Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (21 page)

When he had set out Arlian had intended to head directly to Arithei, to talk to the magicians there, but after months of conversation with Isein on the journey, he now thought he might do better elsewhere.

There were undoubtedly Aritheians who knew more than she did, but she had given him an idea of the limits of Aritheian knowledge.

The Blue Mage spoke human languages, and could sometimes be

reasoned with, and surely knew secrets the Aritheians could not imagine; perhaps she could be coaxed to reveal some of those secrets. She had taken Pon Ashti from the Lands of Man, in defiance of the dragons'

power; perhaps if Arlian offered her further acquisitions . . .

But that would hardly improve the situation.

Double had stopped in a plaza ahead, at the heart of the little village, and spoken with one of the natives there; now he held his arm upraised in one of the signals Arlian had taught him.

"Double says that there's an inn ahead," Arlian called over his shoulder. "I know it's still early, but I think we should stop and hear the latest news."

"As you please, my lord," Isein called back.

Poke smiled. "I think it wise, my lord."

"Go tell Double, then," Arlian said, prodding Poke. "Get the innkeeper started."

Poke jumped down from the slow-moving wagon and trotted ahead.

By the time the oxen plodded into the plaza both guards and half a dozen townsfolk were waiting. The two stableboys ran up, one on either side, and reached for the buckles.

"Wait until we stop," Arlian called, as he pulled on the reins.

"Of course, my lord," the taller boy replied, ignoring Arlian's order and tugging at the straps.

No harm was done; the oxen stopped, and Arlian was able to transfer the reins to one hand and pull the brake lever with the other before the wagon had rolled another foot. A moment later the boys were leading the oxen away to the stable while Poke and Double maneuvered the wagon up against the rail; Arlian had lifted Isein to the ground, and now he turned and bowed to the innkeeper.

"Lord Obsidian of Manfort, at your service," he said.

"Haddrew of Orange River, my lord," the innkeeper replied, returning the bow. He showed no sign of recognizing Arlian's title. "May I inquire after the remainder of your caravan? Will they be arriving today, or has some mishap befallen them?"

"Did a monster get them?" the taller of the local women called.

"We've heard there are monsters in the Desolation now."

"We have no caravan," Arlian replied, glancing from the innkeeper to the woman and back. "I have not come to the Borderlands to trade, but on other business." He doffed his hat to the woman and added,

"And we have seen no monsters, save those in the sky to the south."

Some of the townsfolk cast quick, uneasy glances at the southern sky.

"Nor were we troubled by bandits," Double remarked. "I had always heard that the Desolation was full of them."

Arlian suppressed a sigh. It seemed impolitic to mention bandits in this particular place; the notorious raiders who made crossing the Desolation so dangerous probably included several of the men of this village and the surrounding farms. Bandits could not live in the wastes; they came from towns in the Borderlands. Caravans generally arrived after the harvest; preying on them was seen here as a way to keep young men busy and augment the household coffers. The risks were considerable—

the first man Arlian had ever killed had been such a bandit—but the profits could be, as well.

Fortunately, the townspeople did not take offense at Double's comment A woman, one who had not previously spoken, said, "I think all of them have gone south to help fight the monsters, or guard against the wizard of Pon Ashti."

Arlian turned. "The Blue Mage, you mean?"

"Yes, that's what they call her, my lord. You have heard of her?"

"I fear I have. Then it's true? She has taken Pon Ashti?"

"She has." Both women nodded.

The wagon was secure, the oxen out of sight, and Poke and Double were strolling over to join the group. Arlian and Haddrew began to speak simultaneously, then stopped. Haddrew bowed. "My lord?"

"I was going to suggest, sir, that we have come a long way through some very dry terrain, and would be pleased to take advantage of your hospitality..."

"Something to drink—of course, my lord!"He gestured at the door.

A moment later the four travelers were seated at a table in the inn, just inside the broad glassless window; the shutters were folded all the way back, but a wide canvas awning provided shade. Haddrew, the two women, and an old man who had not yet contributed to the conversation all pulled up chairs nearby, while the two boys fetched water and wine from the cellars.

