Dragon's Bane

by Dragon's Bane (lit)

  at them, then sliding back in surreptitious glances, and of

  Gareth's face, as white as his collar lace.

  A soft voice behind them said, "Please don't be angry

  with him, Gareth."

  Zyeme stood there, in plum-colored silk so dark it was

  nearly black, with knots of pink-tinted cream upon her

  trailing sleeves. Her mead-colored eyes were troubled.

  "You did take his seal, you know, and depart without his

  permission."

  John spoke up. "Bit of an expensive slap on the wrist,

  though, isn't it? I mean, there the dragon is and all, while

  we're here waiting for leave to go after it."

  Zyeme's lips tightened a little, then smoothed. At the

  near end of the King's Gallery, a small door in the great

  ones opened, and the Chamberlain Badegamus appeared,

  quietly summoning the first of the petitioners whom the

  King had acknowledged.

  "There really is no danger to us here, you know. The

  dragon has been confining his depredations to the farm-

  steads along the feet of Nast Wall."

  "Ah," John said comprehendingly. "That makes it all

  right, then. And is this what you've told the people of

  those farmsteads to which, as you say, the dragon's been

  confining his depredations?"

  Dragonsbane 125

  The flash of anger in her eyes was stronger then, as if

  no one had ever spoken to her so—or at least, thought

  Jenny, observing silently from John's side, not for a long

  time. With visible effort, Zyeme controlled herself and

  said with an air of one reproving a child, "You must under-

  stand. There are many more pressing concerns facing the

  King..."

  "More pressing than a dragon sitting on his doorstep?"

  demanded Gareth, outraged.

  She burst into a sweet gurgle of laughter. "There's no

  need to enact a Dockmarket drama over it, you know.

  I've told you before, darling, it isn't worth the wrinkles

  it will give you."

  He pulled his head back from her playful touch.

  "Wrinkles! We're talking about people being killed!"

  "Tut, Gareth," Bond Clerlock drawled, strolling

  languidly over to them. "You're getting as bad as old

  Polycarp used to be."

  Under the paint, his face looked even more washed-

  out next to Zyeme's sparkling radiance. With a forced

  effort at his old lightness, he went on, "You shouldn't

  grudge-those poor farmers the only spice in their dull little

  lives."

  "Spice..." Gareth began, and Zyeme squeezed his

  hand chidingly.

  "Don't tell me you're going to go all dull and altruistic

  on us. What a bore that would be." She smiled. "And I

  will tell you this," she added more soberly. "Don't do

  anything that would further anger your father. Be patient—

  and try to understand."

  Halfway down the long gallery, the Chamberlain Bad-

  egamus was returning, passing the small group of gnomes

  who sat, an island of isolation, in the shadow of one of

  the fluted ornamental arches along the east wall. As the

  Chamberlain walked by, one of them rose in a silken whis-

  per of flowing, alien robes, the cloudy wisps of his milk-

  126 Barbara Hambly

  white hair floating around his slumped back. Gareth had

  pointed him out to Jenny earlier—Azwylcartusherands,

  called Dromar by the folk of men who had little patience

  with the tongue of gnomes, longtime ambassador from the

  Lord of the Deep to the Court of Bel. Badegamus saw

  him and checked his stride, then glanced quickly at Zyeroe.

  She shook her head. Badegamus averted his face and

  walked past the gnomes without seeing them.

  "They grow impudent," the enchantress said softly.

  "To send envoys here, when they fight on the side of the

  traitors of Halnath."

  "Well, they can hardly help that, can they, if the back

  way out of the Deep leads into the Citadel," John remarked.

  "They could have opened the Citadel gates to let the

  King's troops in."

  John scratched the side of his long nose. "Well, being

  a barbarian and all, I wouldn't know how things are done

  in civilized lands," he said. "In the north, we've got a

  word for someone who'd do that to a man who gave him

  shelter when he was driven from his home."

  For an instant Zyeme was silent, her power and her

  anger seeming to crackle in the air. Then she burst into

  another peal of chiming laughter. "I swear, Dragonsbane,

  you do have a refreshingly naive way of looking at things.

  You make me feel positively ancient." She brushed a ten-

  dril of her hair aside from her cheek as she spoke; she

  looked as sweet and guileless as a girl of twenty. "Come.

  Some of us are going to slip away from this silliness and

  go riding along the sea cliffs. Will you come, Gareth?"

  Her hand stole into his in such a way that he could not

  avoid it without rudeness—Jenny could see his face color

  slightly at the touch. "And you, our barbarian? You know

  the King won't see you today."

  "Be that as it may," John said quietly. "I'll stay here

  on the off chance."

