"Yes?"
"Yes. h was very dangerous. Many were killed, and some of them made a trick so they would not be so easy to kill. They took their hearts from their chests and stored them away safely at home when they traveled. It was very difficult to kill a wizard with no heart.
You could still burn him, or cut off his head, but he could not die of bleeding, or of a stab in the chest, and poison could not reach his heart to stop it."
"Wait a minute ..." Rime began.
"But the wizard could not live for long without his heart," Isein said quickly, before Rime could complete her sentence. "The heart would be restored to the chest in no more than three days, or the wizard would die. If a wizard was poisoned, then, he must remove the poison before he restored his heart. That was how this magic became known, and the magicians of Arithei stole the knowledge from the old wizards."
"You're going to cut out my heart!" Rime demanded.
"Oeshir is," Isein agreed.
Rime looked past her at Arlian. "I said you could cut my throat, but this is a little more than that..."
"You will live!" Isein insisted.
"Damn you, woman, stop interrupting me!" Rime snatched up her legbone and slapped at Isein's hand with it. "Let me think about this."
"She will take out your heart," Isein said, "and wash it in water and fill it with clean blood to purify it, and use a charm to draw all the poison into the hole in your chest, where it can be removed. Then she will put the heart back, and heal the wound."
"And I'll live through this."
"Yes!" She hesitated, then admitted, "In Arithei, the people live through it. Here, no one has ever tried."
"Oh, how very reassuring," Rime said. "And tell me, will it hurt to have my chest cut open?"
Isein looked unhappy.
"Yes," she said. "Very much."
"And do you have any magic that will help with that"
"Herbs," Isein said, pointing at a collection of glass-ware on a bedside table. "They will make you unable to move, and deaden the pain."
"Deaden it"
"Some. It will hurt"
"Rime," Arlian said, "I didn't know all this. If you want to curse my name, dress yourself, and go home, I will not take it amiss."
"The old wizards cut out their own hearts," Isein said. "They could not use the herbs because they needed to stay alert, but they could still work the magic, despite the pain. It cannot be that bad."
"I'm not a wizard," Rime said.
"But you're a sorceress," Arlian pointed out.
"And a dragonheart," Rime said. "Damn you, Arlian. Very well." She reached for her buttons again, and Arlian looked away.
When she was naked, even her wooden leg removed, Isein handed her a cup of herbal brew; Rime drank it slowly, but without hesitation.
"What does it taste like?" Arlian asked.
"Pleasant, actually," Rime said. "Somewhat like ..."
She blinked, as if puzzled. "Like mint." Her voice was slightly slurred.
"Lie down," Isein told her.
Rime obeyed. Isein carefully took the ancient bone from her numbing fingers and laid it on a table, then looked up.
That was when Oeshir finally arrived.
She wore the strange, bright robes of an Aritheian, and bore a blue glass bowl, roughly the size of a man's head, held out before her as she marched ceremoni-ously into the room. She set the bowl on the foot of the bed, placing it beside Rime's remaining foot.
Rime lay unnaturally still; the herbs were clearly taking effect.
Arlian didn't see where Oeshir had carried the crystal knife, but suddenly it was in her hand. Arlian's hand slipped under his coat to the waistband of his breeches, where his own hidden knife waited—one with a blade of gleaming black stone, just in case something about this magic went wrong.
Oeshir had not spoken a word since entering the room; now she began a chant, gesturing with her crystal knife. The blade seemed to glow white, but Arlian was unsure whether that was his imagination, or the crystal catching the sunlight, or the magic at work.
She laid the knife on Rime's chest, and despite the paralytic herbs Rime twitched at its touch, her hands and foot jerking slightly. Then Oeshir brought forth two talismans—again, Arlian could not see whence she drew them; they seemed to simply appear in her hands. One was red and vaguely heart-shaped, while the other was a tiny white stone carving of a woman.
Oeshir did something with her hands, and it appeared to Arlian that the heart talisman somehow passed through the white stone, emerging from the other side.
