dom spoken the words, he thanked Lord Aversin the Drag-
onsbane, though he did not specify for what.
"Well, he hardly could, now, could he?" John remarked,
as the three gnomes left the court in the wake of the King's
party. Only Miss Mab had caught Jenny's eye and winked
at her. John went on, "If he came out and said, 'Thank
you for blowing up the Stone,' that would be admitting
that he was wrong about Zyerne not poisoning it."
Gareth, who was still standing hand-in-hand with Trey
beside them, laughed. "You know, I think he does admit
it in his heart, though I don't think he'll ever completely
forgive us for doing it. At least, he's civil to me in Council—
which is fortunate, since I'm going to have to be dealing
with him for a long time."
"Are you?" A flicker of intense interest danced in John's
eye.
Gareth was silent for a long moment, fingering the stiff
lace of his cuff and not meeting John's gaze. When he
looked up again, his face was weary and sad.
"I thought it would be different," he said quietly. "I
thought once Zyerne was dead, he would be all right. And
he's better, he really is." He spoke like a man trying to
convince himself that a mended statue is as beautiful as
it was before it broke. "But he's—he's so absentminded.
Badegamus says he can't be trusted to remember edicts
he's made from one day to the next. When I was in Bel,
we made up a Council—Badegamus, Balgub, Polycarp,
Dromar, and I—to sort out what we ought to do; then I
Dragonsbane 329
tell Father to do it—or remind him it's what he was going
to do, and he'll pretend he remembers. He knows he's
gotten forgetful, though he doesn't quite remember why.
Sometimes he'll wake in the night, crying Zyeme's name
or my mother's." The young man's voice turned momen-
tarily unsteady. "But what if he never recovers?"
"What if he never does?" John returned softly. "The
Realm will be yours in any case one day, my hero." He
turned away and began tightening the cinches of the mules,
readying them for the trek down through the city to the
northward road.
"But not now!" Gareth followed him, his words making
soft puffs of steam in the morning cold. "I mean—I never
have time for myself anymore! It's been months since I
worked on my poetry, or tried to complete that southern
variant of the ballad of Antara Warlady..."
"There'll be time, by and by." The Dragonsbane paused,
resting his hand on the arched neck of Battlehanuner,
Gareth's parting gift to him. "It will get easier, when men
know to come to you directly instead of to your father."
Gareth shook his head. "But it won't be the same."
"Is it ever?" John moved down the line, tightening
cinches, checking straps on the parcels of books—vol-
umes of healing, Anacetus' works on greater and lesser
demons, Luciard's Firegiver, books on engineering and
law, by gnomes and men. Gareth followed him silently,
digesting the fact that he was now, for all intents and
purposes, the Lord of Bel, with the responsibilities of the
kingdom—for which he had been academically prepared
under the mental heading of "some day"—thrust suddenly
upon his unwilling shoulders. Like John, Jenny thought
pityingly, he would have to put aside the pursuit of his
love of knowledge for what he owed his people and return
to it only when he could. The only difference was that
his realm was at peace and that John had been a year
330 Barbara Hambly
younger than Gareth was when the burden had fallen to
him.
"And Bond?" John asked gently, looking over at Trey.
She sighed and managed to smile. "He still asks about
Zyeme," she said softly. "He really did love her, you
know. He knows she's dead and he tries to pretend he
remembers it happening the way'I told him, about her
falling off a horse... But it's odd. He's kinder than he
was. He'll never be considerate, of course, but he's not
so quick or so clever, and I think he hurts people less.
He dropped a cup at luncheon yesterday—he's gotten
very clumsy—and he even apologized to me." There was
a slight wryness to her smile, perhaps to cover tears. "I
remember when he would not only have blamed me for
it, but gotten me to blame myself."
She and Gareth had been following John down the line,
still hand in hand, the girl's rose-colored skirts bright
against the pewter grayness of the frosted morning. Jenny,
standing apart, listened to their voices, but felt as if she
saw them through glass, part of a life from which she was
half-separated, to which she did not have to go back unless
she chose. And all the while, her mind listened to the sky,
hearing with strange clarity the voices of the wind around
the Citadel towers, seeking something...
She caught John's eye on her and saw the worry crease
between his brows; something wrung and wrenched in
her heart.
