“Or yours. It would scarcely matter which, as long as it had the family looks.” Bandaged hands folded, John looked shortsightedly up at the boy as, half-numbed, Gareth went through the automatic motions of forking griddlecakes from the skillet. Still in that gentle, matter-of-fact voice, he went on, “But you see, after this long under Zyerne’s spells, your father may not be capable of fathering a child. And Zyerne needs a child, if she’s to go on ruling.”
Jenny looked away from them, thinking about what it would be, to be that child. The same wave of sickness Gareth had felt passed over her at the knowledge of what Zyerne would do to any child others. She would not feed upon it, as she fed upon the King and Bond; but she would raise it deliberately as an emotional cripple, forever dependent upon her and her love. Jenny had seen it done, by women or by men, and knew what manner of man or woman emerged from that smothered childhood. But even then, the twisting had been from some need of the parent’s heart, and not something done merely to keep power.
She thought of her own sons and the absurd love she bore them. She might have abandoned them, she thought with sudden fury at Zyerne, but even had she not loved them, even were they got on her by rape, she would never have done that to them. It was a thing she would have liked to think she herself could scarcely conceive of anyone doing to an innocent child—except that in her heart she knew exactly how it could be done.
Anger and sickness stirred in her, as if she had looked upon torture.
“Jenny?”
Gareth’s voice broke her from her thoughts. He stood a few paces from her, looking pleadingly down at her. “He will get better, won’t he?” he asked hesitantly. “My father, I mean? When Zyerne is banished, or—or is killed—he will be the way he was before?”
Jenny sighed. “I don’t know,” she replied in a low voice. She shook her mind free of the lethargy that gripped her, a weariness of the spirit as much as the ache of hei body left by the battering of Zyerne’s spells. It was not only that she had badly overstretched her own newfound powers, not only that her body was unused to sustaining the terrible demands of the dragon’s magic. She was aware now that her very perceptions were changing, that it was not only her magic that had been changed by the touch of the dragon’s mind. The dragon in you answered, he had said—she was starting to see things as a dragon saw.
She got stiffly to her feet, staggering a little against the shored-up doorpost of the well house, feeling physically drained and very weak. She had watched through the night, telling herself it was for Zyerne that she watched, though in her heart she knew the enchantress would not be back, and it was not, in fact, for her that she waited She said, “It isn’t the spells that she holds him under that are harming him. Zyerne is a vampire, Gareth—not of the blood, like the Whisperers, but of the life-essence itself. In her eyes last night I saw her essence, her soul; a sticky and devouring thing, yes, but a thing that must feed to go on living. Miss Mab told me of the spells of the Places of Healing that can shore up the life of a dying man by taking a little of the life-energy of those who consent to give it. It is done seldom, and only in cases of great need. I am certain this is what she has done to your father and to Bond. What I don’t understand is why she would need to. Her powers are such that...”
“You know,” John broke in, “it says in Dotys’ Histories... or maybe it’s in Terens... or is it the Elucidus Lapidarus... ?”
“But what can we do?” Gareth pleaded. “There must be something! I could ride back to Bel and let Dromar know it’s safe for the gnomes to reoccupy the Deep. It would give them a strong base to...”
“No,” Jenny said. “Zyerne’s hold on the city is too strong. After this, she’ll be watching for you, scrying the roads. She’d intercept you long before you came near Bel.”
“But we have to do something!” Panic and desperation lurked at bay in his voice. “Where can we go? Polycarp would give us shelter in the Citadel...”
“You going to tell the siege troops around the walls you want a private word with him?” John asked, forgetting all about his speculations upon the classics.
“There are ways through the Deep into Halnath.”
“And a nice locked door at the end of ’em, I bet, or the tunnels sealed shut with blasting powder to keep the dragon out—even if old Dromar had put them on his maps, which he didn’t. I had a look for that back in Bel.”
“Damn him...” Gareth began angrily, and John waved him silent with a mealcake in hand.
“I can’t blame him,” he said. Against the random browns and heathers of the bloodstained plaid folded beneath his head his face still looked pale but had lost its dreadful chalkiness. Behind his specs, his brown eyes were bright and alert. “He’s a canny old bird, and he knows Zyerne. If she didn’t know where the ways through to the Citadel hooked up into the main Deep, he wasn’t going to have that information down on paper that she could steal. Still, Jen might be able to lead us.”
“No.” Jenny glanced over at him from where she sat cross-legged beside the fire, dipping the last bite of her griddlecake into the honey. “Even being able to see in darkness, I could not scout them out unaided. As for you going through them, if you try to get up in under a week, I’ll put a spell of lameness on you.”
“Cheat.”
“Watch me.” She wiped her fingers on the end of her plaid. “Morkeleb guided me through to the heart of the Deep; I could never have found it, else.”
“What was it like?” Gareth asked after a moment. “The heart of the Deep? The gnomes swear by it...”
Jenny frowned, remembering the whispering darkness and the soapy feel of the stone altar beneath her fingertips. “I’m not sure,” she said softly. “I dreamed about it...”
As one, the horses suddenly flung up their heads from the stiff, frosted grass. Battlehammer nickered softly and was answered, thin and clear, from the mists that floated on the fringes of the woods that surrounded Deeping Vale. Hooves struck the stone, and a girl’s voice called out, “Gar? Gar, where are you?”
“It’s Trey.” He raised his voice to shout. “Here!”
There was a frenzied scrambling of sliding gravel, and the whitish mists solidified into the dark shapes of a horse and rider and a fluttering of dampened veils. Gareth strode to the edge of the high ground of the Rise to catch the bridle of Trey’s dappled palfrey as it came stumbling up the last slope, head-down with exhaustion and matted with sweat in spite of the day’s cold. Trey, clinging to the saddlebow, looked scarcely better off, her face scratched as if she had ridden into low-hanging branches in the wood and long streamers clawed loose from her purple-and-white coiffure.
“Gar, I knew you had to be all right.” She slid from the saddle into his arms. “They said they saw the dragon—that Lady Jenny had put spells upon him—I knew you had to be all right.”
“We’re fine. Trey,” Gareth said doubtfully, frowning at the terror and desperation of the girl’s voice. “You look as if you’ve ridden here without a break.”
“I had to!” she gasped. Under the torn rags of her white Court dress, her knees were trembling, and she clung to Gareth’s arm for support; her face was colorless beneath what was left of its paint. “They’re coming for you! I don’t understand what’s happening, but you’ve got to get out of here! Bond...” She stumbled on her brother’s name.
“What about Bond? Trey, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” she cried. Tears of wretchedness and exhaustion overflowed her eyes, and she wiped them impatiently, leaving faint streaks of blue-black kohl on her round cheeks. “There’s a mob on its way, Bond’s leading it...”
“Bond?” The idea of the lazy and elegant Bond troubling himself to lead anyone anywhere was absurd.
“They’re going to kill you. Gar! I heard them say so! You, and Lady Jenny, and Lord John.”