The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) (50 page)

Aiming
such a giant arrow-throwing device would be difficult, of course, and it wouldn't be something he could take with him into the dragon's caves, but still...

He found himself wondering why he had not thought of this sooner.

In the morning Arlian escorted the fisherfolk to the Grey House and saw them settled comfortably into their new residence. He arranged for some of Enziet's furnishings to be returned to their former places, and took the opportunity to talk with Ferrezin about various matters, as well.

It was late evening when he finally returned to the Old Palace to find that the front gate had been smashed down. The crowd that had haunted the street for weeks was gone, the entire vicinity apparently deserted.

Horrified, he ran to the door and knocked loudly.

When the door did not open at once he feared the worst, but after a moment Venlin admitted him, his face ashen—and a spear in his hand, the long obsidian head gleaming in the lamplight. The shutters had hidden the light, so that Arlian had not seen it before the door opened.

He had also not seen that the door's lock was broken, the door and frame splintered several places; to open it Venlin had had to remove a hastily erected barricade.

"My lord," the footman said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Arlian said. "What happened?"

"Word of another village destroyed," Venlin said.

"The mob went mad when they heard, and broke through the gates and stormed the house. I had feared the worst and armed the staff, so that when they broke in the door we were ready. They might have fought us, even so, but we told them you were not at home, and they turned aside."

"Where did they go?" Arlian asked. "They didn't come to the Grey House."

"No," Venlin said. "But I'm afraid they found the garden. I'm surprised they didn't break in die windows there—we couldn't have held them all off if they had."

"The garden?" Arlian turned his steps toward the gallery.

A few moments later he made his way carefully through the wreckage, Venlin at his side with the lamp held high.

The mob had torn up the vines, trampled the herb garden into the dirt, and snapped die branches of a dozen carefully cultivated trees. Flowers had been ripped apart and scattered everywhere. The paths were Arlian looked around in silent astonishment. Why would anyone have done this?

"Was anyone hurt?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Venlin said.

Just then Arlian came to the gravesite, where Sweet and Dove had been buried side by side, their graves marked by white stones at the corners. Arlian had never known their true names, so the stones were blank save for one that bore Sweet's epitaph, "She was loved."

That stone was gone, and a hole had been dug in the center of Sweet's grave, a hole a foot or so deep and two feet across. Clearly, the marauders had deliberately defiled the site.

The hole was not empty, and the image of someone squatting there on Sweet's grave, breeches pulled down, laughing, came unbidden into Arlian's mind. He stared down at the foul mess and said, "I'm sorry, Sweet."

Then he could no longer speak, and he turned away.

The bright side to the whole affair—though it was no brighter than the overcast skies of the hideously prolonged dragon weather—was that the mob had apparently spent its wrath, and no more stones were thrown, no more attacks made, for the next few weeks.

During this period of peace Arlian had the damage to the Old Palace repaired, and also began preparing plans and conducting experiments in his pursuit of a device that could fling a spear into a dragon's heart.

And during that time the long drought finally broke—cold rain drenched the streets and buildings of Manfort, washing away the traces of mud that had not already been cleaned from the walls and paths. The summer, the dragon weather, and the dragons' attacks were ail at an end for the year.

Ail in all, the dragons had destroyed five towns—

Kirial's Rocks, Tiapol, Cork Tree, Shardin, and Black-water. Almost a thousand innocents had perished.

It all appeared to be done, though, and Arlian thought the winter would be a time of healing, a time when he might reconcile Manfort to his presence, when the city's people might realize that he was not responsible for what the dragons did.

Then he made the mistake of not merely replacing a broken window, but leaving the shutters open, and again a stone flew.

As he and Black inspected the damage, feeling the cool autumn breeze blowing through the broken glass, Arlian said, "I wish there were a single foe I could strike down, rather than this great nameless mob."

"There are names," Black said.

"Oh, of course there are," Arlian said, "but I can no longer be certain which name belongs on which side.

Consider Lord Toribor, whom I swore to kill—he and I are now in agreement on everything of any importance. And Lord Hardior, whom I once thought my best ally against the dragons, conspires to see me discredited or dead. I don't know who my enemies are."

"Well, those fools throwing stones are clearly not your friends. Lady Opal incites them; you could deal with
her."

"And that would give Lord Hardior an excuse to send the Duke's guards to fetch me to trial," Arlian said. "And Lady Pulzera would use it as proof of my perfidy. If I strike at one human enemy, it will only strengthen the others. I need to destroy the roots from which this tree grows."

"And what roots are those?"

"The dragons, of course. I need to kill the dragons.

If I could kill even
one,
it would prove me to most of the city."

Black stared at him silently for a moment, then turned away without another word.

The winter was cold and hard. Stores were low because of the extended drought. No one was inclined to wander the streets unnecessarily.

This undoubtedly saved the Old Palace from further indignities.

The fisherfolk lived in the Grey House, but were not happy; the city was strange to them, a harsh and alien environment where they never felt welcome, despite Arlian's best efforts. The first snow had not yet fallen when Arlian reluctantly agreed to send them back to the coast and buy them two fine new fishing boats in exchange for their promise to remain always where he could find them.

Snow had not fallen, but the weather was unsettled, and the journey east a long one. It was decided that they should wait until spring before departing.

While they waited Arlian found work for them, using their knowledge of nets and rigging and boatbuild-ing to help guide the construction of his experimental weapons, the spear-throwing devices he hoped to turn against the dragons.

