Dragonsbane (33 page)

“It’s all of us or none of us, love.”

She swung around on them, her eyes blazing palely with the crystalline coldness of the dragon’s eyes. “None of you can be of the slightest use to me here against so many. John and Trey, all you’ll be is killed immediately. Gareth...” Her eyes pinned his like a lance of frost. “You may not be. They may have other instructions concerning you, from Zyerne. I may have the strength for one more spell. That can buy you some time. John’s wits may keep you alive for a while more in the Deep; you’ll need Trey’s willingness as well. Now go.”

There was a short silence, in which she could feel John’s eyes upon her face. She was conscious of the men approaching in the Vale; her soul screamed at her to get rid of these three whom she loved while there was yet time.

It was Gareth who spoke. “Will you really be able to hold the Gate against another charge? Even of—of my father’s men?”

“I think so,” Jenny lied, knowing she hadn’t the strength left to light a candle.

“Aye, then, love,” said John softly. “We’d best go.” He took her halberd to use as a crutch; holding himself upright with it, he put a hand on her nape and kissed her. His mouth felt cold against hers, his lips soft even through the hard scratchiness of five days’ beard. As their lips parted, their eyes met, and, through the dragon armor of hardness, she saw he knew she’d lied.

“Let’s go, children,” he said. “We won’t shoot the bolts till we have to, Jen.”

The line of soldiers was descending through the labyrinth of shattered foundations and charred stone. They were joined by the men and women of Deeping, those, Jenny noted, who had thrown garbage at Miss Mab in the fountain square of Bel. Makeshift weapons jostled pikes and swords. In the brilliance of daylight everything seemed hard and sharp. Every house beam and brick stood out to Jenny’s raw perceptions like filigree work, every tangle of weed and stand of grass clear and individuated. The amber air held the stench of sulfur and burned flesh. Like a dim background to angry ranting and exhortation rose the keening of the wounded and, now and again, voices crying, “Gold...gold...”

They scarcely even know what it is for,
Morkeleb had said.

Jenny thought about Ian and Adric, and wondered briefly who would raise them, or if, without her and John’s protection of the Winterlands, they would live to grow up at all. Then she sighed and stepped forth from the shadows into the light. The pale sun drenched her, a small, skinny, black-haired woman alone in the vast arch of the shattered Gate. Men pointed, shouting. A rock clattered against the steps, yards away. The sunlight felt warm and pleasant upon her face.

Bond was screaming hysterically, “Attack! Attack now! Kill the witch-bitch! It’s our gold! We’ll get the slut this time—get her...”

Men began to run forward up the steps. She watched them coming with a curious feeling of absolute detachment. The fires of dragon-magic had drained her utterly-one last trap, she thought ironically, from Morkeleb, a final vengeance for humiliating him. The mob curled like a breaking wave over the ruined beams and panels of the shattered gates, the sunlight flashing on the steel of the weapons in their hands.

Then a shadow crossed the sunlight—like a hawk’s, but immeasurably more huge.

One man looked up, pointed at the sky, and screamed.

Again the sunlight was darkened by circling shade. Jenny raised her head. The aureate light streamed translucently through the black spread of bones and the dark veins of sable wings, sparkled from the spikes that tipped the seventy-foot span of that silent silk, and gilded every horn and ribbon of the gleaming mane.

She watched the dragon circling, riding the thermals like a vast eagle, only peripherally conscious of the terrified shouting of the men and the frenzied squeals of the guards’ horses. Yelling and crashing in the rubble, the attackers of the Deep turned and fled, trampling upon their dead and dropping their weapons in their headlong flight.

The Vale was quite empty by the time Morkeleb lighted upon the heat-cracked steps of the Deep.

W
HY DID YOU RETURN?

The sun had set. Echoes of its brightness lingered on the cinnamon edges of the cliff above. After the firelight and blackness of the Market Hall, where Gareth and Trey could be heard talking softly beside the small blaze they had kindled, the windy coolness of the steps was deeply refreshing. Jenny ran tired hands through her hair, the cold of her fingers welcome against her aching skull.

The great, gleaming black shape that lay like a sphinx along the top step turned its head. In the reflected glow from the fire in the hall she saw the long edges of that birdlike skull, the turn and flutter of the ribboned mane and the glint of the bobs of jet that quivered on long antennae.