  Dragonsbane 127

  Bond laughed tinnily. "There's the spirit that won the

  Realm!"

  "Aye," John agreed in a mild voice and returned to the

  carved bench where he and Jenny had been, secure in his

  established reputation for barbarous eccentricity.

  Gareth drew his hand from Zyeme's and sat down

  nearby, catching his mantlings in the lion's-head arm of

  the chair. "I think I'll stay as well," he said, with as much

  dignity as one could have while disentangling oneself from

  the furniture.

  Bond laughed again. "I think our Prince has been in

  the north too long!" Zyerne wrinkled her nose, as if at a

  joke in doubtful taste.

  "Run along, Bond." She smiled. "I must speak to the

  King. I shall join you presently." Gathering up her train,

  she moved off toward the bronze doors of the King's

  antechamber, the opals that spangled her veils giving the

  impression of dew flecking an apple blossom as she passed

  the pale bands of the windowlight. As she came near the

  little group of gnomes, old Dromar rose again and walked

  toward her with the air of one steeling himself for a loathed

  but necessary encounter. But she turned her glance from

  him and quickened her step, so that, to intercept her, he

  would have to run after her on his short, bandy legs. This

  he would not do, but stood looking after her for a moment,

  smoldering anger in his pale amber eyes.

  "I don't understand it," said Gareth, much later, as the

  three of them jostled their way along the narrow lanes of

  the crowded Dockmarket quarter. "She said Father was

  angry, yes—but he knew whom I'd be bringing with me.

  And he must have known about the dragon's latest attack."

  He hopped across the fish-smelling slime of the gutter to

  avoid a trio of sailors who'd come staggering out of one

  of the taverns that lined t
he cobbled street and nearly

  tripped over his own cloak.

  128 Barbara Hambly

  When Badegamus had announced to the nearly empty

  gallery that the King would see no one else that day, John

  and Jenny had taken the baffled and fuming Gareth back

  with them to the guest house they had been assigned in

  one of the outer courts of the Palace. There they had

  changed out of their borrowed court dress, and John had

  announced his intention of spending the remainder of the

  afternoon in the town, in quest of gnomes.

  "Gnomes?" Gareth said, surprised.

  "Well, if it hasn't occurred to anyone else, it has

  occurred to me that, if I'm to fight this drake, I'm going

  to need to know the layout of the caverns." With sur-

  prising deftness, he disentangled himself from the intri-

  cate crisscross folds of his mantlings, his head emerging

  from the double-faced satin like a tousled and unruly weed.

  "And since it didn't seem the thing to address them at

  Court..."

  "But they're plotting!" Gareth protested. He paused

  in his search for a place to dump the handful of old-

  fashioned neck-chains and rings among the already-

  accumulating litter of books, harpoons, and the contents

  of Jenny's medical pouch on the table. "Speaking to them

  at Court would have been suicide! And besides, you're

  not going to fight him in the Deep, are you? I mean..."

  He barely stopped himself from the observation that in

  all the ballads the Dragonsbanes had slain their foes in

  front of their lairs, not in them.

  "If I fight him outside and he takes to the air, it's all

  over," John returned, as if he were talking about back-

  gammon strategy. "And though it's crossed my mind we're

  walking through a morass of plots here, it's to no one's

  advantage to have the dragon stay in the Deep. The rest

  of it's all none of my business. Now, are you going to

  guide us, or do we go about the streets asking folk where

  the gnomes might be found?"

  Dragonsbane 129

  To Jenny's surprise and probably a little to his own,

  Gareth offered his services as a guide.

  "Tell me about Zyerne, Gar," Jenny said now, thrusting

  her hands deep into her jacket pockets as she walked.

  "Who is she? Who was her teacher? What Line was she

  in?"

  "Teacher?" Gareth had obviously never given the mat-

  ter a thought. "Line?"

  "If she is a mage, she must have been taught by some-

  one." Jenny glanced up at the tall boy towering beside

  her, while they detoured to avoid a gaggle of passersby

  around a couple of street-comer jugglers. Beyond them,

  in a fountain square, a fat man with the dark complexion

  of a southerner had set up a waffle stand, bellowing his

  wares amid clouds of steam that scented the raw, misty

  air for yards.

  "There are ten or twelve major Lines, named for the

  mages that founded them. There used to be more, but

  some have decayed and died. My own master Caerdinn,

  and therefore I and any other pupils of his, or of his

  teacher Spaeth, or Spaeth's other students, are all in the

  Line of Herne. To a mage, knowing that I am of the Line

  of Heme says—oh, a hundred things about my power

  and my attitude toward power, about the kinds of spells

  that I know, and about the kind that I will not use."

