Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  dom spoken the words, he thanked Lord Aversin the Drag-

  onsbane, though he did not specify for what.

  "Well, he hardly could, now, could he?" John remarked,

  as the three gnomes left the court in the wake of the King's

  party. Only Miss Mab had caught Jenny's eye and winked

  at her. John went on, "If he came out and said, 'Thank

  you for blowing up the Stone,' that would be admitting

  that he was wrong about Zyerne not poisoning it."

  Gareth, who was still standing hand-in-hand with Trey

  beside them, laughed. "You know, I think he does admit

  it in his heart, though I don't think he'll ever completely

  forgive us for doing it. At least, he's civil to me in Council—

  which is fortunate, since I'm going to have to be dealing

  with him for a long time."

  "Are you?" A flicker of intense interest danced in John's

  eye.

  Gareth was silent for a long moment, fingering the stiff

  lace of his cuff and not meeting John's gaze. When he

  looked up again, his face was weary and sad.

  "I thought it would be different," he said quietly. "I

  thought once Zyerne was dead, he would be all right. And

  he's better, he really is." He spoke like a man trying to

  convince himself that a mended statue is as beautiful as

  it was before it broke. "But he's—he's so absentminded.

  Badegamus says he can't be trusted to remember edicts

  he's made from one day to the next. When I was in Bel,

  we made up a Council—Badegamus, Balgub, Polycarp,

  Dromar, and I—to sort out what we ought to do; then I

  Dragonsbane 329

  tell Father to do it—or remind him it's what he was going

  to do, and he'll pretend he remembers. He knows he's

  gotten forgetful, though he doesn't quite remember why.

  Sometimes he'll wake in the night, crying Zyeme's name

  or my mother's." The young man's voice turned momen-

  tarily unsteady. "But what if he never recovers?"

  "What if he never does?" John returned softly. "The

  Realm will be yours in any case one day, my hero." He

  turned away and began tightening the cinches of the mules,

  readying them for the trek down through the city to the

  northward road.

  "But not now!" Gareth followed him, his words making

  soft puffs of steam in the morning cold. "I mean—I never

  have time for myself anymore! It's been months since I

  worked on my poetry, or tried to complete that southern

  variant of the ballad of Antara Warlady..."

  "There'll be time, by and by." The Dragonsbane paused,

  resting his hand on the arched neck of Battlehanuner,

  Gareth's parting gift to him. "It will get easier, when men

  know to come to you directly instead of to your father."

  Gareth shook his head. "But it won't be the same."

  "Is it ever?" John moved down the line, tightening

  cinches, checking straps on the parcels of books—vol-

  umes of healing, Anacetus' works on greater and lesser

  demons, Luciard's Firegiver, books on engineering and

  law, by gnomes and men. Gareth followed him silently,

  digesting the fact that he was now, for all intents and

  purposes, the Lord of Bel, with the responsibilities of the

  kingdom—for which he had been academically prepared

  under the mental heading of "some day"—thrust suddenly

  upon his unwilling shoulders. Like John, Jenny thought

  pityingly, he would have to put aside the pursuit of his

  love of knowledge for what he owed his people and return

  to it only when he could. The only difference was that

  his realm was at peace and that John had been a year

  330 Barbara Hambly

  younger than Gareth was when the burden had fallen to

  him.

  "And Bond?" John asked gently, looking over at Trey.

  She sighed and managed to smile. "He still asks about

  Zyeme," she said softly. "He really did love her, you

  know. He knows she's dead and he tries to pretend he

  remembers it happening the way'I told him, about her

  falling off a horse... But it's odd. He's kinder than he

  was. He'll never be considerate, of course, but he's not

  so quick or so clever, and I think he hurts people less.

  He dropped a cup at luncheon yesterday—he's gotten

  very clumsy—and he even apologized to me." There was

  a slight wryness to her smile, perhaps to cover tears. "I

  remember when he would not only have blamed me for

  it, but gotten me to blame myself."

  She and Gareth had been following John down the line,

  still hand in hand, the girl's rose-colored skirts bright

  against the pewter grayness of the frosted morning. Jenny,

  standing apart, listened to their voices, but felt as if she

  saw them through glass, part of a life from which she was

  half-separated, to which she did not have to go back unless

  she chose. And all the while, her mind listened to the sky,

  hearing with strange clarity the voices of the wind around

  the Citadel towers, seeking something...

  She caught John's eye on her and saw the worry crease

  between his brows; something wrung and wrenched in

  her heart.

