The Queen of Death

3

“We’re here, boss.”

Kandler woke at Burch’s touch and lowered himself from one of the hammocks hanging in the Phoenix’s hold. He reached out into the dim light streaming through the open hatch and touched the edge of Esprë’s hammock. It swayed light and loose on its anchors.

“She’s up top already,” Burch said. “Got the wheel.”

Kandler grunted, wondering if he’d been the only one to sleep so late. Despite the healing magic Monja had worked on his flesh, his muscles still ached from the battle against Nithkorrh. He felt the new-made scars, marveling at them. He’d felt his lifeblood flowing out through them yesterday, yet here he stood. He’d been given another chance at life, and he intended to make the most of it.

He took Ibrido’s fangblade sword from where he’d hung it next to the hammock, and he strapped its belt around his waist. As he pulled on his boots, he saw Duro, Monja, and Sallah rousing themselves.

“Where’s the changeling?” Kandler said as he followed Burch up through the hatch.

“Scouting duty,” the shifter said, pointing at the sky. “Wanted to stretch her bloodwings.”

“You left her out here with Esprë?” Kandler tried to keep the irritation from his voice. Even though he knew he couldn’t fool Burch, the shifter would appreciate the effort.

“Xalt’s with her.”

Kandler squinted as he climbed into the morning sun. The crisp breeze swept away the warmth of the hold that had surrounded him. Mountains loomed to the east, closer now than they had been at sunset. An eagle spun in the sky off the port bow, circling over a wooded plateau, hunting for prey.

“Where is it?” Kandler said.

Burch pointed over at the port rail and hooked his finger down. Kandler waved at Esprë as he followed his friend over to the ship’s edge, and she and Xalt waved back. Kandler hadn’t seen her smile so freely in months, since before the strange killings had begun in Mardakine. The sight warmed his heart.

Kandler reached the railing and peered over it. All thoughts fled from his head.

The Goradra Gap stretched below them like a gigantic wound in the earth, inflicted during some horrible war among gods. Even at its narrowest point, it had to be a mile across, and it stretched east to west across the mountain range for several leagues, so far that Kandler could not see the end of it, despite how high the Phoenix sailed.

Snowcapped mountains surrounded it in all directions, but nearer to the edge of the gap the land turned green and fertile. Then it fell off into nothing, as if the world was hollow underneath and had given into gravity’s insistent pull. The land had sheared away here, exposing striated layers of rock stacked on each other forever.

Kandler stared down into the abyss and realized he could not see its bottom. It fell away from him for what seemed like a mile or more before the shadows there swallowed it whole. Just looking into it made Kandler’s head spin.

“Quite a drop,” Burch said.

Kandler shook his head and looked back at the shifter, aware that he had been leaning over the railing just a bit too far. “Where’s the settlement?”

The shifter pointed a clawed finger at the Gap’s northern wall. There, about a hundred yards or more down from the Gap’s edge, hung a series of scaffolds, ladders, and platforms strung together with rickety stairwells or rope bridges that hung in a perpetual breeze that gusted up from the depths of the gap. From this distance, the buildings looked small and fragile, something that could be brushed from the wall like dust from a window.

“The buildings front a series of tunnels that run through the cliff,” said Burch. “Place is like an anthill. Can’t see all the activity underneath.”

“What do they call it?” Sallah asked as she joined Kandler and Burch at the railing.

“A classic example of reckless idiocy,” said Burch, turning to smirk at the knight. “It wouldn’t take much to bring that whole thing down.”

Duro, who stood next to Sallah scowled. “The dwarves of Clan Nroth are renowned as some of the finest architects of our age. That place has more buttresses flying about it than one of your flimsy cathedrals.”

“I’d stay within a quick dash to the Phoenix at all times, and don’t tie the mooring lines too tight.”

“Always on the look for a quick getaway, eh?”

“Rather not see the ship pulled down with the rest of the place.”

“I meant, what is its name?” Sallah said.

