The Road to Death

15

“You can’t leave me here,” Esprë said, “not bound like this. I can’t feel my arms.”

The changeling looked down at the young elf from the airship’s bridge. “I’m sorry about that. I truly am, but I can’t worry about that right now.”

Esprë sighed. “Honestly,” she said. “I can’t feel my arms at all anymore. I think they might fall off. I thought you were supposed to bring me to your employer in one piece.”

Te’oma glared down at the young elf. “Whatever made you think that?”

Esprë tried to shrug but only succeed in moving her chest up an inch. Her arms hung loosely from her bonds. “If you could take me in ‘dead or alive,’ I’m sure I’d be dead by now.”

Te’oma growled as she stormed off the bridge toward Esprë. “You’re not quite that annoying.” She stood over the girl and glared down at her. “Not quite. My employer isn’t as picky about your condition as you might think. She just wants you brought to her. If you’re dead, it’s just a bit more complicated is all.”

Esprë nodded. “I see, but can’t you at least tie me up someplace with my hands lower than this? It really hurts.”

“I thought you said you can’t feel anything.”

“What I can feel hurts really bad.”

The changeling looked down at Esprë, suspicion etched on her blank face in simple lines.

“Please?” Esprë did everything she could to look innocent, short of batting her eyes. She didn’t want to overdo it.

Te’oma snorted in annoyance. “Oh, all right,” she said, “but you have to promise to be good.”

Esprë flashed her sunniest smile. “You have my word.”

The changeling reached down with one hand and undid the knots that held Esprë’s arms fast to the ship’s rail. As the ropes came off, the young elf let her arms fall into her lap and breathed a grateful sigh.

“Thank you,” she said as she tried to rub some life into her limbs.

“Stand up,” Te’oma said. “Stretch your legs.”

As young as she was, Esprë’s joints creaked as she struggled to stand. Her arms had hurt so much she’d ignored how stiff her legs and back had become. She groaned as she stretched her arms up over her head and flexed to force the lethargy from her muscles.

She turned to look out over the railing to which she’d been attached. Grassy plains of amber stretched out before her as far as she could see. The mist-shrouded Mournland still lay off to the west, but she ignored it. There was nothing to see there, and she hoped never to enter the place again. Instead, she stared out toward the distant horizon, watching the wind thrum through the plain, ruffling its surface like the waters of a vast, open sea.

“What’s that?” she asked, stabbing a finger toward a dark block squatting on the horizon.

“Karrnath,” Te’oma said. The changeling stood farther along the railing, out of arm’s reach. “That’s one of the forts they established to keep the halflings who roam these plains from invading their land.”

“Do they work?”

Te’oma chuckled. “Not as well as Karrnath would like. The halflings do not covet any lands but their own. If they wished, they could run right past the forts and strike deep into their neighboring lands before anyone would be able to stop them. The forts only serve to remind the halflings where their boundaries lie—the nomads are notorious for not caring about such things—and what penalties there might be for crossing them.”

Esprë shuddered as she remembered the vampires that kidnapped her had hailed from Karrnath. “Is that where you’re taking me?”

“No,” Te’oma said. “Our destination is much farther north and east of here. We have no business in Fort Bones.”

Esprë gave the changeling a sideways look. “Why would they call it something so horrible?”

“The soldiers there are mostly Karrnathi skeletons, savage undead creatures that follow their master’s orders to the letter and need no sustenance or sleep.”

Esprë shuddered again. “It sounds dreadful.”

“It’s not an inn,” the changeling said. “It’s not meant to be inviting.”

Esprë’s arms tingled as the blood rushed back into them. The feeling in her fingers started coming back. It stung now, but she knew it would soon pass. Now that she could move her arms again, she had to take matters into her own recovering hands.

She concentrated as hard as she could and felt the dragonmark on her back begin to burn. She had only seen the thing once in the mirror in her home in Mardakine, and the angle kept her from getting a good look at it. Still, the intricate pattern it weaved over her skin leaped into her mind as if she could see it on a page. She traced the edges of it with her thoughts and watched them leap from her skin with the dark red glow of dying embers. As she ran over them again and again, the edges started brightening, growing hotter and hotter, as if a bellows forced the latent fire back to life.

Esprë felt the power creep down from between her shoulders and along her arms like an army of fire ants marching along her skin. It crawled past her elbows and into her hands, where it pooled like a dammed river, pressing against the tips of her fingers, begging for permission to burst out.

She peered at Te’oma out of the corner of her eye. The changeling seemed lost in thought, as if the vast expanse of land that stretched out before them absorbed her whole.

Esprë rubbed her hands together. The heat from the friction forced away the tingling, but the invisible power still seemed to crackle between her fingers.

“No,” Te’oma said, her voice distant, “my employer’s home is far from here yet, across the frigid waters of the Bitter Sea. I’ve only been there once, but it is a nasty place suited only to the dead. You—” The changeling noticed Esprë staring at her now, holding her hands out in front of her.