His voice was soft in her mind.
I need your help, wizard woman.

What?
It was the last thing she would have expected from the dragon. She wondered illogically if she had heard rightly, though with dragons there was never a question of that.
My HELP? MY help?

Bitter anger curled from the dragon like an acrid smoke, anger at having to ask the help of any human, anger at needing help, anger at admitting it, even to himself. But in the close-shielded mind, she felt other things—exhaustion approaching her own and the chill thread of fear.

By my name you drove me forth from this place,
he said.
But something else, something beyond my name, draws me back.
Like a jewel, one jet-bobbed antenna flicked in the wind.
Like the discontented dreams that first brought me to this place, it will not let me rest; it is a yearning like the craving for gold, but worse. It tormented me as I flew north, mounting to pain, and the only ease I had was when I turned south again. Now all the torments of my soul and my dreams center upon this mountain. Before you entered my mind, it was not so— I came and went as I pleased, and naught but my own desire for the gold made me return. But this pain, this longing of the heart, is something I never felt before, in all my years; it is something I never knew of, until your healing touched me. It is not of you, for you commanded me to go. It is a magic that I do not understand, unlike the magic of dragons. It gives me no rest, no peace. I think of this place constantly, though, by my name, wizard woman, it is against my will that I return.

He shifted upon his haunches, so that he lay as a cat will sometimes lie, his forelimbs and shoulders sphinxlike, but his hinder legs stretched out along the uppermost step. The spiked club of his tail lashed slightly at its clawed tip.

It is not the gold,
he said.
Gold calls to me, but never with a madness like this. It is alien to my understanding, as if the soul were being rooted from me. I hate this place, for it is a place of defeat and disgrace to me now, but the craving to be here consumes me. I have never felt this before and I do not know what it is. Has it come from you, wizard woman? Do you know what is it?

Jenny was silent for a time. Her strength was slowly returning, and she felt already less weak and brittle than she had. Sitting on the steps between the dragon’s claws, his head rose above hers, the thin, satiny ribbons of his mane brushing against her face. Now he cocked his head down; looking up, she met one crystalline silver eye.

She said,
It is a longing such as humans feel. I do not know why it should possess you, Morkeleb—but I think it is time that we found out. You are not the only one drawn to the Deep as if possessed. Like you, I do not think it is the gold. There is something within the Deep. I sense it, feel it within my bones.

The dragon shook his great head.
I know the Deep,
he said.
It was my hold and dominion. I know every dropped coin and every soda-straw crystal; I heard the tread of every foot passing in the Citadel overhead and the slipping of the blind white fish through the waters deep below. I tell you, there is nothing in the Deep but water, stone, and the gold of the gnomes, sleeping in the darkness. There is nothing there that should draw me so.

Perhaps,
Jenny said. Then, aloud, she called into the echoing cavern behind her, “Gareth? John? Trey?”

The dragon lifted his head with indignation as soft footfalls scuffled within. Like speech without words, Jenny felt the sharp flash of his pride and his annoyance at her for bringing other humans into their counsels and she longed to slap his nose as she slapped her cat’s when he tried to steal food from her fingers.

He must have felt the returning glint of her exasperation, for he subsided, his narrow chin sinking to rest upon the long-boned hooks of one black foreclaw. Beyond the spears of his backbone she saw the great tail lash.

The others came out, Gareth and Trey supporting John between them. He had slept a little and rested and looked better than he had. The spells of healing she had laid upon him were having their effect. He gazed up at the dark shape of the dragon, and Jenny felt their eyes meet and knew that Morkeleb spoke to him, thought she heard not what he said.

John replied in words. “Well, it was just as well, wasn’t it? Thank you.”

Their eyes held for a moment more. Then the dragon raised his head and turned it away irritably, transferring his cold silver gaze to Gareth. Jenny saw the young man flush with shame and confusion; whatever the dragon said to him, he made no reply at all.

They laid John down with his back to the granite door pillar, his plaid folded beneath his shoulders. His spectacles caught the starlight, rather like the silvery glow of the dragon’s eyes. Jenny seated herself on the steps between him and the dragon’s talons; Gareth and Trey, as if for mutual protection, sat opposite and close together, staring up in wonder at the thin, serpentine form of the Black Dragon of Nast Wall.

