by Matt Forbeck
Te’oma drew her black-bladed knife and brandished it before her. Espre’s eyes grew wide as she watched the changeling handle the blade. Then, just as Te’oma advanced on her, the girl smiled.
Espre came at Te’oma with her glowing-black hands spread wide. Instead of putting her arms up in front of her, she made no attempt to protect herself or to avoid the blade.
Surprised, Te’oma pulled her knife back. The girl had called her bluff. Espre knew that the changeling wanted to save her, not kill her. To stab her with the knife would work against that goal.
Espre smiled, and the black glow arced between her outstretched hands. Te’oma had never seen it do that before. It seemed the girl’s powers were growing still.
Perhaps Kandler had been wrong not to take the girl into hiding. If they had tried that, they might have been able to delay the inevitable long enough for all of Espre’s horrible powers to reach maturity. Then she might have stood a real chance against the dragons or any others who would have wished to harm her.
Still, to then have to live her life forever on the run, only able to keep people away by killing them, that wasn’t what Espre wanted, but wouldn’t that be better than being dead?
Apparently not, from the girl’s point of view.
Espre swiped at Te’oma again, and the changeling ducked out of the way. The glow on the girl’s hands seemed to whisper with the muted accusations of the souls of those she had already killed. Her voice may not have worked, but her powers strove to speak for her.
Te’oma reached deep into the darkest pockets of her mind, struggling to summon up enough power to stab once more into Espre’s brain. She figured she’d only get one more chance at taking the girl out before everything went to hell.
When learning to hone her mental powers, Te’oma had spent many hours—days, even—meditating, practicing at concentrating. Whereas some students of the mind liked to cloister themselves in silent abbeys or dank dungeons, she preferred to work at her art in the midst of chaos. She went to the main square of whatever town she was in at dawn and stayed there until dusk, forcing herself to tune out any distractions that came her way.
In the wealthier cities, she’d put an empty hat in front of her to collect change from those passersby who thought her a sad veteran of the Last War. In such efforts, she rarely sat alone.
The trick, she had found, was to be able to ignore everything about yourself but the threats. Discerning a true threat when concentrating on something else wasn’t easy, and Te’oma had taken many a boot in the rib before she managed to master the skill. Eventually, though, she’d come to know instinctually the difference between a threat, a bluff, and the bluster of life.
All that training paid off now when Espre came at Te’oma. Instead of stepping out of the way—or just turning tail to run—the changeling knew what the girl was after. She wanted not to kill but to die.
Espre raised her arms, her hands strained into the shape of claws, and charged straight at Te’oma. The changeling knew that if she let the girl by she'd keep running past her until she could tap on the dragon queen’s tail.
Te’oma reached out and grabbed Espre’s glowing arms by the wrists instead.
Espre screamed in frustration at the changeling, although no sound came from her mouth. Then she flexed her arms and started to bring her hands together.
The girl’s anger at the changeling had pushed her over the edge. Her use of her dragonmark was no longer an idle
threat. If Espre managed to touch Te’oma with one of her hands, the changeling would die.
"Don’t,” Te’oma whispered. "You don’t really want to kill me.” She hoped she could convince the girl to believe in the lie.
Espre snarled voicelessly at the changeling.
Holding Espre like this, Te’oma couldn’t help but think of all the horrible things she’d done in her life. The worst—surpassed only, possibly, by abandoning her own daughter—had been to turn this innocent child into a murderer.
When Te’oma had first entered Espre’s life, the girl’s powers had already started to kill, but without Espre’s knowledge or control. When the girl had discovered what had happened, she’d been mortified.
Since then, Espre had been pushed into trying to kill others over and over again. Each time, she’d approached the task with some reluctance—or so Te’oma had told herself, perhaps to assuage her own conscience.
Now, though, the girl held nothing back. She wanted to kill the changeling before she died.
