The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) (18 page)

The gaping wound in Nail's chest was widening as the blood-thing thrust itself upward, and the flesh around the opening rippled and stretched as the creature fought to be born.

"It... it clawed him open from the inside," Flute gasped, as Arlian readied the spear. He was aware that Black stood beside him, his own spear raised.

And then, with a crunching of bone, the dragon burst out of Nail's corpse, struggling to stand on four unsteady legs, crowded onto the bed. Its tail whipped across Nail's unseeing eyes and its wings began to un-fold as it raised its head. One foreclaw slipped from the bed, then quickly recovered its footing.

The secret of draconic reproduction was out.

"Now!" Arlian said, and he thrust his spear at the creature's flank. "Aim for the heart!"

Black's strike was scarcely an instant behind his own; both spearheads sank easily into the still-soft, blood-red scales.

The dragon screamed, a hellish shriek that seemed to shake the very walls; it thrashed wildly, trying to escape the black-tipped weapons that had pierced it through, but Arlian and Black pressed forward.

Two of the creature's clawed feet slid from the bed, one free, the other tangled in the coverlet. Its wings smashed at the bed's canopy, shattering the wooden frame and sending the bedcurtains flapping into a hopeless tangle. It spat venom that sizzled and smoked on the bedclothes and carpet but did not ignite. Its golden eyes were open, staring at Arlian and Black with hatred—and with something else, as well.

Arlian saw Nail in those eyes, and refused to look at them. He was glad he had made the spearshafts as long as he had, so that he need not go any closer to that inhuman face.

"Lord Hardior!" Black called. "Get behind it!"

"The heart," Arlian said. "We have to strike its heart!" He yanked his weapon free and thrust again, stepping forward and stabbing just behind the nearer foreleg.

This time the obsidian tip found its target; with another scream the dragon collapsed, dissolving instantly back into the blood from which it had sprung.

Blood splashed and pooled across the bed and Nail's corpse, ran steaming to the floor, dripped from the ruined canopy where the wings had caught; Arlian's hands were drenched with red where he clutched the shaft of the spear.

Impaled upon the tip of that spear was Nail's heart.

"By the dead gods!" someone muttered.

"By
all
the gods!" said another.

"I don't believe it," Wither whispered.

"You saw it with your own eyes, my lord," Black said.

"I saw
something
," Wither said. "I am not sure what"

"Sorcerous illusion," Lady Opal said, rising from her chair. "
That's
all it was!" She reached tentatively toward the still-smoking bedclothes where the venom had spattered, then drew her hand back.

"For an illusion, it seems to have left a great deal of blood," Flute remarked. The front of her gown was drenched in blood where one of the dragon's wings had collapsed across her bosom, and she looked down at herself in dismay. Then she called to one of the servants, "Fetch something to clean this up!"

The servant she addressed simply stared, stunned, but (me of die others hastened out of the room. She called after him, "And take care, for it's poisonous!"

"Lord Stiam's chest burst," Opal said. "I can hardly deny
that!
But the creature we saw was merely some dire conjuration, not a true dragon."

"I smell dragon's venom," Wither said. "I haven't smelled it in seven hundred years, but that's venom."

Indeed, the reek was everywhere, mingled with the odors of blood, sweat, smoke, and offal.

"Of course you do," Opal said. "From Lord Stiam's blood. But it wasn't a dragon!"

"And how do you know this?" Rime asked, still seated.

"Because the very idea that it was a dragon is arrant nonsense!" Opal said, turning angrily. "It was
red,
and are not dragons said to be green or black?"

"Enact said that they darken as they mature," Arlian sad mildly. Now that the dreaded event was over, he was able to relax again and speak calmly. "Red to gold to green to black. The adults I've seen were black, as you say."

"And do dragons pop like soap bubbles at the thrust of a spear?" Opal demanded, whirling to face him, her fists clenched. "How very strange, then, that none of our ancestors, in all the years they fought the dragons, ever managed to kill one!"

"They never stabbed them in the heart with obsid ian," Arlian said, still calm. "And it may only be the newborn infants that dissolve so thoroughly; this one had scarcely finished forming, after all."

"I think it more likely a sorcerer's illusion burst than that a genuine dragon did!" Opal retorted.

"Believe as you please," Arlian said. "I came here to prevent the creation of a dragon, not to convince you of a thing. If you can reject the evidence of your own eyes, my words are scarcely likely to sway you." He looked down at the spear he held, and the grisly trophy impaled upon it. "Where shall I put this?" he asked no one in particular.

"Nail's heart belongs in his chest," Toribor said, stepping forward.

Arlian held the spear steady as Toribor carefully pulled the mutilated heart from the head, and reverently placed it in the gaping hollow that had been Lord Stiam's bosom. That done, Toribor turned and said,

"You have slain five of the six lords, then, Obsidian—

I alone remain."

"I slew only three," Arlian said. "Three lords, and the two dragons that killed the other two. I was sworn not to kill Lord Nail within the walls of Manfort, and I did not—but you are correct that you alone remain."

"That creature was blood of Nail's blood, and heart of his heart; are you so certain that it was not Nail himself?"

"My lord Toribor, you speak nonsense," Arlian said angrily, his brief calm shattered. He did not want to think of what he had seen in the dragon's face. "Lord Nail lies dead in his bed, butchered by that thing. Is the tapeworm that kills a man heir to his soul, then, and protected by an oath such as mine?"

"This was no mere tapeworm. I saw its eyes, Obsidian ..

"It was a
dragon,
Belly," Wither interrupted angrily.

"Are you truly arguing that a dragon is anything more than a monster to be despised?"

