"By the dead gods!" someone muttered.
"By all the gods!" said another.
"I don't believe it," Wither whispered.
"You saw it with your own eyes, my lord," Black said.
"I saw something," Wither said. "I am not sure what"
"Sorcerous illusion," Lady Opal said, rising from her chair. " That's all it was!" She reached tentatively toward the still-smoking bedclothes where the venom had spattered, then drew her hand back.
"For an illusion, it seems to have left a great deal of blood," Flute remarked. The front of her gown was drenched in blood where one of the dragon's wings had collapsed across her bosom, and she looked down at herself in dismay. Then she called to one of the servants, "Fetch something to clean this up!"
The servant she addressed simply stared, stunned, but (me of die others hastened out of the room. She called after him, "And take care, for it's poisonous!"
"Lord Stiam's chest burst," Opal said. "I can hardly deny that! But the creature we saw was merely some dire conjuration, not a true dragon."
"I smell dragon's venom," Wither said. "I haven't smelled it in seven hundred years, but that's venom."
Indeed, the reek was everywhere, mingled with the odors of blood, sweat, smoke, and offal.
"Of course you do," Opal said. "From Lord Stiam's blood. But it wasn't a dragon!"
"And how do you know this?" Rime asked, still seated.
"Because the very idea that it was a dragon is arrant nonsense!" Opal said, turning angrily. "It was red, and are not dragons said to be green or black?"
"Enact said that they darken as they mature," Arlian sad mildly. Now that the dreaded event was over, he was able to relax again and speak calmly. "Red to gold to green to black. The adults I've seen were black, as you say."
"And do dragons pop like soap bubbles at the thrust of a spear?" Opal demanded, whirling to face him, her fists clenched. "How very strange, then, that none of our ancestors, in all the years they fought the dragons, ever managed to kill one!"
"They never stabbed them in the heart with obsid ian," Arlian said, still calm. "And it may only be the newborn infants that dissolve so thoroughly; this one had scarcely finished forming, after all."
"I think it more likely a sorcerer's illusion burst than that a genuine dragon did!" Opal retorted.
"Believe as you please," Arlian said. "I came here to prevent the creation of a dragon, not to convince you of a thing. If you can reject the evidence of your own eyes, my words are scarcely likely to sway you." He looked down at the spear he held, and the grisly trophy impaled upon it. "Where shall I put this?" he asked no one in particular.
"Nail's heart belongs in his chest," Toribor said, stepping forward.
Arlian held the spear steady as Toribor carefully pulled the mutilated heart from the head, and reverently placed it in the gaping hollow that had been Lord Stiam's bosom. That done, Toribor turned and said,
"You have slain five of the six lords, then, Obsidian—
I alone remain."
"I slew only three," Arlian said. "Three lords, and the two dragons that killed the other two. I was sworn not to kill Lord Nail within the walls of Manfort, and I did not—but you are correct that you alone remain."
"That creature was blood of Nail's blood, and heart of his heart; are you so certain that it was not Nail himself?"
"My lord Toribor, you speak nonsense," Arlian said angrily, his brief calm shattered. He did not want to think of what he had seen in the dragon's face. "Lord Nail lies dead in his bed, butchered by that thing. Is the tapeworm that kills a man heir to his soul, then, and protected by an oath such as mine?"
"This was no mere tapeworm. I saw its eyes, Obsidian ..
"It was a dragon, Belly," Wither interrupted angrily.
"Are you truly arguing that a dragon is anything more than a monster to be despised?"
Opal and Toribor both turned, startled by this out-burst
Wither glared back at them both.
"I fought the dragons for a hundred years," he said.