He let them know that their experience with the dragons might have changed them forever, but he did not call them dragonhearts, nor did he tell them that the Dragon Society existed, or that they might be eligi-ble to join such an organization.

For his own part, Arlian discovered, well after the Society's decision had been made, that he was no longer welcome in the Dragon Society's hall; when he did finally venture thither he was turned away by Lord Door.

"The rules have changed," Door said. "You have no place here, by command of Lord Shatter."

Startled, he spoke to Rime and Toribor—and found that they, too, had been shut out. The Dragon Society no longer welcomed every dragonheart.

This seemed a fundamental change in the Society's very reason for existence. Curious, Arlian attempted to contact Lord Voriam, to learn whether he, too, had been banned, and instead learned, some four days after the fact, that Lord Voriam had hanged himself.

The Dragon Society, it appeared, had re-formed itself around the leadership of Shatter, Hardior, and Pulzera.

Re-formed itself to what purpose, Arlian was not sure—but he feared it was to serve the dragons, rather than oppose them.

He still had a few friends among the dragonhearts—

Rime and Toribor, and oddly, Spider and Shard; he had scarcely known Spider and Shard before the breaking of the Society, but now he encountered them every so often in the streets, or when visiting Rime, and spoke warmly with them.

By the time the weather began to warm again, and the snow on the palace roof began to melt, Arlian realized that this new friendship was because the five of them were the only dragonhearts still excluded from the Society. Voriam's death had destroyed the little faction that had believed Arlian was fated to lead them in defeating the dragons, and the survivors had fled back to the larger group. Toribor's party, which continued to oppose any peace with the dragons but held no special place for Arlian, had dwindled down to just three members: Spider, Shard, and Toribor.

All the others, some thirty-two dragonhearts, had eventually acquiesced to Pulzera's arguments that their own survival meant siding with the dragons in the current conflict.

Arlian was disgusted, but he took little time to concern himself with the matter; he was instead spending as much time as he could spare from the everyday matters of household and business to work on his machines.

Since the scale of these devices made it impossible to keep his activities hidden, Arlian was careful never to use any obsidian in any of his tests; the obsidian weapons stayed safely out of sight, and his various machines were all tested with simple wooden poles.

The Duke had never forbidden him the making of weapons, after all—only
obsidian
weapons. If His Grace had any objection to these new devices, Arlian was sure he would hear of it soon enough, and until he
did
hear, he intended to continue his experimentation.

The most promising approach seemed to be to use massive counterweights to swing a long wooden arm, which would then slam against a padded crossbar, releasing a spear—or several spears, as Rope pointed out that fishermen often used more than one line when trawling, and Black pointed out that the vagaries of aiming arrows over a distance were traditionally compensated by using a volley, rather than a single shaft—

from the arm's outer end. Such a mechanism could fling half a dozen eight-foot spears for several hundred yards with very satisfactory force.

Unfortunately, the first working model was huge, lowering some three stories high. Arlian could not see any practical way to transport it swiftly from one place to another to meet an attacking dragon. He had it mounted on wheels, but it would require a large team of oxen to move it from Manfort to whatever town might be threatened, and the journey would take several days.

Even if the dragons came to Manfort, they would need to come to a small area in the Upper City for the weapon to be effective, and Arlian could not see any way to arrange that. Dragons were not stupid.

He had once assumed they were, when he had plotted to hunt them down in their caverns and kill them as they slept, but now he knew better. They were not human, and did not think like men; but they were not mere beasts, and they were not stupid. Luring them into range would not be easy.

He contemplated schemes for mounting a dozen of the devices on the city walls, with guardsmen trained to use them—but that would require the Duke's active cooperation, and His Grace was still listening to Hardior's advice. Quiet inquiries had determined that the Duke was not interested in granting Arlian another audience; the Duke's position was not entirely immune to popular sentiment, and the mob's opinion of Arlian was plain enough.

Indirect replies from the Citadel said that the Duke felt nothing of importance had changed. Arlian interpreted that to mean that the Duke would aid him in killing dragons only when Arlian had demonstrated that it was
possible
to kill a full-grown dragon.

When he thought about it, Arlian was somewhat startled that Hardior and the Duke had not interfered with his experiments; surely, Hardior must realize that these machines were intended to kill dragons, and Hardior would surely consider their construction a further provocation, something that would stir the dragons anew. Convincing the Duke that these huge weapons could

been be use

easy. d against the Citadel should have

At supper that night Arlian asked Stammer, who was his conduit for news from the Citadel staff, what she had heard about the matter.

"Th ... they think you're ... you're mad," she said.

"Lord Har... Hardior wanted to smash them, said they were dangerous, but the D ... D ...
Duke
says he thinks they're harmless and ... and funny. And everyone else thinks so, too."

"I see," Arlian said.

"Except the Duke said one mo ... mo ... more thing, my lord," Stammer said. "He said that if they ever
did
work, they might be useful. After what the dragons did last summer, he would be ha ... happy to have a weapon to use against dragons, and he wouldn't let Hardior smash
any
chance, no matter how mad it seemed."

That, Arlian thought, was interesting; perhaps the Duke was neither as stupid nor as completely in Hardior's sway as Arlian had thought.

If he could somehow kill a single dragon, that might well pry the Duke free of Hardior entirely.