Dragonshadow

by Barbara Hambly

  John, being John, waved and blew kisses.

  Balancing on his great wings, Morkeleb extended his long hind-legs to earth, then folded himself down to a crouch. By that time two men stood on the edge of the drill-ground where he settled, tall thin young men, the red-haired wearing a black scholar’s robe, the fair one’s spectacles a note of incongruity against the red military tunic, red breeches, and elaborately stamped and tassled red boots.

  It was this bespectacled crimson figure who cried, “Lord John! Lady Jenny!” and strode forward, holding out his hands.

  There was a time, Jenny remembered, when he would have run.

  She made to curtsy in her ragged petticoat and John’s grimy plaids, but he caught her in his arms, bending down his ridiculous height. Then he turned and embraced John, breathless with amazement and pleasure, while Morkeleb folded himself a little more comfortably and regarded the scene with chilly sardonic un-human eyes. Forty feet seemed to be his true size, larger than which he could not go, but it was difficult for Jenny now to be sure.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Gareth of Magloshaldon, son of—and Regent for—his father the King. Even as he spoke, Uriens of the House of Uwanë appeared, a tall man who in his youth must have looked like the statues of Sarmendes the Sun-God: inlaid golden armor, crimson cloak, his great jeweled sword hurling spangles of light. “It’s all right, Father,” Gareth said quickly, going to him as the King, seeing Morkeleb, raised his weapon and began to advance.

  “Lo, it is the Dragon of Nast Wall!”

  “It’s all right,” Gareth repeated, catching his arm. “He’s been conquered. He’s here as a … a prisoner.”

  Morkeleb opened his mouth and hissed, but if he said anything Jenny did not perceive it, and Gareth gave no sign.

  “He’s a dragon.” The King frowned, as if there were something there that he could not comprehend. His servants and batmen hurried up around him, tactfully taking him by the arms. “Dragons must be slain. ’Tis the duty of a King …”

  “No,” said Gareth. “Lord Aversin—you remember Lord Aversin?—and Mistress Waynest have taken this dragon prisoner. I’ll sing you the song of it tonight, or … or the night after.” He turned back to John, frowning as he saw the burns and blisters of acid-seared flesh. “What happened?” He looked, too, at Morkeleb, as if knowing that only direst emergency would bring them to the camp.

  “Rocklys is a traitor.” John tucked one hand into his sword-belt and with the other scratched his long nose. “And that’s the good news.”

  Without comment Gareth heard John’s tale, though when John spoke of the Skerries of Light the Regent’s eyes glowed with longing and delight. Sitting quietly between John and the red-haired Polycarp, Master of Halnath and Doctor of Natural Philosophy—and clothed in an overbright and too-long gown lent by an officer’s wife—Jenny understood then that only part of Gareth’s obsession with tales of the ancient Dragonsbanes stemmed from more than a gawky boy’s craving for heroism and deeds of courage at arms. What Gareth loved was that they were tales touching on dragons.

  As John, she realized, had come to love dragons as his understanding of them grew.

  “She always looked down on you, you know,” Polycarp said to Gareth. He set aside his note tablets. “She and I spoke two or three times when she was in command of the troops besieging Halnath. When word reached her that your father had become … ill”—he glanced at the tall man, seated in the chair of honor at the center of the table—“her first reaction was horror that you would be ruling the Realm.”

  “I’m not ill.” King Uriens, who had listened to John’s recital with the grave wonderment of a child, sat back a little, frowning. His hair, which had been the gold of ripe barley, was now nearly white and had grown so wispy that it had been cropped short. Coming out to slay the dragon earlier, he had worn a flowing golden wig.

  Other than that, Jenny thought, he looked hale, with the good healthy color of a man who eats well and spends part of each day outdoors. Every time Jenny had seen him, since the death of the sorceress Zyerne who had drained away so much of his life and spirit, the old King seemed a little livelier, a little more aware of his surroundings, though he still had a child’s fascination with every flower and button and pulley, as if he had never seen such things before.

