Dragonsbane (12 page)

From the carts and carriages and curtained litters, a murmur of anger went up, the rage of those who have never before been helpless. Jenny, sitting quietly on Moon Horse, realized that it was the first time she had ever seen gnomes by daylight. Their eyes, wide and nearly colorless, were ill-attuned for its glare; the hearing that could catch the whispers of the cave bats would be daily tortured by the clamor of the cities of men.

Aversin asked, “And the King?”

“The King?” The gnome’s piping voice was vicious, and his whole stooping little body bristled with the raw hurt of humiliation. “The King cares nothing for us. With all our wealth mewed up in the Deep, where the dragon sits hoarding over it, we have little to trade upon but promises, and with each day that passes those promises buy less in a city where bread is dear. And all this, while the King’s whore sits with his head in her lap and poisons his mind as she poisons everything she touches—as she poisoned the very heart of the Deep.”

Beside her, Jenny heard the hissing of Gareth’s indrawn breath and saw the anger that flashed in his eyes, but he said nothing. When her glance questioned him, he looked away in shame.

As the gnomes moved out of sight once again into the mists, John remarked, “Sounds a proper snakes’ nest.
Could
this Master really have kidnapped the King’s child?”

“No,” Gareth said miserably, as the horses resumed their walk toward the ferry, invisible in the foggy bottomlands to the south. “He couldn’t have left the Citadel. He isn’t a sorcerer—just a philosopher and an atheist. I—don’t worry about the King’s Heir.” He looked down at his hands, and the expression on his face was the one that Jenny had seen in the camp outside Ember that night—a struggle to gather his courage. “Listen,” he began shakily. “I have to...”

“Gar,” said John quietly, and the boy startled as if burned. There was an ironic glint in John’s brown eyes and an edge like chipped flint to his voice. “Now—the King wouldn’t by any chance have sent for me for some other reason than the dragon, would he?”

“No,” Gareth said faintly, not meeting his eyes. “No, he—he didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

Gareth swallowed, his pale face suddenly very strained. “He—he didn’t send for you—for any other reason. That is...”

“Because,” John went on in that quiet voice, “if the King happened to send me his signet ring to get me involved in rescuing that child of his, or helping him against this Master of Halnath I hear such tell of, or for his dealings with the gnomes, I do have better things to do. There are real problems, not just money and power, in my own lands, and the winter closing in looks to be a bad one. I’ll put my life at risk against the dragon for the sake of the King’s protection to the Winterlands, but if there’s aught else in it...”

“No!” Gareth caught his arm desperately, a terrible fear in his face, as if he thought that with little more provocation the Dragonsbane would turn around then and there and ride back to Wyr.

And perhaps, Jenny thought, remembering her vision in the water bowl, it might be better if they did.

“Aversin, it isn’t like that. You are here to slay the dragon—because you’re the only Dragonsbane living. That’s the only reason I sought you out, I swear it. I swear it! Don’t worry about politics and—and all that.” His shortsighted gray eyes pleaded with Aversin to believe, but in them there was a desperation that could never have stemmed from innocence.

John’s gaze held his for a long moment, gauging him. Then he said, “I’m trusting you, my hero.”

In dismal silence, Gareth touched his heels to Battlehammer’s sides, and the big horse moved out ahead of them, the boy’s borrowed plaids making them fade quickly into no more than a dark, cut-out shape in the colorless fogs. John, riding a little behind, slowed his horse so that he was next to Jenny, who had watched in speculative silence throughout.

“Maybe it’s just as well you’re with me after all, love.”

She glanced from Gareth up to John, and then back. Somewhere a crow called, like the voice of that melancholy land. “I don’t think he means us ill,” she said softly.

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t gormless enough to get us killed all the same.”

The mists thickened as they approached the river, until they moved through a chill white world where the only sound was the creak of harness leather, the pop of hooves, the faint jingle of bits, and the soughing rattle of the wind in the spiky cattails growing in the flooded ditches. From that watery grayness, each stone or solitary tree emerged, silent and dark, like a portent of strange events. More than all else, Jenny felt the weight of Gareth’s silence, his fear and dread and guilt. John felt it, too, she knew; he watched the tall boy from the corner of his eye and listened to the hush of those empty lands like a man waiting for ambush. As evening darkened the air, Jenny called a blue ball of witchfire to light their feet, but the soft, opalescent walls of the mist threw back the light at them and left them nearly as blind as before.

