Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The pain in Arlian's temples was piercing and intense now, and he could not help raising one hand to his brow. "Do you mean . . . " He stopped and took a deep breath.

  The Blue Mage's description of her origin sounded appallingly familiar, and he wondered why he had never guessed at this. After all, to some extent magic was magic, whether the subtle and delicate sorcery of Manfort or the flamboyant exercises of Arithei, whether incarnate in a dragon or manifest in a wizard.

  He let his breath out, then said, "Do you mean that wizards incu-bate in human flesh, then burst forth, killing their hosts? All of them do this?"

  "You have grasped it exactly."

  "And what is it that first quickens a wizard in a human body? Is there some ichor t h a t . . " He stopped and closed his eyes without finishing the sentence; the pain in his head was unbearable.

  "No ichor nor venom, no seed nor egg, save the raw magic of the earth and sky," the wizard replied. "The natural world is full of magic.

  Lord Obsidian, ever seeking an outlet and a form, and when any wisp or current of that ubiquitous force chances upon a living thing, it seeps into it and takes form therein. If the host is man, woman, or child, and the power sufficient that the body's natural defenses cannot absorb it, then in a year and a day the magic bursts forth as a wizard; if it is a beast then a monster is spawned. T h e mindlessness of plants will yield mindless magical things that haunt the land to no purpose; the shapeless spreading of fungus or moss gives us bodiless dreams and figments."

  Trying to think was becoming impossible; Arlian could no longer form complete sentences. "But the dragons," he said. " T h e y . . . their venom. A thousand years."

  "The dragons are different," the Blue Mage said. "They suck all the magic from the land, and pass it to their offspring directly. I don't understand how—if I could do the same, I would. I can have no children, Obsidian, not by any means known to me. I can transform other creatures to suit my whims, guide the land's magic to manufacture demons and gaunts from men and animals, turn beasts to nightstalkers—I created your escort today from shadows and squirrels. But these things live only to serve me, they have no will of their own, and none can work magic in their turn. When I die my magic will disperse and return to the earth, until such time as its eddies and currents again collect it and carry the bits and pieces that were once me into contact with other living things, to spawn a hundred new creatures, none of them like me. The dragons, though—the dragons can spawn more dragons, damn them all."

  She rose abruptly.

  "My presence pains you," she said. "Rest; we will speak again later."

  Arlian tried to make a polite protest, but the only sound that emerged was a dry croak.

  Then the Blue Mage was gone, and sunlight flared up, and he lost consciousness.

  21

  The Spy

  Arlian awoke stretched on a stone bench in a courtyard, the night sky above him strewn with bright stars; he stared up at them for a moment, trying to remember where he was.

  And then he saw a figure standing over him, a dark shape blocking out the stars. Arlian sat up quickly, reaching for his common knife, only to find the sheath empty.

  That brought the memories back, and he knew where he was: in the courtyard of the palace in Pon Ashti, the palace the Blue Mage had taken as her own—or perhaps, he thought, despite appearances, he should say its own. By the wizard's own description it had no true sex, and could not reproduce its kind.

  The stars overhead meant that he had clearly been unconscious for hours; the last moment he remembered was early afternoon. His back was stiff from sleeping on the hard bench, and his head still throbbed dully, but the ghastly piercing pain the Mage's presence had caused was gone. The dim light in the courtyard was not blue, but the natural orange of torchlight—he could see brands set in brackets on each of the four walls.

  And he could see the shadowy figure of a man holding a cord

  between his hands. He had stepped back when Arlian awoke, and now stood a yard away, watching Arlian intently.

  "What is it?" Arlian asked. "Who are you? Step into the light where I can see you." Even as he said this his eyes were adjusting, and Arlian could see that he was addressing a paunchy, middle-aged man in a pale robe.

  The man cleared his throat. "Felicitations, my lord," he said. "I trust you slept well, and your headache is better?"