"Must you go?" Gareth asked hesitantly, and Jenny,
feeling as if her thoughts had been read, looked up; but
it was to John that he had spoken. "Could you stay with
me, even for a little while? It will take nearly a month for
the troops to be ready—you could have a seat on the
Council. I—I can't do this alone."
John shook his head, leaning on the mule Clivy's with-
ers. "You are doing it alone, my hero. And as for me,
I've my own realm to look after. I've been gone long as
Dragonsbane 331
it is." He glanced questioningly at Jenny as he spoke, but
she looked away.
Wind surged down around them, crosswise currents
swirling her plaids and her hair like the stroke of a giant
wing. She looked up and saw the shape of the dragon
melting down from the gray and cobalt of the morning
sky.
She turned from the assembled caravan in the court
without a word and ran to the narrow stair that led up to
the walls. The dark shape hung like a black kite on the
wind, the soft voice a song in her mind.
By my name you have bidden me go. Jenny Waynest,
he said. Now that you are going, I too shall depart. But
by your name, I ask that you follow. Come with me, to
the islands of the dragons in the northern seas. Come
with me, to be of us, now and forever.
She knew in her heart that it would be the last time of
his asking; that if she denied him now, that door would
never open again. She stood poised for a moment, between
silver ramparts and silver sky. She was aware of John
climbing the steps behind her, his face emptied of life and
his spectacle lenses reflecting the pearly colors of the
morning light; was aware, through him, of the two little
boys waiting for them in the crumbling tower of Alyn
Hold—boys she had bome without intention of raising,
boys she should have loved, she thought, eith
er more or
less than she had.
But more than them, she was aware of the dragon,
drifting like a ribbon against the remote white eye of the
day moon. The music of his name shivered in her bones;
the iron and fire of his power streaked her soul.
To be a mage you must be a mage, she thought. The
key to magic is magic.
She turned and looked back, to see John standing on
the root-buckled pavement between the barren apple trees
behind her. Past him, she glimpsed the caravan of horses
332 Barbara Hambly
in the court below. Trey and Gareth holding the horses'
heads as they snorted and fidgeted at the scent of the
dragon. For a moment, the memory of John's body and
John's voice overwhelmed her—the crushing strength of
his muscles and the curious softness of his lips, the cold
slickness of a leather sleeve, and the fragrance of his body
mixed with the more prosaic pungence ofwoodsmoke and
horses that permeated his scruffy plaids.
She was aware, too, of the desperation and hope in his
eyes.
She saw the hope fade, and he smiled. "Go if you must,
love," he said softly. "I said I wouldn't hold you, and I
won't. I've known it for days."
She shook her head, wanting to speak, but unable to
make a sound, her dark hair swirled by the wind of the
dragon's wings. Then she turned from him, suddenly, and
ran to the battlements, beyond which the dragon lay wait-
ing in the air.
Her soul made the leap first, drawing power from the
wind and from the rope of crystal thought that Morkeleb
flung her, showing her the way. The elements around the
nucleus of her essence changed, as she shed the shape
that she had known since her conception and called to
her another, different shape. She was half-conscious of
spreading her arms against the wind as she strode forward
over the edge of the battlement, of the wind in her dark
hair as she sprang outward over the long drop of stone
and cliff and emptiness. But her mind was already speed-
ing toward the distant cloud peaks, the moon, the dragon.
On the walls behind her, she was aware of Trey whis-
pering, "She's beautiful..."
Against the fading day moon, the morning's strength-
ening light caught in the milk-white silk of her spreading
wings and flashed like a spiked carpet of diamonds along
the ghost-pale armor of the white dragon's back and sides.
But more than of that, she was conscious of John,
Dragonsbane JJJ
Dragonsbane of ballad and legend, watching her with silent
tears running down his still face as she circled into the
waiting sky, like a butterfly released from his hand. Then
he turned from the battlements, to the court where the
horses waited. Taking the rein from the stunned Gareth,
he mounted Battlehammer and rode through the gateway,
to take the road back to the north.
CHAPTER XVIII
THEY FLEW NORTH together, treading the woven roads
of the sky.
The whole Earth lay below her, marked with the long
indigo shadows of morning, the bright flash of springing
water, and the icy knives of the glaciers. She saw the
patterns of the sea, with its currents of green and violet,
its great, gray depths, and the scrum of white lace upon
its surface, and those of the moving air. All things were
to her as a dragon sees them, a net of magic and years,
covering the Earth and holding it to all the singing uni-
verse in a crystal web of time.
