Dragon's Bane

  approving glance, and Jenny remembered that the King

  of Bel was also Pontifex Maximus of the official cult;

  Gareth had no doubt been brought up in the most careful

  orthodoxy.

  But the din gave them the illusion of privacy. For all

  any of the crowd around them cared, they might have

  been alone; and after a time Gareth spoke again.

  "It was a hunting accident," he explained. "Father and

  I both hunt, although Father hasn't done so lately. Mother

  hated it, but she loved my father and would go with him

  when he asked her to. He teased her about it, and made

  little jokes about her cowardice—but he wasn't really

  joking. He can't stand cowards. She'd follow him over

  terrible country, clinging to her sidesaddle and staying up

  with the hunt; after it was over, he'd hug her and laugh

  and ask her if it wasn't worth it that she'd plucked up her

  courage—that sort of thing. She did it for as long as I

  can remember. She used to lie and tell him she was starting

  to leam to enjoy it; but when I was about four, I remember

  her in her hunting habit—it was peach-colored velvet with

  gray fur, I remember—just before going out, throwing up

  because she was so frightened."

  "She rounds like a brave lady," Jenny said quietly.

  Gareth's glance flicked up to her face, then away again.

  "It wasn't really Father's fault," he went on after a moment.

  "But when it finally did happen, he felt that it was. The

  horse came down with her over some rocks—in a side-

  Dragonsbane 133

  saddle you can't fall clear. She died four or five days later.

  That was five years ago. I—" He hesitated, the words

  sticking in his throat. "I wasn't very good to him about

  it."

  He adjusted his specs in an awkward and unconvincing

  cover for wiping his eyes on his sleeve ruffle. "Now that

  I look back on it, I think, if she'd been braver, she'd

  probably have had the courage to tell him she didn't want

  to go—the courage to risk his mockery. Maybe that's

  where I get it," he added, with the shy flash of a grin.

  "Maybe I should have seen that I couldn't possibly blame

  him as much as he blamed himself—that I didn't say

  anything to him that he hadn't already thought." He

  shrugged his bony shoulders. "I understand now. But when

  I was thirteen, I didn't. And by the time I did understand,

  it had been too long to say anything to him. And by that

  time, there was Zyeme."

  The priests of Kantirith wound their way out of sight

  up a crooked lane between the drunken lean of crazy

  buildings. Children who had stopped to gawk after the

  procession took up their games once more; John resumed

  his cautious way across the moss-edged, herringbone pat-

  tern of the wet cobbles toward them, stopping every few

  paces to stare at some new marvel—a chair-mender pur-

  suing his trade on the curbstone, or the actors within a

  cheap theater gesticulating wildly while a crier outside

  shouted tidbits of the plot to the passersby around the

  door. He would never, Jenny reflected with rueful amuse-

  ment, leam to comport himself like the hero of legend

  that he was.

  "It must have been hard for you," she said.

  Gareth sighed. "It was easier a few years ago," he

  admitted. "I could hate her cleanly then. Later, for a while

  I—I couldn't even do that." He blushed again. "And

  now..."

  A commotion in the square flared suddenly, like the

  134 Barbara Hambly

  noise of a dogfight; a woman's jeering voice yelled,

  "Whore!" and Jenny's head snapped around.

  But it was not she and her lack of veils that was the

  target. A little gnome woman, her soft mane of hair like

  an apricot cloud in the wan sunlight, was making her

  hesitant way toward the fountain. Her black silk trousers

  were hitched up over her knees to keep them out of the

  puddles in the broken pavement, and her white tunic, with

  its flowing embroideries and carefully mended sleeves,

  proclaimed that she was living in poverty alien to her

  upbringing. She paused, peering around her with a painful

  squint in the too-bright daylight; then her steps resumed

  in the direction of the fountain, her tiny, round hands

  clutching nervously at the handle of the bucket that she

  inexpertly bore.

  Somebody else shouted, "Come slumming, have we,

  m'lady? Tired of sitting up there on all that grain you got

  hid? Too cheap to hire servants?"

  The woman stopped again, swinging her head from side

  to side as if seeking her tormentors, half-blind in the out-

  door glare. Someone caught her with a dog turd on the

  arm. She hopped, startled, and her narrow feet in their

  soft leather shoes skidded on the wet, uneven stones. She

  dropped the bucket as she fell, and groped about for it

  on hands and knees. One of the women by the fountain,

  with the grinning approbation of her neighbors, sprang

  down to kick it beyond her reach.

  "That'll leam you to hoard the bread you've bought

  out of honest folks' mouths!"

  The gnome made a hasty scrabble around her. A faded,

  fat woman who'd been holding forth the loudest in the

  gossip around the fountain kicked the pail a little further

  from the searching hands.

