The Queen of Death

49

“Stay here,” Burch said as he dropped Esprë gently on the floor. “Something’s wrong.”

“Kandler’s not following us,” the girl said. She grabbed at the shifter’s arm before he could scurry back up the rope. “Don’t leave me here.”

Esprë peered around at the darkest corners of the dimly lit room in which Burch had deposited her. Strange machinery hung throughout the room, from both the walls and the ceiling. Much of it seemed like interlocking rings of steel that bore etchings and demarcations, measurements of something that the shifter couldn’t understand. Then he recognized them.

“Those markings, they’re just like the ones on the spheres outside,” he said.

Esprë’s grip on his arm loosened. “Maybe they control the spheres,” she said. “That way the dragon can simulate the positioning of the planets, the planes, and the dragonmarks.” Burch gave out a low whistle. “All the better to figure out parts of their damned Prophecy.” He patted Esprë on the head and said, “Hide.”

With that, he started hauling himself back up the rope— toward the dragons and his friend.

As he climbed, he used only his arms, knowing that pushing on the rope with his legs would only slow him down. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up, wondering if he could reach the next level in time to do any good—or whether or not his efforts would matter at all. Maybe he was just racing toward his death.

He felt a pang of regret at leaving Esprë by herself in the chamber below, but he knew she’d be all right. If a dragon found her, she’d be just as dead with him as without him—or at least that’s what he told himself.

When he reached the edge, he heard Zanga talking and the dragons snarling at each other in their terrible tongue. He knew only snatches of the language, enough to offend a dragon in its own language but not enough to know which way the conversation had turned. The tone of Frekkainta’s growls, though, said all he needed to hear.

Burch popped his head over the edge of the hole and spotted Zanga standing between the two dragons. She’d thrown back her shimmering Shroud of Scales and stood weeping at the red dragon’s taloned feet. As the shifter crept over the lip and unlimbered his crossbow, Zanga said something about selling out Esprë in exchange for her life.

Burch pointed his weapon at the Seren shaman and took careful aim, looking for the right angle through which he could bury a bolt in the woman’s head. Before he could pull the trigger, though, Kandler lowered his head and charged straight at her.

Burch hurled himself forward too, although at an angle that would take him behind the red dragon. If he could put enough space between his path and Kandler’s, he might be able to find a clean angle at the Shroud of Scales again. He just hoped he could manage it before one of the dragons killed his friend instead. With luck, he’d be able to do it before the dragons bothered to take notice of either himself or Kandler, and they could find someplace to hide before either of them got killed.

As he scuttled to his left, though, Burch couldn’t see a good angle at all. Any bolt he loosed stood just as good a chance of bouncing off a dragon’s scales as it did of hitting Zanga. Worse yet, the best angles he could find skated so close to Kandler’s back that they put the justicar in more danger than the Seren.

Then Zanga caught Kandler’s movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look at the onrushing man, his lethal fangblade held high. She opened her mouth to scream, and Burch knew that any hope for killing her quietly and slipping away had been lost.

The shifter stopped and planted his feet. He found his angle. It passed right between Kandler’s left arm and his neck. The bolt would fly true, but if the justicar moved even an inch in the wrong direction he’d end up with the shaft in his chest or neck instead.

Burch summoned up his most commanding voice, the one he’d used on the battlefield during the Last War. He hadn’t employed it often. He preferred to work from cover, alone, when he could, but it had proven enough to herd soldiers into battle and to face nearly certain death.

“Down!” the shifter bellowed.

As the words left his lips, he counted off three heartbeats.

On the first, his shout reached the ears of everyone in the room. Zanga’s eyes flew wide. The crest atop the red dragon’s head twitched, and the silver dragon’s gaze flicked in the shifter’s direction.

Kandler kept running.

On the second beat, Zanga turned to look in Burch’s direction. As she did, her shroud fell away from head, gathering around her shoulders and framing her neck. Burch’s finger tightened on his crossbow’s trigger.

Something that seemed like a smile curled the corners of the silver dragon’s lips. Amusement glinted in the creature’s eyes.

The red dragon’s nostrils wrinkled back as if she had smelled something repulsive and rotting. The one eye of hers that Burch could see swiveled toward Kandler, but her monstrous skull did not move an inch.

Kandler raised his sword higher and bent forward as he ran even harder toward his goal. It seemed that he would let nothing come between him and killing Zanga—not dragons and not even a shout from a friend.

On the third beat, Burch pulled his crossbow’s trigger.

As the bolt whizzed through the air, Kandler left his feet and dived forward, thrusting his sword before him. The justicar would fall short of his goal, but Burch’s desperate shout had gotten through to him just in the nick of time.

The bolt skimmed right past Kandler’s left ear, nicking away a lock of hair from the side of his head as it went. A moment earlier, and it would have buried itself next to his shoulder blade and perhaps punctured his lung. Instead, it proceeded unimpeded toward its target.

Zanga’s eyes grew even wider as she saw Kandler dive to the ground. She never saw the bolt itself. It traveled too fast and presented too small a profile for her to spot it until it slipped under her upraised chin and through her throat.

Only the bolt’s feathers kept it from passing completely through her. They caught on her larynx and crushed it as the bolt’s tip stabbed out through the back of Zanga’s neck.

Burch didn’t bother to reload his crossbow before slinging it across his back. He knew it wouldn’t do any good against the dragon. Even if he managed to find a soft spot amid the red beast’s scales, it would be little more than a bee’s sting against such a creature.

Kandler skidded along the floor on his chest. Before he could even come to a stop, Zanga collapsed before the red dragon, her treacherous words caught in her throat, blocked by the wooden shaft that now lodged there.

Burch reached behind him for the rope that led to the safety of the chamber below—however temporary that might be. He could not wrench his eyes away from his friend, though, whom he saw skitter to a halt in the shadow of the two dragons.

Kandler did not scramble to his feet. He pressed his fists down on the stone floor before him—one of them still wrapped around the hilt of his fangblade—and pushed himself up on to his knees. As he did, the red dragon turned toward the justicar, her nostrils flaring, smoke curling from their edges.

Burch’s mouth went dry. He knew that the dragon could swallow Kandler whole. In less time than it would take him to slam another bolt into his crossbow, his best friend could be gone.

The crimson creature growled, ruffling Kandler’s hair in her fetid breath. Even from where he stood, Burch could smell brimstone billowing from the beast’s mouth. The scent made his eyes water.

Kandler staggered to his feet and brandished his blade before him. Burch smiled. Even faced with certain death, the justicar refused to beg for mercy.

“I have the dragonmark,” Kandler said, his voice raspy. “The others are worthless to you. Kill me, and let them go free.”