“If Jenny could be given the key to the use of the Stone...” suggested Gareth.
“No!” Balgub and Jenny spoke at once. All those w the Master’s long, scrubbed stone workroom, John included, looked curiously at the witch of Wyr.
“No human shall touch it!” insisted the gnome with shrill fury. “We saw the evil it did. It is for the gnomes, and only for us.”
“And I would not touch it if I could.” Jenny drew her knees up close to her chest and folded her arms around them; Balgub, in spite of his protest, looked affronted that the greatest treasure of the Deep should be refused. Jenny said, “According to Mab, the Stone itself has been defiled Its powers, and the spells of those that use it, are polluted by what Zyerne has done.”
“That is not true.” Balgub’s tight little face set in an expression of obstinancy. “Mab insisted that the Stone’s powers were becoming unpredictable and its influence evil on the minds of those who used it. By the heart of the Deep, this is not so, and so I told her, again and again. I do not see how...”
“After being fed chewed-up human essences instead of controlled spells, it would be a wonder if it didn’t become unpredictable,” John said, with his usual good-natured affability.
The gnome’s high voice was scornful. “What can a warrior know of such things? A warrior hired to slay the dragon, who has,” he added, with heavy sarcasm, “signally failed in even that task.”
“I suppose you’d rather he’d signally succeeded?” Gareth demanded hotly. “You’d have had the King’s troops coming at you through the Deep by this time.”
“Lad.” John reached patiently out to touch the angry prince’s shoulder. “Let’s don’t fratch. His opinion does me no harm and shouting at him isn’t going to change it.”
“The King’s troops would never have found their way through the Deep, even with the gates unbolted,” Balgub growled. “And now the gates are locked; if necessary we will seal them with blasting powder—it is there and ready, within yards of the last gate.”
“If Zyerne was leading them, they would have found the way,” Polycarp returned. The links of the too-large mail shirt he wore over his gown rattled faintly as he folded his arms. “She knows the way to the heart of the Deep well enough from the Deeping side. As you all saw, from there to the underground gates of the Citadel it’s an almost straight path. And as for the Stone not having been affected by what she has put into it...” He glanced down at the stooped back and round white head of the gnome perched in the carved chair beside him. “You are the only Healer who escaped the dragon to come here, Balgub,” he said. “Now that the dragon is no longer in the Deep, will you go in and use the Stone?”
The wide mouth tightened, and the green eyes did not meet the blue.
“So,” said the Master softly.
“I do not believe that Mab was right,” Balgub insisted stubbornly. “Nevertheless, until she, I, and the remaining Healers in Bel can examine the thing, I will not have it tampered with for good or ill. If it came to saving the Citadel, or keeping Zyerne from the Deep, yes, I would risk using it, rather than let her have it.” Little and white as two colorless cave shrimp, his hands with their smooth moonstone rings closed upon each other on the inkstained tabletop. “We have sworn that Zyerne shall never again have the use of the Stone. Every gnome—and every man...” He cast a glance that was half-commanding, halfquestioning up at the Master, and Polycarp inclined his head slightly, “—in this place will die before she lays a hand upon what she seeks.”
“And considering what her powers will be like if she does,” Polycarp added, with the detached speculation of a scholar, “that would probably be just as well.”
“Jen?”
Jenny paused in the doorway of the makeshift guest room to which she and John had been assigned. After the windy ramparts, the place smelled close and stuffy, as the Market Hall had last night. The mingled scents of dusty paper and leather bindings of the books stored there compounded with the moldery odors of straw ticks that had gone too long without having the straw changed; after the grass-and-water scents of the east wind, they made the closeness worse. The lumpish shapes of piles of books heaped along two walls and the ghostly scaffolding of scroll racks lining the third made her think of John’s overcrowded study in the north; several of the volumes that had been put here to make room for refugees trapped by the siege had been taken from their places and already bore signs of John’s reading. John himself stood between the tall lights of two of the pointed windows, visible only as a white fold of shirt sleeve and a flash of round glass in the gloom.
She said, “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“I can’t be on the broad of my back forever.” Through his fatigue, he sounded cheerful. “I have the feeling we’re all going to be put to it again in the near future, and I’d rather do it on my feet this time.”
He was silent for a moment, watching her silhouette in the slightly lighter doorway.
He went on, “And for a woman who hasn’t slept more than an hour or so for three nights now, you’ve no room to speak. What is it, Jen?”
Like a dragon, she thought, he has a way of not being lied to. So she did not say, “What is what?” but ran her hands tiredly through her hair and crossed to where he stood.
“You’ve avoided speaking to me of it—not that we’ve had time to do so, mind. I don’t feel you’re angry with me, but I do feel your silence. It’s to do with your power, isn’t it?”
His arm was around her shoulder, her head resting against the rock-hardness of his pectoral, half-uncovered by the thin muslin shirt. She should have known, she told herself, that John would guess.
So she nodded, unable to voice the turmoil that had been all day in her mind, since the dragon’s flight and all the night before. Since sunset she had been walking the ramparts, as if it were possible to outwalk the choice that had stalked her now for ten years.
Morkeleb had offered her the realms of the dragons, the woven roads of the air. All the powers of earth and sky, she thought, and all the years of time. The key to magic is magic; the offer was the answer to all the thwarted longings of her life.
“Jen,” John said softly, “I’ve never wanted you to be torn. I know you’ve never been complete and I didn’t want to do that to you. I tried not to.”
“It wasn’t you.” She had told herself, a hundred years ago it seemed, that it was her choice, and so it had been—the choice of doing nothing and letting things go on as they were, or of doing something. And, as always, her mind shrank from the choice.
“Your magic has changed,” he said. “I’ve felt it and I’ve seen what it’s doing to you.”
“It is calling me,” she replied. “If I embrace it, I don’t think I would want to let go, even if I could. It is everything that I have wanted and worth to me, I think, everything that I have.”
She had said something similar to him long ago, when they had both been very young. In his jealous possessiveness, he had screamed at her, “But you are everything that I have or want to have!” Now his arms only tightened around her, as much, she sensed, against her grief as his own, though she knew the words he had spoken then were no less true tonight.
“It’s your choice, love,” he said- “As it’s always been your choice. Everything you’ve given me, you’ve given freely. I won’t hold you back.” Her cheek was pressed to his chest, so that she only felt the quick glint of his smile as he added, “As if I ever could, anyway.”
They went to the straw mattress and huddle of blankets, the only accommodation the besieged Citadel had been able to offer. Beyond the windows, moisture glinted on the black slates of the crowded stone houses below; a gutter’s thread was like a string of diamonds in the moonlight. In the siege camps, bells were ringing for the midnight rites of Sarmendes, lord of the wiser thoughts of day.