Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” the young knight said.

  Burch and Deothen dropped the end of the rope they’d been hauling on. The shifter reached over and grabbed Kandler into a bear hug. The justicar pounded his friend on the back and grinned.

  “Sorry about your sword,” Kandler said to Brendis as Burch let him go. He stuck out a hand to the young knight.

  “It was a sacred blade awarded to me by the Council of Cardinals,” Brendis said. “It can never be replaced. But it was lost in a good cause.”

  “Yes,” Deothen said as he picked up his own sword from where he’d dropped it on the deck. “You can use the justicar’s for now. He won’t have any use for it.”

  Kandler stared at the senior knight. “You can put that away,” he said. “I won’t fight you, but I’m not going back into that hold.”

  “The situation has not changed,” Deothen said. “We are still going to Flamekeep.”

  Kandler glanced behind the gray-haired knight and saw Esprë huddled in one corner of the bridge with Sallah’s arms around her. The sight warmed his heart, and he smiled. That disappeared as a thought struck him.

  “Who’s flying this thing?” he asked, staring at the abandoned wheel.

  Esprë pulled herself from Sallah’s arms. “The elemental!” she said through her tears. “It can’t see where it’s going, but if you set your direction and altitude, it can fly all by itself. I figured it—”

  One moment Kandler was reaching out to give Esprë’s shoulder a proud squeeze, then the changeling, gliding in on silent wings, swooped down and snatched her away from his outstretched hand. There was only an instant of hesitation as the wings adjusted to the added weight, then both changeling and Esprë disappeared into the night. The girl’s scream echoed in the justicar’s ears long after she was gone.

  “Esprë!” Kandler shouted as he dashed toward the airship’s rail. He stared out into the darkness, looking for any sign of the girl or the changeling. All he saw was the mists of the Mournland, now pulsing a sickly red from the light of the airship’s ring of fire. He heard Esprë scream again, but the sound ended horribly short.

  “Burch!” Kandler said.

  The shifter was already scanning all around, his crossbow hungry for a target.

  “Don’t!” the justicar cried. “They’ll both fall to their deaths.”

  Burch growled in frustration at the sky. “Doesn’t matter anyhow,” he said. “There’s nothing. She’s gone.”

  Kandler cast about desperately. “The changeling can’t get far on those wings,” he said, thinking out loud. “They weren’t strong enough to carry the two of us.”

  “You’re a bit larger than your daughter,” Sallah said.

  Kandler looked over at the woman. Her face was flushed with shame for letting Esprë get away from her, even though the girl had been walking between the two of them at the time. The lady knight would barely meet the justicar’s glance, but he could see tears of frustration welling in her eyes.

  Kandler nodded at Sallah in agreement as he lay a hand on her shoulder in forgiveness. Sallah hadn’t snatched his daughter away.

  “You are wounded,” Xalt said to Kandler.

  Kandler put his hand to where the changeling had bitten him. It came away wet and red. “Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “We have to go after Esprë.” He looked up at the mists swirling past above as they sailed along and held up his hand to the sky. “Can anyone stop this ship?”

  “By the Flame,” Sallah said, “you’re right! We’re being carried farther away with every minute.”

  Deothen launched himself at the wheel.

  “No one’s been able to fly this thing but Esprë,” Kandler said.

  Deothen flashed a grim smile as he gripped the wheel. “I think you’ll find I’m as strong willed as anyone.”

  The ship braked to a halt so fast that Kandler found himself nearly thrown from the bridge. He righted himself and stared at the gray-haired knight.

  Deothen raised an eyebrow at him and said, “They don’t put just anyone in charge of a mission like this.” He nodded at Sallah. “Get the justicar fixed up. I’ll bring the ship around.”

  “But Esprë—!” Kandler started.

  “Is out of our hands until dawn,” said the senior knight. “You need to be ready to fight if you’re to help her when we find her again. Get that wound cleaned before it festers. You’re no good to your daughter dead.”

