Free The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) by Lawrence Watt-Evans

satisfying to know that it had now returned to the village's only survivor and rightful heir.
    Those emotional interests aside, Arlian thought that owning the ruined village might be useful, since sooner or later he would need obsidian.
    Those properties were all of interest, in their way, and stood out on the long list of holdings, but for the moment Arlian was more concerned with the contents of the Grey House itself—Enziet's walled estate here in Manfort, the ancient fortified home where Arlian now sat at one of Enziet's desks, looking through his dead foe's notebooks, hoping to find further information about just what Enziet's arrangements with the dragons had been.
    There were innumerable books, and several sealed chests—Ferrezin had worked with sorcery enough to know better than to open any—and an amazing collection of miscellany. Poor Dove's bones were still in a box on the third floor, and Arlian intended to give those a proper burial eventually.
    For now, though, he was going through Enziet's journals and accounts, trying to puzzle out the dead man's systems.
    Enziet had had an annoying habit of using ciphers and codes and other tricks, and of course no one had the keys to any of them, but Arlian was able to puzzle out some things, and there were often hastily written entries in plain Man's Tongue scattered among the in-decipherable material.
    While most of the writing in the notebooks might not be readily understandable, it was quite clear to Arlian that Enziet had gathered a great many secrets, only a few of which had anything to do with dragons.
    Many of them appeared to be related to blackmail or scandal of one sort or another—but then, Enziet had been active in politics, so that was hardly surprising.
    Several notebooks appeared to describe die misdeeds of various long-dead courtiers, and Arlian wondered why Enziet had bothered to preserve them.
    Enziet had also been a sorcerer, and there were notes on many of his experiments. While Arlian's own knowledge of magic was severely limited, and mostly concerned the wild southern magic rather than the subtle sorcery of the Lands of Man, he was fairly certain that some of the things Enziet's notes described went beyond what the other sorcerers of Manfort knew to be possible.
    It had already become clear to Arlian that if he wanted to recapture Enziet's knowledge of the dragons, he would need to study sorcery. And he did want to recapture that knowledge, so that he could use it in exterminating the monsters and eliminating their threat forever. He knew how to destroy their offspring by killing the human hosts, and he knew that weapons of obsidian could pierce the hides of young dragons, but he did not know how to find all the deep caverns where the dragons slept. He did not know just how effective obsidian blades would be against full-grown dragons. An obsidian dagger had slain the beast that emerged from Lord Enziet's corrupt heart, but that dragon had been a mere hatchling, not very much larger than a man, its hide still soft and red, while the three that had destroyed Arlian's birthplace had measured at least fifty feet, and perhaps as much as a hundred, from snout to tail, and had been black and hard and ancient. Arlian did not think a mere dagger, no matter what its substance, could kill such a creature.
    A spear might, if thrust directly into the heart...
    He reached the last page of the notebook and slapped it shut, stirring a flurry of dust He sneezed, and wiped his nose with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.
    He had had enough of poring over these frustrating tomes, at least for the moment, he decided as he slid the notebook back into its place on the shelf. The secrets he needed might be right here in front of him, lost amid the hundreds for which he had no use, hidden by Enziet's codes and ciphers—or they might be somewhere else entirely, or perhaps Enziet had only carried them in his head.
    He rose from his seat, brushed dust from his linen blouse, and