There was a moment’s silence. Jenny could see the light slither quickly along the silk facing of Zyerne’s sleeve, where her small hand clenched it in anger, leaving a print of wrinkles like the track of invisible thoughts. “These are matters of high polity, Dragonsbane. It is nothing to you, after all. I tell you, be patient and wait until I tell you it is time for us to ride together to the Deep, you and I’ll promise that you shall not be cheated of this slaying.”
She stepped close to him again, and the diamonds on her hands threw little spits of fire against the dullness of leather and plaid.
“No,” Aversin said, his voice low. “Nor shall you be cheated of the Deep, after I’ve done your butchering for you. You summoned the dragon, didn’t you?”
“No.” The word was brittle as the snap of a frost-killed twig. “Of course not.”
“Didn’t you, love? Then it’s gie lucky for you that it came along just when it did, when you were wanting a power base free of the King, in case he tired of you or died; not to speak of all that gold.”
Jenny felt the scorch of her wrath like an invisible explosion across the garden, even as Zyerne raised her hand. Jenny’s throat closed on a cry of fear and warning, knowing she could never have moved in time to help and could not have stood against the younger woman’s magic, if she did; Aversin, his back to the stone of the arch, could only throw his arm before his eyes as the white fire snaked from Zyerne’s hand. The hissing crackle of it in the air was like lightning; the blaze of it, so white it seemed edged in violet, seared over every stone chink and moss tuft in the pavement and outlined each separate, waxy petal of the winter roses in colorless glare. In its aftermath, the air burned with the smell of ozone and scorched leaves.
After a long moment, John raised his face from his protecting arms. Even across the garden. Jenny could see he was shaking; her own knees were so weak from shock and fear she felt she could have collapsed, except for her greater fear of Zyerne; and she cursed her own lack of power. John, standing before Zyerne, did not move.
It was Zyerne who spoke, her voice dripping with triumph. “You get above yourself, Dragonsbane. I’m not that snaggle-haired trollop of yours, that you can speak to me with impunity. I am a true sorceress.”
Aversin said nothing, but carefully removed his spectacles and wiped his eyes. Then he replaced them and regarded her silently in the dim light of the garden lamp.
“I am a true sorceress,” she repeated softly. She held out her hands to him, the small fingers plucking at his sleeves, and a husky note crept into her sweet voice. “And who says our alliance must be so truculent, Dragonsbane? You need not spend your time here tugging with impatience to be gone. I can make the wait pleasant.”
As her delicate hands touched his face, however, Aversin caught the fragile wrists, forcing her away at arm’s length. For an instant they stood so, facing one another, the silence absolute but for the racing draw of their breath. Her eyes were fixed upon his, probing at his mind. Jenny knew, the same way she had probed at Gareth’s earlier, seeking some key of consent.
With a curse she twisted free of his grip. “So,” she whispered. “That raddled bitch can at least get her rutting spells right, can she? With her looks, she’d have to. But let me tell you this, Dragonsbane. When you ride to meet the dragon, like it or not, it will be me who rides with you, not her. You shall need my aid, and you shall ride forth when I say so, when I tell the King to give you leave, and not before. So learn a little of the civilized art of patience, my barbarian—for without my aid against Morkeleb, you shall surely die.”
She stepped away from him and passed under the lamplit arch, reaching out to take the light with her as she went. In its honeyed brightness her face looked as gentle and guileless as that of a girl of seventeen, unmarked by rage or perversion, pettiness or spite. John remained where he was, watching her go, sweat beading his face like a mist of diamonds, motionless save where he rubbed the thin, sharp flashburns on his hands.
A moment later, the window behind him glowed into soft life- Through the fretted screen of scented shrubs and vine that twined its filigreed lattice. Jenny got a glimpse of the room beyond. She had an impression of half-seen frescoes on the walls, of expensive vessels of gold and silver, and of the glint of bullion embroidery thickly edging the hangings of the bed. A man lay in the bed, moving feebly in some restless dream, his gold hair faded and colorless where it lay in disorder over the embroidered pillows. His face was sunken and devoid of life, like the face of a man whom a vampire has kissed.
“It would serve her right if you left tonight!” Gareth stormed. “Rode back north and left her to deal with her own miserable worm, if she wanted it so badly!”
He swung around to pace the big chamber of the guest house again, so furious he could barely splutter. In his anger, he seemed to have forgotten his own fear of Zyerne and his desire for protection against her, forgotten his long quest to the Winterlands and his desperation to have it succeed. From her seat in the window. Jenny watched him fulminate, her own face outwardly calm but her mind racing.
John looked up from tinkering with the keys of the hurdy-gurdy. “It wouldn’t do, my hero,” he said quietly. “However and whyever it got here, the dragon’s here now. As Zyerne said, the people hereabouts are no concern of mine, but I can’t be riding off and leaving them to the dragon. Leaving out the gnomes, there’s the spring planting to be thought of.”
The boy stopped in his pacing, staring at him. “Hunh?” John shrugged, his fingers stilling on the pegs. “The harvest’s gone,” he pointed out. “If the dragon’s still abroad in the land in the spring, there’ll be no crop, and then, my hero, you’ll see real starvation in this town.”
Gareth was silent. It was something he had never thought of. Jenny guessed. He had clearly never gone short of food in his life.
“Besides,” John went on, “unless the gnomes can reoccupy the Deep pretty quick, Zyerne will destroy them here, as Dromar said, and your friend Polycarp in the Citadel as well. For all Dromar’s hedging about keeping us out of the heart of the Deep, the gnomes have done for us what they can; and the way I see it, Polycarp saved your life, or at least kept you from ending up like your father, so deep under Zyerne’s spells he can’t tell one week from the next. No, the dragon’s got to be killed.”
“But that’s just it,” Gareth argued. “If you kill the dragon, she’ll be free to take over the Deep, and then the Citadel will fall because they’ll be able to attack it from the rear.” He looked worriedly over at Jenny. “Could she have summoned the dragon?”
Jenny was silent, thinking about that terrible power she had felt in the garden, and the dreadful, perverted lour of it in the lamplit room at Zyerne’s hunting lodge. She said, “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve heard of human magic being able to touch a dragon—but then, Zyerne derives her magic from the gnomes. I have never heard of such a thing...”
“Cock by its feet, horse by its home...” repeated John. “Could she be holding the dragon by his name? She knows it, right enough.”
Jenny shook her head. “Morkeleb is only the name men give it, the way they call Azwylcartusherands Dromar, and Taseldwyn Mab. If she’d had his true name, his essence, she could send him away again; and she obviously can’t, or she would have killed you in the garden tonight.”