The Queen of Death

51

Kandler wrapped the rope around one leg and then slid down it fast enough to make the fabric in his pants grow hot. As he hit the floor of the chamber below, he spotted Burch and Esprë peering out from behind one of the gigantic sets of rings that cluttered the chamber from floor to ceiling.

“Hide!” Kandler said as he sprinted toward them. He had no idea how long it would take Greffykor to come around looking for them, but he had no intention of leaving any of them standing out where the creature could see them.

Esprë started for Kandler, her arms held wide, fear and joy warring on her face. Burch grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back behind a cabinet that looked large enough to hide an entire wagon inside it. She started to protest but gave up when she saw Kandler coming straight for them.

Kandler didn’t hear the dragon come into the room behind him so much as he felt it. The beating of the creature’s wings made barely a sound, but it displaced so much air as it descended into the gigantic chamber that the justicar could feel the increase of pressure in his ears.

He charged forward, convinced for a moment that the creature might land on top of him and crush the life from him. Burch and Esprë disappeared behind the cabinet in front of him in the blink of an eye.

Kandler hoped that the dragon might not have seen the pair in the dimness, so he peeled off to the right instead of joining the others. He spied one of the massive, demarcated rings hanging in the air before him, nearly but not quite touching the floor. As he passed it, he reached out and grabbed it, swinging himself behind it.

The ring moved as Kandler’s hand touched it, and the formerly dim chamber leaped to life. The runes carved into the metallic rings began to glow with the light of dying embers. Each ring glowed with a slightly different hue, ranging from reddish to bluish and every color in between.

Kandler released the ring in his hand and stepped back. It had started to hum beneath his fingers as he held it, and he had heard a single note ringing in his ears. It had wavered and warbled in some kind of pattern, so regular that it seemed like it might be trying to communicate something to him—or to a creature with a larger mind.

The justicar stared at his tingling hand for a moment and decided not to touch any of the rings again.

Then he heard the dragon snort.

“Such devices are not meant for your kind,” the silvery creature said. “The Prophecy is too much for you. Even a dragon can only conceive of a fractional aspect of the whole. For you to attempt to do so would cause your brains to leak from your ears.”

Kandler took a half-step back from the ring in front of him, but he kept it between himself and the dragon.

“You need to turn the girl over to me,” Greffykor said. “I will present her to the queen. With luck and a bit of well-placed flattery, she may then deign to leave the rest of us alone.”

“No,” Kandler said.

“She is doomed in any case. The Prophecy has foretold this. I could not see the means of her death, but now I see why. She dies here, tonight.”

“And your observatory is impervious to scrying.”

“Even from my own eyes.” Greffykor nodded.

Kandler hefted his fangblade and tapped it against the ring in front of him. The metallic circle spun a few inches then came to a stop.

“You can stop her,” Kandler said, his voice dripping with disgust. “This is your home. How can you let this queen’ of yours barge in here and order you about? ”

Greffykor snorted. “You are amusing. You think to shame me into confronting my guests over your welfare.” “From my experience, dragons have no shame.”

“Not the way that humans think of it.” Greffykor closed his tooth-lined maw, then opened it again. “The queen is more powerful than you could imagine. She could murder me here in my own home and suffer no consequences for her actions.”

“Is she your queen?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter. In her land, her word is law.”

“And here?”

“Out here on our frontier, I am a law unto myself.” “Which means nothing.”

“It means most dragons respect my work and my solitude. If anyone else were to attack me, I could call on others to come to my aid.”

“But not against this queen.”

“Not without the ear of another queen or king, but I am my own dragon, and I do not fall under anyone’s wing.”

Kandler grimaced. He didn’t see a good way out of this. He could only hope that Burch and Esprë were doing something to save themselves while he kept Greffykor occupied. “We are your guests. Doesn’t that mean anything?” Greffykor shook his head, his silvery crest waving above him as he moved.

“If I do not deliver the girl soon, the queen will kill me and tear down my tower with her bare claws.”

Kandler stared at the dragon and then at their surroundings. The tower seemed invulnerable to him, as eternal as a mountain, as did Greffykor, but he decided to take the dragon at his word. The queen, it seemed, did not make idle threats—and Kandler had seen what a dragon could do to a mountain.

In frustration, the justicar slashed at the steel circle in front of him. The blow clanged off the ring’s surface, and the strange letters on it glowed brighter. Near where the blade had notched the circle, the runes shone blindingly bright.

Greffykor hissed. “You do not know what magics you tamper with here.”

“I don’t care,” Kandler said. “I just want my daughter left alone.”

“You might as well ask for the moons to stop spinning through the sky.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Somewhere above, a woman screamed.

Kandler recognized Sallah’s voice, even raised as it was. He started to dash forward, around the ring between him and the rope that led to the upper level, but Greffykor stepped into his way.

That single step was like a house falling into Kandler’s path. He stopped cold.

“Let me by,” the justicar snarled.

Greffykor flicked a single talon forward. It caught Kandler in the chest and sent him flying back past the ring. He landed in a heap where the floor met the wall behind him.

Kandler heard another scream. This time it came from Esprë.

The justicar felt like a horse had dropped onto his chest. He couldn’t get to his feet. He couldn’t even breathe. His vision tunneled hard. All he could see was the vicious end of Greffykor’s snout bared at him.

Then Esprë was at his side, holding him and trying to shake some life into him. He followed his first instinct and tried to push her away.

“No,” he said. “I won’t let her have you.”

Esprë gasped in relief. “You’re alive.”

“At my pleasure,” Greffykor said. “You will come with me now, or I will kill him.”

Burch appeared between Kandler and the dragon, his crossbow leveled at the creature. “Try it, and I’ll put out your eye.”

“I will not harm the elf,” Greffykor said.

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Kandler said between gasps. His breathing had started to ease, but every time he drew a gulp of air into his lungs he wondered if it might be the last he would taste.

“I will intercede with the queen on the—”

Burch’s crossbow twanged. The bolt in it slammed into the dragon’s right eye and ricocheted off the transparent eyelid that protected it.

Kandler drew a breath to curse, but before he could the dragon beat him to it.

Greffykor recoiled and slapped a claw over his bruised eye. He sat back on his haunches and howled in pain.

Kandler shoved himself to his feet, using his sword-which he still gripped in his hand—as a cane. “Run!” he said to Esprë, although it came out more as a hiss than a shout. “Run!”

The girl turned her wide and determined eyes on him. “No,” she said.