“And,” said Esprë, “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,” Esprë 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 Esprë 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.
“Esprë!” 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.”
Esprë 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, Esprë 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 Esprë 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 Esprë’s shoulders. She grunted, and noxious, black smoke billowed from her nostrils.
Turn around, Esprë, 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,” Esprë 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 Esprë 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.
Esprë—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 Esprë. 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 Esprë had last stood, and nothing remained of her but those last few tendrils of smoke still wafting into the night sky.
60
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 Esprë’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 Esprë, 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.