And now the red talisman was pulsing gently.
Oeshir placed it on Rime's throat, then picked up the crystal knife again.
Then she plunged the gleaming blade into Rime's chest.
Rime convulsed, arms and legs flopping uncontrollably; her eyes and mouth flew wide with shock, but no sound emerged. Blood spurted, soaking the magician's knife and hands—but only once.
Arlian's vision blurred at the sight; he blinked and swallowed, feeling ill.
Oeshir paid no attention to the blood or Rime's movements, but continued to chant. With one hand she sawed the knife through Rime's body, through flesh and bone both; with the other she held the red talisman on Rime's throat, holding the thrashing woman in place.
Arlian swallowed again, struggling not to intervene.
Isein watched calmly from the side of the bed opposite Oeshir.
Then Oeshir pulled the blade out, and Rime's movements subsided. The magician laid the bloody knife on Rime's abdomen and reached one hand into the gaping chest wound, while the other picked up the red talisman.
Rime should be dead, Arlian knew—such a wound would have been almost instantly fatal. She was not dead, though—her eyes were wide and staring but alive, her fingers clenched and unclenched despite the herbs.
The air around the bed seemed to ripple, and the colors of the bedclothes shimmered unnaturally; Arlian remembered the waves of wild magic that he had seen flashing through the sky in the lands south of the Borderlands. He had never expected to see anything like that here, in his own home in Manfort. He thought he could see Rime's severed ribs flexing like snakes to make room for the magician's hand, but he was unsure whether that was illusion or reality.
Oeshir tensed, and pulled, and her hand emerged from Rime's chest clutching something red and bloody. Her other hand instantly dropped into the wound, inserting the red talisman in place of Rime's excised heart.
Then she took the bloody, still-beating heart in both hands, leaving the talisman in the wound, and placed it reverently in the waiting glass bowl.
The chant ended. "Water," Oeshir called.
Isein stepped forward, pitcher ready—Arlian had not seen her pick it up. She poured clean water into the bowl while Oeshir turned her attention back to Rime's chest. The white stone talisman was in her hand again; she held it to her lips and kissed it, then rested it across the gash in Rime's chest.
Rime's eyes were beginning to focus again, Arlian thought. Her fingers were still moving erratically, and her whole body had begun to tremble.
Oeshir said something in Aritheian. "The stone is drawing the poison," Isein translated.
"Will it take long?" Arlian asked.
"She doesn't know," Isein replied. "My lord, we will need blood soon, to keep the heart alive."
"Of course." Arlian hurried to the door and called,
"Black!"
He was relieved, in truth, to have an excuse to look away. The knowledge that he had inflicted this horrible, unnatural, excruciating thing on his friend was churning his stomach, making him physically ill.
Black came to the door between rooms, and Arlian was suddenly appalled at the thought of letting his steward see Rime lying there, naked and mutilated.
"In here," Arlian said, pressing Black gently away from the bedchamber. "For modesty's sake."
Black nodded. "What do you need me to do?" he asked.
Arlian glanced back at the bed, wher
e Isein had plunged her hands into the bowl, and was washing Rime's heart as if it were a cabbage. "We'll need blood soon," he said. "I don't know how much."
"Half the bowl," Isein called.
Arlian closed his eyes, sickened by the thought of drawing that much blood from his guests. Then he opened them again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I should never have done this."
"Yes, you should," Brook said. "It won't kill us."
"I'll do it." Black said. "Isein gave us a bowl."
"My lord!" Isein called, her voice suddenly desperate. Arlian turned to find both the magicians staring in motionless horror at Rime's chest.
The white talisman had turned dark red. It had wrapped itself in a curtain of blood that now formed translucent wings and birdlike talons. Its shape had already changed, and it shifted further as Arlian watched—from the form of a woman to that of something else.
The new form was crooked and misshapen, its head too large for its body, its legs like twigs, but it was unmistakably a miniature red dragon. In that shape it was crawling across Rime's body, down across her shoulder onto the blood-soaked bedclothes.
