Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  fragile wrists, the very bones of her hands hurting like an

  old woman's on a winter night; but she forced her hands

  to close.

  Grandeur? her mind cried, slicing up once more through

  the fog of pain and enchantment. It is only you who see

  yourself as grand, Zyerne. Yes, lam evil, and weak, and

  cowardly, but, like a dragon, I know what it is that I am.

  You are a creature of lies, of poisons, of small and petty

  fears—it is that which will kill you. Whether I die or not,

  Zyerne, it is you who will bring your own death upon

  yourself, not for what you do, but for what you are.

  She felt Zyeme's mind flinch at that. With a twist of

  fury Jenny broke the brutal grip it held upon hers. At the

  same moment her hands were struck aside. From her

  knees, she looked up through the tangle of her hair, to

  see the enchantress's face grow livid. Zyeme screamed

  "You! You..." With a piercing obscenity, the sorceress's

  whole body was wrapped in the rags of heat and fire and

  power. Jenny, realizing the danger was now to her body

  rather than to her mind, threw herself to the floor and

  rolled out of the way. In the swirling haze of heat and

  power stood a creature she had never seen before, hideous

  and deformed, as if a giant cave roach had mated with a

  tiger. With a hoarse scream, the thing threw itself upon

  her.

  Jenny rolled aside from the rip of the razor-combed

  feet. She heard Gareth cry her name, not in terror as he

  would once have done, and from the comer of her eye

  she saw him slide the halberd across the glass-slick floor

  to her waiting hand. She caught the weapon just in time

  to parry a second attack. The metal of the blade shrieked

  Dragonsbane 313

  on the tearing mandibles as the huge weight of the thing

  bore her back against the blue-black Stone. Then the thing

  turned, doubling on its tracks as Zyeme had done that

  evening in the glade, and in her mind Jenny seemed to

  hear Zyeme's distant voice howling, "I'll show you! I'll

  show you all!"

  It scuttled into the forest of alabaster, making for the

  dark tunnels that led to the surface.

  Jenny started to get to her feet to follow and collapsed

  at the foot of the Stone. Her body hurt her in every limb

  and muscle; her mind felt pulped from the ripping cruelty

  of Zyeme's spells, bleeding still from her own acceptance

  of what she was. Her hand, which she could see lying

  over the halberd's shaft, seemed no longer part of her,

  though, rather to her surprise, she saw it was still on the

  end of her arm and attached to her body; the brown fingers

  were covered with blisters, from some attack she had not

  even felt at the time. Gareth was bending over her, holding

  the guttering torch.

  "Jenny—Jenny, wake up—Jenny please Don't make

  me go after it alone!"

  "No," she managed to whisper and swallowed blood.

  Some instinct told her the lesion within her had healed,

  but she felt sick and drained. She tried to rise again and

  collapsed, vomiting; she felt the boy's hands hold her

  steady even though they shook with fear. Afterward, empty

  and chilled, she wondered if she would faint and told

  herself not to be silly.

  "She's going to get Morkeleb," she whispered, and

  propped herself up again, her black hair hanging down in

  her face. "The power of the Stone rules him. She will be

  able to hold his mind, as she could not hold mine."

  She managed to get to her feet, Gareth helping her as

  gently as he could, and picked up the halberd. "I have to

  stop her before she gets clear of the caverns. I defeated

  314 Barbara Hambly

  her mind—while the tunnels limit her size, I may be able

  to defeat her body. Stay here and help John."

  "But..." Gareth began. She shrugged free of his hold

  and made for the dark doorway at a stumbling run.

  Beyond it, spells of loss and confusion tangled the

  darkness. The runes that she had traced as she'd followed

  John were gone, and for a few moments the subtle obscu

  rity of Zyeme's magic smothered her mind and made ali

  those shrouded ways look the same. Panic knotted around

  her throat as she thought of wandering forever in the

  darkness; then the part of her that had found her way

  through the woods of the Winterlands said. Think. Think

  and listen. She released magic from her mind and looked

  about her in the dark; with instinctive woodcraftiness,

  she had taken back-bearings of her route while making

  her rune-markings, seeing what the landmarks looked like

  coming the other way. She spread her senses through the

  phantasmagoric domain of fluted stone, listening for the

  echoes that crossed and recrossed in the blackness. She

  heard the muted murmur of John's voice speaking to Gar-

  eth about doors the gnomes had meant to bar and the

  clawed scrape of unclean chitin somewhere up ahead.

  She deepened her awareness and heard the skitter of the

  vermin of the caves as they fled, shocked, from a greater

  vermin. Swiftly, she set off in pursuit.

