stone of the pillar, a bar of sunlight falling through the
Gate around her and lying like a pale carpet on the fire-
black rubble of the Market Hall. She wondered if Zyeme
had ever felt like this, when she had called upon the deep
reserves of her powers, without Limitations—helpless
before the anger of men.
She doubted it. It did something to you to be helpless.
All power must be paid for. Zyeme had never paid.
She wondered, just for a moment, how the enchantress
had managed that.
"What's that?"
At the sound of Trey's voice, she opened her eyes again
and looked out to where the girl was pointing. The light
filling the Vale glinted harshly on something up near the
ruined clock tower. Listening, she could pick out the sound
of hooves and voices and feel the distant clamor of anger
and unthinking hate. Against the dull slate color of the
tower's stones, the weeds of the hillside looked pale as
yellow wine; between them the uniforms of half a com-
pany of Palace guards glowed like a tumble of hothouse
poppies. The sun threw fire upon their weapons.
"Gaw," John said. "Reinforcements."
Bond and a small group of men were running up through
the rubble and sedge toward the new company, flies
swarming thick on the young courtier's untended wounds.
Small with distance. Jenny saw more and more men under
the shadow of the tower, the brass of pike and cuirass
flashing, the red of helmet crests like spilled blood against
264 Barbara Hambly
the muted hues of the stone. Exhaustion ate like poison
into her bones. Her skin felt like a single open, throbbing
wound; through it, she could feel the illusion of the Ga^c
fading to nothingness as her power drained and died.
She said quietly, "You three get back to the doors into
the Grand Passage. Gar, Trey—carry John. Bolt the dooi s
from the inside—there are winches and pulleys there."
"Don't be stupid." John was clinging to the gatepost
beside her to stay upright.
"Don't you be stupid." She would not take her eyes
from the swarming men in the square below.
"We're not leaving you," Gareth stated. "At least, I'm
not. Trey, you take John..."
"No," Trey and the Dragonsbane insisted in approxi-
mate unison. They looked at one another and managed
the ghost of a mutual grin.
"It's all of us or none of us, love."
She swung around on them, her eyes blazing palely
with the crystalline coldness of the dragon's eyes. "None
of you can be of the slightest use to me here against so
many. John and Trey, all you'll be is killed immediately.
Gareth..." Her eyes pinned his like a lance of frost. "You
may not be. They may have other instructions concerning
you, from Zyeme. I may have the strength for one more
spell. That can buy you some time. John's wits may keep
you alive for a while more in the Deep; you'll need Trey's
willingness as well. Now go."
There was a short silence, in which she could feel
John's eyes upon her face. She was conscious of the men
approaching in the Vale; her soul screamed at her to get
rid of these three whom she loved while there was yet
time.
It was Gareth who spoke. "Will you really be able to
hold the Gate against another charge? Even of—of my
father's men?"
Dragonsbane 265
"I think so," Jenny lied, knowing she hadn't the strength
left to light a candle.
"Aye, then, love," said John softly. "We'd best go."
He took her halberd to use as a crutch; holding himself
upright with it, he put a hand on her nape and kissed her.
His mouth felt cold against hers, his lips soft even through
the hard scratchiness of five days' beard. As their lips
parted, their eyes met, and, through the dragon armor of
hardness, she saw he knew she'd lied.
"Let's go, children," he said. "We won't shoot the bolts
till we have to, Jen."
The line of soldiers was descending through the lab-
yrinth of shattered foundations and charred stone. They
were joined by the men and women of Deeping, those,
Jenny noted, who had thrown garbage at Miss Mab in the
fountain square of Bel. Makeshift weapons jostled pikes
and swords. In the brilliance of daylight everything seemed
hard and sharp. Every house beam and brick stood out
to Jenny's raw perceptions like filigree work, every tangle
of weed and stand of grass clear and individuated. The
amber air held the stench of sulfur and burned flesh. Like
a dim background to angry ranting and exhortation rose
the keening of the wounded and, now and again, voices
crying, "Gold... gold..."
They scarcely even know what it is for, Morkeleb had
said.
Jenny thought about lan and Adric, and wondered
briefly who would raise them, or if, without her and John's
protection of the Winterlands, they would live to grow
up at all. Then she sighed and stepped forth from the
shadows into the light. The pale sun drenched her, a small,
skinny, black-haired woman alone in the vast arch of the
shattered Gate. Men pointed, shouting. A rock clattered
against the steps, yards away. The sunlight felt warm and
pleasant upon her face.