  Kandler started to argue with the old man, but the wisdom of his words sunk in. He suddenly realized how tired he was and how much his neck hurt. He climbed down onto the deck, and Sallah knelt down beside him. She reached up and tilted his head away from her, angling his neck so she could see the wound in the light from the ring of fire above. She grazed the opened skin with her fingers, and the justicar winced.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” Sallah said. “If she’d bit a little deeper, you’d have bled to death before we could’ve hauled you aboard.”

  “If I hadn’t been locked in the hold, this might never have happened,” Kandler said bitterly. He held onto that feeling for a moment before he looked down at Sallah’s face.

  Sallah ignored him and concentrated on the wound instead. “He’s a good man in a bad position,” she said.

  “That’s how you tell who’s good,” Kandler said. “It’s easy to behave when everything’s going well. Ow!”

  “Hold still,” Sallah said. “I want to make sure I get all of this.” She tugged at the collar of Kandler’s shirt to expose every bit of the wound.

  “Ouch! Are you sure she wasn’t a vampire too?” Kandler said.

  Sallah peered at the wound. “Teeth marks are too even. No sign of fangs.” She lay her hands atop the savaged skin and spoke a solemn prayer to the Silver Flame. Her hands glowed with an argent warmth that spilled into Kandler’s flesh. When she lifted her hands, his skin was whole again.

  “Thanks,” Kandler said, looking into her eyes as he rubbed his healed neck with a rough hand.

  Sallah returned his gaze. “I’d do the same for anyone.”

  “Any of your prisoners?”

  Sallah smiled. She stood and wiped her bloodied hands on her white tabard. “Almost anyone.”

  “I’m honored,” Kandler said. He glanced back at the bridge and noticed Deothen watching them. When the old man saw that he had caught the justicar’s eye, he beckoned the pair to join the others back on the bridge.

  “At my best guess, I’ve brought the ship back around to where we were when Esprë was taken from us,” Deothen said, gazing out into the seamless night. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much we can do until the dawn.”

  Kandler nodded reluctantly.

  “Where to then?” Sallah asked. “By morning, the changeling will have had hours to get ahead of us or to hide. She could be anywhere.”

  Kandler frowned. “Those wings of hers aren’t all that strong. She’ll be stuck on foot, dragging Esprë along behind her. She’ll need food and water, too, neither of which is easy to find around here. I bet she’d kill for a horse.”

  “My best guess?” Burch said. “She’ll head northeast again. The way she was going before we ran into Lady Majeeda’s tower.”

  “What’s off in that direction?” Sallah asked.

  Kandler shook his head. “I don’t know. Burch and I never made it this far into the Mournland before.”

  “I wasn’t asking you,” the lady knight said. “Xalt is the native here.”

  The warforged rasped a soft laugh. “Nothing, I fear. This is the Mournland.”

  “There has to be something,” Brendis said. “Maybe she went for one of the old lightning rail lines.”

  Deothen grunted. “Those haven’t run since the Day of Mourning. They’d be useless to her.”

  “There is something that may be off to the northeast,” Xalt said. “But the changeling couldn’t possibly know about it.”

  “She’s a psion,” Kandler said.
“A mindreader. If you know about it, there’s a chance she might know about it too. Who knows how long she was in that hold scanning our thoughts?”

  Xalt nodded then said one word. “Construct.”

  Kandler cocked his head at the warforged. “What’s that?”

  “Construct is a town the Lord of Blades founded after the end of the Last War as a warforged settlement. It’s meant to be our capital someday.”

  Deothen curled his lip at this. “I’ve heard rumors of this place,” he said. “Different reports have placed it in every part of the Mournland, but no one’s ever been able to confirm them. The place is like a ghost.”

  “Almost like it moves,” said Xalt.

  Sallah’s eyes grew wide. “It’s a moving city? Like Argonth?”

  The warforged nodded.

  Burch whistled. “That explains a lot,” he said.

  “But how can anyone find such a place?” Brendis asked. “It would be almost impossible.”

  “Not if you knew when it was coming,” Kandler said. He looked at Xalt.

  “It was scheduled to meet with Superior,” the warforged said, “later today.”

