Dragon's Bane

  well through the town. Curses and shouts, muffled by the

  fog, came from the Rise behind them. Cold mists shredded

  past her face and stroked back the black coils other hair.

  She could feel the spells that held the brume in place

  fretting away as she left the Rise behind, but dared not

  try to put forth the strength of will it would take to hold

  them after she was gone. Her very bones ached from even

  the small exertion of summoning them; she knew already

  that she would need all the strength she could summon

  for the final battle.

  The three horses clattered up the shallow granite steps.

  From the great darkness of the gate arch. Jenny turned

  to see the mob still milling about in the thinning fog, some

  fifty or sixty of them, of all stations and classes but mostly

  poor laborers. The uniforms of the handful of Palace guards

  stood out as gaudy splotches in the grayness. She heard

  their shouts and swearing as they became lost within plain

  sight of one another in territory they had all known well

  of old. That won't last long, she thought.

  Moon Horse shied and fidgeted at the smell of the dragon

  and of the old blood within the vast gloom of the Market

  Hall. The carcass of the horse Osprey had disappeared, but

  256 Barbara Hambly

  the place still smelled of death, and all the horses felt it,

  Jenny slid from her mare's tall back and stroked her neck,

  then whispered to her to stay close to the place in case of

  need and let her go back down the steps.

  Hooves clopped behind her on the charred and broken

  flagstones. She looked back and saw John, ashen undei

  the stubble of beard, still somehow upright in Cow's sad-

  dle. He studied the Vale below them with his usual cool

  expressionlessness. "Zyeme out there?" he asked, and

  Jenny shook her head.

  "Perhaps I hurt her too badly. Perhaps she's only

  remaining at the Palace to gather other forces to send

  against us."

  "She always did like her killing to be done by others.

  How long will your spells hold them?"

  "Not long," Jenny said doubtfully. "We have to hold

  this gate here, John. If they're from Deeping, many of

  them will know the first levels of the Deep. There are

  four or five ways out of the Market Hall. If we retreat

  further in, we'll be flanked."

  "Aye." He scratched the side of his nose thoughtfully.

  "What's wrong with just letting them in? We could hide

  up somewhere—once they got to the Temple of Sar-

  mendes with all that gold, I doubt they'd waste much

  energy looking for us."

  Jenny hesitated for a moment, then shook her head.

  "No," she said. "If they were an ordinary mob, I'd say

  yes, but—Zyeme wants us dead. If she cannot break and

  overwhelm my mind with her magic, she's not going to

  give up before she has destroyed my body. There are

  enough of them that would keep hunting us, and we can't

  take a horse into the deeper tunnels to carry you; without

  one, we'd never be able to move swiftly enough to avoid

  them. We'd be trapped in a cul-de-sac and slaughtered.

  No, if we're to hold them, it has to be here."

  "Right." He nodded. "Can we help you?"

  257

  She had returned her attention to the angry snarl of

  moving figures out in the pale ruins. Over her shoulder,

  she said, "You can't even help yourself."

  "I know that," he agreed equably. "But that wasn't my

  question, love. Look..." He pointed. "That bloke there's

  figured out the way. Here they come. Gaw, they're like

  ants."

  Jenny said nothing, but felt a shiver pass through her

  as she saw the trickle of attackers widen into a stream.

  Gareth came up beside them, leading Battlehammer;

  Jenny whispered to the big horse and turned him loose

  down the steps. Her mind was already turning inward

  upon itself, digging at the strength in the exhausted depths

  of her spirit and body. John, Gareth, and the slender girl

  in the white rags of a Court gown, clinging to Gareth's

  arm, were becoming mere wraiths to her as her soul spi-

  raled down into a single inner vortex, like the single-

  minded madness that comes before childbearing—nothing

  else existed but herself, her power, and what she must

  do.

  Her hands pressed to the cold rock of the gate pillar,

  and she felt that she drew fire and strength from the stone

  itself and from the mountain beneath her feet and above

  her head—drew it from the air and the darkness that

  surrounded her. She felt the magic surge into her veins

  like a reined whirlwind of compressed lightning. Its power

  frightened her, for she knew it was greater than her body

  would bear, yet she could afford no Limitation upon these

  spells. It was thus, she knew, with dragons, but her body

  was not a dragon's.

  She was aware of John reining Cow sharply back away

  from her, as if frightened; Gareth and Trey had retreated

  already. But her mind was out in the pale light of the

  steps, looking down over Deeping, contemplating in lei-

  surely timelessness the men and women running through

  the crumbled walls of the ruins. She saw each one of them

  258 Barbara Hambly

  with the cool exactness of a dragon's eyes, not only how

  they were dressed, but the composition of their souls

  through the flesh they wore. Bond she saw distinctly,

  urging them on with a sword in his hand, his soul eaten

  through with abcesses like termite-riddled wood.

