He must have felt the returning glint of her exasperation, for he subsided, his narrow chin sinking to rest upon the long-boned hooks of one black foreclaw. Beyond the spears of his backbone she saw the great tail lash.
The others came out, Gareth and Trey supporting John between them. He had slept a little and rested and looked better than he had. The spells of healing she had laid upon him were having their effect. He gazed up at the dark shape of the dragon, and Jenny felt their eyes meet and knew that Morkeleb spoke to him, thought she heard not what he said.
John replied in words. “Well, it was just as well, wasn’t it? Thank you.”
Their eyes held for a moment more. Then the dragon raised his head and turned it away irritably, transferring his cold silver gaze to Gareth. Jenny saw the young man flush with shame and confusion; whatever the dragon said to him, he made no reply at all.
They laid John down with his back to the granite door pillar, his plaid folded beneath his shoulders. His spectacles caught the starlight, rather like the silvery glow of the dragon’s eyes. Jenny seated herself on the steps between him and the dragon’s talons; Gareth and Trey, as if for mutual protection, sat opposite and close together, staring up in wonder at the thin, serpentine form of the Black Dragon of Nast Wall.
In time, Jenny’s flawed, silver-shot voice broke the silence. “What is in the Deep?” she asked. “What is it that Zyerne wants so badly there? All her actions have been aimed toward having it—her hold over the King, her attempts to seduce Gareth, her desire for a child, the siege of Halnath, and the summoning of the dragon.”
She did not summon me, retorted Morkeleb angrily. She could not have done that. She has no hold upon my mind.
“You’re here, ain’t you?” John drawled, and the dragon’s metallic claws scraped upon the stone as his head swung round.
Jenny said sharply, “John! Morkeleb!”
The dragon subsided with a faint hiss, but the bobs of his antennae twitched with annoyance.
She went on, “Might it be that she is herself summoned?”
I tell you there is nothing there, the dragon said. Nothing save stone and gold, water and darkness.
“Let’s back up a bit, then,” John said. “Not what does Zyerne want in the Deep, but just what does she want?”
Gareth shrugged. “It can’t be gold. You’ve seen how she lives. She could have all the gold in the Realm for the asking. She has the King...” He hesitated, and then went on calmly, “If I hadn’t left for the north when I did, she would certainly have had me, and very probably a son to rule through for the rest of her life.”
“She used to live in the Deep,” Trey pointed out. “It seems that, ever since she left it, she’s been trying to get control of it. Why did she leave? Did the gnomes expel her?”
“Not really,” Gareth said. “That is, they didn’t formally forbid her to enter the Deep at all until this year. Up until then she could come and go in the upper levels, just like any other person from Bel.”
“Well if she’s shapestrong, that’s to say she had the run of the place, so long as she stayed clear of the mageborn,” John reasoned, propping his specs with one forefinger. “And what happened a year ago?”
“I don’t know,” Gareth said. “Dromar petitioned my father in the name of the Lord of the Deep not to let her—or any of the children of men, for that matter...”
“Again, that’s a logical precaution against a shapeshifter.”
“Maybe.” Gareth shrugged. “I didn’t think of it then—a lot of the unpopularity of the gnomes started then, because of that stipulation. But they said Zyerne specifically, because she had...” He fished in his compendious, ballad-trained memory for the exact wording. “... ‘defiled a holy thing.’”
“No idea what it was?”
The prince shook his head. Like John, he looked drawn and tired, his shirt a fluttering ruin of dirt and spark holes, his face sparkling faintly with an almost-invisible adolescent stubble. Trey, sitting beside him, looked little better.
With her typical practicality, she had carried a comb in her reticule and had combed out her hair, so that it hung past her hips in crinkled swaths, the smooth sheen of its fantastic colors softened to a stippling of snow white and violet, like the pelt of some fabulous beast against the matted nap of Gareth’s cloak.
“Defiled a holy thing.” Jenny repeated thoughtfully. “It isn’t how Mab put it. She said that she had poisoned the heart of the Deep—but the heart of the Deep is a place, rather than an object.”
“Is it?” said John curiously.
“Of course. I’ve been there.” The silence of it whispered along her memory. “But as for what Zyerne wants...”
“You’re a witch, Jen,” said John. “What do you want?”
Gareth looked shocked at the comparison, but Jenny only thought for a moment, then said, “Power. Magic. The key to magic is magic. My greatest desire, to which I would sacrifice all things else, is to increase my skills.”
“But she’s already the strongest sorceress in the land,” Trey protested.
“Not according to Mab.”
“I suppose there were gnome wizards in the Deep stronger,” John said interestedly. “If there hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have needed to summon Morkeleb.”
She did not summon me! The dragon’s tail lashed again, like a great cat’s. She could not. Her power is not that great.
“Somebody’s is,” John remarked. “Before you wiped out the Deep and the mages in it, the gnomes were strong enough to keep Zyerne out. But they all perished, or at least all the strong ones did...”
“No,” Jenny said. “That’s what has puzzled me. Mab said that she herself was stronger than Zyerne at some time in the past. That means that either Mab grew weaker, or Zyerne stronger.”
“Could Mab’s power have been weakened in some way when Morkeleb showed up?” John glanced up at the dragon. “Would that be possible? That your magic would lessen someone else’s?”
I know nothing of the magic of humans, nor yet of the magic of gnomes, the dragon replied. Yet among us, there is no taking away of another’s magic. It is like taking away another’s thoughts from him, and leaving him with none.
“That’s another thing,” Jenny said, folding her arms about her drawn-up knees. “When I met Zyerne yesterday... My powers have grown, but I should not have been able to defeat her as I did. She is shapestrong—she should have far more strength than I did.” She glanced over at Gareth. “But she didn’t shift shape.”
“But she can,” the boy protested. “I’ve seen her.”
“Lately?” asked John suddenly.
Gareth and Trey looked at one another.
“Since the coming of the dragon? Or, to put it another way, since she hasn’t been able to enter the Deep?”
“But either way, it’s inconceivable,” Jenny insisted. “Power isn’t something that’s contingent upon any place or thing, any more than knowledge is. Zyerne’s power couldn’t have weakened any more than Mab’s could. Power is within you—here, or in Bel, or in the Winterlands, or wherever you are. It is something you learn, something you develop. AH power must be paid for...”
“Except that it’s never looked as if Zyerne had paid for hers,” John said. His glance went from Jenny to the dragon and back. “You said the magic of the gnomes is different. Is there a way she could have stolen power, Jen? That she could be using something she’s no right to? I’m thinking how you said she doesn’t know about Limitations—obviously, since she summoned a dragon she can’t get rid of...”
She did not summon me!
“She seems to think she did,” John pointed out. “At least she’s kept saying how she was the one who kicked the gnomes out of the Deep. But mostly I’m thinking about the wrinkles on her face.”