could be nothing but calculated temptations. From what
he had told her—from every tense line of his face and
body now—Jenny knew he was struggling with all that
was in him against his desire for his father's mistress.
Judging by her expression in the lamplight, Gareth's efforts
to resist amused Zyeme very much.
"Lady—Lady Jenny?"
Jenny's head turned quickly at the hesitant voice. The
stairway of the lodge was enclosed in an elaborate lat-
ticework of pierced stone; in the fretted shadows, she
could make out the shape of a girl of sixteen or so. Only
a little taller than Jenny herself, she was like an exquisitely
100 Barbara Hambly
dressed doll, her hair done up in an exaggeration of
Zyeme's elaborate coiffure and dyed like white-and-
purple taffy.
The girl curtseyed. "My name is Trey, Trey Cleriock."
She glanced nervously at the two forms framed in the
lighted antechamber, then back up the stair, as if fearing
that one of Zyeme's other guests'would come down and
overhear. "Please don't take this wrongly, but I came to
offer to lend you a dress for dinner, if you'd like one."
Jenny glanced down at her own gown, russet wool with
a hand like silk, banded with embroideries of red and blue.
In deference to custom which dictated that no woman in
polite society was ever seen with her hair uncovered, she
had even donned the white silk veil John had brought
back to her from the east. In the Winteriands she would
have been accounted royally clad.
"Does it matter so much?"
The girl Trey looked as embarrassed as years of deport-
ment lessons would let her. "It shouldn't," she said frankly.
"It doesn't, really, to me, but... but some people at Court
can be very cruel, especially about things like being prop-
erly dressed. I'm sorry," she added quickly, blushing as
she stepped out of the checkered darkness of the stair.
Jenny could see now that she carried a bundle of black
and silver satin and a long, trailing mass of transparent
gauze veils, whose random sequins caught stray spangles
of light.
Jenny hesitated. Ordinarily the conventions of polite
society never had bothered her, and her work left her
little time for them in any case. Knowing she would be
coming to the King's court, she had brought the best gown
she had—her only formal gown, as a matter of fact—
aware that it would be out of date. It had been no concern
to her what others thought of her for wearing it.
But from the moment she had stepped from the ferry
earlier that evening, she had had the feeling of walking
Dragonsbane 101
among unmarked pitfalls. Zyeme and her little band of
courtiers had been all polite graciousness, but she had
sensed the covert mockery in their language of eyebrows
and glances. It had angered her and puzzled her, too,
reminding her too much of the way the other children in
the village had treated her as a child. But the child in her
was alive enough to feel a morbid dread of their sport.
Zyeme's sweet laughter drifted out into the hall. "I
vow the fellow was looking about him for a bootscraper
as he crossed the threshold... I didn't know whether to
offer him a room with a bed or a pile of nice, comfortable
rushes on the floor—you know a good hostess must make
her guests feel at home..."
For a moment Jenny's natural suspicion made her won-
der if the offer of a gown itself might be part of some
scheme to make her look ridiculous. But Trey's worried
blue eyes held nothing but concern for her—and a little
for herself, lest she be spotted in the act of spoiling sport.
Jenny considered for a moment defying them, then dis-
carded the idea—whatever gratification it might bring was
scarcely worth the fight. She had been raised in the
Winteriands, and every instinct she possessed whispered
for the concealment of protective coloration.
She held out her hands for the slithery annfuls of satin.
"You can change in the little room beneath the stairs,"
Trey offered, looking relieved. "It's a long way back to
your rooms."
"And a longer one back to your own home," Jenny
pointed out, her hand on the latch of the concealed door.
"Did you send for this specially, then?"
Trey regarded her with guileless surprise. "Oh, no.
When Zyerne knew Gareth was returning, she told us all
we'd come here for a welcome dinner: my brother Bond
and myself, the Beautiful Isolde, Caspar of Walfrith and
Merriwyn of Longcleat, and all the others. I always bring
102 Barbara Hambly
two or three different dinner gowns. I mean, I didn't know
two days ago what I might want to wear."
She was perfectly serious, so Jenny repressed her smile.
She went on, "It's a little long, but I thought it looked
like your colors. Here in the south, only servants wear
brown."
"Ah." Jenny touched the folds of her own gown, which
caught a cinnamon edge in the glow from the antecham-
ber's lamps. "Thank you. Trey, very much—and Trey?
Could I ask yet another favor?"
"Of course," the girl said generously. "I can help..."