"I stood cm the ramparts of this city watching stones and arrows glance off their scales like raindrops from stone, and I saw my friends and comrades torn to pieces or blasted to bone and ash by their flaming venom. I am sworn to fight them, as is every member of the Dragon Society. I am swom to study their ways, and seek methods to destroy them. And now, when I learn that there may be a dragon in my own body, bid-ing its time and awaiting the moment when it might steal my heart as its own and tear me apart from within ... when I am told that this parasite has been growing in my blood for almost a thousand years, un-detected, you try to tell me that killing it is tantamount to lolling me! That the monster did not kill Nail, but rather that Nail became it?" He lurched forward suddenly, reaching out with his strong left arm and grabbing Toribor by the back of the neck. Displaying a strength truly astonishing in one so old and outwardly frail, he bent the unprepared Toribor over the bed and thrust his unwilling nose within inches of Nail's torn flesh and broken ribs.
"My friend Stiam is dead? Wither growled. "He is art transformed or transcended, he is gone. He was no caterpillar becoming a butterfly; he was a man, and that man is dead. To suggest otherwise, Belly, is obscene, and I will not tolerate it!"
"My apologies, my lord," Toribor murmured.
Wither released him, and Toribor straightened up again.
For a few seconds, everyone in the room was silent.
Then Wither growled. "You knew," he said, turning to Arlian.
"Yes," Arlian admitted.
"You knew. This was why you wouldn't fetch the venom."
"Yes."
"This was how ... The scar on your cheek was made by Enziet's venom?"
Arlian was so startled by this phrasing, so contradictory of what Wither had said just seconds before, that he could not reply at once, but after a moment he nodded.
"Arlian," Rime asked from her chair in the corner,
"why didn't you tell us?"
Arlian clenched his teeth. He closed his eyes for a moment, then asked, "Would you have believed me, if you hadn't seen it yourselves?"
"I'm not sure I believe it now," Lord Hardior said, his voice unsteady.
"I asked you once what you would do if I killed a dragon, my lord," Arlian said, turning to Hardior. "You said to leave such matters until such time as they moved out of the realm of fantasy. Has that time come, or do you still believe me mad?"
"Do not press me, Obsidian," Hardior said, staring at Nail's corpse. "This is a great deal to accept."
"It is too much," Wither said, to no one in particular.
"I will not be a dragon."
"Of course not," Opal said, putting her arm around him. "It was a trick, an illusion!"
"And I wanted to curse you, as well," Wither said to her. "It's a lie, beloved, and we will transform me, with the venom of a true dragon, to live with you forever!"
Wither looked at her with an expression that might have been horror, but said nothing more.
Arlian watched this exchange, and decided it was not his place to interfere. If her own eyes could not convince Opal, then his words surely would not—and it seemed plain that Wither did accept what he had seen.
He was very old himself; perhaps he could sense, as Nail had, the dragon growing within him.
Just then the door of the chamber was flung wide, and Nail's steward entered, with half a dozen other servants arrayed behind him.
"My lords," he said. "I understand my lord Stiam has left us."
"Indeed he has," Lady Flute said. "And quite spectacularly." She held up her arms, displaying her blood-soaked gown.
The steward's composure was shaken by the sight, but he quickly recovered. "Then may I ask that you all leave this room, so that we may clean the body and prepare it?" he said. "It's late, and surely you have needs of your own to attend to—we have rooms enough for you all, and you are welcome to stay as long as you choose; these will see you to your accommodations"
He gestured at the other servants.
"I think he's right," Opal said. "We need to get away from this horror!"
"And clean ourselves," Flute said. "Careful, those of you with blood on your hands, that you let none pass your hps."
"We know it to be toxic, my lady," Arlian said. "We
"No?" Flute gestured at Black, who was staring at his own hands in bemusement, and Arlian fell silent.
"Thank you for your warning, my lady," the steward said.
"You," Lord Hardior said, "why have you not been at your master's deathbed?"
The steward looked at him, startled. "Why, he ordered me away," he said. "I sat with him through much of his illness, but yesterday he sent me away, told me to attend to his business elsewhere. I would have stayed, had he allowed it..."
"Just as well you did not," Arlian said. "Better to remember him as he was."
"Would that we all could!" Wither said.
