He was grateful that neither Hasty nor Vanniari seemed to hold that against him—and he was unsure exactly who had sired the younger three.
Halori, on the other hand, was clearly Dovliril's child; even had Musk and Dovliril not been happily married these past twelve years, the child's resemblance to his father was unmistakable.
"And that's his brother Selsur—do you remember him?"
Arlian smiled at the boy, who had been taking his first steps when last Arlian saw him. "Of course I do," he said.
"And the little one there is Fanora," Vanniari concluded.
T h e girl, who was perhaps three, ducked out of sight at the sound of her name, but Bekerin caught her and dragged her back to visibility.
"Your servant, Mistress Fanora," Arlian said, bowing again. He hesitated, then admitted, "I do not believe I've had the pleasure of your acquaintance, even by proxy."
Vanniari understood his meaning, and said quickly, "She's Aunt Lily's daughter, Aunt Lily and Uncle Stone."
"Ah," Arlian said. He had known that Lily had married one of the Duke's guardsmen, but had not realized any children had resulted from the union. "Thank you." He glanced at Vanniari. "Did I hear correctly, that you are now Lady Rime's adopted granddaughter?"
Vanniari blinked at him in surprise. "Yes, of course," she said. "She adopted all of us. She adopted Mother and Aunt Cricket and Aunt Lily and Aunt Musk and Aunt Kitten as her daughters, and that makes us all her grandchildren."
And her heirs, Arlian thought. The dozen of them would inherit the estates and companies that Rime had spent four centuries acquiring.
That explained why the offspring of Dovliril, a mere footman, were playing in the front rooms of the house—and it probably meant that one day that footman would be Lord Dovliril. Was he still a footman at all, then?
And it meant that all the survivors of the House of Carnal Society would be provided for. Five of them were now heirs to one of the Duke's advisors—and the sixth, Brook, was married to Black.
That hardly seemed fair to Brook, to be a mere steward's wife rather than the heir of a great noble—but then Arlian remembered that he had named Black as his own heir. If he were to die, Brook would be the wealthiest of all the women.
"My lord," the footman said from behind him, "shall I show you to Lady Rime?"
"By all means," Arlian said.
"Oh, I'll do it, Oril!" Vanniari said.
Oril the footman quite properly ignored her, and told Arlian, "This way, please."
Arlian followed—and so did Vanniari and Kuron, though the other five children suddenly burst into shrieks and giggles as they spun about poking at one another, and then ran off in another direction entirely.
Arlian had expected to be led up to Rime's bedchamber, where she had customarily spent most of her time, but instead the footman marched down the gallery and guided the party into a sunlit room Arlian did not recall from previous visits. He had expected to find Rime alone, perhaps reading, but instead his approach was greeted with happy laughter, and he found her surrounded by women.
"Grandmother!" Vanniari called, as the footman stepped aside.
"Look who's come to visit!"
Four faces turned toward the door—Rime and Cricket and Lily and Musk, all of them seated, all but Rime in wheeled chairs of the sort Black had created for Brook. Like Brook, all Rime's adopted daughters had once been brothel slaves in Westguard, and had had their feet amputated.
Arlian bowed deeply, and when he straightened found all the women exclaiming happily. Rime had found her heavy ebony cane and was rising from her chair, a trifle unsteady on her one foot and wooden leg.
"Ari!" she said, holding out her free hand. "How lovely to see you!"
Arlian took the offered hand in both his own and kissed it. "Your servant, my lady," he said. As he raised his lips from her knuckles he studied her appearance.
Hers was still a strong face, plainly visible, her gray hair—now entirely gray, rather than the blend of black and gray she had maintained for four centuries—pulled back tightly into a waist-length pony-tail. Her skin was weathered and brown, her eyes dark—but not as compelling as they were when Arlian first met her, long before. The larger-than-life glamour, the charisma, the special intensity of the dragonhead she had once been was gone.