  "Well enough, thank you," Arlian said. "I fear you have the advantage of me; to whom do I have the honor of speaking?"

  "My name is unimportant," the man with the cord said, fidgeting.

  Arlian smiled crookedly. There had been a time, long ago, when he had said the same thing, and had thereby acquired the nickname Trivial.

  He was not inclined to share that name with this person.

  "Say rather, you do not choose to give it," Arlian said. "As you will.

  Are you in the Blue Mage's service, then?"

  "I serve the rulers of this realm."

  That plural seemed to confirm Arlian's suspicion—this man was almost certainly the dragons' spy. And that cord in his hands had doubtlessly been intended for Arlian's throat, but one did not survive fourteen years of war and attempted assassinations without learning to maintain a certain wariness even when asleep.

  "And do you think, sir, that the Blue Mage will permit you to live if you kill me beneath her roof?"

  "You know?" The man lunged forward, cord stretched taut.

  Arlian raised a hand to intercept it, but the man was quicker and stronger than he looked, and pushed the cord up over Arlian's fingers before Arlian could get a good hold. The cord caught Arlian under the chin, and pushed him back; the bench on which he sat rocked backward under this pressure, and Arlian toppled over. The two men tumbled down into the flowerbed, the would-be assassin atop his intended victim, the cord pressing into Arlian's throat.

  This was a worse situation than Arlian had anticipated; he had assumed he would be able to hold his attacker off easily, but had misjudged both his opponent's prowess and his own stability on the stone bench. He was not seriously worried yet, though, as he pressed at his foe with his left hand and reached for the buttons of his blouse with his right.

  No one in this palace would have a steel blade, nor silver, which was presumably why the spy was using a garrote, but that did not mean Arlian was unarmed—and his weapon was one that he very much

  doubted anyone in service to the Dragon Society would carry.

  The man's weight bearing him down onto the flowers made it difficult to reach his knife, but even the strongest strangler needed a few minutes to kill; he had time.

  "I'm sorry, Obsidian," the spy grunted, as he struggled to cross the ends of his cord behind Arlian's back. "They promised me venom if I killed you—a thousand years of life!"

  Arlian's hand finally slid into his blouse, groping for the hilt, but then blue light flooded over the pair, and all motion ceased.

  Arlian found himself staring upward into the spy's eyes, and he could see utter terror there—but he could not move. The pressure on his throat was less—though not gone.

  Then gray, inhuman hands, the furred hands of the Mage's ape-

  things, closed on the spy's arms and shoulders and legs, and he was lifted off Arlian and carried away, the strangler's cord still in his hands.

  Arlian tried to turn his head to see where the man was taken, and who or what had taken him, but he could not; the Mage's magic held him where he was, staring upward at a sky where all the stars were now-deep blue.

  The pain in his throat was gone—but now his head was throbbing again.

  Obviously, the Blue Mage had returned.

  And then he heard her voice, that rich and beautiful voice.

  "Did you think I would not know what was happening in my own home?" she asked.

  "I hoped," the spy replied. "I thought perhaps the dragons' magic..

  "The dragons have no power here!" she shouted, and Arlian felt an involuntary tremor run through him,
and through the broken plants upon which he rested. "And the dragons have no magic in you—it is he.

  Lord Obsidian, who is seething with their essence! It pains him merely to be near me because I have rejected your bestial masters and shut their power away from me; he suffers intensely, while you stand there unscathed!"

  That, then, explained the headache, Arlian thought.

  Her voice seemed to echo from the courtyard walls, but then the echoes died away and silence descended. Arlian was beginning to wonder whether the spy and the wizard were still there when she spoke again, in a quiet, musing tone.

  "I find it curious," she said. "This Lord Obsidian is ablaze with draconic magic, destined for a thousand years of life, and when that millennium is passed his heart and soul will go to nourish one of the mightiest magical beings to walk the earth since the days of the dead gods—yet he is sworn to destroy the dragons, to cast them down and prevent this fate.

