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    Dragonsbane
    Dragonsbane
    Dragonsbane
    Ebook401 pages7 hours

    Dragonsbane

    By Barbara Hambly

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    An idealistic young prince convinces an aging warrior and a struggling witch to help him kill the dragon that is terrorizing his kingdom
    As a vicious dragon stalks the Southlands, Crown Prince Gareth ventures to the forbidding North in search of the only man who can kill it. He is Lord Aversin, the Dragonsbane, whose dragon-slaying days have won him renown across the land. But when Gareth finds Lord Aversin, he discovers the mighty hero is squat and bespectacled, the ruler of a mud-village who admits that he killed the dragon not with a lance, but with ignoble poison. Still, he’ll have to do.   Gareth and Aversin set off in company with Jenny Waynest, a witch with great ambitions but disappointingly puny powers—a ragtag crew destined to become legendary, or die in the attempt.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMar 29, 2011
    ISBN9781453216866
    Author

    Barbara Hambly

    <DIV>Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century. After receiving a master's degree in medieval history, she published The Time of the Dark, the first novel in the Darwath saga, in 1982, establishing herself as an author of serious speculative fiction. Since then she has created several series, including the Windrose Chronicles, Sun-Cross, and Sun Wolf and Starhawk, in addition to writing for the Star Wars and Star Trek universes.<br><br>Besides fantasy, Hambly has won acclaim for the James Asher vampire series, which won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989, and the Benjamin January mystery series, featuring a brilliant African-American surgeon in antebellum New Orleans. She lives in Los Angeles.</DIV>

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    Reviews for Dragonsbane

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      The intricately described settings are a bit much, even for me. It reflects the style of its original publication date, 1986. Not quite as in-depth as Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave series, but leaning in that wordy direction.That said, this remains one of the most beautiful love stories I've read. Because it's a book I re-read every few years, I've treated myself to a paperback. Even when my trusty Kindle dies, this book will be here. Four stars.
    • 4/5
      A childhood book re-read that I'm going to keep. I read this right after "The Paladin" and it was remarkable how two fantasy books with a male/female lead pairing could be so different. In this one, an unassuming lord who once killed a dragon is sought out to come aid the capital city against a new dragon, and the witch who is also the mother of his children decides to come with him. The story is told from the witch's perspective, we get to see her struggling to balance her quest for power and knowledge against her love for a warrior and their children. Politics and treachery abound in the city, and the fight doesn't end with defeating the dragon. The main antagonist is convincingly insane, turned so far inside and twisted that you can just barely see how their actions make sense.
    • 2/5
      When a courtier comes riding into Jenny's path, flourishing his words and falling off his horse gallantly, she can't help but shake her head. Especially when she learns that he's there to convince Lord Aversin to slay a dragon for the kingdom. And as a witch and his lover, Jenny can't help but be dragged into this adventure.

      Overall, a rather dull book. The characters read very world-weary and that translates into the book as well. Most of it is tromping through the wilderness to get to a place with a rather pragmatic and dismal tone. I'm all for practicality, but for some reason this book just reeks of it. Which makes it a little dull.
      It's satirical in a toss-cold-water-on-you sort of way. It's the type of book that literally says hey, your Dragonbane is a hick and adventuring actually is cold and wet and icky. But there's no spark of humor or entertainment in this book at all. Just pragmatic Jenny with her little magic and down-to-earth John with his good intentions to help out his king and his lands.

      I did appreciate a lot of aspects of the book. Gareth was both annoying and entertaining. I absolutely loved the ending and the idea that there is a spirit animal in every person. I loved Jenny's interaction with the dragon, and oh my gosh, that description of music and gold - that was just beautiful.

      But... this book was just so practical and almost boring.

      Two stars for a good concept. But at the same time, two stars for making it rather grey and dull. Recommended only for those who want to read about a down to earth kind of adventure.
    • 5/5
      I can't even say why, whether it's the magic, the world, the fact that the main character is a middle-aged witch who's trying to balance her life as a mother and her career in magic, the magic with its olfactory and msucial components, the fact that our manly hero is as much knight of the realm as pig farmer, the fact that our gallant prince valiant is a bookish short-sighted boy, the fact that our princess is tough and can handle herself in spite of her girlishness - I think it was everything.

      I Finished it to my wife a few years ago, apparently it doesn't pass the test of time, but still, the characters have stayed with me.
    • 4/5

      In many ways a fairly standard fantasy fare with silly kings, princes, evil dragons, greedy gnomes, dragonslayers and what have you, but made special by the main characters being mature adults. Not a coming of age story, but a being of age story.

