Lost mark 3 The Queen of Death:
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The dragon made a halting, coughing sound that Kandler could only guess was meant to be a laugh. Then it snarled at the girl.
As the dragon spoke, Kandler spotted Xalt creeping around behind the dragon. The warforged seemed to be looking for a means of attacking the dragon or—barring that—charging out and running off with Espre.
Before he could make a move, though, the dragon queen’s tail lashed out and caught him in the chest, knocking him flat against the tower’s far wall. It stayed there then, pinning Xalt against the wall. The cut Sallah had made in the dragon’s tail started to bleed once again, and some of the crimson liquid trickled over Xalt’s legs, but the dragon queen ignored it.
"Frekkainta is curious to know why she shouldn’t just kill you all,” Greffykor said. "Permit me to answer that.”
The silver dragon held up Kandler and Burch to illustrate the point he planned to make. "These people are my guests, and they have no means of harming you. If you insist upon trying to jail me and kill them, I will fight you tooth and claw. You may defeat me, but I will make you pay for your victory.”
"And,” said Espre, "once you do what you came here for—to find the dragonmark and destroy it—it would be a waste of your time to bother with the rest of us. Why would my friends and family be worth even your notice?”
The dragon queen murmured something in a tone of grudging assent.
"Also,” Espre said, "if you do not swear to let the others go free, I will kill you. I have learned many things about my dragonmark over the past few weeks, and I believe I can work it to stop your heart cold in your chest.”
The dragon queen regarded Espre with a stony eye.
Kandler renewed his struggles to free himself from Greffykor’s grasp. The moment he moved, though, the dragon tightened its grip enough that the justicar could barely breathe once more.
"Espre!” Kandler shouted. "No!”
The dragon queen nodded at the girl and growled softly at her.
Greffykor cleared his throat and said, "The dragon queen finds your terms adequate and agrees to them— provided you do bear a dragonmark.”
Espre grunted. Then she turned about and tore open her shirt to her navel. Maintaining her modesty, she pushed the fabric back, exposing the skin between her shoulder blades to the dragon’s eyes.
The dragon queen reached forward with a taloned claw and tugged the shirt back just an inch farther. As she did, Kandler noticed the girl shaking like a sail tacking toward the wind. He wondered if she might collapse before the dragon could see what it wanted to find. He hoped so.
The dragon queen growled something soft. As she did, Espre raised her bright blue eyes and stared straight at Kandler. A tear rolled out of her reddened lids.
The justicar strained and pulled at Greffykor’s talons. "Let go of me, damn it! Let me go!”
In the dragon’s other hand, Burch struggled and fought like a wild animal. His teeth and claws could not get past Greffykor’s silvered scales. He might as well have been trying to chew on a suit of armor. The shifter howled in frustration and desperation, but Greffykor grip altered not one bit.
Kandler cast about everywhere for help. He refused to just let this happen.
The dragon queen still had Xalt trapped under her bleeding tail. The warforged tried to reach for the open wound, but his arms were not long enough by at least a yard.
Sallah lay sprawled on the ground, her broken sword fallen from her curled fingers. She might just be unconscious, but Kandler feared she could just as easily be dead.
In a break between Burch’s howls, Kandler heard the crackle of the Phoenix’s ring of fire as she hovered moored over the landing platform outside.
"Monja!” Kandler shouted. "Monja!”
Burch took up the call too. "Monja!” the two friends
shouted in unison, their voices already run hoarse.
The halfling didn’t respond, and the airship didn’t move. Kandler wondered if the little shaman might also be dead, but that didn’t matter to him now. All he cared about was stopping the dragon queen from killing his daughter.
Where, he asked himself, was Te’oma? He’d written the changeling off long ago, but her affection for Espre was clear. He couldn't believe that she’d just stand by and watch the girl sacrifice herself—unless, of course, she was already dead too.
