Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (4 page)

Rolinor's spear had not been lost after all, but left in the entry tunnel with the men's hats; now it was in the big bundle Quickhand bore.

At least the lordling had not broken every rule.

Arlian still carried his own spear, and still wore his glassy stone dagger on his belt—retaining his personal weapons was one of the privileges of his rank. He grimaced. It was not so very long ago that spears and daggers had been seen as the mark of the commoner, and a lord had been expected to carry only a fine steel sword, and perhaps a matching swordbreaker.

Arlian had such a sword at his waist, of course, but had not drawn it in the cave; steel could not pierce dragonhide, only obsidian could. Still, the sword had seen use a few weeks before, when one of Lord Hardior's hired assassins had attempted to waylay Arlian outside a tavern in Upper Durlek; the man's first dagger thrust had been turned by the mail Arlian wore beneath his blouse, and that had given Arlian the time he needed to draw his own blade. The assassin had not had a chance to make a second thrust, and his skull now hung on a pike at the rear of Arlian's wagon.

The man had lived long enough before bleeding to death to confirm that Lord Hardior had recruited him, but little more—not that it mattered. The Dragon Society, presumably at the direction of their monstrous masters, had been sending assassins after Arlian and certain others for a dozen years now, and there were few surprises left in their stories. A contact by a trusted friend, a succession of meetings, and finally a promise from Lord Hardior that if the assassin could kill Lord Obsidian he would be given a dose of life-extending elixir—the tales did not vary in any important feature.

Lord Shatter was nominally the head of the Dragon Society, on the basis of seniority, but Lord Hardior seemed to be in charge of hiring killers, and Lady Pulzera clearly held a great deal of authority, as well.

Hardior and Pulzera had wanted Arlian dead even before open warfare broke out between the Society and the Duke; it was hardly surprising they continued to do so.

Arlian took a modicum of pleasure in frustrating them. He smiled grimly at the memory as he marched across the frozen mud of the camp to his own pavilion.

He had no woman waiting for him as Rolinor had, but when he

opened the flap he found his steward setting two glasses and an open bottle of good red wine on the little folding table between the camp chairs. A fire was already burning in the improvised earth-and-stone hearth, but while the flames took away the worst of the chill the tent's interior was not truly warm, merely less cold. Arlian's cloak stayed around his shoulders, his hat on his head.

The steward's true name was Beron, but he was known to all as Black; his hair and beard were black, and he usually dressed entirely in black as well, generally favoring leather garb more suited to the caravan guard he had once been than to the steward he had long since become.

He was one of Arlian's oldest friends, as well as the head of his household staff, and Arlian regretted that they spent so little time together; ordinarily Black remained in Manfort with his family, overseeing Arlian's affairs, while Arlian ranged about the countryside battling dragons and dragonhearts. This visit to the dragonslayers' camp was highly unusual—but very welcome.

Black poured generous servings of wine, then waited while Arlian set his spear in its brackets, extending horizontally across almost the entire width of the pavilion, and hung his sword and obsidian dagger in their place above his cot, joining the swordbreaker he had not bothered to carry on the day's expedition.

Weapons secured, Arlian doffed his hat at last, brushed at the soot that had collected on the brim, then set it aside before turning back to Black. He accepted a glass as he sank onto one of the chairs and let his cloak fall open.

Black settled into the other chair and asked, "Did it go well?"

"Well enough," Arlian replied, stretching out his legs.

"Were there indeed six dragons, then? Did any wake?"

"Only four," Arlian said. "And we slew them all before they woke, though the last seemed to be stirring as Stabber approached; no one was hurt, no harm done."

"Except to the dragons."

"Except to the dragons, yes. And the venom supply. We ignited a sinkhole full of the foul stuff."

"And what of the poison sacs in the four corpses? Burned, or simply left untouched?"

"Neither, to be honest. There was . . . well, I said I would not speak of it further." He waved the matter away.