      The rest of the book becomes background as the main character is forced to chose between love and her dreams.
    • 1/5
      Trying a dragon/fantasy to see if I would like it, but just couldn't get into it. Gave it 110 pages, but not my cup of tea. Sorry Mrs. Hambly.
    • 5/5
      Unexpected and lovely. An excellent and unusual heroine.
    • 4/5
      As expected (it is a Hambly), a very rich, well-written tale, with a lot of desperation points and hard choices. It's all Jenny's viewpoint, I'd have been interested to see what John thought now and then. I like the choice she finally made - I'd been thinking about it much earlier, when she first met Zyene. Magic makes magic - but what's the point of it? The dragon is fascinating, a very alien thought process (we see more of his thoughts than John's...). Rich and grim - I have the rest of the series as well, but no way I could read them in quick succession. I'll take a break between each book - though I will read the whole series.
    • 4/5
      Hambly is such a beautiful writer. I love her dragons.
    • 4/5
      It has been many years since I last read this and I just wanted to check that I was right, and I was, this is an excellent read.
      Jenny and John are not an old married couple but they sure do behave like it, and they have two children. Once upon a time John killed a dragon and now he's a living legend. More interested in keeping his people alive and learning more of the ways of people from the past than living up to the title of Dragonsbane, but when Gareth comes and begs that they defeat another dragon, and he invokes the King's name, the King being John's sovereign in some ways he has to come when he calls. So he responds and finds complicated politics and messy personalities that he has to deal with along with Jenny who has to deal with her own temptations and issues.
      It's a story of love and aging and career versus family and I really enjoyed the read, more now that I'm older.
    • 4/5
      When a huge black dragon descends upon the Deep of Ylferdun, young Gareth sets out to find the Dragonsbane, the only man alive who has ever defeated a dragon. But Sir John Aversin is not what Gareth had hoped for—he’s a scruffy academic who is less concerned about honor than he is the health of his villagers’ pigs. And Aversin’s lady love is not what Gareth had expected either: a plain, middle-aged witch, who has borne Aversin two sons out of wedlock and is utterly unapologetic. Swallowing his misgivings, Gareth convinces Aversin and his witch, Jenny Waynest, to travel to the King’s Court and battle the dragon. But once there, will anyone listen to two hicks, past their prime and without wealth or connections?
      I loved this book. It’s a wholly grown-up fantasy novel.
    • 3/5
      See review on Composite Book "Winterlands". 
    • 5/5
      I like how the two main characters already have past history. They're already an established couple with good and bad sides to it and they've already taken on one dragon in their own kingdom. It changes the story from the typical "What are we going to do?!" scenario to "Darn it, not this again." And that atypical viewpoint is a lot of fun. Plus, I really love Jenny's struggles with a normal life versus a sorcerer's live. I think too often we see characters who are happy to accept or reject an isolated life in a tower somewhere in trade for magic. It is wonderful to see a character who wants both but has to pick just one.

      This book falls somewhere in between Sword & Sorcery and heroic fantasy.
    • 5/5
      An excellent book with a strong female protagonist and her partner. Lord John Aversin is not your typical hero - he's pragmatic, down to earth and just as happy getting his boots muddy and talking about pigs.
      He and Jenny Waynest have a very practical approach when it comes to tackling a dragon. None of this charging in with a lance (to the disappointment of young Gareth who sees life though the songs of the bards). They understand the strength and danger of a dragon and work out very carefully how to improve their odds of survival.

      Jenny isn't a typical heroine either. She's no longer in the flush of youth, she has two sons and although she has magical abilities, they aren't strong. She has continual conflict deciding between her magic, which requires seclusion, and her family.

      Dragons in this book are as I want them to be. Powerful, dangerous, but beautiful and magical the same time.

      Jenny can fight one to save the people it would kill, but can also weep for the loss of something unique.

      Recommended.
    • 5/5
      I bought this on Kindle, saw the cover, and know that I also bought it in paperback but never read it. More fool I.

      It is the tale of the quest to slay a dragon, and then it is so much more. The protagonist is a woman, Jenny Wannest, who is a mage woman with a lover, John Aversin, and two children. At the beginning, we learn that Jenny is pulled between her calling, her career as it were, and her family. But she's not a particularly powerful or great mage, and learning takes effort and concentration that is hard to reconcile with a family.

      Then a traveler, Gareth, comes seeking the only Dragonsbane left alive - that is, John. And, you see, the traveler's kingdom has a dragon that needs eliminating. Of course, she and John return with Gareth, and get entangled in the life of that kingdom while they try to fulfill that quest.