As she smiled at him, though, Arlian thought he saw something else there instead, something new. He stared for a moment, and belatedly realized he was behaving rudely—though she seemed untroubled by his gaze.
The excited clamor of the other women died away, and Vanniari was able to interject, "I introduced him to everyone, Grandmother—all the children, I mean."
Rime turned her smile on Vanniari, and at that Arlian realized what was different.
Rime looked happy. Not just amused, or satisfied, or momentarily cheerful, but genuinely, sincerely happy.
And something else was different, something missing—a physical object. He released her hand, and looked swiftly about.
The bone was nowhere in sight.
For as long as Arlian had known her, Rime had carried a polished human shin-bone with her everywhere she went, using it as a gavel, a prod, a toy; Arlian remembered how long it had taken him before he realized that it was her own, the bone from her lost left leg.
And it was not there, not in her hand, not on the table, not anywhere in the room.
"Well done, Vanni," Rime said. "So, Ari, what do you think of my family?" She gestured at the other women, and at Vanniari and Kuron.
"I think they are very fortunate indeed to have you as their patron, my lady."
"Patron? Patron?" She pulled her hand away and feigned a frown.
"Arlian, I adopted them; I am their mother.; not their patron!"
"And it clearly suits you well. I meant no offense, my lady."
"Of course you didn't—but I truly don't think you understand, Ari, that I am the fortunate one, to have found five such excellent daughters so late in life."
"And seven grandchildren," Kuron said.
Rime grinned. "And seven fine grandchildren," she agreed. "And I thank you, Ari, for freeing my daughters."
"It was my pleasure, Rime; I owed them all a debt. I just wish I could have saved the others."
"So do I," Rime said. "But you did what you could."
"Where are Hasty and Kitten?" Arlian asked, looking around.
"Hasty is probably in the kitchens, and Kitten is in the library,"
Cricket volunteered. "I'll go tell Kitten you're here." She grabbed the wheel of her chair and started it rolling.
"Have you eaten, my lord?" Musk asked.
"Vanni, have you seen Falora?" Lily asked. "Has she met Lord Obsidian?"
Arlian and Vanniari both started to speak at the same time, and the conversation collapsed into chaos. Arlian found himself caught in a series of misunderstandings, and forced to meet all seven members of the youngest generation anew before being sat down and fed cakes and wine. Hasty and Kitten appeared in the midst of it, rolling their chairs into the room and adding to the happy confusion.
Arlian gave up all hope of immediately managing a serious conver-mtion with Rime, and let himself be swept up in the cheerful chaos.
10
Considerations for the Future
It was more than two hours before Arlian was able to get away from the crowd and speak with Rime in private. When he did finally coax her into accompanying him elsewhere, he deliberately guided their steps up a flight of stairs, where the five adopted daughters could not follow without assistance.
He knew what he wanted to ask his old friend, but did not know quite how to broach the subject; they walked in silence along an upstairs corridor. At last he remarked, "I see you do not have your bone; I trust it hasn't been lost?"
She glanced at him, startled. "No, of course not; it's on the table by my bed."
"You no longer carry it with you?"
Rime smiled crookedly. "No, I don't. While I am not in the least surprised yo
u noticed, since you've always been an observant young man, I confess to some surprise that you ask about it. How, then, does an old woman's legbone relate to your plans for vengeance?"
"Not at all, my lady."
"Ah. When you said you had serious matters to discuss, I had assumed that these matters must be a part of your grand scheme to destroy the dragons; I have never known you to consider anything else to be serious. Certainly, the whereabouts of my shin-bone would not seem to be a serious matter. Why, then, do you inquire about it?"
For a moment, Arlian did not answer. They reached the end of the passage and stepped out onto a balcony overlooking the gardens behind the house.
