The old gnome stood for a moment, his eyes upon hers, his cloudy white hair drifting like cobwebs around his wrinkled face in the stir of the sea winds. Zyerne wore an expression of childlike pertness, like a well-loved little girl demanding her own way. But Jenny, standing behind her, saw the delighted arrogance of her triumph in every line and muscle of her slim back. She had no doubt that Zyerne would, in fact, call the guards.
Evidently Dromar hadn’t, either. Ambassador from the court of one monarch to another for thirty years, he turned and departed at the behest of the King’s leman. Jenny watched him stump away down the gray and lavender stonework of the path across the garden, with Bond Clerlock, pale and brittle-looking, imitating his walk behind his back.
Ignoring Jenny as she generally did, Zyerne slid one hand through Gareth’s arm and smiled up at him. “Backbiting old plotter,” she remarked. “I must present myself to your father at supper in an hour, but there’s time for a stroll along the sea wall, surely? The rains won’t start until then.”
She could say it with surety, thought Jenny; at the touch of her spells, the clouds would come and depart like lapdogs waiting to be fed.
Still holding Gareth’s arm and leaning her suppleness against his height, she drew him toward the steps leading down into the garden; the courtiers there were already dispersing, and its walks were empty under the winddriven scurry of fugitive leaves. Gareth cast a despairing glance back at John and Jenny, standing together on the terrace, she in the plaids and sheepskin jacket of the north, and he in the ornate blue-and-cream satins of the Court, his schoolboy spectacles balanced on his nose.
Jenny nudged John gently. “Go after them.”
He looked down at her with a half-grin. “So from a dancing bear I’m being promoted to a chaperon for our hero’s virtue?”
“No,” Jenny said, her voice low. “A bodyguard for his safety. I don’t know what it is about Zyerne, but he feels it, too. Go after them.”
John sighed and bent to kiss her lips. “The King had better pay me extra for this.” His hug was like being embraced by a satin lion. Then he was off, trotting down the steps and calling to them in horrible north-country brogue, the wind billowing his mantlings and giving him the appearance of a huge orchid in the gray garden.
In all, it was just over a week, before the King finally sent for his son.
“He asked me where I’d been,” Gareth said quietly. “He asked me why I hadn’t presented myself to him before.” Turning, he struck the side of his fist against the bedpost, his teeth gritted to fight tears of rage and confusion. “Jenny, in all these days he hasn’t even seen me!”
He swung angrily around. The faded evening light, falling through the diamond-shaped panes of the window where Jenny sat, brushed softly across the citron-and-white satins of his Court mantlings and flickered eerily in the round, facetless old jewels on his hands. His hair had been carefully curled for the audience with his father and, as was the nature of fine hair, hung perfectly straight around his face again, except for a stray lock or two. He’d put on his spectacles after the audience, cracked and bent and unlikely-looking with his finery; the lenses were speckled with the fine blowing rain that chilled the windowglass.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said in a strangulated voice. “He said—he said we’d talk about the dragon the next time he saw me. I don’t understand what’s going on...”
“Was Zyerne there?” John inquired. He was sitting at the spindly desk, which, like the rest of the upper floor of his and Jenny’s guest house, was heaped with books. The whole room, after eight days, had the appearance of a ransacked library; volumes were propped against one another, places marked by pages of John’s notes or odd articles of clothing or other books—and in one case a dagger—slipped between the leaves.
Gareth nodded miserably. “Half the time when I asked him things, she’d answer. Jenny, could she be holding him under some kind of spell?”
Jenny started to say, “Possibly...”
“Well, of course she is,” John said, tipping back his high stool to lean the small of his back against the desk. “And if you hadn’t been so bloody determined to do that slick little baggage justice, Jen, you’d have seen it a week ago. Come!” he added, as a soft tapping sounded at the door.
It opened wide enough for Trey Clerlock to put her head around the doorframe. She hesitated a moment; then, when John gestured, she came in, carrying a pearwood hurdy-gurdy with ivory stars scattered at random over its stubby neck box and playing pegs. John beamed with delight as he took it, and Jenny groaned.
“You’re not going to play that thing, are you? You’ll frighten the cattle for miles around, you know.”
“I’ll not,” John retorted. “And besides, there’s a trick to making it louder or softer...”
“Do you know it?”
“I can learn. Thank you. Trey, love—some people just haven’t any appreciation for the sound of fine music.”
“Some people haven’t any appreciation for the sound of a cat being run through a mangle,” Jenny replied. She turned back to Gareth. “Zyerne could be holding him under a spell, yes—but from what you’ve told me of your father’s stubbornness and strength of will, I’m a little surprised that her influence is that great.”
Gareth shook his head. “It isn’t only that,” he said. “I—I don’t know how to put this, and I can’t be sure, because I wasn’t wearing my spectacles during the interview, but it almost seems that he’s faded since I’ve been gone. That’s a stupid idea,” he recanted at once, seeing Jenny’s puzzled frown.
“No,” said Trey unexpectedly. The other three looked at her, and she blushed a little, like a flustered doll. “I don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s true, and faded is a good word for it. Because I—I think the same thing is happening to Bond.”
“Bond?” Jenny said, and the memory of the King’s face flashed across her mind; how hollow and brittle he had looked, and how, like Bond, the paint on his face had seemed to stand out from the waxiness beneath.
Trey appeared to concentrate for a moment on carefully straightening the lace on her left cuff. An opal flickered softly in the particolored coils of her hair as she looked up. “I thought it was just me,” she said in a small voice. “I know he’s gotten heavier-handed, and less funny about his jests, the way he is when his mind is on something else. Except that his mind doesn’t seem to be on anything else; it just isn’t on what he’s doing, these days. He’s so absentminded, the way your father’s gotten.” Her gaze went to Jenny’s, imploring. “But why would Zyerne put a spell on my brother? She’s never needed to hold him to her. He’s always squired her around. He was one of the first friends she had at Court. He—he loved her. He used to dream about her...”
“Dream about her how?” Gareth demanded sharply.
Trey shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Did he sleepwalk?”
The surprise in the girl’s eyes answered the question before she spoke. “How did you know?”
The fitful rain outside had ceased; in the long silence, the voices of the palace guards in the court below the guest house windows could be heard clearly, telling a story about a gnome and a whore in town. Even the hazy light of the afternoon was failing, and the room was cold and slate gray. Jenny asked, “Do you dream about her still, Gareth?”
The boy turned red as if scalded. He stammered, shook his head, and finally said, “I—I don’t love her. I truly don’t. I try—I don’t want to be alone with her. But...” He gestured helplessly, unable to fight the traitor dreams.