Dragonsbane (20 page)

“If that was him.”

The boy stared at him, slowly-growing horror and realization in his face. He whispered, “But I saw him.”

“If she could take the shape of a cat or a bird, putting on the form of the Master of Halnath wouldn’t be beyond her—Jen?” He glanced across the room to where she sat silent, her arm resting across one up-drawn knee, her chin upon her wrist.

“She wouldn’t have taken on his actual being,” she said quietly. “An illusion would have served. Shape-shifting requires enormous power—but then, Zyerne
has
enormous power. However she did it, the act itself is logical. If Polycarp had begun to suspect her intentions toward Gareth, it would dispose of and discredit him at once. By making you the witness, Gar, she removed all chance of your helping him. She must have known how bitter a betrayal it would be.”

Numbly, Gareth whispered, “No!” struck by the horror of what he had done.

Trey’s voice was soft in the stillness. “But what does she want with Gareth? I can understand her holding the King, because without his support she’d—she wouldn’t exactly be nothing, but she certainly wouldn’t be able to live as she does now. But why entrap Gareth as well? And what does she want with Bond? He’s no good to her... We’re really only a very minor family, you know. I mean, we haven’t any political power, and not that much money.” A rueful smile touched one corner of her lips as she fingered the rose-point lace of her cuff. “All this... One must keep up appearances, of course, and Bond is trying to marry me off well. But we really haven’t anything Zyerne would want.”

“And why destroy them?” Gareth asked, desperate concern for his father in his voice. “Do all spells do that?”

“No,” Jenny said. “That’s what surprises me about this—I’ve never heard of a spell of influence that would waste the body of the victim as it holds the mind. But neither have I heard of one holding as close as the one which she has upon your father, Gareth; nor of one that lasts so long. But her magic is the magic of the gnomes and unlike the spells of men. It may be that among their secrets is one that will hold the very essence of another, twining around it like the tendrils of a morning-glory vine, which can tear the foundations of a stone house asunder. But then,” she went on, her voice low, “it is almost certain that to have that kind of control over him, at the first, she had to obtain his consent.”

“His consent?” Trey cried, horrified. “But how could he? How could anyone?”

Gareth, Jenny was interested to note, said nothing to this. He had seen, however briefly, on the road in the north, the mirror of his own soul—and he also knew Zyerne.

Jenny explained, “To tamper that deeply with another’s essence always requires the consent of the victim. Zyerne is a shapeshifter—the principle is the same.”

Trey shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

Jenny sighed and, rising to her feet, crossed to where the two young people sat side-by-side. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “A shapeshifter can change someone else’s essence, even as she can change her own. It requires enormous power—and first she must in some fashion obtain the victim’s consent. The victim can resist, unless the shapeshifter can find some chink of consenting, some hidden demon within—some part of the essence that wills to be changed.”

The deepening darkness outside made the lamplight even more golden, like honey where it lay over the girl’s face. Under the shadows of the long, thick lashes, Jenny could read both fear and fascination, that half-understanding that is the first whisper of consent.

“I think you would resist me if I tried to transform you into a lapdog, had I the power to do so. There is very little of the lapdog in your soul, Trey Clerlock. But if I were to transform you into a horse—a yearling filly, smoke-gray and sister to the sea winds—I think I could obtain your consent to that.”

Trey jerked her eyes away, hiding them against Gareth’s shoulder, and the young man put a protective arm around her as well as he could, considering that he was sitting on the trailing ends of his extravagant sleeves.

“It is the power of shapeshifting and the danger,” Jenny said, her voice low in the silence of the room. “If I transformed you into a filly, Trey, your essence would be the essence of a horse. Your thoughts would be a horse’s thoughts, your body a mare’s body; your loves and desires would be those of a young, swift beast. You might remember for a time what you were, but you could not find your way back to be it once again. I think you would be happy as a filly.”

“Stop it,” Trey whispered, and covered her ears. Gareth’s hold about her tightened. Jenny was silent. After a moment the girl looked up again, her eyes dark with the stirred depths of her dreams. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice small. “It’s not you I’m afraid of. It’s me.”