      The story unfolds in beautiful language and vivid mental pictures. Is the dragon really the bad guy here? There is a coming of age story, and an adult story of choices between different goals in life, as well as a taste of what the story might be from the dragon's point of view. I found the book compelling and not quite the same old fantasy.
    • 4/5
      Very typical Hambly, and very good. A slightly differen take on dragons and dragon hunting. It actually reminds me of Dragonslayer, but its much better. As usual with Hambly's books, the characters are the true strength of the book. They are anything but shallow stereotypes, and really draw you in. Her take on dragons is refreshing also.
    • 5/5
      magnificent and lush story set in a fantasy/medieval setting, which touches more on loyalty and honor than the fantastic
    • 4/5
      Loved this book - didn't need a sequel.
    • 5/5
      Life changing. Tried, but never could get into the rest of the series.
    • 4/5
      I was kind of surprised at how much I liked this, left me wonderin why I'd never picked it up before. Wonderful characters, the whole person behind the ballad thing, the relationship between Aversin and Jenny. Also didn't know there were three more in the series. Thought it was a stand-alone

    Book preview

    Dragonsbane - Barbara Hambly

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    Dragonsbane

    Barbara Hambly

    For Allan

    Contents

    CHAPTER I

    CHAPTER II

    CHAPTER III

    CHAPTER IV

    CHAPTER V

    CHAPTER VI

    CHAPTER VII

    CHAPTER VIII

    CHAPTER IX

    CHAPTER X

    CHAPTER XI

    CHAPTER XII

    CHAPTER XIII

    CHAPTER XIV

    CHAPTER XV

    CHAPTER XVI

    CHAPTER XVII

    CHAPTER XVIII

    A Biography of Barbara Hambly

    CHAPTER I

    BANDITS OFTEN LAY in wait in the ruins of the old town at the fourways—Jenny Waynest thought there were three of them this morning.

    She was not sure any more whether it was magic which told her this, or simply the woodcraftiness and instinct for the presence of danger that anyone developed who had survived to adulthood in the Winterlands. But as she drew rein short of the first broken walls, where she knew she would still be concealed by the combination of autumn fog and early morning gloom beneath the thicker trees of the forest, she noted automatically that the horse droppings in the sunken clay of the roadbed were fresh, untouched by the frost that edged the leaves around them. She noted, too, the silence in the ruins ahead; no coney’s foot rustled the yellow spill of broomsedge cloaking the hill slope where the old church had been, the church sacred to the Twelve Gods beloved of the old Kings. She thought she smelled the smoke of a concealed fire near the remains of what had been a crossroads inn, but honest men would have gone there straight and left a track in the nets of dew that covered the weeds all around. Jenny’s white mare Moon Horse pricked her long ears at the scent of other beasts, and Jenny wind-whispered to her for silence, smoothing the raggedy mane against the long neck. But she had been looking for all those signs before she saw them.

    She settled into stillness in the protective cloak of fog and shadow, like a partridge blending with the brown of the woods. She was a little like a partridge herself, dark and small and nearly invisible in the dull, random plaids of the northlands; a thin, compactly built woman, tough as the roots of moorland heather. After a moment of silence, she wove her magic into a rope of mist and cast it along the road toward the nameless ruins of the town.

    It was something she had done even as a child, before the old wander-mage Caerdinn had taught her the ways of power. All her thirty-seven years, she had lived in the Winterlands—she knew the smells of danger. The late-lingering birds of autumn, thrushes and blackbirds, should have been waking in the twisted brown mats of ivy that half-hid the old inn’s walls—they were silent. After a moment, she caught the scent of horses, and the ranker, dirtier stench of men.

    One bandit would be in the stumpy ruin of the old tower that commanded the south and eastward roads, part of the defenses of the ruined town left from when the prosperity of the King’s law had given it anything to defend. They always hid there. A second, she guessed, was behind the walls of the old inn. After a moment she sensed the third, watching the crossroads from a yellow thicket of seedy tamarack. Her magic brought the stink of their souls to her, old greeds and the carrion-bone memories of some cherished rape or murder that had given a momentary glow of power to lives largely divided between the giving and receiving of physical pain. Having lived all her life in the Winterlands, she knew that these men could scarcely help being what they were; she had to put aside both her hatred of them, and her pity for them, before she could braid the spells that she laid upon their minds.