  There it is, boss,” Burch said. He handed Kandler the spyglass he’d found in a compartment on the bridge.

  Standing in the airship’s bow, the wind whipping all about him as they sailed forward at top speed, the justicar lifted the spyglass to his eye and gazed off in the direction Burch had pointed. Even at this distance, he wasn’t sure how he could have missed it. The city had to be half a mile long and perhaps a hundred yards wide. It was built on a series of interlocking platforms that crawled along the ground. Smoke billowed from great furnaces in the factories that rose from the center of the town. Guard posts lined the edges of the place, each outfitted with a massive set of ballistae and a squad of well-armed soldiers.

  “If there was ever a good reason for people to stop making warforged, that’s it,” said Burch.

  “We are not all bad,” Xalt said from over the justicar’s shoulder.

  “Staggering,” said Sallah, who stood next to the warforged and peered over Kandler’s other shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She turned to Kandler. “How does it compare to your Argonth?”

  Kandler handed the spyglass to the lady knight, who looked through it and gasped. “It doesn’t,” said the justicar. “Argonth is a floating fortress built from the start for war. It’s the most powerful weapon in Breland. An entire army can travel on it at once.

  “This looks like it just grew. There’s almost no plan to it, other than the guards on the perimeter. I bet you could take any of those platforms off and run it around by itself too. In an emergency, they could split the place into as many parts as they like and run them in different directions. Imagine being surrounded by a city like that.”

  “Argonth is taller,” said Burch.

  “With Construct,” said Xalt, “each platform can tilt independent of the others. If you built up too high, the tops of the buildings would crash into each other.”

  “Why did they build it like that?” Brendis asked.

  “It has to do with the terrain around here, doesn’t it?” said Sallah.

  Xalt nodded. “A flat-bottomed structure like Argonth would never work here. How would such a thing traverse a hill? Or climb the Glass Plateau?”

  “Good point,” said Kandler. “Argonth works in Breland because it sticks to the flatter parts of the country. There’s a reason the fortress has never been used in an invasion. It would have a devil of a time getting past Breland’s own natural boundaries.”

  “But how does this thing move?” asked Brendis. “If it doesn’t hover by magic, what pushes it along on those wheels?”

  “May the Flame protect us,” Sallah said in awe as she lowered the spyglass. “Those aren’t wheels under those platforms. They’re legs. Are those warforged?”

  “That’s impossible,” said Deothen, as he strode up behind the others. “That would mean there are thousands of them there.” He took the spyglass from Sallah. “Maybe tens of thousands,” he said.

  “Were that many warforged made?” said Brendis. “How can that be?”

  Xalt laughed. “Those are not warforged,” he said. “My people are free here. They would never submit to such mindless drudgery again.”

  Kandler turned to look back at the artificer. “Then what are they?” he asked.

  “Walkers,” the warforged answered. “Metal golems that consist of little more than a platform on legs.”

  Kandler’s breath caught in his chest. He heard Sallah gasp.

  “You’re jesting,” said Burch.

  The artificer shook his head. “Many wizards use them, and you can find them in the warehouses and factories of the wealthiest houses in Khorvaire, where they are used to help transport goods.”

  “If you know how to make them,” Kandler said, “then making lots of them is just a matter of time.”

  “Precisely.” Xalt nodded.

  “Thank the Flame they haven’t figured out how to create their own kind,” Deothen breathed.

  “If the changeling is in there, we’ll never find her,” said Sallah. “The place is too big.”

  “Get me in there,” said Burch. “I can pick up her scent.”

  “She might not even be there,” Deothen pointed out.

  Kandler nodded at this. He’d had the same thought but been reluctant to voice it. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think we have any other choice. We have to go in to find out.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” said Deothen. “Shall we simply fly this airship in and set down in their central square?”

  “I’ve heard of worse ideas,” said Kandler. “It might give us the element of surprise.”

  “It also might give those ballistae a chance to knock us out of the sky,” said Deothen. “I doubt we could take too many hits from those. An expert pilot might be able to avoid them, but not I.”

