Dragonsbane. Barbara Hambly

her to the corpse in a kind of nauseated fascination. He had never seen death, she thought. At least, not in its raw form. The pea green velvet of his travel-stained doublet, the gold stampwork of his boots, the tucked embroidery of his ruffled lawn shirt, and the elaborate, feathered crestings of his green-tipped hair all proclaimed him for a courtier. All things, even death, were doubtless done with a certain amount of style where he came from.

      He gulped. “You’re—you’re a witch!”

      One corner of her mouth moved slightly; she said, “So I am.”

      He stepped back from her in fear, then staggered, clutching at a nearby sapling for support. She saw then that among the decorative slashings of his doublet sleeve was an uglier opening, the shirt visible through it dark and wet. “I’ll be fine,” he protested faintly, as she moved to support him. “I just need …” He made a fumbling effort to shake free of her hand and walk, his myopic gray eyes peering at the ankle-deep drifts of moldering leaves that lined the road.

      “What you need is to sit down.” She led him away to a broken boundary stone and forced him to do so and unbuttoned the diamond studs that held the sleeve to the body of the doublet. The wound did not look deep, but it was bleeding badly. She pulled loose the leather thongs that bound the wood-black knots of her hair and used them as a tourniquet above the wound. He winced and gasped and tried to loosen it as she tore a strip from the hem of her shift for a bandage, so that she slapped at his fingers like a child’s. Then, a moment later, he tried to get up again. “I have to find …”

      “I’ll find them,” Jenny said firmly, knowing what it was that he sought. She finished binding his wound and walked back to the tangle of hazel bushes where Gareth and the bandit had struggled. The frosty daylight glinted on a sharp reflection among the leaves. The spectacles she found there were bent and twisted out of shape, the bottom of one round lens decorated by a star-fracture. Flicking the dirt and wetness from them, she carried them back.

      “Now,” she said, as Gareth fumbled them on with hands shaking from weakness and shock. “You need that arm looked to. I can take you …”

      “My lady, I’ve no time.” He looked up at her, squinting a little against the increasing brightness of the sky behind her head. “I’m on a quest, a quest of terrible importance.”

      “Important enough to risk losing your arm if the wound turns rotten?”

      As if such things could not happen to him, did she only have the wits to realize it, he went on earnestly, “I’ll be all right, I tell you. I am seeking Lord Aversin the Dragonsbane, Thane of Alyn Hold and Lord of Wyr, the greatest knight ever to have ridden the Winterlands. Have you heard of him hereabouts? Tall as an angel, handsome as song … His fame has spread through the southlands the way the floodwaters spread in the spring, the noblest of chevaliers … I must find Alyn Hold, before it is too late.”

      Jenny sighed, exasperated. “So you must,” she said. “It is to Alyn Hold that I am going to take you.”

      The squinting eyes got round as the boy’s mouth fell open. “To—to Alyn Hold? Really? It’s near here?”

      “It’s the nearest place where we can get your arm seen to,” she said. “Can you ride?”

      Had he been dying, she thought, amused, he would still have sprung to his feet as he did. “Yes, of course; I—do you know Lord Aversin, then?”

      Jenny was silent for a moment. Then, softly, she said, “Yes. Yes, I know him.”

      She whistled up the horses, the tall white Moon Horse and the big liver-bay gelding, whose name, Gareth said, was Battlehammer. In spite of his exhaustion and the pain of his roughly bound wound, Gareth made a move to offer her totally unnecessary assistance in mounting. As they reined up over the ragged stone slopes to avoid the corpse in its rank-smelling puddles of mud, Gareth asked, “If—if you’re a witch, my lady, why couldn’t you have fought them with magic instead of with a weapon? Thrown fire at them, or turned them into frogs, or struck them blind …”

      She had struck them blind, in a sense, she thought wryly—at least until he shouted.

      But she only said, “Because I cannot.”

      “For reasons of honor?” he asked dubiously. “Because there are some situations in which honor cannot apply …”

      “No.” She glanced sidelong at him through the astonishing curtains of her loosened hair. “It is just that my magic is not that strong.”

      And she nudged her horse into a quicker walk, passing into the vaporous shadows of the forest’s bare, over-hanging boughs.

      Even after all these years of knowing it, she found the admission still stuck in her throat. She had come to terms with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius in the single thing she had ever wanted. The most she had ever been able to do was to pretend that she accepted it, as she pretended now.

      Ground fog curled around the feet of the horses; through the clammy vapors, tree roots thrust from the roadbanks like the arms of half-buried corpses. The air here felt dense and smelled of mold, and now and then, from the woods above them, came the furtive crackle of dead leaves, as if the trees plotted among themselves in the fog.

      “Did you—did you see him slay the dragon?” Gareth asked, after they had ridden in silence for some minutes. “Would you tell me about it? Aversin is the only living Dragonsbane—the only man who has slain a dragon. There are ballads about him everywhere, about his courage and his noble deeds … That’s my hobby. Ballads, I mean, the ballads of Dragonsbanes, like Selkythar the White back in the reign of Ennyta the Good and Antara Warlady and her brother, during the Kinwars. They say her brother slew …” By the way he caught himself up Jenny guessed he could have gone on about the great Dragonsbanes of the past for hours, only someone had told him not to bore people with the subject. “I’ve always wanted to see such a thing—a true Dragonsbane—a glorious combat. His renown must cover him like a golden mantle.”

      And, rather to her surprise, he broke into a light, wavery tenor:

       Riding up the hillside gleaming,

       Like flame in the golden sunlight streaming;

       Sword of steel strong in hand,

       Wind-swift hooves spurning land,

       Tall as an angel, stallion-strong,

       Stern as a god, bright as song …

       In the dragon’s shadow the maidens wept,

       Fair as lilies in darkness kept.

       ‘I know him afar, so tall is he,

       His plumes as bright as the rage of the sea,’

       Spake she to her sister, ‘fear no ill …’

      Jenny looked away, feeling something twist inside her at the memory of the Golden Dragon of Wyr.

      She remembered as if it were yesterday instead of ten years ago the high-up flash of gold in the wan northern sky, the plunge of fire and shadow, the boys and girls screaming on the dancing floor at Great Toby. They were memories she knew should have been tinted only with horror; she was aware that she should have felt only gladness at the dragon’s death. But stronger than the horror, the taste of nameless grief and desolation came back to her from those times, with the metallic stench of the dragon’s blood and the singing that seemed to shiver the searing air …

      Her heart felt sick within her. Coolly, she said, “For one thing, of the two children who were taken by the dragon, John only managed to get the boy out alive. I think the girl had been killed by the fumes in the dragon’s lair. It was hard to tell from the state of the body. And if she hadn’t been dead, I still doubt they’d have been in much condition to make speeches about how John looked, even if he had come riding straight up the hill—which of course