  "And to plot against the King!"

  The gnome woman raised herself to her knees, peering

  about her, and one of the children darted out of the gath-

  Dragonsbane 135

  ering crowd behind her and pulled the long wisps of her

  hair. She spun around, clutching, but the boy had gone.

  Another took up the game and sprang nimbly out to do

  the same, too engrossed in the prospect of fun to notice

  John.

  At the first sign of trouble, the Dragonsbane had turned

  to the man next to him, a blue-tattooed easterner in a

  metalsmith's leather apron and not much else, and handed

  him the three waffles he held stacked in his hands. "Would

  you ever hold these?" Then he made his way unhurriedly

  through the press, with a courteous string of "Excuse me

  ... pardon..." in time to catch the second boy who'd

  jumped out to take up the baiting where the first had begun

  it.

  Gareth could have told them what to expect—Zyeme's

  courtiers weren't the only ones deceived by John's

  appearance of harmless friendliness. The bully, caught

  completely offguard from behind, didn't even have time

  to shriek before he hit the waters of the fountain. A huge

  splash doused every woman on the steps and most of the

  surrounding idlers. As the boy surfaced, spitting and gasp-

  ing, Aversin turned from picking up the bucket and said

  in a friendly tone, "Your manners are as filthy as your

  clothes—I'm surprised your mother lets you out like that.

  They'll be a bit cleaner now, won't they?"

  He dipped the bucket full and turned back to the man

  who was holding his waffles. For an instant Jenny tho
ught

  the smith would throw them into the fountain, but John

  only smiled at him, bright as the sun on a knifeblade, and

  sullenly the man put the waffles into his free hand. In the

  back of the crowd a woman sneered, "Gnome lover!"

  "Thanks." John smiled, still at his brass-faced friend-

  liest. "Sorry I threw offal in the fountain and all." Bal-

  ancing the waffles in his hand, he descended the few steps

  and walked beside the little gnome woman across the

  square toward the mouth of the alley whence she had

  136 Barbara Hambly

  come. Jenny, hurrying after him with Gareth at her heels,

  noticed that none followed them too closely.

  "John, you are incorrigible," she said severely. "Are

  you all right?" This last was addressed to the gnome, who

  was hastening along on her short, bowed legs, clinging to

  the Dragonsbane's shadow for protection.

  She peered up at Jenny with teeble, colorless eyes.

  "Oh, yes. My thanks. I had never—always we went out

  to the fountain at night, or sent the girl who worked for

  us, if we needed water during the day. Only she left." The

  wide mouth pinched up on the words, at the taste of some

  unpleasant memory.

  "I bet she did, if she was like that lot," John remarked,

  jerking his thumb back toward the square. Behind them,

  the crowd trailed menacingly, yelling, "Traitors! Hoard-

  ers ! Ingrates!" and fouler things besides. Somebody threw

  a fish head that fucked off Jenny's skirts and shouted

  something about an old whore and her two pretty-boys;

  Jenny felt the bristles of rage rise along her spine. Others

  took up this theme. She felt angry enough to curse them,

  but in her heart she knew that she could lay no greater

  curse upon them than to be what they already were.

  "Have a waffle?" John offered disanningly, and the

  gnome lady took the preferred confection with hands that

  shook.

  Gareth, carmine with embarrassment, said nothing.

  Around a mouthful of sugar, John said, "Gie lucky for

  us fruit and vegies are a bit too dear these days to fling,

  isn't it? Here?"

  The gnome ducked her head quickly as she entered the

  shadows of a doorway to a huge, crumbling house wedged

  between two five-storey tenements, its rear wall dropping

  straight to the dank brown waters of a stagnant canal.

  The windows were tightly shuttered, and the crumbling

  stucco was written over with illiterate and filthy scrawls,

  splattered with mud and dung. From every shutter Jenny

  Dragonsbane 137

  could sense small, weak eyes peering down in apprehen-

  sion.

  The door was opened from within, the gnome taking

  her bucket and popping through like a frightened mole

  into its hill. John put a quick hand on the rotting panels

  to keep them from being shut in his face, then braced with

  all his strength. The doorkeeper was determined and had

  the prodigious muscles of the gnomes.

  "Wait!" John pleaded, as his feet skidded on the wet

  marble of the step. "Listen! I need your help! My name's

  John Aversin—I've come from the north to see about this

  dragon of yours, but I can't do it without your aid." He

  wedged his shoulder into the narrow slit that was all that

  was left. "Please."

