The Queen of Death

59

Kandler hadn’t felt so helpless since the Day of Mourning. Trapped in a dragon’s clutches as the silver creature took to the air with both him and Burch in its clutches, he knew he had no power at all.

He lived and breathed only at Greffykor’s whim. If the dragon wished, it could crush him between its talons before he could scream for it to stop. Kandler told himself not to do anything to make the dragon angry.

The worst part, though, was knowing that he would probably have to do just that. If Greffykor insisted on keeping the justicar from saving Esprë, then he would have no choice.

Kandler wished that the dragon hadn’t made him give up his sword. Trying to kill a dragon—or even hurt it—with his bare hands would be like trying to cart away a mountain without even a shovel. The fangblade could cut through dragon scales the way nothing else would, but now it lay on a floor at least twenty yards below, although it might as well have been a world away.

When Kandler reached the upper floor, he scanned the room for Esprë. He found her—in the worst possible situation.

Against the far wall, the dragon queen had trapped a terrified Xalt. The only reason the dragon hadn’t yet turned the warforged into a pile of ash was because Sallah stood on her tail, wrenching the remnants of her broken blade out of the creature’s tail. Esprë came stalking up behind the lady knight, getting closer to the dragon queen with every step.

Kandler tried to shout out a warning to her, but Greffykor squeezed his chest hard the moment he took a large breath. His yell came out only as the barest wheeze.

“We will watch this happen,” the silver dragon said. “We will not interfere.”

Kandler looked to Burch and saw the shifter struggling against the dragon’s grip too. He had as much success as the justicar did at prying loose those silvery talons: none. They seemed to be made of polished steel rather than flesh, and they gave not one inch despite Kandler’s most desperate efforts to make them move.

The dragon queen knocked Sallah flat, and Kandler tried to shout again, this time in dismay. Greffykor stifled him once more.

“If you do not cease your struggles, I will kill you,” Greffykor said. “This is far too important for you to disrupt.”

Esprë stood over Sallah’s fallen form, between the lady knight and the dragon. “Leaver her alone!” she shouted. “I’m the one you want! ”

The dragon queen paused and considered the young elf’s words. Then she opened her mouth and arched her neck back as she prepared to strike.

“Wait!” Esprë said. “I wish to make a bargain with you.”

The dragon ignored her. Kandler could see that the creature would just slay the girl on the spot.

“I am the one with the dragonmark!” Esprë shouted. “I bear the Mark of Death!”

The dragon queen’s eyes flew wide, and her mouth snapped shut. She regarded the girl in suspicion. She turned one eye toward Esprë and squinted at her as if she were an unusual—rare, even—cut of meat.

The dragon queen snarled something at the girl. Her voice was low and calm, despite the way her nostrils flared and tossed off rising plumes of smoke.

“She requires proof,” Greffykor said, translating for everyone else in the room.

Esprë spun about and spied Kandler and Burch in the silver dragon’s clutches. As she did, the creature relaxed his grip on them. Kandler still had no hope of breaking free, but at least now he could breathe freely.

“Esprë!” Kandler said. “Get out of here!”

The girl lowered her head and shook it. Kandler couldn’t remember seeing her so serious, so sad, since word of her mother’s death.

“Good-bye, Father,” she said to him. Then she turned her back on him and Burch and faced the dragon.

“I will surrender to you,” Esprë said, “if you swear to leave here afterward and let Greffykor and his other guests be.”

The dragon made a halting, coughing sound that Kandler could only guess was meant to be a laugh. Then it snarled at the girl.

As the dragon spoke, Kandler spotted Xalt creeping around behind the dragon. The warforged seemed to be looking for a means of attacking the dragon or—barring that—charging out and running off with Esprë.

Before he could make a move, though, the dragon queen’s tail lashed out and caught him in the chest, knocking him flat against the tower’s far wall. It stayed there then, pinning Xalt against the wall. The cut Sallah had made in the dragon’s tail started to bleed once again, and some of the crimson liquid trickled over Xalt’s legs, but the dragon queen ignored it.

“Frekkainta is curious to know why she shouldn’t just kill you all,” Greffykor said. “Permit me to answer that.”

The silver dragon held up Kandler and Burch to illustrate the point he planned to make. “These people are my guests, and they have no means of harming you. If you insist upon trying to jail me and kill them, I will fight you tooth and claw. You may defeat me, but I will make you pay for your victory.”

“And,” said Esprë, “once you do what you came here for—to find the dragonmark and destroy it—it would be a waste of your time to bother with the rest of us. Why would my friends and family be worth even your notice?”

