The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

  The young elf had no home. With Kandler gone, she was alone in the world.

  The tears started then.

  Esprë still wept when something that felt like a jagged, razor-tipped knife stabbed into her brain. She screeched in terror as she fought to shove back against the telepathic attack, but its sharp point sliced through her mental shields. If not for her savage grip on the airship’s wheel, she would have fallen into a pile of bones on the bridge.

  The young elf summoned every bit of her determination to haul herself up by her arms. As she did, she glared down and saw Te’oma struggling to her knees. “There’s your first lesson as a killer,” the changeling rasped, her pale skin faded to skeletal white. “Always make sure your victim is dead.”

  Esprë didn’t waste any effort on words. She knew that this was the end. Either she or the changeling would die here. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Hold very still,” Te’oma said, in the tone of a mother scolding an errant child. “I’m going to bind you hand and foot this time. That’s the penalty for breaking your word.”

  Esprë ignored the telepath’s patter. Instead, she cleared her mind and reached out to the elemental trapped in the ring of fire that wreathed the airship like a golden ring around a tattered scroll.

  The ship lunged forward and down, and Te’oma flipped straight over the bridge’s console, then slid along the main deck toward the bow, screaming the entire way. Only the railing at the ship’s prow kept her from sailing right over the edge and into the open sky below.

  Then the ship leaned forward farther, and Te’oma tumbled right over the railing and disappeared.

  Esprë reached out for the leather strap hanging from the ship’s console and bound herself to the wheel. She knew the changeling wouldn’t be gone for long. She grabbed the wheel and coaxed the elemental into charging toward the ground with every bit of speed it could muster.

  “No!” Te’oma screamed as she swung in behind the ship’s stern on the leathery, batlike wings of her magic cloak.

  The changeling dove down at the young elf, her arms spread wide, her brain lashing out at Esprë’s tender mind. “I won’t let you do this,” she said. “You can’t!”

  The pain in Esprë’s head blinded her for a moment, and she thought she might pass out. She slumped over the wheel, feeling the wind blasting through her hair as the ship plummeted to the ground like a blazing stone.

  “Stop it!” Te’oma screamed as she wrapped her arms around Esprë, trying to grab for the wheel, to wrest control from the young elf and pull the airship up before it was too late. “I said stop it!”

  A melancholy grin appeared on Esprë’s face as she looked over her shoulder at the changeling who was trying to save her life. “I’m not trying to kill myself,” she shouted over the roaring wind, or maybe the ring of fire that seemed to be cackling with glee. She reached back with a hand and slapped the changeling across the cheek.

  “I’m trying to kill you!”

  Esprë’s head exploded in an excruciating show of pain and light. As darkness swept over her in an undeniable black wave, she saw Te’oma’s eyes roll back into her head.

  The last thing she knew was her own bitter smile.

  What do you mean ‘thunder lizards’?” Kandler said to Burch.

  The shifter pointed down at the large pile of fresh dung in front of him. “Step in it once, you never forget it.”

  Kandler, Burch, Sallah, Brendis, and Xalt had been walking northeast for the better part of the day. “Better to get away from the Cyre,” Burch had said, “and Ikar’s bandits.”

  The plan was to march until their path crossed that of the north-south lightning rail line that ran through the nation of the Talenta Plains, from the capital of Gatherhold in the south up toward the Karrnathi capital Korth.

  “Unless the changeling can navigate by the stars, she’s probably just guessing which way to fly that ship,” Burch had said. “With luck, she’ll follow the rail line north until she spots something she recognizes.”

  “Do we have any prayer of catching her?” Brendis had asked.

  “Prayer’s your solution.” The shifter twitched his nose at the knight as he picked up his pace, forcing Brendis to trot after him to keep up. “Not mine.”

  Burch had smelled the dung long before Kandler saw it. The waving grasses stood high in the plains, past the justicar’s waist, which made spotting something lying on the ground difficult. The shifter had signaled for Kandler and Sallah to stop but let Brendis step right into the smelly mess.

