Dragonshadow. Barbara Hambly

Rocklys walked to the niche in the wall, where in former centuries commandants had put the closed shrines of the gods. She had a shrine there to the Lord of War, and another to the Lord of Law, but where in the south he’d seen little charred basins of incense, and the stains of proffered wine and blood, was only clean-scrubbed marble. The rest of the niche held books, and his eye ran over the titles: Tenantius’ Theory of Laws, Gurgustus’ Essays, The Liever Regulae, and Caecilius’ The Righteous Monarch. On the table before these books was a strongbox of silver pieces, and beside it a small casket containing half a handful of gems. He remembered the complaints that had come to him from the mayors of Far West Riding and Great Toby, how the King’s commissioners demanded more to pay for the garrison than even the greediest thane ever had.

      “Of this new wizard …” She shook her head. “Can Jenny have been mistaken? Or might the man you saw have been some kind of … of illusion, as the dragon was?”

      “And be really this woman?” John shook his head. “But why? Why go to the trouble to fool me?”

      “In any case,” said the Commander, “all of this convinces me—well, I was convinced before—that we must establish this school I’ve spoken of, this academy of wizards, here in Corflyn. I hope now that when she returns, Jenny will agree to come here and teach others. We can’t go on like this.”

      “No.”

      Save a dragon, slave a dragon … The old granny-rhyme drifted back through his mind, and the bodies he’d found the last time Balgodorus had raided a village.

      And as he heard the words again he saw the wizard in his violet coat and embroidered cap mounting Centhwevir’s back, holding out his hand to Ian.

      His ribs ached where the boy’s boot toe had driven in.

      The Commander turned from the neglected shrines, the books of the Legalist scholars, very real distress on her face. “It isn’t just bandit mages who are the danger. You know that! Look at the gnomes, operating what amount to independent kingdoms at the very heart of the King’s Realm! Buying slaves, too, clean against the King’s Law, no matter what they swear and claim! They have wizards among them, and who knows what or who they teach. Look at lords like the Master of Halnath, and the Prince of Greenhythe, and the merchant princes of the Seven Isles! Look at Tinán of Imperteng, claiming that his ancient title to the lands at the base of the mountains is equal in rank to that of the King himself!”

      John propped his spectacles on his nose. “Well, accordin’ to Dotys’ Histories, it is.”

      “What kind of argument is that?!” Rocklys demanded angrily. “The revolt of the Prince of Wyr, four hundred years ago, broke the Realm in two! That should never have been permitted. And Prince Gareth—though I have nothing but respect for him as a scholar and an administrator—is letting it happen all over again!”

      “Our boy Gar’s not done so very ill,” John pointed out quietly. “For one coming new to the game and untaught, he’s doing gie well.”

      He smiled a little, remembering the gangly boy with the fashionable green streaks in his fair hair, broken glasses perched on the end of his long nose, delivering himself of an oratorical message from the King before collapsing in a faint in the Alyn Hold pigyard. Comic, maybe, thought John. But it had taken genuine courage to sail north to an unknown land; genuine courage to ride overland from the harbor at Eldsbouch to Alyn Hold. The boy was lucky he hadn’t had his throat slit for his boots on the way.

      Maybe luckier still that he’d set out on his journey when he had. In those days the witch Zyerne had been tightening her grip on the old King’s mind and soul, draining his energy and looking about her for a new victim.

      “That’s exactly my point!” Rocklys drove her fist into her palm, her face hard. “His Highness the Prince is untaught. And inexperienced. And he’s making mistakes that will cost the Realm dear. It will take years—decades—to repair them, if they can be repaired at all. His …” She stopped herself with an effort.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s your friend, as he is my cousin. I suppose I can’t get over my memories of him prancing along with his friends, wearing those silly shoulder-banners that were all the rage, and toe-points so long they had to be chained to his garters. You’re not going to go seeking Jenny?” She came over to him and rested a big hand on his shoulder. John realized he was so tired it would cost him great effort to stand, and his hands were growing colder and colder around the painted rim of the cup.

      “I’ll ride on back to the Hold,” he said. “Jenny’ll know Ian’s gone, and something’s gie wrong. She’ll be on her way back to the Hold as fast as she can.”

      “I thought mages couldn’t scry other mages.”

      “Nor can they. So she’ll know I haven’t been next or nigh Ian in five days, and that I’ve got meself out of bed and down here before my cuts have fair scabbed. She’ll put two and two together—she’s good at that kind of addition, is Jenny. And it’s as well,” he added, setting the cup aside and rising cautiously from his chair. “For in truth, she can’t return too soon for comfort.”

      “And if she doesn’t return?” asked Rocklys. “If this bandit chief and his tame mage have found a way to imprison or destroy her?”

      “Ah, well.” John scratched the side of his long nose. “Then just us standin’ off a couple of wizards, and a dragon, and all … I’d say we’re in real trouble.” He took three steps toward the door and fainted, as if struck over the head with a house beam.

       SIX

      WAIT FOR ME, you idiot! thought Jenny furiously, and let the images in the fire fade. WAIT FOR ME! She wondered why the Goddess of Women had seen fit to cause her to fall in love with a blockhead.

      Moonlight streamed through the window, just tinged now with the smoke of far-off fires. Somewhere beyond the walls a whippoorwill cried. Jenny drew her plaid around her shoulders and wished with all that was in her that she could slip over the palisade, summon Moon Horse from her patient foraging in the woods, and ride for Alyn Hold as fast as she could go.

      Or if all that were not possible—and it was not, not without leaving close to three hundred people to die—she wished that at least she knew what was going on.

      Silence cupped Palmorgin manor in its invisible hand. Even the guards had nothing to say, focused through their exhaustion on the open ground beyond the moat. This was the dead hour of night that Balgodorus favored for his attacks. Mosquitoes whined in the darkness, but worn down as she was even the spells of “Go bite someone else” scraped at her, like a rough spot on the inside of a shoe after the tenth or twelfth mile.

      No sign of Centhwevir. Under the best of circumstances it wasn’t always possible to scry dragons, for their flesh, their very essence, was woven of magic. But over the past seven days, she had scried the outposts along the fell country, scried the towns of Great Toby and Far West Riding, scried Alyn itself.

      No burned ground. No tangles of stripped and acid-charred bones.

      And at the Hold, no mourning. But she saw Aunt Jane and Aunt Rowan and Cousin Dilly weeping; saw Adric sitting alone on the battlements, looking out to the south. And John, after his brief interview with Rocklys, had refused to remain in bed, had instead dragged himself next morning back onto his horse and taken the road for home, Muffle behind him scolding all the way.

      Ian.

      Something had happened to Ian.

       Wait till I get there, John. This can’t last.

      She slipped from the room.

      Women