Dragonshadow

by Barbara Hambly

  And all the while she was aware of herself, and Amayon, riding the green and gold jere-drake overhead, braiding and gathering spells. Half-seen in the misty world below, the army crept, drenched, as the drifting shapes of the other dragons about her were drenched, in the feral sparkle of demon fire. She was aware that her spells—the demon’s spells—made her beautiful, and being forty-five years old and never a pretty woman, she reveled in that beauty and that power. She rejoiced in the pert breasts and silky skin, in the sudden absence of any need at all to fight migraines, hot flashes, aches, indigestion. She was young and could do whatever she pleased, for none could touch her. And she smiled at the thought of that haughty bitch Rocklys’ surprise, when the time came for the demons to take their pay.

  The ground below them sloped gradually toward the river. Above the soft-rolling grayness of the fogs, the sun stood high.

  All together, demons, mages, dragons spoke a word, and the fog sank into the ground like translucent dust. Gareth’s camp— blotched with the burns of acid and the soaked blood of the men killed last night—lay naked under the dragons’ shadows.

  The army of Bel was ready for them at the outlying defenses of the bridge. The spikes of the gutted Urchins had been laid over the two main bunkers of the camp, and from these, harpoons slashed upward from a dozen salvaged catapult slings. Two wounded the little rainbow-drakes ridden by Werecat and Miss Enk—that semi-trained gnome adept Rocklys had brought in at the last minute from the Deep of Wyldoom—before all the demons, all the wizards pulled about themselves the spells of illusion and confusion, the fractioning of colors, images, shapes. At the same moment there was a great sounding of horns and drums on the northward road, and Rocklys’ mighty voice roaring her battle-cry, “Firebeard! Firebeard!” The paean shook the air as they attacked the redoubts of the bridge, while the dragons struck at the defenders as they tried to rush from the main camp.

  The battle was short, for the clouds that had lain on the mountain flanks stirred and swirled, and cold winds blew them down above the river and the camp. Thunder roared, lightning striking at the dragons, and rain streamed down in torrents. Gnome-magic, Jenny heard Folcalor say in her mind, with a curse. They can’t keep it up long. She was hard put to turn aside the lightning bolts that struck at Mellyn’s wings, and she felt her own rage rise, that squatty ugly creatures like the gnomes should dare defy them: We will make them pay for this, she said.

  Wind howled and twisted at her long black hair, and below by the river fortifications she saw Rocklys’ troops struggling against mud and rain. Rocklys stood at the top of a siege-ladder, sword in hand, waterfalls of rain hammering in her eyes. Wind swept away her shouted commands, and rage and pride came off her in such waves that Jenny laughed.

  Behind her she heard a hissing and a shriek. One of the rainbow-drakes writhed, twisted in the air. Its rider, the Icerider boy Werecat, was thrown clear, dangling by one leg caught in the leather cable hundreds of feet above the ground. Jenny thought the young dragon must have been struck by lightning, for blood poured from its opened belly and sides; she could hear the cursing of its demon from where she sat. Dragon and boy fell, the dragon already dead, the demons drawing back to savor the desperate terror of the youth, imprisoned in his crystal, watching his last hopeless hope of freedom plunge away. The young dragon sprawled wrecked and bleeding on the earth, and she thought it bore less the marks of lightning than of attack by another dragon. But she had seen nothing.

  Yet in her jewel, in her heart, in the part of her that was still Jenny, she knew.

  They can’t keep up the storm forever, she heard Folcalor say in her mind again. He was a big demon, and an old one, swollen with the hearts and lives of other demons he’d devoured; his mind was like a cesspool, stinking as he spoke. And when they tire, we’ll still be here. He added, Gnome-bitch.

  The troops retreated from the defense-works, back beneath the eaves of the woods, and made camp in the rain. Above the trees the lightning continued to flash in a sky turned to night. Rocklys deployed her forces around the wall of Gareth’s camp. The demons settled in to amuse themselves, asking for soldiers or camp-slaves or the captives Rocklys had taken. Pain sometimes, or lust, or terror, usually all three: It was an art form, rendered the more entertaining by the echoed outcry from the imprisoned hearts of their hosts.

