Lost mark 3 The Queen of Death: (29 page)

Espre stepped forward before Zanga could speak. "Hello,” she said. Her voice did not tremble, nor did her knees shake, but Kandler could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was a fragile piece of crystal ready to shatter at the slightest touch. Despite that, she had not shirked her responsibilities here, and he could not have been prouder of her for that.

"Come forward,” Greffykor said.

The dragon shifted his weight onto his rear feet, and Espre froze. She took a deep breath and walked toward the creature, ready as she would ever be for whatever might be coming next.

Kandler had never been entirely sure of the wisdom of coming to Argonnessen. It had just seemed like the best choice out of a handful of horrible alternatives. Now, here, standing in a dragon’s tower while Espre walked toward the creature, every doubt he had resurfaced.

He hefted the fangblade in his hand again. He wanted to call out to the dragon, to remind him to be careful with the girl, to threaten him if he did anything to hurt her. The justicar knew, though, that the dragon would only laugh at such hollow words.

Still, Kandler wanted Espre to know he stood behind her, no matter what danger she might face. He followed her, his footsteps echoing hers as they moved toward the dragon through the large, empty chamber.

As he walked, Kandler realized that another set of footsteps shadowed his. He glanced back to see Sallah marching behind him, the metal of her armored boots clanking hard and cold against the thick, stone floor. Her eyes shone with love and fear, and he mouthed his thanks to her.

Back near the great entrance to the tower, Burch and Xalt had spread out in opposite directions perpendicular to Espre’s path. Each of them had their crossbows trained on the dragon, ready to loose their bolts at the first provocation. Between them, Zanga glanced back and forth at them and giggled at their foolhardiness.

When Kandler looked forward again, Espre had stopped walking and turned to talk with him. She focused her bright blue eyes on him, and the determination he saw there reminded him so much of her mother.

"1 have to do this on my own,” she said.

Kandler opened his mouth to protest but then shut it instead. He leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her forehead, then stood back and smiled at her.

"Go get him,” he said.

Espre smiled at him, a tear welling in one eye, then turned back to the dragon. She strode up to the creature, more confident this time, and presented herself.

"I am Espre of Mardakine,” she said, "daughter of Esprina and Kandler. I bear the Mark of Death.”

Behind Kandler, Zanga screamed again. This time, the sound came not from joy but astonishment.

"So the Prophecy foretold,” Greffykor said. "Ask your questions of me.”

Espre paused, and Kandler feared she might break down with the dragon’s full attention focused on her. When she spoke, though, her voice was proud and strong.

"How can I avoid my fate?”

The dragon spoke without hesitating, as if he had anticipated the question and formulated an answer long before Espre spoke.

"Fate cannot be avoided, only fulfilled.”

"Then what is my fate?”

"That has not yet been written.”

Espre pouted for a moment. "What does the Prophecy say about my fate?”

"You are doomed.”

"How?”

"That is unclear. Your thread in the great tapestry ends soon.”

"How soon?”

Kandler could hear the tremble enter Espre’s voice. "Soon.”

He rushed forward when he saw her knees start to buckle, but she managed to right herself before he reached her. She waved him off without even turning to see him. "How?”

"That is unclear. It involves grief and pain.”

"Is there anything I can do about it?”

"No.”

Espre’s shoulders started shuddering then, and Kandler knew she had started to cry. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he knew that she wouldn’t want that right now. First, she needed to finish this conversation.

When she spoke again, her voice was raw and low. "Is—is there anything you can do about it?”

The dragon remained silent. He stayed as still as a statue as he stared at the girl with his unblinking eyes.

"Is there anything you can do about it?” Espre repeated.

"Ask me to kill you.”

Kandler’s heart sank.

"Wh-what?” said Espre.

"Ask me to kill you.”

"Why?” she asked, her surprise already turning to frustration.

"As a favor.”

"A favor?” Her frustration had started to become rage.

"I will not cause you to suffer.”

Espre gagged. It took her a moment before she could continue.

"Is that the only way? To prevent me from suffering?”

The dragon inclined its head but did not speak.

"I . . .” said Espre.

"Stay as long as you like. Inform me when you reach your decision. My tower is impervious to scrying. No one will find you here.”

With that, the dragon turned and prowled back to the giant crystal. It did not look back.

Espre walked back to Kandler. He gathered her up in a comforting hug.

"I heard everything,” he said. "That dragon doesn’t know a thing.”

"I think Zanga and her people would disagree with you.”

"Prophecies are a fraud,” Kandler said. "They’re just a collection of ancient words cast so broad that they could catch any victim in their net.”

Espre pushed herself away from Kandler and craned her neck back to look at the crystal ball and all the strange, dragon-sized mechanisms in the room. "You can stand in a

place like this and tell me Prophecy has no meaning?”

"Not to you or me,” Kandler said. "Humans are short-timers. We don’t think in terms of the grand sweep of history. Each of us is just a stitch on the 'great tapestry’ that dragon went on about. We’re beneath their notice.”

Espre smiled as she wiped her face. "But I’m an elf.” "You’re a young elf, and your thread has been woven mostly with humans. I think someone with eyes as large as Greffykor can make a mistake about such things.”

Kandler felt Sallah’s hand on his back as he spoke. She didn’t say a word, just squeezed his shoulder in solidarity, but it meant the world to him. He smiled at Espre.

"Do you really mean that?” the girl said.

Kandler gave her a wry half-smile. "Honestly, I don’t know. All this stuff is over my head. All I know is that we have to make the best decisions we can with what we have. Worrying about things like fate can only help make bad predictions about us come true.”

