Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  "You were bound," Aversin said quietly. "It's just that,

  before Jenny's mind touched yours, you weren't aware

  of it. Had you tried to leave before?"

  / remained because it was my will to remain.

  "And it's the old King's will to remain with Zyeme,

  though she's killing him. No, Morkeleb—she got you

  through your greed, as she got poor Gar's dad through

  his grief and Bond through his love. If we hadn't come,

  you'd have stayed here, bound with spells to brood over

  your hoard till you died. It's just that now you know it."

  That is not true!

  True or not. Jenny said, it is my bidding, Morkeleb,

  that as soon as the sky grows light, you shall carry me

  over the mountain to the Citadel of Halnath, so that I

  280 Barbara Humbly

  can send Polycarp the Master to bring these others to

  safety there through the Deep.

  The dragon reared himself up, bristling all over with

  rage. His voice lashed her mind like a silver whip. / am

  not your pigeon nor your servant!

  Jenny was on her feet now, too, looking up into the

  blazing white deeps of his eyes. No, she said, holding to

  the crystal chain of his inner name. You are my slave, by

  that which you gave me when I saved your life. And by

  that which you gave me, I tell you this is what you shall

  do.

  Their eyes held. The others, not hearing what passed

  between their two minds, saw and felt only the dragon's

  scorching wrath. Gareth caught up Trey and drew her

  back toward the shelter of the gateway; Aversin made a

  move to rise and sank back with a gasp. He angrily shook

  offGareth's attempt to draw him to safety, his eyes never

  leaving the small, thin form of the woman who stood

  before the smoking rage of the beast.

  All this Jenny was aware of, but peripherally, like the

  weave of a tapestry upon which other colors are painted.

  Her whole mind focused in crystal exactness against the

  mind that surged like a dark wave against hers; The power

  bom in her from the touch of the dragon's mind strength-

  ened and burned, forcing him back. Her understanding

  of his name was a many-pointed weapon in her hands. In

  time Morkeleb sank to his haunches again, and back to

  his sphinx position.

  In her mind his voice said softly, You know you do not

  need me, Jenny Waynest, to fly over the mountains. You

  know the form of the dragons and their magic. One of

  them you have put on already.

  The other I might put on, she replied, for you would

  help me in that, to be free of my will. But you would not

  help me put it off again.

  Dragonsbane 281

  The deeps of his eyes were like falling into the heart

  of a star. If you wished it, I would.

  The need in her for power, to separate herself from all

  that had separated her from its pursuit, shuddered through

  her like the racking heat of fever. "To be a mage you must

  be a mage," Caerdinn had said.

  He had also said, "Dragons do not deceive with lies,

  but with truth." Jenny turned her eyes from those cosmic

  depths. You say it only because in becoming a dragon, I

  will cease to want to hold power over you, Morkeleb the

  Black.

  He replied. Not 'only,' Jenny Waynest.

  Like a wraith he faded into the darkness.

  Though still exhausted from the battle at the Gates,

  Jenny did not sleep that night. She sat upon the steps, as

  she had sat awake most of the night before, watching and

  listening—for the King's men, she told herself, though

  she knew they would not come. She was aware of the

  night with a physical intensity, the moonlight like a rune

  of molten silver on every chink and crack of the scarred

  steps upon which she sat, turning to slips of white each

  knotted weed-stem in the scuffed dust of the square below.

  Earlier, while she had been tending to John by the fire in

  the Market Hall, the bodies of the slain rioters had van-

  ished from the steps, though whether this was due to

  fastidiousness on Morkeleb's part or hunger, she wasn't

  sure.

  Sitting in the cold stillness of the night, she meditated,

  seeking an answer within herself. But her own soul was

  unclear, torn between the great magic that had always lain

  beyond her grasp and the small joys she had cherished in

  its stead—the silence of the house on Frost Fell, the

  memory of small hands that seemed to be printed on her

  palms, and John.

  John, she thought, and looked back through the wide

  282 Barbara Hambly

  arch of the Gate to where he lay, wrapped in bearskins

  beside the small glow of the fire.

  In the darkness she made out his shape, the broad-

  shouldered compactness that went so oddly with the

  whippet litheness of his movements. She remembered the

  fears that had driven her to the Deep to seek medicines—

  that had driven her first to look into the dragon's silver

  eyes. Now, as then, she could scarcely contemplate years

  of her life that did not—or would not—include that fleet-

  ing, triangular smile.