  The demons grew drunk with delight.

  You can’t say you don’t enjoy it, Amayon whispered to Jenny when she tried to look away, to will her awareness away from what was being done with her senses and her power and her body. An ugly little thing like you never wanted to have all the men you could manage? To have them worship at your feet and beg for your favors? To have them see you as beautiful, as desirable—and then to punish them for it? To make them weep?

  Locked in the heart of the jewel, Jenny could only plead, Let me alone.

  Your son’s a better student of these arts than you are. The demon was disgusted. Would you like to get him in here? Would that be fun? And he laughed at the pleasure he made her feel.

  The soldiers wore out, and left, or passed out drunk on the fouled carpets of the tent floor. Jenny lay for a time in the tangle of silks and furs on the tent’s divan, drinking straight brandy and savoring the afterglow. Ian, the demon part of her knew, was still engaged in his own practices, but it would be good to go over there in time. It had been Ian’s idea to weave the illusion that Bliaud’s sons had been taken in the onslaught and tortured to death and to send this illusion to Bliaud where the old man was trapped in his ensorcelled gem. They had all laughed fit to split their sides at the father’s pitiful weeping. She stretched, rolling her head in the sable pillows of her hair.

  And turning her head, saw there was another man in the tent.

  For a moment she recognized him only as the warrior who’d been trapped half-in, half-out of the burning Urchin, a lithe tallish man with brown hair rain-lank to his shoulders. Wet leather, wet plaids, polishing the rain from his spectacles with his torn shirttail. She was smiling, holding out an inviting hand, when she realized it was John.

  She turned her face away, hand pressed to her mouth in shame and horror, and with her other hand drew up the sheet to cover herself. For a moment her throat locked shut, her whole body twisted with the pain. Then she heard Amayon laugh and the thought came to her that it would be entertaining beyond words to bring John to her—her magic would easily overcome his revulsion, but it might be more amusing to simply use a spell to bring him against his will—and then call for the guards while he lay in her bed.

  Stop it! she screamed. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

  And the demon roared with laughter. So loud did it ring in her mind that for a time she wasn’t aware of how silent the tent was.

  Her face still averted, she said, “Leave here, John.”

  “Am I talking to you, Jen?” he asked. “Or to the demon? Not that I’d get a truthful answer from whatever took possession of you.”

  Jenny faced him, and as the strength of the demon closed hard on her soul and her mind she forced it back with all the power she could draw through the flawed prison of the crystal, all she could still numbly wield. She trembled and could not speak, but she saw the hard wariness in John’s eyes change. He stepped forward, as if he would have taken her hand, and she drew back.

  He looked around at the soldiers sleeping on the floor, and the two snoring grossly beside her on the divan. His voice was very steady. “I understand it wasn’t you, Jen.”

  She fought back the throaty chuckle, the words, Then you can’t have known me well, all these years, and, You should go over to the next tent and have a look at our son. Fought them back so hard her jaws ached. And felt the sudden furious stab of Amayon’s anger in her bowels.

  Her hand drew back from his reach again, and she huddled the sheet around her, “It isn’t that.” The words were like gagging dry stones from her throat as she reached through to take fumbling hold on her flesh. “I—know—I pray—you understand.”
>
  The pain redoubled, twisted and dragged at her; pain worse than any she had known. She dug her nails into the back of her hand until blood came, to hold control against Amayon’s terrible strength. “I can’t—keep the demon—at bay. Go now.”

  “Not without you.”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Mab, and Morkeleb …”

  “Stay away!” Fire flared in the air between them as he stepped forward, driving him back. She had to back away again, put the divan between them, to keep herself from hurting him, from sending the second flash of demon-fire into his body. Agony ripped her and she half-doubled over, clinging to the head of the divan. Morkeleb’s magic, all that was left of her own, burned her like a poison as she turned it against the thing inside her body, the thing that was fighting now like a tiger to take her over again.

  Her breath came in gasps and she brought the words out quickly: “John, get out of here. Trust me. Don’t try to help me and whatever you do don’t try to find Ian, just get out …”

  Her voice choked off as one of the soldiers on the divan sat up, eyes staring madly: “Spy!” he roared, and lunged at John.

