Lost mark 3 The Queen of Death: (32 page)

The silver dragon grunted at the justicar, and Kandler felt the creature’s frigid breath wash over him. Then Greffykor straightened himself up and glared at the red dragon.

"You have made your point,” the silver dragon said.

Kandler cursed himself for not taking the opportunity to strike at the red dragon when he’d had the chance. Now, with the thing looming over him like a building, he had no hope of harming it. He would have to bide his time and keep looking for the right chance to attack.

The red dragon turned its attention to him again and growled.

"She wants proof,” Greffykor said in a brittle tone.

Kandler gaped at the silver dragon. "Of what?”

"Your dragonmark. She wants to see it.”

Kandler grimaced. "Tell her she can pry it off my hairy ass.”

The red dragon drew back her lips, and her long, sinuous tongue flickered out from between her rows of terrifying teeth.

"She can understand your language,” Greffykor said. "She refuses to sully her mouth with it.”

Kandler pursed his lips. If he could get the creature angry enough that she would incinerate him with her burning breath, she would never know if he really had a dragonmark or not, but to do that, he would have to get her closer.

"All right,” Kandler said, tugging at the collar of his shirt. "She’ll need to come closer to see it.”

He slipped his hand with the fangblade in it behind his back. He hoped the red dragon would see it as some form of deference to her.

The monstrous creature folded her wings back against her body and lowered herself onto all four legs once more. Kandler’s arm tensed behind him until it felt as taut as a loaded catapult. He ached to unleash it, to let it whip around and bury his deadly blade into the dragon queen’s flesh, but he forced himself to wait.

The red dragon squinted down at Kandler, and he realized that each of her eyes stood as tall as Espre. They seemed like such large targets that he didn’t see how he could avoid them, much less miss them, but they still hovered just out of his reach.

"It’s not very large,” Kandler said as he tugged at the edge of his shirt, pulling it down past his collarbone. "You’ll have to get closer.”

He tried to keep his voice even, dull, even flat. He just needed the dragon queen to get a few more feet closer. If he tried to leap for her now, he might slice her across the end of her nose, but he wanted to plunge his blade into her eye. Half blinding her would trigger the kind of rage he needed to inspire in her. Nothing less would do.

The red dragon’s head stopped moving downward. Her tongue lashed out toward Kandler’s face. Only his combat-trained reflexes prevented her from flicking out an eye.

The silver dragon opened his mouth. "For a human, you are a terrible liar.”

Kandler whipped his sword around in a vicious arc. It caught nothing but air.

The red dragon sat back on her haunches and rumbled at him again.

Then she threw back her head and roared.

Fire erupted from the dragon queen’s snout and billowed up to the tower’s open top like fireworks exploding into the sky. Kandler backpedaled, nearly stumbling as he went, keeping his sword before him like some sort of talisman that could ward off such all-powerful evil, even though he knew it would be exactly that useless.

A cry of triumph went up from behind the dragon. Kandler peered past the creature and spied Sallah and Xalt racing away from the creature’s rear as fast as their legs would carry them. Sallah’s fists were empty, but Xalt tried to cover their retreat with a crossbow aimed at the dragon.

The dragon queen thrashed her tail, slamming it to the left and right, howling in pain as she did. Even with the thing moving so fast, Kandler could see something was wrong. The end of the massive tail bent at an odd angle, dangling downward.

When the tail swished in his direction again, Kandler saw that the tip of it had almost been chopped off. There, stabbing out of the top of the tail, hung the culprit: abright-bladed sword that blazed with a silver light.

Kandler halted for a moment. If Sallah had managed to harm the dragon, then maybe he could hope to as well. As he adjusted his grip on his fangblade, he watched the dragon queen pound her tail on the floor, trying to dislodge it.

Greffykor turned to the justicar and spotted him standing there, just before the hole that led down to the lower level. The silver dragon shook his snout at Kandler and gestured him away with a quick sweep of one claw.

Kandler understood. The dragon queen hadn’t been hurt—not really. To it, Sallah’s sword felt no worse than a thorn in a lion’s paw.

The observatory’s floor shook with the force of the dragon queen’s throes, but Kandler saw that these came not from a creature that was wounded but angered. The red dragon’s outburst was little more than a tantrum thrown by a beast used to getting its way in all things—instantly.

Greffykor growled something at the dragon queen, and the red dragon froze. She glared at the silver dragon with hate-filled eyes then swung her tail around to her right, the side closest to Kandler.

He could see now that she could not reach the end of her own tail—at least not without undergoing some back-bending contortions. The blazing sword sat there in her tail, crackling away but not burning her scales a bit. A rivulet of blood trickled down from the wound, but it clearly seemed more of a nuisance than a threat.

The dragon queen snarled at Greffykor. Keeping his head low, the silver dragon crept toward the crimson tail, the talons on one of its hands extended toward the offending piece of burning metal. Greffykor snatched the blade free from the dragon queen’s flesh with one sharp move, and the red dragon howled in pain and relief.

Kandler reached for the rope that down the hole, and he began to lower himself down it. As his eyes became level with the floor, though, he stopped and watched.

The dragon queen growled at Greffykor, and the silver dragon nodded in response. "Of course,” he said, "you are both gracious and wise in your mercy. I do not wish for you to have to trouble with destroying my home to find these vermin. I will roust them out for you and present them to you as my gift.”

Chapter

51

K
andler wrapped the rope around one leg and then slid down it fast enough to make the fabric in his pants grow hot. As he hit the floor of the chamber below, he spotted Burch and Espre peering out from behind one of the gigantic sets of rings that cluttered the chamber from floor to ceiling.

