Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Arlian did not consider this acceptable, and said so, emphasizing his displeasure with his sword. He killed three of the eight court magicians before fleeing from some two dozen of their outraged and pregnant wives.

  From there, rather than make his way through the jungles, he

  returned to the Borderlands—or at any rate, the lands that had once been north of the border, and had not yet been claimed by any other government. There he turned east once more, then south, revisiting Shei before returning to his wagon and rejoining the three companions he had left there.

  In Arlian's absence Double had contracted a fever, so that the guard had spent several days lying in the wagon, soaked in sweat and tended by Poke and Uilieh; he was still shaky when Arlian returned. Arlian therefore postponed further exploration until he had delivered Uilieh safely back to her home in Arithei, and left Double in Theyani to recover his health while he and Poke ventured further into unknown lands.

  All in all, Arlian spent some nineteen months exploring the lands beyond the border before finally concluding that there was nothing more of use to be learned there.

  He knew more than he had ever expected to learn about the nature of magic and blood and power and all the myriad forms they could take, but the secret he needed, it seemed, must lie in dragon venom itself. No other still-existent magical essence could produce such consistent results, or bind power so long and so well. No other surviving creature had any equivalent.

  A god's blood could apparently engender magical creatures of immense power and duration, if the leech-god of Tirikindaro could be believed, or at any rate bestow longevity on existing creatures, but there were no living gods left in the world, so far as anyone knew, and therefore no possible source. If Arlian could find a god . . .

  But he could not, and that meant that if he sought to create something that would restrain the magic of the Lands of Man in a stable, long-term form, the only means available was dragon venom. If he sought to achieve it without the continued presence of dragons, then it seemed he would need to find a way to make their venom produce something other than a new dragon.

  That seemed unlikely, to say the least, but it appeared to be his only hope.

  And if he was to have any hope of achieving it, he would need to experiment with dragon venom—which, obviously, was not available beyond the border.

  Therefore at long last he returned to Arithei, where he reloaded his battered wagon, hitched up his weary oxen, and late in the warm and snowless southern winter he headed north into the Dreaming Mountains once again, with a fully recovered Double on the bench beside him and Poke walking alongside. No Aritheians accompanied him; Isein, having been warmly welcomed by her clan, had changed her mind about the relative merits of Theyani and Manfort and preferred to remain in her homeland, while Uilieh simply had no business in the Lands of Man, and no interest in going there.

  The trio of northerners, now experienced in the ways of the magical realms, made good time. Three weeks took them past Sweetwater, and up the canyon into the Desolation.

  27

  The Gate at Stonebreak

  The Gate at Stonebreak

  The first sign Arlian saw of the changes that had taken place in the two years since his departure was the great iron gate, blocking the road in the defile leading down from the Desolation to the town of Stonebreak.

  The summer sun shone brightly on a black iron framework supporting a stone wall that had been built across the narrow canyon from side to side, to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. At the center two twenty-foot towers flanked two massive iron panels, each some ten feet wide and ten feet high.

  Arlian was not pleased.

  He had encountered no trace of magic, not so much as a bad dream, since his third day in the wastes; surety, there could be no need of defenses this far north! Nor could the gate be intended to defend against anything other than magic; what other threat could emerge from the lifeless desert?

  Wasting time and money and manpower to build this thing was

  foolish; the energy would have been better used in building catapults and carving obsidian spearheads—or in growing crops and raising children, since the Duke's truce with the dragons was presumably in effect.

  The wagon rolled to a stop a few feet from the iron barrier, and Arlian tilted back his hat for a better view of the wall. The towers on either side of the gate were simple iron frames, but each was topped with a railed platform, accessible by a ladder on the north side—and neither platform was currently occupied.

  "Ho, there!" Arlian called, as loudly as he could manage—his throat was rather dry, as they had been rolling since midday, and his shout was not all it might have been under better conditions.

  The call echoed from the stone walls of the ravine, but no one answered. Arlian sat, glaring.

  On the bench beside him, Poke leaned back into the interior, groping for something with his intact hand. The guardsman was in civilian garb; the Duke's livery had been stored away out of sight for months.

  Double was in the wagon behind them; the driver's bench could acco-modate only two comfortably.

  Poke found what he was after, and handed Arlian a half-full waterskin—their last; their supplies had been rationed carefully to get them across the Desolation, and if they did not get past this gate thirst might quickly become a real problem. Arlian took a healthy swig, cleared his throat, then stood up on the driver's bench and held his hands to either side of his mouth.

  uHo, the gate!" ht bellowed.

  His shout echoed from the iron and stone, but no one answered.

  Double thrust his head out of the wagon's interior between Poke's shoulder and Arlian's hip, and for a moment all three men stared at the gate. Then Double pointed and said, "What's that, my lord?"