Black smiled. "Ah, now you've piqued my curiosity. Shall I remind you of your oath, these many years past, to keep no secrets from me?"

"I sometimes think I swear altogether too many oaths," Arlian said ruefully.

"Undoubtedly you do."

Arlian tasted his wine, considering the flavor carefully; there was a certain smokiness to it that he did not find particularly appealing after the day's events.

"I await the tale," Black said.

Arlian decided the wine would do well enough, and took another sip. "Ah, it seems our little lordling Rolinor was momentarily overcome by greed," he said. "I caught him filling his brandy flask with venom."

Black was silent for a long moment, all levity vanished. Then he asked, "Have you arranged to send word to his family, or to the Duke?

Will the body be sent home?"

Arlian blinked at his steward, then said mildly, "He's not dead."

Black stared back. "He's not?"

"He's not."

"You let him live?"

"Indeed I did."

"But trafficking in venom—Ari, how could you let him live?"

Arlian sighed. "Black, he's a young fool of good family who lost his head under extraordinary circumstances—a head that was full of brandy and the stench of venom. I destroyed his flask, warned him sternly, and told him that was the end of it, that it would not be mentioned again."

"You let him live." Black's struggle with disbelief was obvious.

"The complications if I had not would be most unfortunate," Arlian remarked.

"But you're showing human weakness, Ari; how unlike you!"

"I prefer to think of it as the lingering traces of compassion in my makeup. Another century will surely burn them away, and then there will be no more of these embarrassing lapses."

"Ah, then you do plan to live another century?"

"I fear it will prove necessary. How many dragons have we slain, in fourteen years of war? How many yet remain?"

'With today's four I believe the count stands at eighty-eight confirmed slain; the numbers remaining are, of course, unknown, but your own last estimate, after going through those mysterious records of yours, was that another forty-six are suspected, and that an unknown number of others may exist, as well. But I would point out that these same records said we would find six in this area, and I assume you were your usual thorough self and there were in fact only four."

"Only forty-six?" Arlian stared over his wineglass at Black.

"Yes. If that. At the present rate another ten years should surely be enough, then."

"I wish I could believe that," Arlian muttered. "I don't. I suspect that so far we have been picking off the easy ones. Some of those other forty-six are probably well hidden and clever, and it might take a century to find them all. And then, when those have been disposed of, we will still need to deal with Lord Hardior and the other dragonhearts, old and new, to ensure that no new plague of dragons is ever unleashed. That will be unpleasant."

"It may not even be possible, Ari; true, we have numbers and tradition and law on our side, but the Dragon Society can offer followers a thousand years of life. That's a powerful inducement for any ordinary man—as we have seen often enough! Stamping them out will not be easy. All the Duke's men have been working on it for fourteen years, with only limited success."

"No, it won't be easy," Arlian agreed, "but I think it can be accomplished. Once the present dragons are all dead, our foes will have no source of fresh venom until the next dragon is born. That will limit their ability to recruit supporters."

"And how old is Lord Shatter? How long do we have until that next dragon bursts from his chest?"

"I believe he is not much past eight hundred years of age; we should have at least a century."

"And you just said that disposing of the other dragons now alive might take that century."

"Let us hope that it will not—and that we will be able to dispose of Lord Shatter, as well, in that time." He leaned back. "Black, there are only twenty-six dragonhearts older than myself remaining; no matter how much venom the dragons may give them, no matter how many others they may recruit, it will be a thousand years before a twenty-seventh new dragon can be born. I think that we can achieve our final victory in that time. It may take a century, it may take two or three, but I am ready to pursue it for however long it takes—assuming no one manages to assassinate me."

"Yes, we all know your mad dedication, Ari. Or perhaps not so mad, in this case; I suppose you are in no great hurry to have your own heart torn out and magically cleansed."

