Rime continued. "He seems to feel you are too unpredictable and uncontrollable; your refusal to finish the duel convinced him that you cannot be trusted at all.
He also points out that any grudge the dragons may hold would be against you, rather than the Society as a whole, and that therefore you are a threat—if the drag-mis do come to Manfort, it will be to kill you, bat the rest of as may well suffer as a result. He and Lady Pulzera are substantially in agreement on that."
"So I suspected," Ariian said
Rime nodded. "He further argues that we need to settle our differences and act as a unified group if we are to maintain our position of power in the Lands of Man, and that that will never be possible while you live. I have the impression that he doesn't really believe die dragons will ever threaten Manfort, and expects the whole affair to blow over once you are eliminated."
"I'm disappointed," Ariian said. "I had hoped for better from him."
"He and Pulzera disagree on some things—Pulzera and Shatter and their party believe that you have indeed ended the peace, and we should resign ourselves to serving the dragons, which makes you, personally, largely irrelevant. Hardior, on the other hand, believes that if you are removed, then the dragons will have no cause to attack us, and will be content to return to the behavior they have displayed these past several centuries. Ticker and Zaner both support Hardior in this—
but I don't think anyone else does."
Ariian nodded. That was not particularly surprising, really.
"Perhaps seven or eight people, led by Lord Voriam, think we should name you master of the Dragon Society and do whatever you say," Rime said. 'They maintain that as Enziet's heir and die only one of us to communicate direcdy with the dragons, you are clearly the chosen of Fate. They argue about what happened when you and Belly fought, whether you decided to spare Belly's life, or that your own could not be thrown away so lightly before your great task is complete. They have spoken of sending you an emis-mry, but when last I listened they had not yet agreed on how best to approach you, or whether they should wait until they have won over more of the membership."
"That's... um."
Arlian had started to say the idea of naming him master was ridiculous, but in fact it would certainly simplify matters in many ways. Instead he asked, "What about Toribor? I suppose he's sided with Hardior?"
"Belly? No. His faction, like Shatter's, maintains that you are simply irrelevant, now that your secrets are known. However, they maintain that Shatter and Pulzera are traitors, and that we should be preparing to fight the dragons by whatever means come to hand. He has spoken of buying obsidian weapons from you, or making his own, and of seeking out the caverns where the dragons sleep—but as yet he has not acted. I think he can't quite bring himself to speak to you."
"Oh," Arlian said.
"He's been speaking to the Duke, though," Rime continued. "I believe he's trying to convince His Grace to restore the city's fortifications to their proper condition and prepare for war with the dragons. Really, Arlian, it's quite amazing—for centuries Belly took no interest in politics, but now he's spending every moment he can at the Citadel." She smiled crookedly. "I don't know what will happen if the dragons don't come. I suppose that would discredit Belly, and make a prophet of Hardior."
"Is Belly trying to displace Hardior at the Duke's ear, then?"
"Not replace, but supplement," Rime said. "Belly takes no interest in anything but defense against the dragons, and that's a subject Hardior avoids."
"Does he?" Arlian asked, startled.
"Oh, yes. As I said, Hardior doesn't seem to believe the dragons will ever come, and he does not care to choose sides between dragon and human—he doesn't think he'll ever need to make a firm decision, and he knows that if he does he will estrange himself from half the Society. You and Pulzera have split it down the middle, An—I don't think the rift will ever heal."
For a moment Rime and Arlian gazed silently at one another, then Arlian said, "Well, one way or another, the Dragon Society must be destroyed eventually, if we are to avoid inflicting dozens of eager young dragons upon the world. Splitting it now may be a start."
"Oh. absolutely. It's a cancer at the heart of the Lands of Man, and it's past time it was cut out. We have been manipulating humanity for centuries, and look at the world we've built—a world of cruelty and slavery, where women like your guests, like my Rose, are treated as playthings or less, to be discarded at a whim. We live in a city of hard stone, as hard as our poisoned hearts."
Black shifted uneasily. He cleared his throat. Rime looked at him inquiringly.
"Your Rose?" Black asked.
"My several-times-great granddaughter," Rime explained. "She was one of the women in the House of the Six Lords. Lord Enziet had killed most of her family and enslaved her, and eventually had her murdered because sixteen was not evenly divisible by six."
Black stared at her for a moment, then said, "Oh."
"I explained this to Arlian in the wagon, on the way to Cork Tree," Rime said. "You were driving; I had thought you would have overheard."
"My attention was elsewhere," Black replied.
"And you never asked Enziet for her life?" Arlian asked, although he already knew the answer. "Or made any attempt to help her, or punish Enziet?"
"No," Rime said.
Arlian exchanged a glance with Black, then said,
"So you feel that the Dragon Society deserves to die."
"Yes, I do," Rime said.
"And if I were to ask you and Lord Voriam and his faction to turn on the others and kill them all, would you?"
Rime smiled coldly at him.
"No," she said, "I wouldn't—but I think some of Voriam's friends would, and I would watch the slaughter without making any move to stop you. I would lift my own chin to the knife when the time came for you to slit my throat, but I cannot bring myself to wield the blade."