  The pressure on the other side of the door was released

  so suddenly that he staggered inward under his own

  momentum. From the darkness beyond a soft, high voice

  like a child's said in the archaic High Speech that the

  gnomes used at Court, "Come in, thou others. It does

  thee no good to be thus seen at the door of the house of

  the gnomes."

  As they stepped inside, John and Gareth blinked against

  the dimness, but Jenny, with her wizard's sight, saw at

  once that the gnome who had admitted them was old

  Dromar, ambassador to the court of the King.

  Beyond him, the lower hall of the house stretched in

  dense shadow. It had once been grand in the severe style

  of a hundred years ago—the old manor, she guessed,

  upon whose walled grounds the crowded, stinking tene-

  ments of the neighborhood had later been erected. In

  places, rotting frescoes were still dimly visible on the

  stained walls; and the vastness of the hall spoke of gra-

  cious furniture now long since chopped up for firewood

  and of an aristocratic carelessness about the cost of heat-

  ing fuel. The place was like a cave now, tenebrous and

  damp, its boarded windows letting in only a few chinks

  138 Barbara Hambly

  of watery light to outline stumpy pillars and the dry mosa-

  ics of the impluvium. Above the sweeping curve of the

  old-fashioned, open stair she saw movement in the gallery.

  It was crowded with gnomes, watching warily these

  intruders from the hostile world of men.

  In the gloom, the soft, childlike voice said, "Thy name

  is not unknown among us, John Aversin."

  "Well, that makes it easier," John admitted, dusting off

  his hands and looking down at the round head of the

  gnome who stood before him and into sharp, pale eyes

  under the flowing mane of snowy hair. "Be a bit awkward

  if I had to explain it all, though I imagine Gar here could

  sing you the ballads."

  A slight smile tugged at the gnome's mouth—the first,

  Jenny suspected, in a long time—as he studied the incon-

  gruous, bespectacled reality behind the glitter of the leg-

  ends. "Thou art the first," he remarked, ushering them

  into the huge, chilly cavern of the room, his mended silk

  robes whispering as he moved. "How many hast thy father

  sent out. Prince Gareth? Fifteen? Twenty? And none of

  them came here, nor asked any of the gnomes what they

  might know of the dragon's coming—we, who saw it best."

  Gareth looked disconcerted. "Er—that is—the wrath

  of the King..."

  "And whose fault was that. Heir ofUriens, when rumor

  had been noised abroad that we had made an end of thee?"

  There was an uncomfortable silence as Gareth red-

  dened under that cool, haughty gaze. Then he bent his

  head and said in a stifled voice, "I am sorry, Dromar. I

  never thought of—of what might be said, or who would

  take the blame for it, if I disappeared. Truly I didn't know.

  I behaved rashly—I seem to have behaved rashly all the

  way around."

  The old gnome sniffed. "Soi" He folded his small hands

  before the complicated knot of his sash, his gold eyes

  studying Gareth in silence for a time. Then he nodded,

  Dragonsbane 139

  and said, "Well, better it is that thou fall over thine own

  feet in the doing of good than sit upon thy hands and let

  it go undone, Gareth ofMagloshaldon. Another time thou

  shalt do better." He turned away, gesturing toward the

  inner end of the shadowed room, where a blackwood table

  could be distinguished in the gloom, no more than a foot

  high, surrounded by burst and patched cushions set on

  the floor in
the fashion of the gnomes. "Come. Sit. What

  is it that thou wish to know, Dragonsbane, of the coming

  of the dragon to the Deep?"

  "The size of the thing," John said promptly, as they all

  settled on their knees around the table. "I've only heard

  rumor and story—has anybody got a good, concrete mea-

  surement?"

  From beside Jenny, the high, soft voice of the gnome

  woman piped, "The top of his haunch lies level with the

  frieze carved above the pillars on either side of the door-

  way arch, which leads from the Market Hall into the Grand

  Passage into the Deep itself. That is twelve feet, by the

  measurements of men."

  There was a moment's silence, as Jenny digested the

  meaning of that piece of information. Then she said, "If

  the proportions are the same, that makes it nearly forty

  feet."

  "Aye," Dromar said. "The Market Hall—the first cav-

  ern of the Deep, that lies just behind the Great Gates that

  lead into the outer world—is one hundred and fifty feet

  from the Gates to the inner doors of the Grand Passage

  at the rear. The dragon was nearly a third of that length."

  John folded his hands on the table before him. Though

  his face remained expressionless. Jenny detected the slight

  quickening of his breath. Forty feet was half again the

  size of the dragon that had come so close to killing him

  in Wyr, with all the dark windings of the Deep in which

  to hide.

  "D'you have a map of the Deep?"

  140 Barbara Hambly

  The old gnome looked affronted, as if he had inquired

  about the cost of a night with his daughter. Then his face