“I’m sorry.” Esprë reached out toward her captor with her right hand.

“No,” Te’oma said, trying to move away, “wait.”

Before the last word left the changeling’s lips, the palm of Esprë’s hand landed on her thin, pale cheek. She had more to say, but the words froze in her throat.

With a tender caress from Esprë’s hand, Te’oma’s body locked up as if every joint froze at once, a sort of instant rigor mortis. The young elf felt the power within her dive into the changeling’s skin, devouring her life force and leaving nothing in its wake. The pressure in her hands, her arms, her back flooded from her, whom it could not hurt, and left Te’oma struggling near death.

The changeling held her awkward pose for a moment, her face frozen in surprise and terror. Then she collapsed to the deck in a heap, every muscle in her gone limp.

The airship started to pitch immediately, but Esprë reached out and grabbed the wheel with one hand. As she did, she stared down at the changeling for a moment, watching a line of saliva drool out of her mouth and onto the deck. She’d expected something more terrifying, screams perhaps, but this silent sloughing off this mortal coil disturbed her even more. To have it be so easy, as if she’d simply and kindly put an end to a suffering creature’s every trouble—that scared her.

She wanted to do it again. That scared her even more.

Esprë reached down with her free hand and rearranged Te’oma’s body into a more restful pose, straightening her head and limbs and folding her hands across her chest. The changeling looked like she was just sleeping, although Esprë knew it would be a rest from which she would never awaken.

The young elf wondered when the tears would come. Perhaps the shock of using her dragonmark willfully for the first time had killed her emotions, or maybe she really was a cold-hearted killer who felt nothing for those she murdered.

Esprë rested her hands on the airship’s wheel and felt the mind of the craft’s elemental there, anxious and ready to strike out in a new direction, but where?

Esprë considered going back to Mardakine, but there was nothing for her there. Perhaps she would try Sharn instead, which lay even farther on the other side of the Mournland. She wondered if the airship could take her back to Aerenal, the eternal homeland of the elves. She hadn’t been there since shortly after her birth. She wondered if her grandparents would recognize her, much less take her in.

The young elf had no home. With Kandler gone, she was alone in the world.

The tears started then.

Esprë still wept when something that felt like a jagged, razor-tipped knife stabbed into her brain. She screeched in terror as she fought to shove back against the telepathic attack, but its sharp point sliced through her mental shields. If not for her savage grip on the airship’s wheel, she would have fallen into a pile of bones on the bridge.

The young elf summoned every bit of her determination to haul herself up by her arms. As she did, she glared down and saw Te’oma struggling to her knees. “There’s your first lesson as a killer,” the changeling rasped, her pale skin faded to skeletal white. “Always make sure your victim is dead.”

Esprë didn’t waste any effort on words. She knew that this was the end. Either she or the changeling would die here. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Hold very still,” Te’oma said, in the tone of a mother scolding an errant child. “I’m going to bind you hand and foot this time. That’s the penalty for breaking your word.”

Esprë ignored the telepath’s patter. Instead, she cleared her mind and reached out to the elemental trapped in the ring of fire that wreathed the airship like a golden ring around a tattered scroll.

The ship lunged forward and down, and Te’oma flipped straight over the bridge’s console, then slid along the main deck toward the bow, screaming the entire way. Only the railing at the ship’s prow kept her from sailing right over the edge and into the open sky below.

Then the ship leaned forward farther, and Te’oma tumbled right over the railing and disappeared.

Esprë reached out for the leather strap hanging from the ship’s console and bound herself to the wheel. She knew the changeling wouldn’t be gone for long. She grabbed the wheel and coaxed the elemental into charging toward the ground with every bit of speed it could muster.

“No!” Te’oma screamed as she swung in behind the ship’s stern on the leathery, batlike wings of her magic cloak.

The changeling dove down at the young elf, her arms spread wide, her brain lashing out at Esprë’s tender mind. “I won’t let you do this,” she said. “You can’t!”

The pain in Esprë’s head blinded her for a moment, and she thought she might pass out. She slumped over the wheel, feeling the wind blasting through her hair as the ship plummeted to the ground like a blazing stone.

“Stop it!” Te’oma screamed as she wrapped her arms around Esprë, trying to grab for the wheel, to wrest control from the young elf and pull the airship up before it was too late. “I said stop it!”

A melancholy grin appeared on Esprë’s face as she looked over her shoulder at the changeling who was trying to save her life. “I’m not trying to kill myself,” she shouted over the roaring wind, or maybe the ring of fire that seemed to be cackling with glee. She reached back with a hand and slapped the changeling across the cheek.

“I’m trying to kill you!”

Esprë’s head exploded in an excruciating show of pain and light. As darkness swept over her in an undeniable black wave, she saw Te’oma’s eyes roll back into her head.

The last thing she knew was her own bitter smile.