The blood-colored dragon stooped low over the girl and turned her snout so that she could focus a single eye on the dragonmark between Espre’s shoulders. She grunted, and noxious, black smoke billowed from her nostrils.
Turn around, Espre, Kandler thought
Then the dragon queen sat back on her haunches again and spread her lips wide. This exposed all her rows of sharp, vicious teeth, most of which were long enough that they could have been used to fashion a fangblade like the one Kandler had been forced to leave behind.
Kandler shuddered in horror.
"The dragon queen finds the girl’s offer acceptable,” Greffykor said. Not a trace of emotion tainted the silver dragon’s voice.
"Remember me,” Espre said. Then she turned to face the dragon queen and accept her fate.
The crimson dragon huffed in a great gulp of air and held it inside her for a moment.
"NOOOO!” Kandler shouted.
The dragon queen’s snout snapped forward, and a jet of fire gouted from between her teeth. The blinding orange flames swallowed Espre whole, and the girl screamed. The sound lasted only an instant before it was cut short.
The dragon continued to drench the girl in fire.
Espre—who now seemed nothing more than a blackened silhouette framed in the incinerating blaze—fell to her knees for a heartbeat and then collapsed on the stone floor, flames engulfing her on every side.
Kandler kept screaming until his voice gave out, but the dragon did not stop. She poured fire from her gullet onto the girl for what seemed like forever, until nothing remained but ashes and tiny fragments of bone.
When the dragon queen finally stopped, the stone floor glowed bright red in a circle centered on what little was left of Espre. Wisps of smoke trailed up from the tiny pile of remains, reaching up through the observatory to the stars watching down from the open sky above.
Then the dragon queen took another deep breath and blew the last bits of ash away. In an instant the floor cooled and cracked where Espre had last stood, and nothing remained of her but those last few tendrils of smoke still wafting into the night sky.
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Kandler felt like his heart might burst. He slouched forward in Greffykor’s iron grip and buried his face in his hands.
He allowed himself only an instant of grief at that moment, then wiped his face and stretched back up tall. He would weep for his daughter later. First, he wanted to memorize her murderer’s face, so he would know her later when he found her and punished her for her deeds.
The dragon queen snarled at Greffykor, then spread her wings and leaped into the air. Instead of passing over Kandler and Burch and their silvery captor, she zoomed straight up toward the tower’s open top, disappearing into the night sky. She left only the horrible scent of Espre’s execution behind.
Greffykor leaned forward and deposited Kandler and Burch on the floor before him. The justicar raced over to where Sallah lay on the floor.
Freed from the dragon queen’s tail, Xalt had already reached the knight’s side, but he had not touched her yet. "She is still breathing,” the warforged said, "although not well.”
Kandler nodded his thanks to Xalt as he knelt and put his arms under the woman’s shoulders. "Take her legs,” he said. "With her armor on, she’s too heavy for me to carry alone."
"Perhaps we should remove it.”
"We don’t have the time. We need to get her to Monja right now.”
Xalt put his hands under Sallah’s legs and nodded. The two lifted the knight together and began to carry her toward the doorway.
"I am so sorry for—”
"Not now,�
�� Kandler said, choking up as he spoke. "It’s too late for Espre, but maybe not Sallah.”
Greffykor swept out of the way as Kandler and Xalt trotted Sallah out of his home. The silver dragon watched them every moment, seemingly oblivious to the murderous looks Kandler shot his way. As Kandler and the others left, Greffykor turned to examine his destroyed crystal, a mournful look on his reptilian face.
Burch met them at the tall, open archway. "Monja brought the airship down closer,” he said as he guided them into the chill night air.
Outside on the landing platform, Kandler saw the Phoenix hovering to the right. Her deck hung level with the platform now, and Monja waved to them tentatively from where she stood on the wheel.
Burch leaped from the platform to the airship and grabbed the gangplank. He thrust it over the gunwale, and as soon as it touched down Kandler and Xalt bore the unconscious Sallah onto the main deck.
