And he was a dragonheart, and some day, some far-off day, if he lived long enough, the dragon in his heart would burst forth.
And he hadn’t yet decided how he felt about that, or what he intended to do about it.
Three days later he felt well enough to ride up front, in the fresh air, at Black’s side as Black drove. Rime sat just inside the door. They had found the edge of the sands and were back on the Eastern Road, headed north, toward Manfort and home.
“So Enziet is absolutely, unquestionably dead?” Rime asked.
“Absolutely and unquestionably,” Arlian agreed.
Black snorted. “His heart was ripped out of his chest,” he said. “He’s dead.”
“His heart was ripped out?” Arlian asked.
“You didn’t see? It was lying there on the stone, next to a broken dagger.”
Arlian nodded. “I wasn’t sure what I saw,” he said.
He wondered whether the dagger had really been broken, or whether Black had not seen its black blade in the darkness. In any case, it had been left behind and was lost forever.
But he knew now that obsidian could be used against dragons, at least sometimes, in some circumstances, against some dragons. That might be very precious knowledge.
He was bound by oath to reveal it to the Dragon Society—but he was unsure just how and when he would inform the Society, or even whether he would keep his word at all in this case. With Enziet dead the entire purpose of the Dragon Society might well be about to change. The dragons might be returning—if they learned that Enziet was dead, and if no one took his place as the keeper of the secret of draconic reproduction. If he could learn how Enziet had communicated with the dragons, Arlian might take that place. He might need to keep that secret, as Enziet had—and if he kept that, why not another?
And the dragons’ secret also meant that Arlian saw the Society in a new light—as the dragons’ breeding ground, rather than their foes. That changed everything. The Dragon Society was not what it believed itself to be.
But he was not yet ready to deal with such weighty matters. He would need to take time to think them through carefully. There would be time enough for his final decisions when he was back in Manfort.
“So you’ve almost finished your campaign of revenge,” Rime said, interrupting his thoughts and providing a welcome distraction. “Just Belly and Nail remain, I believe.”
“If I bother with them, yes. And Dagger and Tooth, if I can find them, and perhaps a fellow called Lampspiller,” Arlian said. “They’re even less important than the lords, though. But even when I’ve dealt with all of those, my lady, the campaign is just starting.”
“Oh? It seems to me you don’t have much more to do. You’ve beaten Belly once, and Nail’s an old man, and you don’t seem very determined to track down the other three.”
“The other three humans,” Arlian corrected her. “There are still the dragons—the three that destroyed my village, and the rest of them on general principles.”
“The dragons?” Rime asked.
Arlian nodded. “The dragons are my true foes,” he said. “I intend to destroy them all.” And that almost certainly meant, he realized, that he would have to destroy the Dragon Society itself in time.
And perhaps himself, since he had a dragon growing in his heart.
“That’s a lifetime’s work, at least,” Rime said. “You do know that no man has ever killed a dragon, don’t you?”
Arlian smiled.
“I’ll find a way,” he said.
TOR BOOKS BY LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS
THE OBSIDIAN CHRONICLES
Dragon Weather
The Dragon Society
Dragon Venom
LEGENDS OF ETHSHAR
Night of Madness
Ithanalin’s Restoration
Touched by the Gods
Split Heirs (with Esther Friesner)
THE ANNALS OF THE CHOSEN
The Wizard Lord
The Ninth Talisman
The Summer Palace
THE FALL OF THE SORCERERS
A Young Man Without Magic
Above His Proper Station
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DRAGON WEATHER
Copyright © 1999 by Lawrence Watt-Evans
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8125-8955-9
ISBN-10: 0-8125-8955-6
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-32903
First Edition: October 1999
First Mass Market Edition: December 2000
eISBN 9781466840195
First eBook edition: February 2013
Dragon Weather Page 56