"Hide!” Kandler said as he sprinted toward them. He had no idea how long it would take Greffykor to come around looking for them, but he had no intention of leaving any of them standing out where the creature could see them.

Espre started for Kandler, her arms held wide, fear and joy warring on her face. Burch grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back behind a cabinet that looked large enough to hide an entire wagon inside it. She started to protest but gave up when she saw Kandler coming straight for them.

Kandler didn’t hear the dragon come into the room behind him so much as he felt it. The beating of the creature’s wings made barely a sound, but it displaced so much air as it descended into the gigantic chamber that the justicar could feel the increase of pressure in his ears.

He charged forward, convinced for a moment that the creature might land on top of him and crush the life from him. Burch and Espre disappeared behind the cabinet in front of him in the blink of an eye.

Kandler hoped that the dragon might not have seen the pair in the dimness, so he peeled off to the right instead of joining the others. He spied one of the massive, demarcated rings hanging in the air before him, nearly but not quite touching the floor. As he passed it, he reached out and grabbed it, swinging himself behind it.

The ring moved as Kandler’s hand touched it, and the formerly dim chamber leaped to life. The runes carved into the metallic rings began to glow with the light of dying embers. Each ring glowed with a slightly different hue, ranging from reddish to bluish and every color in between.

Kandler released the ring in his hand and stepped back. It had started to hum beneath his fingers as he held it, and he had hedrd a single note ringing in his ears. It had wavered and warbled in some kind of pattern, so regular that it seemed like it might be trying to communicate something to him—or to a creature with a larger mind.

The justicar stared at his tingling hand for a moment and decided not to touch any of the rings again.

Then he heard the dragon snort.

"Such devices are not meant for your kind,” the silvery creature said. "The Prophecy is too much for you. Even a dragon can only conceive of a fractional aspect of the whole. For you to attempt to do so would cause your brains to leak from your ears.”

Kandler took a half-step back from the ring in front of him, but he kept it between himself and the dragon.

"You need to turn the girl over to me,” Greffykor said. "I will present her to the queen. With luck and a bit of well-placed flattery, she may then deign to leave the rest of us alone.”

"No,” Kandler said.

"She is doomed in any case. The Prophecy has foretold this. I could not see the means of her death, but now I see why. She dies here, tonight.”

"And your observatory is impervious to scrying.”

"Even from my own eyes.” Greffykor nodded.

Kandler hefted his fangblade and tapped it against the ring in front of him. The metallic circle spun a few inches then came to a stop.

"You can stop her,” Kandler said, his voice dripping with disgust. "This is your home. How can you let this queen’ of yours barge in here and order you about? ”

Greffykor snorted. "You are amusing. You think to shame me into confronting my guests over your welfare.” "From my experience, dragons have no shame.”

"Not the way that humans think of it.” Greffykor closed his tooth-lined maw, then opened it again. "The queen is more powerful than you could imagine. She could murder me here in my own home and suffer no consequences for her actions.”

"Is she your queen?”

"No, but that doesn’t matter. In her land, her word is law.”

"And here?”

"Out here on our frontier, I am a law unto myself.” "Which means nothing.”

"It means most dragons respect my work and my solitude. If anyone else were to attack me, I could call on others to come to my aid.”

"But not against this queen.”

"Not without the ear of another queen or king, but I am my own dragon, and I do not fall under anyone’s wing.”

Kandler grimaced. He didn’t see a good way out of this. He could only hope that Burch and Espre were doing something to save themselves while he kept Greffykor occupied. "We are your guests. Doesn’t that mean anything?” Greffykor shook his head, his silvery crest waving above him as he moved.

"If I do not deliver the girl soon, the queen will kill me and tear down my tower with her bare claws.”

Kandler stared at the dragon and then at their surroundings. The tower seemed invulnerable to him, as eternal as a mountain, as did Greffykor, but he decided to take the dragon at his word. The queen, it seemed, did not make idle threats—and Kandler had seen what a dragon could do to a mountain.

In frustration, the justicar slashed at the steel circle in front of him. The blow clanged off the ring’s surface, and the strange letters on it glowed brighter. Near where the blade had notched the circle, the runes shone blindingly bright.

Greffykor hissed. "You do not know what magics you tamper with here.”

"I don’t care,” Kandler said. "I just want my daughter left alone.”

"You might as well ask for the moons to stop spinning through the sky.”

"If that’s what it takes.”

Somewhere above, a woman screamed.

Kandler recognized Sallah’s voice, even raised as it was. He started to dash forward, around the ring between him and the rope that led to the upper level, but Greffykor stepped into his way.

That single step was like a house falling into Kandler’s path. He stopped cold.

"Let me by,” the justicar snarled.

Greffykor flicked a single talon forward. It caught Kandler in the chest and sent him flying back past the ring. He landed in a heap where the floor met the wall behind him.

Kandler heard another scream. This time it came from Espre.

The justicar felt like a horse had dropped onto his chest. He couldn’t get to his feet. He couldn’t even breathe. His vision tunneled hard. All he could see was the vicious end of Greffykor’s snout bared at him.

Then Espre was at his side, holding him and trying to shake some life into him. He followed his first instinct and tried to push her away.

"No,” he said. "I won’t let her have you.”

Espre gasped in relief. "You’re alive.”

"At my pleasure,” Greffykor said. "You will come with me now, or I will kill him.”

Burch appeared between Kandler and the dragon, his crossbow leveled at the creature. "Try it, and I’ll put out your eye.”

"I will not harm the elf,” Greffykor said.