Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  “That’s right!” The dwarf’s voice brightened for a moment, then darkened again. “But who would be willing?”

  “What about those men who brought Kandler and Burch in?” Sallah asked. “They seemed handy enough with their weapons.”

  Kandler snorted. “Most of them haven’t been in a fight since the end of the war. Two years is long enough for a blade to rust.”

  “They’re better than nothing,” Temmah said. “They were enough to haul you in.”

  “We surrendered,” Burch spat. “If somethin’ wanders out of the Mournland, it won’t be so kind.”

  “Right,” Temmah said, as if he’d somehow forgotten.

  “What about your friends, lady knight?” Kandler asked. “They look sharp and ready.”

  “That we are,” said Sallah, “but would Mardak allow them to serve?”

  “He’s not the justicar.”

  Temmah rumbled with laughter.

  “Take them aside and ask them quietly,” Kandler called to the dwarf. “Mardak doesn’t need to know. If he finds out … well, it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

  “Excellent!” Temmah said with a little laugh. “I’m off.”

  Before the dwarf got more than a few steps away, Kandler called after him once more. “Temmah?”

  “Yes?” The dwarf dragged himself back to the door again.

  “If you’re going to leave this lady to watch over us, shouldn’t she be able to open the door?” Kandler held his breath after the words left his mouth. He hoped his friend would either be dumb enough to fall for this or smart enough to play along.

  Kandler heard the dwarf rummage around in his pockets. Through the window, he saw Sallah reach down to accept something from the dwarf, but then Temmah stopped. “Is this wise? She’s a knight of Thrane.”

  “Aren’t you about to deputize her friends?”

  The dwarf didn’t answer for a long moment.

  “I can’t see you, Temmah,” said Kandler. “You have to speak.”

  “Uh, yes. I nodded yes. Sorry.”

  “Then …” Kandler said, drawing it out and hoping that Temmah would beat him to the punch. It didn’t happen. “Make her your first deputy.”

  “A stupendous idea!” Temmah said. “Sallah?”

  “Yes?” The young knight answered sweetly.

  “Would you do us the honor of being a deputy justicar for the fair town of Mardakine?”

  Sallah stifled a laugh, then said solemnly, “The honor is mine.”

  No one said a word for a moment. “Give her the key,” Burch growled.

  “Oh!” Temmah said. “Here you are, miss.”

  Sallah thanked him, then held the key up to the window for Kandler and Burch to see.

  Temmah cleared his throat and spoke. “That’s all there is to it?”

  “Less even. You’d better find some deputies and get to work. It’s sure to be dark by now, and the town lies undefended.”

  “Your Mardak didn’t think this through well, did he?” said Sallah. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.

  Kandler smiled. “Go, Temmah,” he called.

  “Yes, yes!” The dwarf stumped up the stairs and was gone.

  Sallah shook her head as she watched him go. Kandler could see her red curls swinging in the torchlight. She turned back to the cell and pressed her face between the cold, iron bars. “Why do you protect these people?”

  Kandler raised his eyebrows. “That’s a strange question coming from a Knight of the Silver Flame.”

  “You’re not a knight.”

  Burch snorted at that.

  “Keep walking,” Kandler said, flicking his own chains at the shifter’s heels.

  “Well?” said Sallah.

  Kandler drew in a long breath and blew it out. Sallah waited for him.

  “They lost their whole country. When Cyre was destroyed on the Day of Mourning.”

  “You’re a Brelander.”

  “I … I hadn’t lived in Breland for a while.”

  Burch snorted. He opened his mouth to speak, but Kandler shut it with a blazing glare.

  “Was your wife from Cyre?”

  Kandler couldn’t think of a thing to say. He noticed that Burch didn’t snort this time. In fact, the shifter had frozen in his tracks. Kandler looked up at his old friend, his mouth a grim, bloodless line across his face.

  “My apologies,” Sallah said in a soft voice. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “She was,” Kandler said abruptly. “She died on the Day of Mourning.”

