"Open the gate and you live," Black said.
"Open the gate," Lord Hardior said, belatedly stepping up beside Arlian and pushing Black's spear aside.
"I will take full responsibility."
"My lord," the guard said, recognizing him "I didn't see you."
"Open the gate."
The guard hurried to comply, and the three men, Arlian, Hardior, and Black, hurried across the dooryard and into the house.
A footman met them inside, and reached out to take the spears, but Hardior told him, "No."
The footman hesitated, but then decided not to argue with two powerful lords and their armed companion. He stood back and let them pass.
Hardior led the way down the central passage and op a flight of stairs, and as they strode along Black passed each of the others a spear. A moment later the three of them burst into Lord Stiam's bedchamber, weapons ready
The clatter of boots and spears shattered the hush of the sickroom, and the several occupants turned to stare at the intruders. Even Nail, lying in his bed with his eyes closed and his thin white hair drenched in sweat, lifted his head and squinted at the newcomers.
Arlian stopped dead at the sight of the man in the bed, still outwardly entirely human; he stared intently at Nail, spear raised.
Hardior slowed to a halt and looked around at the others, lowering his weapon.
Black, almost unnoticed behind the other two, backed up against the wall of the room to one side of the door and began edging slowly around to one side, his spear pointing upward.
"Lord Hardior," Lord Wither said from the bedside,
"and Lord Obsidian. Might I ask the reason for this rather loud and abrupt entrance?"
Arlian's attention was still focused on Nail. The old man was stretched out on his bed, head and shoulders propped up on a dozen pillows, his frail body wrapped only in a thin white cotton nightshirt that was so soaked with perspiration it was almost transparent. Arlian could see that Nail's chest was swollen, bloated to almost twice its normal size—and he could see that the flesh of that enlarged bosom was rippling slightly in a horribly unnatural fashion. The skin there was feverish red, while his naked hands and feet were shrunken and bone-white. His hair and beard hung in wet strings, and as he peered at Arlian he was panting heavily.
"We are inside the city walls," Nail gasped, "if that still matters."
Arlian took a step closer, and several hands reached out for him. For the first time the fact that he and Nail were not alone in the room registered, and he looked quickly around.
"He said it was urgent that we come at once," Lord Hardior said over Arlian's shoulder. "I took him at his word, and we did not take time for explanations."
"Perhaps now you will," Wither replied angrily.
Witter, in his best green silk, was standing at Nail's bedside, on the right; on the left, in a physician's red and white, stood Lady Flute, the noted sorceress, her scarred face unmistakable even though it was well over a year since Arlian had last seen her in the hall of the Dragon Society. A woman Arlian did not recognize, richly dressed in saffron and green, fair of face but somehow less noticeable than the others, stood at Wither's shoulder. Leaning against the right-hand wall was Lord Toribor, in a maroon coat more elegant than Arlian had ever before seen him wear, his arms folded across his chest, his one eye fixed on Arlian's face.
Lady Rime was comfortably arranged in a rose silk chair behind Lady Flute, her left leg drawn up beneath a silk skirt of midnight blue so that her wooden pros-thesis did not reach the floor; in her hand was the human legbone she carried as a souvenir, tapping silently against the chair's upholstered arm. She was watching silently, not moving to speak or intervene, just watching.
Three servants in the rose-and-fawn livery of the house were hovering nearby, as well, all clearly waiting for those of higher rank than themselves to take the initiative in dealing with this strange intrusion.
All of them were staring at Arlian and his raised spear.
"Obsidian?" Hardior said. "I see nothing here that would call for an armed intervention. Would you please explain yourself?"
Arlian ignored him; he lowered the spear and stepped up to Nail's bedside, pushing Lady Flute aside.
For a moment he hesitated, aware that there were others in the room who would hear, that he might be about to reveal secrets that had been held close for centuries—but then he decided that if matters had gone this far, the truth would soon be out in any case.
"Do you know what's happening to you?" he asked.
