by Matt Forbeck
Xalt cocked his head at the lady knight. "Kandler told us
to wait here,” he said. "His instructions were clear.”
"If you followed instructions to the letter, Kandler, Burch, and I would be dead, and you would still be wandering about the Mournland.” Sallah tried to take the edge off her comment with a wry grin, but she found she couldn’t summon one.
"She’s right,” Monja said, her hands wrapped around the top spars of the airship’s stationary wheel. She had to stand on a couple of the lower spars to be able to see over the top of the bridge's console, but the position seemed to grant her not only height but authority.
"I saw the look in Kandler’s eyes,” the halfling said, glancing at Te’oma. "He’s spoiling for a fight.”
"Then let him find one,” the changeling said, still rubbing her throat where Kandler has strangled her.
"Do you blame him for not trusting you?” Sallah asked.
"None of you do.” Te’oma spat on the deck, unable to keep the'bitterness from her voice. "Why should he?”
The changeling paced the deck for a moment, then stopped and turned on the others. "I could have flown away from here at any point. On the trip from Fort Bones to the Ironroots, I could have just slipped over the ship’s railing at any time and been gone, but no, I stayed here, with you, so I could do something to . . . to . . .”
The others waited for a moment.
"To kill a dragon?” Duro asked, his voice high and uncertain.
Te’oma scoffed at him. "You’re insane,” she said. "Spending your days guarding the lair of a dragon, armed with nothing more than axes, hoping you could do something to stop it when it wanted to get free. If I’d known what was going to happen—I’ll be honest. I would have flown away. The last you would have seen of me would have been
my wings flapping into the sunset.”
Xalt interrupted her rant. "That is not true. As you say, you could have escaped at many points. Even after we discovered Nithkorrh, you had many opportunities.”
Te’oma turned away and muttered something to herself.
Sallah raised a hand to reach out to the changeling, then thought better of it. Instead, she spoke. "Your actions earned our respect, if not our unwavering trust. You must recall your actions thrust us along this perilous road.”
Te’oma spun back about. "Don’t you think I know that?” she said. "If I could change one thing I’d ever done, I’d—Well, I’d have to start a lot farther back than that.” She bowed her head. "Now, with nothing left for Vol to dangle before me, I just thought I could do some good for once.”
"Especially if that good would thwart the lady who betrayed you,” Monja said.
"She’s no lady,” Te’oma said with a shiver. "She’s beyond such things, like royalty is beyond peasantry. If you’d ever seen her sitting on that frigid throne of hers in Illmarrow Castle, you’d know her for what she is: a queen. The queen of death.”
Silence fell over the bridge then. Duro shifted uncomfortably. Monja stared out from the wheel as if charting a path toward the ocean that appeared as a strip of grayish blue on the southern horizon. Xalt stared at each of the others in turn, focusing his unblinking eyes on them like a lantern’s light.
"I believe in you,” Sallah said to Te’oma as Xalt’s gaze fell on her. As the words left her, she wondered why she’d bothered to speak them.
"So you said.” Te’oma huffed and frowned. "It’s easy to believe in someone when your god lets you know if she’s telling the truth.”
Sallah shook her head. "I didn’t use the powers of the Silver Flame for that.”
Te’oma stared at Sallah through reddened eyes. "You’re lying,” she said.
A soft smile crossed Sallah’s lips. "If you really want the trust you ask from us, it would help if you could extend it too.”
"Why would you tell Kandler to believe me?”
Sallah gave a slight shrug, barely enough to move the shoulders of her shining armor. "Because I did."
Te’oma considered this for a moment. Then a smile slowly spread across her face. "How are we going to break this glorified dinghy free from the dock?” she asked.
Sallah looked to where a pair of thick chains moored the Phoenix to the dock. They had no tools that would snap such weighty links. They would have to try another way.
Duro cleared his throat. "I think I have an idea.”