"Please, gentlemen, ladies," the steward insisted,
"could you leave the room?"
"There is much more that needs to be said, Obsidian," Lord Hardior said, "but perhaps it can wait until morning, when we have had time to rest, and to absorb what we have seen here."
"As you please, my lord," Arlian replied. He looked down at his own bloody hands, and the spear he still held, and then at Nail's body. He shuddered.
Toribor, standing by the bed, reached down and gen-tiy closed Lord Stiam's eyes.
The servant stood aside as Arlian stepped into the room, then hurried to the bedside table where the pitcher and bowl waited. Without being asked he filled the bowl halfway with clean water. An oil lamp already burned dimly on a bracket above the bed.
"Thank you," Arlian said.
"Would you prefer to have your man here with you, or shall we find him a place downstairs?" the servant asked as he fetched towels from a nearby cabinet.
Arlian glanced at Black. "As he prefers," he said.
"He's free to go home, if he chooses; I can attend to my own needs."
"I think a place downstairs would suit me well,"
Black replied.
Arlian understood that Black intended to listen to what the household servants were saying about the night's events, and perhaps guide the stories a little. It was probably too late to preserve any secrets, but it could do no harm to get a closer look at the situation.
"As you please, then," he said as he accepted a towel.
He reached for the bowl.
The servant stood by, and Arlian looked at him.
"You need not stay," he said. "It's late, and I'm sure you have other matters to attend to before you'll see your own bed. See to my steward, and then yourself; don't worry about me."
The servant bowed. "Thank you, my lord." He turned, and he and Black left the room, closing the door gently behind them.
Arlian watched them go, then turned to the basin, eager to finally wash Nail's blood from his hands. He put the towel down, then plunged both hands into the cool, clean water.
The water darkened and swirled, deep red spreading out from his hands; he rubbed the blood from the back of each hand, then began to clean the fingers, one by one, squeezing each between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand and brushing at the blood with his thumb.
After a moment the water was too dark to see whether he was accomplishing anything more, and he withdrew his hands and picked up the towel.
He had gotten the worst of it off, certainly—at any rate, off his hands; the cuffs of his shirt were ruined.
He squinted at his knuckles and wrists, fairly sure that he would find more blood by the morning sun, though he could see nothing by the yellow lamplight. He picked up the towel, then glanced at the basin.
He froze, towel dangling from one hand.
The water in the bowl had gone unnaturally still and flat, as smooth as a mirror, even though the blood was still swirling vigorously beneath the transparent surface. This was unmistakably magic—though whether the sorcery of the Lands of Man or something more exotic, he could not yet say. Arlian stared.
The blood was not dissipating; instead it was gathering itself in the center of the bowl, where a recogniz-able image was forming—the image of a dragon's face.
For a moment Arlian thought that perhaps the dragon he had seen born and had slain half an hour before yet survived, in some strange and intangible form, but then he realized that the dragon's face in the bowl was fully mature, not the soft-featured visage of a hatchling, and the eyes were not Nail's.
No, this was a full-grown black dragon, one he had never seen before—dragons, Arlian had noticed long ago, had curiously distinctive and memorable faces.
He could still summon up every detail of the face of the dragon that destroyed his home on the Smoking Mountain, eleven years before; he could remember exactly the face of the dragon that sprang from Enziet's chest, and likewise the beast Nail bore. Artists and sculptors almost always failed to capture this peculiar quality of draconic appearance, but the image in the bowl had it in full, and was definitely none of those three.
Arlian remembered words he had heard spoken a year before, by poor Sweet shortly after he had rescued her from Enziet's house, before she began her fatal decline.
"I didn't believe him," she had said, "so he took the bowl of water he used to wash off the blood, and showed me that he talked to the dragons."
The bowl of water he used to wash off the blood.
The image solidified, and the swirling ceased; there was no longer any movement Arlian could describe, but the image had an odd vigor to it, the same sort of indefinable something that was the visible difference between a sleeping man and a corpse. This dragon was alive.
