Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (36 page)

He took off his cloak and laid it on the ledge, then unslung his pack and lowered it over the edge, reaching down as far as he could before releasing it. He removed his coat and dropped it onto the cloak.

Then he picked up the lamp, took a deep breath, and jumped.

The lamp's flame flared up wildly as he fell, as much from the wind of his fall as from any drifting clouds of venom, but it did not go out. He landed hard, and sprawled forward, but kept his grip on the brass handle. Hot oil splashed across his glove, but did not ignite.

He lay still for a moment, then pulled himself up and knelt on the sloping stone, raising the lamp high.

His spear and pack lay a few feet away, and the nearest dragon was a looming black presence a few yards beyond.

He got to his feet, reached for his spear—then stopped.

He was not here to kill dragons. He was here to collect venom.

Reluctantly, he left the weapon where it was and instead opened his pack, finding the blue glass bottle he had carried all the way from Manfort. It had contained wine originally, but he had drunk the last of that a month before, then rinsed the bottle thoroughly to prepare it for its new purpose.

He also fished out the smaller brown bottle that had held his lamp oil; he guessed he would have no trouble filling both, given how many dragons slept here.

When he stood upright again he had the blue bottle in one hand and his lamp in the other, the brown bottle thrust into his vest. He stepped forward toward the dragons, leaving spear and pack where they lay.

He would have preferred to find puddles of accumulated venom he could dip the mouth of his bottles into, or to collect it from dripping wall formations, but the smooth, sloping surfaces of this unusual cave had not allowed pools to form, and did not drip. Instead the venom that dripped, spattered, or condensed on the floor and walls trickled down in shallow streaks, too thin to dip into—though their paths had been etched into the stone by the venom's corrosive nature.

He followed the slope downward across a good forty yards of slanting floor, hoping to find a pool at the bottom, but instead discovered that the venom was seeping down into a crevice only an inch or two wide, far too narrow to admit his gloved hand or either bottle.

Tired and annoyed, he made his way back up the slope toward the slumbering dragons.

They did not, he thought, look very magical, nor did the trickle of venom oozing down the floor look like the very essence of magic that he believed it to be, that he needed it to be. Yes, the black scales shimmered in the lamplight, and the venom gleamed, but no more than any number of natural substances. Simple water would have shone more brightly than the venom.

He could have sponged mere water off the stone with a cloth, and wrung it into a container—but venom was far too corrosive for that.

Glass would hold it, as Lord Rolinor's brandy flask had demonstrated, but cloth would disintegrate at its touch.

The only way he could get venom into his two bottles would be to catch it as it dripped from the dragons' jaws.

He moved carefully up to the nearest dragon. The beast lay curled up, catlike, with its back to him; the ridge of its spine was even with his chin, its unmoving flank far above his head. There was no discernible rise and fall as it breathed—but then, Arlian was not entirely certain that dragons did truly breathe. They were not natural beasts, despite their appearance, but magic made flesh. They ate not meat nor fruit nor grain, but human souls; they were born not of womb nor egg, but from human hearts and blood; why, then, would they breathe? Arlian supposed that whatever analogue of breath they might have would partake of magic, rather than air.

He circled to the right, following the dragon's neck, and found its loathsome head resting upon its right foreleg and the tip of its tail.

And venom dripped slowly from its jaw.

This was not a particularly large dragon; Arlian pulled the brown bottle from his vest and set it carefully on the stone below that dripping jaw, setting it on a handful of dust and turning it to make it as stable as possible on the sloping floor. He carefully held the lamp as far from the venom as possible, to avoid sending a flare into the dragon's unmoving nostrils and waking the monster.

A drop of venom struck his glove as he maneuvered, and a cloud of stinking smoke hissed into being as the fluid burned through the leather. Arlian snatched off the glove and scraped it against the floor until the hissing stopped and the smoke dissipated.

That done, he stepped back and looked at his contrivance.

