Dragonsbane (34 page)

“Could Mab’s power have been weakened in some way when Morkeleb showed up?” John glanced up at the dragon. “Would that be possible? That your magic would lessen someone else’s?”

I know nothing of the magic of humans, nor yet of the magic of gnomes,
the dragon replied.
Yet among us, there is no taking away of another’s magic. It is like taking away another’s thoughts from him, and leaving him with none.

“That’s another thing,” Jenny said, folding her arms about her drawn-up knees. “When I met Zyerne yesterday... My powers have grown, but I should not have been able to defeat her as I did. She is shapestrong—she should have far more strength than I did.” She glanced over at Gareth. “But she didn’t shift shape.”

“But she can,” the boy protested. “I’ve
seen
her.”

“Lately?” asked John suddenly.

Gareth and Trey looked at one another.

“Since the coming of the dragon? Or, to put it another way, since she hasn’t been able to enter the Deep?”

“But either way, it’s inconceivable,” Jenny insisted. “Power isn’t something that’s contingent upon any place or thing, any more than knowledge is. Zyerne’s power couldn’t have weakened any more than Mab’s could. Power is within you—here, or in Bel, or in the Winterlands, or wherever you are. It is something you learn, something you develop. All power must be paid for...”

“Except that it’s never looked as if Zyerne had paid for hers,” John said. His glance went from Jenny to the dragon and back. “You said the magic of the gnomes is different. Is there a way she could have stolen power, Jen? That she could be using something she’s no right to? I’m thinking how you said she doesn’t know about Limitations—obviously, since she summoned a dragon she can’t get rid of...”

She did not summon me!

“She seems to think she did,” John pointed out. “At least she’s kept saying how she was the one who kicked the gnomes out of the Deep. But mostly I’m thinking about the wrinkles on her face.”

“But she doesn’t have any wrinkles,” Trey objected, disconcerted at this lightning change of topic.

“Exactly. Why doesn’t she? Every mage I’ve known—Mab, who isn’t that old as gnomes go, old Caerdinn, that crazy little wander-mage who used to come through the Winterlands, and you, Jen—the marks of power are printed on their faces. Though it hasn’t aged you,” he added quickly, with a concern for her vanity that made Jenny smile.

“You are right,” she said slowly. “Now that you speak of it, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a mage that—that sweet-looking. Maybe that’s what first troubled me. And Mab said something about Zyerne stealing secrets. Zyerne herself said that when she is able to get into the Deep, she’ll have the power to destroy us all.” She frowned, some other thought tugging at her mind. “But it doesn’t make sense. If you think she could have gained her powers by studying arts possessed by the gnomes—by breaking into and reading the books of their deeper magic—you’re wrong. I searched through the Places of Healing in quest of just such books, and found none.”

“That’s a bit odd in itself, isn’t it?” John mused. “But when you said power isn’t contingent on any thing, any more than knowledge is—knowledge can be stored in a book. Is there any way power can be stored?
Can
a mage use another mage’s power?”

Jenny shrugged. “Oh, yes. Power can be accumulated by breadth as well as by depth; several mages can focus their power together and direct it toward a single spell that lies beyond their separate strengths. It can be done by chanting, meditating, dancing...” She broke off, as the vision rose once more to her mind—the vision of the heart of the Deep. “Dancing...” she repeated softly, then shook her head. “But in any case, the power is controlled by those who raise it.”

“Is it?” asked John. “Because in Polyborus it says...”

Morkeleb cut him off.
But if she were forbidden the Deep, Zyerne could have been nowhere near it when the power was raised that sent this yearning unto me and called me back. Nor, indeed, could she have been near the Deep to conjure the dreams that first brought me here. And no other mages would have combined to raise that power.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” John broke in. “In Dotys—or Polyborus’
Analects
—or maybe it’s the
Elucidus Lapidarus
...”

“What?” demanded Jenny, well aware that John was perfectly capable of fishing for the source of reference for ten minutes in the jackdaw-nest of his memory.

“Dotys—or Polyborus—says that it used to be rumored that mages could use a certain type of stone for a power-sink. They could call power into it, generation after generation, sometimes, or they could combine—and I think he mentioned dancing—and when they needed great power, for the defense of their realm or defeat of a dragon or a really powerful devil, they could call power out of it.”

