Dragonshadow

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The kaleidoscope of memory that she touched when she touched his mind.

The gold fire of magic that had flowed into her veins.

Plunging herself, dragon form, into the wind …

Mistress Waynest …!

This love you speak of, I do not know what it is. It is not a thing of dragons …

Mistress, wake up!

“Wake up!”

Gasping, she pulled clear of the mind-voice in the shadows. Raw smoke tore her throat; the air was a clamor of men shouting and the frenzied screams of cattle and horses in pain. “What is it?” She scrambled to a sitting position, head aching, eyes thick. Nemus, one of Rocklys’ troopers, stood beside her narrow bed.

“Balgodorus …”

As if it would or could be anything else. Jenny was already grabbing for her halberd and her slingstones—she slept clothed and booted these days—trying to thrust the leaden exhaustion from her bones. Her mind registered details automatically: mid-morning, noise from all sides, concerted attack …

“—fire-arrows,” the young man was saying. “Burning the blockhouse roof, but there’s a storeroom in flames …”

Fire-spells.

“… as if the animals have all gone mad …”

Curse, thought Jenny. Curse, curse, curse …

The stables were in flames, too. She had no idea of the nature of the spell that had been put on the animals, but the horses, mules, and cattle were rushing crazily around the central court, charging and slashing at one another, kicking the walls, throwing themselves at the doors. Bellowing, shrieking, madness in their eyes. The smoke that rolled over the whole scene seemed to Jenny to be laden with magic, as if something foul burned and spread with the blaze.

Damn her, she thought, who taught that bitch such a spell?

Scaling ladders wavered and jerked beyond the frieze of palisade spikes. Arrows filled the air. On the north wall men were already being stabbed at and hacked by the defenders within. Slingstones cracked against the walls and an arrow splintered close to Jenny’s head. Someone was bellowing orders. She got a brief glimpse of Pellanor in his steel-plated armor swaying hand-to-hand at the top of the wall with a robber in dirty leathers, as she sprang down the steps to the court.

“Watch out, m’lady!” yelled another soldier, racing along the catwalk. “Them horses is insane!”

Curse it, thought Jenny, trying to concentrate through exhaustion and the blurring blindness of a too-familiar migraine, trying to snatch the form and nature of the spell out of the air. There were panic-spells working, too, a new batch of them …

She banged on the shutters of the storerooms where the children hid during attacks. “It’s me, Jenny Waynest!” she called out. “One of you, any of you …”

The shutters cracked. A girl’s face showed in the slit.

“The names of the cows,” said Jenny. She’d have to do this the hard way, with Limitations, not a counterspell. “Quick.”

The girl, thank God, didn’t ask her if she was insane, or if she meant what she said. “Uh—Florrie. Goddess. Ginger. You want me to point out which is which? They’re moving awful fast.”

“Just the names.” Jenny already knew the names of the horses. “Give me a minute; I’ll be back. Be thinking of all of them.” She sprinted across the court, two cows and a mule turning, charging her. She barely reached the stair at the base of the east tower before them, leaped and scrambled up out of their reach, drew a Guardian on the stonework. Smoke poured like a river from under the eaves of the workrooms between the east tower and the north, but it was better than trying to get past the melee in the court. Jenny swung herself up, darted across the roof, forming counterspells to the fire as she ran and thanking the Twelve that the roof beneath her feet was tile. A man’s body plunged from above, spraying blood.

Get the danger contained, thought Jenny. Madness-spells, fire-spells, get those taken care of first.

And then, by the Moon-Scribe’s little white dog, you and I have a reckoning, my ill-instructed friend.

The Limitations quieted the maddened animals, exempting them one by one from the spell. It made Jenny’s head ache to concentrate amid the chaos, the smell of smoke and the fear that any moment the bandits would come over the wall.

From the top of the west wall Jenny picked out Balgodorus himself, a tall man, strong enough to dominate any of his men, dark and with a bristling beard. Men were rallying around him now, ready for another attack. They wound their crossbows, milled and shouted among themselves, working up their anger. Balgodorus was saying something to them, gesturing at the walls …

“Probably telling them about all the food and wealth we have in here,” muttered Pellanor, his voice hollow within his steel helm as he came to Jenny’s side. He was panting hard and smelled of sweat and the blood that ran down the steel.

Balgodorus gestured to the woman who stood near him.

Jenny said softly, “That’s her.”

“What?”

“The witch. She’s wearing a skirt, and unarmed. Bandit-women dress as men. Why else would she be at the battle? I’ll need a rope.” Jenny strode along the palisade, dark hair billowing in a crazy cloud behind her, Pellanor hurrying after. “I don’t suppose there’s a scaling ladder still standing.”

On all the walls the defenders were panting, resting their spears and their swords against the palisade, wiping sweat or blood from their eyes. Children ran along the catwalk with water; a man could be heard telling them sharply to get back indoors and bar themselves in. Below, in the court, the horses stamped, restless at the smell of smoke and blood, and all around could be heard the faint, frenzied squealing of the mice, the cats, the rats still under the influence of the mad-spell.

“Great Heaven, no!”

She felt for her stones and sling, shrugging her shoulder through the halberd’s strap. “Go back. They’re gathering for another try.” She stepped over a dead bandit, kilting up her skirts.

“You can’t seriously think of leaving in the middle of an attack! You’ll be slaughtered!” Jenny had never used spells of illusion in or near the Hold, for fear of the effects they might have on the watchers on the wall, or on the counterspells against illusion with which she’d so carefully ringed the fortress. Last night she had renewed those counterspells after a scout told her there was untoward movement around the bandit camp. She’d had only time for a quick, disquieting glimpse of John, who should have been flat on his back in bed, loading provisions into that horror of an airship he’d built last spring. Muffle had been with him—Muffle, for love of the Goddess, knock some sense into his head!

“An attack is the only time she’ll be concentrating on something else.” Jenny found the rope down which Pellanor had let her climb two nights ago, still coiled just inside the door of the north turret. She checked the land below, and the ruined and trampled fields that lay to the east. No bandits in sight on that side of the keep. Arrows littered the ground, floated in the moat like straws. A single body, the legacy of an attack three days ago, bobbed obscenely among the half-sunk timbers and boughs.

“Whatever you do, hold them now,” she said. “This shouldn’t take long.”

“What if she uses more spells?” asked the Baron worriedly. “Without you to counter them …”

“I’m counting on her to do just that,” said Jenny. “It will give me a better chance at her. Hold fast and don’t let anyone panic. I can’t return until after the attack is driven off, but that shouldn’t be long.” She slithered under the dripping, charred spikes of the palisade, hanging onto the rope. “I’ll be watching.”

“May the gods of war and magic go with you, then.” Pellanor saluted and snapped his visor down again. “Damn,” he added, as the noise rose from the other side of the fortress. “Here they come.”

Jenny dropped, playing the rope out fast, thankful that she and John still worked out against one another with halberd and sword. Still, she was forty-one and felt it. No sleep last night and precious little the night before, and when she did sleep, she saw in her mind what John was doing with that monstrosity he’d built …

She pushed away the images, her frantic fear and the desire to break her beloved’s legs to keep him in bed until she got there, forced her thoughts to return to spells of protection, of concealment, as she ran for the fields. Broken crops offered some concealment from the men she could hear shouting beneath the walls.