Dragon's Bane

  worn on the journey, the wolflude-lined jerkin with its

  stray bits of mail and metal plates and spikes and the dark

  leather breeches and scarred boots. His plaids were slung

  back over his shoulder like a cloak, cleaned of mud but

  frayed and scruffy, and there was a world of bright mis-

  chief in his eyes.

  Gareth, at the other end of the table, went red with

  mortification to the roots of his thinning hair. Jenny only

  sighed, momentarily closed her eyes, and thought

  resignedly, John.

  He strode cheerily into the room, bowing with impar-

  tial goodwill to the courtiers along the board, not one of

  whom seemed capable of making a sound. They had, for

  the most part, been looking forward to baiting a country

  cousin as he tried unsuccessfully to ape his betters; they

  had scarcely been prepared for an out-and-out barbarian

  who obviously wasn't even going to bother to try.

  With a friendly nod to his hostess, he settled into his

  place on the opposite side of Zyerne from Jenny. For a

  moment, he studied the enormous battery of cutlery

  108 Barbara Hambly

  arrayed on both sides of his plate and then, with perfect

  neatness and cleanliness, proceeded to eat with his fin-

  gers.

  Zyeme recovered her composure first. With a silky

  smile, she picked up a fish fork and offered it to him.

  "Just as a suggestion, my lord. We do do things differently

  here."

  Somewhere down the board, one of the ladies tittered.

  Aversin regarded Zyeme with undisguised suspicion. She

  speared a scallop with the fish fork and held it out to him,

  by way of demonstration, and he broke into his sunniest

  smile. "Ah, so that's what they're for," he said, relieved.

  Removing the scallop from the tines with his fingers, he

  took a neat bite out of it. In a north-country brogue six

  times worse than anything Jenny had ever heard him use

  at home, he added, "And here I was thinking I'd been in

  your lands less than a night, and already challenged to a

  duel with an unfamiliar weapon, and by the local magewife

  at that. You had me gie worrit."

  On his other side. Bond Clerlock nearly choked on his

  soup, and John thumped him helpfully on the back.

  "You know," he went on, gesturing with the fork in

  one hand and selecting another scallop with the other,

  "we did uncover a great box of these things—all different

  sizes they were, like these here—in the vaults of the Hold

  the year we looked out the bath for my cousin Kat's

  wedding. We hadn't a clue what they were for, not even

  Father Hiero—Father Hiero's our priest—but the next

  time the bandits came down raiding from the hills, we

  loaded the lot into the ballistas instead of stone shot and

  let fly. Killed one of 'em dead on the spot and two others

  went riding off over the moor with all these little spikey

  things sticking into their backs..."

  "I take it," Zyeme said smoothly, as stifled giggles

  skittered around the table, "that your cousin's wedding

  was an event of some moment, if it occasioned a bath?"

  Dragonsfcane 109

  "Oh, aye." For someone whose usual expression was

  one of closed watchfulness, Aversin had a dazzling smile.

  "She was marrying this southern fellow..."

  It was probably. Jenny thought, the first time that any-

  one had succeeded in taking an audience away from

  Zyeme, and, by the glint in the sorceress's eyes, she did

  not like it. But the courtiers, laughing, were drawn into

  the circle of Aversin's warm and dotty charm; his exag-

  gerated barbarity disarmed their mockery as his increas-

  ingly outrageous tale of his cousin's fictitious nuptials

  reduced them to undignified whoops. Jenny had enough

  of a spiteful streak in her to derive a certain amount of

  enjoyment from Zyeme's discomfiture—it was Zyeme,

  after all, who had mocked Gareth for not being able to

  take jests—but confined her attention to her plate. If John

  was going to the trouble of drawing their fire so that she

  could finish her meal in peace, the least she could do was

  not let his efforts go to waste.

  On her other side. Trey said softly, "He doesn't look

  terribly ferocious. From Gareth's ballads, I'd pictured

  him differently—stem and handsome, like the statues of

  the god Sannendes. But then," she added, winkling the

  meat from an escargot with the special tongs to show

  Jenny how it was done, "I suppose it would have been a

  terrific bore for you to ride all the way back from the

  Winterlands with someone who just spent his time 'scan-

  ning th'encircling welkin with his eagle-lidded eyes,' as

  the song says."

  In spite of Zyeme's disapproving glances, her hand-

  some cicisbeo Bond was wiping tears of laughter from his

  eyes, albeit with great care for his makeup. Even the

  servants were having a hard time keeping their faces prop-

  erly expressionless as they carried in peacocks roasted

  and resplendent in all their feathers and steaming removes

  of venison in cream.

