And perhaps, Jenny thought, remembering her vision in the water bowl, it might be better if they did.
“Aversin, it isn’t like that. You are here to slay the dragon—because you’re the only Dragonsbane living. That’s the only reason I sought you out, I swear it. I swear it! Don’t worry about politics and—and all that.” His shortsighted gray eyes pleaded with Aversin to believe, but in them there was a desperation that could never have stemmed from innocence.
John’s gaze held his for a long moment, gauging him. Then he said, “I’m trusting you, my hero.”
In dismal silence, Gareth touched his heels to Battlehammer’s sides, and the big horse moved out ahead of them, the boy’s borrowed plaids making them fade quickly into no more than a dark, cut-out shape in the colorless fogs. John, riding a little behind, slowed his horse so that he was next to Jenny, who had watched in speculative silence throughout.
“Maybe it’s just as well you’re with me after all, love.”
She glanced from Gareth up to John, and then back. Somewhere a crow called, like the voice of that melancholy land. “I don’t think he means us ill,” she said softly.
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t gormless enough to get us killed all the same.”
The mists thickened as they approached the river, until they moved through a chill white world where the only sound was the creak of harness leather, the pop of hooves, the faint jingle of bits, and the soughing rattle of the wind in the spiky cattails growing in the flooded ditches. From that watery grayness, each stone or solitary tree emerged, silent and dark, like a portent of strange events. More than all else. Jenny felt the weight of Gareth’s silence, his fear and dread and guilt. John felt it, too, she knew; he watched the tall boy from the comer of his eye and listened to the hush of those empty lands like a man waiting for ambush. As evening darkened the air. Jenny called a blue ball of witchfire to light their feet, but the soft, opalescent walls of the mist threw back the light at them and left them nearly as blind as before.
“Jen.” John drew rein, his head cocked to listen. “Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?” Gareth whispered, coming up beside them at the top of the slope which dropped away into blankets of moving fog.
Jenny flung her senses wide through the dun-colored clouds, feeling as much as hearing the rushing voice of the river below. There were other sounds, muffled and altered by the fog, but unmistakable. “Yes,” she said quietly, her breath a puff of white in the raw air. “Voices—horses—a group of them on the other side.”
John glanced sharply sidelong at Gareth. “They could be waiting for the ferry,” he said, “if they had business in the empty lands west of the river at the fall of night.”
Gareth said nothing, but his face looked white and set. After a moment John clucked softly to Cow, and the big, shaggy sorrel plodded forward again down the slope to the ferry through the clammy wall of vapor.
Jenny let the witchlight ravel away as John pounded on the door of the squat stone ferry house. She and Gareth remained in the background while John and the ferryman negotiated the fare for three people, six horses, and two mules. “Penny a leg,” said the ferryman, his squirrel-dark eyes darting from one to the other with the sharp interest of one who sees all the world pass his doorstep. “But there’ll be supper here in an hour, and lodging for the night. It’s growing mortal dark, and there’s chowder fog.”
“We can get along a few miles before full dark; and besides,” John added, with an odd glint in his eye as he glanced back at the silent Gareth, “we may have someone waiting for us on the far bank.”
“Ah.” The man’s wide mouth shut itself like a trap. “So it’s you they’re expecting. I heard ’em out there a bit ago, but they didn’t ring no bell for me, so I bided by my stove where it’s warm.”
Holding up the lantern and struggling into his heavy quilted jacket, he led the way down to the slip, while Jenny followed silently behind, digging in the purse at her belt for coin.
The great horse Battlehammer had traveled north with Gareth by ship and, in any case, disdained balking at anything as sheer bad manners; neither Moon Horse nor Osprey nor any of the spares had such scruples, with the exception of Cow, who would have crossed a bridge of flaming knives at his customary phlegmatic plod. It took Jenny much whispered talk and stroking of ears before any of them would consent to set foot upon the big raft. The ferryman made the gate at the raft’s tail fast and fixed his lantern on the pole at its head; then he set to turning the winch that drew the wide, flat platform out across the opaque silk of the river. The single lantern made a woolly blur of yellowish light in the leaden smoke of the fog; now and then, on the edge of the gleam. Jenny could see the brown waters parting around a snagged root or branch that projected from the current like a drowned hand.
From somewhere across the water she heard the jingle of metal on metal, the soft blowing of a horse, and men’s voices. Gareth still said nothing, but she felt that, if she laid a hand upon him, she would find him quivering, as a rope does before it snaps. John came quietly to her side, his fingers twined warm and strong about hers. His spectacles flashed softly in the lanternlight as he slung an end of his voluminous plaid around her shoulders and drew her to his side.
“John,” Gareth said quietly, “I—I have something to tell you.”
Dimly through the fog came another sound, a woman’s laugh like the tinkling of silver bells. Gareth twitched, and John, a dangerous flicker in his lazy-lidded eyes, said, “I thought you might.”
“Aversin,” Gareth stammered and stopped. Then he forced himself on with a rush, “Aversin, Jenny, listen. I’m sorry. I lied to you—I betrayed you, but I couldn’t help it; I had no other choice. I’m sorry.”
“Ah,” said John softly. “So there was something you forgot to mention before we left the Hold?”
Unable to meet his eyes, Gareth said, “I meant to tell you earlier, but—but I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d turn back and—and I couldn’t let you turn back. We need you, we really do.”
“For a lad who’s always on about honor and courage,” Aversin said, and there was an ugly edge to his quiet voice, “you haven’t shown very much of either, have you?”
Gareth raised his head, and met his eyes, “No,” he said. “I—I’ve been realizing that. I thought it was all right to deceive you in a good cause—that is—I had to get you to come...”
“All right, then,” said John. “What is the truth?”
Jenny glanced from the faces of the two men toward the far shore, visible dimly now as a dark blur and a few lights moving like fireflies in the mist. A slightly darker cloud beyond would be the woodlands of Belmarie. She touched John’s spiked elbow warningly, and he looked quickly in that direction. Movement stirred there, shapes crowding down to wait for the ferry to put in. The horse Battlehammer flung up his head and whinnied, and an answering whinny trumpeted back across the water. The Dragonsbane’s eyes returned to Gareth and he folded his hands over the hilt of his sword.
Gareth drew a deep breath. “The truth is that the King didn’t send for you,” he said. “In fact, he—he forbade me to come looking for you. He said it was a foolish quest, because you probably didn’t exist at all and, even if you did, you’d have been killed by another dragon long ago. He said he didn’t want me to risk my life chasing a phantom. But—but I had to find you. He wasn’t going to send anyone else. And you’re the only Dragonsbane, as it was in all the ballads...” He stammered uncertainly. “Except that I didn’t know then that it wasn’t like the ballads. But I knew you had to exist. And I knew we needed someone. I couldn’t stand by and let the dragon go on terrorizing the countryside. I had to come and find you. And once I found you, I had to bring you back...”