"We are not pleased with you."
No words had been spoken, the image of the dragon's mouth had not moved, but Arlian understood all the same what the dragon intended him to understand.
This was one of the oldest and most powerful dragons, and it was speaking to him as it had spoken to Enziet.
And, after all, was Arlian not Enziet's heir?
"I am not interested in pleasing you," Arlian said quietly. The possibility that a servant might be eavesdropping could not be ruled out, so he kept his voice very low. Somehow, he doubted that the dragon would have any difficulty understanding him.
"You should be."
"Why? I am your sworn enemy. Your kind slaughtered my family, my entire village. I want you dead, not pleased."
"The other understood, and told you. We had an agreement, and you are his successor. You were to keep your knowledge of our ways secret."
"I agreed to nothing."
"Do you understand the consequences of ending that agreement? "
Arlian felt a sudden chill, though the chamber's windows were tightly closed, and the night outside warm.
He knew what consequences the dragon meant. Enziet's bargain had ended the Man-Dragon Wars and driven the dragons into their caverns, deep beneath the earth; without it, as Toribor had warned him, there would be nothing restraining them. They might emerge at any time and destroy anything and anyone they chose. The Lands of Man might once again be plunged into war and chaos. All of Manfort might face the same fiery destruction that had befallen the village of Obsidian.
Arlian had feared this; his fears had faded when nothing happened immediately after Enziet's death, and had returned when Toribor pointed out that the weather had been cold. Arlian had still hoped, though, that Toribor was wrong, that the dragons would not venture out
Now one of the dragons themselves was threatening him with exactly that. A sudden rush of anger swept over him.
"Do you understand the consequences of breaking the truce?" he demanded. "I've killed two of you! Do you think you could rule as you did before, now that we know how you can be slain?"
"You know the black stone, yes, but you will not find our elders as easily destroyed as our young. Open war would be costly to both sides, and the eventual victory uncertain— but what choice do
you offer us? You are sworn to destroy us all, and we will not lie quietly in our lairs and await your attacks. An agreement must be made, your oath of vengeance forsaken, or all will suffer."
Arlian paused, startled and thoughtful.
The dragon spoke the truth—at least, Arlian thought it did. He could scarcely expect the dragons to simply let themselves be killed; of course they would fight back.
He had not really considered the possibility of carrying on Enziet's bargain—he had not known how to communicate with the dragons to arrange it. He had assumed that he would have to kill the dragons.
He had been thinking that he would go from cavern to cavern, killing them three or five or ten at a time until they were all gone or he perished in the attempt—
but that had assumed that they were mere beasts, unable to communicate with one another, unable to warn one another that he was coming, so soundly asleep that they could not resist
That was clearly not true, and he should have realized it back when he first learned that Enziet could communicate with the dragons well enough to make his pact. After all, if Enziet could communicate with the dragons, surely they could communicate with each other! And Enziet's pact could scarcely have worked if the dragons were incapable of working in concert.
Arlian's campaign to exterminate the dragons would inevitably become open warfare if he lived and continued it for any length of time. Catching them in their lairs would be ever more difficult as they warned one another and hid themselves more carefully—if they hid at all. They might post guards, as any group of humans would, so that he could never catch a group of them all asleep.
Or they might simply all come out in the open to fight, and how could he fight them then? How could anyone? Yes, obsidian could cut them, but only a thrust to the heart could kill, and the dragons were huge, they could fly, they had talons and teeth and fiery venom.
Obsidian spears would be no more use against full-grown dragons than a rat's fangs were against a cat.
But there were only a few dragons, surely—dozens, yes, perhaps hundreds, but almost certainly not thousands. Humanity numbered in the millions, and in the end, wouldn't that carry the day? Enough rats could bring down a cat, and surely even a dragon could be slain by an entire army armed with obsidian. The dragons would in time be obliterated, gone forever, extinct, while mankind would survive and rebuild.
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 13
