Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  robe, he looked like the corpse at a wake, washed and

  tended and cheerful with his specs perched on the end of

  his long nose. "I'm sure you could find a good Stonebane

  someplace..."

  "Never!" Balgub's wrinkled walnut face grew livid. "It

  is the source of the healing arts of the gnomes! The source

  of the strength of the Deep! It is ours..."

  "It will do you precious little good if Zyeme gets her

  hands on it," John pointed out. "I doubt she could break

  through all the doors and gates you locked behind us on

  our way up here through the Deep, but if the King's troops

  296 Barbara Hambly

  manage to breach the Citadel wall, that won't make much

  difference."

  "If Jenny could be given the key to the use of the

  Stone..." suggested Gareth.

  "No!" Balgub and Jenny spoke at once. All those w

  the Master's long, scrubbed stone workroom, John

  included, looked curiously at the witch of Wyr.

  "No human shall touch it!" insisted the gnome with

  shrill fury. "We saw the evil it did. It is for the gnomes,

  and only for us."

  "And I would not touch it if I could." Jenny drew her

  knees up close to her chest and folded her arms around

  them; Balgub, in spite of his protest, looked affronted that

  the greatest treasure of the Deep should be refused. Jenny

  said, "According to Mab, the Stone itself has been defiled

  Its powers, and the spells of those that use it, are polluted

  by what Zyeme has done."

  "That is not true." Balgub's tight little face set in an

  expression of obstinancy. "Mab insisted that the Stone's

  powers were becoming unpredictable and its influence

  evil on the minds of those who used it. By the heart of

  the Deep, this is not so, and so I told her, again and again.

  I do not see how..."

  "After being fed chewed-up human essences instead

  of controlled spells, it would be a wonder if it didn't become

  unpredictable," John said, with his usual good-natured

  affability.

  The gnome's high voice was scornful. "What can a

  warrior know of such things? A warrior hired to slay the

  dragon, who has," he added, with heavy sarcasm, "sig-

  nally failed in even that task."

  "I suppose you'd rather he'd signally succeeded?" Gar-

  eth demanded hotly. "You'd have had the King's troops

  coming at you through the Deep by this time."

  "Lad." John reached patiently out to touch the angry

  Dragonsbane 297

  prince's shoulder. "Let's don't fratch. His opinion does

  me no harm and shouting at him isn't going to change it."

  "The King's troops would never have found their way

  through the Deep, even with the gates unbolted," Balgub

  growled. "And now the gates are locked; if necessary we

  will seal them with blasting powder—it is there and ready,

  within yards of the last gate."

  "If Zyeme was leading them, they would have found

  the way," Polycarp returned. The links of the too-large

  mail shirt he wore over his gown rattled faintly as he

  folded his arms. "She knows the way to the heart of the

  Deep well enough from the Deeping side. As you all saw,

  from there to the underground gates of the Citadel it's an

  almost straight path. And as for the Stone not having been

  affected by what she has put into it..." He glanced down

  at the stooped back and round white head of the gnome

  perched in the carved chair beside him. "You are the only

  Healer who escaped the dragon to come here, Balgub,"

  he said. "Now that the dragon is no longer in the Deep,

  will you go in and use the Stone?"

  The wide mouth tightened, and the green eyes did not

  meet the blue.

  "So," said the Master softly.

  "I do not believe that Mab was right," Balgub insisted

  stubbornly. "Nevertheless, until she, I, and the remaining

  Healers in Bel can examine the thing, I will not have it

  tampered with for good or ill. If it came to saving the

  Citadel, or keeping Zyeme from the Deep, yes, I would

  risk using it, rather than let her have it." Little and white

  as two colorless cave shrimp, his hands with their smooth

  moonstone rings closed upon each other on the inkstained

  tabletop. "We have sworn that Zyeme shall never again

  have the use of the Stone. Every gnome—and every

  man..." He cast a glance that was half-commanding, half-

  questioning up at the Master, and Polycarp inclined his

  298 Barbara Hambly

  head slightly, "—in this place will die before she lays a

  hand upon what she seeks."

  "And considering what her powers will be like if she

  does," Polycarp added, with the detached speculation of

  a scholar, "that would probably be just as well."

  "Jen?"