    Her concentration deepened further. She stirred judiciously at that compost of memories, whispering to their blunted minds of the bored sleepiness of men who have watched too long. Unless every illusion and Limitation was wrought correctly, they would see her when she moved. Then she loosened her halberd in its holster upon her saddle-tree, settled her sheepskin jacket a little more closely about her shoulders and, with scarcely breath or movement, urged Moon Horse forward toward the ruins.

    The man in the tower she never saw at all, from first to last. Through the browning red leaves of a screen of hawthorn, she glimpsed two horses tethered behind a ruined wall near the inn, their breath making plumes of white in the dawn cold; a moment later she saw the bandit crouching behind the crumbling wall, a husky man in greasy old leathers. He had been watching the road, but started suddenly and cursed; looking down, he began scratching his crotch with vigor and annoyance but no particular surprise. He did not see Jenny as she ghosted past. The third bandit, sitting his rawboned black horse between a broken corner of a wall and a spinney of raggedy birches, simply stared out ahead of him, lost in the daydreams she had sent.

    She was directly in front of him when a boy’s voice shouted from down the southward road, LOOK OUT!

    Jenny whipped her halberd clear of its rest as the bandit woke with a start. He saw her and roared a curse. Peripherally Jenny was aware of hooves pounding up the road toward her; the other traveler, she thought with grim annoyance, whose well-meant warning had snapped the man from his trance. As the bandit bore down upon her, she got a glimpse of a young man riding out of the mist full-pelt, clearly intent upon rescue.

    The bandit was armed with a short sword, but swung at her with the flat of it, intending to unhorse her without damaging her too badly to rape later. She feinted with the halberd to bring his weapon up, then dipped the long blade on the pole’s end down under his guard. Her legs clinched to Moon Horse’s sides to take the shock as the weapon knifed through the man’s belly. The leather was tough, but there was no metal underneath. She ripped the blade clear as the man doubled up around it, screaming and clawing; both horses danced and veered with the smell of the hot, spraying blood. Before the man hit the muddy bed of the road, Jenny had wheeled her horse and was riding to the aid of her prospective knight-errant, who was engaged in a sloppy, desperate battle with the bandit who had been concealed behind the ruined outer wall.

    Her rescuer was hampered by his long cloak of ruby red velvet, which had got entangled with the basketwork hilt of his jeweled longsword. His horse was evidently better trained and more used to battle than he was: the maneuverings of the big liver-bay gelding were the only reason the boy hadn’t been killed outright. The bandit, who had gotten himself mounted at the boy’s first cry of warning, had driven them back into the hazel thickets that grew along the tumbled stones of the inn wall, and, as Jenny kicked Moon Horse into the fray, the boy’s trailing cloak hung itself up on the low branches and jerked its wearer ignominiously out of the saddle with the horse’s next swerve.

    Using her right hand as the fulcrum of a swing, Jenny swept the halberd’s blade at the bandit’s sword arm. The man veered his horse to face her; she got a glimpse of piggy, close-set eyes under the rim of a dirty iron cap. Behind her she could hear her previous assailant still screaming. Evidently her current opponent could as well, for he ducked the first slash and swiped at Moon Horse’s face to cause the mare to shy, then spurred past Jenny and away up the road, willing neither to face a weapon that so outreached his own, nor to stop for his comrade who had done so.

    There was a brief crashing in the thickets of briar as the man who had been concealed in the tower fled into the raw mists, then silence, save for the dying bandit’s hoarse, bubbling sobs.

    Jenny dropped lightly from Moon Horse’s back. Her young rescuer was still thrashing in the bushes like a stoat in a sack, half-strangled on his bejeweled cloak strap. She used the hook on the back of the halberd’s blade to twist the long court-sword from his hand, then stepped in to pull the muffling folds of velvet aside. He struck at her with his hands, like a man swatting at wasps. Then he seemed to see her for the first time and stopped, staring up at her with wide, myopic gray eyes.

    After a long moment of surprised stillness, he cleared his throat and unfastened the chain of gold and rubies that held the cloak under his chin. Er—thank you, my lady, he gasped in a slightly winded voice, and got to his feet. Though Jenny was used to people being taller than she, this young man was even more so than most. I—uh— His skin was as fine-textured and fair as his hair, which was already, despite his youth, beginning to thin away toward early baldness. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, with a natural awkwardness increased tenfold by the difficult task of thanking the intended object of a gallant defense for saving his life.

    My profoundest gratitude, he said, and performed a supremely graceful Dying Swan, the like of which had not been seen in the Winterlands since the nobles of the Kings had departed in the wake of the retreating royal armies. I am Gareth of Magloshaldon, a traveler upon errantry in these lands, and I wish to extend my humblest expressions of...