"We had reports that magic had spread north of the border," Arlian remarked. "I'm sorry to see that they were accurate. How bad is it?"

"Bad," the shorter woman said. "We dare not go out at night."

"And even in our own beds, our dreams are troubled!" the taller said. "We pay taxes to the Duke of Manfort; can't he do something?"

"The Duke is a very long way from here," the shorter said.

"Nonetheless, his family claims to be responsible for protecting all the Lands of Man," Arlian said. "You have a right to expect something in return for your taxes." He did not mention that in fact, most of the Borderlands did not actually pay any taxes; he had heard the Duke's comments on the subject on occasion.

"He only heard about the problems a few weeks before we left,"

Poke said.

The southerners exchanged glances. "Then he has heard?"

"Indeed he has," Arlian said. "I am here in pan as the Duke's representative, sent to assess the situation."

"Good!" the tall woman said.

"We have had no word from the north in months," Haddrew said.

"We heard from Sweetwater that messages had been sent, but we had no way of knowing whether they had reached Manfort. I'm relieved to know that they did."

"Lord Naran encountered no serious delays on his way north,"

Arlian said. "All the same, several months have passed, and I'm sure matters have changed. Tell me, then, how things stand—the Blue Mage still holds Pon Ashti? What of Skok's Falls?"

Everyone began to speak at once, eager to pass on the news.

Several hours and several drinks later the torrent of gossip finally dried up, leaving Arlian with a clearer, albeit depressing, picture of the situation.

For centuries there had been a natural border, invisible but definite, that magical creatures did not cross. Oh, people who slept too close to the line might experience visions or nightmares, or glimpse unnatural movements from the corners of their eyes, and of course they could see the bizarre phenomena in the southern skies, but nothing more tangible, from the flittering nothings to the near-human wizards to the towering stalking horrors, had ventured into the Lands of Man.

The border's exact location might drift back and forth slightly; the city of Pon Ashti was built so close to it that at times its southern and western walls had been subject to the attacks of nightstalkers and gaunts, so that protective bands of iron had been mounted to repel infringing magic. That had worked well, and the border had been maintained. Any northward drift had always been balanced by a southward bulge somewhere else, and had reversed after a season or two in any case.

But a few years ago that had begun to change. Fields that had always been safe suddenly sprouted misshapen weeds that spoke in incomprehensible tongues; the flying monstrosities that circled perpetually over Tirikindaro swept through the skies of border towns, sometimes flap-ping at people's windows; drovers who used the southernmost roads found shadowy little creatures hiding in their wagons. There was still a border, but it was creeping northward, yard by yard, day by day, and the lands newly excluded were gradually absorbed into the magical wilderness, or were invaded and annexed by their southern neighbors. Most of the people who had lived and worked in those lands fought for their homes, but the magical assaults kept coming, traders became ever more reluctant to venture near, and more and more fanners and tradesmen were giving up and moving north.

There were humans dwelling beyond the border, but most of them were ruled by wizards, or lived in uneasy states of truce or stalemate lip the wild magic. A few of the people of the Borderlands had tried to make common cause with these foreigners, but that had only made matters worse—if they had felt any kinship to the inhabitants of the Lands of Man and had any freedom to act upon it, they would not have been outside the borders in the first place. Admitting to them that the border was failing had resulted in raids by human foreigners, as well as the magical varieties.

Those raids had turned into full-fledged invasions two years ago. All the lands beyond the new border had now been usurped by one foreign power or another—Shei and Furza and Tirikindaro had been especially greedy. The Blue Mage, a uniquely powerful wizard who had never before bothered to establish permanent rule over a specific place but had simply moved about, occupying whatever settlement took her fancy, had now taken a fancy to Pon Ashti and settled into the council palace there, establishing a miniature kingdom. She had had the iron stripped from the walls, and reports from the city spoke of inhuman creatures freely roaming the streets, and handsome youths who caught the Mage's eye vanishing into the palace, never to be seen again.