Chapter
21
Espre squirmed in the hard chair across from her father. She knew it was an expensive piece of furniture of the finest elf fashion, and it probably was worth a small fortune. Try as she might, though, she could not make herself comfortable in it.
Instead, she longed for the worn, rickety chairs around the table in her home back in Mardakine. She knew that she’d probably never see that town again. Even if the Mark of Death somehow disappeared from her skin, she could never return to the place where her burgeoning powers had unwittingly caused the deaths of so many of the townspeople. Now that she knew that the responsibility for those murders could be laid at her feet, she could never look the survivors in the face again.
The image of Norra, her best friend ever since she had come with Kandler to Mardakine, leaped into her mind. She missed Norra terribly, but should they ever find themselves in the same room again, Espre knew that she would flee the place rather than confront the fact that her dragon-mark had killed Norra’s mother.
With no home to go back to, Espre wondered if there might be a place for her in her father's life and land. She’d left Aerenal shortly after her birth, but that had been her mother’s doing not hers. Now it seemed like Ledenstrae meant to take her back with open arms. She could hardly believe her luck, but she couldn’t yet tell if that fortune was good or bad.
"Father?” Espre said. "Where would we live in Aerenal?”
Ledenstrae beamed down at the elf-maid. "My family— which is yours too, of course—has places all over Aerenal . Our ancestors are wise and powerful, and they comprise one of the most powerful factions within the Undying Court. We would have our pick of places in which to reside.”
"Where would you take me?”
Espre noticed that Ledenstrae had not offered Burch a seat with the others. The shifter had not seemed to notice the affront though. Instead, he stood watching over them, his head cocked to one side from time to time as if he were listening tor something.
"We would arrive in Pylas Talaear,” Ledenstrae said. "We could stay there for some time, until you feel more comfortable with proper society. She has been gone so long,” he said to Majeeda.
The ancient elf clapped her hands with glee. "As have I! We could practice our etiquette together.”
While the thought pleased Majeeda, it turned Espre’s stomach. She knew that the elves of Aerenal all aimed to someday become deathless like Majeeda, to take their place within the Undying Court, but it seemed horrible and unnatural to her.
Was that why Esprina had taken her away from Aerenal? To save her daughter from an eternal life as such a horror? Or to save herself from the same?
"Why did my mother leave you?” Espre asked.
The question slipped from her before she had a chance to consider it. As it did, though, she felt grateful for it. If her mother hadn’t trusted Ledenstrae, if she’d been willing to abandon her homeland to get herself and her daughter away from him, Espre needed to know why.
Ledenstrae coughed hard and reached for a nearby platter on which sat a steaming teapot, a number of small cups and saucers, and a small selection of cookies that seemed as if they’d stood there untouched for decades. As he poured himself a spot of brackish tea into a cup and drank it, Majeeda scowled at Espre as if she had thrown a soiled diaper into the middle of the floor between them.
"I’d rather not get into the details of the parting between your mother and I,” Ledenstrae said. "I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead.”
When he saw the disappointment on Espre’s face, he continued. "I’d long hoped that
your mother and I might reconcile. As elves, our lives are long. Perhaps we might not have reached an accord until we both found ourselves ascended to the Undying Court, but I had faith that it would someday happen.
"Perhaps that’s why I never bothered to track you down before now. In my heart, I thought that Esprina would one day come back to Aerenal with you. I never thought that she would be so horribly lost. To not even know where her body is . . .” "I know where her body is,” said Espre.
Ledenstrae’s eyes flew wide. Espre looked to Burch, who gave her a tiny shrug. She knew he would have preferred for her not to talk with her father about such things, but she’d already opened that door, so she continued through it. As she spoke, she saw Burch turn and leave. She wanted to ask him to stay, but she feared what he might say to her. As it was, neither Ledenstrae nor Majeeda paid him any heed as he went.
"Kandler and Burch found her body in the western part of the Mournland, near where they helped found Mardakine—that’s a settlement of Cyrans located in the bottom of a blast crater,” she said.
