Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The room’s truly strange features were neither the people nor the furnishings nor the unnatural lighting, but the knicknacks and curiosities that filled the cabinets and shelves and stood on several of the tables. Most of them seemed to have been collected and arranged without rhyme or reason. A row of human skulls adorned one ornate cabinet; a mummified hand lay upon a nearby table, ignored by the woman who sat at that table, reading an old leather-bound book. The complete skeleton of what appeared to be a large lizard, held together with bits of silver wire, stood on a shelf. Odd and unfamiliar devices of wood, wire, and glass glittered from various niches.

  The majority of the trinkets, however, were carvings or sculptures—wood, stone, metal, and glass, crude or sophisticated, all scattered about with no order that Arlian could see. A rough-hewn wooden phallus lay beside a golden eagle; a nude woman in white marble stood with her back to a jade monster; a glass dragon loomed over an architect’s model of a palace.

  And dragons, not usually depicted in the Lands of Man, were the most common subject for the carvings and other illustrations—paintings here and there, a small tapestry, embroidered upholstery, etchings, bas relief, and more. The dragons varied from stylized symbols to statuettes so detailed and realistic that Arlian felt uneasy merely looking at them. He was not entirely free of the common superstition that representations of dragons were bad luck, and this place was full of them.

  The doorkeeper picked up a brass bell from a shelf by the door and rang it. The people in the room looked up, startled.

  “We have an applicant for membership in this august body,” the man in green announced.

  “Who is it, Door?” a dark-haired woman asked.

  “Lord Obsidian,” the doorkeeper replied.

  One man, a thin white-bearded fellow, smothered an oath; another, a barrel-chested bald man in an eyepatch, leaped to his feet, knocking over his chair. He drew his sword and stood at guard, facing Arlian.

  “Is Obsidian his true name, then?” another, older woman asked.

  “Who cares what his true name is?” the man with the sword demanded. “He’s the one who wants to kill me!”

  “And your name, my lord?” Arlian called, his hand on the hilt of his own sword.

  “Toribor,” the swordsman said. “That’s what Kuruvan told you, isn’t it?”

  “Then yes, I’m sworn to kill you,” Arlian acknowledged. “Would you care to attend to it immediately?”

  “Oh, stop it,” the first woman said, obviously disgusted. “Belly, if he joins, he can’t kill you—and you can’t kill him. And if he doesn’t join, well, he’s already dead. Put your sword away.”

  Toribor frowned; his sword lowered, but he hesitated.

  “A moment,” Arlian said. “As I understand it, if I join your Society as I intend, I must indeed swear to make no attempt to kill any of my fellow members inside Manfort’s walls—am I not correct in believing that nothing is said about what might happen outside those walls?”

  “Oh, I like this,” the second woman said. “You’re sworn to kill Belly—that is, Toribor? But you’re willing to swear not to harm him in the city?”

  “Exactly,” Arlian confirmed.

  The woman laughed, and for a moment no one spoke.

  “That’s insane,” someone muttered at last.

  “Delightfully so,” the woman agreed. “I think I may enjoy this. Yes, Door, by all means, let’s have him join!”

  Toribor’s sword wavered.

  “I came here intending to join this Society,” Arlian said, “and that is still my intention. If Lord Toribor would prefer to fight me to settle the matter between us before I continue, I have no objection.”

  “If you won, you’d still need to join,” a man said.

  “Yes, of course,” Arlian agreed.

  “And if you lost, you’d die—even if Belly did not kill you cleanly,” the man continued. “You can’t leave this room alive unless you join, and you could not join were you too injured to continue a fight, nor would we provide medical attention. We would instead finish you off.”

  Toribor looked around. “You’re all standing about discussing this as if it were nothing!” He focused on the thin white-haired man. “Nail, aren’t you going to say anything?”

  For a second or two the others, including the man addressed as Nail, simply stared at Toribor; then the older woman said, “You’d need to fight right here, you know—young Lord Obsidian can’t leave this room except as a full member of the Dragon Society.”

  Arlian said nothing, but he couldn’t help glancing around at the maze of furniture and the clutter everywhere. A duel in here would be absurd; he and Toribor would be stumbling over everything.

  “Well, I’m not cleaning up the mess if they fight here,” someone said.

  “The survivor would clean it up,” the woman replied.

  “There’d be breakage,” another woman said.

  “Something valuable might be smashed,” a man remarked.

  “Oh, may the gods rot you all,” Toribor said in disgust, sheathing his sword. “I won’t fight him here. Can’t we just kill him as an intruder?”

  “He’s eligible for membership,” Door said.

  “And I want him to join,” the older woman said. “He amuses me.”

  “He deserves the same rights as any other newcomer,” a man said.

  “He has stated his intention of killing five of us,” the man called Nail said in a whispery, unhealthy voice.

  “What of it?” the woman demanded. “That’s what the oath is for.”