Venom was gathering along the ridged black lip; as he watched, a drop formed, and fell—missing the mouth of the bottle by inches.

Arlian sighed. He looked at the dragon's face, to be sure there was no sign that the creature's sleep had been disturbed.

He did not recognize this particular dragon. Like all its kind, its face was strong-featured and unique—perhaps it was a part of their magic, but each dragon's face was memorable in a way no other species, not even humanity, could match. No dragon could ever be mistaken for another, if one once saw its face. Arlian could remember every detail of every dragon he had ever seen face-to-face, regardless of what the circumstances might have been, and regardless of whether he wanted to.

This particular dragon was not one he had seen before—but then, the vast majority he had seen were dead. The dragon that had spoken to him sorcerously through a bowl of bloody water was dead; the dragon that had contaminated Lady Rime's blood and destroyed the Old Palace was dead. All the dragons he had found in their lairs were dead. Only the one that had slain his grandfather and sired the abomination growing in Arlian's heart, and its companions in the destruction of the village of Obsidian, still lived.

Another drop of venom fell, and this one struck the rim of the bottle's mouth and split. Half of it trickled down the bottle's side; the other half fell inside.

Light and smoke flared up as the venom ignited the traces of oil lingering in the bottle; Arlian stepped back, startled. He glanced at the dragon's face, then at his spear, lying thirty yards away.

The dragon did not stir.

Arlian let out his breath in a slow sigh of relief, and a second drop of venom fell into the bottle.

There was no second flare, though smoke swirled upward from the bottle's mouth. Arlian guessed there was no longer enough good air in the bottle to feed actual flame.

He left that bottle where it was, and turned his attention to finding a place for the other. He resolved not to simply choose the nearest dragon this time, but to find one producing the best flow of venom. He raised his lamp and began to explore the population of the cave.

The next dragon he passed was unremarkable, and had arranged its jaw on its foreleg in such a way that the venom trickling from its mouth never dripped, but ran down over the black scales to the floor. The third lay with its jaws on the floor itself. The fourth might have served, but Arlian chose to look further.

And when he looked at the face of the fifth dragon, he stopped dead in his tracks, trembling.

He knew that face.

He had seen it looking at him through the burning ruins of his parents' pantry long ago, as a boy of eleven; he had seen it casually spit venom at his grandfather, burning the man's face away.

This was the face that had haunted his dreams almost every night as he slaved in the mines of Deep Delving, that had lingered in his dreams and memories ever since.

This was the dragon he had sworn to kill, all those many years ago.

This was the true target of his lust for revenge. This was the focus of all his hatred, the monster that had destroyed his family and twisted his life into its dark and loathsome form. This was the creature that had casually robbed him of the capacity for love and joy, wiped out any possibility of human descendants, and tainted his blood with its own vile spawn.

He stood frozen for a moment, too numb with shock and hatred to think or act; then he turned and ran for his spear, dropping the wine bottle as he neared.

His hand had closed on the shaft, and he was lifting the weapon, when he stopped.

He could kill the beast, here and now; he knew that. He could kill it, and the others would almost certainly wake, and he might kill one or two others before he died. If the other two that destroyed the village of Obsidian still lived, they might even be among those he slew—but he would never know if he had found all three, since he had never seen one of their faces.

He could kill the dragon. He could avenge his grandfather, his parents, his brother, and himself—and die.

For most of his life, that had been all he hoped for.

But if he died now, the other dragons would survive. The Lands of Man would suffer under their dominion, a village destroyed every year.

Black and Brook and their children would live out their lives in a world corrupted by the dragons; Vanniari and Rime and all the others, as well.

He looked at the spear, its obsidian head glistening in the lamplight, then lowered it to the floor.

"Later," he whispered to himself. "There will be time later." He released the spear and stood up, then turned to look at the sleeping dragon.

"I know where you live now," he said. "I can find you—and I will."