Before Kandler could turn around to tell Burch to take the wheel, the shifter had already done so. Monja leaped down from the bridge and dashed over to inspect the knight.
"What in the names of the spirits happened in there?” the shaman said as she bent over the knight.
"You didn’t see the red dragon?” Kandler asked.
Monja peeled open Sallah’s eyelids. "Of course, I had her son out here to keep me company.” She felt her neck for a pulse. "He took off as soon as he saw her fly out of the top of the tower.”
Kandler grimaced. He wanted to blame the halfling for not doing something, but what could she have done? None of the others had been able to stop the dragon queen either. Even trying would have probably cost Monja her life too.
He realized he should probably have been grateful that so many of them had survived their meeting with the dragon queen. He just couldn’t manage to muster that feeling up.
"Can you help her?” Kandler asked.
"Give me some room,” Monja said.
As Kandler stepped back, the halfling spread her arms wide and looked up toward the sky. She chanted a heartfelt prayer to her people’s spirits, and a warm, golden glow flowed around her arms. She reached forward and laid her hands on either side of Sallah’s forehead.
The pleasant glow flowed off of Monja’s hands and surrounded Sallah instead. As Kandler watched, the woman’s breathing grew steadier, and the creases of pain in her brow smoothed down.
As Monja sat back to examine her work, Kandler knelt down next to Sallah and took her hand in his. After a moment, her emerald eyes fluttered open, and she smiled up at him.
"Did we do it?” Sallah asked.
Kandler swept the woman up in his arms and clutched her to his chest. Gratitude that she would be all right washed over him then, and sobs wracked his body.
"Oh, no,” Sallah said softly as she began to weep with him. "Oh, no.”
Monja glanced at Burch with a questioning look, and he gave her a grim nod. She covered her mouth with her hands, stifling an exclamation of grief. The shifter knelt down and reached out for her, and she buried her face in his shoulder.
Xalt stood watching over the others. "Never before in my life,” he said, "have I wished I could cry.”
After a moment, Greffykor lumbered out of his observatory, framed against the light spilling out through the archway. Kandler loosened his grasp on Sallah and kissed her on her full lips, light and tenderly. Then, arm in arm, they got to their feet.
"What is it?” Kandler said. "Come to tell us that the dragon queen has changed her mind?”
For an instant, he hoped she had. He felt like the one thing he wanted at the moment would be to die trying to pull the dragon’s eyes from her head with his bare hands.
Greffykor’s snout swung from side to side. The dragon didn’t say a word. Kandler thought the creature’s shame in failing to stand up to the dragon queen might have silenced him.
Then a small shape detached itself from the dragon’s silhouette and ran toward the ship.
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As the figure approached, Kandler froze in Sallah’s arms. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him as he rushed down the gangplank. The others raced along behind them.
There on the edge of the wide, flat landing platform— her bright-eyed face lit in warm tones by the airship’s ring of fire—stood Espre.
Kandler and Sallah pulled up just shy of the girl and stared at her. With the tears he’d cried for her still wet on his face, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He reached out with an unsure hand to touch her.
"Are you . . . ?”
He’d just seen her incinerated. She couldn’t be real. Perhaps her ghost had come back to haunt him for his failure to protect her. He knew he deserved no less torment than that.
When his fingers reached her face, though, he felt no chill spirit but warm flesh. At his touch, she grinned and leaped into his arms.
Kandler reveled in the moment, refusing to let her go.
He kissed her cheek and felt her giggle with laughter and relief, and he joined her. He shamelessly wept fat tears of
joy.
"How?” he said eventually, letting her go enough that he could look her in the face.
Espre shook her head, still groggy. "I don’t know. The last thing I remember was fighting with Te’oma. Then I woke up in one of the cabinets near the doorway. I had to knock for Greffykor to let me out.”
The girl looked around at the others staring at her. "What happened to the dragon queen?” she asked.
Kandler gasped. He knew.
He held Espre tight and told her how Te’oma had taken her place.