  Jenny paused in the doorway of the makeshift guest

  room to which she and John had been assigned. After the

  windy ramparts, the place smelled close and stuffy, as the

  Market Hall had last night. The mingled scents of dusty

  paper and leather bindings of the books stored there com-

  pounded with the moldery odors of straw ticks that had

  gone too long without having the straw changed; after the

  grass-and-water scents of the east wind, they made the

  closeness worse. The lumpish shapes of piles of books

  heaped along two walls and the ghostly scaffolding of

  scroll racks lining the third made her think of John's over-

  crowded study in the north; several of the volumes that

  had been put here to make room for refugees trapped by

  the siege had been taken from their places and already

  bore signs of John's reading. John himself stood between

  the tall lights of two of the pointed windows, visible only

  as a white fold of shirt sleeve and a flash of round glass

  in the gloom.

  She said, "You shouldn't be out of bed."

  "I can't be on the broad of my back forever." Through

  his fatigue, he sounded cheerful. "I have the feeling we're

  all going to be put to it again in the near future, and I'd

  rather do it on my feet this time."

  He was silent for a moment, watching her silhouette

  in the slightly lighter doorway.

  He went on, "And for a woman who hasn't slept more

  than an hour or so for three nights now, you've no room

  to speak. What is it, Jen?"

  Like a dragon, she thought, he has a way of not being

  Dragonsbane 299

  lied to. So she did not say, "What is what?" but ran her

  hands tiredly through her hair and crossed to where he

  stood.

  "You've avoided speaking to me of it—not that we've

  had time to do so, mind. I don't feel you're angry with

  me, but I do feel your silence. It's to do with your power,

  isn't it?"

  His arm was around her shoulder, her head resting

  against the rock-hardness of his pectoral, half-uncovered

  by the thin muslin shirt. She should have known, she told

  herself, that John would guess.

  So she nodded, unable to voice the turmoil that had

&nbs
p; been all day in her mind, since the dragon's flight and all

  the night before. Since sunset she had been walking the

  ramparts, as if it were possible to outwalk the choice that

  had stalked her now for ten years.

  Morkeleb had offered her the realms of the dragons,

  the woven roads of the air. All the powers of earth and

  sky, she thought, and all the years of time. The key to

  magic is magic; the offer was the answer to all the thwarted

  longings of her life.

  "Jen," John said softly, "I've never wanted you to be

  torn. I know you've never been complete and I didn't

  want to do that to you. I tried not to."

  "It wasn't you." She had told herself, a hundred years

  ago it seemed, that it was her choice, and so it had been—-

  the choice of doing nothing and letting things go on as

  they were, or of doing something. And, as always, her

  mind shrank from the choice.

  "Your magic has changed," he said. "I've felt it and

  I've seen what it's doing to you."

  "It is calling me," she replied. "If I embrace it, I don't

  think I would want to let go, even if I could. It is every-

  thing that I have wanted and worth to me, I think, every-

  thing that I have."

  She had said something similar to him long ago, when

  300 Barbara Humbly

  they had both been very young. In his jealous posses-

  siveness, he had screamed at her, "But you are everything

  that I have or want to have!" Now his arms only tightened

  around her, as much, she sensed, against her grief as his

  own, though she knew the words he had spoken then were

  no less true tonight.

  "It's your choice, love," he said- "As it's always been

  your choice. Everything you've given me, you've given

  freely. I won't hold you back." Her cheek was pressed

  to his chest, so that she only felt the quick glint of his

  smile as he added, "As if I ever could, anyway."

  They went to the straw mattress and huddle of blan-

  kets, the only accommodation the besieged Citadel had

  been able to offer. Beyond the windows, moisture glinted

  on the black slates of the crowded stone houses below;

  a gutter's thread was like a string of diamonds in the

  moonlight. In the siege camps, bells were ringing for the

  midnight rites of Sarmendes, lord of the wiser thoughts

  of day.

  Under the warmth of the covers, John's body was

  familiar against hers, as familiar as the old temptation to

  let the chances of pure power go by for yet another day.

  Jenny was aware, as she had always been, that it was less

  easy to think about her choices when she lay in his arms.

  But she was still there when sleep finally took her, and

  she drifted into ambiguous and unresolved dreams.

  CHAPTER XVI

  WHEN JENNY WAKENED, John was gone.

  Like a dragon, in her dreams she was aware of many

  things; she had sensed him waking and lying for a long

  while propped on one elbow beside her, watching her as

  she slept; she had been aware, too, of him rising and

  dressing, and of the slow painfulness of donning his shirt,

  breeches, and boots and of how the bandages pulled pain-

  fully over the half-healed mess of slashes and abrasions

  on his back and sides. He had taken her halberd for sup-

  port, kissed her gently, and gone.

