Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  Burch pressed the side of his head to the door and listened. “Two voices,” he whispered. “Can’t make out the words.”

  Kandler beckoned the shifter back and then gestured with his sword. Each of the three held their weapons at the ready. The justicar lowered his shoulder and charged.

  The door swung wide on creaking hinges. Kandler burst into the room with Burch and Sallah close on his heels. All three blinked at the bright light from the chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

  As the trio entered, the two people standing at the desk in the center of the room looked up. “Kandler!” one of them shouted with glee.

  Esprë dashed around the table and flung herself at her stepfather. Relief washed over Kandler like a wave. He gathered her up in her arms and hugged her tighter than he had since her mother’s death.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly in her ear, tears rolling freely down his face. “I’m here now.”

  “Boss?” Burch said as he tapped Kandler on the shoulder. “Want to say hello to our host?”

  The shifter’s tone told Kandler that something was wrong. Kandler swung Esprë around in his left arm and held his sword at the ready in the other. He looked up and saw a gaunt elf standing behind a desk nearly covered with a book and papers coated with arcane writing.

  “Two sets of visitors in one day,” the old elf woman said, her voice like rustling leaves. “This is a special day.”

  Before Kandler could respond, he heard hoofbeats in the courtyard—a sudden clatter followed by the sound of the horses leaving. Kandler turned and raced back out the door, Esprë still in his arms and clinging to his neck. Burch and Sallah were hot on his heels.

  As he reached courtyard, he saw all four horses stampeding away across the drawbridge. The changeling stood in the stirrups of the beast in the rear, urging them all forward into the mists.

  Is the changeling leaving without a farewell?” the elf said as she emerged from her tower. The others parted before her as she stepped into the courtyard. “I can’t tolerate such rudeness.”

  With a gesture from the wizard, the drawbridge began to rise. Still crossing it, the horses whinnied in fear as they felt the planks move beneath them, but Te’oma shouted and kicked her heels into her mount’s sides, urging them on.

  The far end of the bridge continued to rise. The horses raced toward its limit at top speed, and when they reached it they leaped out into the mists.

  Kandler’s horse cleared the gap with Burch and Sallah’s close behind. Te’oma’s mount seemed to almost lose its nerve, but the changeling spurred it hard, and the beast jumped over the abyss.

  The horse’s rear hooves scrambled as it landed on the far side of the chasm and it slid backward toward certain doom. Esprë squealed in fear and reached out to the changeling, although there was nothing she could do. Kandler pulled the girl back toward him, never taking his eyes away from the scene before him.

  With a desperate effort, the gelding’s rear hooves managed to find a crack in the rock, its hoof caught, and it pushed itself up and forward to safety. It galloped off into the mists, carrying Te’oma away with it.

  Kandler raced a few steps forward and shouted after the fleeing changeling. “No!” Then he realized he still had Esprë in his arms, so he turned back and handed her to Sallah, who held the girl away from her at arm’s length, as if she’d been tossed a wild animal.

  Kandler raced up to the bridge and started to hunt for a winch, lever, or any sort of mechanism that would let him bring the bridge down. Behind him, he heard Esprë say to Sallah, “You can put me down. I won’t bite.”

  Kandler glanced back to see Esprë back on the ground for just a moment before the girl hurled herself at Burch and wrapped him up in her best impression of a bear hug.

  The justicar gave up and stormed back toward the others. “Lower the bridge!” he said to the elf. “We have to go after her.”

  As the justicar waited for a response, he took a good look at the elf for the first time, and his jaw dropped. Her yellowed, wizened skin stretched thin over her skeleton like old parchment, but out here in the dimness she seemed to be glowing from within, like a light blazing behind a leathery shade.

  “It can’t be,” Kandler said, stunned by what he saw. “I mean, you … you can’t be.”

  The elf smiled, revealing her teeth, which seemed to be barely attached to her faded gums. She shook her head. “I’m not,” she said. “Close but not quite.”

