Dragon Venom (Obsidian Chronicles Book 3) (38 page)

He had to use his own key, and hang up his own cloak; he had, after all, sent the staff away. The stone passages were cold, dim, and silent, in stark contrast to the noisy, sunlit bustle of Obsidian House.

He could hardly maintain the entire house single-handed; he

decided he would keep the fires lit in the kitchens and his own bedchamber, and let the rest die out. The cold might reduce the pest population, thereby accomplishing through neglect what ongoing efforts with broom and fly-swatter had not.

He went through the mansion, closing doors and dousing lamps, then settled at last at the kitchen table to plan out his experiments.

He fell asleep around midnight, his head on the table, the two sealed bottles of venom on the shelf above.

35

Studies on the Effect of Dragon Venom

Arlian's first experimental subject was a large rat.

Closing off most of the rooms had driven a good number of rats and mice into the kitchens, and trapping them alive proved relatively easy; he collected several in a variety of cages in one of the pantries.

Mice were too small to handle easily, so he chose a fat black rat for his initial trial. He isolated it from the other captive vermin, coaxing it into its own small cage, then carried it out to the courtyard of the Grey House and placed it upon the pavement. The rat retreated to a corner of the cage in the shadow of the catapults that lined the roof, and it crouched there while he prepared a dose of elixir.

The first question to address was what sort of blood to use in his preparation. The mix that produced dragonheads was dragon venom and human blood; should a rat, then, receive the same combination, or a mix of venom and rat's blood?

There was no record of any pets or livestock surviving a dragon's attack; no non-human dragonhearts had ever been reported. Arlian suspected that that meant non-human blood would not work.

On the other hand, feeding human blood to a rat struck him as somehow unseemly and repellent, and the non-appearance of surviving beasts might mean that the dragons had made a point of slaughtering any beast that might have spawned an inferior sort of magical creature.

Since Arlian wanted another sort of magical creature . . .

He mixed a single drop of dragon venom with a half-cup of blood drawn from the other rats, then carried the mixture out to the courtyard.

The rat backed away from him into the farthest corner of its cage, but Arlian was able to get a secure hold and drag it out. The animal tried very hard to keep its mouth closed and as far as possible from that foul-smelling brew, but at last Arlian was able to hold the animal in one hand, pry its mouth open with the other, and then hold it open while he quickly poured the seething mixture down its throat.

The rat vomited immediately, but that meant nothing; Arlian had vomited after drinking his grandfather's contaminated blood, and that had not saved him.

Arlian, however, had not then gone into convulsions; bloody spew had not sprayed from his mouth, nor smoke seeped from his nostrils.

The rat lived a surprisingly long time, under the circumstances—

almost half an hour. Arlian considered putting the poor thing out of its misery, but that would invalidate the whole experiment; he had to be absolutely certain that the animal would not survive. He forced himself to watch as it weakened and died.

The next rat received its drop of venom in a cup halt-full of Stammer's blood—Arlian could not use his own blood, since he was himself tainted and his blood poisonous, and had therefore prevailed upon his servants to supply what he needed, paying them generously for the precious fluid. The results of this experiment were slightly less dramatic than the first trial, lacking the smoke from the nostrils, but were even more swiftly fatal.

Two more rats produced identical reactions.

Arlian then tried a few variations, first using his own blood for one thin brown rat; that rodent keeled over within a dozen heartbeats, and died almost instantly. Venom diluted in water or wine was more lethal than venom diluted in healthy blood, but not quite so deadly as in Arlian's blood.

At last, after four days and more than two score dead rats, he could think of nothing more to try, and began anew with the two dozen pigs Black had bought. The husbandman Black had hired to tend the livestock, a fellow called Mucker, helped fetch the animals into the courtyard, but once each pig was securely tied to a post the man departed quickly; he made it plain that he wanted no part of these unnatural experiments, which he considered wasteful and dangerous, and that he was only staying in Arlian's employ because Black had promised him truly exorbitant wages.

