The Road to Death

48

Esprë remained as still as a statue.

“He is speaking to you,” Ibrido said. “You must obey.”

Esprë shook her head. This dragon didn’t have any hold over her, or so she told herself. She just stared ahead, remaining mute.

Ibrido reached over and grabbed Esprë by the arm. He swung her about so her back faced Nithkorrh, and he presented her to the dragon.

“The mark is on her back,” he said, “between her shoulder blades.”

“How do you know that?” Esprë asked. “You’ve never seen it.”

She could feel the mark start to itch around its edges. In her mind, she could see the pattern it cast on her skin, although she’d only seen the mark once herself, in a mirror in her home back in Mardakine. The black lines that made up the mark seemed more solid than those of any tattoo. It had looked angry and red around the edges, even then when it didn’t itch at all. From the way it felt right now, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn her skin was blistering there, with large pustules of burnt skin ready to pop and ooze down her back.

As the itching turned to scraping and then to burning, Esprë ached for that kind of release. She didn’t know what was happening with her dragonmark. She knew only that something had to give, and soon.

She heard the dragon creeping closer to her, sloshing through the black waters in which they all stood. She felt it reach out with a serrated talon, caked with mud and other unclean things. She could smell the rot in its own flesh, sitting there underneath scales that spent most of their time immersed in the stale waters in this frigid, underground lake.

Then the talon hooked in the back of her shirt collar and pulled it back. Nithkorrh’s touch was gentler than Esprë would have thought possible. She never would have guessed that such a large creature could have such delicate control. It dragged the collar of the shirt back until the front of it pressed against her throat, choking her.

She could tell, though, that the dragonmark was exposed to the air, as it began to burn even warmer, so hot that she was surprised her shirt didn’t catch fire. She leaned forward, gasping in pain, and Nithkorrh let her go.

“Yes,” the dragon said. Esprë looked back and saw that it had bared its teeth again, showing more of them than ever before. “That is it. I saw it once on Vol herself before she disappeared. Hers was larger, of course, but she was full grown, and she had mastered its use.”

Esprë’s mind reeled at this. The thought that the mark could be larger than it already was seemed ludicrous. It felt as if it could consume her right now.

Nithkorrh’s talon fell on Esprë again, this time across her shoulder. The dragon pulled on it, spinning the young elf around to face it.

“Do you have any dragon blood running in your veins, I wonder?” Nithkorrh said.

“I’m told her mother was a sorcerer of some repute,” Ibrido said. “Many scholars have long theorized that the talent for sorcery is inherited by those honored to include dragons in their ancestry.”

Esprë frowned at that. “We are elves, pure-blooded, through and through.”

Ibrido chuckled. “You should be honored to have even a dash of such regal parentage.”

Esprë shook her head. “I’d rather have nothing to do with dragons at all. I wish they would stay in my childhood stories and never come to life.”

Nithkorrh snorted, and an acrid green mist engulfed the young girl, burning at her eyes and lungs like bitter smoke. “My kind predates your stories, elfling. We were here before your kind could even speak, and we will be here long after. Eberron is our world. The word ‘Eberron’ means ‘the dragon between.’ All of your other so-called ‘races’ are just visitors here, transients who will fade away with the cycles of time like the bothersome insects you are.”

Esprë couldn’t hold back her disgust and anger any longer. If the Mark of Death wanted to be free, if it wanted to kill, then she would let it. She had never found any creature more deserving of an untimely death than Nithkorrh, and she was ready to hand it to it.

She had to get the dragon closer to her, though. She’d learned her lesson with Ibrido. While she had the power to kill, she needed to get close enough to use it. Otherwise, she would fail for sure.

She had to make sure that Ibrido and Nithkorrh could not see the blackness snaking along her arms and glowing from her hands. She wasn’t sure if their eyes could see such things in total darkness, but she knew they could see them in the light.

“Whoops!” she said. She bobbled the everburning torch in front of her, finally smacking it away from her as she dropped it, knocking it to the right of the dragon.

Ibrido snickered at what Esprë hoped he thought was her misfortune. “Now,” he said, “you will have to make your way out of here in the darkness.”

The cave wasn’t entirely dark though. Esprë could see the torch still glowing as it sank through the black waters to the muck-covered bottom of the lake. There wasn’t much light from it now, but just enough for her to detect the silhouette of the dragon and the dragon-elf, and she could see the dragon’s glowing eyes as well.

“I think Nithkorrh should make you go get it,” Esprë said, taunting Ibrido. “After all, I’m worth more to him than you are.”

“Do not think yourself so valued,” the dragon rumbled. “The dragon kings don’t need much of you to work with. If you somehow die before you get there, it just makes transporting you that much easier for the half-breed here.”

Esprë spat out into the darkness. “Which of you has the guts to try it?” she shouted, letting her anger loose now, feeling the dark, cold energy snake along her arms and envelope her hands in its bone-freezing blackness. “You live down here in the darkness, thinking you’re something important, some kind of king. You’re just a coward, hiding here from the ‘insects’ who could sting you to death.”

“Check your tongue, elfling,” the dragon said, frustration edging into its voice. “You do not know of what you speak.”

“Dragons are magnificent, powerful creatures who fly through the sky and command respect from all who see them. You’re no dragon,” Esprë said. “You’re a catfish, a bottom-feeder who swims in the coldest, deepest parts of the river where no self-respecting creature would go, living on the rotted refuse of the insects who outnumber you ten thousand to one. You’re no better than a maggot chewing on a year-old corpse!”

“I have heard enough!”

The dragon’s eyes, still glowing in the dark, lunged forward. Its snout shoved Esprë back, and she fell into the water, which closed over her head. She thrashed about in the freezing lake for a moment, wondering why she hadn’t realized until now that she could no longer feel her feet.

Then a set of what felt like long, serrated knives closed on the front of Esprë’s tunic and hauled her back to the surface, sputtering and gasping for air. As she came up, she reached forward with both hands and grasped the dragon’s hard, scaly snout. She focused all her anger and all of the power from her dragonmark—which burned so hot now she was surprised it hadn’t boiled the lake when she fell—into her hands and channeled it out of her fingertips and into Nithkorrh’s face.

“Die!” she screamed with all her might. “Die! Die! Die!”