“But it’s silly!”
“Not as silly as falling in love with a witch, and we’ve both done that,” John replied cheerfully. In spite of her exhaustion, Jenny chuckled. “How long can you hold them, love?”
Something in the sound of his voice made her look back quickly at him. Though he had dismounted from Cow to help her, it was obvious he could not stand alone; his flesh looked gray as ash. Shouting from below drew her attention a moment later; past the smoke still curling from the steps, she could see men forming up into a ragged line, the madness of unreasoning hate in their eyes.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “All power must be paid for. Maintaining the illusion of the Gates draws still more of my strength. But it buys us a little time, breaking the thrust of their will if they think they’ll have to break them.”
“I doubt that lot has the brains to think that far.” Still leaning heavily on the pillar, John looked out into the slanted sun of the square outside. “Look, here they come.”
“Get back,” Jenny said. Her bones hurt with the thought of drawing forth power from them and from the stone and air around her one more time. “I don’t know what will happen without Limitations.”
“I can’t get back, love; if I let go of this wall, I’ll fall down.”
Through the ghost shape of the Gates, she saw them coming, running across the square toward the steps. The magic came more slowly, dredged and scraped from the seared core of her being—her soul felt bleached by the effort. The voices below rose in a mad crescendo, in which the words “gold” and “kill” were flung up like spars of driftwood on the rage of an incoming wave. She glimpsed Bond Clerlock, or what was left of Bond Clerlock, somewhere in their midst, his Court suit pink as a shell among the blood-and-buttercup hues of the Palace guards. Her mind locked into focus, like a dragon’s mind; all things were clear to her and distant, impersonal as images in a divining crystal. She called the white dragon rage like a thunderclap and smote the steps with fire, not before them now, but beneath their feet.
As the fire exploded from the bare stone, a wave of sickness consumed her, as if in that second all her veins had been opened. The shrieking of men, caught in the agony of the fire, struck her ears like a slapping hand, as grayness threatened to drown her senses and heat rose through her, then sank away, leaving behind it a cold like death.
She saw them reeling and staggering, ripping flaming garments from charred flesh. Tears of grief and weakness ran down her face at what she had done, though she knew that the mob would have torn the four of them apart and had known, that time, that she could summon fire. The illusion of the Gates felt as tenuous as a soap-bubble around her—like her own body, light and drifting. John stumbled to catch her as she swayed and pulled her back to the pillar against which he had stood; for a moment they boih held to it, neither strong enough to stand.
Her eyes cleared a little. She saw men running about the square in panic, rage, and pain; and Bond, oblivious to burns which covered his hand and arm, was chasing after them, shouting.
“What do we do now, love?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered “I feel as if I’m going to faint.”
His arm tightened around her waist. “Oh, do,” he encouraged enthusiastically. “I’ve always wanted to carry you to safety in my arms.”
Her laughter revived her, as he had no doubt meant it to. She pushed herself clear of his support as Gareth and Trey came up, both looking ill and frightened.
“Could we run for it through the Deep?” Gareth asked, fumbling the maps from an inner pocket and dropping two of them. “To the Citadel, I mean?”
“No,” Jenny said. “I told John—if we left the Market Hall, they’d flank us; and carrying John, we couldn’t outdistance them.”
“I could stay here, love,” John said quietly. “I could buy you time.”
Sarcastically, she replied, “The time it would take them to pick themselves up after tripping over your body in the archway would scarcely suffice.”
“One of us could try to get through,” Trey suggested timidly. “Polycarp and the gnomes at the Citadel would know the way through from that side. They could come for the rest of you. I have some candles in my reticule, and some chalk to mark the way, and I’m no good to you here...”
“No,” Gareth objected, valiantly fighting his terror of the dark warrens. “I’ll go.”
“You’d never find it,” Jenny said. “I’ve been down in the Deep, Gareth, and believe me, it is not something that can be reasoned out with chalk and candles. And, as John has said, the door at the end will be locked in any case, even if they didn’t blast it shut.”
Down below them, Bond’s voice could be heard dimly, shouting that the Gate wasn’t real, that it was just a witch’s trick, and that all the gold that had been lost was theirs by right. People were yelling, “Death to the thieves! Death to the gnome-lovers!” Jenny leaned her head against the stone of the pillar, a bar of sunlight falling through the Gate around her and lying like a pale carpet on the fireblack rubble of the Market Hall. She wondered if Zyerne had ever felt like this, when she had called upon the deep reserves of her powers, without Limitations—helpless before the anger of men.
She doubted it. It did something to you to be helpless.
All power must be paid for. Zyerne had never paid.
She wondered, just for a moment, how the enchantress had managed that.
“What’s that?”
At the sound of Trey’s voice, she opened her eyes again and looked out to where the girl was pointing. The light filling the Vale glinted harshly on something up near the ruined clock tower. Listening, she could pick out the sound of hooves and voices and feel the distant clamor of anger and unthinking hate. Against the dull slate color of the tower’s stones, the weeds of the hillside looked pale as yellow wine; between them the uniforms of half a company of Palace guards glowed like a tumble of hothouse poppies. The sun threw fire upon their weapons.
“Gaw,” John said. “Reinforcements.”
Bond and a small group of men were running up through the rubble and sedge toward the new company, flies swarming thick on the young courtier’s untended wounds. Small with distance. Jenny saw more and more men under the shadow of the tower, the brass of pike and cuirass flashing, the red of helmet crests like spilled blood against the muted hues of the stone. Exhaustion ate like poison into her bones. Her skin felt like a single open, throbbing wound; through it, she could feel the illusion of the Ga^c fading to nothingness as her power drained and died.
She said quietly, “You three get back to the doors into the Grand Passage. Gar, Trey—carry John. Bolt the doors from the inside—there are winches and pulleys there.”
“Don’t be stupid.” John was clinging to the gatepost beside her to stay upright.
“Don’t you be stupid.” She would not take her eyes from the swarming men in the square below.
“We’re not leaving you,” Gareth stated. “At least, I’m not. Trey, you take John...”
“No,” Trey and the Dragonsbane insisted in approximate unison. They looked at one another and managed the ghost of a mutual grin.
“It’s all of us or none of us, love.”
She swung around on them, her eyes blazing palely with the crystalline coldness of the dragon’s eyes. “None of you can be of the slightest use to me here against so many. John and Trey, all you’ll be is killed immediately. Gareth...” Her eyes pinned his like a lance of frost. “You may not be. They may have other instructions concerning you, from Zyerne. I may have the strength for one more spell. That can buy you some time. John’s wits may keep you alive for a while more in the Deep; you’ll need Trey’s willingness as well. Now go.”