  While the young knight tried to scrape his boots clean, Sallah asked Burch the question burning in Kandler’s mind. “What size of thunder lizards are you talking about?”

  Burch screwed up his face. “Spoor’s not too big.”

  “It covered my foot to the ankle!” Brendis said, dragging his foot through the long grass in a wide circle around the others.

  “Small, for a thunder lizard,” Burch said. “Probably a clawfoot, about as big as a lupallo. Good fighters too. Got a toe claw you could use to harvest wheat. Halflings around here ride them to war.”

  Sallah blew out a deep breath. “I’ve heard of such things, but they seemed mere fodder for stories, tales told to scare children.”

  Burch smirked. “They’re real enough. Just ask Brendis.”

  “How many?” Kandler asked.

  A few yards to the north, Brendis slipped in something soft and disappeared in the grass. “The Flame take this whole place!” he cursed as he scrambled to his feet, dragging his leg behind him, trying to wipe it clean.

  “At least two,” Burch said, laughing softly at the young knight, his mouth drawn wide and baring his rows of sharp, pointed teeth. “Keep hopping around,” he called to Brendis. “You’ll find them all.”

  “Is this trouble?” Kandler asked.

  Burch shrugged. “Wild clawfeet hunt in packs. They can devour a bull in a matter of minutes. If they’re tame, well, it depends on who’s riding them, don’t it?”

  “The halflings of the plains are peaceable folk,” Brendis said as he gave up on getting himself any cleaner. As he walked back to the others, Kandler wondered if the horrible stench that followed the knight would draw the clawfeet to them or drive them away.

  “Ever met any?” Burch asked.

  Brendis shook his head.

  “The Plains aren’t a nation like you’d think of it—more a collection of tribes. If Cyre and Karrnath hadn’t kept bugging them during the Last War, they’d have stayed that way. Only a common threat like that brought them all together.”

  “So they stand united,” said Brendis, “civilized by their interactions with the other nations.”

  “If you can call defending yourselves ‘interaction,’ then sure, but the war’s over. They’re sure to revert to their old ways.”

  “Which were?”

  The shifter gazed at the young knight with his wide, yellow eyes. “Nomadic hunting and gathering, punctuated by deadly arguments between tribes.”

  “We have nothing to do with their disagreements,” Sallah said. “Perhaps they will let us pass unmolested.”

  “It’s a strange world,” Burch said, his tone betraying his true feelings on the matter. “Anything could happen.” He stalked off to the northeast again, letting the others trail in his wake, each of them watching their footing as much as him.

  “So,” Kandler said, trotting to catch up with the shifter, “have you ever been this way before?”

  “More than once,” Burch said. “Not since the end of the war.” He stared out at the horizon before them. “Lot’s changed.”

  “How so?”

  The shifter jerked his head off to the right. “I don’t remember seeing such a large hunting party before.”

  Kandler looked south. There, just on the crest of a low hill, he saw a section of especially tall grass waving in the wind. At first, that didn’t seem unusual, but then he realized that the wind was blowing from the west. He shaded
his eyes with his hand and squinted at the hill.

  The extra tall grass turned out to be harvested tufts of the stuff used to camouflage something large moving beneath it—or several somethings. Kandler counted at least ten different sections of independent grass roaming their way toward them. At the rate they moved, they’d overtake the walkers in a matter of minutes.

  Kandler looked around, but there was nothing to see in any direction but rolling hills covered with the same, sun-blasted grass.

  Burch caught his eye as he motioned for the knights and Xalt to join them. “No chance,” he said.

