The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) (19 page)

He reached for the bowl.

The servant stood by, and Arlian looked at him.

"You need not stay," he said. "It's late, and I'm sure you have other matters to attend to before you'll see your own bed. See to my steward, and then yourself; don't worry about me."

The servant bowed. "Thank you, my lord." He turned, and he and Black left the room, closing the door gently behind them.

Arlian watched them go, then turned to the basin, eager to finally wash Nail's blood from his hands. He put the towel down, then plunged both hands into the cool, clean water.

The water darkened and swirled, deep red spreading out from his hands; he rubbed the blood from the back of each hand, then began to clean the fingers, one by one, squeezing each between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand and brushing at the blood with his thumb.

After a moment the water was too dark to see whether he was accomplishing anything more, and he withdrew his hands and picked up the towel.

He had gotten the worst of it off, certainly—at any rate, off his hands; the cuffs of his shirt were ruined.

He squinted at his knuckles and wrists, fairly sure that he would find more blood by the morning sun, though he could see nothing by the yellow lamplight. He picked up the towel, then glanced at the basin.

He froze, towel dangling from one hand.

The water in the bowl had gone unnaturally still and flat, as smooth as a mirror, even though the blood was still swirling vigorously beneath the transparent surface. This was unmistakably magic—though whether the sorcery of the Lands of Man or something more exotic, he could not yet say. Arlian stared.

The blood was not dissipating; instead it was gathering itself in the center of the bowl, where a recogniz-able image was forming—the image of a dragon's face.

For a moment Arlian thought that perhaps the dragon he had seen born and had slain half an hour before yet survived, in some strange and intangible form, but then he realized that the dragon's face in the bowl was fully mature, not the soft-featured visage of a hatchling, and the eyes were not Nail's.

No, this was a full-grown black dragon, one he had never seen before—dragons, Arlian had noticed long ago, had curiously distinctive and memorable faces.

He could still summon up every detail of the face of the dragon that destroyed his home on the Smoking Mountain, eleven years before; he could remember exactly the face of the dragon that sprang from Enziet's chest, and likewise the beast Nail bore. Artists and sculptors almost always failed to capture this peculiar quality of draconic appearance, but the image in the bowl had it in full, and was definitely none of those three.

Arlian remembered words he had heard spoken a year before, by poor Sweet shortly after he had rescued her from Enziet's house, before she began her fatal decline.

"I didn't believe him," she had said, "so he took the bowl of water he used to wash off the blood, and showed me that he talked to the dragons."

The bowl of water he used to wash off the blood.

The image solidified, and the swirling ceased; there was no longer any movement Arlian could describe, but the image had an odd vigor to it, the same sort of indefinable something that was the visible difference between a sleeping man and a corpse. This dragon was alive.

"We are not pleased with you."

No words had been spoken, the image of the dragon's mouth had not moved, but Arlian understood all the same what the dragon intended him to understand.

This was one of the oldest and most powerful dragons, and it was speaking to him as it had spoken to Enziet.

And, after all, was Arlian not Enziet's heir?

"I am not interested in pleasing you," Arlian said quietly. The possibility that a servant might be eavesdropping could not be ruled out, so he kept his voice very low. Somehow, he doubted that the dragon would have any difficulty understanding him.

"You should be."

"Why? I am your sworn enemy. Your kind slaughtered my family, my entire village. I want you dead, not pleased."

"The other understood, and told you. We had an
agreement, and you are his successor. You were to keep
your knowledge of our ways secret."

"I agreed to nothing."

"Do you understand the consequences of ending
that agreement? "

Arlian felt a sudden chill, though the chamber's windows were tightly closed, and the night outside warm.

He knew what consequences the dragon meant. Enziet's bargain had ended the Man-Dragon Wars and driven the dragons into their caverns, deep beneath the earth; without it, as Toribor had warned him, there would be nothing restraining them. They might emerge at any time and destroy anything and anyone they chose. The Lands of Man might once again be plunged into war and chaos. All of Manfort might face the same fiery destruction that had befallen the village of Obsidian.

Arlian had feared this; his fears had faded when nothing happened immediately after Enziet's death, and had returned when Toribor pointed out that the weather had been cold. Arlian had still hoped, though, that Toribor was wrong, that the dragons would not venture out

Now one of the dragons themselves was threatening him with exactly that. A sudden rush of anger swept over him.

"Do
you
understand the consequences of breaking the truce?" he demanded. "I've killed two of you! Do you think you could rule as you did before, now that we know how you can be slain?"

"You know the black stone, yes, but you will not find
our elders as easily destroyed as our young. Open war
would be costly to both sides, and the eventual victory
uncertain
—
but what choice do you offer us? You are
sworn to destroy us all, and we will not lie quietly in
our lairs and await your attacks. An agreement must
be made
,
your oath of vengeance forsaken, or all will
suffer."

Arlian paused, startled and thoughtful.

The dragon spoke the truth—at least, Arlian thought it did. He could scarcely expect the dragons to simply let themselves be killed; of course they would fight back.

He had not really considered the possibility of carrying on Enziet's bargain—he had not known how to communicate with the dragons to arrange it. He had assumed that he would have to kill the dragons.

He had been thinking that he would go from cavern to cavern, killing them three or five or ten at a time until they were all gone or he perished in the attempt—

but that had assumed that they were mere beasts, unable to communicate with one another, unable to warn one another that he was coming, so soundly asleep that they could not resist

That was clearly not true, and he should have realized it back when he first learned that Enziet could communicate with the dragons well enough to make his pact. After all, if Enziet could communicate with the dragons, surely they could communicate with each other! And Enziet's pact could scarcely have worked if the dragons were incapable of working in concert.