  The forerunners hit the cracked pavement and dust of

  the square before the gates. Like the chirp of an insect

  in a wall, she heard Gareth nattering, "What can we do^

  We have to help her!" as she dispassionately gathered the

  lightning in her hands.

  "Put that down," John's voice said, suddenly weak and

  bleached. "Get ready to run for it—you can hide in the

  warrens for a time if they get through. Here's the maps..."

  The mob was on the steps. Incoherent hate rose around

  her like a storm tide. Jenny lifted her hands, the whole

  strength of rock and darkness tunneling into her body,

  her mind relaxing into the shock instead of bracing against

  it.

  The key to magic is magic, she thought. Her life began

  and ended in each isolate crystal second of impacted time.

  The fire went up from the third step, a red wall of it,

  whole and all-consuming. She heard those trapped in the

  first rush screaming and smelled smoke, charring meat,

  and burning cloth. Like a dragon, she killed without hate,

  striking hard and cruel, knowing that the first strike must

  kill or her small group would all be dead.

  Then she slammed shut before her the illusion of the

  doors that had long ago been broken from the gateway

  arch. They appeared like faded glass from within, but

  every nail and beam and brace of them was wrought per-

  fectly from enchanted air. Through them she saw men and

 
women nulling about the base of the steps, pointing up

  at what they saw as the renewed Gates of the Deep and

  crying out in wonder and alarm. Others lay on the ground,

  or crawled helplessly here and there, beating out the flames

  from their clothes with frenzied hands. Those who had

  Dragonsbane 259

  not been trapped in the fire made no move to help them,

  but stood along the bottom of the step, looking up at the

  gates and shouting with drunken rage. With the caco-

  phony of the screams and groans of the wounded, the

  noise was terrible, and worse than the noise was the stench

  of sizzling flesh. Among it all. Bond Clerlock stood, star-

  ing up at the phantom gates with his hunger-eaten eyes.

  Jenny stepped back, feeling suddenly sick as the human

  in her looked upon what the dragon in her had done. She

  had killed before to protect her own life and the lives of

  those she loved. But she had never killed on this scale,

  and the power she wielded shocked her even as it drained

  her of strength.

  The dragon in you answered, Morkeleb had said. She

  felt sick with horror at how true his knowledge of her had

  been.

  She staggered back, and someone caught her—John

  and Gareth, looking like a couple of not-very-successful

  brigands, filthy and battered and incongruous in their

  spectacles. Trey, with Gareth's tattered cloak still draped

  over her mud-stained white silks and her purple-and-wtute

  hair hanging in asymmetrical coils about her chalky face,

  wordlessly took a collapsible tin cup from her pearl-beaded

  reticule, filled it from the water bottle on Cow's saddle,

  and handed it to her.

  John said, "It hasn't stopped them for long." A mist

  of sweat covered his face, and the nostrils of his long nose

  were marked by dints of pain from the mere effort of

  standing. "Look, there's Bond drumming up support for

  a second go. Silly bleater." He glanced across at Trey and

  added, "Sorry." She only shook her head.

  Jenny freed herself and walked unsteadily to the edge

  of the shadow gate. Her head throbbed with exhaustion

  that bordered nausea. The voices of the men and her own

  voice, when she spoke, sounded flat and unreal. "He'll

  get it, too."

  260 Barbara Hambly

  In the square below the gates, Bond was running here

  and there among the men, stepping over the charred bod-

  ies of the dying, gesticulating and pointing up at the phan-

  tom doors. The Palace guards looked uncertain, but the

  laborers from the Dockmarket were gathered about him,

  listening and passing wineskins among themselves. They

  shook their fists up at the Deep, and Jenny remarked,

  "Like the gnomes, they've had their taste of poverty."

  "Yes, but how can they blame us for it?" Gareth objected

  indignantly. "How can they blame the gnomes? The

  gnomes were even more victims of it than they."

  "Whether or no," John said, leaning against the stone

  pillar of the Gate, "I bet they're telling themselves the

  treasures of the Deep are theirs by right. It's what Zyeme

  will have told 'em, and they obviously believe it enough

  to kill for them."

  "But it's silly!"

  "Not as silly as falling in love with a witch, and we've

  both done that," John replied cheerfully. In spite of her

  exhaustion, Jenny chuckled. "How long can you hold

  them, love?"

