Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  “That’s it!” Te’oma said triumphantly. She let go of Esprë’s wrists, and the girl reeled back from her and into the table. “That’s the power of the Mark of Death, to kill with but a touch, and you have it.”

  Te’oma hadn’t been positive about Esprë’s dragonmark. She’d seen a drawing of the last known dragonmark of that kind, but the legends that swirled around the Mark of Death made anything about it hard to believe. Now she was sure. Te’oma breathed an inward sigh of relief. She’d taken a chance in provoking the girl, but she had needed to know if the girl was the one. If not, Te’oma didn’t see the point in hauling her all the way to Karrnath. Now that she knew she was right, all the challenges that lay before them would be worth it. And the rewards …

  “I should kill you!” Esprë said, tears of rage rolling down her tender cheeks.

  Te’oma grinned. “You know better than that. Like it or not, you need me.”

  “I do not!”

  “Look around you,” Te’oma said, swinging her arms wide. “You’re in the middle of the Mournland on a rolling city filled with hundreds of hostile warforged. Are you going to hike home on your own?”

  The cold facts of her situation slashed through Esprë’s anger. The tears stopped flowing, and her color slowly returned to normal. The changeling had her just where she wanted her.

  “Even if you somehow managed to get off Construct by yourself and make it to the border, do you think you could get through those mists alone? On foot?” Te’oma shook her head. “And what if you do make it back to that ramshackle slum you called a home? Will you go back to that life, killing townsfolk in your sleep? Killing is a fine art, and you may one day be its finest practitioner, but you must learn.”

  “I don’t want to learn!” Esprë said. “I’ll never be like you. I hate you.”

  “Fine. Hate me. But you know I speak the truth. You are a killer whether you like it or not. That dragonmark is part of you. Learn to control it, and you may choose to never kill again. Let it control you, and …”

  “And what?” Esprë sniffed and wiped her tears away on her sleeve.

  “You know what, girl,” Te’oma replied. “You’re not stupid. Just scared. And I don’t blame you. But you must learn to control your dragonmark, Esprë. Until you do, you are a danger to everyone you know and love. I can take you to people who will teach you to control your gift.”

  “Why? What kind of people would know such a thing?

  Te’oma smiled.” There is a queen in the north, far in the north. She is a distant relative of yours, an elf of such great age and power that the old crone we met in the tower would cower before her. You weren’t raised among the elves, Esprë. You don’t know their ancient ways. You are of this queen’s family, and the queen protects her own.”

  This is it,” said Burch.

  The quartet stood before a door that looked like most of the others they’d passed as they meandered through Construct, following Esprë’s scent. It was tall and gray, with a simple mechanical latch in its handle.

  “Are you sure?” Kandler asked.

  The shifter nodded. “Scents don’t lie.”

  Burch put his ear to the door and listened for a moment. Kandler saw Xalt glancing nervously up and down the gangway that ran in front of the door.

  “Someone’s moving inside,” Burch whispered. He glanced left and right. “No one’s watching.”

  “Hit it,” said Kandler.

  Kandler and Burch took two steps back. On three they lowered their shoulders and charged into the door. It gave way, and they plowed in.

  “Quick!” Xalt said, pushing Sallah through the door. “I hear someone coming.” Once inside, he slammed the door shut again. It fit poorly on its frame now, but it still closed.

  Kandler surveyed the room. It was furnished with simple but sturdy furniture. The walls were unadorned. There were no doors other than the one through which they’d come. A wardrobe stood in one corner, opposite a table and two bare chairs.

  “Where is she?” Kandler whispered.

  Burch sniffed at the air one last time. When he looked at Kandler, his eyes were back to normal. “Smells strong,” he said. “She has to be close.”

  “B-Burch?” a little voice said.

  “Esprë!” Kandler said. “Is that you?”

  “Kandler!” Esprë said as she burst out of the wardrobe. She dashed into his arms and hugged him tight, silent tears rolling from her eyes.

