Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  And of course, if the mother did survive, she would be a dragonheart. She would never again bear children. Even if the Aritheians were to cleanse her of the taint, remove her heart and leach the venom from it, she would probably be sterile—in all the years since the method was first developed, none of the handful of former dragonhearts had ever managed to sire or conceive a child.

  And on the other hand, if the experiment worked, what would the child be like? There would be no confusion of cat and human, but only human. The dragon portion did not seem to make the transition from mother to offspring, though the magic did. Would the child be a wizard, perhaps? Or a powerful natural magician, but otherwise human?

  Or something else?

  He could only carry out such an experiment on a willing pregnant volunteer—if then, since an unborn child was hardly in a position to consent to it. This was not something he could force anyone into; the potential consequences were too severe. And who in the world would volunteer for such a thing? What mother could be so heedless of her child's welfare?

  Perhaps someone sufficiently desperate might be found—but taking advantage of someone's desperation in such a fashion seemed wrong.

  He was mulling it over carefully when he arrived at Lady Rime's estate, where he was distracted by the swarm of children eager to see the new kitten.

  " T h i s will be the last," Arlian explained, as Bekerin readied a milk-soaked rag and Rose took the shivering kitten from Arlian's hands. "I will be doing no more experiments on cats."

  That's just as well," Rime said, smiling. "I think we have quite enough kittens now."

  Arlian looked at her thoughtfully. At one time he would have con-salted with her about his plans, but they had spoken so rarely in recent years, and she had seemed so entirely concerned with her adopted family, that he no longer felt comfortable discussing greater issues with her.

  And Black would have been another advisor, but he had been sufficiently distressed by Arlian's recent experiments that they had drifted apart. And given Black's horror at experimentation with animals, he would surely be appalled by any suggestion of experimenting on an unborn child.

  Lord Zaner might have an opinion, and could provide a useful

  sounding board, but should he disagree with Arlian's conclusion he might bring the Duke's soldiers sweeping down from the Citadel to intervene; Arlian did not like that prospect. He intended to make his own decisions, and carry them out or not as he chose, rather than as the Duke instructed.

  When the kitten, a gray one now named Fog, was properly settled Arlian politely declined an offer of breakfast and headed up the street toward Obsidian House, thinking deeply.

  Patch had turned on him, and been killed—in fact, the cat-creature had seemed to want to be killed. He had poisoned dozens of cats and pigs and dogs in the past few months; now he suspected he might need to kill Smudge and Bee, as well. He did not like killing animals, but it did not particularly trouble him; after all, as a man who happily ate beef and pork and mutton, he could hardly object to killing animals on general principles.

  People were another matter.

  If he were to turn a pregnant woman into a dragonheart, and the baby survived and proved to be a new sort of magical creature, then he might have his way of diverting the land's magic away from either dragons or chaos—but if the new creature proved maleficent, could he bring himself to kill a child as he had slain Patch?

  He shivered and pulled his coat more tightly about him; although the spring was well advanced, early mornings could still be chilly on occasion. He glanced up at the pale blue sky.

  Summer was coming; the dragons would definitely be waking soon, if they were not already active. The Duke had granted them one village a year; any day now, they might sweep out of their caves and slaughter a town full of men, women, and children. The weather in Manfort was still too cool and bright for them, but there might be areas elsewhere in the Lands of Man already suffering under the oppressive heat and thick clouds of dragon weather.

  A town a year, every year, for the rest of eternity, if the dragons were not stopped—and the only way he knew to stop them, now that their secrets were all known, was to kill them.

  And if they were stopped, all their land destroyed, then chaos would overwhelm the Lands of Man as it had the realms to the south and west.

  Arlian still could not accept either possibility. He needed a third alternative as much as he ever had. Patch had demonstrated that magical cats were not an acceptable choice. What if magical children were no better?

  Arlian had killed men before, several of them—he had no exact count, but from the first bandit in the southern slopes of the Desolation to the last magician in Kaltai Ol there had easily been a dozen or more.