  “Not what?” Sallah said.

  “One of the ascendant councilors,” Kandler said, nearly every other thought fleeing from his head. “The ancient dead of the elves.”

  “I am dead,” the elf said, “but still I walk this world.” She looked out at the mist. “At least as far as I care.”

  Sallah stepped back and put her still-blazing sword between herself and the elf. “No undead creatures can stand before the light of the Silver Flame,” she said.

  “So I am told,” the elf said. She reached out and patted Sallah’s hands on the hilt of her sword. “But I am not one of those abominations that stroll about at the whim of some lowly necromancer. No.” She shook her head. “I am one of the deathless.”

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” Kandler said in the elf tongue, his wits returning to him. “Could you see fit to lowering your drawbridge so we can pursue the thief who has entered both your house and mine?”

  The deathless elf smiled and answered him in her native language. “You are mannered. You may call me Majeeda.”

  “My Lady Majeeda,” Kandler said with a worried smile, “could you find it in your heart to lower the bridge for us? We thank you for your hospitality, but urgent matters call upon us, and we sadly must part company with you.”

  “What are they saying?” Sallah whispered to Burch.

  The shifter shrugged. “Do I look like an elf?”

  “He’s asking her to let us go,” Esprë whispered.

  Majeeda threw her hands wide. “Why should you wish to do leave so soon?” she asked. “Do you not have what you came for?”

  She looked over at Esprë and smiled. The elf girl clutched Burch tight and sidled around far enough behind him that Majeeda could only see her face.

  “Of course,” Kandler said. He smiled at Esprë, and the girl relaxed a little. Burch reached back and tousled her hair. “But there is the matter of the one who recently abandoned your graces. She must be punished for her actions, or I fear that she may repeat them.”

  Majeeda nodded. “I understand your concern, but I wish for you to stay with me a while longer. The changeling you seek has already left my home. She no longer offends me or concerns me.”

  Kandler held back a frown. “I appreciate your thoughts and your offer of continued hospitality. It saddens me that this changeling who caused you such concern should roam unpunished, but that is a matter I can hope to take up with her at a later date.”

  The justicar licked his dry lips before he broached the next subject. Dealing with ancient elves was always tricky—he remembered how difficult it had been to ask Esprina’s parents for her hand in marriage—but this was worse. Esprina would have married him either way. He sensed that Majeeda’s wrath was not something he wished to incur.

  “I know your feelings on the matter of undead,” the Kandler said. “I share your revulsion at the horrible monstrosities. When we pursued the changeling in here, she was in the company of one of the most terrible breeds of these creatures.”

  Majeeda raised her painted-on eyebrows. Kandler could hear her skin crinkle with the movement. “The vampire, you mean?”

  Kandler nodded and waited.

  A thin smile crept across Majeeda’s dry-leaf lips. “He is no longer a concern to anyone, least of all himself.”

  “What happened?” Kandler asked, forgetting the mannered patterns of the elf language for the moment and slipping into the common tongue.

  “He tried to leave without my permission.” Something close to anger clouded the death
less elf’s eyes. “I granted his wish for an early departure, although not perhaps in the means he would have preferred.”

  Kandler switched back to the elf language again. “I hesitate to trouble you with matters so mundane my Lady Majeeda,” he said, “but could you elaborate upon the vampire’s ultimate fate?”

  “In what fashion?”

  Kandler could tell the elf was being deliberately obtuse. She seemed to enjoy forcing him to drag every detail from her papery lips. “Forgive my vulgarity, my lady,” he said with a grimace, “but is he dead?”

  Majeeda opened her mouth and laughed out loud. The sound rustled like a child dashing down a leaf-strewn lane in late fall. “My dear,” she said, “I haven’t laughed like that in over a century. That creature of which you speak died a long time ago.” She patted her chest to calm herself down. “But I … eradicated his corpse, yes.”