"Perhaps it does relate to my plans for vengeance in a way, my lady,"
Arlian said. "Leaving it aside is a change from habits you maintained for centuries, after all. I find myself curious about your reasons for that change, and about the state of your heart and health in general. I came here today not merely for the undeniable pleasure of your company and your hospitality, but to learn from you something of the nature of the transformations you have undergone in your lifetime; it may be that your decision to leave that bone at your bedside is indeed a part of what I came to ask."
Rime leaned on the balcony rail, her ebony cane in her hand, and looked out over the garden; tulips were in bloom, daffodils beginning to wither. Then she looked up at Arlian.
"So you think you might complete your vengeance, and are contemplating what might lie beyond?" she asked.
"You have always been perceptive," Arlian said.
"I would think this would be something you would discuss with Black, rather than with me."
"Black has never been cursed with dragon's venom; he has never experienced the transformation from mortal to dragonheart, nor the reverse. You have survived both."
"So has Spider. And Shard, and Flute, and Rope, and Dinan, and Demdva, and Pori, and . . . "
"You need not list them all," Arlian interrupted. "And I think we may safely ignore Rope and all the others who were dragonhearts only briefly; their experience would not reflect mine. You, Spider, Shard, and Flute are my only resources in this research, and of those, only you do I trust to speak only the truth."
"I'm flattered." She looked out over the garden again. "What is it you want to know?"
"Simply, my lady—was it worth it, to be cleansed of the dragon's taint, or would a quick death have been better?"
She smiled crookedly, and peered sideways at him. "You have always been able to surprise me, Arlian, and to amuse me, as well. You do realize, I trust, that for most men the choice would not be between mortal life and quick death, but between a brief but clean life, and centuries as a tainted but powerful dragonspawn, undoubtedly making preparations to ensure the timely demise of your eventual progeny?"
"I am not most men, my lady. I have never been a normal man—I was only a boy when I swallowed my grandfather's blood and the dragon's venom, and grew to adulthood in this polluted state. I have never had a man's life, a man's knowledge, a man's heart. I have no family and few friends; material possessions and worldly power mean nothing to me. The only woman I ever thought I loved was poisoned, and died in my arms. I live only for revenge upon the dragons that made me what I am, and when that is accomplished, why should I continue?"
"For the company of others, and the enjoyment of the earth's bounty. Even as you are, you can appreciate the beauty of flowers in the spring, or a young woman's body—why throw away a life that has such things in it?"
"Because of what grows within me. I am unclean, and any passing pleasure I might take is more than counterbalanced by the constant awareness of the abomination I truly am. You know I care little for my own life; you have certainly known me to risk it often enough."
"Indeed I have."
"Then you know how little I value mere continuance in my present condition. You have experienced what it means to be a dragonheart, and what it means to be restored to true humanity, and you know the cost in pain that must be paid—the agony of having your heart torn from your chest as you helplessly watch, of seeing it flushed of its poison and restored, of spending weeks or months healing and recouping your strength to face the certainty that you will, regardless, be dead within a century and that your sacrifice has bought you only a little time. You know what I would face, as I do not. You were not ready to die when you were a dragonheart, nor are you ready to die now—but how great is the difference? Given that I scarcely care whether I live or die now, is there any reason to suffer through magical torment rather than simply plunge an obsidian blade into my heart?"
"Oh, A r i . . . " She shook her head sadly, and looked out over the garden again. "You poor child. You know so little of life."
Arlian started to speak, to protest—he had traveled widely, lived as slave and noble, fought against men and monsters and magic, while most people lived and died in a single village, as his parents had.
But then he remembered who he was speaking to. Lady Rime was
more than four hundred years old—and had he not come to her because she did have experiences he did not?
And had he not himself said, just a few moments ago, that he had never known what it was to be a man?
He bit his tongue and waited for her to continue.
"When I was a young woman, before the dragons came," she said, "I had hardly seen anything of the world, yet I knew many things that you have never learned, or cannot remember. I knew what it was to love, to care—and I lost that when I drank my own blood from an envenomed wound, down in that well where I hid from the dragons.