  Arlian looked where Double's finger indicated, and saw a four-foot lever connected to a heavy chain that vanished into a small opening in the left-hand tower. He had not consciously noticed it before, thinking it merely a crooked bit of the tower's iron frame, but now that Double drew his attention to it, Arlian could see that it was a mechanism of some sort. He stepped down from the bench, jumped lightly to the ground, and strode over to the lever in question. Then he grabbed it in both hands, tested it, and heaved.

  Machinery clanked, and the gates sagged open. The lever had

  released a latch of some kind.

  "By the dead gods," Arlian muttered, as he pushed one valve aside.

  "What do they hope to keep out with that?" Clearly, whoever had built this gate and latch assumed that the magical creatures it was meant to exclude were mindless beasts; Arlian concluded therefore that the builders had never encountered wizards or gaunts.

  A moment later the wagon was through the open gate, rolling down into Stonebreak. Double asked, "Shouldn't we close it again?"

  Arlian growled. "No," he said. "If they're fool enough to leave it unmanned, it's not our responsibility to compensate for their folly."

  "Maybe they left it unmanned because they're all dead," Poke suggested.

  "Then there's no one to defend, and nothing to be accomplished by closing it," Arlian said—but his tone was milder; the possibility of some great catastrophe having taken place had not previously occurred to him. "I don't see that the gate served much purpose in any case—anything human could get through as we did, and a good many magical creatures are not bothered by iron, nor hindered by such simple barriers. If something has slain them all, then the gate did no good."

  But then they rounded the final turn in the ravine, and the question was moot—they could see the village ahead, and people going about their business in the street. Everything looked much as Arlian remembered it—save that he could not see the catapults that had stood by the road. He supposed they had been moved to less obtrusive positions.

  There had been no catapults in any of the towns beyond the Desolation, but he had expected them to be even more common and more obvious elsewhere than before his journey; he was mildly startled
by their absence.

  As they had on the way south, the three men stayed the night at the town's only inn, just a dozen yards from where Arlian had slain a soldier called Stonehand in a duel almost eighteen years before, and around the corner from the lot where he had bought the two now-dead horses.

  Their arrival drew a great deal of attention from the townspeople; apparently caravans were scarce these days.

  The locals had been somewhat irritated to learn that Arlian had left the iron gate open.

  "The Duke's men said we should keep it closed," one man explained as Arlian ate his supper.

  "And how are honest travelers to get through, then?"

  "Just as you did," the innkeeper replied, as he delivered the last plate. "That's why we installed that lever."

  "Except we had thought they would have the courtesy to leave it as they found it," the other man said.

  "Perhaps if you left a man on watch . . . ?"

  "That's what the Duke's messenger said we should do," a boy offered.

  "But who's got the time to stand out there all day? We have better things to do. Bad enough we had to help the soldiers build it! I spent a good three weeks hauling and hammering iron, without earning a single ducat."

  "It wasn't so bad," the innkeeper said.

  "You weren't out there heaving iron bars about!"

  "No, I had an inn full of soldiers and messengers and the like order-ing me about day and night, and not a one of them paid for his room. At least you weren't expected to do anything after sundown."

  "And at least you were paid for the food and drink."

  "What's the point of it?" Arlian asked.

  The natives stopped their arguing to stare at him. "The point of what?" the innkeeper asked.

  "The point of the gate."

  "To keep out the bad magic," the boy said.

  "But it's just iron," Arlian said. "That will stop some of the creatures of the earth and air, perhaps. What of silver for the creatures of darkness? Gems for the creatures of dreams and madness? And what of the creatures that can fly over it, or climb the ravine walls around it, or climb down the cliffs? What of humans in the thrall of magic, or wizards, who can work the lever as I did?"

  The villagers glanced at one another.

  "We wouldn't know anything of that," the innkeeper said.

  "Are you a magician, then?" a plump woman asked.

  "A dealer in magic, and a dabbler in sorcery," Arlian said. "Not a true magician."

  "We have two sorcerers here in Stonebreak," one man said. "Neither of them said anything about the gate not being effective."

  Arlian shrugged. "What would a sorcerer know of southern magic?

  But I've just come from Arithei, and . . . well, that gate won't do much by itself."

  "It doesn't have to," the innkeeper said. "I heard the Duke's men talking—they say the dragons will keep out the southern magic. Seems the Duke's made a pact with them, common cause against the southerners. The gate's just to slow 'em down until the dragons get here."

  "You trust the dragons?" Arlian demanded.

  No one answered at first, but as the silence grew uncomfortable one of the barmaids said, "We might as well; we can't do anything about them in any case."

  Arlian frowned. "I had heard you had catapults here, with obsidian heads fitted to ten-foot bolts." In fact, he had signed the orders himself, though he had not personally overseen the installation, and he had taken a good approving look at them on his way south. "After what befell Cork T r e e . . . "

  "The Duke took them back," the boy said. "The oxen that hauled the iron here hauled the catapults away."

  "The boy's right," the innkeeper admitted.

  Arlian did not like the sound of that at all. "Why?"

  Feet shuffled and shoulders shrugged. "We don't know," a man admitted.

  Arlian could think of a few possible reasons, none of which he liked.

