The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

"Don't you?" Arlian said. "The secret Enziet had kept all those years, had withheld from this Society, was how the dragons reproduce. They do not breed as natural beasts do; instead they contaminate men and women and the dragons' young grow within them, like a disease, until they are ready to emerge, killing their hosts. This development takes centuries, so our lives are unnaturally extended, and to ensure we survive long enough to 'hatch,' as it were, we are made immune to other poisons and lesser diseases. Perhaps to keep us from ties that would hold us back, we are made sterile—or perhaps it is merely that once pregnant, we cannot breed again until the offspring is born."

  "Then you claim all of us here are going to ... to die honibly, when these baby dragons burst from our chests!" Ticker demanded.

  "Yes, exactly," Arlian said.

  "And why did you not tell us this when you first returned to Manfort?" Toribor asked angrily. "Why did you wait until that ghastly scene at Nail's bedside?"

  "Well, firstly," Arlian said, "I doubted you would believe me. I had no evidence beyond my word, after all, and many of you mistrusted me then—and mistrust me now. I can hardly blame you, under the circumstances."

  "You apparentiy expect us to believe you now, though," Lady Shard said.

  "Now, my lady, you have asked me. Perhaps you'll believe, and perhaps not, but I will not he about it further."

  "Go on," Lord Hardior said. "That was your first reason; are there others?"

  "Of course." Arlian spread his hands. "Secondly,"

  he said, "I was not at all sure how you would react to the news, so I hesitated. I was still struggling with the question of what should be done about it myself; you may recall that I have sworn to destroy the dragons or die in the attempt, and I had to consider the question of whether that included dragons yet unborn."

  "You mean whether you should try to slaughter the lot of us," Toribor said.

  "Yes," Arlian said.

  "Have you decided upon your answer to this question?" Rime asked.

  "No," Arlian said, "I have not."

  "So you might just try to kill us all?" Zaner said, astonished. "And you admit it?"

  "My lord Zaner," Arlian said, "I am still bound by my oath not to harm you within the city walls. You need have no fear that I will snatch up a sword and try to skewer you here and now."

  "No, you'll wait until I go to visit my businesses in Lorigol, and waylay me on the road!"

  "Possibly. That remains to be seen. Because there is a third reason I did not speak, my lords and ladies—

  the same reason that Lord Enziet did not speak in all those years." He paused dramatically.

  "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Rime asked, smiling.

  Startled, Arlian said, "What?"

  "Drawing this out, teasing us—you're enjoying it."

  "I just want to keep everything clear," Arlian protested, disconcerted, and suddenly wondering whether he was enjoying himself. It certainly didn't seem reasonable to take pleasure in being put on trial for his life, though it was true that he was not at all nervous, but rather enthusiastic....

  "Well, get on with it, then," Rime said with a dismissive wave.

  "Yes, of course," Arlian said. "The other reason is that Enziet told me why the dragons gave up their war against humanity and withdrew to their caverns—he made a bargain with them, promising to keep their secrets in exchange for their withdrawal. He told me that he had gone so far as to destroy the covert organization known as the Order of the Dragon that had been hunting down and killing dragonhearts; he had been a member of the Order, but changed sides—I suppose when he became a dragonheart himself—and betrayed and murdered his former comrades to keep the dragons' secret."

  "I don't see..." Ticker began, but he stopped as others around him reacted.

  "By the dead gods," Hardior said.

  "I knew it," Toribor muttered. "That's what he meant, then? That with him dead, the bargain would be ended and the dragons could emerge again?"

  "Yes," Arlian said. "If the secret was lost, they would be free to do as they pleased."

  "That's why you were making those spears,"

  Hardior said.

  "Yes," Arlian said. "And that's a reason why I did not tell anyone of the dragons' method of reproduction—I thought I might perhaps somehow take up Enziet's end of the bargain. But then Nail remained in Manfort, for fear of me, instead of leaving the city as the dragons wished, and the secret could not be kept when so many people saw the beast emerge from his chest, and here I am."