  Burch pointed up at the ring of fire that surrounded the airship. “They see us already, boss.”

  Kandler looked around at the ring. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “They don’t seem to have raised any kind of alarm,” said Brendis. “If I saw an airship on its way toward me, I’d have something to say about it.”

  “Dragons don’t worry about mosquitoes,” Kandler said.

  “Can’t a mosquito bite a dragon?” asked Sallah.

  “Sure,” said Kandler, “if the mosquito doesn’t mind being crushed afterward.”

  “We’re more than a mosquito,” said Brendis. “If we crashed the airship into the center of their town, that would loose the fire elemental. That would get their attention.”

  “And how do you suppose we’d walk away from that?” Kandler asked.

  “It is a good thought, Sir Brendis,” said Deothen, “but we’re not here to get their attention. We want to get in and find out if the girl is there. If she is, we rescue her and leave. If not, we leave and look elsewhere. The changeling was traveling northeast with undead Karrn warriors. It’s safe to assume she’s headed to Karrnath.”

  “So how do we get in there?” asked Sallah. “We’re not all warforged. They’ll spot us at once.”

  “True,” said Xalt. “But there are many breathers in Construct.”

  Sallah’s face lit up. “Excellent! Are they merchants, diplomats? I’m sure we can pose as them and sneak in. It’s just a matter of doing it right.”

  Xalt shook his head. “They do get such people from time to time, but they are rare enough that they always draw a crowd.”

  “You said there are many ‘breathers’ in town,” Kandler said. “Why are they there?”

  Xalt paused a moment before speaking. “Slaves.”

  Everyone stared at Xalt.

  “You saw Superior’s attitude toward your kind,” said Xalt. “He is not alone in such beliefs. Among my people, I am somewhat of a … rarity.”

  Kandler tapped his forehead. He didn’t like
the idea that sprang into his head, but there was nothing else there. “All right. We can pose as slaves and you”—he pointed at Xalt—“you can be our master.”

  “You would trust him that far?” Brendis asked.

  “You saved my life when you had no reason to do so,” Xalt replied. “I am in your debt. I will pose as your master, if that is what you wish.”

  Deothen fell a half step back. “Never,” he said. “The Knights of the Silver Flame are no slaves. There is no honor in such a deception.”

  “The honorable route would be suicidal,” said Kandler, frustrated. He had known that Deothen would find some way to object. “You can’t just announce yourself and walk in. They’ll tear you apart.”

  “Actually,” said Xalt, “they would probably take you before the town’s ruler for judgment. Then they would either enslave you or tear you apart.”

  “Who’s the town ruler?” Deothen asked, a tad too imperiously for Kandler’s taste. “Perhaps he is a creature who can be reasoned with. We have no issue with him. We only want the changeling and the girl, neither of whom are his concern.”

  “He’s a lieutenant of the Lord of Blades,” Xalt said. “Each of them is named after a particular kind of sword or knife. They are his tools, after all, his weapons in his war on breathers.”

  “What’s this one call himself?” asked Kandler. The artificer’s hesitancy had piqued his curiosity.

  “He calls himself after the hand-and-a-half sword, the kind that you can fight with in one hand or switch to a two-handed grip for a more powerful blow. He uses the colloquial term for it—Bastard.”

  Deothen’s face fell, and Kandler couldn’t help but smirk to himself.

  “The Knights of the Silver Flame are not slaves,” Deothen said firmly.

  “We’d just be posing as slaves,” said Sallah. To Kandler, she sounded like the voice of reason, but it seemed that Deothen didn’t share the justicar’s opinion.

  The senior knight spun about as if he’d been stabbed. “I can’t believe I’m hearing such words from your mouth, my daughter!”

  “Please hear me out,” the lady knight said. “While it is beneath a Knight of the Silver Flame to engage in such deception, there is something else to consider here—the life of the child and the fate of our mission. We can adhere to a strict code of honor here and all end up dead and the girl in enemy hands. Or we can … bend the code. These are extraordinary circumstances, after all.”