Arlian turned his head away for a moment, then said, "Lady Rime made that same accusation long ago. In truth, I do not look forward to undergoing that procedure—I saw how much Rime and Shard and Spider suffered, and how swiftly they seemed to age in the weeks after it was done. I am relieved I was not present when Lady Flute surrendered herself, as I do not wish to ever see the process again, let alone experience it. I think I might prefer to simply die, as Lord Wither did—after all, what awaits me if I am cleansed? Where would I fit in a world purged of dragons? What do I have to live for, save my revenge upon them? I am polluted with their magic, and have been since childhood. I have no place among humanity. Better to die than suffer such torment and live out an empty existence."

Black stared at Arlian for a long moment before replying.

"I think you should speak to Rime and Shard and Spider and Flute before making any choice so permanent," he said at last. "You have hardly said a word to any of them in longer than I can recall—they might have some comment on the emptiness of their existence." He shifted in his chair. "Why haven't you discussed this with them, if you harbor such doubts?"

"I have been rather busy," Arlian pointed out. "All of us have been traveling extensively, and going about our various businesses."

"As the deaths of eighty-eight dragons will attest."

"Indeed."

For a moment the two men sat silently, each lost in his own

thoughts; the side of the tent rippled in the breeze, and Arlian watched the movement idly as he sipped his wine, noting the change in the fab-ric's color as the last sunlight faded and torches were lit.

Then Black rose to his feet. "I think I have had quite enough wine for now, my lord," he said. "Let me fetch our supper, such as it is."

"Very good," Arlian said. "Thank you, Black."

Black bowed, then slipped out of the tent into the torchlit twilight beyond.

Arlian remained in his chair, staring blindly at the tent wall.

"Eighty-eight dragons," he murmured to himself at last.

When he was a new-made orphan swearing revenge, and in all his seven years as a slave in the mines of Deep Delving, when he had been plotting and praying for that revenge, and on his journey through the Desolation to the Borderlands and Arithei, when he had been struggling to find the means to pursue his oath of vengeance, he had never dared believe he would ever kill so many of the monsters. He had become wealthy and powerful entirely so that he might have greater resources to devote to the task, but even so, even when he had succeeded at almost everything else, he had only hoped he might someday find a way to kill one of them.

But then Lord Enziet's death, in a cave beneath the Desolation, had shown him how the dragons were born, and how they could die.

And the dragon that destroyed his former home in Manfort had let him demonstrate to the entire city that an adult dragon could indeed be slain.

The Duke of Manfort had named him warlord and charged him

with the destruction of the dragons and the extermination of those dragonhearts who would not allow themselves to be transformed back to ordinary men and women, and he had done the best he could to carry out his duties. He had chosen to concentrate his own efforts on the dragons first, deeming them the greater threat, leaving most of the fight against the Dragon Society to the Duke's other commanders.

He and his men—the Duke's men, really—and the defenders of certain villages had slain eighty-eight dragons.

And still they had not yet found the one that slew Arlian's grandfather, and tainted Arlian's blood with venom. As long as the three dragons that obliterated his village and slaughtered his family still lived, Arlian's vengeance was not complete.

He would find them in time, he told himself. There were still forty-six dragons listed in the records Wither and Enziet had left him, forty-six dragons that had been seen emerging from their caverns, forty-six dragons that could be tracked, by skill and sorcery, and killed as they slept in their underground lairs.

Surely, the ones that destroyed the village of Obsidian would be among them! He would find them and slay them in time.

And when those forty-six were slain, when the threat was ended forever—what then?

Ah, but the threat would not be ended while any dragonheart still lived. The twenty-six surviving members of the Dragon Society would be hunted down, by the Duke's order, and offered a choice of death or magical cleansing. And the underlings they had fed the elixir of blood and venom would be offered the same choice—there were probably dozens of them by now, though of course Arlian had no accurate count.

They would all be found and dealt with; dragonhearts could be recognized by anyone familiar with the signs.

And then it would be done, the Lands of Man freed forever from the dragons' malign power, and Arlian could rest. He could choose a normal life, as Rime and Spider and Shard and Flute had, or he could choose death, as Lord Wither had.