  "You're a fool," Toribor said. "You could have brought your Aritheians to his bedside and told us it was all some illusion they had conjured! Lady Opal said it was a sorcerous trick, and you denied it! You could have told us it was a final trap Enziet laid for you! Drisheen hired an assassin—Enziet might have devised something sorcerous."

  Arlian gazed at him. "I didn't think of any of that at the time," he said. "It seemed the secret was out, and pretense had become pointless; do you mean to say that you would have believed me, had I told you those lies?"

  "I wouldn't," Rime said, "but you might have convinced us to keep the matter quiet."

  "And what of the servants?" Arlian asked. "What of Lady Opal herself? And Flute, here—why would she join in such a deception?"

  "To keep the dragons in their caves," Flute replied.

  "If it was not yet too late then. I would have kept silent, had I known."

  Arlian stared at her, astonished, then turned to Toribor and demanded, "Belly, would you have joined in a he I requested?"

  "If you'd told us why, that it was to keep the dragons away, yes. You saw in Cork Tree that I was still willing to listen to you."

  "No," Arlian corrected him, "I saw that you would still ask me to listen to you. It's hardly the same thing."

  Then a thought struck him, and he looked around the room.

  "You realize," he said, "that I am here accused of keeping secrets, and now you say I have not kept them well enough!"

  "I don't say that!" Ticker objected. "How would the dragons ever know what's happened? How could Lord Enziet make a bargain with them in the first place?"

  "Enziet could speak with them, through sorcery,"

  Arlian said. "I thought that was already generally known among the members of the Society. They have ways of knowing things—they spoke to me, after Nail's death."

  "And how are we to know this was not merely a hal-lucination?" Rime asked. "I have often heard you say you may be mad, after all."

  "Very well, then," Arlian said, "I thought they spoke to me. When I washed Nail's blood from my hands an image appeared to me in the basin, and I heard the dragon's thoughts—or so I believed; if you prefer to think this the delusions of a lunatic, I cannot prove you wrong."

  "What did they say to you?" Spider asked, speaking for the first time.

  "They told me not to kill any more of their young, nor to reveal their secrets, else they would resume their war against humanity. They asked me to lie for them, and say that what we saw at Nail's bedside was mere illusion—as it would seem many of you would have preferred."

  "And did you agree to these terms?"

  "Have I told you, my lord, that the dragon sprung from Nail's death was an illusion?"

  "So you challenged them to come out and fight,"

  Toribor said, disgusted. "You doomed us all."

  "No," Arlian said. "I am not quite that mad. I tried to mislead the dragon—I only spoke with one. I attempted to make it believe that I had acquiesced, without actually lying about it—though truly, I am unsure why I bothered; I am under no obligation to speak the truth to dragons. I was very tired, my lords."

  "It would seem," Rime said, "that everyone—young Marasa, Flute, our friend Belly, the dragons themselves—wanted you to keep the truth hidden, and tell us that we had been fooled by a magical illusion. Yet you didn't Is that just the perversity of your nature asserting itself, Arlian?"

  "My lady Rime, I was brought here today accused of keeping sec
rets from the Society, and warned that a con-viction could mean death. Would it be wise to attempt to keep secrets from the Society under such circumstances?

  You have brought this, albeit unknowingly, upon yourselves. There would have been some who did not believe my lies, and the truth would eventually have come out in any case; I prefer to have it out now, with all of us here, so that we can plan our collective response."

  "Collective response?" Hardior said.

  "Indeed," Arlian said. "I have refused my end of the dragons' bargain. I gave Wither the weapon he needed for his suicide, and I have revealed the dragons' secrets here, at this meeting. I think that if the dragons were sincere in their threats—as I hope they were not—then we can expect open warfare between Man and Dragon to resume. I assume that we will collectively respond to that."

  "And what do you think that response should be, Lord Obsidian?" Spider asked.