  "Really?" Gareth was fascinated. "I didn't know it was

  anything like that. I thought that magic was just some-

  thing—well, something you were born with."

  "So is the talent for art," Jenny said. "But without

  proper teaching, it never comes to fullest fruition; without

  sufficient time given to the study of magic, sufficient striv-

  ing ..." She broke off, with an ironic smile at herself. "All

  power has to be paid for," she continued after a moment.

  "And all power must come from somewhere, have been

  passed along by someone."

  It was difficult for her to speak of her power; aside

  130 Barbara Hambly

  from the confusion of her heart about her own power,

  there was much in it that any not magebom simply did

  not understand. She had in all her life met only one who

  did, and he was presently over beside the waffle stand,

  getting powdered sugar on his plaids.

  Jenny sighed and came to a halt to wait for him at the

  edge of the square. The cobbles were slimy here with sea

  air and offal; the wind smelled offish and, as everywhere

  in the city of Del, of the intoxicating wildness of the sea.

  This square was typical of the hundreds that made up the

  interlocking warrens ofBel's Dockmarket, hemmed in on

  three-and-a-half sides by the towering, rickety tenements

  and dominated by the moldering stones of a slate-gray

  clock tower, at whose foot a neglected shrine housed the

  battered image of Quis, the enigmatic Lord of Time. In

  the center of the square bubbled a fountain in a wide basin

  of chip-edged granite, the stones of its rim worn smooth

  and white above and clotted beneath with the black-green

  moss that seemed to grow everywhere in the damp air of

  the city. Women were dipping water there and gossiping,

  their skirts hiked up almost to their thighs but their heads

  modestly covered in clumsy wool veils tied in knots under

  their hair to keep them out of the way.

  In the mazes of stucco and garish color of the Dock-

  market, John's outlandishness hadn't drawn much notice.

  The sloping, cobbled streets were crowded with sojoum-

  ers from three-fourths of the Realm and all the Southern

  Lands: sailors with shorn heads and beards like coconut

  husks; peddlers from the garden province of Istmark in

  their old-fashioned, bundly clothes, the men as well as

  the women wearing veils; moneychangers in the black

  gabardine and skullcaps that marked them out as the Wan-

  derer's Children, forbidden to own land; whores painted

  to within an inch of their lives; and actors, jugglers, scarf

  sellers, rat killers, pickpockets, cripples, and tramps. A

  few women cast looks of dismissive scorn at Jenny's

  Dragonsbane 131

  uncovered head, and she was annoyed at the anger she

  felt at them.

  She asked, "How much do you know about Zyeme?

  What was she apprenticed as in the Deep?"

  Gareth shrugged. "I don't know. My guess would be

  in the Places of Healing. That was where the greatest

  power of the Deep was supposed to lie—among their

  healers. People used to journey for days to be tended

  there, and I know most of the mages were connected with

  them."

  Jenny nodded. Even in the isolated north, among the

  children of men who knew virtually nothing of the ways

  of the gnomes, Caerdinn had spoken with awe of the

  power that dwelled within the Places of Healing in the

  heart of the Deep of Ylferdun.

  Across the square, a religious procession came into

  view, the priests of Kantirith, Lord of the Sea, walking

 
with their heads muffled in their ceremonial hoods, lest

  an unclean sight distract them, the ritual wailing of the

  flutes all but drowning out their murmured chants. Like

  all the ceremonials of the Twelve Gods, both the words

  and the music of the flutes had been handed down by rote

  from ancient days; the words were unintelligible, the music

  like nothing Jenny had heard at Court or elsewhere.

  "And when did Zyeme come to Bel?" she asked Gar-

  eth, as the muttering train filed past.

  The muscles of the boy's jaw tightened. "After my

  mother died," he said colorlessly. "I—I suppose I shouldn't

  have been angry at Father about it. At the time I didn't

  understand the way Zyeme can draw people, sometimes

  against their will." He concentrated his attention upon

  smoothing the ruffles of his sleeve for some moments,

  then sighed. "I suppose he needed someone. I wasn't

  particularly good to him about Mother's death."

  Jenny said nothing, giving him room to speak or hold

  his peace. From the other end of the square, another

  132 Barbara Hambly

  religious procession made its appearance, one of the

  southern cults that spawned in the Dockmarket like rab-

  bits; dark-complexioned men and women were clapping

  their hands and singing, while skinny, androgynous priests

  swung their waist-length hair and danced for the little idol

  borne in their midst in a carrying shrine of cheap, pink

  chintz. The priests of Kantiritfc seemed to huddle a little

  more closely in their protecting hoods, and the wailing of

  the flutes increased. Gareth spared the newcomers a dis-