  "So you've traded the catapults for your iron gate. Have there been many incursions from the south, then? Strange births, transformed beasts, unnatural plants?"

  "No."

  "No, nothing like that."

  "Nightmares, then, or strange dreams?"

  "No."

  "But the travelers have brought stories from the Borderlands!" the boy called. "Terrible stories!"

  "The Borderlands are hundreds of miles from here, beyond the Desolation," Arlian pointed out.

  "But the tales all agree the danger is moving north," a man pointed out. "Why leave our defenses until the last minute?"

  "Ah, well, then if you're preparing for some possible danger years from now, the iron gate may be a good start," Arlian acknowledged.

  "You'll need to do more in time, though."

  "Of course," the innkeeper said. "Of course! And we'll do it when the time comes."

  "As soon as the Duke sends us orders."

  Arlian nodded, and said no more, but his thoughts were not quiet.

  There were several things that troubled him about this situation.

  Firstly, building iron gates so far from the town, and only on the southern side, was useless; if the dragons died and the magic came it would come from all directions, from earth and sky, and a full wall encircling the town would be needed to keep out the worst of it.

  And if the dragons did not die, then the magic would not come.

  These people had no way of knowing that, but the Duke's advisors ought to. The Duke himself, although he had gained some sense over the past several years, was still a bit of a fool, and he might not recognize the situation, but surely, some of the people around him would have explained it to him!

  If the Duke was trying to build defenses against magical invasion from the south, who was advising him? Why would anyone suggest such a course? All this did was to waste time and money that could be better spent elsewhere; what would anyone stand to gain from that?

  And why were Stonebreak's defenses against the still-real danger of the dragons gutted? Where were those catapults taken? What had become of the obsidian points? Were the dragons' servants in control, and removing anything that might threaten their monstrous masters?

  What was happening in Manfort? Was the city, too, being stripped of its defenses? Could even the Duke be that foolish?

  And for that matter, why were the people of Stonebreak speaking of the Duke as if he were their lord and master? True, there was no higher authority in the Lands of Man than the Duke of Manfort, and every trading village was expected to pay taxes to the Duke, but that was largely a relic of ancient times. The Duke's ancestors had been the warlords who commanded the human armies in the Man-Dragon Wars, and for seven centuries the Dukes and their troops had been charged with keeping the peace and defending the land against all foes, but they had never been recognized as the final authority in other matters. Local lords and village councils had always set their own rules and made their own decisions—but the people of Stonebreak had built that ridiculous gate at the Duke's command, and allowed their catapults to be hauled away.

  Arlian could only guess that they were acting out of fear. In recent years, ever since Lord Enziet's death, the peace had been not merely broken, but utterly shattered—towns and villages had been destroyed by dragons, the lords of the Dragon Society had warred openly against the Duke, and now stories of wild magic rampaging through the Borderlands were everywhere. A village could not hope to defend itself unaided—and the Duke was the only one offering aid. The villagers did not know how to protect themselves against these menaces, and the Duke, it would seem, claimed that he did know. What could be more natural than that they would hurry to obey their traditional protector?

  Why would they question his knowledge?

  Arlian finished his chop, scraping the last meat from the bone with his knife, then looked around.

  "I thank you all for acquainting me with circumstances here, and I regret any inconvenience I may have caused by leaving the gate open, but I assure you, there is no magic threatening you at p
resent that the gate would keep out. The wild magic has indeed spread into the Borderlands, but is still well south of the Desolation, and does not seem to be encroaching further."

  Unless more dragons died, he did not expect it to ever advance, but he saw no point in saying this.

  "Is it really bad in the Borderlands?" the boy asked. "Are there really bloodsucking monsters everywhere, draining the life from the cattle?"

  "Not everywhere," Arlian assured him, and that casual response unleashed a flood of questions. He spent the rest of the evening describing what he had and had not seen in the south.

  And in the morning he and his men headed out while the sun was still red in the east; Arlian wanted to reach Manfort as soon as possible, to see for himself what the Duke was up to.

  28

  Manfort Transformed

  Manfort Transformed

  The ruins of Cork Tree were as depressing as ever; no one had yet made any attempt to rebuild, and the trees growing up from empty foundations were taller and sturdier than before.

  In Sadar there were no iron gates, but iron posts, not unlike the road markers used in Arithei, encircled the village. The obsidian-throwing catapults that had been built and armed some ten years before were gone; the locals explained that the Duke's men had said they were needed more urgently elsewhere.

  In Blasted Oak a protective iron framework had been built around the central shrine, and the catapults were gone.

  Jumpwater had no added protections, but the catapults were gone; the same was true at Benth-in-Tara. Arlian found himself wondering what the Duke did with all that obsidian.

  And then, when he at long last came within sight of Manfort's walls, he saw.

  They were rolling through the surrounding towns—Manfort had

  outgrown its walls long ago, though the streets and shops and houses clustered outside the ramparts were not considered truly part of the city—when they rounded a corner and caught their first good view of the ancient defenses.