  Toribor looked around and found no support for his suggestion. He growled, then said, “Fine, then. Go ahead and initiate him. If he swears the oath, that makes my life that much easier. But don’t expect me to shake his hand and laugh with him over the wine.” He turned away. “Nail? I’m going—are you going to stay and watch this travesty?”

  “I believe I am,” Nail replied.

  “Then may the dead gods spit on you, too,” Toribor said. He pushed past his neighbors’ chairs and stamped out; Arlian stepped warily aside to let him past.

  Toribor glowered at him but said nothing more, and did not touch him nor draw a weapon. A moment later he was gone, and Arlian turned back to face the others.

  “Now,” Door said, “welcome, Lord Obsidian, to the Dragon Society. You have come here as a stranger, but after today you will be a stranger to us no more—you will be one of us, or one of the dead. Which of those options we choose will be determined by how you answer questions put to you. You must answer truthfully and completely, to the best of your ability. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” Arlian replied. “Am I permitted to ask questions, as well?”

  “You are permitted to ask, but we are not required to answer,” the older woman said.

  “And many of your questions will probably be answered in the initiation process, in any case,” a man said.

  “Come in and take a seat,” Door said. “This may take some time.” He gestured for Arlian to step forward.

  Arlian moved warily into the room and found an unoccupied chair. He seated himself, being careful to keep his sword and swordbreaker from becoming entangled in the legs of the furniture.

  No one had asked him to remove them, nor had Toribor removed his; what’s more, looking around, Arlian saw that most of the men in the room wore swords. Even one woman had a knife on her belt long enough that it might generously be considered a sword.

  As he watched, the members of the Society came and seated themselves in a semicircle facing him, and Arlian looked them over.

  He counted fourteen—eight men and six women. All were significantly older than he was, but only Nail was white-haired. All wore expensive clothes, supple leathers or fine fabrics, but not all wore them well—several garments were visibly frayed, faded, or wrinkled.

  Many of the members were maimed or visibly damaged in some way—no fewer than three, counting the departed Toribor, wore patches over ruined eyes; on
e man lacked a right hand, and one older woman’s left leg from the knee down had been replaced with a wooden peg, while several merely had masses of scar tissue one place or another.

  All of them, despite their disfigurements, had strong faces and piercing eyes, and being the focus of their attention was unsettling. Arlian found himself remembering that long-ago moment in his parents’ pantry when he had looked into the face of a dragon; these faces might be human, yet the resemblance was plain.

  The experience was far less intense, though. “The heart of the dragon” was not a wholly inappropriate name, but these faces did not show the heart so much as a faint, pale reflection of a dragon’s eyes.

  “Who wants to begin?” Door asked, as he took a place for himself to Arlian’s right.

  “I will,” the older woman said. She had taken a place at the center of the semicircle, directly in front of Arlian. Her hair was black streaked with gray, pulled back tightly into a long ponytail; her skin was rough and brown, but her face unscarred. Her eyes were dark and intense, but she was smiling. As she leaned forward over an oaken table she held an elaborately carved ebony cane in one hand, and a polished white bone in the other.

  The cane made a connection for Arlian, and he realized that this woman was the one missing half a leg.

  Door bowed. “Lady Rime,” he said. “You may begin, then.”

  39

  Initiation Rites

  The woman nodded an acknowledgment to Door, then met Arlian’s gaze across the table. “You have been permitted in this room,” she said, “because we believe you possess the trait we all share, the trait that sets us apart from the rest of humanity. Do you know what that trait is?”

  “I assume you refer to what my steward calls ‘the heart of the dragon,’” Arlian said.

  “And can you tell us how you acquired this trait?”

  “Not with certainty,” Arlian said. “My steward believed some people are simply born with it. On the other hand, Lord Wither said that it came from drinking human blood mixed with dragon’s venom.”

  “And have you drunk human blood mixed with dragon’s venom?”

  “I have.”

  “Tell us how that happened.”

  Arlian hesitated. He was not eager to share those memories with these strangers—and with Nail, in particular, who was presumably either one of the six lords himself or a close friend to some of them, and who might find a way to use any information about Arlian’s origins against him.

  But he had promised to answer fully. He drew a deep breath and began.

  “Dragons destroyed my home village,” he said. “At least three of them. They came nine years ago, during a long spell of dragon weather. I was in the family cellar, taking inventory to see how much we needed to add before winter, when they attacked. My grandfather was killed by a blast of venom that failed to ignite, and he fell down the cellar ladder onto me as he died; his blood, and the venom, spilled into my mouth as I lay stunned beneath his corpse.”

  Rime asked, “Have you any witnesses?”

  “Of course not,” Arlian said. “I was the only survivor.”

  “Have you any scars left by the experience?”

  “Only on my heart, from my family’s death,” Arlian said. “The dragon’s venom itself did not touch me.”

  “Then can you provide any proof, any evidence at all, that you are telling us the truth?”

  “I will give you my word,” Arlian said. “Beyond that, how can I? Lord Wither said he could see it in my face; if that isn’t enough, what more can I do?”