In time, Jenny’s flawed, silver-shot voice broke the silence. “What is in the Deep?” she asked. “What is it that Zyerne wants so badly there? All her actions have been aimed toward having it—her hold over the King, her attempts to seduce Gareth, her desire for a child, the siege of Halnath, and the summoning of the dragon.”

She did not summon me,
retorted Morkeleb angrily.
She could not have done that. She has no hold upon my mind.

“You’re here, ain’t you?” John drawled, and the dragon’s metallic claws scraped upon the stone as his head swung round.

Jenny said sharply, “John! Morkeleb!”

The dragon subsided with a faint hiss, but the bobs of his antennae twitched with annoyance.

She went on, “Might it be that she is herself summoned?”

I
tell you there is nothing there,
the dragon said.
Nothing save stone and gold, water and darkness.

“Let’s back up a bit, then,” John said. “Not what does Zyerne want in the Deep, but just what does she want?”

Gareth shrugged. “It can’t be gold. You’ve seen how she lives. She could have all the gold in the Realm for the asking. She has the King...” He hesitated, and then went on calmly, “If I hadn’t left for the north when I did, she would certainly have had me, and very probably a son to rule through for the rest of her life.”

“She used to live in the Deep,” Trey pointed out. “It seems that, ever since she left it, she’s been trying to get control of it. Why did she leave? Did the gnomes expel her?”

“Not really,” Gareth said. “That is, they didn’t formally forbid her to enter the Deep at all until this year. Up until then she could come and go in the upper levels, just like any other person from Bel.”

“Well if she’s shapestrong, that’s to say she had the run of the place, so long as she stayed clear of the mage-born,” John reasoned, propping his specs with one forefinger. “And what happened a year ago?”

“I don’t know,” Gareth said. “Dromar petitioned my father in the name of the Lord of the Deep not to let her— or any of the children of men, for that matter...”

“Again, that’s a logical precaution against a shape-shifter.”

“Maybe.” Gareth shrugged. “I didn’t think of it then— a lot of the unpopularity of the gnomes started then, because of that stipulation. But they said Zyerne specifically, because she had...” He fished in his compendious, ballad-trained memory for the exact wording. “... ‘defiled a holy thing.’”

“No idea what it was?”

The prince shook his head. Like John, he looked drawn and tired, his shirt a fluttering ruin of dirt and spark holes, his face sparkling faintly with an almost-invisible adolescent stubble. Trey, sitting beside him, looked little better. With her typical practicality, she had carried a comb in her reticule and had combed out her hair, so that it hung past her hips in crinkled swaths, the smooth sheen of its fantastic colors softened to a stippling of snow white and violet, like the pelt of some fabulous beast against the matted nap of Gareth’s cloak.

‘“Defiled a holy
thing.”
Jenny repeated thoughtfully. “It isn’t how Mab put it. She said that she had poisoned the heart of the Deep—but the heart of the Deep is a place, rather than an object.”

“Is it?” said John curiously.

“Of course. I’ve been there.” The silence of it whispered along her memory. “But as for what Zyerne wants...”

“You’re a witch, Jen,” said John. “What do you want?”

Gareth looked shocked at the comparison, but Jenny only thought for a moment, then said, “Power. Magic. The key to magic is magic. My greatest desire, to which I would sacrifice all things else, is to increase my skills.”

“But she’s already the strongest sorceress in the land,” Trey protested.

“Not according to Mab.”

“I suppose there were gnome wizards in the Deep stronger,” John said interestedly. “If there hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have needed to summon Morkeleb.”

She did not summon me!
The dragon’s tail lashed again, like a great cat’s.
She could not. Her power is not that great.

“Somebody’s is,” John remarked. “Before you wiped out the Deep and the mages in it, the gnomes were strong enough to keep Zyerne out. But they all perished, or at least all the strong ones did...”

“No,” Jenny said. “That’s what has puzzled me. Mab said that she herself was stronger than Zyerne at some time in the past. That means that either Mab grew weaker, or Zyerne stronger.”