Bond was screaming hysterically, "Attack! Attack now!
266 Barbara Hambly
KU1 the witch-bitch! It's our gold! We'll get the slut thip
time—get her..."
Men began to run forward up the steps. She watchec
them coming with a curious feeling of absolute detach
ment. The fires of dragon-magic had drained her utterly—
one last trap, she thought ironically, from Morkeleb, i
final vengeance for humiliating him. The mob curled like
a breaking wave over the ruined beams and panels of the
shattered gates, the sunlight flashing on the steel of the
weapons in their hands.
Then a shadow crossed the sunlight—like a hawk's,
but immeasurably more huge.
One man looked up, pointed at the sky, and screamed.
Again the sunlight was darkened by circling shade.
Jenny raised her head. The aureate light streamed trans-
lucently through the black spread of bones and the dark
veins of sable wings, sparkled from the spikes that tipped
the seventy-foot span of that silent silk, and gilded every
hom and ribbon of the gleaming mane.
She watched the dragon circling, riding the thermals
like a vast eagle, only peripherally conscious of the ter-
rified shouting of the men and the frenzied squeals of the
guards' horses. Yelling and crashing in the rubble, the
attackers of the Deep turned and fled, trampling upon
their dead and dropping their weapons in their headlong
flight.
The Vale was quite empty by the time Morkeleb lighted
upon the heat-cracked steps of the Deep.
CHAPTER XIV
WHY DID YOU RETURN?
The sun had set. Echoes of its br
ightness lingered on
the cinnamon edges of the cliff above. After the firelight
and blackness of the Market Hall, where Gareth and Trey
could be heard talking softly beside the small blaze they
had kindled, the windy coolness of the steps was deeply
refreshing. Jenny ran tired hands through her hair, the
cold of her fingers welcome against her aching skull.
The great, gleaming black shape that lay like a sphinx
along the top step turned its head. In the reflected glow
from the fire in the hall she saw the long edges of that
birdlike skull, the turn and flutter of the ribboned mane
and the glint of the bobs of jet that quivered on long
antennae.
His voice was soft in her mind. I need your help, wizard
woman.
What? It was the last thing she would have expected
from the dragon. She wondered illogically if she had heard
rightly, though with dragons there was never a question
of that. My HELP? MY help?
Bitter anger curled from the dragon like an acrid smoke,
267
268 Barbara Hambly
anger at having to ask the help of any human, anger at
needing help, anger at admitting it, even to himself. But
in the close-shielded mind, she felt other things—exhaus-
tion approaching her own and the chill thread of fear.
By my name you drove me forth from this place, he
said. But something else, something beyond my name,
draws me back. Like a jewel, one jet-bobbed antenna
flicked in the wind. Like the discontented dreams that
first brought me to this place, it will not let me rest; it is
a yearning like the craving for gold, but worse. It tor-
mented me as I flew north, mounting to pain, and the
only ease I had was when I turned south again. Now all
the torments of my soul and my dreams center upon this
mountain. Before you entered my mind, it was not so—
I came and went as I pleased, and naught but my own
desire for the gold made me return. But this pain, this
longing of the heart, is something I never felt before, in
all my years; it is something I never knew of, until your
healing touched me. It is not of you, for you commanded
me to go. It is a magic that I do not understand, unlike
the magic of dragons. It gives me no rest, no peace. I
think of this place constantly, though, by my name, wizard
woman, it is against my will that I return.
He shifted upon his haunches, so that he lay as a cat
will sometimes lie, his forelimbs and shoulders sphinx-
like, but his hinder legs stretched out along the uppermost
step. The spiked club of his tail lashed slightly at its clawed
tip.
It is not the gold, he said. Gold calls to me, but never
with a madness like this. It is alien to my understanding,
as if the soul were being rooted from me. I hate this place,
for it is a place of defeat and disgrace to me now, but the
craving to be here consumes me. I have never felt this
before and I do not know what It is. Has it come from
you, wizard woman? Do you know what is it?
Jenny was silent for a time. Her strength was slowly
Dragonsbane 269
returning, and she felt already less weak and brittle than
she had. Sitting on the steps between the dragon's claws,
his head rose above hers, the thin, satiny ribbons of his
mane brushing against her face. Now he cocked his head
down; looking up, she met one crystalline silver eye.