“I know,” Jenny replied softly. “But do you understand now? Do you understand what she might have done to your father, Gareth? It is sometimes less painful to give over striving and let another mind rule yours. When Zyerne first came to power she couldn’t have acquired that kind of hold over you, because you would not come near enough for her to do it. You hated her, and you were only a boy—she could not draw you as she draws men. But when you became a man...”

“I think that’s loathsome.” It was Trey’s turn to put a protective arm around Gareth’s satin shoulders.

“But a damn good way to keep her power,” John pointed out, leaning one arm across the hurdy-gurdy resting upon his knees.

“I still can’t be sure that this is what she did,” Jenny said. “And it still wouldn’t explain why she did the same thing to Bond. I would not know for certain until I could see the King, speak to him...”

“God’s Grandmother, he’ll scarcely speak to his own son, love, let alone me or thee.” John paused, listening to his own words. “Which might be a good reason for not speaking to me or thee, come to that.” His eyes flickered to Gareth. “You know, Gar, the more I see of this, the more I think I’d like to have a few words with your dad.”

I
N THE DEATHLY
hush that hung over the gardens, Gareth’s descent from the wall sounded like the mating of oxen in dry brush. Jenny winced as the boy crashed down the last few feet into the shrubbery; from the shadows of the ivy on the wall top at her side she saw the dim flash of spectacle lenses and heard a voice breathe, “You forgot to shout ‘eleven o’clock and all’s well,’ my hero!”

A faint slur of ivy followed. She felt John land on the ground below more than she heard him. After a last check of the dark garden half-visible through the woven branches of the bare trees, she slipped down to join them. In the darkness, Gareth was a gawky shadow in rust-colored velvet, John barely to be seen at all, the random pattern of his plaids blending into the colors of the night.

“Over there,” Gareth whispered, nodding toward the far side of the garden where a light burned in a niche between two trefoil arches. Its brightness spangled the wet grass like pennies thrown by a careless hand.

He started to lead the way, but John touched his arm and breathed, “I think we’d better send a scout, if it’s burglary and all we’re after. I’ll work round the three sides through the shadows of the wall; when I get there, I’ll whistle once like a nightjar. Right?”

Gareth caught his sleeve as he started to move off. “But what if a real nightjar whistles?”

“What, at this time of the year?” And he melted like a cat into the darkness. Jenny could see him, shifting his way through the checkered shadows of the bare topiary that decorated the three sides of the King’s private court; by the way Gareth moved his head, she could tell he had lost sight of him almost at once.

Near the archways there was a slither of rosy lamplight on a spectacle frame, the glint of spikes, and the brief outline of brightness on the end of a long nose. Gareth, seeing him safe, started to move, and Jenny drew him soundlessly back again. John had not yet whistled.

An instant later, Zyerne appeared in the doorway arch.

Though John stood less than six feet from her, she did not at first see him, for he settled into stillness like a snake in leaves. The enchantress’s face, illuminated in the warm apricot light, wore that same sated look Jenny had seen in the upstairs room at the hunting lodge near the Wildspae—the look of deep content with some wholly private pleasure. Now, as then, it raised the hackles on Jenny’s neck, and at the same time she felt a cold shudder of fear.

Then Zyerne turned her head. She startled, seeing John motionless so near to her; then she smiled. “Well. An enterprising barbarian.” She shook out her unbound, unveiled hair, straying tendrils of it lying against the hollow of her cheek, like an invitation to a caress. “A little late, surely, to be paying calls on the King.”

“A few weeks late, by all I’ve heard.” Aversin scratched his nose self-consciously. “But better late than never, as Dad said at Granddad’s wedding.”

Zyerne giggled, a sweet and throaty sound. Beside her, Jenny felt Gareth shiver, as if the seductive laughter brought memories of evil dreams.

“And impudent as well. Did your mistress send you along to see if Uriens had been entangled in spells other than his own stupidity and lust?”

Jenny heard the hiss of Gareth’s breath and sensed his anger and his shock at hearing the guttersnipe words fall so casually from those pink lips. Jenny wondered why she herself was not surprised.

John only shrugged and said mildly, “No. It’s just I’m no dab hand at waiting.”