  And it was discouraging to reflect that Rocklys had probably been correct: If Uriens were separated from his son, he could easily be persuaded to forget him and make anyone—Rocklys or the Prince of Imperteng or John or even Adric—Regent in the young man’s stead.

  The King went on, “I just get sleepy, but I can still be King even if I get sleepy, can’t I?” He turned anxiously to his son, who smiled and laid a hand over the big brown fingers.

  “No one better, Father.”

  “It was mean of her to say that.” Uriens turned back to Poly-carp. “I wouldn’t have thought it of her. She was always such a fine warrior, such a fine fighter. I remember I gave her armor for her thirteenth birthday. You asked for books.” He regarded Gareth with mild puzzlement, though with no animosity in his voice.

  By the flush that crept up under his thin skin at his father’s words, Jenny guessed that his father had had a good deal to say on the subject of boys who asked for books rather than armor.

  “Why doesn’t she like us anymore?” Uriens said.

  “She doesn’t like us because she’s not getting her own way,” said John, with a wry sideways smile, and the King nodded, understanding this.

  “Well, that’s why she didn’t marry that merchant fellow. All for the best, of course.”

  From outside the plain, dark walls of the tent came the barking of the camp dogs, the caw of rooks about the midden. Very little other noise, thought Jenny. No slap of arms or calling-out of orders. Morkeleb, crouched in the midst of the main parade ground in sinister, glittering silence, seemed to have damped every sound.

  What would the spies and scouts of the hill-men make of it, or the Prince of Imperteng, for that matter?

  “She told me,” said Gareth quietly, “that she hadn’t liked the idea of my regency but she was willing to learn different. After that she always treated me with respect.”

  So maybe even then, Jenny thought, Rocklys had begun to think of taking the throne.

  “She spoke out half a dozen times in council against letting the fiefs and the free towns keep their own parliaments and maintain their ancient laws,” the young Regent went on. “She said it was foolish and inefficient. But what could I have done? The Princes and Thanes acknowledge me King in part because they are allowed to have their own laws, to live the way their ancestors bade them live. A king can’t tell his subjects—his willing subjects—that he knows more about how they should live than their ancestors did.”

  “Evidently,” John said in a dry voice, “she thought you could.”

  “As for Caradoc,” said Polycarp, long fingers toying with his stylus, “I remember him. About five years ago he came with a dozen copyists and offered me their services in repairing and replacing some of the oldest manuscripts in the library, if I’d grant them permission to make him copies as well. I always thought he was too fortunate in trade to be quite honest.”

  He glanced over at the King, but His Majesty had become absorbed in contemplating the gold beading around the edge of a plate that held cheeses, sweet breads, and the intricate savories of the south.

  John sniffed. “Now we know where he got the fair winds and the good tides from.”

  “More than that,” said Gareth. “In the past two years there have been enough … well … accidents … to shipping in the islands that a motion was made in council to revive the old laws against wizards holding property or office. Only no one knew who the wizard was.” He glanced apologetically at Jenny, then went on quickly, ”Tell us about your dragon-slaying machine.”

  John obliged him, keeping the exposition short and businesslike, as he could when need arose. “I’ve been working on it for owls’ years,”
he said, when he was done. “I got the idea from somethin’ in Polyborus—or was it Dotys’ Secret History?—but most of the actual design came from Heronax of Ernine, except I used the steering cage from Cerduces Scrinus’ designs for parade floats.” He tapped the drawing he’d sketched in chalk on the tablecloth, surrounded by half-empty goblets.

  “And I was trading with the gnomes for pieces for years and driving poor Muffle mad with all the little locks and levers that hold the thing together, so it can be took apart. It’s a heavy little bastard.”

  Gareth and Polycarp exchanged a look. “The Lord of the Deep of Ylferdun would make us more,” the Regent said, polishing his spectacles with the tablecloth. “The last thing he or any gnome wants running around loose are dragons.”

  Four years, Jenny thought, had sobered and quieted him. When she and John had come south two years ago, for the naming-feast of Gareth’s daughter, Jenny had seen that the impulsive, sensitive boy who’d come north to beg John’s help had settled into a young man well aware of his limitations and willing to ask help, deferring lovingly to the shadow of the warrior king his father had been and granting him every show of royalty and state.