  The justicar pulled the girl away from him for a second and used his hand to brush her hair back from her face. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did she hurt you?”

  Esprë shook her head as she gasped through her sobs of relief. “She left me here, and when I heard you outside I didn’t know who it was. I hid in the wardrobe.”

  Kandler swept the girl up into his arms and held her tight. “It’s all right now. Don’t worry.”

  Esprë sunk her face into Kandler’s shoulder and wept. He held her and rocked her back and forth as he thought about the things he’d like to do to the changeling who had put his daughter through so much.

  Sallah put a hand on Kandler’s back. “I don’t want to break up this happy reunion,” she said, “but we need to get out of here. The changeling could come back at any moment.”

  “You don’t say.” The door opened. A gray-cloaked figure stood there silhouetted in the dim, gray daylight of the Mournland sky. “What an interesting scene to come home to,” the creature said.

  Esprë looked up at the figure in the doorway, her blue eyes wide and red and magnified by her brimming and spilling tears. “Te-Te’oma?” she whispered.

  Kandler gathered Esprë up in his arms as he stood. He told himself that he had what he came for. There was no reason to start a fight here in the middle of a warforged capital if he could help it. His first priority had to be getting his daughter out alive. He looked the changeling dead in the eyes and said, “Because she’s not hurt, I’m going to give you one chance to run.”

  Te’oma chuckled, and the sound set Kandler’s teeth on edge. “Give me the girl,” she said.

  For a moment, Kandler couldn’t believe his ears. He was stunned that the changeling could be so brazen. “You’re out of your mind. We’re four to your one.”

  “Don’t fool yourself. The game is over. You’re going to give me the girl and walk away, or I’m going to call the entire city down on your heads.”

  Burch reached back and slapped his crossbow into his hands. Before he could loose a bolt, the changeling dove out of the doorway. As she went, she let out a scream worthy of a banshee.

  “Help!” Te’oma cried. “Breathers!”

  “Stop her!” Kandler shouted. He considered launching himself after the changeling, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to put Esprë back down. At the moment, he felt like he never would.

  Burch leaped across the room, Sallah close behind him. The shifter slid through the open doorway and to the left, giving the knight enough room to barrel past him as he took aim at the changeling. He let fly, but Te’oma ducked around the next corner, and the bolt sailed wide.

  The shifter and the knight raced after the changeling, elbowing past the few warforged who poked their heads out of their doors to see what all the noise was about. Within a matter of seconds, they were gone.

  Clutching Esprë close to his chest, Kandler ducked through the doorway after the others. “Hold it!” he said as he burst into the narrow alley between the platforms.

  Xalt misjudged Kandler’s abrupt stop and slammed into the justicar’s back as he emerged from the tiny room. Kandler, Esprë, and the warforged went down on the gangway in a tangle of metallic and fleshy limbs.

  Kandler struggled to his feet, Esprë still hanging around his neck. “Burch!” he shouted. “Sallah! Come back!”

  The shifter and the lady knight were already out of sight and apparently earshot. Kandler reached back and helped Xalt to his feet. “Damned shifter temper!” the justicar said.

&nbs
p; He held Esprë to him and started off after his friend.

  Kandler glanced back at Xalt. “Where are they headed?” he asked the artificer.

  “In the wrong direction,” Xalt said as he trotted along behind the justicar.

  “Why’s that?” asked Esprë. Hanging on Kandler’s neck, she could see right over his shoulder to the warforged.

  “That way lies the arena, the main barracks, and Bastard’s headquarters,” Xalt said. “This is suicide! We should let them go and save ourselves.”

  As Kandler leaped over a warforged who Burch and Sallah must have knocked down a moment before, he squeezed Esprë tight, and she hugged him back. He wondered if Xalt was right. He’d risked so much to rescue his daughter. Was he throwing it away now?

  “What do you think?” he asked Esprë.

  “No!” Esprë said. “You don’t leave friends behind.”

  “That’s my girl.” Kandler grinned as he stiff-armed a warforged that leaped out from a nearby intersection. “I sure miss your mother.”

