“But she doesn’t have any wrinkles,” Trey objected, disconcerted at this lightning change of topic.
“Exactly. Why doesn’t she? Every mage I’ve known—Mab, who isn’t that old as gnomes go, old Caerdinn, that crazy little wander-mage who used to come through the Winterlands, and you, Jen—the marks of power are printed on their faces. Though it hasn’t aged you,” he added quickly, with a concern for her vanity that made Jenny smile.
“You are right,” she said slowly. “Now that you speak of it, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a mage that—that sweet-looking. Maybe that’s what first troubled me. And Mab said something about Zyerne stealing secrets. Zyerne herself said that when she is able to get into the Deep, she’ll have the power to destroy us all.” She frowned, some other thought tugging at her mind. “But it doesn’t make sense. If you think she could have gained her powers by studying arts possessed by the gnomes—by breaking into and reading the books of their deeper magic—you’re wrong. I searched through the Places of Healing in quest of just such books, and found none.”
“That’s a bit odd in itself, isn’t it?” John mused. “But when you said power isn’t contingent on any thing, any more than knowledge is—knowledge can be stored in a book. Is there any way power can be stored? Can a mage use another mage’s power?”
Jenny shrugged. “Oh, yes. Power can be accumulated by breadth as well as by depth; several mages can focus their power together and direct it toward a single spell that lies beyond their separate strengths. It can be done by chanting, meditating, dancing...” She broke off, as the vision rose once more to her mind—the vision of the heart of the Deep. “Dancing...” she repeated softly, then shook her head. “But in any case, the power is controlled by those who raise it.”
“Is it?” asked John. “Because in Polyborus it says...”
Morkeleb cut him off. But if she were forbidden the Deep, Zyerne could have been nowhere near it when the power was raised that sent this yearning unto me and called me back. Nor, indeed, could she have been near the Deep to conjure the dreams that first brought me here. And no other mages would have combined to raise that power.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” John broke in. “In Dotys—or Polyborus’ Analects—or maybe it’s the Elucidus Lapidarus...”
“What?” demanded Jenny, well aware that John was perfectly capable of fishing for the source of reference for ten minutes in the jackdaw-nest of his memory.
“Dotys—or Polyborus—says that it used to be rumored that mages could use a certain type of stone for a powersink. They could call power into it, generation after generation, sometimes, or they could combine—and I think he mentioned dancing—and when they needed great power, for the defense of their realm or defeat of a dragon or a really powerful devil, they could call power out of it.”
They looked at one another in silence—witch and prince, maiden and warrior and dragon.
John went on, “I think what the gnomes were guarding—what lies in the heart of the Deep—is a power sink.”
“The Stone,” Jenny said, knowing it for truth. “They swear ‘by the Stone’ or ‘by the Stone in the heart of the Deep.’ Even Zyerne does. In my vision, they were dancing around it.”
John’s voice was soft in the velvety darkness. “And in that case, all Zyerne would have needed to steal was the key to unlock it. If she was apprenticed in the Places of Healing near there, that wouldn’t have been hard.”
“If she’s mentally in contact with it, she could use it somewhat, even at a distance,” Jenny said. “I felt it, when I struggled with her—some power I have never felt. Not living, like Morkeleb—but strong because it is dead and does not care what it does. It must be the source of all her strength, for shapechanging and for the curse she sent to the gnomes, the curse that brought you here from the north, Morkeleb.”
“A curse that’s still holding good whether she wants it to or not.” John’s spectacles flashed in the starlight as he grinned. “But she must not be able to wield it accurately at a distance, even as Miss Mab can’t use it against her. It would explain why she’s so wild not to let them get even a chance of going back.”
So what then? demanded Morkeleb grimly. Did your estimable Dotys, your wise Polyborus, speak of a way to combat the magic of these stones?
“Well,” John said, a faint grin of genuine amusement touching the comers of his mouth, “that was the whole point of my coming south, you see. My copy of the Elucidus Lapidarus isn’t complete. Almost nothing in my library is. It’s why I agreed to become a Dragonsbane for the King’s hire in the first place—because we need books, we need knowledge. I’m as much a scholar as I can be, but it isn’t easy.”
With the size of a human brain, it would not be, Morkeleb snapped, irrationally losing his temper. You are no more scholar than you are Dragonsbane!
“But I never claimed to be,” John protested. “It’s just there’s all these ballads, see...”
The jet claws rattled again on the pavement. Jenny, exasperated with them both, began, “I really am going to let him eat you this time...”
Trey put in hastily, “Could you use the Stone yourself, Lady Jenny? Use it against Zyerne?”
“Of course!” Gareth bounced like a schoolboy on the hard step. “That’s it! Fight fire with fire.”
Jenny was silent. She felt their eyes upon her—Trey’s, Gareth’s, John’s, the crystal gaze of the dragon turned down at her from above. The thought of the power stirred in her mind like lust—Zyerne’s power. The key to magic is magic...
She saw the worry in John’s eyes and knew what her own expression must look like. It sobered her. “What are you thinking?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, love.”
He meant that he would not stand in the way of any decision she made. Correctly interpreting his look, she said gently, “I would not misuse the power, John. I would not become like Zyerne.”
His voice was pitched to her ears alone. “Can you know that?”
She started to reply, then stilled herself. Shrill and clear she heard Miss Mab’s voice saying. She took the secrets of those greater than she, defiled them, tainted them, poisoned the very heart of the Deep... She remembered, too, that sense of perverted power that had sparkled in the lamplight around Zyerne and the luckless Bond, and how the touch of the dragon’s mind had changed her.
“No,” she said at last. “I cannot know. And it would be stupid of me to meddle with something so powerful without knowing its dangers, even if I could figure out the key by myself.”
“But,” Gareth protested, “it’s our only chance of defeating Zyerne! They’ll be back—you know they will! We can’t stay holed up here forever.”
“Could we learn enough about the Stone for you to circumvent its powers somehow?” Trey suggested. “Would there be a copy of the Whatsus Howeverus you talked about in the Palace library?”
Gareth shrugged. His scholarship might extend to seven minor variants of the ballad of the Warlady and the Red Worm of Weldervale, but it was a broken reed insofar as obscure encyclopedists went.
“There would be one at Halnath, though, wouldn’t there?” Jenny said. “And if it didn’t contain the information, there are gnomes there who might know.”
“If they’d tell.” John propped himself gingerly a little higher against the granite of the gate pillar, the few portions of his shirt not darkened with bloodstains very white in the rising moonlight against the metallic glints of his doublet. “Dromar’s lot wouldn’t even admit it existed. They’ve had enough of humans controlling the Stone, and I can’t say as I blame them. But whatever happens,” he added, as the others subsided from their enthusiasm into dismal reflection once more, “our next move had better be to get out of here. As our hero says, you know Bond and the King’s troops will be back. The only place we can go is Halnath, and maybe not there. How tight are the siege lines. Gar?”