Arlian might have found another pair of hands useful in administer-ing the elixir, but he saw no need to make the man uncomfortable, and he could manage by himself. He thought he understood something of Mucker's attitude, but did not share it; these experiments were necessary, and might do far more to aid humanity than would the pork and ham that the pigs would have otherwise provided. From the pig's point of view it surely could not matter much; he would be equally dead either way.

When the pigs yielded no useful results Arlian intended to move on to other species, but oxen were difficult to force-feed, and presented serious disposal problems; he attempted only two of them.

He tried half a dozen mice, despite their small size, with no more success; nor were a few assorted spiders and insects any better.

He was getting nowhere at the end of almost a month's work, and he knew it. It seemed as if dragon venom, either undiluted or in any combination whatsoever, was invariably and swiftly fatal to anything except humans and dragons.

Magic itself was not inherently toxic; he knew that much from his experiences in the lands beyond the southern border. The draconic nature of the venom, he decided, must be the source of its deadliness. If there were some way to separate the magic from the dragonness . . .

But how?

He consulted with Lady Rime, and with all the Aritheians still dwelling in Manfort, but none of them knew even as much as he did about the matter.

The key, he guessed, was in the blood. Dragon venom by itself would kill a man dead; in combination with human blood, though, it created a dragonheart. Somehow human blood allowed the magic to work before the venomous nature could take effect.

He needed something that would remove that venomous nature

entirely that would filter it out while passing the magic on—but what?

He stared at the half-empty brown bottle.

Perhaps another layer, as it were, might help; he fetched another rat and tried combining a drop of venom with half a cup of human blood and half a cup of rat's blood.

It didn't help.

He tried feeding the dead rat to a dog; the dog died.

He tried feeding some of the rat's blood to another rat; it, too, died.

He tried combining the rat's blood with a fresh drop of venom, thinking that perhaps the two poisons might cancel each other out, and the result killed another rat.

Perhaps rats and pigs and oxen were simply not suitable; in desperation he caught a stray cat in the alleys behind the Grey House, an unusually plump one, brought her into the kitchen, and fed her a mix of human blood and venom, planning to use her blood for his next experiment. After pouring the mess down her throat he set her down on a bed of rags and sat down to wait beside her.

She promptly vomited—he had expected that—and then lay down,

looking weak and tired. That was what had happened with previous animals. But then, a moment later, she began to breathe in great heaving pants, her flanks rippling; no previous beast had done that. Arlian stared, and then realized what he had done.

This cat was not fat, she was pregnant—hardly unusual in the

spring. If he had not been so focused on his own concerns, his elaborate experiments, he would have noticed. Now the poison had brought on contractions, and he had undoubtedly killed a litter of kittens along with his chosen subject.

He had not intended that. Arlian was hardly sentimental, and had felt little remorse over poisoning dozens of assorted animals in the course of his research, given its importance in the campaign to free humanity of the dragons, but he did feel a serious twinge of regret at this unintentional waste.

Sure enough, half an hour later the cat had produced two kittens, tiny, mewling things lying helplessly on the rags, eyes closed, their mother too sick from the poison to properly lick them clean or nurse them; the second was scarcely born when their mother gave a final twitch and lay still.

The kittens were still alive, though. One was white with striped gray patches, like its mother, while the other was entirely black. They lay upon the rags, heads moving from side to side, their tiny paws pulling at the rags as they struggled to move themselves.

And they appeared healthy.

Arlian stared. He had expected them to die immediately, but they showed no sign of illness or poisoning at all. Perhaps, he thought, the magic had not had time to reach them.

Or perhaps a little magic had reached them, but the venom's poison had not. There might be something to be learned from these kittens.

This accident might even be just what he had sought. He looked around, aware that Mucker had left for the day and he was alone in the house, with no one to call on for aid, and no idea at all how to keep a pair of orphaned newborn kittens alive.

Obviously, they would need warmth and milk; they needed to be cleaned off completely. Beyond that, he had no idea; he had never kept pets of any sort, and had left the care of the livestock to Mucker.