  He had never slain a child, though.

  But if the new creatures were truly children, he told himself, then he would have no need to kill them. They could be brought up to be com-passionate and kind.

  Couldn't they?

  At Obsidian House he made his way to the kitchens, to find himself the breakfast he had disdained at Rime's; there he discovered Brook and her three children at the table, talking quietly.

  Arlian could not help noticing that Brook's pregnancy was well advanced now; if all went well her fourth child would be born before the summer was far advanced.

  And if she were to drink a cup of blood and venom before then . . .

  "My lord," Brook said, upon seeing him enter, "have you seen Patch this morning?*'

  "Oh," Arlian said.

  At the tone of his reply Brook took one look at his face, then told her children, "Go find your father. All three of you, right now."

  Amberdine promptly trotted away; Kerzia took a moment to catch Dirinan by the hand and tow him along as she followed her sister.

  Arlian sat down across the table from Brook, and said, "Patch is dead, I'm afraid, by my own hand."

  "What happened?"

  Arlian hesitated, trying to decide what to explain and what to leave out, and then, without really intending it, found himself telling her everything.

  He was just explaining how the obsidian dagger had glanced harmlessly off Patch's back when Black appeared in the doorway with a daughter on either side and Dirinan riding on his shoulders.

  "You sent the children to find me, my dear?" Black asked.

  Brook looked up, startled. "Oh," she said. "Yes, I did, but I'm afraid it was a mistake—I had misunderstood something Lord Arlian said."

  Black glanced curiously at Arlian, who said nothing.

  "Could you take the children outside, please?" Brook continued.

  "They should enjoy this weather while they can."

  "Of course." Black looked from his wife to his employer and back, then down at the girls. "Come on," he said. "Why don't we take a walk down to visit Lady Rime? We could see what Rose and Bekerin and the rest are doing."

  "They have a new kitten," Arlian said. "He's named Fog."

  "Kitten!" Amberdine exclaimed, jumping up and down.

  "Haven't you seen enough kittens lately?" Black asked, smiling.

  "No," Amberdine answered, very definitely.

  "This is the last," Arlian said. "I've finished my experiments with cats."

  Black looked at him with an expression that might have been relief.

  "Then we'll go meet this one last kitten," Black said. "Come on." He turned, and herded the girls away.

  When they were gone, Arlian resumed his narrative. When he had completed a bare outline of the night's events, he tried to explain his thoughts about what had occurred; throughout all of this Brook provided an attentive audience.

  It took some time. In the course of Arlian's explanation Stammer and some of the other servants looked in occasionally, but upon seeing the room occupied by Lord Obsidian and the steward's crippled wife deep in conversation they quickly departed.

  Finally* though, Arlian finished speaking, and sat silently, gazing across the table at Brook.

 
She gazed thoughtfully back, then said, "The dragons destroyed Siribel five years ago. They burned it to the ground, and smashed the stone piers into the sea, because the town fathers refused to pay taxes to Lord Hardior on top of what they paid the Duke."

  Siribel, Arlian knew, was the coastal town where Brook had been born and raised. Her family had died in that attack, much as his own had died when the dragons attacked the Smoking Mountain more than twenty years earlier. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "My parents were dead to me before that," she replied. "They were dead to me when they never inquired after me in Gan Pethrin, where Sarcheyon sold me to the slavers. But my sisters, the neighbors—the dragons killed them all."

  "I know," Arlian said.

  "I want the dragons dead—perhaps not as much as you do, Triv, but I want them dead, all of them. Every time you came home and reported how many of their nests you had cleaned out, how many you had slain, the sun shone a little more brightly for me, my heart was a little lighter, my children's future seemed a little more hopeful. When the Duke made peace with the Dragon Society and forbade you to kill more, the world darkened again." Her hand fell to her swollen belly. "I want you to go on killing dragons, Triv," she said. "I will risk this child inside me if that's what is required to send you and your men out there with your black spears again."