Ledenstrae perched on the edge of his seat, his eyes boring holes through Espre. "What did they do with her?” "They buried her by a black river and placed a marker over her grave.”
Ledenstrae and Majeeda gasped in horror. The deathless elf clutched at her chest as if her dead heart might start beating again.
"Savages!” Ledenstrae said. "Did your stepfather not know what that meant, to bury an elf rather than recovering her body? It’s been years. The worms might have devoured every bit of her flesh by now.”
Now Espre understood Ledenstrae’s shock. In Aerenal, she knew, the Undying Court evaluated the lives of dead elves. Those deemed worthwhile were brought into the court itself to sit at the sides of their ancestors. Others, who had not yet had a chance to prove themselves, were usually resurrected by magical means. Only the worst sort were abandoned to the cruelty of Dolurrh, the land of the truly dead.
"Those killed in the Mourning cannot be brought back to life in any way,” Espre said. "Kandler would have moved the moons to bring my mother back to me. It couldn’t be done."
"Is this true?” Ledenstrae asked Majeeda.
The deathless elf frowned, and Espre wondered if her jaw might fall off. "From what I have been told,” Majeeda said. "I’ve never seen anyone actually try to work such magics on the victims of the Mourning. Those are the domain of the gods, and I fear I have ignored such beings now for countless years.”
"But Vol said—”
Espre leaped up from her chair. It crashed backward behind her.
"Vol?” She could not feel the air in her lungs. "You’ve been in contact with Vol?”
Espre watched her father’s eyes dart back and forth as he struggled to figure out what to say, what he could say to salvage the situation.
"I’m afraid so,” he said. "These are desperate times, I’m afraid, and I took desperate measures.”
"Do you even know who she is?”
"Of course he does, dear,” Majeeda said. "I introduced them.”
"Get out of my way,” Kandler said as he exited the basket.
Burch stood in front of him, his hands held up before him to keep the justicar from storming past him. "She deserved to know,” he said.
"That’s not for you to decide,” Kandler said. "She’s my daughter, not yours.”
Burch folded his arms across his chest. "You don’t want to try that line. She’s with her real father now.”
Kandler brought up the fangblade, which he’d never bothered to sheathe. Its tip came within an inch of Burch’s neck. At that moment, the justicar wanted to drive it straight through.
The shifter didn’t flinch. His eyes didn’t even flicker toward the sword.
"I don’t have time for this,” Kandler said. "Every moment she spends with that cold-hearted bastard, she’s in danger of—”
"What? Learning he’s a bastard?”
Kandler adjusted his grip on the fangblade. "Don’t joke about this.”
Burch unfolded his arms, the grim look on his face softening. "She’s a good elf, boss. She’ll figure this out on her own, and she deserves the chance to do it.”
" But what if— ”
"You have to have faith in her.” Burch closed his mouth for a moment then tried again. "There’s a damn good chance we’re going to get ourselves killed here, soon. How are you going to protect her then?”
Kandler rubbed his eyes with his open hand. "You’d better be right.”
"Have I ever steered you wrong?” Burch grinned. "Don’t answer that.”
Chapter
22
Espre felt like her head might explode. She d stormed off the Phoenix to go find her real father, despite the fact that she knew that Kandler had lied to her about him being in town. She’d known he’d just been trying to protect her, and that had made her even angrier and more determined to find Ledenstrae.
Thankfully—or so she’d thought at the time—Burch had been willing to show her the way. Otherwise, she knew that she and Kandler would have had a horrible screaming match of a fight. Avoiding him instead had been the better course—or so she’d told herself.
Now, though, sitting alone with two elves who’d been in contact with Vol—the Lich Queen who’d sent Te’oma and a pack of vampires to kidnap her from her home—she had to wonder where it had all gone wrong.
Maybe at her birth.
"Why would you do something like that?” Espre said to Majeeda, her voice constricted with horror.
"I thought that they would have a lot to say to each other,” Majeeda said. "After all, they are related.”