    Jenny shook her head and stilled him with an upraised hand. Wait here, she said, and turned away.

    Puzzled, the boy followed her.

    The first bandit who had attacked her still lay in the clay muck of the roadbed. The soaking blood had turned it into a mess of heel gouges, strewn with severed entrails; the stink was appalling. The man was still groaning weakly. Against the matte pallor of the foggy morning, the scarlet of the blood stood out shockingly bright.

    Jenny sighed, feeling suddenly cold and weary and unclean, looking upon what she had done and knowing what it was up to her yet to do. She knelt beside the dying man, drawing the stillness of her magic around her again. She was aware of Gareth’s approach, his boots threshing through the dew-soaked bindweed in a hurried rhythm that broke when he tripped on his sword. She felt a tired stirring of anger at him for having made this necessary. Had he not cried out, both she and this poor, vicious, dying brute would each have gone their ways...

    ...And he would doubtless have killed Gareth after she passed. And other travelers besides.

    She had long since given up trying to unpick wrong from right, present should from future if. If there was a pattern to all things, she had given up thinking that it was simple enough to lie within her comprehension. Still, her soul felt filthy within her as she put her hands to the dying man’s clammy, greasy temples, tracing the proper runes while she whispered the death-spells. She felt the life go out of him and tasted the bile of self-loathing in her mouth.

    Behind her, Gareth whispered, You—he’s—he’s dead.

    She got to her feet, shaking the bloody dirt from her skirts. I could not leave him for the weasels and foxes, she replied, starting to walk away. She could hear the small carrion-beasts already, gathering at the top of the bank above the misty slot of the road, drawn to the blood-smell and waiting impatiently for the killer to abandon her prey. Her voice was brusque—she had always hated the death-spells. Having grown up in a land without law, she had killed her first man when she was fourteen, and six since, not counting the dying she had helped from life as the only midwife and healer from the Gray Mountains to the sea. It never got easier.

    She wanted to be gone from the place, but the boy Gareth put a staying hand on her arm, looking from her to the corpse in a kind of nauseated fascination. He had never seen death, she thought. At least, not in its raw form. The pea green velvet of his travel-stained doublet, the gold stampwork of his boots, the tucked embroidery of his ruffled lawn shirt, and the elaborate, feathered crestings of his green-tipped hair all proclaimed him for a courtier. All things, even death, were doubtless done with a certain amount of style where he came from.

    He gulped. You’re—you’re a witch!

    One corner of her mouth moved slightly; she said, So I am.

    He stepped back from her in fear, then staggered, clutching at a nearby sapling for support. She saw then that among the decorative slashings of his doublet sleeve was an uglier opening, the shirt visible through it dark and wet. I’ll be fine, he protested faintly, as she moved to support him. I just need... He made a fumbling effort to shake free of her hand and walk, his myopic gray eyes peering at the ankle-deep drifts of moldering leaves that lined the road.

    What you need is to sit down. She led him away to a broken boundary stone and forced him to do so and unbuttoned the diamond studs that held the sleeve to the body of the doublet. The wound did not look deep, but it was bleeding badly. She pulled loose the leather thongs that bound the wood-black knots of her hair and used them as a tourniquet above the wound. He winced and gasped and tried to loosen it as she tore a strip from the hem of her shift for a bandage, so that she slapped at his fingers like a child’s. Then, a moment later, he tried to get up again. I have to find...

    I’ll find them, Jenny said firmly, knowing what it was that he sought. She finished binding his wound and walked back to the tangle of hazel bushes where Gareth and the bandit had struggled. The frosty daylight glinted on a sharp reflection among the leaves. The spectacles she found there were bent and twisted out of shape, the bottom of one round lens decorated by a star-fracture. Flicking the dirt and wetness from them, she carried them back.

    Now, she said, as Gareth fumbled them on with hands shaking from weakness and shock. You need that arm looked to. I can take you...

    My lady, I’ve no time. He looked up at her, squinting a little against the increasing brightness of the sky behind her head. I’m on a quest, a quest of terrible importance.

    Important enough to risk losing your arm if the wound turns rotten?

    As if such things could not happen to him, did she only have the wits to realize it, he went on earnestly, I’ll be all right, I tell you. I am seeking Lord Aversin the Dragonsbane, Thane of Alyn Hold and Lord of Wyr, the greatest knight ever to have ridden the Winterlands. Have you heard of him hereabouts? Tall as an angel, handsome as song... His fame has spread through the southlands the way the floodwaters spread in the spring, the noblest of chevaliers... I must find Alyn Hold, before it is too late.

