Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (41 page)

Arlian easily knocked her aside, but she vanished before she struck the floor. Arlian blinked, and drew his sword. Clearly, the experiment called Patch was not a success, and would have to be destroyed before she killed anything else as she had the newborn kitten.

Fangs suddenly buried themselves in his calf; he twisted, and saw the cat-thing behind him, its teeth sunk into his flesh through his trouser leg. He did not brush it away, though; instead he took careful aim and plunged his sword's point toward its tiny heart.

The blade skidded across the thin fur as if he had struck at granite.

Arlian had seen that happen before, long ago, in a cave beneath the Desolation, when he broke two blades on a newborn dragon. "Damn,"

he said. He tossed the sword to his left hand, then reached down to grab the creature.

She released her hold and danced aside, vanishing again the

moment she reached a shadow.

This was ludicrous, Arlian thought as he straightened and sheathed his sword. He stared into the shadows, but could not see Patch anywhere. Obviously, her magic enabled her to hide preternaturally well—

an amplification, perhaps, of a cat's natural talents.

The sword had not touched her, any more than ordinary steel could harm a dragon; Arlian had half expected that, and had come prepared when conducting his experiments. He reached into his coat and pulled out an obsidian dagger.

"Patch," he called, "where are you?"

She did not reply—but he heard a crash, and whirled.

The almost-empty brown bottle of venom had been knocked from

the table and smashed on the stone floor; foul vapor was swirling up from the scattered shards. Patch was on the table, looking up at the still-full blue bottle on a nearby shelf.

"Damn!" Arlian said again, lunging for the kitten-creature.

Patch leapt, an impossible monkeylike leap that left her hanging by her fingertips from the shelf, her toes scrabbling at empty air.

Arlian ran, and grabbed the blue bottle before Patch could pull herself up; then he stepped back, bottle in one hand and stone dagger in the other, and watched as the kitten dropped to the floor, righted herself, and turned to face him.

"I will not take orders from a kitten," Arlian growled.

Patch charged.

The dash at his legs was so unexpected he almost dropped the bottle to fend off the attack, but he caught himself at the last instant. He let her lock her fingers around his ankle and sink her fangs into him once again. Then he bent down and stabbed at her with the obsidian dagger.

To his astonishment, it was no more effective than his steel had been; the needle-sharp point slid and skipped across her fur without piercing. Those blue eyes glared up at him, and then she began climbing.

He dropped the dagger, raised the blue bottle above his head with his left hand, and looked about for a weapon. He remembered Black's suggestion that it might take six hundred years to find a way to kill the kittens—but Patch had killed the newborn with nothing but her own paws and fangs.

That was presumably a part of her magic.

He grabbed Patch by the throat and pulled her free of his trousers; she squirmed wildly, flexing and twisting in his grip. He squeezed, unconcerned with whether or not he harmed her, as he would never have done with any ordinary kitten.

She did not seem to be bothered by the pressure on her throat; her gyrations did not slacken in the least.

While holding the cat-thing at arm's length, he set the bottle carefully on the table; then he took a firm grip with both hands and tried to wring Patch's neck as she thrashed and clawed at him.

He could not do it. Even his full strength was not enough to snap the little creature's spine. The best he could do was hold her relatively still.

He held her at arm's length again, and stared at her, trying to think what he could do, as she struggled desperately. It was probably too late to try to calm her or bargain with her, and killing her . . .

Well, steel and strength and obsidian had failed, but there were other possibilities. He looked down at the floor, where spatters of venom had eaten holes into the slate. He knelt, and shoved the kitten's face into the smear of venom that had collected in one such hole.

There was no effect; she continued to struggle and squirm as

strongly as before.

That was interesting, that his new creation should be immune to the dragon's poison; venom was the one toxin that could scar, sicken, or kill a dragonheart.

