The Road to Death

52

As Kandler watched Burch creep back down the stairs toward the angry dragon below, he felt Sallah lay a hand on his arm. “That is a true friend you have there,” she said to him.

“None better,” Kandler said.

He held his breath as he saw the shifter reach the bottom of the stairs, poking the tip of his crossbow out in front of him.

“Is that you, knight?” the dragon said in a low, mean rumble. “Did you drop your burning sword in the water as you ran?”

Kandler saw Burch crouch down and creep forward until his feet touched the edge of the bubbling pool on the floor of the entry chamber.

“Ah,” the dragon said, “a shifter sent to do a knight’s job.” It laughed, a low horrible rumble. “Have the others all died? Are you all alone? If you leave now, it might amuse me to let you live.”

“Burch!” Esprë’s voice screamed from somewhere beyond the dragon.

Kandler launched himself down the stairs before Sallah could stop him.

“Let the kid go,” Burch said as Kandler reached his side. He heard the lady knight come down right behind him.

“You are here for the elfling?” The dragon snorted, and Kandler felt the room tremble. “You waste your breath and my time if you think I will relinquish the bearer of the Mark of Death. She is mine forevermore.”

Burch stepped forward and leveled his crossbow at the dragon’s glowing eye, still framed in the portal.

“You think you can hurt me with your weapons?” A transparent eyelid flicked down over the dragon’s eye, protecting the soft tissue beneath. “The temerity of mortals …”

Burch smiled at the dragon, showing all his sharp teeth. “Watch this,” he said, as he loosed the shockbolt at the creature’s eye.

The magic bolt struck right in the center of the slit that ran vertically down the center of the dragon’s eye. It exploded with such force that it knocked Kandler and Burch back off their feet and splattered acidic water on every wall in the room. The noise deafened Kandler, and it took him a moment before he realized Sallah was trying to talk to him.

He ignored her for the moment to stare back at the portal in the iron wall. In the flash from the explosion, the dragon’s eye had disappeared.

“You got him!” he shouted to Burch, clapping him on the back. The justicar could barely hear his own voice from the ringing in his ears, and he suspected the shifter was deaf as well. Still, he wrapped his old friend in a bear hug and whooped for joy.

Sallah slapped him on the back of the head then, hard. He turned around and glared at her, bothered that anyone could interrupt such an amazing moment. She jerked her thumb back over her shoulder as she grabbed him by the collar, mouthing something he couldn’t yet make out. All he could catch was the word “go.”

Then the stairwell shuddered, and Kandler could hear something that seemed as loud as the explosion had been, although a bit farther away. Some wounded beast screeched at the top of its capacious lungs for bitter revenge, and the justicar knew.

The dragon was hurt but not dead.

“What about Esprë?” Kandler shouted, trying to stagger toward the portal. He shrugged off Sallah’s efforts to haul him back up the stairs. He knew she was only trying to save him, but he wasn’t about to leave there without his daughter.

He stumbled across the shaking ground toward the portal. As he reached it, he saw a crowd of skeletons standing in front of the doorway, cutting him off from what lay within. Somewhere in the darkness, the dragon trashed and crashed his way against every bit of the cavern, bringing large chunks of it crashing down into the churning waters of an underground lake.

Ibrido stood to one side, shouting at the dragon, trying to calm it down, but without success. The dragon-elf was near hysterics, but the black-scaled dragon paid him little heed.

Two skeletons stood near Ibrido, just opposite him from Kandler. In the darkness, the justicar couldn’t be sure, but he thought they held someone between them, someone about Esprë’s size.

Just then, Kandler’s hearing cleared a bit, and he heard Esprë screaming at him at the top of her lungs. “Kandler! Kandler, I’m right here!”

The justicar leaped forward, but a pair of Karrnathi skeletons rattled into his way. He reared back to charge at them when the roof came tumbling down upon them, burying them under tons of rock.

Burch’s firm hands snatched Kandler back into the entry chamber, keeping him from sharing the skeletons’ fate. The falling rocks sealed off the doorway, though, separating Kandler from his daughter once again.

The justicar charged forward and threw himself against the rocks. They were too many and too heavy, though, and he knew after a moment’s effort that there was no way he could move them on his own.

Kandler cast about desperately, looking for some means of removing the rocks. His eyes fell on Burch’s crossbow.

“Use one of those shockbolts,” he said, pointing at the wall. “You can blast those rocks out of the way.”

“Not a very good idea,” Duro said as he ran his hand along the tumbled rocks. “This entire area is unstable now. Even if you blast these out of the way, more will just fall in to take their place, and you could bring the roof down on us here too.” He looked up at the ceiling of the entry chamber and took in a faceful of dust for his efforts.

“We have to try something!”

“After a cave-in like that, you don’t even know if she’s alive,” Duro said. Kandler saw the concern etched on the dwarf’s face was real. “It could take days to dig her out safely even then.”

“We know someone who can tell us if Esprë’s alive,” Sallah said, pointing her sword back up the stairwell.

“The changeling,” Kandler said. He nodded at the lady knight. “She’s our only hope now. Let’s move!”

The trip back through the mountain seemed to take twice as long, even though Kandler knew they were moving faster than before. The way the entire place kept shaking kept him on his toes. It was hard to tell when a large chunk of the ceiling might decide to break loose, and Duro saved him and the others more than once by steering them away from unsafe regions just before they gave way.

When they reached the exit, Kandler couldn’t remember a time he’d been so thrilled to see the sun. It was low in the west now, heading toward a handsome sunset over the plains of Karrnath.

Leading the way, he charged down the narrow path until he reached the wide shelf underneath Keeper’s Claw. As he ran, he shouted out, “Monja! Monja!”

He spied the halfling’s head popping up over the gunwale of Phoenix. She didn’t bother to shout anything back. Instead, she ran over and found the ship’s rope ladder and pitched it over the railing. It tumbled out, falling toward the shelf and landing directly in Kandler’s path.

The justicar held the end of the ladder down and waved the others on to it. Burch went first, slinging his crossbow over his shoulder and scrambling up so fast he reached the top before Sallah grabbed hold of the bottom. The lady knight hustled up next, climbing steadily, hand over hand.

When Duro reached the ladder, he stopped. “Where are you going with this contraption?” he asked.

“What’s holding you back?” Kandler asked. “Everyone else is dead.”

Duro considered this for a moment, then reached out and started up the ladder. “Good point,” he said, as he passed Kandler by.

Once Duro was aboard the ship, Kandler launched himself up the ladder too, the bottom end swaying wildly underneath him. When he cleared the gunwale, he glanced around. The first thing he noticed was that Te’oma was missing. The changeling’s chains lay empty on the deck.