  Gareth settled his spectacles back on his nose. “How long do we have, would you say?”

  “Depends,” replied John. “If Rocklys has all the dragons she wants—and they must take a twilkin’ bit of fodder—then we’ve maybe three weeks. Maybe more, depending on how bad Ian and Yseult were hurt, and how fast Rocklys wants to march her men south. She knows we know of her, and she knows Jen and I got away. My guess is she’ll gather her troops and head south as fast as she can”—his eyes narrowed and an edge crept into his voice—“and bugger the bandits and the Iceriders that’ll strike the new settlements.”

  He averted his face to hide his quick anger, but Jenny saw the sudden fisting of his hand, and how his mouth hardened and thinned. Between them, King Uriens had slipped into a doze again.

  “I’m sorry,” Gareth said quietly. “I’m sorry about this.” He straightened the plate and the crumbs before him with embarrassed care, trying not to meet John’s eyes. “She …”

  John shook his head quickly. “She was the best thing going, son, and you’d no reason to doubt she’d keep her trust,” he said. “And she’s a damn fine commander. I suppose the things that made her good are the very ones that turned her against you: the need to see everything done the way she feels is right. And not hearing excuses for why it can’t be done the quickest way. But I tell you,” he went on, “and I know, because I’ve tried doin’ both: You can’t be a commander and a ruler at the same time. You need to see different things and be two different people. Maybe more. Rocklys would have found that out if she’d ever gotten to try, which we’ll make bloody sure she doesn’t.”

  “My lord …” A soldier-servant appeared in the doorway of the tent, barely sketching a salaam in the direction of the dozing King. The open flap let through the chill scent of the forest beyond the wooden palisade, and the sound of the River Wildspae roaring through the arches of Cor’s Bridge. “My lord, the men are asking all sorts of questions about the … the dragon.” He lowered his voice as if he feared that Morkeleb might hear, and of course, thought Jenny, he could. The man’s mistake was in thinking the star-drake would care.

  “They don’t like it a bit, and that’s a fact, my lord. They say there’s witchery in it.” He glanced at the King and then at Jenny, and Jenny could almost hear him remembering Uriens a few years before, in his warlike prime. Before the sorceress Zyerne.

  “Well, it’s good to know your men are up on the obvious, anyway,” John said. “You’d better be damn glad that dragon’s there, son,” he added, addressing the soldier. “And if you’ll excuse my sayin’ so”—he glanced at Gareth, who nodded, bidding him continue—“if you’ll excuse my sayin’ so, you’re gonna be a whole lot gladder in about three weeks.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was agreed that John would ride east with Polycarp and a small guard to Halnath Citadel, leaving Jenny with Gareth. Rocklys had spoken of the camp as lying “before the walls of Jotham,” but Jotham lay in fact in the rough country where the Trammel Fells butted up against Nast Wall. It was impossible to make a camp closer than two miles from the city’s gate and thus impossible, too, to mount an effective siege. Here in the flats beside the River Wildspae forage parties had little defense against the tough fell-men and mountaineers who slipped through the forest. Cor’s Bridge commanded the road to Belmarie in the south, whence came the army’s supplies, and that was something. Now, too, the guards watched the road that lead from the north.

  The Wildspae was deep here and dangerous. It grew wider farther west, so Rocklys would have to come through here.

  Morkeleb remained close, but displayed a surprising facility for being unnoticed. There were times when Jenny, speaking to the servants in the kitchens or the soldiers who worked frantically to dig underground shelters against the coming of dragons, realized that people didn’t even remember that he was there.

  Does this surprise you, Wizard-woman? The dragon stretched himself along the ridge that shouldered against the camp’s eastern wall. Caves were everywhere in these limestone foothills, and without altering his size Morkeleb seemed able to fit, as a rat can, through crevices barely a quarter his apparent girth. The dragon would simply appear among the clumps of hemlock and maple, shake out his mane and resettle his wings.

