Dragon's Bane

  on's soul, for Jenny felt, even through the distant vision,

  the radiant surge ofMorkeleb's annoyance. But the drag-

  on's thoughts sounded down to their depths again, and

  he became still, almost invisible against the colors of the

  stone. Only his antennae continued to move, restless, as

  if troubled by the turmoil in the air.

  A thunderstorm? Jenny thought, suddenly troubled. In

  winter?

  "Jenny?" She looked up quickly and saw the Master

  Polycarp standing in the tall slit of the doorway. She did

  not know why at first, but she shuddered when she saw

  hanging at his belt the brass spyglass he had used in her

  dream. "I didn't want to wake you—I know you've been

  without sleep..."

  "What is it?" she asked, hearing the trouble in his

  voice.

  "It's the King."

  Her stomach jolted, as if she had missed one step of

  a stairway in darkness, the dread other dream coalescing

  in her, suddenly hideously real.

  "He said he'd escaped from Zyeme—he wanted sanc-

  tuary here, and wanted above all to talk to Gar. They

  went off together..."

  "No!" Jenny cried, horrified, and the young philoso-

  pher looked at her in surprise. She snatched up and flung

  Dragonsbane 305

  on the black robe she had been wearing earlier, dragging

  its belt tight. "It's a trick!"

  "What...?"

  She pushed her way past him, shoving up the robe's

  too-long sleeves over her forearms; cold air and the smell

  of thunder smote her as she came into the open and began

  to run down the long, narrow stairs. She could hear Mor-

  keleb calling to her, faint and confused with distance; he

  was waiting for her in the upper court, his half-risen scales

  glittering uneasily in the sickly storm light.

  Zyerne, she said.

  Yes. I saw her just novv, walking with your little prince

  to the door that leads down into the Deep. She was in

  the guise of the old King—they had already passed through

  the door when I spoke of it to Aversin. Is it possible that

  the prince did not know it, as Aversin said to me? I know

  that humans can fool one another with the illusions of

  their magic, but are even his own son and his nephew

  whom he raised so stupid that they could not have told

  the difference between what they saw and what they knew?

  As always, his words came as pictures in her mind—

  the old King leaning, whispering, on Gareth's shoulder

  for support as they walked the length of the narrow court

  toward the door to the Deep, the look of pity, involuntary

  repulsion, and wretched guilt on the boy's face—feeling

  repelled, and not knowing why.

  Jenny's heart began to pound. They know the King has

  been ill, she said. No doubt she counted upon their for-

  giveness of any lapses. She will go to the Stone, to draw

  power from it, and use Gareth's life to replace it. Where's

  John now? He has to...

  He has gone after them.

  WHAT? Like a dragon, the word emerged only as a

  blazing surge of incredulous wrath. He'll kill himself!

  He will likely be forestalled, Morkeleb replied cyni-

  cally. But Jenny did not stay to listen. She was already

  306 Barbara Hambly

  running down the steep twist of steps to the lower court.

  The cobbles of the pavement there were uneven and badly

  worn, with tiny spangles of vagrant rain glittering among

  them like silver beads on some complex trapunto; the

  harshness of the stone tore at her feet as she ran toward

  that small, unprepossessing door.

  She flung back to the dragon the words. Wait for her

  here. If she reaches the Stone, she will have all power at

  her command—I will never be able to defeat her, as I did

  before. You must take her when she emerges...

  It is the Stone that binds me, the dragon's bitter voice

  replied in her mind. If she reaches it, what makes you

  think I shall be able to do anything but her will?

  Without answering Jenny flung open the door and

  plunged through into the shadowy antechambers of the

  earth.

  She had seen them the previous morning, when she

  had passed through with the gnomes who had gone to

  fetch John, Gareth, and Trey from the other side of the

  Deep. There were several rooms used for trade and busi-

  ness, and then a guardroom, whose walls were carved to

  three-quarters of their height from the living bone of the

  mountain. The windows, far up under the vaulted ceilings,

  let in a shadowy blue light by which she could just see

  the wide doors of the Deep itself, faced and backed with

  bronze and fitted with massive bars and bolts of iron.

  These gates were still locked, but the man-sized pos-

  tern door stood ajar. Beyond it lay darkness and the cold

  scent of rock, water, and old decay. Gathering up her

  robes. Jenny stepped over the thick sill and hurried on,

  her senses probing ahead of her, dragonlike, her eyes

  seeking the silvery runes she had written on the walls

  yesterday to mark her path.