  Arlian smiled crookedly. "Although I have been a member of this group only briefly, I have observed that agreement among the Society's members is scarce. I don't really expect an entirely unified response; I expect thirty-eight individual, sometimes contradictory, reactions. I note that Lord Wither has made his own irreversible response to the news, one that I think honorable, if extreme."

  He did not say that he hoped they would start planning ways to exterminate the dragons; he feared that if he pushed too hard, he would only strengthen resistance to his ideas. Toribor and Ticker were already inclined to favor the opposite of whatever he proposed.

  "But what of your own response? What would you prefer as our response?"

  And there he had been asked directly. Before he could reply, though, Lord Hardior observed, "His response was making obsidian weapons, and killing the dragon that Nail bore."

  "Yes, but beyond that," Spider said.

  "He probably meant to kill all of us," Toribor growled.

  "In fact, I did," Arlian said. "I swore long ago to destroy the dragons by any means I might discover, and killing their unborn young would seem to fit that purpose. But on the other hand, I am sworn not to encom-pass the death of any of you within the city's walls, and I am fully bound by that—and I am glad of it I do not enjoy killing; some of you are my friends, and others acquaintances, while only you, Belly, do I consider in any way an enemy, and even in your case I respect you and would prefer to make peace. Better in the long term that you all die before you can add new dragons to the world, but in the short term, I would much prefer not to harm any of you."

  "So what do you plan to do?" Ticker demanded.

  "And what do you expect us to do?" Zaner asked.

  Arlian spread his empty hands,

  don't know," he said "I assume that you will all want to use the knowledge I have brought you against the dragons and work toward their eventual extermination, but I have reached no decision as to the best time or place or method to fight the dragons—and it may be that the dragons will not leave those decisions entirely up to us. I believe they can somehow sense what befalls their kin—perhaps including the unborn kin we all carry. How else could they have known what befell Nail? They may well be hearing every word we say here.

  They may even now be leaving their caves and making their way toward Manfort, leaving us no choice but to fight them here, and soon."

  There was a frightened murmur in response.

  "But do we need to fight?" someone said.

  Heads turned to see who had spoken. Arlian did not recognize her at first, a pale woman missing three fingers from her left hand, then placed her—Lady Pulzera. "After all," she continued, "we are, in effect, pregnant with their children; they will have no wish to harm us. Quite the contrary, they would surely want to protect us and ensure that we each live out the full term granted us."

  "But they're dragons," Toribor protested. "We're sworn to oppose them; if we don't, they'll enslave humanity again."

  "But they won't harm us," Pulzera insisted.

  Hardior said sarcastically, "Are you suggesting that we should betray humanity and side with the dragons in the coming war?"

  Pulzera looked around uncertainly, then said,

  "Well... yes, I suppose I am."

  When the hubbub had subsided somewhat and

  Lord Hardior had restored a semblance of order, he said sternly, "I think it's clear that we can't take seriously any proposal that we should side with the dragons against our own kind."

  "It's not clear to me," Pulzera said, a little more confidently.

  Arlian studied her curiously. This was something he had feared might happen someday—he had realized during the long ride back to Manfort that in fact the Dragon Society was, despite its avowed purpose, a natural ally of the dragons. Enziet had implied, during their final conversation, that he had deliberately created it that way after he betrayed the old Order of the Dragon.

  But Arlian had not expected the others to realize it so quickly.

  Oh, it was obvious that anyone who wanted to exterminate the dragons—as Arlian did—must eventually destroy the Society and all its members, as well, but Arlian had hoped that the others would either fail to see this, or fail to admit it, or not draw the conclusion that this meant that, in a new war between the dragons and humankind, the human side would want to wipe out the Dragon Society to prevent the eventual reinforcement of their foes. That reinforcement was centuries away, in most cases, but still, it would happen someday.