"I think I can manage. John—Lord Aversin—will be
down in a few moments..." She paused, thinking of the
somewhat old-fashioned but perfectly decent brown vel-
vet of his doublet and indoor cloak. But it was something
about which she could do nothing, and she shook her
head. "Ask him to wait, if you would."
The room beneath the stairs was small, but showed
evidence of hasty toilettes and even hastier romantic
assignations. As she changed clothes, Jenny could hear
the courtiers assembling in the hall to await the summons
for dinner. Occasionally she could catch some of the muted
bustling from the servants in the dining hall beyond the
antechamber, laying the six cloths and undercover so nec-
essary, according to Gareth, to the proper conduct of a
meal; now and then a maid would laugh and be rebuked
by the butler. Nearer, soft voices gossiped and teased:
"... well, really, what can you say about someone who
still wears those awful smocked sleeves—and she's so
proud of them, too!"... "Yes, but in broad daylight? Out-
doors? And with her husbandT'... "Well, of course it's
all a plot by the gnomes..." "Did you hear the joke about
why gnomes have flat noses?"
Closer, a man's voice laughed, and asked, "Gareth, are
you sure you found the right man? I mean, you didn't
mistake the address and fetch someone else entirely?"
Dragonsbane 103
"Er—well—" Gareth sounded torn between his loy-
alty to his friends and his dread of mockery. "I suppose
you'd call him a bit barbaric. Bond..."
"A bit!" The man Bond laughed richly. "That is to say
that the dragon has caused 'a bit' of trouble, or that old
&n
bsp; polycarp tried to murder you 'a bit.' And you're taking
him to Court? Father will be pleased."
"Gareth?" There was sudden concern in Zyeme's lilt-
ing voice. "You did get his credentials, didn't you? Mem-
bership in the Guild of Dragonsbanes, Proof of
Slaughter..."
"Testimonials from Rescued Maidens," Bond added.
"Or is that one of his rescued maidens he has with him?"
Above her head. Jenny felt rather than heard a light
descending tread on the steps. It was the tread of a man
raised to caution and it stopped, as her own had stopped
for a moment, at the point on the stairs just behind where
the light fell from the room beyond. As she hastened to
pull on the stiffened petticoats, she could feel his silence
in the entwining shadows of the latticed staircase.
"Of course!" Bond was saying, in the voice of a man
suddenly enlightened. "He has to carry her about with
him because nobody in the Winterlands can read a written
testimonial! It's similar to the barter system, you see..."
"Well," another woman's voice purred, "if you ask me,
she isn't much of a maiden."
With teasing naughtiness, Zyerne giggled. "Perhaps it
wasn't much of a dragon."
"She must be thirty if she's a day," someone else added.
"Now, my dear," Zyeme chided, "let us not be catty.
That rescue was a long time ago."
In the general laugh. Jenny was not sure, but she thought
she heard the footsteps overhead soundlessly retreat.
Zyerne went on, "I do think, if this Dragonsbane of yours
was going to cart a woman along, he might at least have
picked a pretty one, instead of someone who looks like
104 Barbara Hambly
a gnome—a short little thing with all that hair. She scarcely
needs a veil for modesty."
"That's probably why she doesn't wear one."
"If you're going to be charitable, my dear..."
"She isn't..." began Gareth's voice indignantly.
"Oh, Gareth, don't take everything so seriously!"
Zyeme's laughter mocked him. "It's such a bore, darling,
besides giving you wrinkles. There. Smile. Really, it's all
in jest—a man who can't take a little joking is only a short
step from far more serious sins, like eating his salad with
a fish fork. I say, you don't think..."
Her hands shaking with a queeriy feelingless anger,
Jenny straightened her veils. The mere touch of the stiff-
ened gauze fired a new spurt of irritation through her,
annoyance at them and that same sense of bafflement she
had feltbefore. The patterns of human relationships inter-
ested her, and this one, shot through with a web of arti-
ficiality and malice, explained a good deal about Gareth.
But the childishness of it quelled her anger, and she was
able to slip soundlessly from her cubbyhole and stand
among them for several minutes before any of them became
aware of her presence.
Lamps had been kindled in the hall. In the midst of a
small crowd of admiring courtiers, Zyeme seemed to spar-
kle bewitchingly under a powdering of diamonds and lace.
"I'll tell you," she was saying. "However much gold
Gareth was moved to offer the noble Dagonsbane as a re-
ward, I think we can offer him a greater one. We'll show
him a few of the amenities of civilization. How does that
sound? He slays our dragon and we teach him how to eat
with a fork?"