  John stepped back, tripped and elbowed him, sending him sprawling to the carpets, but the damage was done. The other men lurched to their feet, grabbing swords and knives. There was an outcry from beyond the tent wall, and the clashing of metal. John sprang over the divan, catching up the tawny fur coverlet and throwing it around Jenny’s body, muffling her arms, lifting her from her feet. Jenny twisted, mute as a snake, kicking and butting with her head. John set her down at the back of the tent, drew his sword and turned to face the soldiers closing in around him. In Jenny’s mind Amayon’s laughter grew louder and louder, drowning thought, drowning resistance.

  What kind of a ballad does he think he’s in? Folcalor, Gothpys, come here, you have to see this!

  John hacked, gutted one man, kicked another in the belly and sent him sprawling into three more, then turned and sliced open the back wall of the tent. He swung back around to catch the blades of those who’d come in from outside—armored, these warriors, and two of them had pikes—twisting, cutting, dodging, backing toward the spilling rain of the outside.

  He was here, you know, Jenny; he saw you with the soldiers. You really think he doesn’t think it was you?

  A man fell near her, flopped and gasped and tried to close up the gaping sword-slash in his breast with his hands; his sword lay at Jenny’s feet. Pain clawed her, the terror that she would die if she didn’t pick it up, drive it to the hilt in John’s back …

  She kicked it from her with all her strength and with everything left in her, called a slamming burst of lightning down on the attacking soldiers, and darkness that swallowed the lamps. “Run!” Handfuls of wet leather, bloody plaids, the familiar scent of them ripping her heart …

  “Run!” She thrust him through the slit in the tent, whirled back and flung fire at the men coming through the flap. Ian, Caradoc, Yseult naked and wine-soaked … A blast of light, darkness, power throwing them back, then she fell to her knees, balled tight on the squishing rugs, sobbing, emptied, pain and more pain through which the unconsciousness she prayed for never came …

  Stop it, said Folcalor harshly.

  Amayon’s reply was beyond words, beyond even the concept of words. Raw violent hatred at being defied. A beast lifting a bloody mouth from its prey.

  STOP IT. You’ll kill her.

  She’s safe in your hellfestering little jewel. Only it wasn’t words, just a river of poison poured over the raw pulp of her soul.

  She can’t die.

  Don’t think it, snapped the other.

  Doesn’t matter, laughed Gothpys wearing Ian’s body as he returned through the slit in the tent. There was a spear in his hand running with rainwater and blood. He’s dead.

  And Jenny saw the scene in her mind. John kneeling in the soup of rain-thinned blood where they’d hamstrung him, trying to fend off their pikes and swords and harpoons with his hands. Wet hair hung down over his broken spectacles and he tried once more to get to his feet, tried to crawl away; looked up, and saw Ian with a spear in his hands, rain sluicing down his black hair, looking down at him with smiling hell-blue eyes.

  Jenny’s heart seemed to shut in white blank horror. You’re lying! she screamed at them. You’re lying! Like you lied to Bliaud! Her grip over her body slithered away again as the last flame of her resistance died.

  On the third night after that, two horses picked their way through the bracken-choked rubble and inexplicable gashes of darkness that filled in the cup-shaped valley on the eastern rim of Nast Wall’s foothills. Feathers and fragments of blue-white light drifted along the ground, and now and then showed up, among the skeins of wild grape and ivy, a startling white stone hand or incised lintel. High thin clouds hid the pale fingernail of the slow-waxing moon.

  The rider of the smaller horse, a coarse-maned mountain pony, drew rein where fallen pillars marked the gate of what had been a path to the citadel on the hill: “Art determined to do this thing, man?”

  Aversin’s voice was weary, beaten with three nights of broken sleep and foul dreams. “Show me any other way and I’ll do it, Mab. I swear to you I’ll do it.”

  She sat silent, night wind lifting the ghostly cloud of her hair.

  “The penalties are terrible for those that seek the spawn of Hell.”

  “More terrible than havin’ seven wizards possessed? Seven dragons at their beck?”