He had no milk for the kittens, but he could keep them clean and warm; he gathered both of them up in some of the rags they had been born on, wiped the remaining blood and tissue from their fur, and carried them closer to the hearth. He set them down just outside the fender, arranging the rags into a nest, then looked around at the shelves, trying to think what he might substitute for their mother's milk.

Warm water would be better than nothing; a bit of wet cloth would give them something to suck on, at any rate.

They were still mewing, pawing at the rags, pulling themselves along; Arlian was amazed at their vitality. It was not as if their mother had been particularly healthy or well fed, after all.

Perhaps they had absorbed a little of the magic.

He hurried to the water bucket, snatched a towel from the rack, and dipped a corner. Then he returned to the hearth, twisted the towel's corner into a crude approximation of a nipple, and tried to direct it into the black kitten's mouth.

The kitten was not having any of it; it spat the towel and water out, quite vigorously. And then it opened pale blue eyes and glared at him.

Arlian stared back.

He knew that wasn't right; a kitten's eyes did not open less than an hour after birth. He was unsure just what was normal, but he knew it took at least a few days. This kitten could not even stand, yet it was glaring at him as intensely as any full-grown cat.

This was beyond him; he needed help.

He did not dare leave these unnatural little beasts unattended, so he could not go and bring help back. Taking newborn kittens out in the cold outside air seemed risky, but he saw no other practical choice. He set a dozen towels warming on the hearth, then found a wooden crate and prepared a portable nest.

An hour later he was in the kitchen of Obsidian House, explaining the situation to Brook and Stammer; Black was out on business, negotiating with drapers for some of the final accoutrements the establishment still lacked.

Brook listened intently, but Stammer was more interested in watching the kittens. Both kittens had their eyes open now, and stared up at her with a very unkittenlike assurance.

"Lady Rime's sorcery may be helpful," Brook said. UI doubt Lilsinir has anything. She's been complaining for some time how little magic she has left."

"She can still cleanse dragonhearts, can she not?" Arlian asked.

"Oh, yes," Brook said. "She and Asaf and Tiviesh are all well equipped for that—but the demand has scarcely been overwhelming, especially since the Duke made his pact with the dragons. No, it's the other magic that's in short supply, and I doubt she would have had anything to help study magical kittens, in any case."

"Perhaps I should take them to Lady Rime . . . "

"No, leave them here!" Stammer said, looking up. " I . . . I . . . I mean, I . . . " She stammered herself into silence, gazing pleadingly at him.

Arlian smiled. "They can stay here," he said. "I can bring Lady Rime up to study them here. And I'm sure all the children would be glad to see them, once they're old enough to play with."

"If they live that long," Brook said.

"Indeed," Arlian agreed. "That's hardly a certainty, is it?"

"I'll f . . . f . . . find them some milk," Stammer said.

A few hours later, when the sun was down, Arlian found himself momentarily alone with the kittens in the kitchen of Obsidian House, staring at the tiny animals again. They had emphatically refused the warm milk Stammer had offered them; in fact, they had not eaten nor drunk since their birth, yet they seemed as strong and alert as ever—

more alert, in fact, as they gazed back at him knowingly.

Lady Rime had not yet replied to his message, but somehow Arlian suspected her sorcery would yield little useful information about these strange little creatures. They had clearly escaped poisoning, yet had received at least a portion of the venom's magic.

The possibility must therefore exist of creating thousands of such kittens, thereby soaking up the magic of the Lands of Man and allowing the dragons to be slain, but Arlian was by no means ready to celebrate.

This would appear at first to be exactly what he sought, but the kittens made him uneasy. While it seemed absurd that magical cats could be as bad as wild magic or dragons, he was not comfortable with these unnatural little creatures.

And how many dozens or hundreds or thousands of such tiny creatures would it take to equal one dragon? Did the magic consumed cor-respond to body weight? Would they grow to the size of ordinary cats, or to the size of dragons?