Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (20 page)

Unfortunately, there were complications, as even he had to admit.

He found it maddening.

He spent many evenings visiting Lady Rime and her household,

enjoying the sound of childish laughter and the cheerful chatter of Rime's adopted family, and trying to distract himself from thoughts of magic and dragons and death.

It never worked for long.

And when the last trace of snow had melted, the spring flowers come and largely gone, the days grown warm, and Qulu had still not returned from Arithei with word of circumstances there, Arlian could stand it no longer. He had made preparations, and now he put them into effect.

"I am going to Arithei," he told Black at the supper table. "I leave tomorrow."

Black glanced at Brook, who sat on his right.

"I hope you will remain here, to tend to my affairs and keep a watch on events," Arlian added.

Brook smiled.

"How can I refuse?" Black asked, smiling back. Then the smile vanished. "I would accompany you, if you asked me," he said. "If you thought an old man's sword might be of use."

"I'd rather have someone with common sense looking after things in Manfort," Ariian said. "Swordsmen are far more easily found than sensible men."

Brook's smile widened. "I've told him that," she said.

Arlian nodded. "Though swordsmen of his caliber, I am sure, are far less common."

That settled, the question of who Arlian would take with him arose; after all, a lone man, even one of Arlian's experience, could not reasonably hope to cross the Desolation unassisted. The remainder of the evening was spent in considering the possibilities.

In the end, there were three men aboard the wagon that rolled out of Manfort two days later: Arlian and two young soldiers from the Duke's guard, men known as Double and Poke. For now, all three rode behind the oxen; Arlian intended to buy a horse or two in Stonebreak, so that one of the soldiers could scout the surrounding area thereafter.

The party also included a woman: Isein.

"I thought you preferred Manfort," Arlian had teased when she volunteered.

"I do," she said. "I don't intend to stay in the south. I do hope to hear what became of Qulu, though, and to see for myself just how bad things have gotten. Besides, my lord, you will need a translator and guide."

"Indeed I will," Ariian agreed; despite his months of study, his Aritheian remained quite limited. "Thank you."

The wagon itself was large and heavily built, its painted sides reinforced with strips of black iron; fine silver filigree decorated the gaps between iron bars, adding another layer of protection against magic, and an amethyst was concealed in each of its four corner joints. Each of the four travelers carried at least two steel blades at all times; each wore a good-sized amethyst around his or her throat on a heavy silver chain.

The interior was jammed with supplies, much of their volume simply water—they were going to be crossing the Desolation in summer, after all. There was almost no room for trade goods, but that did not concern Arlian; this was no money-making venture, no miniature caravan.

This was a scouting expedition.

He was, after all, the duly-appointed warlord of the Lands of Man.

The Duke of Manfort might hope to make peace, to arrange a compromise with the dragons, but Arlian preferred to find a way to win the war against them.

17

Into the Borderlands

Into the Borderlands

The journey south was not a happy one. Rumors of the magical disasters in the Borderlands had reached every town and village along the road, and were the universal topic of discussion in the inns and taverns Arlian visited.

In the towns where he admitted his identity openly he was questioned to the point of harassment about what he and the Duke intended to do to rid the Lands of Man of both dragons and wild magic, and his insistence that no final decisions had been made provoked anger and derision.

"So the warlord himself is going to personally scout out the situation, with just two men and a wizard to help him?" one villager sneered in Benth-in-Tara, as Arlian looked over the town's array of half a dozen catapults.

"She isn't a wizard," Arlian corrected idly. "She's a magician, an Aritheian magician."

That provoked an argument that escalated rapidly and eventually led to drawn blades, though in the end tempers were calmed without drawing blood; several of the villagers seemed to feel that all Aritheians were wizards, rather than human beings, and varied only in how well they hid their true nature. Other villagers considered this a side issue, and only wanted to know more about the Duke's intentions, and whether Arlian was genuinely scouting, or being sent into exile. Arlian's explanations foiled to satisfy them or quell their suspicions.