  Esprë kissed Kandler on the cheek. “Me, too,” she said softly.

  As he ran, Kandler kept catching and then losing sight of Sallah and Burch as they chased Te’oma deeper into the city. The canny changeling kept ducking down side passages, turning back and forth as often as she could, never giving the shifter the time to bring her down with a well-aimed bolt.

  From up ahead, Kandler heard a dull noise, like the murmur of a thousand tinny voices. As he got closer, an excited roar went up.

  “Are we ready to give up?” Xalt said from behind.

  Kandler heard a tremor in warforged’s voice.

  “Never!” Esprë shouted back at the artificer. The justicar just held her tighter and smiled.

  They turned a final corner, and there—across an open set of platforms that formed a barren sort of park, complete with low benches but missing plants or trees—a huge wall appeared before him, at least forty feet high. The noise came from behind it. The wall stretched almost entirely across the city, leaving perhaps a single column of platforms untouched on either side of it. Open portals pierced it at regular intervals, each standing empty. Kandler saw the backs of his friends disappear through the portal straight in front of him, which formed a long, dark tunnel. A moment later a roar went up from the other side of the wall.

  “By the forge that made me,” Xalt said, reaching out his good hand to slow Kandler down. “Tell me they didn’t go in there.”

  The warforged dragged the justicar to a stop and stared up at the wall with his jaw wide open. The structure stood four stories tall and stretched from one edge of the city to the other, at least a hundred yards across at this point. With the exception of the tunnels that ran through its base at regular intervals, it was a solid wall of graying tarpaulins stretched taut over an intricate wooden frame, the outlines of which were visible beneath the thick, oiled canvas.

  Kandler spun back at the stunned artificer. “What is it?” he said.

  The warforged didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Xalt!” the justicar said. “What’s through there?”

  “This is bad,” Xalt said. “Not just bad. Awful.”

  Kandler stepped into the artificer’s face. “Can you be more specific?”

  Xalt brought his obsidian eyes back down to look at Kandler. He focused on the justicar as if he were seeing him for the first time. “It’s the arena,” the artificer said. “And from the sound of it, there’s a match going on.”

  Kandler closed his eyes.

  “What is it?” Esprë said as she turned around in his arms to stare at Xalt. “What’s going to happen to Burch and Sallah?”

  The justicar kissed the girl’s cheek, never taking his eyes from the artificer. “How many warforged in there?” he asked.

  Xalt shook his head. “That must be why the streets are so empty.”

  “How many, Xalt?”

  The greaser spoke slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep. “A few score at least. Hundreds? Maybe more.”

  Kandler grimaced as another roar sounded from inside the arena.

  Esprë pulled back from Kandler’s neck and sat on his hip. She furrowed her brow at him. “What’s going to happen to them?” she asked.

  Kandler looked back at her, and her eyes were as blue and wide as he had ever seen them. He reached up with his free arm and brushed the blonde hair back from the elf-girl’s face. Even in the Mournland’s half-light, it seemed to glitter.

  “I just found you,” he whispered.

  Kandler kissed Esprë on her forehead and handed her to Xalt.

  “Get her out of here,” he said. “Take her someplace safe till things quiet down, then get her back to Deothen.”

  Xalt nodded as the girl slid from Kandler’s arms and grabbed his thick, three-fingered hand. She bit her lip and said, “Wait! I can help.”

  Kandler shook his head. “The world needs you safe,” he said, “but our friends need me.” He drew his sword and stared down the black tunnel toward the circle of dim light at the other end. “I have to go.”

  “Wait!” Xalt said. “What is the plan? What are you going to do?”

  Kandler glanced back over his shoulder as he left and said, “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  As Kandler reached the end of the tarpaulin-lined tunnel, he saw Burch and Sallah racing into the middle of a sawdust-floored open area that seemed to stretch on forever. The shifter loosed his crossbow at something above, and Kandler poked his head out of the tunnel to see Te’oma flapping away on her cloak, which had transformed once again into batlike wings.

