Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  Deothen laid a hand on Sallah’s arm. “Stand down,” he said. She turned toward him, and he looked deep into her eyes. “These are good people. They are scared. We have no issue with them.”

  “But, sir—” Sallah started.

  Deothen cut her off with a raised eyebrow, then he reached down and unbuckled his sword belt. He wrapped the belt around his blade’s scabbard and handed the bundle to Mardak. “These knights are my charges,” he said as Mardak accepted the sword. “I am responsible for them and their deeds, whether good or ill. I shall bear the burden of your suspicions.”

  Mardak weighed the sword in his hands. “You are charged with the murder of one of our citizens. The penalty for this is death.”

  Levritt blanched. Sallah opened her mouth to object again, but Deothen silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Give them your swords,” he said. He raised his voice to preempt any protests. “We are guests here. We will follow their laws.”

  The knights surrendered their weapons to Kandler. He handed them to Rislinto, one by one, marveling at them as he handled them. Each hilt was long and straight, of a piece with its blade, forged from a single length of the finest steel. Silver filigree wrapped around each crimson scabbard in the pattern of flames licking up the sheath’s full length. The soldier in Kandler felt the urge to draw one of the swords, to test its balance and its edge, but he passed them along instead.

  Rislinto blew out a sigh of professional amazement as he collected the blades. The blacksmith cradled them in his arms as if each was a fragile flower.

  Deothen drew in a deep breath and addressed Mardak. “I place myself in your hands and trust your mercy.”

  “You are far wiser than your young charges,” said Mardak, a hard smile growing on his face. “Now we must determine the truth of your words.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” Deothen asked, as serious as he had been while giving Shawda’s eulogy. “Knights such as I have the power to separate truth from lies. Do you have one among your number blessed with such favors?”

  Mardak shook his head. “Fradelko has been missing now for two full weeks. We will have to resort to more traditional methods.”

  “Wait,” said Kandler. “I can poke around a bit at their campsite, try to confirm their story.”

  Mardak grimaced. “Do not waste your time, justicar. If these people could snatch so many from our midst without detection, then they could surely meddle with any such so-called evidence. We cannot trust our eyes or our hearts.”

  Kandler’s stomach flipped over. He knew where this was going.

  “Our course is clear,” Mardak said. “Trial by fire.”

  You’re out of your mind,” Kandler told Mardak. “Darguun may only lie over the other side of Point Mountain, but we aren’t goblins.”

  The mayor of Mardakine narrowed his eyes at his old friend. “Perhaps you’re forgetting who is in charge here, justicar,” he said. “Our people follow my guidance, and they know I speak the truth.”

  Mardak turned and swept his arms wide, his ashen cloak swirling about him as he did. “My friends, Fradelko is with us no more. We have no means of extracting the truth from these intruders other than the tried and true methods our forebears used.”

  “We could take them to New Cyre,” Kandler said, doing his best to be reasonable in the face of clear madness. The stress of having the citizens of Mardakine disappear one by one had taken its toll on the entire town, and it had affected no one more than Kandler. Still, he knew that the people were near their breaking point, and it seemed that Mardak was ready to snap them over his knee. “They have a priest there.”

  “ ‘New’ Cyre,” Mardak scoffed. “A town filled with those Cyrans too fearful of what our home has become to live in its shadow as we do.”

  Kandler didn’t like the way the conversation was headed. “Prince Oargev is the ruler in exile of Cyre.”

  “Exile?” Mardak said. His eyes widened in wrath. “Look to the east!” He pointed up at the gray tendrils sweeping high into the sky over the crater’s rim. “We were not exiled. We lucky few happened to be outside our homeland the day it was murdered.”

  “Prince Oargev is the rightful heir to the throne of Cyre, and we should present these knights to him for judgment.”

  “What do you care about Cyre, Brelander?” Mardak said.

  Kandler clamped down on his rising temper. Every time the two had a disagreement, Mardak would point out the fact that while Kandler had married an elf from Cyre, that land was not his home.