“Ah.” Her smile widened, lazy and alluring. She seemed half-drunk, but not sleepy as drunkards are; she glowed, as she had on that first morning in the King’s Gallery, bursting with life and filled with the casual arrogance of utter well-being. The lamp in its tiled niche edged her profile in amber as she stepped toward John, and Jenny felt again the grip of fear, as if John stood unknowingly in deadly danger. “The barbarian who eats with his hands—and doubtless makes love in his boots.”

Her hands touched his shoulders caressingly, shaping themselves to the muscle and bone beneath the leather and plaid. But Aversin stepped back a pace, putting distance between them, rather as she had done in the gallery to Dromar. Like Dromar, she would not relax her self-consequence enough to pursue.

In a deliberately deepened north-country drawl, he said, “Aye, my lack of manners does give me sleepless nights. But it weren’t to eat prettily nor yet to make love that I came south. I was told you had this dragon eating folks hereabouts.”

She giggled again, an evil trickle of sound in the night. “You shall have your chance to slay it when all is ready. Timing is a civilized art, my barbarian.”

“Aye,” John’s voice agreed, from the dark cutout of his silhouette against the golden light. “And I’ve had buckets of time to study it here, along with all them other civilized arts, like courtesy and kindness to suppliants, not to speak of honor, and keeping one’s faith with one’s lover, instead of rubbing up against his son.”

There were perhaps three heartbeats of silence before she spoke. Jenny saw her back stiffen; when she spoke again, her voice, though still sweet, had a note to it like a harp string taken a half-turn above its true note. “What is it to you, John Aversin? It is how things are done here in the south. None of it shall interfere with your chance of glory. That is all that should concern you. I shall tell you when it is right for you to go.”

“Listen to me, Aversin, and believe me. I know this dragon. You have slain one worm—you have not met Morkeleb the Black, the Dragon of Nast Wall. He is mightier than the worm you slew before, mightier than you can ever know.”

“I’d guessed that.” John pushed up his specs, the rosy light glancing off the spikes of his armbands as from spear-points. “I’ll just have to slay him how I can, seemingly.”

“No.” Acid burned through the sweetness of her voice like poisoned candy. “You can not. I know it, if you and that slut of yours don’t. Do you think I don’t know that those stinking offal-eaters, the gnomes, have lied to you? That they refused to give you true maps of the Deep? I know the Deep, John Aversin—I know every tunnel and passage. I know the heart of the Deep. Likewise I know every spell of illusion and protection, and believe me, you will need them against the dragon’s wrath. You will need my aid, if you are to have victory—you will need my aid if you are to come out of that combat with your life. Wait, I say, and you shall have that aid; and afterward, from the spoils of the Deep, I shall reward you beyond the dreams of any man’s avarice.”

John tilted his head a little to one side. “
You’ll
reward me?”

In the silence of the sea-scented night, Jenny heard the other woman’s breath catch.

“How is it you’ll be the one to divvy up the gnomes’ treasure?” John asked. “Are you anticipating taking over the Deep, once the dragon’s out of the way?”

“No,” she said, too quickly. “That is—surely you know that the insolence of the gnomes has led them to plot against his Majesty? They are no longer the strong folk they were before the coming of Morkeleb. Those that were not slain are divided and weak. Many have left this town, forfeiting all their rights, and good riddance to them.”

“Were I treated as I’ve seen them treated,” John remarked, leaning one shoulder against the blue-and-yellow tiles of the archway, “I’d leave, myself.”

“They deserved it.” Her words stung with sudden venom. “They kept me from...” She stopped herself, then added, more reasonably, “You know they are openly in league with the rebels of Halnath—or you should know it. It would be foolish to dispose of the dragon before their plots are uncovered. It would only give them a strong place and a treasure to return to, to engage in plotting further treason.”

“I know the King and the people have heard nothing but how the gnomes are plotting,” Aversin replied in a matter-of-fact voice. “And from what I hear, the gnomes up at the Citadel haven’t much choice about whose side they’re on. Gar’s being gone must have been a real boon to you there; with the King half-distracted, he’d have been about ready to believe anything. And I suppose it would be foolish to get rid of the dragon before so many of the gnomes have left the Realm—or some reason can be found for getting rid of the rest of ’em—that they can’t reoccupy their stronghold, if so be it happened someone else wanted the place, that is.”