They looked at one another in silence—witch and prince, maiden and warrior and dragon.

John went on, “I think what the gnomes were guarding—what lies in the heart of the Deep—is a power sink.”

“The Stone,” Jenny said, knowing it for truth. “They swear ‘by the Stone’ or ‘by the Stone in the heart of the Deep.’ Even Zyerne does. In my vision, they were dancing around it.”

John’s voice was soft in the velvety darkness. “And in that case, all Zyerne would have needed to steal was the key to unlock it. If she was apprenticed in the Places of Healing near there, that wouldn’t have been hard.”

“If she’s mentally in contact with it, she could use it somewhat, even at a distance,” Jenny said. “I felt it, when I struggled with her—some power I have never felt. Not living, like Morkeleb—but strong because it is dead and does not care what it does. It must be the source of all her strength, for shapechanging and for the curse she sent to the gnomes, the curse that brought you here from the north, Morkeleb.”

“A curse that’s still holding good whether she wants it to or not.” John’s spectacles flashed in the starlight as he grinned. “But she must not be able to wield it accurately at a distance, even as Miss Mab can’t use it against her. It would explain why she’s so wild not to let them get even a chance of going back.”

So what then?
demanded Morkeleb grimly.
Did your estimable Dotys, your wise Polyborus, speak of a way to combat the magic of these stones?

“Well,” John said, a faint grin of genuine amusement touching the corners of his mouth, “that was the whole point of my coming south, you see. My copy of the
Elucidus Lapidarus
isn’t complete. Almost nothing in my library is. It’s why I agreed to become a Dragonsbane for the King’s hire in the first place—because we need books, we need knowledge. I’m as much a scholar as I can be, but it isn’t easy.”

With the size of a human brain, it would not be!
Morkeleb snapped, irrationally losing his temper.
You are no more scholar than you are Dragonsbane!

“But I never claimed to be,” John protested. “It’s just there’s all these ballads, see...”

The jet claws rattled again on the pavement. Jenny, exasperated with them both, began, “I really am going to let him eat you this time...”

Trey put in hastily, “Could you use the Stone yourself, Lady Jenny? Use it against Zyerne?”

“Of course!” Gareth bounced like a schoolboy on the hard step. “That’s it! Fight fire with fire.”

Jenny was silent. She felt their eyes upon her—Trey’s, Gareth’s, John’s, the crystal gaze of the dragon turned down at her from above. The thought of the power stirred in her mind like lust—Zyerne’s power. The key to magic is magic...

She saw the worry in John’s eyes and knew what her own expression must look like. It sobered her. “What are you thinking?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, love.”

He meant that he would not stand in the way of any decision she made. Correctly interpreting his look, she said gently, “I would not misuse the power, John. I would not become like Zyerne.”

His voice was pitched to her ears alone. “Can you know that?”

She started to reply, then stilled herself. Shrill and clear she heard Miss Mab’s voice saying,
She took the secrets of those greater than she, defiled them, tainted them, poisoned the very heart of the Deep...
She remembered, too, that sense of perverted power that had sparkled in the lamplight around Zyerne and the luckless Bond, and how the touch of the dragon’s mind had changed her.

“No,” she said at last. “I cannot know. And it would be stupid of me to meddle with something so powerful without knowing its dangers, even if I could figure out the key by myself.”

“But,” Gareth protested, “it’s our only chance of defeating Zyerne! They’ll be back—you know they will! We can’t stay holed up here forever.”

“Could we learn enough about the Stone for you to circumvent its powers somehow?” Trey suggested. “Would there be a copy of the Whatsus Howeverus you talked about in the Palace library?”

Gareth shrugged. His scholarship might extend to seven minor variants of the ballad of the Warlady and the Red Worm of Weldervale, but it was a broken reed insofar as obscure encyclopedists went.

“There would be one at Halnath, though, wouldn’t there?” Jenny said. “And if it didn’t contain the information, there are gnomes there who might know.”