  “I care about our home here,” Kandler said, forcing the words out one at a time. “I will not let you turn these people into a pack of hobgoblins. We are civilized. We may not be a part of Cyre, but we follow Cyran laws, and they don’t leave room for burning people we don’t like.”

  “Cyre is dead.”

  Until that point, the crowd had murmured along with the argument, chattering support or disgust with each position. At that moment, everyone fell silent. This was the truth they all lived with but always refused to utter.

  Kandler dragged the front of his hand across his mouth as if he hoped to pull out all of the evil things he wished to say before they escaped his lips. When he spoke, his voice was as calm and steady as an executioner’s.

  “If that’s so, then we’re in Breland. My homeland. We don’t burn people to death here either.”

  “Times like these call for us to dispense with such niceties. We must use whatever means necessary to secure our safety.”

  “Like torture?”

  Mardak’s face turned stony. “Whatever means necessary.”

  Kandler locked eyes with Mardak and considered the meaning of the man’s words. Eventually, Mardak looked away and scanned the eyes of the townspeople. Kandler didn’t need to. He knew what he’d see—terror mixed with anger and just a dash of hope that perhaps killing these outsiders would end the disappearances.

  “Fine,” Kandler said.

  Mardak’s head snapped around and he goggled at the justicar. “I’m glad you’ve come to see it my way. You will take them into custody then.” To Kandler’s ears, this was more of a question than Mardak wanted it to be.

  Kandler shook his head. “I’ll take them. To my home. As my guests.”

  Mardak leaned forward and whispered to Kandler like a snake hissing through its teeth. “Do not defy my authority,” he said. “If you break with me, our settlement—our cause—may fall apart. We are besieged on all sides and must speak with one voice. The people need a strong leader. Now more than ever.”

  “Then be one,” Kandler said. He stepped back from the mayor and ordered the people holding Levritt to let him go. “These knights are my guests now. Mistreat them, and it becomes my problem.”

  Kandler looked to Rislinto. The blacksmith blushed.

  “Give them back their swords,” Kandler said.

  Rislinto’s eyes bounced back and forth between Kandler and Mardak. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and along his right cheek. His burly, hairy arms shifted nervously around the bundle of swords that he’d been cradling like an infant.

  “You know where your loyalties lie, Rislinto,” said Mardak. An oily sheen covered the mayor’s upper lip. “With Cyre. And Cyre alone.”

  Kandler stepped up to Rislinto and relieved him of the swords. The blacksmith surrendered them without protest. “I’ll take responsibility for these,” Kandler said, “and their owners.”

  Rislinto nodded and stepped back into the crowd. He refused to meet Mardak’s baleful glare.

  Kandler turned to address the crowd. “You people have a funeral to finish. No matter what happened to Shawda or how she died, she was still one of us. She deserves better than this. Now see to it.”

  Rislinto ordered the men nearest him to fetch torches. Kandler turned away. The sooner he was out of here, the sooner Mardak could calm down.

  Deothen approached Kandler and said, “We are in your debt, justicar. But you do not have to do this for us.”<
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  “I know,” Kandler said as he beckoned the other knights to follow him.

  Kandler glanced up at the roof of the town hall to see Burch still perched there, his crossbow now pointed at Mardak, who hadn’t noticed. With a tug on his ear, Kandler waved the shifter off. He didn’t bother to look up to see if Burch would comply.

  One by one, the knights fell into line behind Kandler as he passed through the town square and headed for home. The townspeople parted before him as he went. None of them met his eyes, but they all looked after him and his charges as they passed.

  Even Norra was silent now, her sobs faded to sniffles. As Kandler reached her, he put an arm around her and gave her a firm hug. Esprë, who stood next to Norra, her arm still around her, whispered something in her friend’s ear. Norra nodded, wiping her tears and giving Esprë a quick embrace.

  The young elf maiden reached up to take Kandler’s hand, and they walked toward their home like that. As they left the townspeople behind, Kandler looked down at Esprë. They hadn’t walked together like this in months.