The dragon queen murmured something in a tone of grudging assent.

“Also,” Esprë said, “if you do not swear to let the others go free, I will kill you. I have learned many things about my dragonmark over the past few weeks, and I believe I can work it to stop your heart cold in your chest.”

The dragon queen regarded Esprë with a stony eye.

Kandler renewed his struggles to free himself from Greffykor’s grasp. The moment he moved, though, the dragon tightened its grip enough that the justicar could barely breathe once more.

“Esprë!” Kandler shouted. “No!”

The dragon queen nodded at the girl and growled softly at her.

Greffykor cleared his throat and said, “The dragon queen finds your terms adequate and agrees to them— provided you do bear a dragonmark.”

Esprë grunted. Then she turned about and tore open her shirt to her navel. Maintaining her modesty, she pushed the fabric back, exposing the skin between her shoulder blades to the dragon’s eyes.

The dragon queen reached forward with a taloned claw and tugged the shirt back just an inch farther. As she did, Kandler noticed the girl shaking like a sail tacking toward the wind. He wondered if she might collapse before the dragon could see what it wanted to find. He hoped so.

The dragon queen growled something soft. As she did, Esprë raised her bright blue eyes and stared straight at Kandler. A tear rolled out of her reddened lids.

The justicar strained and pulled at Greffykor’s talons. “Let go of me, damn it! Let me go!”

In the dragon’s other hand, Burch struggled and fought like a wild animal. His teeth and claws could not get past Greffykor’s silvered scales. He might as well have been trying to chew on a suit of armor. The shifter howled in frustration and desperation, but Greffykor grip altered not one bit.

Kandler cast about everywhere for help. He refused to just let this happen.

The dragon queen still had Xalt trapped under her bleeding tail. The warforged tried to reach for the open wound, but his arms were not long enough by at least a yard.

Sallah lay sprawled on the ground, her broken sword fallen from her curled fingers. She might just be unconscious, but Kandler feared she could just as easily be dead.

In a break between Burch’s howls, Kandler heard the crackle of the Phoenix’s ring of fire as she hovered moored over the landing platform outside.

“Monja!” Kandler shouted. “Monja!”

Burch took up the call too. “Monja!” the two friends shouted in unison, their voices already run hoarse.

The halfling didn’t respond, and the airship didn’t move. Kandler wondered if the little shaman might also be dead, but that didn’t matter to him now. All he cared about was stopping the dragon queen from killing his daughter.

Where, he asked himself, was Te’oma? He’d written the changeling off long ago, but her affection for Esprë was clear. He couldn’t believe that she’d just stand by and watch the girl sacrifice herself—unless, of course, she was already dead too.

The blood-colored dragon stooped low over the girl and turned her snout so that she could focus a single eye on the dragonmark between Esprë’s shoulders. She grunted, and noxious, black smoke billowed from her nostrils.

Turn around, Esprë, Kandler thought.

Then the dragon queen sat back on her haunches again and spread her lips wide. This exposed all her rows of sharp, vicious teeth, most of which were long enough that they could have been used to fashion a fangblade like the one Kandler had been forced to leave behind.

Kandler shuddered in horror.

“The dragon queen finds the girl’s offer acceptable,” Greffykor said. Not a trace of emotion tainted the silver dragon’s voice.

“Remember me,” Esprë said. Then she turned to face the dragon queen and accept her fate.

The crimson dragon huffed in a great gulp of air and held it inside her for a moment.

“NOOOO!” Kandler shouted.

The dragon queen’s snout snapped forward, and a jet of fire gouted from between her teeth. The blinding orange flames swallowed Esprë whole, and the girl screamed. The sound lasted only an instant before it was cut short.

The dragon continued to drench the girl in fire.

Esprë—who now seemed nothing more than a blackened silhouette framed in the incinerating blaze—fell to her knees for a heartbeat and then collapsed on the stone floor, flames engulfing her on every side.

Kandler kept screaming until his voice gave out, but the dragon did not stop. She poured fire from her gullet onto the girl for what seemed like forever, until nothing remained but ashes and tiny fragments of bone.

When the dragon queen finally stopped, the stone floor glowed bright red in a circle centered on what little was left of Esprë. Wisps of smoke trailed up from the tiny pile of remains, reaching up through the observatory to the stars watching down from the open sky above.

Then the dragon queen took another deep breath and blew the last bits of ash away. In an instant the floor cooled and cracked where Esprë had last stood, and nothing remained of her but those last few tendrils of smoke still wafting into the night sky.