Arlian snatched the obsidian dagger from his waistband and leapt to the bedside. There he hesitated, as the dragon-thing turned to face him.
"Will it hurt her if I kill it?" he asked.
Isein looked at him, then at Oeshir; she was clearly in no shape to translate that, and Arlian decided that it really didn't matter. If killing the thing killed Rime, at least it would end her pain.
He stabbed it, driving the knife down between the thing's shoulder blades, between its wings, pinning it to the bed. It squealed, a thin, high-pitched sound like the cry of a wounded rat, and the bloody shape dissolved, leaving the stone woman—or rather, the shattered fragments of the stone woman; the obsidian knife had broken the talisman into a dozen pieces.
The tip of the knife had broken, as well, and a tri-angular splinter of black glass stood in the tangled bedclothes.
And the white stone had turned black. The bedclothes beneath those fragments smoked, and Arlian smelled something he did not recognize immediately, but then placed.
Dragon venom.
Oeshir babbled wildly in Aritheian, but Arlian interrupted her, pointing his knife at the bowl. "Now what?" he asked.
Oeshir caught herself. She fell silent, took a long, deep breath, then let it out. She turned to the bowl and slid her thumbs under the rim.
Then, to Arlian's surprise, she lifted out a clear inner bowl; what he had taken for a single blue glass bowl was two bowls, one nested tightly inside the other. Now Oeshir had separated them. She placed the removed, water-filled inner bowl beside the empty outer one, then lifted Rime's heart from the murky, bloody water and placed it in the empty blue bowl.
It was still beating strongly. Arlian's breath came a little more easily when he saw that; Rime was not dead.
"Blood," Oeshir said.
Arlian nodded, and hurried back to the sitting room door.
"We need the blood now," he told Black.
Black was kneeling before Lily, holding her arm over a silver bowl; blood was running down her wrist into the bowl. Brook was sitting in a nearby chair, looking very pale and holding her own bandaged forearm. Kitten was sitting on the floor with her face to the wall, determinedly not watching any of the gory oc-currences around her.
Arlian hurried over and looked at the silver bowl.
"That might be enough," he said.
Black nodded, and reached for a waiting bandage.
Arlian lifted the silver bowl carefully and hurried back to the bedside, where he proffered it to Oeshir.
She looked at the quantity critically, then nodded and accepted it. She poured it into the blue bowl and began chanting again as her hands massaged Rime's heart.
Arlian did not want to watch this, and his eyes roamed, searching the room for something else to look at. His gaze fell upon the clear bowl, now sitting on a bedside table, out of the way.
The blood was swirling in it, beneath a mirror-smooth surface.
Arlian blinked.
The motion was not natural—but he had seen it before. "By the dead gods," he said, as he stepped over to it
The image took shape.
This was not a dragon he had ever seen before, but it was nonetheless a dragon, and Arlian could understand its thoughts as clearly as he had the others. He could feel its anger and hatred.
And then he heard its thoughts.
"You have killed my child!" it said.
Isein and Oeshir started; they had plainly heard the dragon's thoughts, as well. Oeshir's chanting wavered, but continued uninterrupted.
"You have killed my child!" the dragon repeated.
"As you killed Lady Rime's husband and children,"
Arlian replied, meeting the intense stare of the image in the bowl.
"As I will kill you. I was awakened by the pain of my child's death cry, and you shall pay for that agony. You cannot be permitted to teach others how to do this. To kill my child and let its host live is wrong." The amount of disgust and loathing it conveyed in the concept
"wrong" was overpowering. "It is obscene."
Arlian marveled at how completely the dragon had forgotten its own presumed human ancestry, and how little it comprehended human values.
Or perhaps it understood human values, but rejected them.
"Dragons have threatened me before," Arlian said.
"I still live."
"You have not faced me," the dragon replied. "Now you will. You will die, your palace burning around you.
That abomination that performed this obscenity will die with you, and all the outsiders who dare to intrude in the lands of dragons with their mockery of wizardry as well. The creature who permitted this to be done to her will die. Even now, I am on my way to destroy you."