They nested among the high peaks ofNast Wall, among
the broken bone ends of the world, looking eastward over
the gorges where the bighorn sheep sprang like fleas from
rock to rock, past dizzying drops of green meltwater and
woods where the dampness coated each tree in pillows
of emerald moss, and down to the woods on the foothills
of the Marches, where those who swore fealty to the
Master dwelt. Westward, she could look past the glacier
that lay like a stilled river of green and white through the
gouged gray breakers of the cliffs, past cold and barren
334
Dragonsbane 335
rocks, to see the Wildspae gleaming like a sheet of brown
silk beneath the steam of its mists and, in the glimmering
bare woods along its banks, make out the lacework turrets
of Zyerne's hunting lodge among the trees.
Like a dragon, she saw backward and forward in time;
and like a dragon, she felt no passion at what she saw.
She was free, to have what she had always sought—
not only the power, which the touch of Morkeleb's mind
had kindled in her soul, but freedom to pursue that power,
released from the petty grind of the work of days.
Her mind touched and fingered that knowledge, won-
dering at its beauty and its complexity. It was hers now,
as it had always been hers for the taking. No more would
she be asked to put aside her meditations, to trek ten
miles on foot over the wintry moors to deliver a child; no
more would she spend the hours needed for the study of
her power ankle-deep in a half-frozen marsh, looking for
frogwort for Muffle the smith's rheumatism.
No more would her time—and her mind—be divided
between love and power.
Far off, her dragon's sight could descry the caravan of
horses, making their antlike way along the foothills arid
into the woods. So clear was her crystal sight that she
could identify each beast within that train—the white
Moon Horse, the balky roans, the stupid sorrel Cow, and
the big liver-bay Battlehammer—she saw, too, the flash
of spectacle lenses and the glint of metal spikes on a
patched old doublet.
He was no more to her now than the first few inches
upon the endless ribbon of dragon years. Like the bandits
and the wretched Meewinks—like his and her sons—he
had his own path to follow through the labyrinth patterns
of darkening time. He would go on with his fights for his
people and with his dogged experiments with rock salts
and hot-air balloons, his model ballistas and his quest for
lore about pigs. One day, she thought, he would take a
336 Barbara Hambly
boat out to the rough waters ofEldsbouch Cove to search
for the ruins of the drowned breakwater, and she would
not be waiting for him on the round pebbles of the gravel
beach... He would ride out to the house beneath the
standing stones on Frost Fell, and she would not be stand-
ing in its doorway.
In time, she knew, even these memories would fade.
She saw within herself, as she had probed at the souls of
others. Trey's, she recalled, had been like a clear pool,
with bright shallows and unsuspected depths. Zyeme's
had been a poisoned flower. Her own soul she saw also
as a flower whose petals were turning to steel at their
outer edges but whose heart was still soft and silky flesh.
In time, it wo
uld be ail steel, she saw, breathtakingly
beautiful and enduring forever—but it would cease to be
a flower.
She lay for a long time in the rocks, motionless save
for the flick of her jeweled antennae as she scried the
colors of the wind.
It was thus to be a dragon, she told herself, to see the
patterns of all things from the silence of the sky. It was
thus to be free. But pain still poured from some broken
place inside her—the pain of choice, of loss, and of still-
born dreams. She would have wept, but there was nothing
within dragons that could weep. She told herself that this
was the last time she would have to feel this pain or the
love that was its source. It was for this immunity that she
had sought the roads of the sky.
The key to magic is magic, she thought. And all magic,
all power, was now hers.
But within her some other voice asked, For what pur-
pose? Afar off she was aware of Morkeleb, hunting the
great-homed sheep in the rocks. Like a black bat of steel
lace, he passed as soundlessly as his own shadow over
the snowfields, wrapping himself in the colors of the air
to drop down the gorges, the deceptive glitter of his magic
Dragonsbane 337
hiding him from the nervous, stupid eyes of his prey.
Magic was the bone of dragon bones, the blood of their
blood; the magic of the cosmos tinted everything they
perceived and everything they were.
And yet, in the end, their magic was sterile, seeking
nothing but its own—as Zyeme's had been.
Zyeme, Jenny thought. The key to magic is magic. For
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