  She had told Morkeleb to stand guard over the outer

  door. She prayed now that he had had the sense not to,

  but it scarcely mattered whether he did or not.The power

  of the Stone was in Zyeme—from it she had drawn the

  deepest reserves of its strength, knowing that, when the

  time came to pay it back, she would have lives aplenty

  at her disposal to do it. The power of the Stone was lodged

  in Morkeleb's mind, tighter now that his mind and hers

  had touched. With the dragon her slave, the Citadel would

  fall, and the Stone be Zyeme's forever.

  Jenny quickened once more to a jog that felt ready to

  Dragonsbane 315

  break her bones. Her bare feet splashed in the trickling

  water, making a faint, sticky pattering among the looming

  shapes of the limestone darkness; her hands felt frozen

  around the halberd shaft. How long a start Zyeme had

  she didn't know, or how fast the abomination she had

  become could travel. Zyeme had no more power over

  her, but she feared to meet her now and pit her body

  against that body. A part other mind thought wryly: John

  should have been doing this, not she—it was his end of

  the bargain to deal with monsters. She smiled bitterly.

  Mab had been right; there were other evils besides drag-

  ons in the land.

  She passed a hillslope of stone mushrooms, an archway

  of teeth like grotesque daggers. Her heart pounded and

  her chilled body ached with the ruin Zyeme had wrought

  on her. She ran, passing the locks and bars the gnomes

  had set such faith in, knowing already that she would be

  too late.

  In the blue dimness of the vaults below the Citadel,

  she found the furniture toppled and scattered, and she

  forced herself desperately to greater speed. Through a

  doorway, she glimpsed a reflection of the fevered daylight
>
  outside; the stench of blood struck her nostrils even as

  she tripped and, looking down, saw the decapitated body

  of a gnome lying in a pool of warm blood at her feet. The

  last room of the Citadel vaults was a slaughterhouse, men

  and gnomes lying in it and in the doorway to the outside,

  their makeshift black livery sodden with blood, the close

  air of the room stinking with the gore that splattered the

  walls and even the ceiling. From beyond the doorway,

  shouting and the stench of burning came to her; and,

  stumbling through the carnage. Jenny cried out Morkeleb

  She hurled the music of his name like a rope into the

  sightless void. His mind touched hers, and the hideous

  weight of the Stone pressed upon them both.

  Light glared in her eyes. She scrambled over the bodies

  316 Barbara Hambly

  in the doorway and stood, blinking for an instant in the

  lower court, seeing all around the door the paving stones

  charred with a crisped muck of blood. Before her the

  creature crouched, larger and infinitely more hideous in

  the befouled and stormy daylight, metamorphosed into

  something like a winged ant, but without an ant's compact

  grace. Squid, serpent, scorpion, wasp—it was everything

  hideous, but no one thing in itself. The screaming laughter

  that filled her mind was Zyeme's laughter. It was Zyerne's

  voice that she heard, calling to Morkeleb as she had called

  to Gareth, the power of the Stone a tightening noose upon

  his mind.

  The dragon crouched immobile against the far rampart

  of the court. His every spike and scale were raised for

  battle, yet to Jenny's mind came nothing from him but

  grating agony. The awful, shadowy weight of the Stone

  was tearing at his mind, a power built generation after

  generation, fermenting in upon itself and directed by

  Zyeme upon him now, summoning him to her bidding,

  demanding that he yield. Jenny felt his mind a knot of

  iron against that imperious command, and she felt it when

  the knot fissured.

  She cried again, Morkeleb and flung herself, mind and

  body, toward him. Their minds gripped and locked.

  Through his eyes, she saw the horrible shape of the crea-

  ture and recognized how he had known Zyerne through

  her disguise—the patterning of her soul was unmistaka-

  ble. Peripherally, she was aware that this was true for

  every man and gnome who cowered within the doorways

  and behind the protection of each turret; she saw things

  as a dragon sees. The force of the Stone hammered again

  at her mind, and yet it had no power over her, no hold

  upon her. Through Morkeleb's eyes, she saw herself still

  running toward him—toward, in a sense, herself—and

  saw the creature turn to strike at that small, flying rag of

  Dragonsbane 317

  black-wrapped bones and hair that she knew in a detached

  way for her own body.

  Her mind was within the dragon's, shielding him from

  the burning grip of the Stone. Like a cat, the dragon

  struck, and the creature that had been Zyerne wheeled

  to meet the unexpected threat. Half within her own body,

  half within Morkeleb's, Jenny stepped in under the sag-

  ging, bloated belly of the monster that loomed so hugely

  near her and thrust upward with her halberd. As the blade

  slashed at the stinking flesh, she heard Zyeme's voice in

  her mind, screaming at her the back-street obscenities of

  a spoiled little slut whom the gnomes had taken in on

  account of the promise of her power. Then the creature

  gathered its mismated limbs beneath it and hurled itself

  skyward out of their way. From overhead, Jenny felt the

  hot rumble of thunder.