  You, in turn, are untouched by magic in any form, though you have learned a few of the simple tricks you call sorcery, and yet you serve the dragons."

  "I want what he has," the spy said.

  "Yet he rejects it; what if, upon receiving it, you, too, reject it?"

  "I won't. There are many who do not, and I would join them."

  "Can you be sure?"

  "I think so."

  "And what if, rather than allow you your brew of human blood and dragon venom, I were to take you deep into the southern wilds, and arrange for you to be saturated with the wild magic of earth and fire?

  Would it please you as much to engender a wizard as to inculcate a dragon?"

  Arlian could hear the uncertainty in the man's reply. "How long would that take? I mean, how long would I live?"

  "For a year and a day you would live, though the magic would manifest itself about you in various ways—you might grow wings or scales or horns, you might gain the gift of second sight or a healer's touch. And then the mature wizard would emerge and cast your body aside."

  "A year? Just one year?"

  "And a day. Did you think you might have found another way to claim a thousand years of existence?"

  " I . . . Maybe."

  "No. Duration and longevity and continuity are the dragons' greatest magics. No one knows how long they live—thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps forever, while we wizards have only fifty years of existence, sixty if we are very fortunate, before we dissolve back into the chaos from which we sprang. And our spells dissolve with us—I could not grant you eternal life even if I wanted to, for any invulnerability I might bestow would vanish when I do."

  Arlian listened to this carefully—this was important information, and fascinating in its own right.

  It was especially noteworthy since he knew that the Blue Mage had been active well before he was born, probably at least a dozen years before, and he was thirty-seven. If it was true that she could expect only fifty years of life, then she was nearing the end of her time.

  Then he felt cold hands closing on his arms, and he was pulled upright, heaved up and over the bench until he was standing on the pavement, ape-things supporting him on either side. He remembered that the Mage had said she had made them from squirrels, but their grip was as strong as any man's.

  The spy stood a dozen feet away, similarly restrained, and the Blue Mage stood between them. She was looking directly at Arlian. Even though he knew she was a sterile, inhuman thing, he could not help thinking of her as female; save for their color and luminescence, her face and body were those of a beautiful woman.

  "Yes, I am nearing my end," she said. "And yes, I can hear your unspoken thoughts, under certain circumstances." Her head tilted as she studied him. "You intrigue me, Lord Obsidian."

  He could not bow while the squirrel-apes held him, but he nodded a polite acknowledgment. "I am pleased to entertain you in whatever way I might, my lady,"

  "This man was willing to risk my ire to kill you, yet I sense in you no anger at his actions, no hatred of him."

  "He sought what he mistakenly sees as a great reward, my lady; he does not hate either of us. Why, then, should I hate in return?"

  "The dragons did not hate your family, but slew them merely because they were there—yet you hate the dragons with a rare intensity.

  This distinction puzzles me."

  "I loved my family. They had done no harm to anyone; they were innocents. The dragons had no right to kill them." Arlian was startled to hear the vehemence in his own voice.

  "And this assassin has a right to kill you?"

  Arlian fought down his anger, then shrugged. "He has a reason, in any case, and I can make no claims of innocence. I have assisted in the slaying of more than fourscore dragons; I have killed a dozen men. Nor is my life so very precious to me, in any case. I must in time yield it up, and while I am in no hurry to do so, neither do I believe it would be so very great a loss."

  "Such resignation!" Wonderment was plain in the wizard's voice.

  "Can you teach it to me?"

  "My lady?"

  "My own dispersal draws near, Obsidian—my death, insofar as a being like myself can die. I dread it, but I know I cannot prevent it; already I feel myself becoming less focused, less cohesive. My light escapes me whether I will it or no, and there is nothing I can do to alter this. I cannot drink blood and venom and imbue myself with an extended existence, as a human might; I am neither human nor

  dragon, nor can I become either one. I came to Pon Ashti in hopes that the environment here, far poorer in wild magic than my native land while still outside the dragons' reach, might serve to prolong my time a little, but I can detect little or no improvement. It may even have worsened my situation; it is a very difficult thing to judge. So whether here in Pon Ashti, or roaming the wilderness, I am dying—

  and I do not want to die. If I could learn not to care, as you have, it would ease my passage."