  Something in the sound of his voice made her look

  back quickly at him. Though he had dismounted from

  Cow to help her, it was obvious he could not stand alone;

  his flesh looked gray as ash. Shouting from below drew

  her attention a moment later; past the smoke still curling

  from the steps, she could see men forming up into a ragged

  line, the madness of unreasoning hate in their eyes.

  "I don't know," she said softly. "All power must be

  paid for. Maintaining the illusion of the Gates draws still

  more of my strength. But it buys us a little time, breaking

  the thrust of their will if they think they'll have to break

  them."

  "I doubt that lot has the brains to think that far." Still

  leaning heavily on the pillar, John looked out into the

  slanted sun of the square outside. "Look, here they come."

  Dragonsbane 261

  "Get back," Jenny said. Her bones hurt with the thought

  of drawing forth power from them and from the stone and

  air around her one more time. "I don't know what will

  happen without Limitations."

  "I can't get back, love; if I let go of this wall, I'll fall

  down."

  Through the ghost shape of the Gates, she saw them

  coming, running across the square toward the steps. The

  magic came more slowly, dredged and scraped from the

  seared core of her being—her soul felt bleached by

  the effort. The voices below rose in a mad crescendo, in

  which the words "gold" and "kill" were flung up like spars

  of driftwood on the rage of an incoming wave. She glimpsed

  Bond Clerlock, or what was left of Bond Clerlock, some-

  where in their midst, his Court suit pink as a shell among

  the blood-and-buttercup hues of the Palace guards. Her

  mind locked into focus, like a dragon's mind; all things

  were clear to her and distant, impersonal as images in a

  divining crystal. She called the white dragon rage like a

  thunderclap and smote the steps with fire, not before them

  now, but beneath their feet.

  As the fire exploded from the bare stone, a wave of

  sickness consumed her, as if in that second all her veins

  had been opened. The shrieking of men, caught in the

  agony of the fire, struck her ears like a slapping hand, as

  grayness threatened to drown her senses and heat rose

  through her, then sank away, leaving behind it a cold like

  death.

  She saw them reeling and staggering, ripping flaming

  garments from charred flesh. Tears of grief and weakness

  ran down her face at what she had done, though she knew

  that the mob would have torn the four of them apart and

  had known, that time, that she could summon fire. The

  illusion of the Gates felt as tenuous as a soap-bubble around

  her—like her own body, light and drifting. John stumbled

  to catch her as she swayed and pulled her back to the

  262 Barbara Hambly

  pillar against which he had stood; for a moment they boih

  held to it, neither strong enough to stand.

  Her eyes cleared a little. She saw men running about

  the square in panic, rage, and pain; and Bond, oblivion^

  to bums which covered his hand and arm, was chasing

  after them, shouting.

  "What do we do now, love?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know," she whispered

  "I feel as if I'm going to faint."

  His arm tightened around her waist. "Oh, do," he

  encouraged enthusiastically. "I've always wanted to carr>

  you to safety in my arms."

  Her laughter revived her, as he had no doubt meant it

  to. She pushed herself clear of
his support as Gareth and

  Trey came up, both looking ill and frightened.

  "Could we run for it through the Deep?" Gareth asked,

  fumbling the maps from an inner pocket and dropping two

  of them. "To the Citadel, I mean?"

  "No," Jenny said. "I told John—if we left the Market

  Hall, they'd flank us; and carrying John, we couldn't out-

  distance them."

  "I could stay here, love," John said quietly. "I could

  buy you time."

  Sarcastically, she replied, "The time it would take them

  to pick themselves up after tripping over your body ic

  the archway would scarcely suffice."

  "One of us could try to get through," Trey suggesteu

  timidly. "Polycarp and the gnomes at the Citadel would

  know the way through from that side. They could come

  for the rest of you. I have some candles in my reticule,

  and some chalk to mark the way, and I'm no good to you

  here..."

  "No," Gareth objected, valiantly fighting his terror of

  the dark warrens. "I'll go."

  "You'd never find it," Jenny said. "I've been down in

  the Deep, Gareth, and believe me, it is not something that

  Dragonsbane 263

  can be reasoned out with chalk and candles. And, as John

  has said, the door at the end will be locked in any case,

  even if they didn't blast it shut."

  Down below them, Bond's voice could be heard dimly,

  shouting that the Gate wasn't real, that it was just a witch's

  trick, and that all the gold that had been lost was theirs

  by right. People were yelling, "Death to the thieves! Death

  to the gnome-lovers!" Jenny leaned her head against the