  All the same, the members of the Dragon Society thought of themselves as human. They had all survived dragon attacks, and all knew how monstrous the creatures were; they had all been exposed to centuries of propaganda intended to convince them that the Society was unalterably opposed to the continued existence of dragons. Arlian had thought that the desire to avenge their long-dead friends and family would ensure that they would help him in fighting the dragons.

  He had assumed all that would keep them on the human side, at least initially—that it would take time to see through the superficial appearances.

  Lady Pulzera, though, had seen through to the truth almost immediately. Now, as the others stared at her in varying degrees of astonishment and shock, she explained, and she seemed to grow steadily more certain of her position as she spoke.

  "What we are, the dragons made us," Pulzera said.

  "We are no longer entirely human, whether you want to admit it or not—the blood that flows in our veins is as poisonous as the dragon venom that transformed us.

  We can no longer breed with humankind; instead, we are all gravid with the dragons' young, and the dragons will surely therefore want to protect us, while ordinary humans will surely want us dead, so that those young will never be added to the foes they confront. Our interests he with the dragons, in the long term. Our older members have often remarked on how we grow colder as we age, and more like dragons ourselves—of course we do. Whatever our outward appearance, we are half-dragon, half-human, and that means that we are free to choose the side we prefer—and I would choose the side that has a very good reason not to kill us."

  "And would you choose the side that slaughtered your natural family?" Toribor asked angrily. "The side that took my eye and half your hand?"

  "I would choose the side that gave us a thousand-year lifespan and freedom from disease," Pulzera retorted, "the side to which my only possible surviving offspring will turn when I die."

  "The side that will kill you producing that offspring!"

  "Belly, I am almost two hundred years old; if not for the dragons I would be long dead. The dragons have given me centuries I would never have seen; should I loathe them that their gift is finite?"

  "Yes, damn you!" Toribor shouted. "You should hate them with all your heart for polluting you thus!" Then he whirled back to face Arlian. "You did this!" he said.

  "You have ruined everything! You have perverted this Society, divided it against itself, with your secrets and your murders!"

  "I have merely revealed the truth, and removed a traitor and his allies from our m
idst," Arlian said calmly.

  "You call Enziet a traitor?" Toribor demanded.

  "Of course," Arlian said, genuinely startled. "He withheld crucial information and bargained with the dragons, in violation of the Society's oaths."

  "He kept us from one another's throats by keeping his mouth shut!"

  Arlian could not think of any sensible reply to that; he merely shrugged. Around them, he could hear other members arguing with one another—it appeared that while a majority of the Society still found the idea of siding with the dragons intolerable, Pulzera was by no

  "Pulzera,

  means alon "e Hardio

  in her r said loudly

  opinions.

  . "Stop and think

  what you're saying"

  "I have," she replied. "The dragons will not harm us if we do not fight them ourselves; they want us to survive. If we take up those magic spears Obsidian has reportedly made, then perhaps they will kill us in self-defense—after all, they can make more dragonhearts. But if we say and do nothing to oppose them, they won't bother us!"

  "They may slaughter thousands of innocents,"

  Hardior said. "They may enslave us all, as they did our ancestors."

  "For some of us, we were enslaved, not our ancestors," Shatter said. "We have been free for seven centuries; I have lived for eight. I still remember."

  "We can bargain with them, as Enziet did," Pulzera said. "We need not be enslaved. We know their secrets."

  "And so do others," Arlian said. "What can you offer the dragons? Enziet offered his silence, but isn't it too late for that?"

  "Well, who does know about it?" Spider asked. "All of us here, but who else?"

  "Marasa," Rime said.

  "And the servants," Arlian added.

  "We could kill them," Pulzera said. "They're just servants, after all. We could accuse them of poisoning poor Nail."

  "And Wither," Ticker added.

  "They stabbed poor Wither, didn't they?" Pulzera said. "This Marasa probably arranged it so that she could inherit the estate; we can have her tried and hanged."

  "Wait a minute," Arlian said, holding up his hands.

  "Wait. Are you seriously proposing to kill two entire households in order to keep the dragons' secrets from spreading further?"