Arlian's campaign to exterminate the dragons would inevitably become open warfare if he lived and continued it for any length of time. Catching them in their lairs would be ever more difficult as they warned one another and hid themselves more carefully—if they hid at all. They might post guards, as any group of humans would, so that he could never catch a group of them all asleep.

Or they might simply all come out in the open to fight, and how could he fight them then? How could anyone? Yes, obsidian could cut them, but only a thrust to the heart could kill, and the dragons were huge, they could fly, they had talons and teeth and fiery venom.

Obsidian spears would be no more use against full-grown dragons than a rat's fangs were against a cat.

But there were only a few dragons, surely—dozens, yes, perhaps hundreds, but almost certainly not thousands. Humanity numbered in the millions, and in the end, wouldn't that carry the day? Enough rats could bring down a cat, and surely even a dragon could be slain by an entire army armed with obsidian. The dragons would in time be obliterated, gone forever, extinct, while mankind would survive and rebuild.

What's more, aside from the relative numbers, the dragons did not
dare
wipe out humanity—after all, if they did that, how would they reproduce? To destroy mankind would be to destroy themselves.

And once secrets were out, they could scarcely be suppressed. If it came to war, then everyone would learn how to kill dragons, and how to destroy their unborn young. Sooner or later, victory for humanity was inevitable.

Arlian opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

Yes, mankind would survive—but what about all those men and women and children who would
not?

What right did he have to condemn tens of thousands to the sort of gruesome death that the dragons would inflict, the same death that had taken his own family?

He needed time to think, to plan, to consider his op-tions—but the dragon wanted an agreement
now.

"What can I do?" he asked. "The secret is out—even if I do nothing, word will spread that obsidian can kill you."

"You can say it was illusion, mere sorcery of your
own contrivance."

"And how would that explain Nail's death?"

"More sorcery."

"You say I should confess to killing him."

"You swore to kill him."

"But I didn't kill him!"

"You slew what he became."

"But..." Ariian began, then stopped.

The dragon didn't care about lies or oaths, or whether or not Nail and the dragon that he bore were the same being; it wanted an agreement, a restoration of the truce.

"You want me to he," he said.

**Yes

"And in return—what? You'll stay in your caverns?

You'll let me live?"

"You have killed two of our hatchlings, and two
dragons yet unborn; letting you live is generous. Lie
for us, and kill no more, and we will remain in our
lairs and go on as before. Fail us in this, and we will
have no choice but to attempt to destroy all inhabitants
of the so-called Lands of Man before you can turn
them against us and arm them with the black stone."

"Destroy them
allT
The idea astonished Ariian.

Could even the dragons hope to wipe out
everyone?

Perhaps they could. Perhaps a bargain would be the sensible thing—but Arlian's anger welled up, and he said, only remembering at the last instant not to shout,

"You killed my family, my entire village, and now you threaten my entire race! Two of your foul offspring is not enough to begin to make up for that..."

The dragon's words interrupted him.
"Lie for us,
and kill no more dragons, bom or unborn, or face the
consequences."

And the dragon needed no more words to convey what the consequences would be.

Arlian fell silent, and stared at the inhuman face floating in the bowl.

Those golden eyes, eyes that were oddly human, eyes that had presumably once, thousands of years ago, belonged to a man or woman, stared back at him.

Arlian swallowed his rage and tried to reason with the monster. "Born or unborn?" he asked. "Do you say you would not even permit me to kill Lord Toribor?

Or to kill in my own defense should a dragonheart attack me?"

For the first time the dragon hesitated.

"That one, but no other,"
came the reply at last.

"And in defense of your own life"

"Fair enough," Arlian said, oddly pleased with himself. He had won a concession, however minor, from a
dragon
; he had not known that was possible.

Of course, he no longer had any particular interest in killing Toribor. Lord Belly, and all the dragonhearts, seemed insignificant compared with the dragons already born.

He would have to find some way to destroy them without permitting open warfare—though right now, exhausted as he was, he could not imagine what it might be.

And he realized, with that, that he was in no condition to deal with this just now. True, he had not been injured fighting Nail's dragon as he had been when he battled Enziet, he had not driven himself across half the Desolation in pursuit of his foe, but still, he was weary and not thinking clearly. He had been through no great physical effort, but the mental and emotional strain of the extended deathwatch at Nail's bedside, followed by this sudden apparition in his washbasin, had in its way been worse.

"Then we are agreed."

"Enough," Arlian said, and he thrust a hand into the water with a splash. The dragon's image spattered into nonexistence, and his mind was suddenly clearer. The dragon's method of communication, he realized, had imperceptibly become an oppressive weight upon his thoughts, a weight that was now lifted.

He hoped he had not been too hasty in breaking the link; he watched the bowl for a moment, to see whether the dragon would attempt to reestablish the spell.

Nothing happened. The water rippled for a moment, then stilled, the blood dispersed and slowly settling.

Apparently the monster had been satisfied, at least for the moment—but Arlian told himself that he had not actually agreed to anything. He had said the terms were reasonably fair; he had never said he accepted them.

But he had bargained with the dragons, like Enziet; he was truly Enziet's heir. He held Enziet's estates, Enziet's secrets, and now Enziet's bargains.

He stared at the water for a moment

He did not hold Enziet's
beliefs
, he told himself. He would never sacrifice an innocent village ...

But hadn't he, just a moment before, been considering the possibility of allowing a new Man-Dragon War, sacrificing thousands, for the sake of destroying die dragons forever?