Arlian looked at her, this woman who had lived many times her apparent age, her grey streaked hair pulled back tightly, exposing every line of her weathered face. Her dark, unwavering eyes returned his gaze.
The bone in her hand tapped idly on one arm of her chair. Half of one of her legs was missing, severed just below the knee in a long-ago mishap—and that bone was her own shinbone. Although she had told him the story of how she lost her leg, and how she came to have the bone, he had never asked her why she had held on to it all these years, why she carried it with her everywhere she went.
She had kept track of her surviving family for several generations after the encounter with a dragon that had transformed her from an ordinary woman to what she was now, but had never told them who she was, that she still lived.
Holding on to things she knew she should discard was simply part of what she was, he decided—and her life was no different to her than the bone or her granddaughters, something she had no need of any longer, but could not let go.
Those members of the Society who agreed with him would be the easiest to kill. Those who opposed him would fight fiercely for their fives, he was certain—as Toribor had.
But Toribor did, in fact, agree with him in intending to fight the dragons, unlike Pulzera and Shatter...
It was all too confusing.
"I think perhaps it's time for some fresh air," he said. "Shall we take a walk in the garden?" He rose, and held out a hand to help Rime from her chair.
At last, eleven days after his audience with the Duke, Arlian led his caravan southward, bound for Deep Delving. Only after he had collected silver and amethysts and dealt with the miners there would the caravan continue onward, across the Desolation and the Borderlands into the magical realms of the south.
The wagons left the suburbs of Manfort without incident, rolling between lush fields just starting to fade from green to yellow as the crops ripened. If Lord Hardior had hired any assassins, they had not shown themselves.
Arlian had refused to take the traditional caravan master's position at the rear; instead he
had put the Aritheian magicians there, while he and Black took the lead. He wanted to look at the open road and the countryside, not the dusty back of the wagon ahead.
Arlian had hired a man called Quickhand, whom he had traveled with before, as his chief guard; Black, who had earned his keep commanding caravan guards for years, was instead assistant master and driver of the lead wagon, so that he and Arlian sat side by side at the head of the caravan, Black holding the reins and Arlian simply watching their surroundings.
The obsidian weapons, all of them, were in the two wagons at the front of the procession, which left little room for anything else. Arlian glanced back over his shoulder as the wagon rattled along the road, hoping that the brittle edges wouldn't be too badly chipped by the bumps.
Black noticed his gaze, and said, "You aren't really sending those to Arithei, are you?"
"No," Arlian said.
"You'll need to keep them hidden when we return, then. That would seem to complicate their distribution and use."
"We'll keep them hidden until they're needed," Arlian agreed. "If and when the dragons come, we'll dis-tribute them then."
"And what about your fellow dragonhearts? When do you intend to murder them?"
Arlian looked at Black, startled.
In fact, he had just been dunking about that, trying to determine what the best thing to do would be. None of them had chosen to gestate dragons, after all, and killing them would not be just.
Allowing new dragons to be born would be unwise, though.
He had thought that he would let each dragonheart live out his thousand years, and would then dispose of each new dragon as it was born, but if the Dragon Society was broken and its members scattered, tracking them all down when the times came could be difficult.
It might be better to kill them all before they could disperse....
But it would still not be just.
"I don't know" he said. "I'm not sure I intend to murder them at all."
"That would disappoint Lady Rime, if you did not."
"I'm sure she'll bear up under such a disappoint-ment"
"The two of you seemed quite determined to see the Dragon Society destroyed the other day."
"Well, we don't want them to hatch into dragons,"
Arlian said uneasily.
"It seemed more than that for Lady Rime," Black said. "She called the Society 'a cancer at the heart of the Lands of Man.'"
"She exaggerates."
"Rather, she understates," Black said. "Ari, the Dragon Society isn't a cancer—it's the heart itself.
Have you ever thought about just what the Society controls?"
Arlian looked at Black, clearly puzzled. "Well, the Duke's advisers are mostly dragonhearts..." he said uncertainly.
"Besides that," Black said. "Haven't you ever looked at who the other lords are? You haven't told me all their names, but I can guess. You did mention Lord Voriam, who owns most of the lands and mills from Norva to Kariathi, and there's Lord Zaner, who owns half the trading vessels and warehouses in Lorigol.
Lady Flute operates the pumps and aqueducts that supply Manfort's water, and owns most of Clearpool.
Lady Rime herself owns salt mines, tanneries, and dye works. You started out dealing in magic, which is not of any great importance, but have you ever considered that list of holdings you inherited from Enziet? As your steward I went over it with Fenrezin. You control perhaps two-thirds of the tin mines in the western mountains and thousands of acres of barley to the north, and your employees in Westguard coin the silver the Duke uses to pay his troops, to name just a few of the largest holdings."
"Hmm," Arlian said. He had not thought about any of this, and did not see yet what Black was getting at.
"But even if we do own all you say, what of it? We don't personally grow those crops or mine those metals; if we die, the businesses will go on."
"Will they? Most of you have no heirs, as I understand it—do you want the Duke to inherit it all? Imagine that man as not merely the hereditary lord of Manfort but the master of most of the enterprises in the Lands of Man. Or what if, without killing anyone, you divide die Society so that its members will no longer deal with one another? What if Lord Zaner will no longer carry your tin and barley on his ships? What if the Duke's men no longer trust the silver you send?