  Sallah nodded. No one spoke for a moment. Kandler wished that Burch would start pacing again, but the shifter stood rock still.

  “She was an elf,” Sallah said. It was not a question.

  “How did …? Ah.” Kandler allowed himself a quick grin. “Esprë.”

  “You are no father to that girl.”

  Burch broke in there, striding toward the door as far as his chains would let him. “He’s a fine father!”

  “I’m sorry,” Sallah said. “I meant by blood. I’m sure the justicar is a wonderful parent.”

  Kandler waved off the comment. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, “but we get by. Tell me more about this dragonmark you’re looking for.”

  Sallah brightened at what seemed a welcome attempt to change the subject. “The Mark of Death, yes. It is imperative that we find the bearer—and soon.”

  “Are you looking for an infant then?” Kandler asked.

  Sallah shot the justicar a confused look. “Of course not. Most dragonmarks appear in the bearer’s youth, as they make the transition from child to adult.”

  Kandler nodded at that, trying to keep his face a mask. He feared what it might mean.

  “Have you never seen a dragonmark?” Sallah asked.

  Kandler cocked his head. “I’ve seen people who bear them—or so they claimed. Most people around here run about fully clothed. What do they look like?”

  “They are rare.” Sallah ran a finger across her lips as she thought about it. “I’ve only seen a few myself. They look like a tattoo made from black ink—sometimes bounded in red, as if it erupted from the skin.”

  “Like a mole?” Kandler asked.

  “I suppose,” said Sallah. “But no mole ever granted such power. Like a mole, however, these start out small and can sometimes grow larger. The bigger they get, the more powerful they become.”

  Kandler gazed off into the distance and nodded. “I was afraid of that.”

  Sallah narrowed her eyes at the justicar. “You don’t strike me as a man who is afraid of much.”

  “So why do you do it?” Kandler asked, changing the subject. “Why are you a knight?” He wanted to talk about something else, anything else.

  Sallah drew back from the bars a bit. Her face fell into shadow.

  “I am a Knight of the Silver Flame, a paladin pledged to uphold the good and holy teachings of the Voice of the Flame and to bring justice and enlightenment to the world.”

  “I didn’t ask who you are,” Kandler said. “I asked your reasons for it.”

  Sallah stammered for a moment. “I was born to—Shush!”

  “What?”

  “Quiet!” Sallah held the palm of her hand up to the bars in the door’s window as she moved a step toward the stairs that led to the main floor. Her armored boot scuffed on the stone floor. “I hear something.”

  Kandler stood up and moved as close to the door as his chains would let him. He listened for a moment but couldn’t hear a thing.

  Burch held back and cocked his head to one side. Horror spread across his face. He rushed toward the door and held up his chains. “Let us loose!” he said.

  “The dwarf charged me with keeping you here,” said Sallah.

  “Those are screams!” Burch said. “People are dying!”

  Sallah looked to Kandler. He pleaded with her with his eyes, but she turned and started to leave.

  “Stop!” Kandler shouted. “That’s our town up
there!”

  Kandler hoisted his chains and set his foot against the wall. “Help me!” he said to Burch. “Maybe we can break them together.” He knew it was a long shot. Rislinto had forged each link with skill and care. Still, it seemed their only hope.

  Burch rushed over to lend a hand. As the shifter began to pull, Kandler heard the sound of a key scraping in a lock behind them. The two looked back to see Sallah shove the heavy door in on its black, oiled hinges. They dropped Kandler’s chains and turned to hold up their shackles up for her.

  “No tricks!” the lady knight said as he stepped into the room.

  “Hurry,” Kandler said. He didn’t want to panic her, so he kept his voice as steady as he could. He felt a small tremor in it, but he hoped she wouldn’t hear it.

  Sallah brought the key up to insert into the lock on Kandler’s manacles, but at the last second she stopped and gave Kandler an appraising eye. “Maybe I should go up and check it out first,” she said.

  “No time!” said Burch. He snarled. Kandler realized that Sallah had gotten too close and the shifter was ready to strangle her with his chains. He put up a hand to stop his friend.