  Kandler bowed then turned to speak to Esprë, Burch, and Sallah. “Lady Majeeda here,” he said in the common tongue, “has asked us to stay a while and enjoy her hospitality. It would be in our best interests to take her up on her kind offer.”

  “What about the vampire?” Sallah asked.

  “Already taken care of,” Kandler said.

  Burch looked around at the mists. “Is this safer than the Mournland?” he whispered.

  Kandler glanced at Majeeda. “I think so. At least for tonight.”

  “For any day or night,” said Majeeda. “I want you to be comfortable here in my home for as long as you stay.”

  “But I can’t,” Sallah started, but Kandler cut her short with an angry glare. She tried again. “My thanks for your kind offer, my lady. We would rather not impose on your good nature for any longer than we have to.”

  “It’s no imposition at all,” Majeeda said. “I assure you.”

  “How long might you expect us to enjoy our time with you?” Sallah asked.

  Kandler’s stomach flipped at the question. He wanted to know the answer himself, but he’d hoped to not learn it until there was no other option.

  The deathless elf smiled. “Not long at all, my dear,” she said. “A blink of an eye. Only until it’s safe for you to go.”

  “When’s that?” Burch asked.

  Majeeda’s pleasure dimmed only a bit at the sound of the shifter’s voice. “Why, until Cyre is restored and the Mournland is no more,” she said.

  A shout went up from Levritt’s position to the north of the mound of mist. In another land, Deothen might not have been able to hear it over the sounds of chirping birds or crickets, but in the stillness of the Mournland Levritt’s call carried far.

  The senior knight stood and scanned the distance. Levritt was right where he’d been ordered to be, at one vertex of a triangle that surrounded the mist, allowing the three knights to each see a half of the misty mound and both of their compatriots at the same time.

  Leaping in the air, Levritt waved at Deothen with one arm and pointed to his right with the other, toward the spot at which Brendis had been sitting near his horse. Deothen turned to look for Brendis and saw the other knight waving as well and climbing upon his mount. Once in his saddle, Brendis pointed off toward Levritt and then spurred his steed in that direction.

  Deothen climbed atop his white horse, his bones creaking with the effort. The rest after the long ride here had been good for both himself and his mount, but his muscles had stiffened up in the short time he and the other knights had kept their watch. With a grunt, he kicked his heels into his steed’s sides and galloped off after the others.

  Deothen rode down the side of the valley toward the mysterious mound of mist, along the shortest route to where Levritt and Brendis were headed. As he neared the mists, he veered to the right and gave the place a wide berth. He didn’t know what might be concealed within them, but thoughts of a dragon’s wings or a hydra’s head snaking out to pluck him from his saddle danced in his head.

  When Deothen made it around to the other side of the mist he saw Levritt and Brendis speeding ahead of him, off to the northeast. He lowered his head, nudged a bit more effort from his mount, and they thundered after the two knights at full gallop.

  The blasted landscape fell away before Deothen and the knights and then rose into a hilly stretch of ground that rolled off into the distance. Deothen poked up his head to see what his young charges might be after. It took him a moment, jangled as he was by his horse’s pounding hooves, but he spotted it—a lone figure on a massive black horse galloping straight for the hills.

  At this distance, Deothen couldn’t be sure, but he would have bet his last copper that the rider was the changeling. The patch of sunlight over the mound of mist had long since faded, the hole in the thick, dark cloud cover now just a strange but happy memory. It could have been the vampire astride the horse, but Deothen’s gut said different.

  The knight looked back over his shoulder, wondering if he’d see the vampire come flapping out of the smoky area on a bat’s wings now that the knights were on the chase. Perhaps it was all some devious trick meant to draw the knights away while the vampire escaped with Kandler’s stepdaughter.

  If so, it was too late for the knights to change course. Brendis and Levritt had raced ahead rather than wait for their commander, so Deothen had little choice but to try to catch up with them. He prayed it wasn’t the wrong path.