She said. It is a longing such as humans feel. I do not
know why it should possess you, Morkeleb—but I think
it is time that we found out. You are not the only one
drawn to the Deep as if possessed. Like you, I do not
think it is the gold. There is something within the Deep.
I sense it, feel it within my bones.
The dragon shook his great head. / know the Deep, he
said. It was my hold and dominion. I know every dropped
coin and every soda-straw crystal; I heard the tread of
every foot passing in the Citadel overhead and the slip-
ping of the blind white fish through the waters deep below.
I tell you, there is nothing in the Deep but water, stone,
and the gold of the gnomes, sleeping in the darkness.
There is nothing there that should draw me so.
Perhaps, Jenny said. Then, aloud, she called into the
echoing cavern behind her, "Gareth? John? Trey?"
The dragon lifted his head with indignation as soft foot-
falls scuffled within. Like speech without words, Jenny
felt the sharp flash of his pride and his annoyance at her
for bringing other humans into their counsels and she
longed to slap his nose as she slapped her cat's when he
tried to steal food from her fingers.
He must have felt the returning glint of her exasper-
ation, for he subsided, his narrow chin sinking to rest
upon the long-boned hooks of one black foreclaw. Beyond
the spears of his backbone she saw the great tail lash.
The others came out, Gareth and Trey supporting John
between them. He had slept a little and rested and looked
better than he had. The spells of healing she had laid upon
him were having their effect. He gazed up at the dark
shape of the dragon, and Jenny felt their eyes meet and
270 Barbara Hambly
knew that Morkeleb spoke to him, thought she heard not
what he said.
John replied in words. "Well, it was just as well, wasn't
it? Thank you."
Their eyes held for a moment more. Then the dragon
raised his head and turned it away irritably, transferring
his cold silver gaze to Gareth. Jenny saw the young man
flush with shame and confusion; whatever the dragon said
to him, he made no reply at all.
They laid John down with his back to the granite door
pillar, his plaid folded beneath his shoulders. His spec-
tacles caught the starlight, rather like the silvery glow of
the dragon's eyes. Jenny seated herself on the steps
between him and the dragon's talons; Gareth and Trey,
as if for mutual protection, sat opposite and close together,
staring up in wonder at the thin, serpentine form of the
Black Dragon of Nast Wall.
In time, Jenny's flawed, silver-shot voice broke the
silence. "What is in the Deep?" she asked. "What is it
that Zyeme wants so badly there? All her actions have
been aimed toward having it—her hold over the King,
her attempts to seduce Gareth, her desire for a child, the
siege of Halnath, and the summoning of the dragon."
She did not summon me, retorted Morkeleb angrily.
She could not have done that. She has no hold upon my
mind.
"You're here, ain't you?" John drawled, and the drag-
on's metallic claws scraped upon the stone as his head
swung round.
Jenny said sharply, "John! Morkeleb!"
The dragon subsided with a faint hiss, but the bobs of
his antennae twitched with annoyance.
She went on, "Might it be that she is herself sum-
moned?"
/ tell yo
u there is nothing there, the dragon said. Noth-
ing save stone and gold, water and darkness.
Dragonsbane 271
"Let's back up a bit, then," John said. "Not what does
Zveme want in the Deep, but just what does she want?"
Gareth shrugged. "It can't be gold. You've seen how
she lives. She could have all the gold in the Realm for the
asking. She has the King..." He hesitated, and then went
on calmly, "If I hadn't left for the north when I did, she
would certainly have had me, and very probably a son to
rule through for the rest of her life."
"She used to live in the Deep," Trey pointed out. "It
seems that, ever since she left it, she's been trying to get
control of it. Why did she leave? Did the gnomes expel
her?"
"Not really," Gareth said. "That is, they didn't formally
forbid her to enter the Deep at all until this year. Up until
then she could come and go in the upper levels, just like
any other person from Bel."
"Well if she's shapestrong, that's to say she had the
run of the place, so long as she stayed clear of the mage-
born," John reasoned, propping his specs with one fore-
finger. "And what happened a year ago?"
"I don't know," Gareth said. "Dromar petitioned my
father in the name of the Lord of the Deep not to let her—
or any of the children of men, for that matter..."
"Again, that's a logical precaution against a shape-
shifter."
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