  Still weary, she lay in the tangle of blankets and straw-

  ticks, wondering where he had gone, and why she felt

  afraid.

  Dread seemed to hang in the air with the stormclouds

  that reared dark anvil heads above the green distances

  north of Nast Wall. There was a queer lividness to the

  light that streamed through the narrow windows, a breath-

  less sense of coming evil, a sense that had pervaded her

  dreams...

  Her dreams, she thought confusedly. What had she

  dreamed?

  301

  302 Barbara Hambly

  She seemed to remember Gareth and the Master Poly-

  carp walking on the high battlements of the Citadel, both

  in the billowing black robes of students, talking with the

  old ease of their interrupted friendship. "You must admit

  it was a singularly convincing calumny," Polycarp was

  saying.

  Gareth replied bitterly, "I didn't have to believe it as

  readily as I did."

  Polycarp grinned and drew from some pocket in his

  too-ample garments a brass spyglass, unfolding its jointed

  sections to scan the fevered sky. "You're going to be

  Pontifex Maximus one day. Cousin—you need practice

  in believing ridiculous things," And looking out toward

  the road that led south he had stared, as if he could not

  believe what he saw.

  Jenny frowned, remembering the cloudy tangles of the

  dream.

  The King, she thought—it had been the King, riding

  up the road toward the siege camps that surrounded the

  Citadel. But there had been something wrong with that

  tall, stiff form and its masklike face, riding through the

  sulfurous storm light. An effect of the dream? she won-

  dered. Or had the eyes really been yellow—Zyeme's eyes?

  Troubled, she sat up and pulled on her shift. There was

  a wash bowl in a comer of the room near the window,

  the surface of the water reflecting the sky like a piece of

  smoked steel. Her hand brushed across it; at her bidding,

  she saw Morkeleb, lying in the small upper courtyard of

  the Citadel, a small square of stone which contained noth-

  ing save a few withered apple trees, a wooden lean-to that

  had once held gardening equipment and now, like every

  other shelter in the Citadel, housed displaced books. The

  dragon lay stretched out like a cat in the pallid sunlight,

  the jeweled bobs of his antennae flicking here and there

  as if scenting the welter of the air, and beside him, on the

  court's single granite bench, sat John.

  303

  The dragon was saying. Why this curiosity. Dragons-

  bane? That you may know us better, the next time you

  choose to kill one of us?

  "No," John said. "Only that I may know dragons bet-

  ter. I'm more circumscribed than you, Morkeleb—by a

  body that wears out and dies before the mind has seen

  half what it wants to, by a mind that spends half its time

  doing what it would really rather not, for the sake of the

  people who're in my care. I'm as greedy about knowledge

  as Jenny is—as you are for gold, maybe more so—for I

  know I have to snatch it where I can."

  The dragon sniffed in disdain, the velvet-rimmed nos-

  tril flaring to show a surface ripple of deeper currents of

  thought; then he turned his head away. Jenny knew she

  ought to feel surprise at being able to call Morkeleb's

  image in the water bowl, but did not; though she could

  not have phrased it in words, but only in the half-pictured

  understandings of dragon-speech, she knew why it had

  formerly been impossible, but was possible to her now.

  Almost, she thought, she could have summoned his image
<
br />   and surroundings without the water.

  For a time they were silent, man and dragon, and the

  shadows of the black-bellied thunderheads moved across

  them, gathering above the Citadel's heights. Morkeleb did

  not look the same in the water as he did face to face, but

  it was a difference, again, that could not be expressed by

  any but a dragon. A stray wind shook the boughs of the

  cronelike trees, and a few spits of rain speckled the pave-

  ment of the long court below them. At its far end. Jenny

  could see the small and inconspicuous—and easily defen-

  sible—door that led into the antechambers of the Deep.

  It was not wide, for the trade between the Citadel and

  the Deep had never been in anything bulkier than books

  and gold, and for the most part their traffic had been in

  knowledge alone.

  Why? Morkeleb asked at length. If, as you say, yours

  304 Barbara Hambly

  is a life limited by the constraints of the body and the

  narrow perimeters of time, if you are greedy for knowl-

  edge as we are for gold, why do you give what you have,

  half of all that you own, to others?

  The question had risen like a whale from unguessed

  depths, and John was silent for a moment before answer-

  ing. "Because it's part of being human, Morkeleb. Having

  so little, we share among ourselves to make any of it worth

  having. We do what we do because the consequences of

  not caring enough to do it would be worse."

  His answer must have touched some chord in the drag