  Her counterspell blocked the bolt of lightning that would

  have come hurling down on the court an instant later; she

  used a dragon-spell, such as those who walked the roads

  of the air used to allow them to fly in storms. Morkeleb

  was beside her then, her mind shielding his from the Stone

  as his body shielded hers from Zyeme's greater strength.

  Minds interlinked, there was no need of words between

  them. Jenny seized the knife-tipped spikes of his foreleg

  as he raised her to his back, and she wedged herself

  uncomfortably between the spearpoints that guarded his

  spine. More thunder came, and the searing breathlessness

  of ozone. She flung a spell to turn aside that bolt, and the

  lightning—channeled, she saw, through the creature that

  hovered in the livid air above the Citadel like a floating

  sack of pus—struck the tubular harpoon gun on the ram-

  part. It exploded in a bursting star of flame and shattered

  iron, and the two men who were cranking another catapult

  to bear on the monster turned and fled.

  Jenny understood then that the storm had been sum-

  moned by Zyeme, called by her powers through the Stone

  318 Barbara Hambly

  from afar, and the Stone's magic gave her the power to

  direct the lightning when and where she would. It had

  been her weapon to destroy the Citadel—the Stone, the

  storm, and the dragon.

  She pulled off her belt and used it to lash herself to

  the two-foot spike before her. It would be little use if the

  dragon turned over in flight, but would keep her from

  being thrown off laterally, and that was all she could hope

  for now. She knew her body was exhausted and hurt, but

  the dragon's mind lifted her out of herself; and in any

  case, she had no choice. She sealed herself off from the

  pain and ripped the Limitations from mind and flesh.

  The dragon hurtled skyward to the thing waiting above.

  Winds tore at them, buffeting Morkeleb's wings so

  that he had to veer sharply to miss being thrown into the

  highest turret of the Citadel. From above them, the crea-

  ture spat a rain of acid mucus. Green and stinking, it seared

  Jenny's face and hands like poison and made smoking

  tracks of corrosion on the steel of the dragon's scales.

  Furiously keeping her mind concentrated against the sear-

  ing agony. Jenny cast her will at the clouds, and rain began

  to sluice down, washing the stuff away and half-blinding

  her with its fury. Long black hair hung stickily down over

  her shoulders as the dragon swung on the wind, and she

  felt lightning channeling again into the hovering creature

  before them. Seizing it with her mind, she flung it back.

  It burst somewhere between them, the shock of it striking

  her bones like a Mow. She had forgotten she was not a

  dragon, and that her flesh was mortal.

  Then the creature fell upon them, its stumpy wings

  whirring like a foul bug's. The weight of it rolled the

  dragon in the air so that Jenny had to grasp the spikes on

  either side of her, below the blades and yet still cutting

  her fingers. The earth rolled and swung below them, but

  her eyes and mind locked on the thing above. Its stink i^

  was overpowering, and from the pullulant mass of its j||

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  flesh, a sharklike head struck, biting at the massive joints

  of the dragon's wings, while the whirlwind of evil spells

  sucked and ripped around them, tearing at their linked

  minds.

  Ichorous yellow fluid burst from the creature's mouth

  as it bit at the spikes of the wing-joints. Jenny slashed at

  the eyes, human and as big as her two fists, gray-gold as

  mead—Zyeme's eyes. The halberd blade clove through

  the flesh—and from among the half-severed flaps of the

  wound, other heads burst like a knot of snakes among

  spraying gore, tearing at her robe and her flesh with suck-

  eriike mouths. Grimly, fighting a sense of nightmare hor-

  ror, she chopped again, her blistered hands clotted and

  running with slime. Half her mind called from the depths

  of the dragon's soul the healing-spells against the poisons

  she knew were harbored in those filthy jaws.

  When she slashed at the other eye, the creature broke

  away from them. The pain of Morkeleb's wounds as well

  as her own tore at her as he swung and circled skyward,

  and she knew he felt the burning of her ripped flesh. The

  Citadel dropped away below them; rain poured over them

  like water from a pail. Looking up, she could see the

  deadly purplish glow of stored lightning rimming the black

  pillows of cloud so close above their heads. The battering

  of Zyeme's mind upon theirs lessened as the sorceress

  rallied her own spells, spells of wreckage and ruin against

  the Citadel and its defenders below.

  Mists veiled the thrusting folds of the land beneath

  them, the toy fortress and the wet, slate-and-emerald of

  the meadows beside the white stream of the river. Mor-

  keleb circled. Jenny's eyes within his seeing all things

  with clear, incredible calm. Lightning streaked down by

  her and she saw, as if it had been drawn in fine lines