  "Must you go?" Gareth asked hesitantly, and Jenny,

  feeling as if her thoughts had been read, looked up; but

  it was to John that he had spoken. "Could you stay with

  me, even for a little while? It will take nearly a month for

  the troops to be ready—you could have a seat on the

  Council. I—I can't do this alone."

  John shook his head, leaning on the mule Clivy's with-

  ers. "You are doing it alone, my hero. And as for me,

  I've my own realm to look after. I've been gone long as

  Dragonsbane 331

  it is." He glanced questioningly at Jenny as he spoke, but

  she looked away.

  Wind surged down around them, crosswise currents

  swirling her plaids and her hair like the stroke of a giant

  wing. She looked up and saw the shape of the dragon

  melting down from the gray and cobalt of the morning

  sky.

  She turned from the assembled caravan in the court

  without a word and ran to the narrow stair that led up to

  the walls. The dark shape hung like a black kite on the

  wind, the soft voice a song in her mind.

  By my name you have bidden me go. Jenny Waynest,

  he said. Now that you are going, I too shall depart. But

  by your name, I ask that you follow. Come with me, to

  the islands of the dragons in the northern seas. Come

  with me, to be of us, now and forever.

  She knew in her heart that it would be the last time of

  his asking; that if she denied him now, that door would

  never open again. She stood poised for a moment, between

  silver ramparts and silver sky. She was aware of John

  climbing the steps behind her, his face emptied of life and

  his spectacle lenses reflecting the pearly colors of the

  morning light; was aware, through him, of the two little

  boys waiting for them in the crumbling tower of Alyn

  Hold—boys she had bome without intention of raising,

  boys she should have loved, she thought, eith
er more or

  less than she had.

  But more than them, she was aware of the dragon,

  drifting like a ribbon against the remote white eye of the

  day moon. The music of his name shivered in her bones;

  the iron and fire of his power streaked her soul.

  To be a mage you must be a mage, she thought. The

  key to magic is magic.

  She turned and looked back, to see John standing on

  the root-buckled pavement between the barren apple trees

  behind her. Past him, she glimpsed the caravan of horses

  332 Barbara Hambly

  in the court below. Trey and Gareth holding the horses'

  heads as they snorted and fidgeted at the scent of the

  dragon. For a moment, the memory of John's body and

  John's voice overwhelmed her—the crushing strength of

  his muscles and the curious softness of his lips, the cold

  slickness of a leather sleeve, and the fragrance of his body

  mixed with the more prosaic pungence ofwoodsmoke and

  horses that permeated his scruffy plaids.

  She was aware, too, of the desperation and hope in his

  eyes.

  She saw the hope fade, and he smiled. "Go if you must,

  love," he said softly. "I said I wouldn't hold you, and I

  won't. I've known it for days."

  She shook her head, wanting to speak, but unable to

  make a sound, her dark hair swirled by the wind of the

  dragon's wings. Then she turned from him, suddenly, and

  ran to the battlements, beyond which the dragon lay wait-

  ing in the air.

  Her soul made the leap first, drawing power from the

  wind and from the rope of crystal thought that Morkeleb

  flung her, showing her the way. The elements around the

  nucleus of her essence changed, as she shed the shape

  that she had known since her conception and called to

  her another, different shape. She was half-conscious of

  spreading her arms against the wind as she strode forward

  over the edge of the battlement, of the wind in her dark

  hair as she sprang outward over the long drop of stone

  and cliff and emptiness. But her mind was already speed-

  ing toward the distant cloud peaks, the moon, the dragon.

  On the walls behind her, she was aware of Trey whis-

  pering, "She's beautiful..."

  Against the fading day moon, the morning's strength-

  ening light caught in the milk-white silk of her spreading

  wings and flashed like a spiked carpet of diamonds along

  the ghost-pale armor of the white dragon's back and sides.

  But more than of that, she was conscious of John,

  Dragonsbane JJJ

  Dragonsbane of ballad and legend, watching her with silent

  tears running down his still face as she circled into the

  waiting sky, like a butterfly released from his hand. Then

  he turned from the battlements, to the court where the

  horses waited. Taking the rein from the stunned Gareth,

  he mounted Battlehammer and rode through the gateway,

  to take the road back to the north.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THEY FLEW NORTH together, treading the woven roads

  of the sky.

  The whole Earth lay below her, marked with the long

  indigo shadows of morning, the bright flash of springing

  water, and the icy knives of the glaciers. She saw the

  patterns of the sea, with its currents of green and violet,

  its great, gray depths, and the scrum of white lace upon

  its surface, and those of the moving air. All things were

  to her as a dragon sees them, a net of magic and years,

  covering the Earth and holding it to all the singing uni-

  verse in a crystal web of time.

