The Road to Death

32

Te’oma heard the howl just as she opened the door to the captain’s quarters. It ran icicles through her veins. She shivered as she froze in the doorway. Indecision transfixed her as she tried to determine what she should do.

Ibrido pulled her into the cabin and slammed the door behind her. She heard the latch fall shut as she picked herself up off the crimson rug that covered most of the floor. She noticed Esprë laid out on the red-velvet couch in front of her. The young elf slept there peacefully oblivious, not a mark on her pale skin. The fort infirmary had been good to her, unnaturally so. Te’oma suspected that the Captain of Bones had slipped a healing potion of some sort into Esprë’s drink, something she was equally sure hadn’t been wasted on herself.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Te’oma said as she spun to face Ibrido. “We need to cast off.”

The soldier stared at her with his unblinking eyes. “The crew is set to that task already. We will be off as soon as we can.”

“Is there a good reason, then, for locking us all in here?”

Ibrido bared his teeth. “There are a few details I need to take care of before we go. As an added bonus, they may help delay any pursuit for a vital few minutes.”

“What in the Dark Six’s most damned names are you blathering about?”

Ibrido smiled as he rubbed a ring he wore on the pinky of his left hand. “I am afraid I have let you labor under a misconception,” he said, his voice as even as if he were describing the weather.

Te’oma narrowed her eyes at the creature. “What do you mean?” she said. As she spoke, she reached out with her mind, probing Ibrido’s thoughts, hoping to determine the truth behind his mysterious comments. Something frustrated her efforts though. When she reached out for him, it was as if he wasn’t there at all.

“Do you think I would be so indiscreet as to allow you unrestricted access to my innermost thoughts?” he asked, a soft snigger in his voice. “That would not make me much of a spy, now would it?”

Te’oma’s hand went to the sword hanging from Brendis’s weapon belt, the sacred, burning blade of a Knight of the Silver Flame. Before she could get it clear of the scabbard, though, Ibrido was on her.

The soldier smacked her to the floor with the back of his hand. She reached up to feel her face and brought her hand away slicked with blood trickling from her nose.

“Are you mad?” she asked, more shocked by the betrayal than the injury. “The Lich Queen will skin you alive for that. I’m to bring this child to her in Illmarrow Castle. There is no more important mission.”

“The Lich Queen?” Ibrido laughed. “You think I fear that fragile bag of bones? There are greater things in this world than long-dead elves who refuse to relinquish their hold on it.”

Te’oma stared at the Karrn, unable to make herself understand what he meant.

“Even if I cared about her, what makes you think I need you anymore?” Ibrido said as he delivered a vicious kick to Te’oma’s ribs. She felt her ribs crack as she tried to scramble away. “The Lich Queen wants the child who bears the Mark of Death. I doubt she’ll mind it if there’s one less changeling thief in the world.”

Te’oma mentally unfurled her cloak, commanding the symbiont to transform itself into a set of batlike wings that could carry her to safety. When the tips of the wings rapped against the ceiling, though, she understood why Ibrido had hauled her into the captain’s cramped quarters before confronting her.

The Karrn slammed into the changeling from below, smashing her wings flat against the cabin ceiling above her. She felt something in them snap, and pain stabbed into her through the nerves she shared with the parasitic creature. She closed her eyes as she flinched in pain, and when she opened them something terrible stood in Ibrido’s place.

The creature holding Te’oma against the ceiling looked something like the Ibrido she knew but different. Shimmering green scales covered him from head to toe. His crimson eyes were slit like those of a serpent, and his thin, black tongue flicked about the rim of his slash of a mouth when he wasn’t using it to speak. His scale-covered ears were pointed like an elf’s. He was taller than before and stronger too, and when he drew back his lips all Te’oma could see were rows of vicious, knifelike teeth.