  The first passage was wide and had once been pleasant,

  with basins and fountains lining its walls. Now some were

  broken, others clogged in the months of utter neglect;

  Dragonsbane 307

  moss clotted them and water ran shining down the walls

  and along the stone underfoot, wetting the hem of Jenny's

  robe and slapping coldly at her ankles. As she walked,

  her mind tested the darkness before her; retracing yes-

  terday's route, she paused again and again to listen. The

  way through the Deep ran near the Places of Healing, but

  not through them; somewhere, she would have to turn

  aside and seek the unmarked ways.

  So she felt at the air, seeking the living tingle of magic

  that marked the heart of the Deep. It should lie lower

  than her own route, she thought, and to her left. Her mind

  returned uncomfortably to Miss Mab's words about a false

  step leaving her to die of starvation in the labyrinthine

  darkness. If she became lost, she told herself, Morkeleb

  could still hear her, and guide her forth...

  But not, she realized, ifZyeme reached the Stone. The

  power and longing of the Stone were lodged in the drag-

  on's mind. If she got lost, and Zyeme reached the Stone

  and gained control of Morkeleb, there would be no day-

  light for her again.

  She hurried her steps, passing the doors that had been

  raised for the defense of the Citadel from the Deep, all

  unlocked now by Gareth and the one he supposed to be

  the King. By the last of them, she glimpsed the sacks of

  blasting powder that Balgub had spoken of, that final

  defense in which he had placed such faith. Beyond was

  a branching of the ways, and she stopped again under

  an arch carved to look like a monstrous mouth, with sta-

  lactites of ivory grimacing in a wrinkled gum of salmon-

  pink stone. Her instincts whispered to her that this was

  t
he place—two tunnels diverged from the main one, both

  going downwards, both to the left. A little way down the

  nearer one, beside the trickle of water from a broken

  gutter, a wet footprint marked the downward-sloping stone.

  John's, she guessed, for the print was dragged and

  slurred. Further along that way, she saw the mark of a

  308 Barbara Hambly

  drier boot, narrower and differently shaped. She saw the

  tracks again, dried to barely a sparkle of dampness on

  the first steps of a narrow stair which wound like a path

  up a hillslope of gigantic stone mushrooms in an echoing

  cavern, past the dark alabaster mansions of the gnomes,

  to a narrow doorway in a cavern wall. She scribbled a

  rune beside the door and followed, through a rock seam

  whose walls she could touch with her outstretched hands,

  downward, into the bowels of the earth.

  In the crushing weight of the darkness, she saw the

  faint flicker of yellow light.

  She dared not call out, but fled soundlessly toward it.

  The air was warmer here, unnatural in those clammy

  abysses; she felt the subtle vibrations of the living magic

  that surrounded the Stone. But there was an unwhole-

  someness in the air now, like the first smell of rot in

  decaying meat or like the livid greenness that her dragon

  eyes had seen in the poisoned water. She understood that

  Miss Mab had been right and Balgub wrong. The Stone

  had been defiled. The spells that had been wrought with

  its strength were slowly deteriorating, perverted by the

  poisons drawn from Zyeme's mind.

  At the end of a triangular room the size of a dozen

  barns, she found a torch, guttering itself out near the foot

  of a flight of shallow steps. The iron door at the top stood

  unbolted and ajar, and across its threshold John lay

  unconscious, scavenger-slugs already sniffing inquiringly

  at his face and hands.

  Beyond, in the darkness. Jenny heard Gareth's voice

  cry, "Stop!" and the sweet, evil whisper of Zyeme's laugh-

  ter.

  "Gareth," the soft voice breathed. "Did you ever think

  it was possible that you could stop me?"

  Shaken now with a cold that seemed to crystallize at

  the marrow of her bones. Jenny ran forward into the heart

  of the Deep.

  Dragonsbane 309

  Through the forest of alabaster pillars she saw them,

  the nervous shadows of Gareth's torch jerking over the

  white stone lace that surrounded the open floor. His face

  looked dead white against the black, baggy student gown

  he wore; his eyes held the nightmare terror of every dream,

  every encounter with his father's mistress, and the knowl-

  edge of his own terrifying weakness. In his right hand he

  held the halberd John had been using for a crutch. John

  must have warned him that it was Zyeme, Jenny thought,

  before he collapsed. At least Gareth has a weapon. But

  whether he would be capable of using it was another mat-

  ter.