Nail's eyes widened as he stared up at Arlian. "Do you?" he asked, his voice weak, but still harsh.
"More or less," Arlian said. "I saw it happen to Lord Enziet." He glanced up at Lord Wither and, behind him, Lord Toribor. "I know you thought I killed him, but it's more complicated than that." Then he turned his gaze back to Nail. "Enziet hurried the process—he cut his own chest open well before his situation was this far advanced. If you'd prefer to end it after that fashion, I'm sure one of your servants could fetch a blade."
"My lord!" Lady Flute protested.
Arlian turned. "Do you have any idea what's happening to him? Has your sorcery told you?"
"No," Flute admitted. "My best spells do not show him to be ill at all, and can do nothing for him. Nail summoned me because his physicians could not help, but I've done no better."
Arlian hesitated. It might still be possible to keep the process secret after all. If all these other people could be convinced to leave the room ...
"Would it be possible for me to have a minute alone with Lord Nail?" Arlian asked.
"No," Toribor replied, before anyone else could speak. He straightened, stepping away from the wall.
"I think you may have poisoned him somehow, in your insane quest for revenge, and perhaps you've come now to finish him off."
"I didn't need to poison him," Arlian said. "He was poisoned a thousand years ago."
Several people began to reply to that, shouting protests and questions, and Arlian realized that his chances of keeping his secrets here were nonexistent.
Nobody would trust him alone with Nail—and he could not leave Nail's bedside until the transformation was over. The dragon that Nail was becoming would need to be killed as quickly as possible.
And it might emerge at any moment, from the way Nail's chest was heaving. Arlian thought he could smell not merely sweat, but blood, and even a trace of the distinctive stench of dragon's venom.
He thought of perhaps requesting that at least the servants be sent away, so that only dragonhearts would hear—but surely, the news would spread in any case, and why should he try to limit it to dragonhearts? In the end, everyone would know.
He turned to Flute again.
"In a way, your spells are telling you the truth," he said. "My lord Stiam is not ill; he's in labor."
"You are mad!"' Hardior said, staring.
Nail's eyes widened; he said nothing at first, but he stared intently at Arlian.
Arlian ignored the others for a moment as he leaned over the bed and met Nail's gaze. "Did you know?" he asked.
He listened intently as the dying man whispered a reply.
"I thought I was delirious with fever," Nail said, his voice feint. "I can feel it, you know. I can almost hear its thoughts. Sometimes I'm not sure which feelings are mine, and which belong to this thing inside of me."
"You know what it is, then," Arlian said.
Nail managed a single slight nod. "It wanted me to leave the city," be said. "I almost did. It wanted to go somewhere dark and hot and safe—but I wanted to live, and I feared you would follow and find me and lull me if I left Manion. And I thought it was just a fever dream,"
"It's real," Arlian said. "It's been growing in your blood for centuries, and now it's waking up, ready to come forth."
"Enziet knew, somehow," Nail said.
Arlian nodded. "He knew all along. He kept the secret for seven hundred years."
"I have been fighti
ng to keep it in. You said Enziet cut open his own breast?"
"We were fighting," Arlian said. "He was losing. He knew he didn't have much more time either way."
"What are you two talking about?" Lord Wither demanded, leaning across the bed toward Arlian.
Nail waved him away. "The spears," he said to Arlian. "Are they for me, or for it?"
"For it," Arlian said. "That was Enziet's great discovery—obsidian. I learned it from him beneath the Desolation."
Nail smiled crookedly. "Then you and Enziet together will avenge me, won't you?"
"After a fashion," Arlian agreed, smiling mechani-cally in return. Then the smile vanished. "Does it hurt?"
"Not exactly," Nail replied. "The rest of me feels weak and cold, while it grows hotter and stronger and more impatient, but there's no real pain. My skin does feel thin and tight across my chest, which is uncomfortable, but no more than that."
"The dead gods do show some mercy, then."
"Say rather that the dragons do," Nail whispered.
"Or the power that created them."
"Do you know how long... ?"