  It bothered Deothen that this course of action forced him to leave Sallah behind, but he saw no alternative. He prayed the Silver Flame would keep her safe.

  Levritt and Brendis seemed to be enjoying the pursuit. They hunched high in their saddles and urged their horses beyond breakneck speeds. Deothen heard the two laugh out loud as they glanced at each other.

  The land started to rise. Deothen looked ahead and realized that they had no chance of catching the changeling before she topped the first hill. Levritt and Brendis were gaining on her by the moment, but she had too much of a head start. She must have come barreling out of the mists as if all the demons of Dolurrh were on her tail.

  The young knights didn’t seem to care. They spurred their mounts on faster and faster, never breaking stride as the ground rose. They used the momentum from their headlong sprint downhill to propel them upward fast as they could.

  As Deothen watched, the changeling and her mount disappeared over the crest of the hill. The young knights reached the same spot only half a minute later. They hauled up short for a moment and glanced all around.

  Levritt turned back to Deothen and pointed off to the right. The senior knight signaled for the young men to slow down for a moment longer so he could catch up with them. Too eager to run their prey to ground, they never saw the gesture.

  Deothen shouted at the young knights, but they plunged over the crest of the hill and out of sight, the thunder of their hooves drowning out the old man’s protestations. Although his mount was laboring at the effort now, he pushed the horse hard up the hill.

  Once Deothen topped the rise, he hauled his steed to a halt and scanned the land around. The hills stretched away before him, dipping and rising in an easy, patternless way.

  The knight knew that Levritt and Brendis had sped off to the right. A low valley presented itself there, and the obvious path quickly turned around a bend. Deothen could see the path of divots in the grayish grass and rock that the young knights’ steeds had torn up as they raced in that direction.

  The elder knight was not so eager to give up the high ground. Instead, he plunged down into the small valley and then up the other side to the next hill’s top. Then he turned his horse to the right and drove it along that hill’s crest.

  As Deothen rode, he squinted into the distance, scanning the land for a sign of some kind of trap. He thought perhaps he’d see the changeling crawling along a hilltop with a wand of some sort, ready to rain magical death down on the hapless young knights. Or maybe the vampire would appear, spring upon Levritt and Brendis, and tear them from their saddles.

  Deothen shivered as he recalled how the ot
her vampire had sunk its fangs into Brendis’s neck. If it hadn’t been for the shifter’s bolt, the young man would surely be dead. Despite all the training Deothen had striven to instill in the young knight, he’d been helpless before the evil creature’s overwhelming power.

  Those thoughts brought Deothen’s mind to the fate of Gweir. He didn’t know what he could have done to save the knight from that kind of an ambush. How could he have predicted so many warforged would be hiding under those long-dead bodies? The concept was almost unthinkable for the old warrior.

  Deothen had already prayed long and hard for the Silver Flame to forgive these inadequacies in himself. He hoped that Gweir’s parents could find it in their heart to do the same. Deothen did not relish bringing them the news of their son’s demise, no matter how heroic it might have been or how noble the cause. He prayed he wouldn’t have to make the same visit to any other parents once this mission was done.

  How was he going to be able to find Sallah again after this? Of all his young charges, he trusted her abilities the most. He hoped he would see her again before too long.

  It was then that Deothen spotted the two knights as they trotted along the floor of the twisting hollow before him, which was coming to a dead end. The changeling was nowhere to be seen, and Deothen imagined the young men were discussing just how they should proceed. He called out to them.

  Brendis and Levritt turned in their saddles to wave back at their commander. As they did, Deothen spotted something on the ridge to the left above them. He thought it might be the changeling, but another silhouetted form joined the first, and then another.

  Deothen shouted out a warning to the young knights, but they were unable to hear him. They cupped their hands to their ears as more and more of the forms rose from the ridge. Deothen stabbed his finger into the air behind the two knights, over and over, but they didn’t seem to understand.