  The Stone in the center of the onyx dancing floor seemed

  to glow in the vibrating dark with a sickly corpse light of

  its own. The woman before it was radiant, beautiful as

  the Death-lady who is said to walk on the sea in times of

  storm. She looked younger than Jenny had ever seen her,

  with the virgin fragility of a child that was both an armor

  against Gareth's desperation and a weapon to pierce his

  flesh if not his heart. But even at her most delicate, there

  was something nauseating about her, like poisoned mar-

  zipan—an overwhelming, polluted sensuality. Wind that

  Jenny could not feel seemed to lift the soft darkness of

  Zyeme's hair and the sleeves of the frail white shift that

  was all that she wore. Stopping on the edge of the flow-

  stone glades, Jenny realized that she was seeing Zyeme

  as she had once been, when she first had come to this

  place—a magebom girl-child who had run through these

  lightless corridors seeking power, as she herself had sought

  it in the rainy north; trying, as she herself had tried, to

  overcome the handicap of its lack in whatever way she

  could.

  Zyeme laughed, her sweet mouth parting to show pearls

  of teeth. "It is my destiny," she whispered, her small

  hands caressing the blue-black shine of the Stone. "The

  gnomes had no right to keep it all to themselves. It is

  310 Barbara Hambly

  mine now. It was meant to be mine from the founding of

  the world. As you were."

  She held out her hands, and Gareth whispered, "No."

  His voice was thin and desperate as the wanting of her

  clutched at his flesh.

  "What is this No? You were made for me, Gareth.

  Made to be King. Made to be my love. Made to father

  my son."

  Like a phantom in a dream, she drifted toward him

  over the oily blackness of the great floor. Gareth slashed

  at her with the torch, but she only laughed again and did

  not even draw back. She knew he hadn't the courage to

  touch her with the flame. He edged toward her, the hal-

  berd in his hand, but Jenny could see his face rolling with

  streams of sweat. His whole body shook as he summoned

  the last of his strength to cut at her when she came near

  enough—fighting for the resolution to do that and not to

  fling down the weapon and crush her in his arms.

  Jenny strode forward from the alabaster glades in a

  blaze of blue witchlight, and her voice cut the palpitant

  air like a knife tearing cloth. She cried, "ZYERNE!" and

  the enchantress spun, her eyes yellow as a cat-devil's in

  the white blaze of the light, as they had been in the woods.

  The spell over Gareth snapped, and at that instant he

  swung the halberd at her with all the will he had left.

  She flung the spell of deflection at him almost

  contemptuously; the weapon rang and clattered on the

  stone floor. Swinging back toward him, she raised her

  hand, but Jenny stepped forward, her wrath swirling about

  her like woodsmoke and phosphorous, and flung at Zyeme

  a rope of white fire that streamed coldly from the palm

  of her hand.

  Zyeme hurled it aside, and it splattered, sizzling, on

  the black pavement. Her yellow eyes burned with unholy

  light. "You," she whispered. "I told you I'd get the Stone—

  and I told you what I'd do to you when I did, you ignorant

  Dragonsbane 311

  bitch. I'll rot the stinking bones of your body for what

  you did!"

  A spell of crippling and ruin beat like lightning in the

  close air of the cavern, and Jenny flinched from it, feeling

  all her defenses buckle and twist. The power Zyeme

  wielded was like a weight, the vast shadow she had only

  sensed before turned now to the weight of the earth where

  it smote against her. Jenny threw it aside and writhed

  from beneath it; but for a moment, she hadn't the strength

  to do more. A second spell struck her, and a third, cramp-

  ing and biting at the muscles and organs of her body, />
  smoking at the hem of her gown. She felt something break

  within her and tasted blood in her mouth; her head

  throbbed, her brain seemed to blaze, all the oxygen in

  the world was insufficient to her lungs. Under the ruthless

  battering she could do no more than defend herself; no

  counterspell would come, no way to make it stop. And

  through it all, she felt the weaving of the death-spells,

  swollen and hideous perversions of what she herself had

  woven, returning like a vengeance to crush her beneath

  them. She felt Zyerne's mind, powered by the force of

  the Stone, driving like a black needle of pain into hers;

  felt the grappling of a poisoned and vicious essence seek-

  ing her consent.

  And why nofi she thought. Like the black slime of

  bursting pustules, all her self-hatreds flowed into the light.

  She had murdered those weaker than herself; she had

  hated her master; she had used a man who loved her for

  her own pleasure and had abandoned the sons of her body;

  she had abandoned her birthright of power out of sloth

  and fear. Her body screamed, and her will to resist all the

  mounting agonies weakened before the scorching onslaught

  of the mind. How could she presume to fight the evil of

  Zyeme, when she herself was evil without even the excuse

  of Zyeme's grandeur?

  Anger struck her then, like the icy rains of the Win-

  312 Barbara Hambly

  terlands, and she recognized what was happening to her

  as a spell. Like a dragon, Zyerne deceived with the truth,

  but it was deception all the same. Looking up she saw

  that perfect, evil face bending over her, the golden eyes

  filled with gloating fire. Reaching out, Jenny seized the