    Jenny sighed, exasperated. So you must, she said. It is to Alyn Hold that I am going to take you.

    The squinting eyes got round as the boy’s mouth fell open. To—to Alyn Hold? Really? It’s near here?

    It’s the nearest place where we can get your arm seen to, she said. Can you ride?

    Had he been dying, she thought, amused, he would still have sprung to his feet as he did. Yes, of course; I—do you know Lord Aversin, then?

    Jenny was silent for a moment. Then, softly, she said, Yes. Yes, I know him.

    She whistled up the horses, the tall white Moon Horse and the big liver-bay gelding, whose name, Gareth said, was Battlehammer. In spite of his exhaustion and the pain of his roughly bound wound, Gareth made a move to offer her totally unnecessary assistance in mounting. As they reined up over the ragged stone slopes to avoid the corpse in its rank-smelling puddles of mud, Gareth asked, If—if you’re a witch, my lady, why couldn’t you have fought them with magic instead of with a weapon? Thrown fire at them, or turned them into frogs, or struck them blind...

    She had struck them blind, in a sense, she thought wryly—at least until he shouted.

    But she only said, Because I cannot.

    For reasons of honor? he asked dubiously. Because there are some situations in which honor cannot apply...

    No. She glanced sidelong at him through the astonishing curtains of her loosened hair. It is just that my magic is not that strong.

    And she nudged her horse into a quicker walk, passing into the vaporous shadows of the forest’s bare, over-hanging boughs.

    Even after all these years of knowing it, she found the admission still stuck in her throat. She had come to terms with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius in the single thing she had ever wanted. The most she had ever been able to do was to pretend that she accepted it, as she pretended now.

    Ground fog curled around the feet of the horses; through the clammy vapors, tree roots thrust from the roadbanks like the arms of half-buried corpses. The air here felt dense and smelled of mold, and now and then, from the woods above them, came the furtive crackle of dead leaves, as if the trees plotted among themselves in the fog.

    Did you—did you see him slay the dragon? Gareth asked, after they had ridden in silence for some minutes. Would you tell me about it? Aversin is the only living Dragonsbane—the only man who has slain a dragon. There are ballads about him everywhere, about his courage and his noble deeds... That’s my hobby. Ballads, I mean, the ballads of Dragonsbanes, like Selkythar the White back in the reign of Ennyta the Good and Antara Warlady and her brother, during the Kinwars. They say her brother slew... By the way he caught himself up Jenny guessed he could have gone on about the great Dragonsbanes of the past for hours, only someone had told him not to bore people with the subject. I’ve always wanted to see such a thing—a true Dragonsbane—a glorious combat. His renown must cover him like a golden mantle.

    And, rather to her surprise, he broke into a light, wavery tenor:

    Riding up the hillside gleaming,

    Like flame in the golden sunlight streaming;

    Sword of steel strong in hand,

    Wind-swift hooves spurning land,

    Tall as an angel, stallion-strong,

    Stern as a god, bright as song...

    In the dragon’s shadow the maidens wept,

    Fair as lilies in darkness kept.

    ‘I know him afar, so tall is he,

    His plumes as bright as the rage of the sea,’

    Spake she to her sister, ‘fear no ill...’

    Jenny looked away, feeling something twist inside her at the memory of the Golden Dragon of Wyr.

    She remembered as if it were yesterday instead of ten years ago the high-up flash of gold in the wan northern sky, the plunge of fire and shadow, the boys and girls screaming on the dancing floor at Great Toby. They were memories she knew should have been tinted only with horror; she was aware that she should have felt only gladness at the dragon’s death. But stronger than the horror, the taste of nameless grief and desolation came back to her from those times, with the metallic stench of the dragon’s blood and the singing that seemed to shiver the searing air...

    Her heart felt sick within her. Coolly, she said, For one thing, of the two children who were taken by the dragon, John only managed to get the boy out alive. I think the girl had been killed by the fumes in the dragon’s lair. It was hard to tell from the state of the body. And if she hadn’t been dead, I still doubt they’d have been in much condition to make speeches about how John looked, even if he had come riding straight up the hill—which of course he didn’t.

    He didn’t? She could almost hear the shattering of some image, nursed in the boy’s mind.

    Of course not. If he had, he would have been killed immediately.

    Then how...

    The only way he could think of to deal with something that big and that heavily armored. He had me brew the most powerful poison that I knew of, and he dipped his harpoons in that.

    Poison? Such foulness clearly pierced him to the heart. "Harpoons? Not a sword at all?"