  The justicar craned his head around to see the entire arena. Rough-hewn bleachers lined both of the longer sides of the place, each of which stood behind a system of split-rail fencing that kept the crowd separated from the arena floor. Hundreds of warforged stood in them and stared at the shifter and the knight who had just barreled into the place.

  For a moment, it seemed that the observers thought the intruders were part of the show, but when Burch’s errant bolt sailed into the stands on the opposite side of the arena, the crowd leaped to its feet and roared in outrage. In the center of the arena, two of the largest warforged Kandler had ever seen turned from where they had put a halt to their fight and stomped toward the intruders.

  “What in the name of the Silver Flame are those?” Kandler heard Sallah shout to Burch as she pointed at the massive creatures. They looked something like a warforged, but they stood over twenty feet tall, even hunched over. The plates of armor that formed their skin were each at least an inch thick, and foot-long spikes rose from their backplates and the backs of their limbs. In place of hands, their arms terminated in massive weapons. The right was a massive hammer made of battered granite. The left was an axe-head nearly as tall as a man.

  As the creatures lumbered toward Burch and Sallah, they rasped their weapon-hands together. The edges of their steel axes drew huge lines of sparks from their hammers’ stony surfaces.

  “Titans!” Burch exclaimed.

  The arena floor shook with the massive creatures’ every tread.

  Kandler glanced behind him and saw a squad of five warforged warriors stomping up the tunnel behind him. “So much for the stealthy route,” he said to himself before dashing out to join Burch and Sallah on the arena floor.

  As Kandler reached the pair, Burch growled a greeting at him. “Just like old times,” the shifter grinned with a bravado the justicar wished he felt.

  Kandler shook his head as he looked up at the titans and said, “I don’t remember them being this bad.”

  The lady knight stood transfixed by the sight of the creatures rumbling toward them. Kandler grabbed Sallah by the arm and turned her to face him. “Ready to fight?” he said.

  Sallah stared at him with wide, green eyes. “Those things?” She pulled her arm away as if he was mad.

  Kandler jerked his head toward where the warforged now blocked their way back through the tunnel. “I like those odds better,”
he said.

  As the words left his lips, he glanced about and saw identical squads standing at the end of each of the other tunnels. Their best shot was to try for the closest tunnel, right back the way they came.

  The three warriors turned together and charged at the warforged standing in the mouth of the tunnel. The defenders stepped out to meet the intruders.

  The titans slowed as they reached the brawl, unable to storm in against the strangers without killing their smaller brethren. Instead they stood hovering over the fight, their arms raised high as they waited for a chance to slam down a killing blow.

  “Stop them!” a voice rang out from the stands, piercing through the noise of the battle and the roar of the crowd. “Capture them alive!”

  “Follow me!” Kandler screamed as he engaged the first of the guards. Having been ordered not to kill, the warforged held back, and Kandler soon had the best of his foe. A shot from Burch’s crossbow took out another.

  Just as Kandler saw his way clear to the nearest tunnel entrance—only a single warforged still stood in his way—something that looked like an ornate shield slammed down in front of him. Its edge bit deep into the floor as it sliced down through the hapless warforged before him, cutting it in half.

  Kandler looked up and saw that the shield was actually the axe-arm of one of the titans. The monstrous creature shambled in front of the tunnel door as it tore its weapon from where it was embedded in the floor.

  A scream came from behind Kandler, and he turned to see the other titan knock Sallah aside with its massive hammer. The blow smashed into her chest and sent her flying back and skittering across the arena floor. Her sword sailed away from her grasp and landed several yards beyond.

  Kandler started to run toward the fallen knight, but the other titan’s hammer slammed down just behind him. The blow missed him, but it shook the floor hard enough to knock him flying.

  The justicar rolled with his momentum, tucked himself into a neat somersault, and sprang to his feet, his sword still at the ready.

  “Hey, boss!” Burch said. The shifter stood right next to the justicar, his loaded crossbow in his hands. “We finally out of luck?”