There was a good deal of appreciative laughter at this.
Jenny noticed the girl Trey joining in, but without much
enthusiasm. The man standing next to her must be her
brother Bond, she guessed; he had his sister's fine-boned
prettiness, set off by fair hair of which one lovelock, trail-
Dragonsbane 105
. down onto a lace collar, was dyed blue. Beside his
graceful slimness, Gareth looked—and no doubt felt—
eangly, overgrown, and miserably out of place; his
expression was one of profound unhappiness and embar-
rassment.
It might have been merely because he wasn't wearing
his spectacles—they were doubtless hideously unfash-
ionable—but he was looking about him at the exquisite
carvings of the rafters, at the familiar glimmer of lamplit
silk and stiffened lace, and at the faces of his friends, with
a weary confusion, as if they had all become strangers to
him.
Even now. Bond was saying, "And is your Dragons-
bane as great as Silkydrawers the Magnificent, who slew
the Crimson-and-Purple-Striped Dragon in the Golden
Woods back in the Reign of Potpourri the Well-Endowed—
or was it Kneebiter the Ineffectual? Do enlighten me,
Prince."
But before the wretched Gareth could answer, Zyeme
said suddenly, "My dears!" and came hurrying to Jenny,
her sleeve ruffles. The smile on her face was as sweet
and welcoming as if she greeted a long-lost friend. "My
dearest Lady Jenny—forgive me for not seeing you sooner!
You look exquisite! Did darling Trey lend you her black-
and-silver? How very charitable of her..."
A bell rang in the dining room, and the minstrels in the
gallery began to play. Zyeme took Jenny's arm to lead in
the guests—first women, then men, after the custom of
the south—to dinner. Jenny glanced quickly around the
hall, looking for John but knowing he would not be there.
A qualm crossed her stomach at the thought of sitting
through this alone.
Beside her, the light voice danced on. "Oh, yes, you're
a mage, too, aren't you?... You know I did have some
very good training, but it's the sort of thing that has always
106 Barbara Hambly
come to me by instinct. You must tell me about using your
powers to make a living. I've never had to do that, you
know..." Like the prick of knives in her back, she felt
the covert smiles of those who walked in procession
behind.
Yet because they were deliberate. Jenny found that the
younger woman's slights had lost all power to wound her.
They stirred in her less anger than Zyeme's temptation
of Gareth had. Arrogance she had expected, for it was
the besetting sin of the magebom and Jenny knew herself
to be as much prey to it as the others and she sensed the
enormous power within Zyeme. But this condescension
was a girl's ploy, the trick of one who was herself insecure.
What, she wondered, did Zyerne have to feel insecure
about?
As they took their places at the table. Jenny's eyes
traveled slowly along its length, seeing it laid like a winter
forest with snowy linen and the crystal icicles of cande-
labra pendant with jewels. Each silver plate was inlaid
with traceries of gold and flanked with a dozen little forks
and spoons, the complicated armory of etiquette; all these
young courtiers in their scented velvet and stiffened lace
were clearly her slaves, each more interested in carrying
&nbs
p; on a dialogue, however brief, with her, than with any of
their neighbors. Everything about that delicate hunting
lodge was designed to speak her name, from the entwined
Zs and Us carved in the comers of the ceiling to the
delicate bronze of the horned goddess of love Hartem-
garbes, wrought in Zyeme's image, in its niche near the
door. Even the delicate music of hautbois and hurdy-
gurdy in the gallery was a proclamation, a boast that Zyeme
had and would tolerate nothing but the very finest.
Why then the nagging fear that lay behind pettiness?
She turned to look at Zyeme with clinical curiosity,
wondering about the pattern of that giri's life. Zyeme's
eyes met hers and caught their expression of calm and
Dragonsbane 107
slightly pitying question. For an instant, the golden orbs
narrowed, scorn and spite and anger stirring in their depths.
Then the sweet smile returned, and Zyerne asked, "My
dear, you haven't touched a bite. Do you use forks in the
north?"
There was a sudden commotion in the arched doorway
of the hall. One of the minstrels in the gallery, shocked,
hit a glaringly wrong squawk out of his recorder; the oth-
ers stumbled to silence.
"Gaw," Aversin's voice said, and every head along the
shimmering board turned, as if at the clatter of a dropped
plate. "Late again."
He stepped into the waxlight brightness of the hall with
a faint jingle of scraps of chain mail and stood looking
about him, his spectacles glinting like steel-rimmed moons.
He had changed back into the battered black leather he'd