Arlian shook his head. "No," he said. "Seconds, hours, days, I cannot say. You are already farther along than Enziet was when he put an end to himself."
"Lord Hardior," Wither said loudly, "will you please escort this madman out of here? He's tormenting Lord Stiam with his perverse fantasies."
"Shut up, Wither," Nail rasped, straining to be heard. "Let him stay."
Arlian glanced at Hardior, who was standing back, clearly confused and not eager to intervene, then at Wither.
Wither was glaring at him with hatred.
Behind Wither, Lord Toribor had stepped forward from the wall and was watching and listening—but Arlian was startled to see no sign of anger or hatred in his expression, but only a sort of distressed fascination.
The woman at Wither's shoulder merely looked confused. Her face seemed curiously uninteresting despite her beauty, her eyes dim, and after a moment Arlian realized that she was not a dragonheart. Because erf her presence in the sickroom and her expensive attire he had at first assumed she was an unfamiliar member of the Dragon Society, but now he realized she was merely an ordinary mortal.
Lady Opal, he supposed, Wither's paramour. She was plainly out of her depth here, and aware of it.
Arlian felt a hand on his arm, and turned as Flute said, "My lords, let us not needlessly trouble Lord Stiam with our quarrels. Obsidian, put aside your weapon. Wither, our host wishes Obsidian to stay; do not gainsay him that in what may be his last hours.
And my lord Nail, pray do not strain yourself. Rest."
"Thank you, my lady," Arlian said, essaying a small bow.
"My lord," she acknowledged. She hesitated, then said, "You surely realize that your words do sound quite mad."
"Sometimes I think the whole world is mad, my lady, and other times that only I am; nonetheless, I speak the truth as I know it."
"And you say something is growing in Lord Nail's chest?"
"So I believe, yes. I came here thinking it would have already burst forth—our vigorous entrance was a response to that expectation."
Flute hesitated again, glanced around the room, then asked, "And what is it you believe to be gestating here?"
Startled, Arlian in turn looked around at the gathered faces. He had thought it obvious what was about to be born, but clearly some of these people needed to hear it spoken aloud before they would permit themselves to think it.
"A dragon," he said. "It will be blood-red when it first emerges, for it is forming from Nail's own heart and blood. It will be larger than could logically be possible, larger than a grown man, too large to fit comfortably in this chamber, but still only a hatchling by dragon's standards."
Arlian heard someone, perhaps one of the servants, gasp at that; feet shuffled, and die room's other occupants glanced uneasily at one another.
"And you brought a few spears to fight it?" Wither said, sneering. "Even a madman should know better than that! No man has ever slain a dragon; what could your spears do?"
"Kill it," Arlian said. "As dragons are magical fire and darkness, obsidian is natural fire and darkness, and these spears can kill a dragon."
"You put an absurd faith in this theory of..."
Wither began.
"It's no mere theory," Arlian said, cutting him off.
"You say no man has ever slain a dragon, but that is no longer true; I slew one, newborn in a cave beneath the Desolation, with an obsidian dagger."
"Obsidian," Hardior said, "you are making ever more outrageous claims here. Are you sure you know what you're saying?"
"Indeed I do."
"I believe him," Nail whispered. "I feel it within me. "This is insane," Wither said.
"I would tend to agree," Hardior said, and Flute nodded.
"The world is insane," Black said, breaking his silence. "I wish you had told me sooner, Ari."
"I may be mad," Arlian said. "I would scarcely be the best judge of that, and I freely admit I've had my doubts on occasion. Might I suggest that we simply wait, and let the passage of time settle the matter? Either Lord Nail will die a natural death, or the disease will pass, or my 'theory,' as Lord Wither calls it, will be vindicated. I am willing to wait and see which it is.
I suspect we will have an answer before tomorrow's dawn."
"Sooner than that," Nail hissed. "Oh, much sooner than that."
For a moment the room was silent; then Lord Hardior shrugged and said, "We'll wait."
