Мэтт Форбек - The Queen of Death

Kandler rubbed his chin. “So where do I fit into all of that?”

“Wherever you would like.” Sallah’s smile turned coy. “Are Knights of the Silver Flame allowed to marry outside of the Order?”

“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, I think.” “Humor me.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m living proof of such marriages. My mother grew up on a farm outside Flamekeep. She served as the innkeeper in her father’s inn until she met my father.”

“Did your mother convert to the faith?”

“What makes you think that she wasn’t an adherent of the Church?”

“Most innkeepers I know are agnostic.”

“Fair enough.” Sallah paused. “No, she never did. It was what drove them apart.”

“They ended their marriage?”

“The Church doesn’t permit such things. A matrimonial vow is until death. They chose to live separate but faithful lives.”

“That must have been hard on you.”

Sallah lowered her eyes. “We all have our burdens to bear.”

“Am I to be your salve?”

Sallah raised her chin and gazed at him. “I’d like that.” Kandler took her in his arms, and they kissed again. When they parted, he said. “Why tell me all this now? Right before we’re about to go meet with a dragon?”

“If we survive this, I want for us to be together. I thought you should know that.”

“You don’t think we’ll survive this.” He peered deep into her eyes.

She did not flinch. “No, and I couldn’t stand the idea of dying without telling you how I feel.”

“I’m glad you did,” Kandler said.

“Truly? ”

“I’ve been standing here at the bow for the past few hours, trying to figure out just how I could find a way to tell you the same thing.”

The justicar took the lady knight in his arms.

“Land ho!” Monja called from the bridge.

Sallah and Kandler broke apart. “She must have been a pirate in a previous life,” said Kandler.

“Do you believe in such things? Multiple lives?” Kandler grinned as he walked back down the deck of the airship with her, hand in hand. “No more than I believe in anything else.”

As they approached the bridge, Kandler turned his head to port to see what Monja was pointing at. Off in the distance, he spotted a series of floating lights. In the darkness, he would have thought they were a little more than a tightly clustered constellation of stars. When he looked at them closely, though, he saw that they moved.

He turned back to call out to Zanga, who stood on the bridge between Monja and Esprë. “Is that where we’re going?” he asked.

The shrouded woman nodded. “That is the observatory of Greffykor.”

“Observatory?” said Burch, who’d been helping Te’oma cook up a hot meal over the firepit on the main deck. “What do dragons observe?”

“Everything!” Zanga said.

“Then I guess he’ll know we’re on our way,” the shifter said, “and I hope he has something better to eat than this. I’m getting tired of leftover soarwing.”

Kandler felt strangely numb as the Phoenix approached the observatory. The idea of meeting with a dragon and perhaps learning more about what he might be able to do to save Esprë thrilled him. At the same time, he feared that the dragon might slaughter them all. The two notions canceled each other out and left him with nothing.

As the ship drew closer, the observatory stood out like a silver spike stabbing from the top of the mountains. The light of the moons shimmered on its glittering surface, and a series of large glowing balls swirled about the place for a moment then froze in place. These luminescent spheres seemed to be made of crystal wrapped in bands of silver. Runes had been cut all the way through these straps of metal, and the light shone through them, spelling out mystic words Kandler knew he would never comprehend.

“There are thirteen spheres,” Zanga said from her perch on the edge of the bridge, “one for each of the moons. These have three bands of metal crossing them, one along each axis.”

“What are the runes?” Esprë said.

They’d gotten close enough that Kandler thought he could almost recognize some of them. Beyond them, the tower loomed larger than ever. It stood at least a hundred feet above the tallest of the mountain peaks, and frost and ice crusted its smooth-carved walls. Kandler wondered how cold it would feel inside, far from the airship’s warming ring of fire.

“Each band has thirteen runes. Those on the first stand for the thirteen moons again. Those on the second represent the thirteen planes of existence. On the third, they depict the thirteen dragonmarks.”

Kandler’s gut flipped. “I thought there were only twelve dragonmarks.” He hoped Zanga could not hear the deception in his voice.

“You forget the Mark of Death,” Zanga said.

The justicar gave his stepdaughter’s shoulder a squeeze and stared up at the tremendous structure. It swept up from the mountains as if part of the toothy peaks and then lanced far out above them. This close, the walls seemed to have been made from gigantic columns of rock drilled from some distant quarry and then dropped here atop the mountain, their inward-sweeping tops tipped toward each other until they almost touched.

The gaps between the columns seemed to have been mortared with pure silver. Spaces showed in these long lines, forming tall, thin windows that glowed with a bluish light. The top of the tower seemed to be open to the air, although it was impossible to tell from the low angle of their approach. The light emanating from the top could have come from a raging bonfire, although it shared the same hue as the illumination that spilled out through the sides of the tower, particularly through the solitary arched entrance.

This gaped like a toothed maw about a quarter of the way down from the tower’s top. A long, stone platform jutted out from the arch, resembling a wide, flat tongue. Monja, who had the airship’s wheel, aimed the craft straight for it.

“Where is the dragon?” Xalt asked. The warforged strained his neck to see through the tower’s entrance. He had stuck close to Esprë since they’d left Seren behind. The thought that the girl had such a protector at her side at all times relieved Kandler. It freed him up to think about more than just standing between her and danger.

“He waits for us inside,” Zanga said. She dropped her shroud over the front of herself again, disappearing underneath it.

“Have you ever been here before?” Sallah asked.

“Once. Right after my mentor passed the shroud to me. It was … sublime. I will not spoil the experience with more words. Soon enough, you will share in it yourself.”

Burch emerged from the ship’s hold with a double armful of crossbows, plus four quivers full of bolts, and some thin rope of elven make. He set them down on the deck with care, and arranged them in a row. Kandler counted four standard crossbows—plus a smaller one that looked like it would be a good fit for Monja—as well as two coils of rope.

When the shifter noticed the others watching him, he winked at them. “Can’t be too careful,” he said.

“Those toys cannot harm Greffykor,” Zanga said. “Your bolts will bounce off his scales.”

“Who said I’d aim for his scales?” Burch said, needling the shrouded woman. “Anyhow, these aren’t for your armored god in there.”

“Then who?”

“Like I said, you can’t be too careful.”

Burch picked up the small crossbow and one of the larger ones. He laid the first at Monja’s feet, along with a quiver of bolts. He gave the second to Xalt, who murmured his thanks as he checked the weapon’s action. Then the shifter handed one coil of rope to Kandler and kept the other for himself.