At first Arlian had assumed this incident to be a fluke, but when roughly similar events occurred in Jumpwater and Blasted Oak he resolved not to admit his identity further. In Sadar he claimed to be a messenger in the Duke's service, forbidden to reveal his destination or the contents of his message. Astute natives noted the iron and silver on the wagon, and concluded he was bound for somewhere beyond the border.

The resultant prying for hints was maddening; Isein was reduced to tears and fled back to the wagon, while Poke resorted to drinking himself insensible in silence to avoid letting anything slip.

The overgrown ruins of Cork Tree, while depressing, at least did not demand explanations from the travelers. Arlian picked his way through the stones by the roadside, identifying the foundation of the tavern where he had run Lord Drisheen through, and locating the site of his nighttime duel with Lord Toribor, before settling to sleep in the wagon.

This was the one town on the route where no obsidian-armed catapults stood ready to defend against dragons; none had been ready in time. The meager remnants of Cork Tree served as a stern reminder of why those catapults loomed over the other villages.

In Stonebreak Arlian required Poke and Double to wear ordinary clothing, rather than their white and blue uniforms, and refused to give any account of himself whatsoever. That proved the best course yet—

the townsfolk seemed far more willing to accept a completely mysterious stranger than an imperfectly explained ducal representative. The party stayed two days in town, and Arlian took the opportunity to buy a pair of horses, so that one or two of the men would be able to scout ahead of the wagon in the wilder lands to the south. He first chose a big chestnut gelding, a calm-tempered and well-trained beast, and then a somewhat more skittish bay mare who showed a promising turn of speed.

The negotiations for the horses went smoothly; the seller, not want-ing to lose the sale, did not pry into Arlian's intentions nor make any mention of magic loose in the Borderlands.

The horse trader was perhaps the only person in Stonebreak who did not warn the travelers against venturing further south; wild rumors and thirdhand reports of magic filtering northward, of horrific happen-ings in the Desolation or the lands beyond, were everywhere. Arlian tried to tease out fact from gossip, asking for names and dates and places, and could find no reason to believe any of these tales.

Despite the rumors and arguments and nervousness in the various towns, Arlian and Isein found no evidence at all that any wild magic had intruded into the surrounding territory. Everything seemed entirely normal until they were well into the harsh uplands of the Desolation.

Arlian dared hope, as they wended their way into the stony wasteland, that the reports received at the Citadel had been exaggerated.

By the time the wagon rolled down the rocky defile that led from the Desolation into the Borderlands, however, Arlian had known for days that the situation ahead was very bad indeed. He had seen the magic flickering across the southern skies while still deep in the Desolation, and he suspected that the uneasy dreams that had troubled any of them who slept outside the amethyst-guarded wagon were not entirely the natural product of their apprehensions.

Although they had taken the East Road, as Arlian had on his previous visit to the Borderlands, the terrain had not looked familiar for the last few days; the sands of the Desolation often shifted, drifting in the wind, and he was fairly sure he had come down a different canyon than had his previous expedition.

That meant that the village ahead was probably not Sweetwater.

Arlian remembered that there were three routes down from the Desolation in the vicinity, one of which ended at Sweetwater, and he was fairly sure the steepest and least likely did not emerge near any settlement at all; unfortunately, he could not recall the name of the town at the foot of the third.

Well, he would find out soon enough. He urged the oxen forward.

Double was riding ahead on their surviving horse, the big chestnut gelding; the bay mare had died ten days earlier and been left lying on the stony ground, as they could not spare the time and effort to bury her. They had never figured out exactly what had killed her, and Double had expressed doubts about the honesty of the trader in Stonebreak.

Poke was seated beside Arlian on the wagon—he had done most of the driving, but Arlian had taken the reins when he glimpsed the rooftops ahead.

Isein was staying inside the wagon, out of the sun—and out of bow-shot of any foolish bandits who might decide to see what a lone wagon arriving out of season was carrying. She had abandoned her northern blouses and velvets for the vivid robes of Arithei, which were far more practical in the hotter climes of the south.