Te’oma’s vision blurred, and for a moment she feared that the girl had managed to use her dragonmark’s powers against her after all. Then she blinked away the tears that had formed in her eyes.
"You don’t have to do this,” Te’oma said, her voice raw and pained. "You don’t.”
The girl pulled herself backward and crumpled toward the ground. Surprised, Te’oma kept her grasp on the girl’s wrists and toppled over on top of her. It wasn’t until she started to fall forward that the changeling realized her mistake. If she and the girl fell to the floor together, she’d be at the girl’s mercy.
Te’oma released Espre’s wrists and tried to pluck her hands away. The girl’s left hand shot out, though, and caught the changeling around the shoulder.
As the black glow began to flow from Espre into Te’oma, the girl mouthed a single word at the panicked changeling. "Die!”
Te’oma gathered everything she had left in her mind and formed it into a black-bladed knife. "There’s no other way,” she said. "I’ll do whatever it takes.”
With but a single, desperate thought, she flung the blade at Espre’s brain.
Everything turned black.
Chapter
58
The dragon queen smashed the horned crests that ran along the top of her head into the crystal again. She had already forced a half-dozen spiderweb-patterned sets of cracks into the opposite surface of the crystal in the same way. This time, though, Sallah heard something larger give, and she looked up to see that a good chunk of the crystal had caved away. The shard toppled from the top of the crystal and shattered on the stone floor near the crimson dragon’s feet.
"We can’t hide back here much longer,” Xalt said. He had stopped screaming, but his voice still held a histrionic edge.
"We don’t have anywhere else to go!” Sallah said. She peered around the crystal and spotted Espre and Te’oma talking near the hole.
The knight’s heart sank. If Espre had come up from the lower level by herself—-without Kandler or Burch—then something horrible had to be wrong. Te’oma had disappeared before they’d reached the observatory. What could she be doing with the girl now?
Although Burch had vouched for Te’oma, Sallah shared Kandler’s distrust of the changeling. If not for her, they would be safe in Flamekeep now, with Espre in the caring hands of the Voice of the Flame.
The dragon smashed into the crystal. Once more, a piece that could have crushed Sallah dead cascaded to the floor.
Xalt screamed.
Sallah turned on him and snarled. "When did you lose your nerve?”
Xalt froze. "Is this not the right way to act in such a situation? I was taking my cues from you.”
If Sallah had thought for a moment that the warforged was mocking her, she’d have considered separating his head from his shoulders and then toting around his skull as a warning to others who might be tempted to try it. As it was, she knew he meant her no disrespect. The dragon had rattled her, and she’d let it show.
She hadn’t acted so cowardly in the battle with Nithkorrh, but she hadn’t faced the great beast directly in that fight. Now, come face to snout with an enraged dragon the size of a cathedral, she’d given in to fear and taken to cowering behind cover like some common mercenary. If her father could see her now, he would turn away from her and hang his head in shame, she knew.
This had to end.
The dragon queen smacked her head into the crystal again, and another boulder-sized piece of it ca
me away. The beast roared in triumph, so loud that Sallah wondered if her ears might bleed. Only half of the crystal remained now. It would disappear entirely with just a few more blows.
Sallah peeked around the crystal again and saw Espre and Te’oma wrestling with each other. The girl’s hands glowed in a telltale shade of black.
The knight turned back and grabbed Xalt by the shoulder.
She pointed behind him. "I need you to run as fast as you can in that direction."
"Of course,” Xalt said. "I will lead the way.”
Sallah started to say something, but yet another crystal-cracking strike from the dragon cut her off.
"Go!” she yelled at the warforged. She spun him about and slapped him on the back. "Go!”
Xalt took off as ordered and did not look back. Sallah spun on her heel and chased around the other side of the crystal instead.
The dragon queen reared up for another attack and froze in mid-strike. Her head snapped to her right, her eyes following Xalt’s progress as he dashed away, oblivious to the fact that Sallah had not followed him.
Then she roared and started after him.
