Dragon Venom, page 34
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. “I 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 correspond to body weight? Would they grow to the size of ordinary cats, or to the size of dragons?
They were a mystery, an enigma, and whether they were a solution remained to be seen.
“Do you know what you are?” he murmured, staring at the gray and white kitten’s strange blue eyes.
Do you? came the reply.
Arlian started back.
He had heard that sort of voiceless communication before, in sorcerous conversation with the dragons; he had not expected it from a kitten.
These were clearly not true kittens at all.
What they were remained to be seen.
It was at that moment that Black walked in; he had been absent for most of the day, but had finally concluded his negotiations with the drapers and taken care of whatever other business had seemed urgent.
He found Arlian staring at the kitten, and followed his employer’s gaze.
“Kittens,” he said. “Stammer told me you had brought a pair of kittens here.” He looked at the pair, who looked back, unafraid. “About two weeks old, are they, or three? Stammer said they were newborn.”
“They are,” Arlian said. “Born this very day.”
Black threw him a sharp glance. “You’re certain of that?”
“Completely certain. I saw the birth with my own eyes.”
“This was one of your damnable experiments, then?”
“Rather, an inadvertent side effect of one. I hadn’t known their mother was pregnant until after I administered the elixir.”
Black looked back at the kittens and shuddered.
“They’re abominations,” he said. “So vigorous and alert, eyes already open, in less than a day? It’s not natural.”
“Indeed, it is not,” Arlian agreed.
“Destroy them,” Black said.
Just then the door thumped, and Brook rolled in in her wheeled chair. Black glanced at her, then repeated, “Destroy them, Ari.”
“These may be the best hope we have,” Arlian protested. “These are the only living results of all my tests and trials. They may well hold the solution I seek!”
“Then keep them at the Grey House. You assured us all your experiments would be conducted there.”
“And they will be—but I cannot care for these there, and I cannot risk their intrusion upon further experiments. Although it was built by your order and to your design, this is my house, Black, built with my money, on my land, and I want these kittens kept here, at least for the present.”
“The children adore kittens,” Brook interjected.
Black whirled to face her. “I don’t want these things around my children!”
“They’re just kittens,” Brook replied. Arlian, aware that they were not truly just kittens, said nothing.
“They’re magical, unnatural kittens,” Black said, “and even ordinary kittens have claws and teeth.”
“We will keep a careful watch on them, Black.”
Black looked from his wife to his employer and back. “It seems I am outnumbered,” he said. “I have never been able to refuse you, Brook. If you wish these furry little pests to stay, then they will stay, and so shall we—but we will indeed keep a close watch on them, and the children will not handle them without one of us present.”
“Agreed,” Arlian said, relieved that the matter had been resolved to his satisfaction. “Take whatever precautions you like—but the kittens stay here.”
36
The Spawn of Magic
The kittens were only ten days old when their strangeness became so obvious that even the doting children could not deny it. The specific occasion was when the gray-and-white, now known as Patch, stretched out what should have been tiny paws and instead revealed fingers—thin, furless fingers, with knuckles and nails, utterly unlike anything a cat should possess.
That was enough to send Amberdine shrieking from the room, crying for her father.
A few moments later it seemed as if half the household was crowded into the kitchen, watching intently while Black and Arlian studied the two little creatures.
“Toes,” Arlian said, holding out Smudge’s hind foot.
“And fingers,” Black agreed, holding Patch.
“No scales, though,” Arlian said, looking down at the squirming kitten-thing. “But the fur…”
“The fur’s thinning,” Black said, “but why would there be scales?”
“Because it was dragon venom that made them into whatever they are,” Arlian said.
“Dragon venom and blood,” Black corrected him. “What kind of blood did you use?”
“Human,” Arlian said. “Wolt’s, I believe.”
Several of the observers turned to look at the footman, who was watching from the doorway.
“You drew some of my blood that morning, my lord,” Wolt acknowledged. “But you took blood from all of us at one time or another.”
“Hold out your hands,” Black ordered.
Wolt complied. Black held up Patch’s tiny paw, fingers spread, and looked from the kitten to the footman and back.
“Fingers are fingers,” Brook said. “I can’t tell whether they’re alike.”
“But Mother, cats aren’t supposed to have fingers!” Amberdine replied.
“Obviously, these two aren’t true cats,” Arlian said, looking at Smudge’s inscrutable little face. The cat looked back, but no voiceless words appeared in Arlian’s mind.
Neither of them had repeated that stunt of speaking silently since that first instance, on the night they were born, and Arlian had begun to wonder whether he had imagined the whole thing. He was not given to flights of fancy, but it hardly seemed reasonable that a newborn creature of any kind, even a magical one, should be able to communicate in such a fashion.
He set the kitten-thing back in the box, then straightened up.
“Whatever they are,” he said, “I am responsible for them, and I want to know everything out of the ordinary that any of you might observe. Please keep me informed of any abnormalities—but for now, let us all return to our usual concerns.” He gestured at the surrounding throng.
Most were reluctant to leave, and of course some had legitimate business in the kitchen, but eventually he managed to coax a semblance of normality.
He and Black made their way to Arlian’s still-unfinished study, where they settled onto a pair of out-of-place chairs that had been brought from the Grey House.
“You know,” Black said, “those things have done more than all your warnings to convince me that I do not, in fact, want to taste that elixir.”
“Then at least some good has come of my experimentation,” Arlian replied.
“Experimentation you had agreed to keep at the Grey House. This may be your house, Ari, but as I told you the night you brought them, I do not appreciate having those two little monstrosities here, reminding me of what you were doing half a mile away, and possibly endangering my family.”
“I needed help in caring for them!”
“Did you? They seem to be thriving without food or water; if starvation has no effect, I wonder whether anything can kill them.”
“A good question,” Arlian asked, glancing uneasily in the direction of the kitchens. He had not yet considered the matter—but then, he had still been thinking of them as kittens, and killing kittens was so very easy that the idea that these two might be difficult to dispose of, should they prove dangerous, had seemed absurd.
“At least you seem to have abandoned your experiments, and have brought no more furry little horrors here.”
Arlian shook his head. “I have not abandoned anything,” he said. “I am merely waiting until the results of this trial are complete before beginning the next.”
“You intend to continue?”
“Oh, certainly—I am obviously getting close to a solution! These strange little catlings may be just what we need. Create an army of them to drink up the natural magic of our homeland, then exterminate the dragons, and we have…”