But of course, it did not trouble the dragons themselves. By analogy, then, Patch's kind were not mere ambulatory incubators that would someday spawn new magical creatures, like dragonhearts, but were themselves, like dragons, the magical end-product.

Neither iron nor obsidian nor venom . . .

Still clutching the struggling cat-thing, Arlian made his way out through the servants' entry-way to the carriage house, where his trader's wagon still stood; he had never bothered to empty it completely after returning from the Borderlands. Now he climbed up into it, pressed Patch down solidly onto the bench where she could be secured with one hand, and groped inside with the other.

A moment later he held up what he sought—a silver dagger.

Patch stopped struggling.

Strike, then,
she said.

He struck.

38

An Audacious Proposal

An Audacious Proposal

Arlian disposed of Patch's remains, and the other corpses produced by the night's experiments, in the ash pit where he had disposed of so many others; he observed that Patch had decayed with unnatural speed, like a dragonheart, though not as thoroughly as would a dragon.

By the time that was done dawn had begun to lighten the eastern sky, and he had a live, normal, but very unhappy kitten to deal with. He wrapped the poor little thing in a warm towel, then set out to bring it to Lady Rime's family.

As he closed the door of the Grey House behind him the silver dagger was tucked inside his coat, where the obsidian had been before, and the towel-wrapped kitten was cradled in his arms.

As he attended to these matters, and again as he walked down the still-deserted street, Arlian thought over the night's events and everything Patch had said.

She had said he should find a species where the elixir would not kill an expectant mother, and of course he did know of one such species, the obvious species for further experimentation—but he had not dared to think of experimenting on humans. The risks and unknowns seemed very high, too high to ask any woman to face, for either herself or her child. In a thousand years of records there were no reports of any pregnant woman surviving a dragon attack or becoming a dragonheart; he could not be sure that the mother would survive, let alone an unborn child.

And of course, if the mother did survive, she would be a dragonheart. She would never again bear children. Even if the Aritheians were to cleanse her of the taint, remove her heart and leach the venom from it, she would probably be sterile—in all the years since the method was first developed, none of the handful of former dragonhearts had ever managed to sire or conceive a child.

And on the other hand, if the experiment worked, what would the child be like? There would be no confusion of cat and human, but only human. The dragon portion did not seem to make the transition from mother to offspring, though the magic did. Would the child be a wizard, perhaps? Or a powerful natural magician, but otherwise human?

Or something else?

He could only carry out such an experiment on a willing pregnant volunteer—if then, since an unborn child was hardly in a position to consent to it. This was not something he could force anyone into; the potential consequences were too severe. And who in the world would volunteer for such a thing? What mother could be so heedless of her child's welfare?

Perhaps someone sufficiently desperate might be found—but taking advantage of someone's desperation in such a fashion seemed wrong.

He was mulling it over carefully when he arrived at Lady Rime's estate, where he was distracted by the swarm of children eager to see the new kitten.

" T h i s will be the last," Arlian explained, as Bekerin readied a milk-soaked rag and Rose took the shivering kitten from Arlian's hands. "I will be doing no more experiments on cats."

That's just as well," Rime said, smiling. "I think we have quite enough kittens now."

Arlian looked at her thoughtfully. At one time he would have con-salted with her about his plans, but they had spoken so rarely in recent years, and she had seemed so entirely concerned with her adopted family, that he no longer felt comfortable discussing greater issues with her.

And Black would have been another advisor, but he had been sufficiently distressed by Arlian's recent experiments that they had drifted apart. And given Black's horror at experimentation with animals, he would surely be appalled by any suggestion of experimenting on an unborn child.

Lord Zaner might have an opinion, and could provide a useful

sounding board, but should he disagree with Arlian's conclusion he might bring the Duke's soldiers sweeping down from the Citadel to intervene; Arlian did not like that prospect. He intended to make his own decisions, and carry them out or not as he chose, rather than as the Duke instructed.