  They nested among the high peaks ofNast Wall, among

  the broken bone ends of the world, looking eastward over

  the gorges where the bighorn sheep sprang like fleas from

  rock to rock, past dizzying drops of green meltwater and

  woods where the dampness coated each tree in pillows

  of emerald moss, and down to the woods on the foothills

  of the Marches, where those who swore fealty to the

  Master dwelt. Westward, she could look past the glacier

  that lay like a stilled river of green and white through the

  gouged gray breakers of the cliffs, past cold and barren

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  Dragonsbane 335

  rocks, to see the Wildspae gleaming like a sheet of brown

  silk beneath the steam of its mists and, in the glimmering

  bare woods along its banks, make out the lacework turrets

  of Zyerne's hunting lodge among the trees.

  Like a dragon, she saw backward and forward in time;

  and like a dragon, she felt no passion at what she saw.

  She was free, to have what she had always sought—

  not only the power, which the touch of Morkeleb's mind

  had kindled in her soul, but freedom to pursue that power,

  released from the petty grind of the work of days.

  Her mind touched and fingered that knowledge, won-

  dering at its beauty and its complexity. It was hers now,

  as it had always been hers for the taking. No more would

  she be asked to put aside her meditations, to trek ten

  miles on foot over the wintry moors to deliver a child; no

  more would she spend the hours needed for the study of

  her power ankle-deep in a half-frozen marsh, looking for

  frogwort for Muffle the smith's rheumatism.

  No more would her time—and her mind—be divided

  between love and power.

  Far off, her dragon's sight could descry the caravan of

  horses, making their antlike way along the foothills arid

  into the woods. So clear was her crystal sight that she

  could identify each beast within that train—the white

  Moon Horse, the balky roans, the stupid sorrel Cow, and

  the big liver-bay Battlehammer—she saw, too, the flash

  of spectacle lenses and the glint of metal spikes on a

  patched old doublet.

  He was no more to her now than the first few inches

  upon the endless ribbon of dragon years. Like the bandits

  and the wretched Meewinks—like his and her sons—he

  had his own path to follow through the labyrinth patterns

  of darkening time. He would go on with his fights for his

  people and with his dogged experiments with rock salts

  and hot-air balloons, his model ballistas and his quest for

  lore about pigs. One day, she thought, he would take a

  336 Barbara Hambly

  boat out to the rough waters ofEldsbouch Cove to search

  for the ruins of the drowned breakwater, and she would

  not be waiting for him on the round pebbles of the gravel

  beach... He would ride out to the house beneath the

  standing stones on Frost Fell, and she would not be stand-

  ing in its doorway.

  In time, she knew, even these memories would fade.

  She saw within herself, as she had probed at the souls of

  others. Trey's, she recalled, had been like a clear pool,

  with bright shallows and unsuspected depths. Zyeme's

  had been a poisoned flower. Her own soul she saw also

  as a flower whose petals were turning to steel at their

  outer edges but whose heart was still soft and silky flesh.

  In time, it wo
uld be ail steel, she saw, breathtakingly

  beautiful and enduring forever—but it would cease to be

  a flower.

  She lay for a long time in the rocks, motionless save

  for the flick of her jeweled antennae as she scried the

  colors of the wind.

  It was thus to be a dragon, she told herself, to see the

  patterns of all things from the silence of the sky. It was

  thus to be free. But pain still poured from some broken

  place inside her—the pain of choice, of loss, and of still-

  born dreams. She would have wept, but there was nothing

  within dragons that could weep. She told herself that this

  was the last time she would have to feel this pain or the

  love that was its source. It was for this immunity that she

  had sought the roads of the sky.

  The key to magic is magic, she thought. And all magic,

  all power, was now hers.

  But within her some other voice asked, For what pur-

  pose? Afar off she was aware of Morkeleb, hunting the

  great-homed sheep in the rocks. Like a black bat of steel

  lace, he passed as soundlessly as his own shadow over

  the snowfields, wrapping himself in the colors of the air

  to drop down the gorges, the deceptive glitter of his magic

  Dragonsbane 337

  hiding him from the nervous, stupid eyes of his prey.

  Magic was the bone of dragon bones, the blood of their

  blood; the magic of the cosmos tinted everything they

  perceived and everything they were.

  And yet, in the end, their magic was sterile, seeking

  nothing but its own—as Zyeme's had been.

  Zyeme, Jenny thought. The key to magic is magic. For