“If they’d tell.” John propped himself gingerly a little higher against the granite of the gate pillar, the few portions of his shirt not darkened with bloodstains very white in the rising moonlight against the metallic glints of his doublet. “Dromar’s lot wouldn’t even admit it existed. They’ve had enough of humans controlling the Stone, and I can’t say as I blame them. But whatever happens,” he added, as the others subsided from their enthusiasm into dismal reflection once more, “our next move had better be to get out of here. As our hero says, you know Bond and the King’s troops will be back. The only place we
can
go is Halnath, and maybe not there. How tight are the siege lines, Gar?”

“Tight,” Gareth said gloomily. “Halnath is built on a series of cliffs—the lower town, the upper town, the University, and the Citadel above that, and the only way in is through the lower town. Spies have tried to sneak in over the cliffs on the mountain side of the city and have fallen to their deaths.” He readjusted his cracked spectacles. “And besides,” he went on, “Zyerne knows as well as we do that Halnath is the only place we can go.”

“Pox.” John glanced over at Jenny, where she sat against the alien curves of the dragon’s complicated shoulder bones. “For something that was never any of our business to begin with, this is looking worse and worse.”

“I could go,” Trey ventured. ‘The troops would be least likely to recognize me. I could tell Polycarp...”

“They’d never let you through,” John said. “Don’t think Zyerne doesn’t know you’re here, Trey; and don’t think she’d let you off because you’re Bond’s sister or that Bond would risk Zyerne so much as pouting at him to get you off. Zyerne can’t afford even one of us returning to the gnomes with word the dragon’s left the Deep.”

That,
Morkeleb said thinly,
is precisely our problem. The dragon has NOT left the Deep. Nor will he, until this Zyerne is destroyed. And I will not remain here docile, to watch the gnomes carrying on their petty trafficking with my gold.

“Your
gold?” John raised an eyebrow. With a swift gesture of her mind Jenny stilled Morkeleb again.

Nor would they allow it,
she said, for the dragon alone.
It would only be a matter of time until their distrust of you mastered them, and they tried to slay you. No—you must be freed.

Freed!
The voice within her mind was acrid as the stench of vinegar.
Freed to be turned like a beggar onto the roads?
The dragon swung his head away, the long scales of his mane clashing softly, like the searingly thin notes of a wind chime.
You have done this to me, wizard woman! Before your mind touched mine I was not bound to this place...

“You were bound,” Aversin said quietly. “It’s just that, before Jenny’s mind touched yours, you weren’t aware of it. Had you tried to leave before?”

I remained because it was my will to remain.

“And it’s the old King’s will to remain with Zyerne, though she’s killing him. No, Morkeleb—she got you through your greed, as she got poor Gar’s dad through his grief and Bond through his love. If we hadn’t come, you’d have stayed here, bound with spells to brood over your hoard till you died. It’s just that now you know it.”

That is not true!

True or not,
Jenny said,
it is my bidding, Morkeleb, that as soon as the sky grows light, you shall carry me over the mountain to the Citadel of Halnath, so that I can send Polycarp the Master to bring these others to safety there through the Deep.

The dragon reared himself up, bristling all over with rage. His voice lashed her mind like a silver whip.
I am not your pigeon nor your servant!

Jenny was on her feet now, too, looking up into the blazing white deeps of his eyes.
No,
she said, holding to the crystal chain of his inner name.
You are my slave, by that which you gave me when I saved your life. And by that which you gave me, I tell you this is what you shall do.

Their eyes held. The others, not hearing what passed between their two minds, saw and felt only the dragon’s scorching wrath. Gareth caught up Trey and drew her back toward the shelter of the gateway; Aversin made a move to rise and sank back with a gasp. He angrily shook off Gareth’s attempt to draw him to safety, his eyes never leaving the small, thin form of the woman who stood before the smoking rage of the beast.

All this Jenny was aware of, but peripherally, like the weave of a tapestry upon which other colors are painted. Her whole mind focused in crystal exactness against the mind that surged like a dark wave against hers. The power born in her from the touch of the dragon’s mind strengthened and burned, forcing him back. Her understanding of his name was a many-pointed weapon in her hands. In time Morkeleb sank to his haunches again, and back to his sphinx position.

In her mind his voice said softly,
You know you do not need me, Jenny Waynest, to fly over the mountains. You know the form of the dragons and their magic. One of them you have put on already.