    Jenny shook her head, not knowing whether to feel amusement at the boy’s disappointed expression, exasperation at the way he spoke of what had been for her and hundreds of others a time of sleepless, nightmare horror, or only a kind of elder-sisterly compassion for the naïveté that would consider taking a three-foot steel blade against twenty-five feet of spiked and flaming death. No, she only said, John came at it from the overhang of the gully in which it was laired—it wasn’t a cave, by the way; there are no caves that large in these hills. He slashed its wings first, so that it couldn’t take to the air and fall on him from above. He used poisoned harpoons to slow it down, but he finished it off with an ax.

    "An ax?! Gareth cried, utterly aghast. That’s—that’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard! Where is the glory in that? Where is the honor? It’s like hamstringing your opponent in a duel! It’s cheating!"

    He wasn’t fighting a duel, Jenny pointed out. If a dragon gets into the air, the man fighting it is lost.

    But it’s dishonorable! the boy insisted passionately, as if that were some kind of clinching argument.

    "It might have been, had he been fighting a man who had honorably challenged him—something John has never been known to do in his life. Even fighting bandits, it pays to strike from behind when one is outnumbered. As the only representative of the King’s law in these lands, John generally is outnumbered. A dragon is upward of twenty feet long and can kill a man with a single blow of its tail. You said yourself, she added with a smile, that there are situations in which honor does not apply."

    But that’s different! the boy said miserably and lapsed into disillusioned silence.

    The ground beneath the horses’ feet was rising; the vague walls of the misty tunnel through which they rode were ending. Beyond, the silvery shapes of the round-backed hills could be dimly seen. As they came clear of the trees, the winds fell upon them, clearing the mists and nipping their clothes and faces like ill-trained dogs. Shaking the blowing handfuls of her hair out of her eyes, Jenny got a look at Gareth’s face as he gazed about him at the moors. It wore a look of shock, disappointment, and puzzlement, as if he had never thought to find his hero in this bleak and trackless world of moss, water, and stone.

    As for Jenny, this barren world stirred her strangely. The moors stretched nearly a hundred miles, north to the ice-locked shores of the ocean; she knew every break in the granite landscape, every black peat-beck and every hollow where the heather grew thick in the short highlands summers; she had traced the tracks of hare and fox and kitmouse in three decades of winter snows. Old Caerdinn, half-mad through poring over books and legends of the days of the Kings, could remember the time when the Kings had withdrawn their troops and their protection from the Winterlands to fight the wars for the lordship of the south; he had grown angry with her when she had spoken of the beauty she found in those wild, silvery fastnesses of rock and wind. But sometimes his bitterness stirred in Jenny, when she worked to save the life of an ailing village child whose illness lay beyond her small skills and there was nothing in any book she had read that might tell her how to save that life; or when the Iceriders came raiding down over the floe-ice in the brutal winters, burning the barns that cost such labor to raise, and slaughtering the cattle that could only be bred up from such meager stock. However, her own lack of power had taught her a curious appreciation for small joys and hard beauties and for the simple, changeless patterns of life and death. It was nothing she could have explained; not to Caerdinn, nor to this boy, nor to anyone else.

    At length she said softly, John would never have gone after the dragon, Gareth, had he not been forced to it. But as Thane of Alyn Hold, as Lord of Wyr, he is the only man in the Winterlands trained to and living by the arts of war. It is for this that he is the lord. He fought the dragon as he would have fought a wolf, as a vermin which was harming his people. He had no choice.

    But a dragon isn’t vermin! Gareth protested. "It is the most honorable and greatest of challenges to the manhood of a true knight. You must be wrong! He couldn’t have fought it simply—simply out of duty. He can’t have!"

    There was a desperation to believe in his voice that made Jenny glance over at him curiously. No, she agreed. A dragon isn’t vermin. And this one was truly beautiful. Her voice softened at the recollection, even through the horror-haze of death and fear, of its angular, alien splendor. Not golden, as your song calls it, but a sort of amber, grading to brownish smoke along its back and ivory upon its belly. The patterns of the scales on its sides were like the beadwork on a pair of slippers, like woven irises, all shades of purple and blue. Its head was like a flower, too; its eyes and maw were surrounded with scales like colored ribbons, with purple horns and tufts of white and black fur, and with antennae like a crayfish’s tipped with bobs of gems. It was butcher’s work to slay it.