  Adric had it already, along with the blithe and sunny

  half of John's quirky personality. lan had his sensitivity,

  his maddening, insatiable curiosity, and his intentness.

  His sons, she thought. My sons.

  Yet the memory of the power she had called to stop

  the lynch mob on these very steps returned to her, sweet-

  ness and terror and exultation. Its results had horrified

  her, and the weariness of it still clung to her bones, but

  the taste that lingered was one of triumph at having wielded

  it. How could she, she wondered, have wasted all those

  years before this beginning? The touch ofMorkeleb's mind

  had half-opened a thousand doors within her. If she turned

  away from him now, how many of the rooms behind those

  doors would she be able to explore? The promise of the

  magic was something only a magebom could have felt;

  the need, like lust or hunger, something only the magebom

  would have understood. There was a magic she had never

  dreamed of that could be wrought from the light of certain

  stars, knowledge unplumbed in the dark, eternal minds

  of dragons and in the singing of the whales in the sea.

  The stone house on the Fell that she loved came back to

  her like the memory of a narrow prison; the clutch of

  small hands on her skirts, of an infant's mouth at her

  breast, seemed for a time nothing more than bonds holding

  her back from walking through its doors to the moving

  air outside.

  Dragonsbane 283

  Was this some spell of Morkeleb's? she wondered,

  wrapping the soft weight of a bearskin more tightly around

  her shoulders and gazing at the royal blue darkness of the

  sky above the western ridge. Was it something he had

  sung up out of the depths of her soul, so that she would

  leave the concerns of humans and free him of his bondage

  to her?<
br />
  Why did you say, "Not" 'only,'"Morkeleb the Black?

  You know that as well as I, Jenny Waynest.

  He had been invisible in the darkness. Now the moon-

  light sprinkling his back was like a carpet of diamonds

  and his silver eyes were like small, half-shut moons. How

  long he had been there she did not know—the moon had

  sunk, the stars moved. His coming had been like the float-

  ing of a feather on the still night.

  What you give to them you have taken from yourself.

  When our minds were within one another, I saw the strug-

  gle that has tortured you all your life. I do not understand

  the souls of humans, but they have a brightness to them,

  like soft gold. You are strong and beautiful. Jenny Way-

  nest. I would like it if you would become one of us and

  live among us in the rock islands of the northern seas.

  She shook her head. / will not turn against those that

  I love.

  Turn against? The sinking moonlight striped his mane

  with frost as he moved his head. No. That I know you

  would never do, though, for what their love has done to

  you, they would well deserve it if you did. And as to this

  love you speak of, I do not know what it is—it is not a

  thing of dragons. But when I am freed of the spells that

  bind me here, when I fly to the north again, fly with me.

  This is something also that I have never felt—this wanting

  of you to be a dragon that you can be with me. And tell

  me, what is it to you if this boy Gareth becomes the slave

  of his father's woman or to one of his own choosing?

  What is it to you who rules the Deep, or how long this

  284 Barbara Hambly

  woman Zyerne can go on polluting her mind and her body

  until she dies because she no longer recalls enough about

  her own magic to continue living? What is it to you if the

  Winterlands are ruled and defended by one set of men or

  another, or if they have books to read about the deeds

  of yet a third? It is nothing. Jenny Way nest. Your powers

  are beyond that.

  To leave them now would be to turn against them. They

  need me.

  They do not need you, the dragon replied. Had the

  King's troops killed you upon these steps, it would have

  been the same for them.

  Jenny looked up at him, that dark shape of power—

  infinitely more vast than the dragon John had slain in Wyr

  and infinitely more beautiful. The singing of his soul re-

  echoed in her heart, magnified by the beauty of the gold.

  Clinging to the daylight that she knew against the calling

  of the dark, she shook her head again and said. It would

  not have been the same.

  She gathered the furs about her, rose, and went back

  into the Deep.

  After the sharpness of the night air, the huge cavern

  felt stuffy and stank of smoke. The dying fire threw weird

  flickers of amber against the ivory labyrinth of inverted

  turrets above and glinted faintly on the ends of the broken

  lamp chains that hung down from the vaulted blackness.

  It was always so, going from free night air to the frowsty

  stillness of indoors, but her heart ached suddenly, as if

  she had given up free air for a prison forever.

  She folded the bearskin, laid it by the campfire, and

  found where her halberd had been leaned against the few

  packs they had brought with them from the camp. Some-

  where in the darkness, she heard movement, the sound

  of someone tripping over a plaid. A moment later Gareth's

  voice said softly, "Jenny?"