Or perhaps worst of all, what if the dragons do come, and you fight them? Manfort could be destroyed, and even you must agree that would cut the heart out of the Lands of Man "
"That's why the dragons must die," Arlian said. "So that they can't destroy what men have built"
"So you're willing to risk destroying everything we have to protect what our descendants might build."
"Yes, I am," Arlian said.
"And what gives you the right to decide this?"
Arlian blinked and turned to look at Black again.
"The right?" he said. "There's no 'right.' I have the ability to destroy the dragons—or at least, I hope I do—and I have chosen to do it."
"And die thousands of other people who may be affected by this have no say in it?"
"Each can choose for himself what to do," Arlian said "They can join me, oppose me, or simply hide until it's all over."
"Bat you believe they can't tell you, 'No, leave well enough alone.'"
"No, they cannot This is no special circumstance.
The Duke's decisions affect other people every day; every lord's decisions affect his employees. We are forever at the mercy of others."
"But everyone knows the Duke reigns over them.
Every employee has chosen to work for his lord. The only people who have no choices are slaves, yet you propose to give no choice to all of Manfort."
Arlian frowned. "Now, are you comparing me to a slave owner to enrage me, or do you really think I might accept this specious line of argument? No one chooses to live at the whim of dragons. No one chose the present Duke. No one can tell Lord Zaner what cargoes to load in his ships, though that may mean the difference between wealth and starvation for everyone in Lorigol. Black, do you really think that I could stop at this point, and that matters would simply return to what they were? Enziet is dead and his secrets are out, and I am caught up in the result, as we all are. Lord Hardior is a fool to think my death would restore things to what they were."
"You could dump these weapons and tell the dragons you will keep their secrets if they stay in their caves. You could stay in Deep Delving and never return to Manfort. You could work to reconcile the fac-tions in the Society."
"It's too late to keep the dragons' secrets."
"Is it? You heard the lies Stammer collected about you; rumor and gossip spread through the city like mushrooms after a rain, and vanish as swiftly. A year from now no one but the dragonhearts will remember how Nail died."
Arlian did not answer immediately. The wagon rolled on down the ruts in the road, the oxen plodding steadily.
"You can't be sure of that," he said at last. "It may be too late. The dragons may already be out of their caverns—and they do deserve to die, all of them."
"So you're going to go on with your revenge even if it destroys Manfort and ruins the Lands of Man."
"I am."
It was Black's turn to pause before replying, but at last he said, "So you will let the Dragon Society destroy itself."
"I don't believe I can prevent it"
"That will tear the heart out of Manfort. Have you given any thought to what might replace it?"
Ariian started as the wagon hit a bump. "What?"
The Dragon Society may be a bunch of cold-
hearted bastards, Ari, but they have kept Manfort peaceful and whole for six hundred years. If you destroy it, or it destroys itself, who will rule Manfort? Do you expect the Duke to actually do the job he was born to, with no Enziet or Hardior to direct him? And if the dragonhearts die without heirs and leave the Duke a hundred times as wealthy as he is now, do you think that would be a good thing?"
"Do you e
xpect me to lead a real insurrection against him?" Ariian asked. "He's the Duke of Manfort, warlord of the Lands of Man."
"He's an idiot"
"Well, yes. But he's the Duke. I'm sure he'll find advisers, as he always has—they just won't be dragonhearts."
"So you would replace dragon-hearted sorcerers possessing the wisdom of centuries with ordinary men"
"Indeed I would," Ariian said.
"You have a higher opinion of my fellow men than I do"
Ariian smiled crookedly. "No," he said, "I have a lower opinion of dragon-hearted sorcerers." Then the smile vanished, and his expression turned thoughtful.
"What would replace the Dragon Society?" he said.
"Mortal men and women. What else?"
Black looked at him, but said no more. The conversation died, and no new one rose to take its place—
Arlian was distracted, plainly thinking hard about something.
In fact, he was thinking about what might become of the Dragon Society—not the organization as a whole, but its individual members. They could become dragons, if their tainted blood was allowed to mature, or corpses, if that blood was spilled—but was there no third possibility?
Black had asked what would replace the Dragon Society at Manfort's heart. Surely, ordinary mortals could fill the gap, and the Lands of Man would live on.
Could something similar be done on a more personal scale?
He had wondered before whether there might be some way to remove the taint that made a dragonheart something other than an ordinary human. He knew sorcery could not do it. Could the wild magic of the south?
Could Aritheian magic replace a dragon heart with a human one?
That night, in the street before an inn in a village called Grandfather Elm, as soon as the caravan was secured for the night, Arlian spoke to the Aritheians.
"When you come back," he said, "I want you to bring certain things."
"Love potions?" Thirif asked, smiling.
"No." Arlian shook his head. "I don't mean the things to sell. You know better than I what will bring the best profits, now that you've had all these months in Manfort, and I trust you to invest wisely. There are two matters I need to attend to, though, that will require magic—if they can be done at all."
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 28