Kandler noticed the airship had turned so that her prow aimed straight for a prominent terrace that jutted out from the largest of the buildings attached to the gap’s north wall.

“Durviska,” Duro said, still glaring at Burch.

“That’s Dwarven for ‘Watch that last step,’ ” the shifter said.

“It means ‘Overlook,’ flatlander!”

Burch smiled down at the dwarf, showing all of his fang-like teeth.

“Let’s get those mooring lines ready,” Kandler said to Burch. He grabbed the shifter by the shoulder and pointed him toward the stern.

Burch winked at the justicar and trotted off. Kandler glanced at Sallah, but she looked away. He shrugged and made for the line near the bow.

Kandler respected Burch’s advice. They’d only use two lines to tie off at the side of that terrace, which looked more and more like a dock as they approached it. Ropes this thick would hold the airship in place as she floated there above the Gap, but a few quick hacks with a sword would get the Phoenix moving again in a pinch.

Kandler thought of the dragonfang blade riding on his hip, the one with which Ibrido had nearly killed him. A single slice from that blade would sever the rope’s fibers like a scythe cutting hay, he guessed. He wondered what dragon had given up a tooth for the weapon or what another dragon might think to see it in a human’s hand. If his plans worked out, he’d have the chance to find out.

As the airship neared the dock, which jutted out a dozen yards from the building’s face, a squad of dwarves padded out from a wide set of doors in the middle of the place. They fanned out along the wood-railed edge and signaled their readiness to catch a mooring line and tie it fast.

Kandler spotted a sign swinging free over the place’s door. It depicted a winged dwarf diving into the open air. The words emblazoned below it in crystal letters set into the dark, weathered wood read The Flying Leap.

The justicar tossed a coil of rope to one of the waiting dwarves, and Burch did the same. Before their fellows had even moored the ship tight, the others dwarves toted out a wide, railed gangplank and tossed it out to hook onto the Phoenix’s port rail.

Duro leaped up on to the plank and sauntered down to the open dock. Sallah and Esprë stood at the railing, waiting for Kandler and Burch. Monja peered out over the wheel now, having taken it from Esprë, and Xalt stood next to her, peering down over the ship’s aft rail as if he could plumb the abyss with his unblinking ebony eyes.

“Hail and well met! ” a deep voice from inside the building boomed. A white-haired dwarf with a loose, bushy beard stomped out after it, grinning up at the newcomers. “Welcome to my hang-out!”

Duro met the dwarf at the bottom of the gangplank, and they grasped each other’s arms in greeting.

“Krangel Mrothdalt of Clan Nroth,” the elderly dwarf said. Despite his years, he seemed hale enough to take Duro in two falls out of three.

“Duro Darumnakt of Clan Drakyager. These are my friends. Treat them as you would a fellow dwarf.”

The snow-haired dwarf raised a craggy eyebrow. “Drakyager, eh? How does the dragon treat you?”

Duro beamed at his host. “Nithkorrh is no more. These folk slew the dragon, blasting his cursed corpse from the sky.”

Every dwarf on the platform—and a number more peering out at the newcomers through the windows that lined the building’s front—stared at Kandler and the others in disbelief. For a moment, Kandler feared the dwarves might pluck the gangplank from under him, just as he’d started to lead Esprë on to it. Then Krangel tossed back his head and laughed.

“Excellent!” the host said, clapping Duro on the back hard enough to make Kandler wince. “That tale alone might be enough to pay for your cots here tonight—even more if it’s true!”

Kandler sighed with relief then took Esprë by the hand and led her down to the dock. Sallah followed close on his heels, with Burch right behind.

Kandler looked back to see Xalt and Monja waving at them as they disembarked. He scanned the sky, but the changeling seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps she’d taken her leave of them, but Kandler couldn’t believe she’d go that easily. He wasn’t that lucky.

“Come in! Come in!” Krangel said. “I’ve never seen such a motley crew in such dire need of a cold ale!”