Espre began to respond, but the smile that had been forming on her lips melted away into a look of sheer terror as she gazed over Kandler’s shoulder.

The justicar whirled about toward the entrance, and there—framed in the entrance of Greffykor’s tower—stood a gigantic red dragon, its wings unfurled.

Chapter

46

T
e’oma shivered in the chill night air as she perched atop one of the inward curving tips atop the pylons that formed Greffykor’s tower. She thought that she might look like a mighty bird of prey if she hadn’t been shuddering so hard. She wrapped her wings around her even tighter when a freezing blast of wind blew through her. Part of her hoped it might knock her from the tower and put an end to the cold.

As the
Phoenix
had flown south, the changeling had enjoyed the growing warmth of the weather. She’d taken many flights of her own throughout those days, basking in the stronger rays of the sun. Her bloodwings tired more quickly than she did, and she always had to return to the airship before they gave out, but she relished the opportunity to stretch them for long periods of time, free from the fear that someone below might spot her.

Like most changelings, Te’oma shunned the spotlight— at least when wearing her own skin. Many people didn’t care for members of her race, and so she often wore the guise of one of them. She’d pretended to be so many different kinds of people over the years that she sometimes wondered if she

might somehow forget what she looked like herself.

These past couple weeks, though, in the company of Espre and her family (such as it was) and friends, Te’oma had been able to truly relax for the first time in as long as she could remember. The fact that Vol had destroyed her dead daughter’s body in what seemed a fit of pique had horrified Te’oma at first. She’d wanted to do nothing but mourn the long-dead girl again. Instead, fate had forced her to put those emotions aside while she helped Kandler and the others save Espre from sharing her daughter’s fate.

Once the
Phoenix
had left Khorvaire behind, though, few distractions had surfaced, and Te’oma had been forced to deal with her grief once more. Mostly she had kept away from the others, preferring to mourn privately. She doubted that any of them would have been able to understand. They had no reason to empathize with her at all, much less pity her.

Only Burch had reached out to Te’oma. Although he had kept her at arm’s length—as any wary hunter like him would—he had checked in on her regularly and made sure that she kept herself feed and rested. She’d been unable to tell him how much she’d appreciated even such small gestures.

Still, she’d been unable to get Espre out of her mind. She’d known when she struck the deal to help kidnap the girl that she’d agreed to participate in an act of horrible evil against an innocent child. The parallels with her own daughter’s fate had not escaped her.

Yet she’d done it all the same.

The changeling peered down past the tips of the pylons into the brightly lit chamber below. She saw Kandler, Espre, Sallah, and Xalt approach the silver dragon. They looked like insects next to the massive beast.

As the dragon moved to speak with them, it glanced upward. Its gaze seemed to pierce Te’oma’s brain, and she felt petrified, unable to move—to even breathe—until the majestic monster turned its attention away.

Te’oma had hoped to scout out the area without the dragon or the others interfering with her. She’d considered telling Kandler, or even Burch, but she hadn’t wanted to deal with the inevitable bickering and mistrust. Instead, she’d taken off on her own initiative to discover what she could. All she’d learned so far was how little of a chance any of them had against such a creature.

Then she spotted a pair of silhouettes framed against the blood-red western horizon. The sun had set, and the last traces of daylight would be gone entirely within minutes, but she saw the edges of the forms of these two creatures clearly in those final moments.

Dragons.

Te’oma stood up on the tip of one of the tower’s pylons and stretched out her stiff arms and frozen wings, flexing blood back into them. Then she looked down and let the attraction of the terrible distance to the ground pull her from her perch. Her wings caught the wind, and she aimed herself straight for the bridge of the
Phoenix,
where Monja stood staring at the entrance into the observatory, unaware of either Te’oma or the dragons soaring in behind her.

"We have to get out of here,” Te’oma said as she landed on the bridge, just feet from Monja’s side.

The halfling screamed in surprise. She spun about, grabbing for the knife hanging from her belt. As she did, her hands left the airship’s wheel.

The Phoenix bucked, hard. To Te’oma, it felt like the ship had run aground. The force of the ship’s movement slammed her to the deck. An instant later, she found herself hanging in the air above it as the ship dropped lower instead.

Te’oma closed her eyes and braced for the
Phoenix
to leap up and slam into her again as her wings held her hovering in the air. When nothing happened, she peeled them open them a moment later.

Monja lay hanging over the airship’s wheel like a dirty shirt. She had her hands wrapped around the wheel’s spars and was struggling into a more dignified position. As she did, she turned around and fumed at the changeling. "Don’t you ever do that again!” the halfling snarled. Te’oma ignored the tiny shaman’s wrath. "What happened there?” she said, scared enough to forget about the dragons for the moment.

"You’ve flown this ship,” Monja said. "You know how ornery the elemental in that fiery ring is. Well, it sensed what happened to the
Keeper’s Claw
when the elemental in it blew up and destroyed that dragon. Now it’s linked dragons with enough destructive power to free it.”

"But it was Burch’s shockbolt that did that.”

"There’s no reasoning with it. That’s what it thinks, and now that it’s this close to a dragon’s home again, it’s aching for a chance to bust loose.”

Panic entered Monja’s heart. "We need to get this ship out of here,” she said. "There’s a pair of dragons coming this way right now!”

The changeling pointed off into the sky, but where there had been colors before now held only darkness. The thought that Monja might not believe her struck her like a brick.

"Probably some kind of family reunion,” the halfling said, or maybe Greffykor's invited a couple of friends over for dinner—with a ship full of idiots on the menu.”