  “Look,” Kandler said, as he grabbed the knight’s wrist, “if you go up there and get killed, we could be stuck down here for what little will be left of our lives.”

  Sallah looked at her wrist and then into Kandler’s eyes. She pulled her arm free angrily. “I’ll just have to chance that.”

  Sallah turned to leave. Kandler grabbed her by the gleaming metal collar of her armor and pulled her back toward him. “I can’t let you do that.”

  Sallah swung around and backhanded Kandler to the floor. Incensed, she stomped over to where he was, pointed down at him, and said, “You can’t stop me.”

  As the words left Sallah’s mouth, the chain binding Burch’s wrists sailed over her head. Before she could react, the shifter put his knee into her back and pulled the chain tight. It snaked up along her armor and came to rest under the chin where Burch pulled it taut in an instant.

  Sallah dropped the key as her hands darted up to pull the chain from her throat. Before she could get a good grip, Kandler lashed out and kicked her feet from under her. The lady knight went down hard with Burch still on her back, pulling the chain even tighter.

  “Hold her!” Kandler said as he scrambled across the floor to pluck up the key. “Try not to hurt her.”

  “I’m trying!” Burch grunted. Sallah struggled under him, swinging him to and fro on her back as her fingers sought purchase under the chain. “She fights like a troll!”

  Kandler shoved the key into the lock on his manacles and turned. The shackles fell free.

  Sallah, who had managed to get to her knees, growled with rage. “Whoa!” Burch shouted, as if he were trying to calm a bucking horse. To Kandler, this only seemed to make the knight even angrier.

  Sallah was taller than Burch if no heavier. She stood and rammed her back toward the wall, crunching Burch between her armor and the unforgiving stone. The air rushed out of the shifter’s lungs. When Sallah hauled on his chain this time, it slipped from his fingers, and she was loose.

  “Let’s talk this over!” Kandler said. He held both hands up in front of Sallah in what he hoped was a calming manner.

  Sallah shrugged her way free of Burch’s chain, and the heavy links fell on the shifter’s head. She drew her blade and brandished it at Kandler as she spoke. “I will have that key,” she said.

  Kandler slipped back toward the wall to which he had been anchored, gathering his chain as he did. He began to swing the loose links before him, spinning his manacles about so the chain whirled like a spoke on a wheel. “You’ll have to kill me to get it.”

  Sallah feinted at Kandler with her blade, and he knocked it away with his chain. As the lady knight searched for a hole in the justicar’s defenses, she sidled away from Burch, who was still gasping for breath. “As you wish,” she said to Kandler.

  Kandler sent his chain whirring about faster. Sallah poked at his moving shield again. The chain knocked the blade away, but the contact disrupted the shield for a split second. She prodded at it twice more with the same result each time.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Kandler said. With the cell door open, he could finally hear the commotion in the town above. He hoped Esprë had found her hiding hole, just as he trained her to do, but he wasn’t willing to bet her life on it.

  Sallah drew back her blade and stabbed it at Kandler’s chest, passing through his chain-shield near his hand. The chain wrapped around it like a constrictor.

  Kandler wrenched at the chain, hoping to pull Sallah’s weapon from her grasp. Instead of resisting the pull, though, the lady knight pursued it. As she closed, she reversed her grip and smashed Kandler in the face with the pommel of her sword.

  The blow knocked Kandler from his feet, and he went down in a cascade of chain links. Sallah slid her sword free, and Kandler found himself staring down its point.

  “I’ll run you through,” Sallah said. She held out her open hand for the key.

  Kandler ran the back of his hand across his face. It came back blooded from a cut in his lip. As he held open his hand, the blood shone red against the silvered key in his palm.

  The sounds of shouts and screams echoed faintly down the stairwell and into the open cell. Kandler moved to get up, but Sallah pinned him down with her blade again.

  “You can’t tell me—” Kandler started.

  “Silence!” Sallah said. “I need to think.”