  "I am sorry," Arlian said, sincerely. "I am what I am because I have lived the life I have lived; I have nothing I can teach you in the time remaining." He hesitated, unsure why he was considering assisting this creature, then said, "I have heard of a wizard in Arithei, long ago, that attempted to transfer its essence into another body when its own was destroyed. Might you be able to perform such a transference, and thereby extend your life?"

  The Blue Mage laughed unhappily.

  "I could take a new body," she said. "I could put myself into one of those creatures holding you, or into one of the demons I have created, or even into the body of this man who tried to kill you—we wizards are not tied to a single form. It would not help. It's not my body that is weakening." She raised her arms and shifted her weight to one leg, displaying her not-inconsiderable charms. "Does this look like a body about to die of old age? No, it is my soul that now verges on disintegration, my magical essence, and transferring it to another, less familiar form would only hasten that dispersal."

  "Maybe the dragons . . . " the spy said from behind her.

  She whirled, one hand thrust out, and he was flung back against the courtyard wall; one of the two ape-things that held him was carried with him, the two of them slamming against the stone side by side, while his right arm was pulled from the other ape's grasp, leaving ragged, bleeding claw marks and sending the ape tumbling to the pavement.

  The Blue Mage had grown as she turned, and now towered twice a man's height, glowing more brightly than ever. "The dragons will not help me," she bellowed, in a voice that was terrible and inhuman, far deeper than her previous tones, yet still beautiful. "The dragons are by their very nature the foes of all wild magic. We are the creatures of chaos and change, while they are the essence of order and stagnation!

  We and they cannot exist in the same realm—no wizard nor other magical creature can set foot in the Dragon Lands without suffering for it, nor can the dragons cross the borders into our territory."

  So much, Arlian thought, for any possibility of some compromise whereby the dragons might be allo
wed to live somewhere other than the Lands of Man. The only comfort he found was that at least this meant any alliance of dragons and wizards against him and the rest of humanity was unlikely in the extreme.

  The Mage turned, looking down over her shoulder at Arlian—

  though her shoulder seemed somewhat lower again.

  "My lord," she said, in a voice returning gradually to its normal tones, "while you do not hate this man, do you see any reason I should let him live?"

  "He is a human being," Arlian said.

  "You think that reason enough?" Arlian opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak she continued, "I do not!"

  Blue light flared, and the dragons' hireling was smashed against the wall; Arlian could hear the crunch of breaking bones, could see blood, deep purple in the blue light, spurt from the man's mouth and the back of his skull. His face distorted as his head was flattened.

  For an instant he hung there, as if pinned in place, then slid down the stone, leaving a smear of blood and hair, and lay in a heap at the bottom of the wall.

  "If I cannot live," the Mage said, "why should he?" Then she turned back to face Arlian. "Now, tell me, Lord Obsidian—if I cannot live, why should you?"

  22

  A Change of Regime

  I am your enemy's enemy," Arlian said calmly—though he did not feel calm. He suspected he had erred in coming to Pon Ashti. The spy's death had convinced him that in all likelihood he was about to die. The prospect did not frighten him, but neither did it please him. "While that need not make us friends, nor even allies," he continued, "surely it means I can be useful to you, and am not a tool to be lightly cast aside?"

  The Blue Mage stared at him, shrinking slowly. "You are not frightened," she said. "You truly are not frightened by death."

  "I truly am not," Arlian agreed. "I have despaired of ever being able to live free of the burdens that weigh perpetually on my spirit and pre-clude all happiness; what terrors, then, lie in death?"

  "The unknown," the wizard replied. "Dissolution. The loss of self.