Arlian had privately agreed with Nail's assess-ment; he had expected the new dragon to burst forth within minutes. He had misjudged either the dragon's state of development, or Nail's determination to cling to life and humanity as long as he possibly could.
Had he known how much time yet remained Arlian would probably have attempted to send away the servants, and perhaps Lady Opal as well, to try to keep what he could of the Dragon Society's secrets. As it was, he did not bother.
The sun set, and candles were lit, and still Nail lay in his bed, gasping for air as his chest swelled and writhed. Well after night had fallen Lord Hardior finally sent servants to fetch a little food to sustain the participants in the deathwatch, in lieu of the supper they had missed.
The air grew foul with smoke and sweat, and the scent of dragon venom grew ever more unmistakable.
Save for die servants no one left the room for more than a moment, and no one new entered; none of those present wanted to miss the final act of the drama.
Three times Arlian had asked, over Wither's loud objections, whether Nail wanted one of the servants to fetch a knife; each time, the old man had grimaced and refused. Each refusal had been weaker, less certain, than the one before, and at the last, when they were finishing die repast that Hardior had summoned and when the servants were renewing the candles, Arlian had thought the wait must surely be about to end.
Even so, it was past midnight, and most of the company were drowsing in their chairs, when Flute screamed.
Arlian, who had been drifting in and out of uneasy sleep, jerked himself instantly upright, snatching up the spear he had let fall.
The sight he beheld through the candle smoke could have been a nightmare, and for an instant he thought he was dreaming. It should have been a nightmare, but was all too real.
Flute was standing by the bed, her hands over her mouth, as she stared in now-silent terror at her patient.
Nail lay rigid, his head thrown back, mouth open as though screaming, though no sound emerged; if he was not yet dead, he would be in seconds.
Blood was streaming from his chest, but instead of flowing naturally it was rising upward, writhing and expanding, and the top of the rising column was shaped into a talon, the column forming a crooked leg.
The gaping wound in Nail's chest was widening as the blood-thing thrust itself upward, and the flesh around the opening rippled and stretched as the creature fought to be born.
"It
... it clawed him open from the inside," Flute gasped, as Arlian readied the spear. He was aware that Black stood beside him, his own spear raised.
And then, with a crunching of bone, the dragon burst out of Nail's corpse, struggling to stand on four unsteady legs, crowded onto the bed. Its tail whipped across Nail's unseeing eyes and its wings began to un-fold as it raised its head. One foreclaw slipped from the bed, then quickly recovered its footing.
The secret of draconic reproduction was out.
"Now!" Arlian said, and he thrust his spear at the creature's flank. "Aim for the heart!"
Black's strike was scarcely an instant behind his own; both spearheads sank easily into the still-soft, blood-red scales.
The dragon screamed, a hellish shriek that seemed to shake the very walls; it thrashed wildly, trying to escape the black-tipped weapons that had pierced it through, but Arlian and Black pressed forward.
Two of the creature's clawed feet slid from the bed, one free, the other tangled in the coverlet. Its wings smashed at the bed's canopy, shattering the wooden frame and sending the bedcurtains flapping into a hopeless tangle. It spat venom that sizzled and smoked on the bedclothes and carpet but did not ignite. Its golden eyes were open, staring at Arlian and Black with hatred—and with something else, as well.
Arlian saw Nail in those eyes, and refused to look at them. He was glad he had made the spearshafts as long as he had, so that he need not go any closer to that inhuman face.
"Lord Hardior!" Black called. "Get behind it!"
"The heart," Arlian said. "We have to strike its heart!" He yanked his weapon free and thrust again, stepping forward and stabbing just behind the nearer foreleg.
This time the obsidian tip found its target; with another scream the dragon collapsed, dissolving instantly back into the blood from which it had sprung.
Blood splashed and pooled across the bed and Nail's corpse, ran steaming to the floor, dripped from the ruined canopy where the wings had caught; Arlian's hands were drenched with red where he clutched the shaft of the spear.
Impaled upon the tip of that spear was Nail's heart.
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
