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Dragonsbane
Barbara Hambly
A rich and breath-taking fantasy classic full of whirlwind adventure, magic and dragons – Dragonsbane is the first book in Barbara Hambly’s landmark epic quartet, The Winterlands. When the Black Dragon seizes the capital of Bel, the young noble, Gareth, must journey into the decaying Northlands to find John Aversin, Dragonsbane – the only living man ever to slay a dragon. Upon arrival, Gareth also meets Jenny Waynest the half-taught sorceress and mother of Aversin's sons. A bargain is struck: witch and dragonkiller agree to rid the city of its monster in return for the king’s aid in their wintry home which is beset by bandits. But when they reach court, nothing is as they expected. For Gareth is no mere noble, and the king is in the thrall of a deeply evil power that seeks total control over the land. The kingdom crumbles. Perhaps the dragon that Jenny and John have been brought to slay is the least of their enemies…A rich and breath-taking fantasy classic full of whirlwind adventure, magic and dragons – Dragonsbane is the first book in Barbara Hambly’s landmark epic quartet, The Winterlands.
DRAGONSBANE
BOOK ONE OF THE WINTERLANDS QUARTET
Barbara Hambly
Copyright (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by Del Rey 1985
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1988
Copyright © Barbara Hambly 1985
Map © Shelly Shapiro
Cover illustration © Nakonechnyi Jaroslav
Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Barbara Hambly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008374181
Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008374198
Version: 2019-10-14
Dedication (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
For Allan
Contents
Cover (#u81b9c923-e79c-5de8-8d32-a731530ac773)
Title Page (#u3a3584a5-318d-547c-bb9e-28d4604f9b58)
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Chapter One (#u5487bcda-ed38-5cea-9279-95d37c4f71f0)
Chapter Two (#u9da9de72-3628-5ce7-b889-c8c0d4c7e15b)
Chapter Three (#u51eede61-ae2b-5951-8a40-d3a00ea45650)
Chapter Four (#ubad7c855-4347-521c-8fdf-6181cb8a70fb)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author
Also by Barbara Hambly
About the Publisher
Maps (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
ONE (#ulink_184edb00-224f-5263-9be7-713f434e39c9)
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.
Barbara Hambly
A rich and breath-taking fantasy classic full of whirlwind adventure, magic and dragons – Dragonsbane is the first book in Barbara Hambly’s landmark epic quartet, The Winterlands. When the Black Dragon seizes the capital of Bel, the young noble, Gareth, must journey into the decaying Northlands to find John Aversin, Dragonsbane – the only living man ever to slay a dragon. Upon arrival, Gareth also meets Jenny Waynest the half-taught sorceress and mother of Aversin's sons. A bargain is struck: witch and dragonkiller agree to rid the city of its monster in return for the king’s aid in their wintry home which is beset by bandits. But when they reach court, nothing is as they expected. For Gareth is no mere noble, and the king is in the thrall of a deeply evil power that seeks total control over the land. The kingdom crumbles. Perhaps the dragon that Jenny and John have been brought to slay is the least of their enemies…A rich and breath-taking fantasy classic full of whirlwind adventure, magic and dragons – Dragonsbane is the first book in Barbara Hambly’s landmark epic quartet, The Winterlands.
DRAGONSBANE
BOOK ONE OF THE WINTERLANDS QUARTET
Barbara Hambly
Copyright (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by Del Rey 1985
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1988
Copyright © Barbara Hambly 1985
Map © Shelly Shapiro
Cover illustration © Nakonechnyi Jaroslav
Cover design by Andrew Davis © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Barbara Hambly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008374181
Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008374198
Version: 2019-10-14
Dedication (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
For Allan
Contents
Cover (#u81b9c923-e79c-5de8-8d32-a731530ac773)
Title Page (#u3a3584a5-318d-547c-bb9e-28d4604f9b58)
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Chapter One (#u5487bcda-ed38-5cea-9279-95d37c4f71f0)
Chapter Two (#u9da9de72-3628-5ce7-b889-c8c0d4c7e15b)
Chapter Three (#u51eede61-ae2b-5951-8a40-d3a00ea45650)
Chapter Four (#ubad7c855-4347-521c-8fdf-6181cb8a70fb)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author
Also by Barbara Hambly
About the Publisher
Maps (#udea137e0-1f14-5297-a8f6-9bbca04d4d54)
ONE (#ulink_184edb00-224f-5263-9be7-713f434e39c9)
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.
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