  Before the shifter could explain things to the others, a dozen creatures tossed off their grassy covers and sprinted toward them, their tiny riders letting loose a spine-tingling war whoop as they came. The large lizards—clawfoots, just like Burch had guessed—stood about six feet tall and easily massed over two hundred pounds. They were long, lean, and muscular, covered with thick amber scales above, with splashes of emerald green on their chests. Their arms were thin and stunted but ended in vicious claws that looked like they could pry open a man’s chest in seconds. They raced about on long, thick-muscled legs that propelled them on a sharp, fast gait no mammal could mimic. Their heads appeared to be mostly rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  Brendis drew his sword, which burst into silvery flames as it leapt from his scabbard. Kandler put a hand on the young knight’s shoulder and said, “Put it away.”

  “Are you mad?” Brendis said. “We are under attack.”

  “We don’t know that yet,” Kandler said, “and even if we are, do you think we can stand against a dozen clawfoots and their well-armed riders?”

  “With faith in the Flame, all things are possible.”

  “Put that damn thing out before you start a fire!” Burch growled.

  “But that is the symbol of our faith,” the young knight said.

  Sallah lay a hand on Brendis’s sword arm. “Then rely on your faith rather than its symbol.”

  Chastened, Brendis extinguished the flames but still held his blade before him, ready to defend himself and his compatriots to his last breath.

  By this time, the clawfoots had the walkers surrounded. Each of them bore a rider on a reptile-skin saddle on its back and had a bit jammed into its mouth. They stared at the walkers with their slit yellow eyes, straining at their bits, hoping for a chance at the fresh meat standing before them.

  None of the people riding the clawfoots could have been more than half Kandler’s height. Despite their size, they exuded danger. They wore dark tattoos and red war paint in aggressive patterns over their sun-bronzed skin. No city halflings, these nomads were wiry and strong, used to living an entire life on the trail, never stopping for more than a week to settle down—and often much less.

  “Wrong place for you,” one of the halflings said. This one, with his long golden hair held back in a thick braid, rode the largest of the clawfoots, a creature that strained against its bridle with every step.

  “We’re on a rescue mission,” Kandler said, speaking straight at the leader. “We’re trying to rescue my daughter.”

  The halfling glanced at his fellows and laughed. “Long way from home.”

  “We come from Breland. We followed her kidnapper through the Mournland to here.”

  “Those not Brelish.” The halfling pointed at Xalt and the two knights with his spear. The stone tip had been worked to a vicious edge with a barbed head behind it. Three red feathers dangled from its other end.

  “Our friends joined us in our quest to get my daughter back,” Kandler said, walking closer to the leader. “In such desperate times, nationalities matter little.”

  The halfling jabbed out at the justicar with his spear, forcing the man back. “Countries mean nothing to us—or the dead.”

  At this, Burch stepped forward. “I’ve not been here for a few years, but is this how the hunters of Talenta treat all their guests?”

  The halfling nodded as he considered this. “We hunt no food. We spot a ship in the sky three days past.”

  “The airship!” Kandler stepped toward the leader again, and the halfling loosed his reins enough for his clawfoot to bite down at the justicar, its teeth snapping empty air only inches from Kandler’s face.

  “You know it?” the leader said, spitting on the ground. “Here, we kill spies.”

  “No,” said Kandler. “That’s the ship that took my daughter from me. Which way did it go?”

  The leader shook his war-painted head. “We don’t share secrets with spies,” he said.

  “Let’s go,” Burch said. The shifter walked straight between two of the clawfoots and off to the northeast again. As he sauntered away, a spear from one of the leader’s lieutenants slammed into the ground before him and stuck.

  “Another step, and the next one will be through your heart,” the leader called.

  Burch turned on the halflings and glared at each of them in turn. “You’re a bunch of cowards,” he said. “You’re not going to hurt us, so if you’re not going to help, then get out of our way.”

  “You dare talk—”

  “He dares,” said Kandler, following his old friend’s lead. He glanced at the others. Brendis looked horrified by the turn of events. Even Xalt stood open-mouthed. Sallah just smiled at him and waited for him to speak to the halflings again, which he did, gazing into her eyes. “I dare. We all dare.”

  Eleven spears stretched toward Kandler and the others still in the circle. Not for the first time, Kandler wondered if he and Burch had made a terrible mistake.