Opal and Toribor both turned, startled by this out-burst

Wither glared back at them both.

"I fought the dragons for a hundred years," he said.

"I stood cm the ramparts of this city watching stones and arrows glance off their scales like raindrops from stone, and I saw my friends and comrades torn to pieces or blasted to bone and ash by their flaming venom. I am sworn to fight them, as is every member of the Dragon Society. I am swom to study their ways, and seek methods to destroy them. And now, when I learn that there may be a dragon in my own body, bid-ing its time and awaiting the moment when it might steal my heart as its own and tear me apart from within ... when I am told that this parasite has been growing in my blood for almost a thousand years, un-detected, you try to tell me that killing it is tantamount to lolling
me!
That the monster did not kill Nail, but rather that Nail
became
it?" He lurched forward suddenly, reaching out with his strong left arm and grabbing Toribor by the back of the neck. Displaying a strength truly astonishing in one so old and outwardly frail, he bent the unprepared Toribor over the bed and thrust his unwilling nose within inches of Nail's torn flesh and broken ribs.

"My friend Stiam is
dead?
Wither growled. "He is art transformed or transcended, he is
gone.
He was no caterpillar becoming a butterfly; he was a
man,
and that man is
dead.
To suggest otherwise, Belly, is obscene, and I will not tolerate it!"

"My apologies, my lord," Toribor murmured.

Wither released him, and Toribor straightened up again.

For a few seconds, everyone in the room was silent.

Then Wither growled. "You
knew,"
he said, turning to Arlian.

"Yes," Arlian admitted.

"You knew. This was why you wouldn't fetch the venom."

"Yes."

"This was how ... The scar on your cheek was made by Enziet's venom?"

Arlian was so startled by this phrasing, so contradictory of what Wither had said just seconds before, that he could not reply at once, but after a moment he nodded.

"Arlian," Rime asked from her chair in the corner,

"why didn't you tell us?"

Arlian clenched his teeth. He closed his eyes for a moment, then asked, "Would you have believed me, if you hadn't seen it yourselves?"

"I'm not sure I believe it
now,"
Lord Hardior said, his voice unsteady.

"I asked you once what you would do if I killed a dragon, my lord," Arlian said, turning to Hardior. "You said to leave such matters until such time as they moved out of the realm of fantasy. Has that time come, or do you still believe me mad?"

"Do not press me, Obsidian," Hardior said, staring at Nail's corpse. "This is a great deal to accept."

"It is too much," Wither said, to no one in particular.

"I will
not
be a dragon."

"Of course not," Opal said, putting her arm around him. "It was a trick, an illusion!"

"And I wanted to curse
you,
as well," Wither said to her. "It's a
lie,
beloved, and we
will
transform me, with the venom of a
true
dragon, to live with you forever!"

Wither looked at her with an expression that might have been horror, but said nothing more.

Arlian watched this exchange, and decided it was not his place to interfere. If her own eyes could not convince Opal, then his words surely would not—and it seemed plain that Wither
did
accept what he had seen.

He was very old himself; perhaps he could sense, as Nail had, the dragon growing within him.

Just then the door of the chamber was flung wide, and Nail's steward entered, with half a dozen other servants arrayed behind him.

"My lords," he said. "I understand my lord Stiam has left us."

"Indeed he has," Lady Flute said. "And quite spectacularly." She held up her arms, displaying her blood-soaked gown.

The steward's composure was shaken by the sight, but he quickly recovered. "Then may I ask that you all leave this room, so that we may clean the body and prepare it?" he said. "It's late, and surely you have needs of your own to attend to—we have rooms enough for you all, and you are welcome to stay as long as you choose; these will see you to your accommodations" He gestured at the other servants.

"I think he's right," Opal said. "We need to get away from this horror!"

"And clean ourselves," Flute said. "Careful, those of you with blood on your hands, that you let none pass your hps."

"We know it to be toxic, my lady," Arlian said. "We

"No?" Flute gestured at Black, who was staring at his own hands in bemusement, and Arlian fell silent.

"Thank you for your warning, my lady," the steward said.

"You," Lord Hardior said, "why have you not been at your master's deathbed?"

The steward looked at him, startled. "Why, he ordered me away," he said. "I sat with him through much of his illness, but yesterday he sent me away, told me to attend to his business elsewhere. I would have stayed, had he allowed it..."

"Just as well you did not," Arlian said. "Better to remember him as he was."

"Would that we all could!" Wither said.

"Please, gentlemen, ladies," the steward insisted,

"could you leave the room?"

"There is much more that needs to be said, Obsidian," Lord Hardior said, "but perhaps it can wait until morning, when we have had time to rest, and to absorb what we have seen here."

"As you please, my lord," Arlian replied. He looked down at his own bloody hands, and the spear he still held, and then at Nail's body. He shuddered.

Toribor, standing by the bed, reached down and gen-tiy closed Lord Stiam's eyes.

The servant stood aside as Arlian stepped into the room, then hurried to the bedside table where the pitcher and bowl waited. Without being asked he filled the bowl halfway with clean water. An oil lamp already burned dimly on a bracket above the bed.

"Thank you," Arlian said.

"Would you prefer to have your man here with you, or shall we find him a place downstairs?" the servant asked as he fetched towels from a nearby cabinet.

Arlian glanced at Black. "As he prefers," he said.

"He's free to go home, if he chooses; I can attend to my own needs."

"I think a place downstairs would suit me well,"

Black replied.

Arlian understood that Black intended to listen to what the household servants were saying about the night's events, and perhaps guide the stories a little. It was probably too late to preserve any secrets, but it could do no harm to get a closer look at the situation.

"As you please, then," he said as he accepted a towel.