  "... so the bridegroom looked about for one of those

  110 Barbara Hambly

  wood things such as you have here in my rooms," John

  was continuing, "but as he couldn't find one, he hung his

  clothes over the armor-stand, and damned if Cousin Kat

  didn't wake in the night and set about it with her sword,

  taking it for a bandit..."

  Trust John, Jenny thought, that if he couldn't make an

  impression on them on their own grounds, he wouldn't

  try to do it on the grounds of Gareth's ballads, either.

  They had succumbed to the devil of mischief in him, the

  devil that had drawn her from the first moment they had

  met as adults. He had used his outrageousness as a defense

  against their scorn, but the fact that he had been able to

  use it successfully made her think a little better of these

  courtiers of Zyeme's.

  She finished her meal in silence, and none of them saw

  her go.

  "Jenny, wait." A tall figure detached itself from the

  cluster of bright forms in the antechamber and hurried

  across the hall to catch her, tripping over a footstool half-

  way.

  Jenny paused in the enclosing shadow of the stair lat-

  tice. From the anteroom, music was already lilting—not

  the notes of the hired musicians, this time, but the com-

  plex tunes made to show off the skill of the courtiers

  themselves. To play well, it seemed, was the mark of a

  true gentleperson; the music of the cwrdth and the

  double-dulcimer blended into a counterpoint like lace,

  from which themes would emerge like half-familiar

  faces glimpsed in a crowd. Over the elaborate harmonies,

  she heard the blithe, unrepentant air of the pennywhistle,

  following the melody by ear, and she smiled. If the Twelve

  Gods of the Cosmos came down, they would be hard put

  to disconcert John.

  "Jenny, I—I'm sorry."
Gareth was panting a little from

  his haste. He had resumed his battered spectacles; the

  Dragonsbane 111

  fracture in the bottom of the right-hand lens glinted like

  a star. "I didn't know it would be like that. I thought—

  he's a Dragonsbane..."

  She was standing a few steps up the flight; she put out

  her hand and touched his face, nearly on level with her

  own. "Do you remember when you first met him?"

  He flushed with embarrassment. In the illuminated

  antechamber, John's scruffy leather and plaids made him

  look like a mongrel in a pack of lapdogs. He was exam-

  ining a lute-shaped hurdy-gurdy with vast interest, while

  the red-haired. Beautiful Isolde of Greenhythe told the

  latest of her enormous stock of scatological jokes about

  the gnomes. Everyone guffawed but John, who was far

  too interested in the musical instrument in his lap to notice;

  Jenny saw Gareth's mouth tighten with something between

  anger and confused pain. He went north seeking a dream,

  she thought; now he had neither that which he had sought

  nor that to which he had thought he would return.

  "I shouldn't have let them bait you like that," he said

  after a moment. "I didn't think Zyeme..."

  He broke off, unable to say it. She saw bitterness harden

  his mouth, and a disillusion worse than the one John had

  dealt him beside the pigsty at Alyn. He had probably

  never seen Zyeme being petty before, she thought; or

  perhaps he had only seen her in the context of the world

  she had created, never having been outside of it himself.

  He took a deep breath and went on, "I know I should

  have taken up for you somehow, but... but I didn't

  know how!" He spread his hands helplessly. With the first

  rueful humor at himself that Jenny had seen, he added,

  "You know, in ballads it's so easy to rescue someone. I

  mean, even if you're defeated, at least you can die grace-

  fully and not have everyone you know laugh at you for

  the next three weeks."

  Jenny laughed and reached out to pat his arm. In the

  gloom, his features were only an edge of gold along the

  112 Barbara Hambly

  awkward cheekline, and the twin circles of glass were

  opaque with the lamplight's reflection that glinted on a

  few flame-caught strands of hair and formed a spiky illu-

  mination along the edges of his lace collar. "Don't worry

  about it." She smiled. "Like slaying dragons, it's a special

  art."

  "Look," said Gareth, "I—I'm sorry I tricked you. I

  wouldn't have done it, if I'd known it would be like this.

  But Zyeme sent a messenger to my father—it's only a

  day's ride to Bel, and a guest house is being prepared for

  you in the Palace. I'll be with you when you present

  yourselves to him, and I know he'll be willing to make

  terms..." He caught himself, as if remembering his earlier

  lying assurances. "That is, I really do know it, this time.

  Since the coming of the dragon, there's been a huge stand-

  ing reward for its slaying, more than the pay of a garrison

  for a year. He has to listen to John."

  Jenny leaned one shoulder against the openwork of the

  newel post, the chips of reflected lamplight filtering through

  the lattice and dappling her black and silver gown with

  gold. "Is it so important to you?"