  Kandler didn’t have any children of his own, and he treasured his stepdaughter’s long childhood. He’d known her for six years already, and he’d raised her alone since her mother’s death four years past. In that time, she had changed so little that she seemed to be the same person. He, on the other hand, had seen his thirty-fifth year, and he was starting to feel it.

  Kandler squeezed Esprë’s hand, and she looked up at him with her wide, almond-shaped eyes. “Thank you,” he said softly. She smiled back at him, and he realized he’d been missing that smile for weeks.

  When Kandler and Esprë reached their home, the knights still in tow, Burch was sitting on the front porch waiting for them. “Took your time,” the shifter said.

  Kandler grinned. “Knights in armor don’t move so quickly.” He released Esprë’s hand and guided her up the steps and into Burch’s arms. She wrapped her arms around the shifter and hugged him so tight his yellow eyes began to bulge.

  “Oof,” Burch said. He pulled himself loose from the elf maid’s embrace and favored her with a wan smile. “Be gentle with your friends.” He tousled her long, blonde hair. Kandler smiled down at the scene for a moment, but a voice from behind interrupted him.

  “Justicar,” Deothen called from the edge of the yard, “you have our gratitude and that of the Silver Flame.” He and the other knights unhitched their horses from Kandler’s post as he spoke.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Kandler asked as he turned to watch the knights work. “Just because I took responsibility for you doesn’t mean you can just ride out of here. You owe me more than that.”

  Deothen shook his head. “Our horses need tending. It has been a long journey for them, taken with all due speed.”

  Kandler tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a full trough and some hay in the stable out back,” he said. “You’re welcome to what you need. Just watch out for Dargent and Cintila.”

  “You have other guests?” Deothen asked, his eyebrow arching high enough to match the path of his widow’s peak.

  “Other horses,” Kandler said, “and they don’t care much for strangers.”

  “Like most of the people around here, it seems,” said Sallah as she led her horse around the side of the house, ahead of the others.

  Kandler glanced to his left, but Burch was already gone around the other side of the house to keep an eye on the knights. The justicar looked back at Deothen. “When you’re done,” he said, “come inside. We need to talk.”

  “Tell me again why you’re here?” Kandler said. He and Deothen sat across the table from each other in the main room of Kandler’s home. Esprë slouched next to Kandler in one of the room’s other well-worn chairs. Even though a chair still sat open, Sallah and the other knights stood, each in a separate corner of the room, their swords once again buckled around their waists. Burch sat perched on the sill of one of the open windows, picking his teeth with a long, black fingerclaw as he glanced inside the house and out.

  “Our Lady Tira Miron, the Voice of the Silver Flame, received a vision that a lost dragonmark has appeared in the Mournland,” Deothen said. He stopped when Kandler held up a battle-scarred hand.

  “You’ve said all that before. What more do you know?”

  Deothen sat up straight and craned his neck at Kandler as if he could see straight through him to the opposite wall.

  “You said you were in my debt,” Kandler said. “It’s time to start evening the score.” He stared deep into the older man’s piercing blue eyes, where he saw a natural distrust of outsiders warring with the duty to repay a kindness done. Duty won.

  “We are looking for the Lost Mark,” Deothen said.

  “Which mark is that?” Kandler said.

  “The Lost Mark,” Deothen repeated, enunciating each word.

  Kandler gasped despite himself. He shook his head in disbelief and said, “It has returned?”

  “This is what Our Lady tells us. It is why we are here.” Deothen was as somber as he’d been at Shawda’s funeral.

  Kandler felt a tug at his sleeve. “What’s he talking about?” Esprë asked as he looked down at her. She seemed to have curled into a ball at the back of the chair’s seat.

  “It’s nothing,” Kandler said, but Sallah spoke up from a corner between two windows. The light streamed in around her on both sides, and the dust in the air swirled and danced in the beams as she spoke.

  “The Thirteenth Mark,” Sallah said in an eager voice. “Some say it was the first of the dragonmarks to appear, and the first and only to be lost.”