  Rime nodded. “Good enough. Those are my questions, as required; now let me give you the first instruction. The Dragon Society takes its name from our origins, of course—all of us have drunk blood and venom, and received the dragon’s heart thereby—but also from its purpose. We are not questioning you merely for our amusement, but because the Society exists in part to study the ways of dragons, to learn everything about them that we can, so that someday, if we choose, we might destroy them, and free the world forever from their vile presence. It is because of this that we may ask you, over and over, to tell us every detail of your encounter with those dragons you say destroyed your village.” That said, Rime used the bone in her right hand to prod the man next to her. “I’ve had my turn, then—you’re next, Shatter.”

  The left side of Shatter’s head was a hairless, shapeless ruin, a mass of scar tissue, but he still had both his eyes, and he stared intently at Arlian.

  “What’s your true name?” he asked.

  “Arlian,” Arlian said.

  “And your village, that you say was destroyed?”

  “Obsidian, on the Smoking Mountain.” A few heads nodded at that; they had heard of the incident.

  “You call yourself Obsidian—why?”

  “After my home village.”

  “Have you used other names?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were they?”

  “I can’t be sure I remember them all,” Arlian warned. “I called myself Lanair a few times, I traveled with a caravan under the name Lord Ari, and there were several people who called me Triv for a time.”

  “Why did you use those other names?”

  Arlian shrugged. “It was convenient to do so.”

  “Had you a reason to refrain from using your true name?”

  Arlian frowned. “Yes. Need I explain it?”

  “Does it concern dragons?”

  “No.”

  “Then you need not.” Shatter leaned back in his chair. “My true name is Illis,” he said. “The custom of using false names is an old one, and most people don’t remember its origins, but some of us here were among those who first instituted it, in the ancient days when the dragons ruled over us. This is your second instruction—that we gave false names to one another so that if we were caught by the dragon’s human servants we could not reveal the true identities of our companions in the struggle for our freedom. Those servants are gone now, long dead, and so we all reveal our true names here, so that we know we can trust one another—but the dragons still live, beneath the earth, and we keep the custom alive in case they ever return, and we must once again organize ourselves to oppose them.” He gestured to the next man in the circle.

  Nail.

  “Do you know who I am?” the old man asked, in that thin, harsh voice.

  “No,” Arlian said warily. “I heard you addressed as Nail.”

  “My name is Stiam; I believe you have announced your intention of killing me.”

  “I haven’t exactly announced it,” Arlian corrected him. “I revealed it to Lord Kuruvan.”

  “Whom you mortally wounded.”

  “I beat him in an honorable duel. I do not know whether his wound was mortal.”

  “And there were others you listed as your foes?”

  “Yes. Lord Enziet…”

  He paused as two or three of the members gasped at the name, but then collected himself and continued, “… Lord Toribor, Lord Drisheen, Lord Horim, and yourself.”

  Nail leaned forward across the table. “Are you aware that all of us save Kuruvan are members of the Dragon Society?”

  “Uh … no. I knew some of you were, and particularly Lord Enziet; I was not aware all of you were.”

  “Then you did not join the Society to find us?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why are you here, then?” Nail stared at him intently.

  Arlian looked around the circle, partly to escape that basilisk stare and partly to judge the mood of the others, then sighed. He did not dare try to lie to these people. “I recently tried to arrange a meeting with Lord Enziet—I admit I did so to further my plans to destroy him, but I merely asked to meet with him. He not only refused this reasonable request, but threatened to kill me if I ever troubled him again. I have seen him kill a woman for failing in a commission he gave her, and I know he killed four others merely for being inconvenient; I did not doubt that he meant what he said. I also believed
, from a conversation with Lord Wither, that he is a member of this Society, and that no member of the Society may kill another within the city’s walls, and furthermore that I, too, am eligible for membership. I therefore came to join to protect myself from Lord Enziet—while he is a ruthless man, I believe even he would hesitate to break your oath.”

  “Then you’re abandoning your grudge against us, whatever it was?”

  “Oh, by no means!” Arlian said. “I have every intention of eventually meeting each of you outside the city walls, when I can do so on even terms.”

  Nail stared at him for a moment longer, then blinked, straightened up, and said, “I’m not sure whether you’re a coward or a fool or something else entirely. You come here fleeing Lord Enziet, yet you fought Kuruvan and offered to fight Toribor. You openly admit to my face that you still intend to kill me if you can.”

  “I do not believe I’m a coward,” Arlian said. “Is not Enziet a powerful and dangerous man who does not hesitate to act as much from expedience as honor? Is he incapable of hiring assassins, or using dire sorcery? To defy him openly seems not courage, but foolhardiness. I will be glad to meet him, or any of the six of you, openly and fairly; I do not care to be waylaid on the street by Enziet’s guards, and left dying in an alley somewhere.”

  “You accuse him of such treachery?” Nail leaned forward again.

  “I certainly believe him capable of it. His warning to me did nothing to convince me otherwise.”

  “And you don’t hesitate to say so?”

  “I am required to answer all the questions put to me here honestly and completely, am I not?”