She felt the spew of his venomous anger, but would not let go. If you kill me, I shall drag you down with me into death, she thought, or dying, I shall not release your name from my mind.
The strength that was breaking the sinews of her mind drew back, but his eyes held to hers. Her thoughts were suddenly flooded with images and half-memories, like the visions of the heart of the Deep; things she did not understand, distracting and terrifying in their strangeness. She felt the plunging vertigo of flight in darkness; saw black mountains that cast double shadows, red deserts unstirred by wind since time began and inhabited by glass spiders that lived upon salt. They were dragon memories, confusing her, luring her toward the place where his mind could close around hers like a trap, and she held fast to those things of her own life that she knew and her memory of the piping of old Caerdinn whistling the truncated air of Morkeleb’s true name. Into that air she twisted her own spells of breaking and exhaustion, mingling them with the rhythm of his heart that she had learned so well in the healing, and she felt once more his mind draw back from hers.
His wrath was like the lour of thunder-sky, building all around her; he loomed before her like a cloud harboring lightning. Then without warning he struck at her like a snake, one thin-boned claw raised to slash.
He would not strike, she told herself as her heart contracted with terror and her every muscle screamed to flee... He could not strike her for she had his name and he knew it... She had saved him; he must obey... Her mind gripped the music of his name even as the claws hissed down. The wind of them slashed at her hair, the saber blades passing less than a foot from her face. White eyes stared down at her, blazing with hate; the rage of him beat against her like a storm.
Then he settled back slowly upon his bed of gold. The tang of his defeat was like wormwood in the air.
You chose to give me your name rather than die, Morkeleb. She played his name like a glissando and felt the surge of her own rising power hum in the gold against his. You will go from these lands and not return.
For a moment more she felt his anger, resentment, and the fury of his humbled pride. But there was something else in the hoarfrost glitter of his gaze upon her, the knowledge that she was not contemptible.
He said quietly. Do you not understand?
Jenny shook her head. She looked around her once again at the Temple, its dark archways piled high with more gold than she had ever seen before, a treasure more fabulous than any other upon earth. It would have bought all of Bel and the souls of most of the men who dwelled there. But, perhaps because she herself had little use for gold, she felt drawn to ask again, Why gold, Morkeleb? Was it the gold that brought you here?
He lowered his head to his paws again, and all around them the gold vibrated with the whisper of the dragon’s name. It was the gold, and the dreams of the gold, he said. I had discontent in all things; the longing grew upon me while I slept. Do you not know, wizard woman, the love that dragons have for gold?
She shook her head again. Only that they are greedy for it, as men are greedy.
Rose-red light rimmed the slits of his nostrils as he sniffed. Men, he said softly. They have no understanding of gold; no understanding of what it is and of what it can be. Come here, wizard woman. Put your hand upon me and listen with my mind.
She hesitated, fearing a trap, but her curiosity as a mage drove her. She picked her way over the cold, uneven heaps of rings, platters, and candlesticks, to rest her hand once more against the soft skin below the dragon’s great eye. As before, it felt surprisingly warm, unlike a reptile’s skin, and soft as silk. His mind touched hers like a firm hand in the darkness.
In a thousand murmuring voices, she could hear the gold pick up the music of the dragon’s name. The blended nuances of thought were magnified and made richer, distinct as subtle perfumes, piercing the heart with beauty. It seemed to Jenny that she could identify every piece of gold within that enormous chamber by its separate sounding, and hear the harmonic curve of a vessel, the melding voices of every single coin and hairpin, and the sweet tingling locked in the crystal heart of every jewel. Her mind, touching the dragon’s, flinched in aching wonder from the caress of that unbearable sweetness as the echoes awoke answering resonances within her soul. Memories of dove-colored dusks on the Fell that was her home pulled at her with the deep joy of winter nights lying on the bearskins before the hearth at Alyn Hold, with John and her sons at her side. Happiness she could not name swept over her, breaking down the defenses of her heart as the intensity of the music built, and she knew that foi Morkeleb it was the same in the chimeric deeps of his mind.
When the music faded, she realized she had closed her eyes, and her cheeks were wet with tears. Looking about her, though the room was as black as before, she thought that the memory of the dragon’s song lingered in the gold, and a faint luminosity clung to it still.
In time she said. That is why men say that dragon’s gold is poisoned. Others say that it is lucky... but it is merely charged with yearning and with music, so that even dullards can feel it through their fingers.
Even so, whispered the voice of the dragon in her mind.
But dragons cannot mine gold, nor work it. Only gnomes and the children of men.
We are like the whales that live in the sea, he said, civilizations without artifacts, living between stone and sky in our islands in the northern oceans. We lair in rocks that bear gold, but it is impure. Only with pure gold is this music possible. Now do you understand?
The sharing had broken something between them, and she felt no fear of him now. She went to sit close to the bony curve of his shoulder and picked up a gold cup from the hoard. She felt as she turned it over in her hands that she could have chosen it out from a dozen identical ones. Its resonance was clear and individuated in her mind; the echo of the dragon’s music held to it, like a remembrance of perfume. She saw how precisely it was formed, chastened and highly polished, its handles tiny ladies with garlands twined in their hair where it streamed back over the body of the cup; even microscopically fine, the flowers were recognizable as the lilies of hope and the roses of fulfillment. Morkeleb had killed the owner of this cup, she thought to herself, only for the sake of the incredible music which he could call from the gold. Yet his love for the gold had as little to do with its beauty as her love for her sons had to do with their—undeniable, she thought—good looks.
How did you know this was here?
Do you not think that we, who live for hundreds of years, would be aware of the comings and goings of men? Where they build their cities, and with whom they trade, and in what? I am old, Jenny Waynest. Even among the dragons, my magic is accounted great. I was born before we came to this world; I can sniff gold from the bones of the earth and follow its path for miles, as you follow ground water with a hazel twig. The gold-seams of the Wall rise to the surface here like the great salmon of the north country rising to spawn.
The dragon’s words were spoken in her mind, and in her mind she had a brief, distant glimpse of the Earth as the dragons saw it, spread out like a mottled carpet of purple and green and brown. She saw the green-black pelt of the forests of Wyr, the infinitely delicate cloud shapes of the crowns of the tall oaks, fragile and thready with winter, and saw how, toward the north, they were more and more replaced by the coarse spiky teeth of pine and fir. She saw the gray and white stones of the bare Winterlands, stained all the colors of the rainbow with lichen and moss in summer, and saw how the huge flashing silver shapes of eight- and ten-foot salmon moved beneath the waters of the rivers, under the blue, gliding shadow of the dragon’s wings. For an instant, it was as if she could feel the air all about her, holding her up like water; its currents and countereddies,. its changes from warm to cold.