  “I’ve heard of dragonmarks,” Esprë said in a voice that surprised Kandler with how grown-up it sounded. “They are magical tattoos that grant the powerful more power.”

  Deothen loosed a good-natured laugh. “Close, but not quite,” he said. “They are birthmarks passed down through the strongest of bloodlines. A few rare and lucky members of the blessed peoples have them. These form the bases for the dragonmarked houses. They resemble tattoos, but they arise naturally in those born to them.”

  “Blessed peoples?” Esprë asked.

  “Humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, elves, and some half-elves and even half-orcs.”

  “No shifters?” Esprë glanced at Burch. Kandler followed her eyes and saw his friend still sitting in the window, his clawed feet wrapped around the sill. He wore a smirk on his face.

  Deothen sucked at his teeth. “No, child,” he said. “No shifters have ever been found with a dragonmark.”

  Esprë gazed at Burch for a moment. The shifter smiled back at her, baring all of his long, feral teeth. Her eyes flew wide as an idea struck her. “Maybe they’re just hidden under all the hair,” she said.

  The room erupted into laughter. Burch nearly fell backward out of his window, but he managed to right himself in time. Esprë blushed with embarrassment at first, but when Kandler leaned over and gave her a one-armed hug, she joined in with the rest.

  “What—?” Esprë said loudly. Kandler could tell she was eager to move on, so he motioned for the others to shush. “What is the Lost Mark the mark of?”

  All laughter in the room evaporated like raindrops on hot coals.

  “That’s not important,” Kandler said, trying to change the subject.

  “I mean,” Esprë continued, apparently not to be dissuaded, “there are the twelve regular marks, the Mark of Finding, the Mark of Making, the Mark of Storm, and so on. What’s the thirteenth the mark of?” She leaned forward in her seat now, ready for the answer, no matter what it might be.

  “The Mark of Death,” Sallah said soberly. “The one who bears it has mastery over life and death.”

  Esprë’s brows creased as she digested this. A hush feel over the house. The silence seemed to bother the dark-haired knight, who spoke. “Aren’t there any birds here?” he said as he fidgeted against the wall.

  “Nope,” said Burch. All eyes turned to the shifter. “Too c
lose to the Mournland. Not much grows around here, not enough for animals to feed on.”

  Deothen looked from Burch to Kandler. “Then how do you people survive?”

  Kandler tapped his hand on the table a few times before answering. “We trade with New Cyre, mostly. Sometimes with Vathirond or Kennrun.”

  Sallah nodded. “We passed through Vathirond on our way here. The justicar there told us of this place.”

  “But what do you trade?” Deothen asked. “I can see your needs are many, but what would traders want from you?”

  “Things from Cyre,” Kandler said. He hesitated for a moment before he continued. He knew Mardak wouldn’t like him talking to outsiders about such things, but at the moment he didn’t much care what Mardak liked. “This town was founded as a base of operations for a group of people who want to learn what happened during the Day of Mourning. We’ve been here since the end of the war.”

  Deothen nodded. “Those must have been two long years. Have you discovered anything?”

  “Only a lot of dead people,” Kandler said. “We’ve never ventured farther than the Glass Plateau, a shelf high above the plains, filled with jagged formations of colored glass. The place is filled with never-ending spells that have come to life. And there are things more dangerous than that in the Mournland. Cyre is beyond dead. It’s been … twisted.” Kandler sighed deeply. “The ruins between here and the Plateau are filled with all sorts of things—stuff that used to belong to the dead whose bodies still lie there, never rotting. We gather up some of that and sell it to finance the town and our expeditions.”

  “You haven’t gotten very far yet,” Sallah said.

  Kandler glared at the woman. She was beautiful but clueless. “Have you ever been to the Mournland?” he asked her.

  Sallah shook her head. “No.”

  “Then you have no idea—” He stopped short at the sound of a quick two taps then three on the house’s western wall. He glanced at the empty window where Burch had been.