“Jen.” John drew rein, his head cocked to listen. “Can you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Gareth whispered, coming up beside them at the top of the slope which dropped away into blankets of moving fog.

Jenny flung her senses wide through the dun-colored clouds, feeling as much as hearing the rushing voice of the river below. There were other sounds, muffled and altered by the fog, but unmistakable. “Yes,” she said quietly, her breath a puff of white in the raw air. “Voices— horses—a group of them on the other side.”

John glanced sharply sidelong at Gareth. “They could be waiting for the ferry,” he said, “if they had business in the empty lands west of the river at the fall of night.”

Gareth said nothing, but his face looked white and set. After a moment John clucked softly to Cow, and the big, shaggy sorrel plodded forward again down the slope to the ferry through the clammy wall of vapor.

Jenny let the witchlight ravel away as John pounded on the door of the squat stone ferry house. She and Gareth remained in the background while John and the ferryman negotiated the fare for three people, six horses, and two mules. “Penny a leg,” said the ferryman, his squirrel-dark eyes darting from one to the other with the sharp interest of one who sees all the world pass his doorstep. “But there’ll be supper here in an hour, and lodging for the night. It’s growing mortal dark, and there’s chowder fog.”

“We can get along a few miles before full dark; and besides,” John added, with an odd glint in his eye as he glanced back at the silent Gareth, “we may have someone waiting for us on the far bank.”

“Ah.” The man’s wide mouth shut itself like a trap. “So it’s you they’re expecting. I heard ’em out there a bit ago, but they didn’t ring no bell for me, so I bided by my stove where it’s warm.”

Holding up the lantern and struggling into his heavy quilted jacket, he led the way down to the slip, while Jenny followed silently behind, digging in the purse at her belt for coin.

The great horse Battlehammer had traveled north with Gareth by ship and, in any case, disdained balking at anything as sheer bad manners; neither Moon Horse nor Osprey nor any of the spares had such scruples, with the exception of Cow, who would have crossed a bridge of flaming knives at his customary phlegmatic plod. It took Jenny much whispered talk and stroking of ears before any of them would consent to set foot upon the big raft. The ferryman made the gate at the raft’s tail fast and fixed his lantern on the pole at its head; then he set to turning the winch that drew the wide, flat platform out across the opaque silk of the river. The single lantern made a woolly blur of yellowish light in the leaden smoke of the fog; now and then, on the edge of the gleam, Jenny could see the brown waters parting around a snagged root or branch that projected from the current like a drowned hand.

From somewhere across the water she heard the jingle of metal on metal, the soft blowing of a horse, and men’s voices. Gareth still said nothing, but she felt that, if she laid a hand upon him, she would find him quivering, as a rope does before it snaps. John came quietly to her side, his fingers twined warm and strong about hers. His spectacles flashed softly in the lanternlight as he slung an end of his voluminous plaid around her shoulders and drew her to his side.

“John,” Gareth said quietly, “I—I have something to tell you.”

Dimly through the fog came another sound, a woman’s laugh like the tinkling of silver bells. Gareth twitched, and John, a dangerous flicker in his lazy-lidded eyes, said, “I thought you might.”

“Aversin,” Gareth stammered and stopped. Then he forced himself on with a rush, “Aversin, Jenny, listen. I’m sorry. I lied to you—I betrayed you, but I couldn’t help it; I had no other choice. I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” said John softly. “So there was something you forgot to mention before we left the Hold?”

Unable to meet his eyes, Gareth said, “I meant to tell you earlier, but—but I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d turn back and—and I couldn’t let you turn back. We need you, we really do.”

“For a lad who’s always on about honor and courage,” Aversin said, and there was an ugly edge to his quiet voice, “you haven’t shown very much of either, have you?”

Gareth raised his head, and met his eyes, “No,” he said. “I—I’ve been realizing that. I thought it was all right to deceive you in a good cause—that is—I had to get you to come...”

“All right, then,” said John. “What is the truth?”