For a creature so large and powerful, the dragon queen moved with surprising grace. She lowered her head to the ground and prowled forward, every stride of her gigantic legs pulling her forward faster than the warforged could run. She would- be on him before he could find another place to hide.
The dragon queen’s tongue slithered across her slavering lips as she closed in on the hapless Xalt.
As the dragon turned, Sallah raced around behind her. There, still stuck in the dragon’s tail, hung the knight’s blazing sword. Black-baked blood caked the blade, and the tip of it had been broken off at the point where it had stuck out of the dragon’s scales. The hilt still jabbed up out of the dragon queen’s flesh, though, and Sallah charged straight for it.
While the dragon moved fast, it took a moment for her tail to catch up, and Sallah leaped atop the end of it. This part of the tail was nearly severed from the rest. The dragon’s thrashing attempts to dislodge the sword had only made matters worse, and Sallah doubted the creature could even feel her back here on the deadened flesh.
Somewhere up ahead, Xalt screamed again. Sallah hated that she hadn’t been able to explain her plan to the warforged. He probably thought that she’d abandoned him for her own gain, perhaps plotting to slink away while the dragon queen tore him to pieces.
It added up to just one more reason why she could not fail.
Sallah pulled herself up the dragging tail, hand over hand, until she could reach her sword’s gleaming hilt. As she went, she looked up the Vermillion crest that ran up the dragon queen’s back, right from the tip of her tail to where it split at the base of her neck and thrust along either side of the crown of her skull. It felt like looking up a mountain.
Just as she put her hand out for what was left of her sword, the dragon came to a halt and reared up on her haunches. The sudden movement threatened to throw the knight from her seat. She knew, though, that the change meant that the dragon meant to strike. If the knight did not act soon, the beast would destroy Xalt with a single, crushing blow.
Sallah snapped out her hand and closed it around her sword’s hilt. As she did, she let her body fall backward. The weight of her armored form pried the weapon free.
As the blazing sword left the dragon’s tail, it cut through the flesh there again. The dragon queen stiffened, then threw back her head and howled.
Sallah let her momentum roll her off the dragon's tail and somersaulted to her feet. She stood there, her broken sword in hand, still defiantly blazing away, and shouted out a prayer.
"Silver Flame, guide my way!” she cried as the dragon turned to face her.
The dragon queen’s head spun about on her sinuous neck first, her gaze darting back and forth until it landed on Sallah and her sword-shard. The creature’s eyes narrowed, the reptilian slits in the great yellow orbs constricting until they seemed like vertical lines.
The dragon’s tail cocked back, and Sallah tensed, ready to move. When the tail whipped around, she leaped into the air. The dragon queen, though, had anticipated this, and the tail came up and knocked the woman’s legs from beneath her.
The blow sent Sallah clanging to the floor. Despite that, she kept her grip on her sword.
By the time Sallah had scrambled back to her feet, the dragon queen had spun her entire body around, bringing the whole of her fearsome visage to bear on the knight.
Sallah felt a tremor pass through her body, but she suppressed it. If these were to be her last moments in this world, she refused to spend them afraid. She held her broken sword before her, interposing its silvery light between herself and the dragon.
The flickering blaze echoed in Sallah’s own soul and set it afire. She felt the heat of it burn in her eyes in her determination to deport herself as she had always been meant to be: a Knight of the Silver Flame.
"Come, queen of dragons,” Sallah said. "Let us bring this to an end.”
The monstrous creature peered down at the knight as if she’d come across some curious insect crawling across her path, something that bore closer inspection before she crushed it. A low growl escaped from her mouth. It sounded like rolling thunder.
Sallah assumed a warrior’s stance. From here, she could not reach the dragon's snout or neck. The creature had been hurt once already, and the wound had made it cautious.
Sallah considered charging the beast, her sword held high. One look at the dragon’s maw told her all she needed to know about how well that would succeed. The creature could swallow her whole then use her blade to pick her teeth.