  The lady knight pursed her lips but never looked away from Kandler. A drop of sweat ran from her hair down her cheek. Her emerald eyes burned as she narrowed them in thought. Kandler realized he was holding his breath.

  Sallah’s mouth formed a frown. For a moment, Kandler’s heart dropped into his stomach. “You are sworn to protect the people of this town?” she said.

  “It’s my job,” Kandler said. He stared hard into her eyes. “Let me do it.”

  “Do you give me your word you will face justice when this is done?” Sallah glared around the cell. “Such as it is?”

  “You’d trust a word given under duress?”

  Sallah shook her head in frustration. “Bah!” she said. Then she swung her blade up over her shoulder and offered her left hand to help Kandler up. He took it and leaped to his feet.

  “Looks like you’ll have to trust me,” Kandler said with a grim grin.

  Sallah pointed at Burch. “Hurry and free your friend,” she said. “And don’t make me regret this.”

  Kandler tossed Burch the key. The shifter had his shackles undone in seconds. He rubbed his hairy wrists where the manacles had bit into his skin as he tried to strangle Sallah. “No hard feelings, lady,” he said.

  “No time for that,” Sallah said as another scream sounded out above, much closer this time. She nodded at the others, then sprinted out of the cell and up the stairs beyond.

  Kandler and Burch stopped only a moment to gather their weapons where they’d been stored on the landing at the bottom of the stairs. “Hurry!” Sallah said, waiting halfway up the steps.

  Kandler buckled on his sword and stuffed his knife into the sheath on the back of his belt. Burch slipped his own sword belt over his shoulders and snatched up his crossbow. They nodded at each other and sprinted up the stairs, Sallah struggling to stay ahead of them.

  As the trio emerged into the town hall, Kandler looked up and saw that someone—Temmah probably—had raised the tarp that usually covered the chandelier of everbright lanterns hanging from the large room’s tall, peaked roof. The light spilling down from the ceiling lit the three long tables in the center of the room, but it cast the plain wooden walls in shadow.

  The justicar glanced around and saw Temmah pushing against the heavy, wooden front doors of the place with all his might, although they stood closed and barred. Something outside banged on the doors hard enough to rattle the thick, ironbound bar that lay across them. The stout windows in t
he large, solid building were barred as well, as they usually were when the hall wasn’t being used.

  “What’s going on?” Kandler asked.

  Startled, Temmah screamed. Coming from the dwarf’s normally deep-voiced throat, it was like cold steel sliding along Kandler’s spine.

  Temmah flipped around and pressed his back to the doors. “Thank Aureon!” he said as another blow shook the doors and rattled his teeth. “We’re under attack!”

  “Who is it?” Kandler motioned for Burch to grab the other end of a large table. They carried it over and shoved it against the door to lend it support. The banging continued.

  “We don’t know,” said Temmah, his eyes wide with fear, his face and clothes spattered with blood. “I had just deputized a few men in the town square when they came in out of the darkness. Whatever they are, they tore Patelko’s head clean off.”

  Kandler’s mind zoomed through a list of possible attackers. The region had been quiet since the disappearances had started two weeks back. Perhaps whoever was behind the missing people had gotten tired of picking off the citizens of Mardakine one at a time. Privately, Kandler hoped so. All his investigations so far had borne little fruit, and he was ready to put an end to this.

  “Is it a living spell from the Mournland?” Burch asked, his hushed voice just audible over the banging.

  “Anything’s possible,” said Kandler. He glanced at Sallah. She was staring at the door—or, as it seemed to Kandler, through it.

  “I can feel their evil,” the lady knight said.

  “They’re trying to break down the door and kill us,” said Kandler. “I’d say their evil is pretty well established.”

  “Hold on,” Sallah said, still concentrating. “There are three of them right outside the door. One is far more powerful than the others. The darkness in him is deep.”

  The banging came faster and more furious. The bar bent. The doors began to give.

  “Step away from the door,” Kandler whispered to Temmah

  Temmah’s wide eyes goggled at the justicar. “I’m the only thing holding those creatures out!”

  Kandler pulled his sword. “Move!” he whispered again.