He picked up the blue bottle. "But I have something else to do first—

something to live for."

He smiled.

"And I'll use your venom to do it."

33

Out of the Caverns

Arlian awoke to total darkness.

At first he did not remember where he was. The possibility that he had gone blind occurred to him, or that he had died, but in reality he thought that he was back in the mines of Deep Delving, a slave asleep in his little tunnel, about to be called out for his shift. His escape, his journeys to the Borderlands and beyond, his life in Manfort as Lord Obsidian, his elaborate revenge and his years of dragon-slaying, all seemed nothing more than a fantastic dream.

But the sheared granite wall beside him did not have the familiar texture of hewn limestone or galena, and his memories flooded back. He was in a dragon lair deep beneath the Shoulderbone Range, and the pack pillowing his head held flint and steel, while a lamp with a little oil still in it lay nearby.

He had allowed several hours to fill the bottles. For most of that time Arlian had slept as soundly as the dragons, curled up in a corner with his extinguished lamp placed far enough away that he would not acciden-tally spill it in his sleep, but close enough he could find it in the dark.

He sat up, pulled the pack to him, then groped for the lamp.

A moment later the wick caught from a sliver of glowing tinder, and he could see his surroundings once more. He hastened to inspect his collections, and found the brown bottle overflowing, the blue nearly so.

Setting the lamp down for a moment, he capped both bottles

securely, wrapped them in extra clothing, and buried them deep in his pack, as well protected as he could make them. Retrieving the lamp, he looked around at the sleeping dragons, which seemed completely undisturbed by his stay among them.

The temptation to plunge the lamp into a trickle of venom and set as much of the cave ablaze as possible was very strong, but he resisted it; it would not harm the monsters, perhaps not even seriously annoy them, but it would alert them to his presence.

Plunging his spear into the black heart of his family's murderer was an even greater temptation, but he resisted that, as well, telling himself that a better time would come. Instead he returned to the corner where he had descended into the cave, where the ledge reached its lowest point He set the lamp on the cavern floor, then hoisted his pack up above his head and leapt upward, shoving the pack two-handed up and over the edge before falling back.

The heavy pack barely made it, and the noise he made upon landing worried him; he paused and looked around at the dragons.

They had not stirred.

He picked up his spear and looked at it, tempted anew; then he sighed, backed up, and with a two-step running start jumped for the ledge again, tossing the spear up beside the pack.

It bounced and rattled, and came to rest with the butt end sticking a few inches out over the edge.

That left Arlian himself, and the battered oil lamp. The lamp was a problem—but it was also on the verge of running dry; it flickered every time he moved it, the remaining oil splashing faintly in the reservoir. It wouldn't last for the entire journey back to the surface, in any case.

He could find his way in the dark if he had to, and he could not throw the lamp around as he had the pack and spear—it would spill, and Arlian might find himself awash in flaming oil, or worse, flaming venom. He stepped away from the lamp, preparing to leave it behind. Its glow would see him up the ledge and into the tunnel, and he could find his way from there in the dark- The lamp would bum itself out harmlessly in a short while . . .

He paused.

If he left it then in the spring, when the dragons awoke, they would know someone had been here. They might well abandon this lair—and that would mean at least fifteen dragons (he never had made an exact count, and was not about to waste his remaining oil doing it now) he would need to track down all over again.

That was unacceptable.

He couldn't fling a lit lamp up onto the ledge, though, and would need both hands to climb up. He doubted he could make the jump in the dark, so extinguishing the lamp for transport would not work, either. He had to carry the lamp somehow, and do it without using his hands.

He wished he had thought all this out before tossing his pack up where he couldn't reach it; he had nothing with which to improvise a carrying strap.

Finally, though, he devised an arrangement where he buttoned his vest through the lamp's handle, fastening it to his chest. That put the open flame uncomfortably close to his collar and beard, but he thought he could manage it for the few seconds it would take to get back up to the ledge.