"Wait!” a voice said behind her.
Sallah snapped her head around to see Espre walking up behind her, an unfamiliar look painted on her face.
The moment Sallah took her eyes from the dragon queen’s, she knew she had made a mistake. She heard the rush of air as the creature’s head darted forward. She had time to say a single word before the slab-like snout smashed into her in an attempt to snuff out her light forever.
"Run!” Sallah said to Espre.
The instant before the dragon’s attack knocked her senseless, though, she recognized the look in the young elf’s eyes. She would do anything but run.
Chapter
59
Kandler hadn’t felt so helpless since the Day of Mourning. Trapped in a dragon’s clutches as the silver creature took to the air with both him and Burch in its clutches, he knew he had no power at all.
He lived and breathed only at Greffykor’s whim. If the dragon wished, it could crush him between its talons before he could scream for it to stop. Kandler told himself not to do anything to make the dragon angry.
The worst part, though, was knowing that he would probably have to do just that. If Greffykor insisted on keeping the justicar from saving Espre, then he would have no choice.
Kandler wished that the dragon hadn’t made him give up his sword. Trying to kill a dragon—or even hurt it—with his bare hands would be like trying to cart away a mountain without even a shovel. The fangblade could cut through dragon scales the way nothing else would, but now it lay on a floor at least twenty yards below, although it might as well have been a world away.
When Kandler reached the upper floor, he scanned the room for Espre. He found her—in the worst possible situation.
Against the far wall, the dragon queen had trapped a terrified Xalt. The only reason the dragon hadn’t yet turned the warforged into a pile of ash was because Sallah stood on her tail, wrenching the remnants of her broken blade out of the creature’s tail. Espre came stalking up behind the lady knight, getting closer to the dragon queen with every step.
Kandler tried to shout out a warning to her, but Greffykor squeezed his chest hard the moment he took a large breath. His yell came out only as the barest wheeze.
"We will watch this happen,” the silver dragon said. "We will not interfere.”
Kandler
looked to Burch and saw the shifter struggling against the dragon’s grip too. He had as much success as the justicar did at prying loose those silvery talons: none. They seemed to be made of polished steel rather than flesh, and they gave not one inch despite Kandler’s most desperate efforts to make them move.
The dragon queen knocked Sallah flat, and Kandler tried to shout again, this time in dismay. Greffykor stifled him once more.
"If you do not cease your struggles, I will kill you,” Greffykor said. "This is far too important for you to disrupt.”
Espre stood over Sallah’s fallen form, between the lady knight and the dragon. "Leaver her alone!” she shouted. "I’m the one you want! ”
The dragon queen paused and considered the young elf’s words. Then she opened her mouth and arched her neck back as she prepared to strike.
"Wait!" Espre said. "I wish to make a bargain with you.”
The dragon ignored her. Kandler could see that the
creature would just slay the girl on the spot.
"I am the one with the dragonmark!” Espre shouted. "I bear the Mark of Death!”
The dragon queen’s eyes flew wide, and her mouth snapped shut. She regarded the girl in suspicion. She turned one eye toward Espre and squinted at her as if she were an unusual—rare, even—cut of meat.
The dragon queen snarled something at the girl. Her voice was low and calm, despite the way her nostrils flared and tossed off rising plumes of smoke.
"She requires proof,” Greffykor said, translating for everyone else in the room.
Espre spun about and spied Kandler and Burch in the silver dragon’s clutches. As she did, the creature relaxed his grip on them. Kandler still had no hope of breaking free, but at least now he could breathe freely.
"Espre!” Kandler said. "Get out of here!”
The girl lowered her head and shook it. Kandler couldn’t remember seeing her so serious, so sad, since word of her mother’s death.
"Good-bye, Father,” she said to him. Then she turned her back on him and Burch and faced the dragon.
"I will surrender to you,” Espre said, "if you swear to leave here afterward and let Greffykor and his other guests be.”