    They rounded the shoulder of a tor. Below them, like a break in the cold granite landscape, spread a broken line of brown fields where the mists lay like stringers of dirty wool among the stubble of harvest. A little further along the track lay a hamlet, disordered and trashy under a bluish smear of woodsmoke, and the stench of the place rose on the whipping ice-winds: the lye-sting of soap being boiled; an almost-visible murk of human and animal waste; the rotted, nauseating sweetness of brewing beer. The barking of dogs rose to them like churchbells in the air. In the midst of it all a stumpy tower stood, the tumble-down remnant of some larger fortification.

    No, said Jenny softly, the dragon was a beautiful creature, Gareth. But so was the girl it carried away to its lair and killed. She was fifteen—John wouldn’t let her parents see the remains.

    She touched her heels to Moon Horse’s sides and led the way down the damp clay of the track.

    Is this village where you live? Gareth asked, as they drew near the walls.

    Jenny shook her head, drawing her mind back from the bitter and confusing tangle of the memories of the slaying of the dragon. I have my own house about six miles from here, on Frost Fell—I live there alone. My magic is not great; it needs silence and solitude for its study. She added wryly, Though I don’t have much of either. I am midwife and healer for all of Lord Aversin’s lands.

    Will—will we reach his lands soon?

    His voice sounded unsteady, and Jenny, regarding him worriedly, saw how white he looked and how, in spite of the cold, sweat ran down his hollow cheeks with their faint fuzz of gold. A little surprised at his question, she said, These are Lord Aversin’s lands.

    He raised his head to look at her, shocked. These? He stared around him at the muddy fields, the peasants shouting to one another as they shocked up the last of the corn, the ice-scummed waters of the moat that girdled the rubble fill and fieldstone patches of the shabby wall. Then—that is one of Lord Aversin’s villages?

    That, Jenny said matter-of-factly as the hooves of their horses rumbled hollowly on the wood of the draw-bridge, is Alyn Hold.

    The town huddled within the curtain wall—a wall built by the present lord’s grandfather, old James Standfast, as a temporary measure and now hoary with fifty winters—was squalid beyond description. Through the archway beneath the squat gatehouse untidy houses were visible, clustered around the wall of the Hold itself as if the larger building had seeded them, low-built of stone and rubble upon the foundations of older walls, thatched with river reed-straw and grubby with age. From the window-turret of the gatehouse old Peg the gatekeeper stuck her head out, her long, gray-streaked brown braids hanging down like bights of half-unraveled rope, and she called out to Jenny, You’re in luck, in the glottal lilt of the north-country speech. Me lord got in last night from ridin’ the bounds. He’ll be about.

    "She wasn’t—was she talking about Lord Aversin?" Gareth whispered, scandalized.

    Jenny’s crescent-shaped eyebrows quirked upward. He’s the only lord we have.

    Oh. He blinked, making another mental readjustment. ‘Riding the bounds’?

    The bounds of his lands. He patrols them, most days of the month, he and militia volunteers. Seeing Gareth’s face fall, she added gently, That is what it is to be a lord.

    It isn’t, you know, Gareth said. It is chivalry, and honor, and... But she had already ridden past him, out of the slaty darkness of the gatehouse passage and into the heatless sunlight of the square.

    With all its noise and gossipy squalor, Jenny had always liked the village of Alyn. It had been the home of her childhood; the stone cottage in which she had been born and in which her sister and brother-in-law still lived—though her sister’s husband discouraged mention of the relationship—still stood down the lane, against the curtain wall. They might regard her with awe, these hard-working people with their small lives circumscribed by the work of the seasons, but she knew their lives only a little less intimately than she knew her own. There was not a house in the village where she had not delivered a child, or tended the sick, or fought death in one of the myriad forms that it took in the Winterlands; she was familiar with them, and with the long-spun, intricate patterns of their griefs and joys. As the horses sloshed through mud and standing water to the center of the square, she saw Gareth looking about him with carefully concealed dismay at the pigs and chickens that shared the fetid lanes so amicably with flocks of shrieking children. A gust of wind blew the smoke of the forge over them, and with it a faint wash of heat and a snatch of Muffle the smith’s bawdy song; in one lane laundry flapped, and in another, Deshy Werville, whose baby Jenny had delivered three months ago, was milking one of her beloved cows half-in, half-out of her cottage door. Jenny saw how Gareth’s disapproving gaze lingered upon the shabby Temple, with its lumpish, crudely carved images of the Twelve Gods, barely distinguishable from one another in the gloom, and then went to the circled cross of Earth and Sky that was wrought into the stones of so many village chimneys. His back got a little stiffer at this evidence of paganism, and his upper lip appeared to lengthen as he regarded the pigpen built out from the Temple’s side and the pair of

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