  She said nothing for a time. Then, “Understand that my spells may not protect thee beyond the Gate of Hell.”

  His spectacles flashed as he bent his head, rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. The horses fidgeted, uneasy at the smells in this place. At length he said, “No spells protected Jen, did they?”

  “Never since the Fall of Ernine have demons so strong entered into our world.” The gnome-wife’s deep voice was troubled. “No lore I have studied touches upon the case. Yet the dragon says it was through her magic that they entered her soul.”

  “The dragon wouldn’t bloody well get his whiskers singed to take his own child out of the fire,” John retorted viciously. “The dragon’s got no bloody room to talk. He wouldn’t even bring me past the spell-bounds set around Rocklys’ camp …”

  “The dragon is right,” Mab said quietly. “And the dragon did save thy life.” In the flickering witchlight the shapes of the hillocks altered, and one could see in them the echoes of temples, palaces, market-halls long crumbled.

  “Then it looks like I’m a fool, doesn’t it?” John swung down from his horse and knotted the rein angrily around a sapling. “Only since I’d sooner be dead than live without her, I haven’t got a lot to lose now, have I?”

  Mab sighed. The will-o’-the-wisp coalesced into a glowing ball, shining in the air before John’s knees. It illuminated a face drawn with exhaustion, eyes bruised with weariness and flaming with anger. Beyond them the gnome-witch evidently saw something else, for her voice gentled. “Thou hast no knowing, man, of what it is thou stand to lose. Still, for her sake I will do for you what I can.”

  She dismounted and held out her hand. After a moment John knelt before her. “No spell of this world can touch the Spawn of Hell themselves,” she said, “nor yet turn aside the illusions and the ills they send within their own Hells. They are of a nature that we do not understand, and it seems that now they have found some new power besides to grant them greater might. Yet can I strengthen thine eyes against the blindness that is one of their entertainments. Greater discernment I can give to thy mind, that thou might find thy way back to the Gate that I shall make in the burning mirror; and give that thy heart beat stronger, that thou remember thy love for Jenny, and put aside the desire to remain in Hell forever. I can strengthen thy flesh, that it will not die behind the mirror unless thou so wish. But remember, man, if thou diest, thy soul shall remain there a prisoner, unable to travel on to where the souls of men return.”

  While she
spoke, she touched his eyelids with her thick little thumb and marked rune signs on his temples and breast. John thought he should have felt something, some warmth or strength or increase of power, but he felt nothing, not even the lessening of his fear.

  Don’t do this, Johnny… He could almost hear Muffle screaming the words at him. Don’t do this…

  “These signs and this strength will not hold long in the world behind the mirror,” said Mab’s voice. He looked up at her, hoping his terror didn’t show in his eyes. “Beware of what thou sayst there, and beware more than all else what promises thou make to them. They shall try to hold thee in their world and make thee their servant; departing, they shall try to put thee in debt to them, owing a teind of your loyalty and all you possess, to serve them here in this one. This above all things thou must not permit. My blessings go with thee.” Her hard hand ruffled his hair. “Good luck.”

  He rose. “Does ’good luck’ mean that I find the place or that I don’t?”

  Unwillingly, the old wrinkled face returned the smile. “In Ernine of old,” she said, “they worshiped the Lord of Time, who saw forward and backward, and knew answers to such things. But it is the nature of mortals, of gnomes and of men, that they could not abide this knowledge, so they turned instead to the worship of the Twelve. Even the Twelve ask no questions of the Lord of Time.”

  Leaving the gnome-wife standing like moonlit rock, John followed the path Jenny had described to him, when she’d waked moaning from the horrors of her dream. A second palace, and a third, had been built over the Citadel of Ernine since the days of the heroes, but once past the gates there was only one way to go. Under knee-deep ivy and grapevines the very sandstone of the stairway was grooved and smoothed by water and the feet of long-dead servants and kings. In the courtyard where the queen’s ladies had worked their looms, a fountain still gurgled from the broken basin. Mab’s pale guide-light drifted and flickered over the dark laurel, thorn-bristling roses, and wisteria grown monstrous with age that perfumed the night.