  Esprë couldn’t remember ever feeling so bad. Her head hurt where she had banged it on the airship’s wheel—again—and pain lanced through her left arm every time she tried to move it. And it was hot, hotter than a sun-savaged desert. She licked her cracked lips and winced. She raised her right hand to her face, and it came back slicked with blood.

  She couldn’t find the changeling, and the thought that Te’oma might come back to kill her sent her heart racing. She shoved off from the bridge’s console with her feet but realized she was still strapped to the wheel. As her right hand moved to release herself—she tucked her left into her waistband to offer it some support—she wondered why everything looked hazy, like she was caught in the mists of the Mournland again.

  Then the smell of smoke set her coughing, something the mysterious border of that damned land had never done. Was the ship burning?

  Esprë glanced up and saw the ring of fire still spinning around the ship, crackling with power that strove to shatter its mystical harness. She spied cracks in the upper binding arc, a long curve of polished, rune-crusted wood, and she wondered if the lower arc still clung to the ship.

  The smoke spiraled up around the ship, past the arc, and into the sky beyond. Esprë stumbled away from the airship’s wheel, the ship pitched forward at a steep angle that threatened to pull her toward the splintered bow, but she clawed her way with her one good arm to the bridge’s aft railing and surveyed the damage.

  The airship sprawled in a shallow valley surrounded by easy, rolling hills on all sides. Pieces of it lay strewn in the wake it had cut through the tall grasses of the plains as it skidded to a halt. It sat in the center of a wide circle of ash, black and gray remnants of the tall grasses that had done nothing to cushion its landing. On the edges of the circle, gouts of flame fed on fresh, dry grass, surrounding the ship in an ever-growing nimbus of fire.

  Esprë gasped at the sight, then choked on the smoke that collected in her lungs. She spun about and slid back down to the airship’s wheel, desperate to move the battered thing up and away from the fire. She wondered for a moment why the fire hadn’t consumed the entire ship, made of wood as it was. Then she thought of the ring of fire that propelled the ship through the air and knew that part of the magic that bound the fiery being into the ring must also protect the ship from its heat.

  She wrapped her right hand around the wheel and reached out for the elemental with her mind. Most t
imes, she enjoyed piloting the ship. The thrill of having such a large boat driven by such a powerful creature respond to her will never got old. Now, though, the ship ignored her. Instead of the grudging pliancy she expected from the elemental, it seemed to laugh at her efforts. The crackling of the fiery ring intensified as she tried to push the creature harder, filling her ears with its mean-hearted mirth. The elemental sensed that the ship would soon fall apart and it would be free.

  Esprë brought her injured arm up so she could grab the wheel with both hands, and she concentrated on getting the elemental to move the ship with all her might. She willed it to pull free from the earth that dragged it down, to slough off gravity’s greedy bonds and soar high once more through the clean, fresh skies. Sweat beaded on her scorched brow as she changed from ordering the ship to move to pleading with it.

  Nothing worked. The ship stayed mired in the soft land in which it had crashed—in which she had crashed it.

  Just as Esprë gave up on the ship, she heard a groan from the other side of the console. She peered over and saw Te’oma there, her body draped across the remains of the hatch that led into the ship’s hold. Back in the city of Construct, a warforged titan had torn through the hull, demolished the hold, and smashed the lid from the hatch, but its frame still squatted there in the cracked decking.

  The changeling must have been flung from the bridge in the crash and caught there, Esprë guessed. Otherwise, she would have skittered along the deck and fallen into the fire that had devoured the surrounding landscape.

  It stunned Esprë that Te’oma still lived. She’d tried to use the dragonmark to kill her twice and failed each time. Was it that she couldn’t bring herself to kill anyone? Or did the changeling have some kind of special hold on her, perhaps a mental block she’d telepathically placed in her head? Or perhaps Esprë just needed to try harder.

  The young elf stared down at the changeling and wondered how she could make it down to her without hurting herself. Her injured arm would make navigating the deck difficult.