"I thought at first that it was the shock, the loss of my family, that left me numb. I thought my coldness was a defense against grief. Later, when I joined the Dragon Society, I learned that all dragonheads grow apart from humanity over time, but still, we believed it to be as much because of the separation caused by our extended lives as anything else.
And we did not realize the depth of our detachment—it deepens so gradually over the years, and we all lived through horror at the start.
"But then I was cured. You cured me, Arlian—you and your Aritheian magicians—and I owe you a debt beyond your comprehension.
"It took time to heal, to recover; it was perhaps two years before I was entirely well. But that time passed, and as my heart healed, so did my soul. I re-learned what I had lost and forgotten. I'm whole again, as I was before ever the dragons came; even with the scars on my chest, and my leg cut short, I am more whole now than I was in those centuries before we met. I remember now what it is to love, to feel joy, to take pleasure in simply being alive. I lost my husband and my four children four hundred years ago, and never remarried, never sought a new family, in all that time, because I could not love—that capacity had been killed by the poison that flowed in my veins.
"But now I can love again, and in fact I can hardly stop myself. My dear daughters—I find those women so brave, so charming—how could I fail to adore them? All those years I thought there was no good to be found in humanity, when in truth there was no good in me that could recognize its kin! I love them, as I loved my children four hundred years ago. For nine years I let them stay on as your guests at the Grey House because I did not want to hurt you, because I was not sure they cared for me, but in the end I took them in, and I wish I had done it sooner. I would have adopted Brook as well, had she allowed it, but she chose her husband's side, as she should." She smiled.
"The children have brought new life to this old house, filled it with laughter and happiness—I have a new family, a large and boisterous one, as dear to me as the one the dragons slew. I have once again had lovers who were more than a few nights' amusement. Arlian, life is very precious to me now, but I would rather have only an hour as I am than another four hundred years as I was, and I would gladly pay with the pain of the transformation to get it. T h e air is sweeter, the sky more beautiful, than you can imagine. I need no old bone to remind me of what I have lost, for what I have i
s more than enough. Those among our former companions who fight against this, who cling to the prolonged existence the dragons have given them, have no idea how very foolish they're being; I wish I could tell them, but would they believe me? They would tell themselves that I lie, that having sacrificed my own years I would see theirs stolen, as well, to drag them down with me—but I am not below them, Arlian, I am flying so far above them they cannot conceive of it. I told Flute, and she listened, and I hope you will, in time, when you have completed the arduous task you have set yourself, but I knew most of them would not hear me. Spider and Shard gave themselves into Oeshir's care of their own choice before I could sway them, and Rope and the others were compelled by the Duke's men, but Flute—she was my doing, and I am very proud of that. I think you'll find her grateful, should you ask."
"I may do that," Arlian said.
"And perhaps you'll be my second victory?"
"Perhaps."
"You know, Ari, how so many of the Dragon Society have turned to cruelty and perversion? I believe that they do so because on some level they know that they should be feeling more than they are, that they know something is lacking, and they look for anything that can provide a new sensation. I remember how amusing I found it that you openly announced your intention to kill Enziet and the others, but now—now I would be appalled, rather than amused." She hesitated, then corrected herself. "No, I would still be amused—but I would also be appalled." She smiled. "It's such a shame that Wither did not live long enough to be treated!"
"It is," Arlian agreed. He stood, leaning on the rail, ostensibly looking at the garden, but in truth seeing nothing.
Rime's words had answered his question, but had inspired a hundred more.
If he took her at her word, then the cleansing was clearly worth the pain it would cost—but was it truly that simple? She had been a grown woman, a wife and mother, when the dragons came; he had been a boy of eleven. Would his heart, once purified, be the heart of a man, or of a child? He had learned many hard lessons since that day when the dragons swept down on the Smoking Mountain, and he did not want to lose them.
Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) Page 9