  We are travelers, we star-drakes. When we come to a place where none of us has been before nor glimpsed even in our dreams, we conceal ourselves in the strongest places we can. There we breathe, and sleep, and cast forth our dreams around about us, drinking in the air until it tells us what creatures walk the stones and ride the winds. There are worse beings than dragons in existence—and behind the worst, creatures even more terrible than they.

  And his mind brought not only words but images to hers, images that she could little understand: landscapes of black stone under red and swollen suns; worlds of thick, rank mist whose cold carried over thought, where shambling dreadful things roved half unseen among glaciers of purplish ice. She turned her eyes from the digging and building in the camp below and asked him, Morkeleb, where do the dragons come from?

  And he only said, Far away.

  Far away. A hole in her awareness of how the world was constituted, infinities of darkness she had never suspected, unimaginable corridors stretching into the night sky and beyond.

  Dragons from stars in an empty sky.

  Far away.

  Is there magic there? she asked. She sat against his shoulder, feeling the heat of him through the enameled iron of his scales. It was unlike the warmth of any other creature, a glowing sense of power. The place you come from, and all those places that lie between?

  Ah, Wizard-woman, he said, there is magic everywhere. It breathes from the ground like dew. We drink it; we wrap ourselves in it as if it were a blanket of music; it is of us.

  And having once been a dragon, Jenny understood. And for a moment she ached with the ache of wanting power, power to wield the magic that she knew was abroad in the world. If I had only been strong enough, she thought, Ian would be safe.

  From this hill also they sometimes saw the woodmen or the fell-dwellers in their green jackets and baggy striped trousers, sliding silently through the trees to observe the camp by the river. They were little dark men with thick black hair, and their ancestors had held these fastnesses from time immemorial against the fair-haired race of Belmarie. Twice Jenny watched them attack the men who labored to strengthen the fortifications on Cor’s Bridge itself or the redoubts that were being raised to dominate the road beside it; twice saw the warriors of Bel stream from the main camp’s gates crying, “Uwanë, Uwanë for Bel!”

  The second time, Jenny slipped into the camp as soon as the fighting ceased and made her way to the Regent’s tent, knowing that she’d find him curled up on his bed, shaking and sick.

  “Were there any way of dealing w
ith them other than subjugation, believe me, I’d try it no matter what Father says—or said— about the honor of the Realm.” Gareth dragged in his breath in a shaky sigh and ran a hand through his fair hair—the dyed pink and blue lovelocks thinned almost to nothing and pointy with sweat. Thanks to John’s teaching, the young man was capable now of leading men into battle, though he took care to appoint able officers and to stick close to them and to their advice.

  “I take it they’re less than pleasant neighbors?” Jenny fetched a basin of hot water from the pavilion’s outer chamber. She’d seen the King in the battle also, leading the soldiers with a ferocity startling to one used to seeing him as only a smiling elderly man.

  He was the Lord of the House of Uwanë, raised to war; Gareth had only to tell him which way to ride. The men followed him gladly, crying out his name, and told themselves afterward that he was himself again or nearly so.

  Gareth shook his head. The greenish pallor was fading a little from his cheeks. “There’s always border raiding going on,” he said. “Prince Tinán claims his lands stretch all the way down to Choggin, though they never were farmed by anybody before our people started to settle there. It’s been owned by the Thanes of Choggin and their people for more generations than you can count. And of course now everything’s complicated by blood-feuds. No, just the tunic,” he added, as Jenny brought fresh clothing from the press. “And the mantlings—those green ones—and the hood. I have to change and get out there for the victory celebration.”

  “That was victory?” It had not had the look of victory to her.

  “We have to call it one.” Gareth pulled off his tunic, spattered with gore, and reached for the fresh one. He flinched as he handled the soiled cloth, fingers avoiding the blood. “Thank you,” he added, as she gave him a cloth to wash with. “Dear King of the Gods, I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish I could just … just lie down.” He swallowed hard. “Father’s the Pontifex of the Realm, but I have to be there because he forgets. And truly, if there isn’t some show of strength against them, the fell-men only push harder. It isn’t …”