I was forced back, and turned to Michelle.
“There is a cellar door in the back room. Go there and find the exit into the street. It is certainly encrusted in snow, and potentially in ice; the dragons will not be guarding it, because it will be hidden by the very element which serves them.”
“Okay,” Michelle piped, fleeing into the back room of Gordon’s Instruments. Although there were four ice dragons in Gordon’s shop, they all let Michelle go without much interest. Of course. It was me whom they had come for.
One of those four dragons—a shimmering, slender, white creature with black, bottomless eyes—dove for me with a blast of ice as sharp as dagger blades. I felt my face, the only unprotected part of my body, lacerate in several places, and I staggered back, shaking off the pain. I was so dazed by these turns of events—Michelle’s heavy-handed persuasion, the mirror coming alight, Penelope and the ice prince entangled together, the spat with Michelle and now the ice dragon infiltration—I still held the damn lute.
When I exhaled a plume of white-hot flame into the wooden instrument, its interior cavern sparkled with flame, and when the white dragon converged on me again, I smashed it against his throat. He went down, stunned, and I delved into the leather satchel slung on my back, extracting a sword from within. Again, I burned the blade with my own orange tongue and sent it hurtling through the air, sinking into the white throat of the offending dragon. He went down and I vaulted atop him, gripping the hilt of the Aena sword and extracting its dripping, bloodied blade from his throat.
When I looked up again, one of the other ice dragons, also white, had come closer with a strangely human expression in his eyes. I assumed that they were family, and I reeled back with the blade, prepared to strike in this dragon’s moment of weakness… but then my arm relaxed, and I held the sword again at the defensive position. I could not let the atrocities of the ice people make me become like one of them.
Turning from the carcass of the fallen white dragon, I observed the scene at the hearth and saw that Einhen was in the grasp of a dark blue dragon’s jaws. He struggled and bled, but appeared to be very much alive; the dragon had secured him at the shoulder. Khem, meanwhile, had been cornered near the front window of the shop, squaring off with another dragon, this one small and black laced with blue. The dragon was too small to be of major concern, even though Khem appeared to be cornered. His body language expressed no despair as he engulfed the other dragon with his flames.
Forced to choose between the two, I dove to Einhen’s side and slashed at the offending dragon with my sword, taking half of one wing. The dark blue dragon wailed, jaws falling open to release my wounded friend. Einhen collapsed, groaning and wounded but alive.
The dark blue dragon relented, reeling backwards toward the front entrance of Gordon’s. As he receded into the winter storm beyond, a bloodcurdling wail emitted from the street—and I realized that Khem was no longer in the store.
And beyond the doorway was snow streaked with blood.
“No,” I breathed, lurching forward.
In all my years as the prince of The Hearthlands, I had only seen peacetime; I had never seen the horrors of war.
Leaping over the corpse of the first white dragon, the one I had stabbed in the throat, I raced into the snow-choked streets to see that Khem had been dragged into the distance, and the other white dragon—the one I had shown mercy—had its bastard head lowered over the torso of my friend, ripping through his remains. Its glistening white snout shone with Khem’s vitality.
My mouth fell open.
There was no possibility that Khem would live through this. His head was hanging, boneless and slack, at the end of his neck. So much blood… and the viscera which clung to the white dragon’s teeth… Khem wasn’t even struggling…
Still, I was electrified, spurred through the shock and driving snow toward the white dragon and Khem.
“Get off of him, vulture!” I roared, slinging my sword through air. The white dragon, stained red, scrambled backward, abandoning Khem. Not because he was afraid, I was sure, but because he was not hungry for the carrion of my old friend. There was nothing to be gained by protecting him from me, nothing to be gained by taking him off into the sky. There was no way Khem would survive, but I couldn’t just let him be eaten alive.
“Khem,” I breathed, dropping to my knees beside the fallen form of my friend.
Although Khem’s eyes were open and moving, his mouth was not. Blood coursed down his chin.
I had just scooped my arms around him and was gently lifting him when an explosion of fire rattled the very roof of the instrument shop.