The Road to Death

49

Nithkorrh hurled itself backward, away from Esprë’s necrotizing touch. She held on to its face as hard as she could, determined to kill the creature or die trying. Her hands found purchase on the inner edges of its nostrils, and she refused to let go.

Esprë kept concentrating on her dragonmark, on forcing the chill power through her hands and into the dragon’s face. She guessed that with such a powerful creature it would take some time for the iciness to reach its heart. If she could stop that from beating any further, though, she—she couldn’t think any further than that. She just gritted her teeth and clenched her fingers tighter, shoving more and more freezing energy into the beast.

Esprë was glad she couldn’t see the dragon’s face or anything but its glowing orange eyes. She knew it would terrify her, maybe to the point where she would lose her grip.

The dragon roared, and the expulsion of its breath blasted Esprë’s body away from its mouth. She held on, her legs flapping behind her like a banner in a storm. The noise stabbed like needles into the young elf’s ears, and it left her deafened by their ringing. Tears flowed from her eyes, not in sadness or even pain but from the horrible stench that sprang from the dragon’s maw.

Nithkorrh drew in another breath, and Esprë steeled herself for it to roar again. Instead, it drove her backward with its mighty neck and plunged her bodily into the black waters of its home lake. The impact forced the air from her lungs. Now she held on not out of murderous intent but for her life. If she let go, she feared she might never find her way back to the surface. In the endless blackness, she might swim too far in the wrong direction and run out of air before she had any hope of finding it again.

Esprë realized that her only hope was to hurt the dragon as much as possible before her lungs and her will gave out. She prodded her dragonmark like she was stirring the embers of a dying fire, and at her command it sprang back to life. The burning returned as hot as ever, and the ice flowed down her arms and out through her hands so fast she was amazed that the waters around her didn’t freeze solid on the spot.

The dragon hauled its neck out of the water and roared again. This time, the timbre seemed rooted more in fear than rage.

Esprë’s heart soared as she gulped the stale air of the cave as if it were from a rain-swept sky. She had frightened a dragon. She had hurt it. That meant she could kill it. She prepared to draw on her deepest reserves to put an end to the dragon’s life.

Nithkorrh took that moment to shake its head so hard that Esprë felt her arms might break. Despite her desperate efforts, her grip on the creature’s nostrils came loose, and she went sailing through the air to splash into some distant part of the underground lake.

As Esprë plunged into the water, her only hope was that it was deep. She thanked her mother for teaching her to swim at an early age. She had loved kicking her way around Lake Cyre in those days, so much so her mother had called her “my little fish.” One of the things she’d missed most in Mardakine was the lack of any water deeper than a bathtub. She’d often sat on the front porch of her house on a hot summer day and dreamed of a cool pool to take a dip in.

She’d never imagined it to be anything like this.

When Esprë hit the water, she spread out her arms and legs to slow herself down. Even so, the force of the dragon’s toss shoved her through the water until she smacked into the bottom of the underground lake. She’d expected to smash into bare, hard rock, but instead landed in a thick layer of loamy muck. It cushioned her abrupt stop enough that she managed to keep the air in her lungs.

Esprë swung her legs beneath her, feeling for the bottom, then kicked off against it. It felt soft and sticky, like it would suck her down if she hung on to it too long. She didn’t want to thick about what it might be made of. She swam for the unseen surface as hard as she could.

When Esprë’s head broke the water, she heard the dragon still roaring in pain and rage.

“Where are you, cockroach?” Nithkorrh said, spitting each word. “I will tear out your brain with my tongue and use your bones to pick my teeth!”

In the darkness, Esprë couldn’t see a thing, not even the dragon’s glowing eyes. It must have been facing away from her, at least at first.

Then, treading water in this black cave—the water so cold it seemed to freeze even the heat from her dragonmark—trapped and lost in a dragon’s home, Esprë realized she had failed. Nithkorrh would kill her, just as she had expected. That didn’t bother her—although she knew she would much rather live. The fact that the dragon had survived her best effort crushed what little spirit she had left.

“I will find you, elfling,” the dragon said, still thrashing about, its voice filled with menace. “I will skin you alive and fashion your dragonmark into a glove.”

Esprë shuddered at the thought and held her breath, trying to keep afloat as quietly as possible.

“The dragon kings will take your skin and learn of your family. We will hunt them down and devour them all!”

The thought of all those dead elves chilled Esprë’s heart. She hadn’t lived among other elves for decades, but she remembered Aerenal from her youth. It was a place filled with history that the people of the land lived every day. To leave it behind to move to Khorvaire had felt like leaving part of herself behind. She remembered her mother had wept about it bitterly, but they had gone just the same.

“Sometimes,” Esprina had said, “history is not a platform on which you stand but a cage in which you live.”

Those words had followed them to Valenar and then up through Cyre until they reached Metrol, where they had settled. Esprë had thought then that this would be forever, but Esprina had said, “Elves live too long to think of forever.”

“If we cannot figure out who you are, from what line you hail, we will invade your precious Aerenal and destroy it. We will kill every elf we find there, and then we will go to the other lands and kill their elves too!”

“Stop!” Ibrido shouted. Esprë realized he’d been trying to make himself heard over the dragon’s ranting for awhile, but his voice finally managed to find a break in which it could ring out.

Nithkorrh came to a sloshing halt. From where Esprë was, she could see the dragon’s lantern-like eyes bear down on the dragon-elf, picking him out of the darkness in their golden-orange glow.

“An elf’s blood runs through your veins too, half-breed,” the dragon said. “Do not think I shall forget it.”

“You have let your anger master you,” Ibrido said. “If the youth is dead, railing at her won’t help. If she is alive, then you should take care you do not kill her in your rage.”

“What do you suggest I do?” Nithkorrh hissed each word at the dragon-elf as if any one of them could spell Ibrido’s death.

“Just stop for a moment and listen.”

Esprë cursed silently. She knew they would hear her as soon as the waves from the dragon’s rage quit sloshing through the lake. Even the barest sounds of her breath would echo loud enough in the cavern for Nithkorrh’s ears to catch them.

For a moment, she thought she should scream at the dragon, dare him to come and get her, to tangle with her once more. She found she could not bring herself to do it. Nithkorrh’s tossing her about had tired her out. She could barely tread water any longer, but she didn’t dare give up.

“There!” Nithkorrh said. Its glowing orange eyes spun about and focused on her, catching her in their light like a fly in amber.

Esprë grabbed one last breath and let her arms and legs go limp. She dropped away from the surface as fast as her weight, and that of her sodden clothes, would take her, but it wasn’t fast enough.

She saw the twin orange orbs follow her into the water, and then, before she could try to swim away, a taloned claw caught her around the waist and pulled her screaming to the surface.

The dragon dragged Esprë through the water and deposited her at Ibrido’s feet. “Keep control of her this time,” it said to the dragon-elf. “Your life is not worth as much to me as hers.”