Jenny glanced from the faces of the two men toward the far shore, visible dimly now as a dark blur and a few lights moving like fireflies in the mist. A slightly darker cloud beyond would be the woodlands of Belmarie. She touched John’s spiked elbow warningly, and he looked quickly in that direction. Movement stirred there, shapes crowding down to wait for the ferry to put in. The horse Battlehammer flung up his head and whinnied, and an answering whinny trumpeted back across the water. The Dragonsbane’s eyes returned to Gareth and he folded his hands over the hilt of his sword.

Gareth drew a deep breath. “The truth is that the King didn’t send for you,” he said. “In fact, he—he forbade me to come looking for you. He said it was a foolish quest, because you probably didn’t exist at all and, even if you did, you’d have been killed by another dragon long ago. He said he didn’t want me to risk my life chasing a phantom. But—but I had to find you. He wasn’t going to send anyone else. And you’re the only Dragonsbane, as it was in all the ballads...” He stammered uncertainly. “Except that I didn’t know then that it wasn’t like the ballads. But I knew you had to exist. And I knew we needed someone. I couldn’t stand by and let the dragon go on terrorizing the countryside. I had to come and find you. And once I found you, I had to bring you back...”

“Having decided you knew better about the needs of my people and my own choice in the matter than I did?” John’s face never showed much expression, but his voice had a sting to it now, like a scorpion’s tail.

Gareth shied from it, as from a lash. “I—I thought of that, these last days,” he said softly. He looked up again, his face white with an agony of shame. “But I couldn’t let you turn back. And you will be rewarded, I swear I’ll see that you get the reward somehow.”

“And just how’ll you manage that?” John’s tone was sharp with disgust. The deck jarred beneath their feet as the raft ground against the shoals. Lights like marsh candles bobbed down toward them through the gloom. “With a mage at the Court, it couldn’t have taken them long to figure out who’d pinched the King’s seal, nor when he’d be back in Belmarie. I expect the welcoming committee...” he gestured toward the dark forms crowding forward from the mists. “...is here to arrest you for treason.”

“No,” Gareth said in a defeated voice. “They’ll be my friends from Court.”

As if stepping through a door the forms came into visibility; lanternlight danced over the hard gleam of satin, caressed velvet’s softer nap, and touched edges of stiffened lace and the cloudy gauze of women’s veils, salted all over with the leaping fire of jewels. In the forefront of them all was a slender, dark-haired girl in amber silk, whose eyes, golden as honey with a touch of gray, sought Gareth’s and caused the boy to turn aside with a blush. One man was holding a cloak for her of ermine-tagged velvet; another her golden pomander ball. She laughed, a sound at once silvery and husky, like an echo from a troubled dream.

It could be no one but Zyerne.

John looked inquiringly back at Gareth.

“That seal you showed me was real,” he said. “I’ve seen it on the old documents, down to the little nicks on its edges. They’re taking its theft a bit casually, aren’t they?”

He laid hold of Cow’s bridle and led him down the short gangplank, forcing the others to follow. As they stepped ashore, every courtier on the bank, led by Zyerne, swept in unison into an elaborate Phoenix Rising salaam, touching their knees in respect to the clammy, fish-smelling mud.

Crimson-faced, Gareth admitted, “Not really. Technically it wasn’t theft. The King is my father. I’m the missing Heir.”

“S
O THAT’S YOUR
Dragonsbane, is it?”

At the sound of Zyerne’s voice, Jenny paused in the stony blue dimness of the hall of the enchantress’s hunting lodge. From the gloom in which she stood, the little antechamber beyond the hall glowed like a lighted stage; the rose-colored gauze of Zyerne’s gown, the whites and violets of Gareth’s doublet, sleeves, and hose, and the pinks and blacks of the rugs beneath their feet all seemed to burn like the hues of stained glass in the ember-colored lamplight. The instincts of the Winterlands kept Jenny to the shadows. Neither saw her.

Zyerne held her tiny goblet of crystal and glass up to one of the lamps on the mantel, admiring the blood red lights of the liqueur within. She smiled mischievously. “I must say, I prefer the ballad version myself.”

Seated in one of the gilt-footed ivory chairs on the opposite side of the low wine table, Gareth only looked unhappy and confused. The dimple on the side of Zyerne’s curving, shell pink lips deepened, and she brushed a corner of her lace veils aside from her cheek. Combs of crystal and sardonyx flashed in her dark hair as she tipped her head.