The Darambar River, which flowed through Pon Ashti on its way to its tangled and swampy delta, had always been clean and natural upstream of the city; now there were strange many-eyed fish in it that would stare up at anyone who came near, and the water seemed to glow at night. The true border was now judged by some to be a good three miles north of the city.

Other towns and villages had fallen as well, dozens of them, but the people of Orange River considered the loss of Pon Ashti to be the most significant disaster, since that had been their major center of trade. The river for which their town was named joined the Darambar just a day's travel to the south.

It was widely feared throughout the Borderlands that the wild magic's advance would continue until it reached the Desolation, and all the inhabitants would be forced to either flee or subject themselves to the whims of some wizard.

The reason for the border's retreat, which had seemed so obvious in Manfort, was unknown here; these people simply didn't think about the dragons. No dragon had been seen in the Borderlands for three hundred years, and the stories that came from the north of villages burned and dragons slain in their lairs were merely stories that had no connection with the world these people lived in. No one here understood how a catapult worked, nor saw any reason to want one built in their villager.

In fact, careful questioning led Arlian to conclude that the people of Orange River had never heard of dragonhearts, had no idea how dragons reproduced, and knew of no uses for dragon venom. They knew that obsidian had been discovered to be effective in piercing draconic armor, but found this of purely academic interest—after all, none of them had ever seen obsidian or had a clear idea what it was, nor had any of them ever seen a dragon.

Arlian took a moment to show them the obsidian dagger he carried, which was passed around and marveled at.

"1 want to see Pon Ashti for myself," he said. "How can I get in?"

The villagers looked at him and at one another, puzzled; then the tall woman said, "Just walk in. They won't stop you."

"They don't guard the walls?"

"The gates stand open day and night, now that the Blue Mage rules there; after all, what's left to keep out?"

"Ah, I see," Arlian said.

"Of course, it's dangerous. Wear gloves, lest a haunt or night-thing bite you, and keep your back to a wall whenever you can. A plastered wall, if you can, as some things can seep through the cracks between stones or boards."

"Indeed." He hesitated, then said, "Many years ago 1 crossed the Dreaming Mountains to Arithei; should I expect anything worse in Pon Ashti than I faced there?"

Again the villagers exchanged glances.

"I suppose not," the short woman reluctantly admitted.

"Good!" Arlian said, slapping the table and pushing back his chair.

"Then I will leave for Pon Ashti in the morning!"

18

18

The Gates of Pon Ashti

Arlian studied the terrain ahead with interest; he had never seen anything quite like it.

Directly ahead, to the southeast, his view was blocked by the golden-brown walls of Pon Ashti, speckled and striped by the marks where the protective iron had been stripped away, leaving snapped rivets, streaks of rust, and discolored stone.

To either side of the city, though, marshland stretched out to the horizon. At the moment the tide was out, and the gray-green marsh grasses lay stretched out flat, drawn seaward and woven into graceful patterns by the retreating waters. Here and there creatures of one sort or another flickered in and out of the grass blades—some of them the normal coastal wildlife, others shadowy or sparkling in ways that made Arlian quite sure they would not ordinarily be found in the Lands of Man. Every so often a wave of unnatural color flashed across the marsh to the south, and the southern sky was seething with magic. The air smelled of salt and storms.

The marshes were what made any sea trade here impractical, forcing merchants to send caravans across the Desolation instead. Arlian knew that somewhere to the east lay the sea, near enough that the tides washed up to the walls of Pon Ashti and raised those grasses up, but he could not see it; the marsh grass seemed endless.

And somewhere to the south the Darambar made its way through a hundred shallow, twisting channels in the marshes to the sea—but it also passed through miles of territory that had always been outside the borders, even when the dragons had been at their mightiest. Foreigners sometimes sailed their little flat-bottomed boats up through that maze, but no northern merchant had attempted it in centuries.