  He nodded. Even with the fashionable padding of his

  white-and-violet doublet, his narrow shoulders looked

  stooped with tiredness and defeat. "I didn't tell very much

  truth at the Hold," he said quietly. "But I did tell this:

  that I know I'm not a warrior, or a knight, and I know

  I'm not good at games. And I'm not stupid enough to

  think that the dragon wouldn't kill me in a minute, if I

  went there. But—I know everyone around here laughs

  when I talk about chivalry and honor and a knight's duty,

  and you and John do, too... But that's what makes John

  the Thane of the Winterlands and not just another bandit,

  doesn't it? He didn't have to kill that first dragon." The

  boy gestured wearily, a half-shrug that sent fragments of

  luminosity slithering along the white stripes of his slashed

  Dragonsbane 113

  sleeves to the diamonds at his cuffs. "I couldn't not do

  something. Even if I did muff it up."

  Jenny felt she had never liked him so well. She said,

  "If you had truly muffed it up, we wouldn't be here."

  She climbed the stairs slowly and crossed the gallery

  that spanned the hall below. Like the stair, it was enclosed

  in a stone trellis cut into the shapes of vines and trees,

  and the shadows flickered in a restless harlequin over her

  gown and hair. She felt tired and cold from holding herself

  braced all evening—the sly baiting and lace-trimmed mal-

  ice of Zyeme's court had stung more than she cared to

  admit. She pitied them, a little, for what they were, but

  she did not have John's brass hide.

  She and John had been given the smaller of the two

  rooms at the end of the wing; Gareth, the larger, next

  door to theirs. Like everything else in Zyeme's lodge,

  they were beautifully appointed. The red damasked bed

  hangings and alabaster lamps were designed both as a

  setting for Zyeme's beauty and a boast of her power to

  get what she wanted from the King. No wonder, thought

  Jenny, Gareth distrusted and hated any witch who held

  sway over a ruler's heart.

  As she left the noise of the gallery behind her and

  turned down the corridor toward her room, she became

  conscious of the stiff rustling of her borrowed finery upon

  the inlaid wood of the floor and, with her old instinct for

  silence, gathered the heavy skirts up in her hands. Lamp-

  light from a half-opened door laid a molten trapezoid of

  brightness across the darkness before her. Zyeme, Jenny

  knew, was not downstairs with the others, and she felt

  uneasy about meeting that beautiful, spoiled, powerful

  girl, especially here in her own hunting lodge where she

  held sole dominion. Thus Jenny passed the open doorway

  in a drift of illusion; and, though she paused in the shad-

  ows at what she saw by the lights within, she remained

  herself unseen.

  114 Barbara Hambly

  It would have been so, she thought later, even had she

  not been cloaked in the spells that thwart the casual eye.

  Zyeme sat in an island of brightness, the glow of a night-

  lamp stroking the gilt-work of her blackwood chair, so

  still that not even the rose-point shadows of her lace veils

  stirred upon her gown. Her hands were cupped around

  the face of Bond Clerlock, who knelt at her feet, and such

  was his immobility that not even the sapphires pinning

  his hair glinted, but burned steadily with a single reflec-

  tion. Though he looked up toward her face, his eyes were

  closed; his expression was the contorted, intent face of

  a man in ecstasy so strong that it borders pain.

  The room smoked with magic, the weight of it like a
<
br />   glittering lour in the air. As a mage. Jenny could feel it,

  smell it like an incense; but it was an incense tainted with

  rot. She stepped back, repelled. Though the touch of

  Zyeme's hands upon Bond's face was the only contact

  between their two bodies, she had the sickened sensation

  of having looked upon that which was obscene. Zyeme's

  eyes were closed, her childlike brow puckered in slight

  concentration; the smile that curved her lips was one of

  physical and emotional satisfaction, like a woman's after

  the act of love.

  Not love, thought Jenny, drawing back from the scene

  and moving soundlessly down the hall once more, but

  some private satiation.

  She sat for a long time in the dark window embrasure

  of her room and thought about Zyeme. The moon rose,

  flecking the bare tips of the trees above the white carpet

  of ground mists; she heard the clocks strike downstairs

  and the drift of voices and laughter. The moon was in its

  first quarter, and something about that troubled her,

  though she could not for the moment think what. After

  a long time she heard the door open softly behind her and

  turned to see John silhouetted in the dim lamplight from

  the hall, its reflection throwing a scatter of metallic glints

  Dragonsbane 115

  from his doublet and putting a rough halo on the coarse

  wool of his plaids.

  Into the darkness he said softly, "Jen?"

  "Here."

  Moonlight flashed across his specs. She moved a lit-

  tle—the barring of the casement shadows on her black

  and silver gown made her nearly invisible. He came cau-

  tiously across the unfamiliar terrain of the floor, his hands

  and face pale blurs against his dark clothing.

  "Gaw," he said in disgust as he slung off his plaids.