The girl nearly collapsed in his arms.
"How?” Espre said, stunned. "Why?”
"She told me once she had a lot to make up for,” Burch said, calling from his spot at the wheel.
"She said that to me too,” said Xalt. "I thought she meant to apologize for stabbing me when we were in Construct.”
"By the light of the Flame,” Sallah said. "She redeemed herself.”
"May the spirits bless her,” Monja said before she headed back for the bridge, "wherever her soul may now rest.”
While Te’oma might have won Kandler’s respect and undying gratitude with her death, he could not suppress how he felt about the results. "The dragon queen thinks you’re dead.”
Espre grinned and hugged Kandler with all her might. "Does this mean it’s all over?” she said, her voice filled with wonder.
"I am afraid not,” Greffykor said.
All eyes turned toward the dragon, who had loomed silently over the joyful reunion until now. Burch trotted
up to stand beside Kandler, a loaded crossbow in his hands. The justicar flexed his empty hands, remembering that his fangblade still lay where he had cast it aside in the lower level of the observatory.
"I plan to take my daughter and fly out of here,” Kandler said. "You’re not going to stop me.”
"No," Espre said, standing away from him. "I will.” Kandler narrowed his eyes at his daughter. "Explain.” "The dragon queen thinks I’m dead. She will probably spread word of that far and wide.” The girl looked to Greffykor for confirmation, which she received.
"That’s just what we want,” Kandler said.
"It won’t last,” said Espre. "How did the Lich Queen know where to find me? Or the Keeper of the Flame?”
Sallah frowned. "The emergence of your dragonmark alerted those who keep their fingers on the pulse of the world.”
"Would they be fooled by what they’ll see as a rumor of my death?”
"Got a point,” Burch said ruefully.
"So we go back to the original plan,” Kandler said. "We confront the bastards behind this brewing conflict and put an end to it."
Monja cleared her throat then blushed as the others turned to look at her. "Well,” she said, "that was never all that much of a plan, was it?”
Kandler bristled at the comment, mostly because he could not deny it. "Did anyone have a better idea?” he asked.
Kandler’s heart sank as he looked to the girl. "You seem older,” he said. He wasn’t sure who’d changed, though, him or her.
"I hear coming back from the dead can do that to you.” She offered him a weak smile, and he clung to it.
"Tell me,” he said.
Espre frowned, and Kandler braced himself.
"I have to stay here,” she said. "Forever.”
Kandler’s knees wobbled. Sallah put her arm around him, and he leaned on her a bit.
"Of course," said Xalt. "You’ll be safe here.”
Monja stared up at the top of the tower. "Won’t the people who found Espre before just find her here?”
Greffykor shook his head. " My observatory is invisible to magical detection. As long as Espre stays here with me, no one will be able to find her.”
"The dragon queen knew where we were because she followed us,” said Sallah.
Espre craned her neck back and looked up at the silver dragon. "Is that an invitation?”
"I offered before to keep you here,” Greffykor said. "You may stay as long as you wish. My home will be your own.” Kandler grumbled. "How is this going to work? Where will she sleep? How are you going to feed her? What if other dragons come to visit?”
Espre cut Kandler off with a hand laid across his lips. "Greffykor is a powerful sorcerer. He can care for me here.”
"Why?” Kandler said, eyeing the dragon. "Why would you do that for her?”
"It would give me a chance to study her dragonmark,” Greffykor said. "It is an unparalleled chance to research the effects of such a mark on the Prophecy. Perhaps I might even be able to determine if it is, in fact, the Mark of Death.”
"It’s not?” said Kandler. Hope warred with outrage in his head. "Then what’s all this been about? You can’t tell me we’ve gone through all this because of some sort of mystical case of mistaken identity.”
"The Voice of the Silver Flame herself sent me to Mardakine to find the Mark of Death,” said Sallah. "I do not believe that she would make such a mistake.”
"Did she say 'the Mark of Death’?” Monja asked. "Those exact words?”