Arlian opened his mouth to speak fresh defiance, but before the words came the image in the bowl shattered—and the bowl itself shattered an instant later, showering blood and water and venom across the table and the floor beneath.
He turned to see what was happening on the bed.
Oeshir had placed Rime's heart back in her chest and was frantically working to close and heal the wound; her hands and voice trembled, but she continued the gestures and incantation.
Isein was staring in horror at the broken bowl.
Rime's hps were drawn back from her teeth in a hideous grimace; her hands gripped the coverlet beneath her so tightly the knuckles were white. Her eyes were focused on the canopy over the bed.
Arlian turned again and saw Black in the sitting room door, a dagger in his hand.
"What was that?" Black demanded. "What spoke?"
"A dragon," Arlian said. "The one whose venom flowed in Lady Rime's veins. It would seem our little experiment succeeded."
"It's coming here?"
"So it says."
'1 can have the coach ready in ..."
"I'm not fleeing," Arlian interrupted. "I've been looking for a way to fight these monsters since I was a child; now that one is finally coming here to face me, I am not going to run away!"
Black nodded. He started to speak, but Arlian interrupted him again.
"You should get the women out of here, though—
coach, wagon, whatever you can find. Alert the household, tell anyone who wants to flee to go now. Anyone who stays should be armed with obsidian." He smiled tensely. "And see that someone loads spears into that machine out front"
The chanting stopped. Arlian turned.
"It is done," Oeshir said, stepping away from the bed, the red talisman in her hand. Then she spoke to Isein in rapid Aritheian.
"She cannot be moved for a day and a night," Isein translated. She hesitated, then asked, "When will the dragon arrive?"
"I don't know," Arlian said. "I don't know where it lairs, or how fast a dragon can fly. It could be days, or it could be mere minutes."
Isein looked unhappily at Rime. "If it is l
ess than a day and a night, our work was for nothing."
"I'll see to it that it wasn't," Arlian replied. He, too, looked at Rime.
Her naked body was drenched in sweat, and from throat to crotch she was smeared with blood; blood saturated the coverlet on which she lay. She was trembling uncontrollably, despite the herbs.
The wound in her chest was closed, though, and her eyes were alert.
"Do whatever you can for her," Arlian said. A thought struck him. "And can Oeshir heal those two women who provided the blood?"
Isein quickly translated the question into Aritheian; Oeshir did not bother to answer, but hurried to the sitting room. As she did Isein fetched a cloth and pitcher, and began to wash Rime.
Arlian wanted to stay, to see that Rime was cared for, to reassure her—but he had more urgent matters to attend to.
A dragon was coming to kill him.
"If I live, I'll be back for you," Arlian told Rime quickly; then he turned and ran for the door.
Two hours later the spear-throwing device was prepared, standing in the forecourt with six of Arlian's longest and best obsidian-tipped spears loaded, ready to be launched by tripping a single lever. Arlian stood beside it, scanning the sky, another spear in his hand and two obsidian daggers in his belt
Kitten, Brook, Cricket, Hasty, Vanniari, Lily, Musk, and most of the servants had been hastily packed up and sent off to the Grey House—Black had seen to that, and had accompanied them to ensure their safe arrival. Messengers had been sent to the Citadel, and to Toribor, Spider, and Shard, warning them that a dragon was on its way. Everyone remaining in the Old Palace was armed with at least an obsidian dagger.
Everyone, that is, but Rime, who could not yet close her hand to hold a knife. Isein and Oeshir and Rime were all still in the upstairs rooms; Rime could not be moved, and the two magicians would not leave her, though they happily accepted the stone knives.
Arlian was unsure where Qulu, the third magician, was; he had not happened to cross his employer's path.
Arlian hoped that the dragon had no special means for locating the Aritheians, and that Qulu was somewhere safe.
Arlian had considered sending a message to the remainder of the Dragon Society, but had dismissed the idea; after all, they might well decide to help the dragon.
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 37
