The Queen of Death

46

Te’oma shivered in the chill night air as she perched atop one of the inward curving tips atop the pylons that formed Greffykor’s tower. She thought that she might look like a mighty bird of prey if she hadn’t been shuddering so hard. She wrapped her wings around her even tighter when a freezing blast of wind blew through her. Part of her hoped it might knock her from the tower and put an end to the cold.

As the Phoenix had flown south, the changeling had enjoyed the growing warmth of the weather. She’d taken many flights of her own throughout those days, basking in the stronger rays of the sun. Her bloodwings tired more quickly than she did, and she always had to return to the airship before they gave out, but she relished the opportunity to stretch them for long periods of time, free from the fear that someone below might spot her.

Like most changelings, Te’oma shunned the spotlight— at least when wearing her own skin. Many people didn’t care for members of her race, and so she often wore the guise of one of them. She’d pretended to be so many different kinds of people over the years that she sometimes wondered if she might somehow forget what she looked like herself.

These past couple weeks, though, in the company of Esprë and her family (such as it was) and friends, Te’oma had been able to truly relax for the first time in as long as she could remember. The fact that Vol had destroyed her dead daughter’s body in what seemed a fit of pique had horrified Te’oma at first. She’d wanted to do nothing but mourn the long-dead girl again. Instead, fate had forced her to put those emotions aside while she helped Kandler and the others save Esprë from sharing her daughter’s fate.

Once the Phoenix had left Khorvaire behind, though, few distractions had surfaced, and Te’oma had been forced to deal with her grief once more. Mostly she had kept away from the others, preferring to mourn privately. She doubted that any of them would have been able to understand. They had no reason to empathize with her at all, much less pity her.

Only Burch had reached out to Te’oma. Although he had kept her at arm’s length—as any wary hunter like him would—he had checked in on her regularly and made sure that she kept herself feed and rested. She’d been unable to tell him how much she’d appreciated even such small gestures.

Still, she’d been unable to get Esprë out of her mind. She’d known when she struck the deal to help kidnap the girl that she’d agreed to participate in an act of horrible evil against an innocent child. The parallels with her own daughter’s fate had not escaped her.

Yet she’d done it all the same.

The changeling peered down past the tips of the pylons into the brightly lit chamber below. She saw Kandler, Esprë, Sallah, and Xalt approach the silver dragon. They looked like insects next to the massive beast.

As the dragon moved to speak with them, it glanced upward. Its gaze seemed to pierce Te’oma’s brain, and she felt petrified, unable to move—to even breathe—until the majestic monster turned its attention away.

Te’oma had hoped to scout out the area without the dragon or the others interfering with her. She’d considered telling Kandler, or even Burch, but she hadn’t wanted to deal with the inevitable bickering and mistrust. Instead, she’d taken off on her own initiative to discover what she could. All she’d learned so far was how little of a chance any of them had against such a creature.

Then she spotted a pair of silhouettes framed against the blood-red western horizon. The sun had set, and the last traces of daylight would be gone entirely within minutes, but she saw the edges of the forms of these two creatures clearly in those final moments.

Dragons.

Te’oma stood up on the tip of one of the tower’s pylons and stretched out her stiff arms and frozen wings, flexing blood back into them. Then she looked down and let the attraction of the terrible distance to the ground pull her from her perch. Her wings caught the wind, and she aimed herself straight for the bridge of the Phoenix, where Monja stood staring at the entrance into the observatory, unaware of either Te’oma or the dragons soaring in behind her.

“We have to get out of here,” Te’oma said as she landed on the bridge, just feet from Monja’s side.

The halfling screamed in surprise. She spun about, grabbing for the knife hanging from her belt. As she did, her hands left the airship’s wheel.

The Phoenix bucked, hard. To Te’oma, it felt like the ship had run aground. The force of the ship’s movement slammed her to the deck. An instant later, she found herself hanging in the air above it as the ship dropped lower instead.

Te’oma closed her eyes and braced for the Phoenix to leap up and slam into her again as her wings held her hovering in the air. When nothing happened, she peeled them open them a moment later.

Monja lay hanging over the airship’s wheel like a dirty shirt. She had her hands wrapped around the wheel’s spars and was struggling into a more dignified position. As she did, she turned around and fumed at the changeling. “Don’t you ever do that again!” the halfling snarled. Te’oma ignored the tiny shaman’s wrath. “What happened there?” she said, scared enough to forget about the dragons for the moment.

“You’ve flown this ship,” Monja said. “You know how ornery the elemental in that fiery ring is. Well, it sensed what happened to the Keeper’s Claw when the elemental in it blew up and destroyed that dragon. Now it’s linked dragons with enough destructive power to free it.”

“But it was Burch’s shockbolt that did that.”

“There’s no reasoning with it. That’s what it thinks, and now that it’s this close to a dragon’s home again, it’s aching for a chance to bust loose.”

Panic entered Monja’s heart. “We need to get this ship out of here,” she said. “There’s a pair of dragons coming this way right now!”

The changeling pointed off into the sky, but where there had been colors before now held only darkness. The thought that Monja might not believe her struck her like a brick.

“Probably some kind of family reunion,” the halfling said, or maybe Greffykor’s invited a couple of friends over for dinner—with a ship full of idiots on the menu.”

“We have to get the airship out of here,” Te’oma said. “If the dragons destroy her, we’ll never be able to leave.”

Monja shook her head. “Not a chance,” she said. “I’m not abandoning the others—especially not to a trio of dragons.”

“If we get away, we can come back later to pick them up.”

“If any of them survive.”

“They’ll be killed with or without us. Why compound the error?”

Monja winked at the changeling. “You talk a good game, lady, but I’m not in the mood to play it. We’re staying put and taking our chances with the others.”

“But—”

Before Te’oma could complete her thought, a gust of wind blasted past her. It seemed like it might be strong enough to blow out the ring of fire like a lonely candle. The changeling glanced up as she cringed against the bridge’s console, and she saw a flash of something red and scaly block out the stars.

The dragon went past them before Te’oma could even think about screaming. It landed square on the platform, right between the airship and the entrance into the observatory. It ignored the airship entirely and moved straight through the portal and into the gigantic room beyond.

“We’re just insects to it,” Te’oma said, awestruck. “It could have torn us apart, but we’re not worth the bother.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” a voice said from behind Te’oma and Monja.

The two turned around. On the bridge just a few feet from them, stood the tall, slender, red-haired man they’d met over the ocean. He showed his inhuman teeth to them and stood there as comfortably as if he’d been on this trip with them the entire time.

“If Mother hadn’t the slightest concern about you and your flying toy here, I don’t think she would have bothered to ask me to watch over you.”