The pressure inside Espre’s skull increased. "How?” That was the only word she could squeak out. If Ledenstrae and Vol were related, it meant that she and Vol were somehow bound together too, and by more than just the dragonmark they both shared.
Ledenstrae grimaced at Majeeda’s words. "That’s not exactly clear,” he said. He reached out a hand to Espre, who was too stunned to pull away. "It’s possible, but not certain.”
"Of course,” Majeeda said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Many of the records from the days of Vol were destroyed long ago, and it wasn’t just the elves working hand-in-claw with the dragons who did that.”
"What—what do you mean?” Espre said.
The feeling seemed to be coming back into her limbs. She needed to understand this, to wrap her head around it. The deathless elf’s words meant little to her. She decided to prod Majeeda into jabbering away until all the thoughts whirling about her coalesced into something resembling sense.
"The dragons and elves who joined together to destroy the House of Vol? They wanted to eradicate every last drop of blood that could contain even the barest potential for the Mark of Death, and they made good headway at it too. Every elf who had even the most tenuous claim to being a part of the House of Vol was put to death.”
"Except Vol, you mean.”
"Oh, she was killed too,” Majeeda said, "but as you see, death isn’t always permanent—especially for an abomination like a lich.”
This didn’t agree with what Te’oma had told Espre about the Lich Queen, but she didn’t care to argue the point. She just wanted to keep Majeeda talking.
"They killed an entire house?” she said. "How could
they do that? Didn’t anyone stand up for them?”
Majeeda’s face parted in a cold, crinkled smile. "This crusade against the House of Vol gave the dragons and the rest of the elves something in common—a foe against which they could rally together. It put an end to the Dragon-Elf War. To many on the Undying Court in those days, that alone was worth the sacrifice of a single house.”
"How many elves would share the blood of the House of Vol?” Espre asked. Her mind balked at trying to come up with a number.
"That is exactly the issue,” Majeeda said. "To be absolutely safe, to make sure you got rid of every last drop of that tainted, hateful breed, you’d have to kill every last elf w
ho still drew breath.”
"Tell me again why we can’t just walk in and kill them,” Kandler whispered to Burch. The justicar knew the answer as well as his friend, but he wanted little more than to ignore that wisdom and give in to his anger instead.
"Majeeda would flash-fry us,” Burch said, "and probably Espre. We need some sort of distraction.”
Kandler grimaced as he listened down the shaft that led to the ground floor. Someone pounded at the door below, and he heard the sound of splintering wood.
Burch squinted at the justicar. "You let the guards live?” "They were just doing their jobs.”
"Now it’s their job to kill us.”
"You said you wanted a distraction. There’s your distraction.”
Kandler reached into the shaft with his fangblade and began to slice the basket into small pieces. The broken bits tumbled back down the shaft to the stone floor dozens of feet below.
"That should slow them down,” the justicar said, "but they’ll still make enough noise to get Ledenstrae’s attention.” A thought struck him then, and he narrowed his eyes at the shifter. "What happened to all the guards who were hiding up here?”
Burch gave Kandler a winning grin.
"You didn’t think that would cause a problem?” "Thought we’d be long gone before anyone found out.” Kandler nodded. Since they’d come back before anyone had noticed, it had worked out all right. The fewer problems they had to deal with up here in the top of the tower, the better. He had a feeling that Majeeda would be trouble enough.
"She sounds scared,” Kandler said as he crept forward. "That’s because she’s smart,” said Burch.
Espre heard someone pounding on the door of the tower. Ledenstrae glanced in the direction of the room into which the shaft to the lower level opened up. He scowled at the interruption but ignored it for the moment.
"The Undying Court convinced the dragons that the sacrifice of the House of Vol would be enough,” Ledenstrae said. "However, the dragons live even longer than elves. Despite the fact that it has been millennia since that house’s eradication, the dragons have not forgotten the threat of the Mark of Death. If it were to arise again . . .”