  Arlian stared at her. He had not asked her, and to have her volunteer like this was more than he had hoped for. "I cannot promise . . . " he said.

  "If you do not perform your experiment on a human child, will you kill any more dragons?"

  "I don't know," he said. "The Duke has forbidden it, and the wild magic is . . . If it came, our civilization would not survive it."

  "And you think that the child would be human, and not a monster?"

  " I . . . I don't know," he said. "I believe it would be human in appearance, certainly, but then wizards are often human in appearance, while they are not inwardly human. And I cannot be sure of anything, anything at all."

  "Any child is a risk," Brook said. "I have lost two, and every time I have conceived I have lived with the possibility that my baby would be deformed, hunchbacked, hare-lipped, dwarfed, blind, or deaf, that 1

  might bear a drooling idiot with missing limbs. Each time I was pregnant I lived in dread that the child would be born without feet, and be as much a cripple as I am—oh, I know that that was unlikely, but no one truly understands how these things happen. Adding magic to the terrors I face does not seem so very dreadful."

  Arlian considered that for a moment, trying to understand her feelings and failing. At last he said, "You understand, though, that if we do this you will be, at least temporarily, a dragonheart? That this will then of necessity be your last child?"

  "Arlian, I am forty-two years old; this would quite probably be my last child in any case."

  "You may be unable to suckle the babe."

  "A wet nurse can be found easily enough."

  "And you will need to undergo the Aritheian cleansing rites eventually, if you are not to give birth to a dragon. The venom will eat away at your soul, at your heart, if it is not removed."

  "I have spoken to Lady Rime often enough, Arlian, and Lady Flute has been land enough to attend me on occasion; I helped nurse Lord Zaner back to health. I know what is involved."

  "Thank you, Brook." Arlian was seated and could not bow properly, but he lowered his eyes in respect. "I am honored by your offer."

  "Then fetch your venom, my lord, and let us proceed without delay, before anything can interfere—and before the baby arrives. I am in my final month, I think, and although it should still be a few weeks, and I do not feel anything to indicate otherwise, babies come on their schedule, not ours."

  "I am more concerned about the meddling of magical forces, or of Fate, than of a premature birth, madam, but I agree that some haste is appropriate." He pushed back his chair, rose, and turned—and found himself meeting the gaze of two small, blue, slit-pupiled eyes.

  You killed my sister, Smudge said from his perch on a shelf beside the hearth.

  Brook's head jerked around, startled, and she, too, saw the kitten-thing.

  "I did," Arlian agreed, his hand creeping toward the silver dagger in his coat. "She attacked me."

  Do you intend to kill me?

  "I am perfectly willing to, and will do so if you threaten those I care about."

  And if I do not?

  "I bear no ill will toward you."

  Perhaps it would be well if I left.

  "Perhaps it would," Arlian agreed.

  And then Smudge had vanished. Arlian was unsure whether this was some trick of natural feline stealth magically exaggerated, or outright invisibility, but there could be no question that the creature could disappear in the shadows far more effectively than any ordinary cat.

  For a moment he stood silently, waiting to see whether the strange little beast would reappear; then Brook said, "There's Bee to worry about, but I think we have a few weeks before that one can cause any trouble. Right now I really think you should fetch that venom."

  The possibility that Smudge intended to spill or smash the blue bottle, as his sister had smashed the brown, could not be ignored. "At once," Arlian agreed, as he strode toward the door.

  By the time he left the grounds of the Old Palace he was almost running.

  39

  A Father's Objections

  A Father's Objections

  Arlian hurried down the avenue he glimpsed Black returning,

  without the children; he waved, but did not wait for his steward, nor take the time to speak, before he turned the corner onto Cutler Street.