When the kitten, a gray one now named Fog, was properly settled Arlian politely declined an offer of breakfast and headed up the street toward Obsidian House, thinking deeply.

Patch had turned on him, and been killed—in fact, the cat-creature had seemed to want to be killed. He had poisoned dozens of cats and pigs and dogs in the past few months; now he suspected he might need to kill Smudge and Bee, as well. He did not like killing animals, but it did not particularly trouble him; after all, as a man who happily ate beef and pork and mutton, he could hardly object to killing animals on general principles.

People were another matter.

If he were to turn a pregnant woman into a dragonheart, and the baby survived and proved to be a new sort of magical creature, then he might have his way of diverting the land's magic away from either dragons or chaos—but if the new creature proved maleficent, could he bring himself to kill a child as he had slain Patch?

He shivered and pulled his coat more tightly about him; although the spring was well advanced, early mornings could still be chilly on occasion. He glanced up at the pale blue sky.

Summer was coming; the dragons would definitely be waking soon, if they were not already active. The Duke had granted them one village a year; any day now, they might sweep out of their caves and slaughter a town full of men, women, and children. The weather in Manfort was still too cool and bright for them, but there might be areas elsewhere in the Lands of Man already suffering under the oppressive heat and thick clouds of dragon weather.

A town a year, every year, for the rest of eternity, if the dragons were not stopped—and the only way he knew to stop them, now that their secrets were all known, was to kill them.

And if they were stopped, all their land destroyed, then chaos would overwhelm the Lands of Man as it had the realms to the south and west.

Arlian still could not accept either possibility. He needed a third alternative as much as he ever had. Patch had demonstrated that magical cats were not an acceptable choice. What if magical children were no better?

Arlian had killed men before, several of them—he had no exact count, but from the first bandit in the southern slopes of the Desolation to the last magician in Kaltai Ol there had easily been a dozen or more.

He had never slain a child, though.

But if the new creatures were truly children, he told himself, then he would have no need to kill them. They could be brought up to be com-passionate and kind.

Couldn't they?

At Obsidian House he made his way to the kitchens, to find himself the breakfast he had disdained at Rime's; there he discovered Brook and her three children at the table, talking quietly.

Arlian could not help noticing that Brook's pregnancy was well advanced now; if all went well her fourth child would be born before the summer was far advanced.

And if she were to drink a cup of blood and venom before then . . .

"My lord," Brook said, upon seeing him enter, "have you seen Patch this morning?*'

"Oh," Arlian said.

At the tone of his reply Brook took one look at his face, then told her children, "Go find your father. All three of you, right now."

Amberdine promptly trotted away; Kerzia took a moment to catch Dirinan by the hand and tow him along as she followed her sister.

Arlian sat down across the table from Brook, and said, "Patch is dead, I'm afraid, by my own hand."

"What happened?"

Arlian hesitated, trying to decide what to explain and what to leave out, and then, without really intending it, found himself telling her everything.

He was just explaining how the obsidian dagger had glanced harmlessly off Patch's back when Black appeared in the doorway with a daughter on either side and Dirinan riding on his shoulders.

"You sent the children to find me, my dear?" Black asked.

Brook looked up, startled. "Oh," she said. "Yes, I did, but I'm afraid it was a mistake—I had misunderstood something Lord Arlian said."

Black glanced curiously at Arlian, who said nothing.

"Could you take the children outside, please?" Brook continued.

"They should enjoy this weather while they can."

"Of course." Black looked from his wife to his employer and back, then down at the girls. "Come on," he said. "Why don't we take a walk down to visit Lady Rime? We could see what Rose and Bekerin and the rest are doing."

"They have a new kitten," Arlian said. "He's named Fog."

"Kitten!" Amberdine exclaimed, jumping up and down.

"Haven't you seen enough kittens lately?" Black asked, smiling.

"No," Amberdine answered, very definitely.

"This is the last," Arlian said. "I've finished my experiments with cats."