“Was?” Jenny said, perplexed. “I know that most of the Healers in the Deep were killed with the coming of the dragon; I had thought none of sufficient strength survived to defy her. The magic of gnomes is different from the spells of men, but power is power. How could Zyerne have lessened yours?”
Mab only shook her head furiously, so that her pale, web-colored hair whipped back and forth, and said, “These are the things of the gnomes.”
In those days Jenny did not see much of Zyerne, but the enchantress was often on her mind. Zyerne’s influence pervaded the court like the faint waft of her cinnamon perfume; when Jenny was in the Palace confines, she was always conscious of her. However Zyerne had acquired her power and whatever she had done with it since. Jenny never forgot that it was so much greater than hers. When she neglected what tomes of magic John was able to pilfer from the Palace library to sit with her scrying-stone, watching the tiny, soundless images of her sons skylarking perilously along the snow-covered battlements of the Hold, she felt a pang of guilt. Zyerne was young, at least ten years younger than she; her power shone from her like the sun. Jenny no longer felt jealousy and she could not, in all honesty, feel anger at Zyerne for having what she herself did not, as long as she was not willing to do what was needful to obtain that power. But she did feel envy, the envy of a traveler on a cold night who saw into the warmth of a lighted room.
But when she asked Mab about Zyerne—about the powers that had once been less than Mab’s, but now were greater; about why the gnomes had forbidden her to enter the Deep—the little mage would only say stubbornly, “These are the things of the gnomes. They have naught to do with men.”
In the meantime John went his own way, a favorite of the younger courtiers who laughed at his extravagant barbarism and called him their tame savage, while he held forth about engineering and the mating customs of pigs, or quoted classical authors in his execrable north-country drawl. And still, every morning, the King passed them by in the gallery, turning his dull eyes aside from them, and the etiquette of the Court forbade Gareth to speak.
“What’s his delay?” John demanded as he and Gareth emerged from the arched porticoes of the gallery into the chill, fleet sunlight of the deserted terrace after yet another futile day’s waiting. Jenny joined them quietly, coming up the steps from the deserted garden below, carrying her harp. She had been playing it on the rocks above the sea wall, waiting for them and watching the rainclouds scud far out over the sea. It was the season of winds and sudden gales, and in the north the weather would be sleety and cold, but here days of high, heatless sunlight alternated with fogs and blowing rains. The matte, white day-moon was visible, sinking into the cloud wrack over the sea; Jenny wondered what it was that troubled her about its steady waxing toward its half. Against the loamy colors of the fallow earth, the clothes of Zyerne and her court stood out brightly as they passed on down into the garden, and Jenny could hear the enchantress’s voice lifted in a wickedly accurate imitation of the gnomes’ shrill speech.
John went on, “Is he hoping the dragon will fall on the Citadel and spare him the trouble of the siege?”
Gareth shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m told Polycarp has catapults for slinging naphtha set up on the highest turrets. The dragon keeps his distance.” In spite of the Master’s treason. Jenny could hear in the Prince’s voice a trace of pride in his former friend.
Unlike John, who had rented a Court costume from a shop outside the palace gates which specialized in such things for petitioners to the King, Gareth owned at least a dozen of them—like all Court costumes, criminally expensive. The one he wore today was parakeet green and primrose and, in the uncertain light of the afternoon, it turned his rather sallow complexion yellow.
John pushed his specs a little further up on the bridge of his nose. “Well, I tell you, I’m not exactly ettling to go on kicking my heels here like a rat catcher waiting for the King to decide he wants my services. I came here to protect my lands and my people, and right now they’re getting nothing from the King who’s supposed to guard them, nor from me.”
Gareth had been gazing down into the garden at the little group around the leaf-stained marble statue of the god Kantirith absently, as if not aware of where he looked; now he turned his head quickly. “You can’t go,” he said, worry and fear in his voice.
“And why not?”
The boy bit his lip and did not answer, but his glance darted nervously back down to the garden. As if she felt the touch of it, Zyerne turned and blew him a playful kiss, and Gareth looked away. He looked tired and hagridden, and Jenny suddenly wondered if he still dreamed of Zyerne.
The uncomfortable silence was broken, not by him, but by the high voice of Dromar.
“My lord Aversin...” The gnome stepped out onto the terrace and blinked painfully in the wan, overcast light. His words came haltingly, as if they were unfamiliar in his mouth. “Please—do not go.”
John glanced down at him sharply. “You haven’t precisely extended your all in welcome and help, either, have you?”
The old ambassador’s gaze challenged him. “I drew thee the maps of the Deep. By the Stone, what more canst thou want?”
“Maps that don’t lie,” John said coolly. “You know as well as I do the maps you drew have sections of ’em left blank. And when I put them together, the maps of the various levels and the up-and-down map, damned if it wasn’t the same place on all of them. I’m not interested in the secrets of your bloody Deep, but I can’t know what’s going to happen, nor where I may end up playing catch-me in the dark with the dragon, and I’d just as soon have an accurate map to do it with.”
There was an edge of anger on his level voice, and an edge of fear. Dromar must have heard both, for the answering blaze died out of his own countenance, and he looked down at his hands, clasped over the knots of his sash. “This is a matter that has nothing to do with the dragon, nothing to do with thee,” he said quietly. “The maps are accurate—I swear it by the Stone in the heart of the Deep. What is left off is the affair of the gnomes, and the gnomes only—the very secret of the heart of the Deep. Once, one of the children of men spied out that heart, and since then we have had cause to regret it bitterly.”
He lifted his head again, pale eyes somber under the long shelf of snowy brow. “I beg that thou trust me, Dragonsbane. It goes against our ways to ask the aid of the children of men. But thou must help us. We are miners and traders; we are not warriors, and it is a warrior that we need. Day by day, more of our folk are forced to leave this city. If the Citadel falls, many of the people of the Deep will be slaughtered with the rebels who have given them not only the shelter of their walls, but the very bread of their rations. The King’s troops will not let them leave the Citadel, even if they would—and believe me, many have tried. Here in Bel, the cost of bread rises, and soon we shall be starved out, if we are not murdered by the mobs from the taverns. In a short time we shall be too few to hold the Deep, even should we be able to pass its gates.”
He held out his hands, small as a child’s and grotesquely knotted with age, pallidly white against the soft black layerings of his strangely cut sleeves. “If thou dost not help us, who among the children of men will?”
“Oh, run along, Dromar, do.” Clean and sweet as a silver knife, Zyerne’s voice cut across his last words. She came mounting the steps from the garden, light as an almond blossom floating on the breeze, her pink-edged veils blown back over the dark and intricate cascades of her hair. “Isn’t it enough that you try to foist your way into the King’s presence day after day, without troubling these poor people with politics out of season? Gnomes may be vulgar enough to talk business and buttonhole their betters in the evening, but here we feel that once the day is done, it should be a time for enjoyment.” She made shooing gestures with her well-kept hands and pouted in impatience. “Now run along,” she added in a teasing tone, “or I shall call the guards.”