Under any other circumstances, this revelation—that Ibrido was a half-breed that bore the blood of both dragons and elves—might have made Te’oma fall to pieces. To have Esprë stolen from her by such a creature, just as she was about to make off with her for good, would have been enough to drive her mad. As it was, though, her every thought was consumed with keeping herself alive instead. She had killed enough people in her time to know when someone was ready to commit murder, and Ibrido bore all the signs.

Te’oma reached down with her mouth and bit the hand that Ibrido was using to hold her against the ceiling. The dragon-elf shouted in surprise and pulled back his injured fist, letting the changeling drop to the floor in front of him. He steeled himself for a follow-up attack from Te’oma, but it never came.

Instead, the changeling turned and made a mad dash for the set of windows that lined the back of the room, designed to give the captain of the ship a panoramic view of the lands before them. The frames of the windows formed from the ribs of the airship’s monstrous masthead, pale and thick as a giant’s bones. She smashed into the windows at full speed, hoping to burst through into the open air beyond. If she could get free, if she could survive, she could lick her wounds and come back to take Esprë from Ibrido when the time was ripe. She’d managed to take her from Kandler and his friends. She could do it again.

The wooden ribs cracked but held, and Te’oma bounced back into the room, reeling from the impact. Before she could utter a moan, Ibrido scooped her up off the floor and wrapped his hands around her neck.

“Impressive,” he said as he started to strangle her. “Your drive for survival suits you well. Perhaps in other circumstances we could be true allies. You would be an asset.” He squeezed even harder, and the changeling felt her world start to go black. “As it is, though, you are far too competent a foe to be allowed to live.”

Desperate, Te’oma lashed out blindly with her fists. The dragon-elf’s arms were half again as long as hers, though, and she only found purchase on his biceps. She tried digging into them with her nails, but she could not penetrate his scales. She morphed back into her natural form, but her arms still weren’t long enough. She considered duplicating Ibrido’s form, but a better idea struck her.

The changeling brought her knees up to her chest, and Ibrido laughed at her. “You cannot escape me by rolling into a ball,” he said, just before she lashed out with a two-footed kick that crushed his snoutlike nose.

The dragon-elf dropped Te’oma to the floor. She hit it hard then rolled away, hacking hard, trying to cough away the impressions his fingers had left on her throat. She crawled toward the door as best she could, not bothering to look back. How badly she might have hurt her foe didn’t matter. The only thing she could think about was getting out of that room.

“You bastard bitch!” Ibrido roared.

Te’oma still didn’t glance back, but she heard the dragon-elf suck in a deep breath then exhale it in her direction. A thick, cloying gas enveloped her before she could blink, its acidic fumes eating away at her, stinging her eyes and burning her skin. She screamed in horror, and as she drew in her next breath she sucked the stuff into her lungs. This set her coughing hard enough to snap one of her already cracked ribs.

Te’oma was still wincing in pain as Ibrido snatched her up by the collar of her stolen armor and hauled her to her feet. She coughed blood into his face.

“Having a hard time breathing, are we?” he said. “That is a problem I can help you solve.”

Ibrido reached out with his other hand and grabbed Te’oma by the chin. Then, with relentless force, he began forcing her head around, away from the direction in which he held her shoulders.

Te’oma struggled against the dragon-elf’s incredible strength with what was left of her might. Still coughing that horrible gas from her lungs, she beat at him with her arms and legs, but he just hauled her in closer, drawing her into a terrible embrace she could not resist. She tried to bite the web of his hand, between his index finger and thumb, but she couldn’t do more than scratch his scales as his talons dug deep into her cheeks, drawing blood that flowed down his fingers and into her mouth, threatening to drown her in her own hot fluids.

When her neck twisted to the farthest point she thought it could, Te’oma unleashed a horrid, desperate scream.

Ibrido gave her head one final push and snapped her neck like a dry piece of kindling.

Te’oma felt her body go limp and numb beneath her. Helpless, unable to even raise her arms to defend herself, she did the only thing she could.

She wept. She cried for herself, for her long-dead daughter, and for the rest of her life, which it seemed she would never have.