  He reached the Grey House in good time and found the bottle of venom undisturbed; there was no evidence that Smudge had been in the vicinity, and Arlian guessed that his concern had been needless. As an added precaution, though, he wrapped the bottle in several layers of toweling and packed it in a leather shoulderbag before departing the Grey House, locking the doors behind himself and heading back up the slope toward Obsidian House at a brisk pace.

  The sun was perhaps an hour past its zenith when he rounded the corner and saw the old palace gateposts ahead—and saw Black standing between them, a sword bare in his right hand, his left on the hilt of a swordbreaker. Arlian slowed, and looked around for some reason for Black's unsheathed steel—as a steward, rather than a lord, Black did not ordinarily carry a sword or swordbreaker at all. The ones he now bore were a set Arlian kept for his use in practice.

  Arlian saw no enemy, no need for a blade—and Black was not moving, not turning to face a foe. Instead he stood between the stone pillars, staring directly at Arlian.

  Arlian glanced over his shoulder to be sure no assassin lurked behind him, but saw only the bare cobbles of the street, the high brick wall of Lord Dehellen's estate, and a few workmen pushing a cart some twenty yards away.

  The workmen did not look like assassins, and in any case were moving away. Had Smudge perhaps slipped out, or made a threat of some sort? "Ho, Black!" Arlian called, turning his gaze forward once more and picking up his pace.

  "Arlian," Black replied, raising his sword to guard. His voice was low and harsh.

  Arlian stopped dead, twenty feet from the tip of the raised blade.

  Black did not call him "Arlian." Black called him "Ari." Under certain circumstances Black might perhaps call him "my lord" for emphasis, or "Lord Obsidian" as gentle mockery, but never, so far as he could recall, "Arlian." Something was very wrong.

  "Beron," Arlian answered. "What is it?"

  "You are not going to poison my child," Black replied.

  Arlian understood the situation immediately, and cursed himself for not having anticipated this. He had been so caught up in his own concerns, so encouraged by Brook volunteering unasked, that he had forgotten how Black would react.

  "I sincerely hope not," he said.

  "You are not going to poison my wife."

  "Beron, please . . . "

  "You
are not going to bring that filth into our home."

  Arlian frowned. "Your home?"

  "I saw what those kittens became," Black continued. "You are not going to do that to my baby."

  "I don't intend to," Arlian said. "The effects should be . . . "

  "J don't care what you intend!" Black bellowed, advancing on Arlian with his sword at ready. "I don't care what you think the effects are!"

  Arlian raised his hands in what was intended to be a calming gesture.

  "Black," he began, " I . .

  "You will dump that bottle out, here and now," Black ordered, before Arlian could say more. "All of it. Not a single drop passes this gate."

  IS will not," Arlian said, stepping back, his hands falling to the hilts of his own sword and swordbreaker.

  Black's sword-point was at his throat. "You will," Black growled.

  Arlian's left hand flashed up as he twisted sideways, and his swordbreaker knocked Black's blade away; then he drew his own sword and faced his steward in guard position.

  "Don't do this, Black," Arlian said.

  "You are not going to destroy my family," Black said, making a quick advance—one intended to intimidate or wound, not kill. Arlian sidestepped it easily and did not riposte, but simply resumed his guard.

  He was aware, as he circled slowly around his opponent, that they had acquired an audience; several people who had been going about their business a moment before had stopped to watch the duel.

  "You have destroyed one thing after another all your life, Arlian,"

  Black said. "You destroyed Enziet's bargain with the dragons, you destroyed the Old Palace, you killed Drisheen and Stonehand and the rest, you destroyed the Blue Mage. You plunged all the Lands of Alan into chaos, from Sarkan-Mendoth to the Borderlands, in pursuit of your insane dreams of vengeance. And now you propose to destroy my wife and child, and I have had enough of destruction."

  And then he attacked, moving just off the beat that would have followed the rhythm of his speech.

  Arlian knew that trick; Black had taught it to him many years ago, when they had been caravan guards crossing the Desolation. He was ready, and turned the sword easily.

  But then Black's swordbreaker came around unexpectedly and