The two soldiers were back in the Duke's uniform, though with coats removed, sleeves rolled up, and buttons undone in deference to the warmer temperatures; Arlian had resolved to try revealing his true identity and purpose again, in hopes that matters were different here in the Borderlands than on the northern side of the Desolation.

"What are those trees?" Poke asked, as they emerged from the defile onto the track between two tightly packed groves, a track too faint to be called a road.

"Orange groves," Arlian answered—he had seen such groves before.

He scarcely bothered to look at them, however; his attention was on that seething, unnatural sky, where shadowy shapes fluttered through glittering purple clouds. He did glance to either side to make sure that the farmers gathering fruit were not obviously hostile, and was reassured to see that they waved cheerfully at the wagon. That settled, he returned to trying to estimate the distance to the aerial manifestations, and the nature of the things flying there.

Poke, on the other hand, stared into the groves, watching the workers, plainly fascinated. "Oranges grow on trees?" he asked.

Arlian turned, grinning, to stare at Poke. "Where did you think they came from?"

"Vines, like pumpkins," Poke explained. "I thought they were miniature pumpkins."

"No, they grow on the trees you see here," Arlian said. "Which, alas, cannot survive the winters back north. I think you'll find they taste even better fresh from the tree than they do back home."

"I've never tasted one at all," Poke said. "We couldn't afford oranges! If my family had that kind of money I wouldn't have become a soldier."

"Well, you'll eat them here," Arlian told him, smiling. Then he looked forward again. The conversation had reminded him of the village's name, which had previously eluded him: Orange River.

"I believe this is Orange River," he called over his shoulder to Isein.

"Are you familiar with it?"

"No," she called back. "We always went by way of Sweetwater."

That was hardly surprising; Orange River was well east of the best route to Arithei.

On the other hand, if he remembered his geography correctly, they were only about four days from Pon Ashti. That city was reportedly now under the sway of the Blue Mage, but it might still be safe enough to make a visit there. Perhaps he could talk to magicians there, or even arrange an audience with the Blue Mage herself.

He and Isein had discussed various possibilities during the long ride across the Desolation, and Arlian had questioned her at length about the nature of magic, and of wizards.

"Wizards were all created from human beings," she had explained,

"or at least so we believe. Those whose origins we know were people who were consumed by magic, and became something other than

human."

"Magicians who lost control of their magic, then?" Arlian had asked her. "Are you at risk, if we venture beyond the border?"

"No," she said. "Previous knowledge of magic doesn't seem to matter; some wizards had been magicians, some were not. Rather, they were people who became infected with wild magic, which then overwhelmed and destroyed them, creating wizards from their flesh. The last wizard-king of Arithei had been a mushroom farmer—going about his business one day, then awakening transformed the next."

That had aroused Arlian's curiosity. What were wizards, and how did they come to be? Could their nature be the key to what he sought?

Now he wondered whether a wizard like the Blue Mage might know everything he needed to safeguard the Lands of Man without the dragons, and whether she might be willing to talk to him.

He had briefly entertained the notion that allowing wizards to rule the Lands of Man might be acceptable; presumably they would keep the other wild magic at bay. Isein had done her best to disabuse him of this notion, however, and had largely succeeded—wizards, according to Aritheian history, were capricious and violent, thoroughly untrustworthy, and not particularly long-lived, so that any wizard-king of Manfort would need to be replaced fairly often. Finding one tolerable wizard-king would be extremely difficult, if it was possible at all; finding a regular supply of them was presumably out of the question.

"Wizards do not breed after the fashion of men or beasts?" he had asked.

"Nothing magical does," Isein had replied.

Somehow, that did not surprise him.

He had already learned a few principles of sorcery from Rime, years ago; his conversations with Isein had now confirmed that southern magic, however chaotic it might appear, also had certain underlying laws and patterns and limits. The magicians of Arithei knew some of the patterns and limits, but most of the deepest laws they could still only guess at.