  "Over here." She straightened up, her pale face and

  285

  the metal buckles of her sheepskin jacket catching the low

  firelight. Gareth looked tired and bedraggled in his shirt,

  breeches, and a stained and scruffy plaid, as unlike as

  possible to the self-conscious young dandy in primrose-

  and-white Court mantlings of less than a week ago. But

  then, she noted, there was less in him now than there had

  been, even then, of the gawky and earnest young man

  who had ridden to the Winterlands in quest of his hero.

  "I must be going," she said softly. "It's beginning to

  mm light. Gather what kindling you can, in case the King's

  men return and you have to barricade yourselves behind

  the inner doors in the Grand Passage. There are foul things

  in the darkness. They may come at you when the light is

  gone."

  Gareth shuddered wholeheartedly and nodded.

  "I'll tell Polycarp how things stand. He should come

  back here to get you, if they didn't blast shut the ways

  into the Deep. If I don't make it to Halnath..."

  The boy looked at her, the heroically simple conclu-

  sions of a dozen ballads reverberant in his shocked fea-

  tures.

  She smiled, the pull of the dragon in her fading. She

  reached up the long distance to lay a hand on his bristly

  cheek. "Look after John for me."

  Then she knelt and kissed John's lips and his shut

  eyelids. Rising, she collected a plaid and her halberd and

  walked toward the clear slate-gray air that lay like water

  outside the darker arch of the Gate.

  As she passed through it, she heard a faint north-coun-

  try voice behind her protest, "Look after John, indeed!"

  CHAPTER XV

  LIGHT WATERED THE darkness, changing the air from

  velvet to silk. Cold cut into Jenny's hands and face, imbu-

  ing her with a sense of strange and soaring joy. The high

  cirques and hanging valleys of the Wall's toothy summits

  were stained blue and lavender against the charcoal gray

  of the sky; below her, mist clung like raveled wool to the

  bones of the shadowy town. For a time she was alone

  and complete, torn by neither power nor love, only

  breathing the sharp air of dawn.

  Like a shift in perception, she became aware of the

  dragon, lying along the bottom step. Seeing her, he rose

  and stretched like a cat, from nose to tail knob to the tips

  of the quivering wings, every spine and hom blinking in

  the gray-white gloom.

  Wrap yourself well, wizard woman. The upper airs are

  cold.

  He sat back upon his haunches and, reaching delicately

  down, closed around her one gripping talon, like a hand

  twelve inches across the back and consisting of nothing

  but bone wrapped in muscle and studded with spike and

  hom. The claws lapped easily around her waist. She felt

  286

  Dragonsbane 287

  no fear of him; though she knew he was treacherous, she

  had been within his mind and knew he would not kill her.

  Still, a shivery qualm passed through her as he lifted her

  up against his breast, where she would be out of the air-

  stream.

  The vast shadow of his wings spread against the mauve

  gloom of the cliff behind them, and she cast one quick

  glance down at the ground, fifteen feet below. Then she

  looked up at the mountains surrounding the Vale and at

  the white, watching eye of the moon on the flinty crest

>   of the ridge, a few days from full and bright in the western

  air as the lamps of the dragon's eyes.

  Then he flung himself upward, and all the world dropped

  away.

  Cold sheered past her face, its bony fingers clawing

  through her hair. Through the plaids wrapped around her,

  she felt the throbbing heat of the dragon's scales. From

  the sky she looked to the earth again, the Vale like a well

  of blue shadow, the mountain slopes starting to take on

  the colors of dawn as the sun brushed them, rust and

  purple and all shades of brown from the whitest dun to

  the deep hue of coffee, all edged and trimmed with the

  dark lace of trees. The rain tanks north of Deeping caught

  the new day like chips of mirror; as the dragon passed

  over the flanks of the mountain, circling higher, she saw

  the bright leap of springs among the pine trees, and the

  white spines of thrusting rock.

  The dragon tilted, turning upon the air, the vast wings

  searing faintly at the wind. Occasional eddies of it whis-

  tled around the spikes that defended the dragon's back-

  bone—some of them no longer than a finger, others almost

  a cubit, dagger-sharp. In flight the dragon seemed to be

  a thing made of silk and wire, lighter than his size would

  lead one to think, as if the flesh and muscle, like the mind

  and the shape of his bones, were different in composition

  from all things else upon the Earth.

  288 Barbara Hambly