Marked for Death: The Lost Mark, Book 1

by Forbeck, Matt

  Kandler shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “You idiots!” the voice from the stands said, even louder this time. “I said I want them alive!”

  The rest of the voices in the arena fell silent, and the titans froze, their weapon-arms poised to strike at a moment’s notice.

  Burch grinned at Kandler and said, “Now that’s lucky.”

  “The problem with luck,” Kandler said, “is that you can’t count on it.”

  “Archers!” the voice rang out.

  A long rank of warforged stood up from the back rows of the stands, raised their bows, and stretched them toward Kandler and Burch. The justicar glanced back to see that one of the titans had blocked the nearest tunnel exit with its foot. It was a long dash to either of the next-nearest exits.

  “Surrender, breathers!” the voice said.

  Burch nudged Kandler on the shoulder and pointed toward a blue-painted box in the center of the arena stands opposite the side the justicar had come through. It was large enough to hold a score of spectators, each of whom sat in a large chair. These were stacked in tiers to provide their occupants with a perfect view of the entire arena.

  A warforged dressed in a crimson cape with a silver hood stood at the front of the box. His silvery armor plates, burnished to a mirror finish, reflected the light of the dozens of torches distributed throughout the arena. In his hand, he held a golden horn that amplified his voice as he spoke.

  “Can you hit him from here?” Kandler asked.

  “Maybe,” the shifter said, “but not all the archers too.”

  Kandler looked up at the warforged leader in his private box. It galled him to surrender, but he didn’t warm to the thought of certain death either. He thought of Esprë and Xalt where he’d left them standing outside the stadium, and he knew the most important thing he could do was buy them time. If he could convince the warforged to hunt down the changeling too, then all the better.

  Kandler shook his head and sheathed his sword, and Burch slung his crossbow across his back. They strode across the arena floor to where Sallah lay on the ground. Blood trickled from her nose, and she looked pale, but her eyes were open.

  “I can’t breathe,” the lady knight gasped with a panicked look on her face. “I think my chest is crushed.”

  Kandler knelt next to her and put his hand on her chest. It was dented horribly, but something was wrong. He couldn’t feel her breathing at all, despite the way she panted. “Maybe,” he said, lifting the bottom of her shawl to reveal a shiny silver breastplate beneath. He smiled and said to her, “I thought I told you to leave your armor behind.”

  “All of it?” Sallah said, trying to laugh.

  Kandler reached down to Sallah’s side and unbuckled her armor, then nodded at Burch to give him a hand. They sat Sallah up, and her dented breastplate fell away. The lady knight sucked in a large breath of air and held it.

  “How’s that feel?” asked Kandler. He looked around to see that a score or more of well-armed warforged had surrounded the trio. The creatures stood there with their weapons out and ready but did not say a word.

  Sallah reached up to feel her ribs. “Painful,” she said, “but I’ll live.” She glanced at Kandler and Burch, “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank us,” the justicar said. “Thank our host. If he hadn’t said something, you’d probably be a smear running down the side of that titan’s axe right now.”

  “That’s a bit more gratitude than I think I can muster at the moment,” Sallah said, seeing the impassive faces of the warforged pressing in around them.

  “Bring them to me!” the voice from the stands said.

  Many warforged hands reached down and lifted the intruders to their feet. “Keep working at it,” Kandler said to Sallah. “You’re about to get your chance.”

  You are in the presence of a lieutenant of the Lord of Blades,” a warforged courtier said as the guards hauled Kandler, Sallah, and Burch through the indigo curtains that separated the leader’s box from the rest of the arena’s stands.

  The warforged leader turned to get a better look at its guests. He stood taller than the other warforged. His epidermal plates of polished adamantine encased him more like a suit of armor than a skin. Long, polished spikes poked from his arms, shoulders, legs, and knees. A crest of smaller spikes ran up from the center of his back. These fanned out and grew longer as they reached his head, like the plumage of a deadly bird. His eyes seemed made of sapphires.

  “Bastard, I presume,” Kandler said. He stuck out his hand in greeting, but the warforged ignored it.

  The guards standing to either side and behind him moved closer until he lowered his hand again.

  “My fame precedes me,” Bastard said. “As it should.”

  He gazed at each of his visitors in turn. Sallah fidgeted under the relentless stare, but she kept her tongue and met the creature’s eyes.

  “I saw the breastplate, and I’d recognize one of those swords anywhere. What has the Lord of Blades done to deserve this honor?” Bastard said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Has the Keeper of the Flame heard of our magnificent city and sent you to curry our favor?” The leader turned his sapphire eyes on Kandler and Burch. “Or has King Boranel finally decided that it is time to pay his regards to the Master of the Mournland?”

  Kandler shook his head. This sort of talk made him uneasy. He’d gone to live in Mardakine to get away from such nationalism. He appreciated the irony of doing so in a town built on a mission to restore Cyre, but it was the pursuit of such a hopeless mission that set the town outside normal concerns.

  “I don’t pay much attention to politics,” Kandler said.

  Bastard nodded. His shoulders creaked as he did, and a servant was there in a moment to oil his plates as he continued to talk. “So it seems. I would not expect an emissary from one of our neighbors’ courts to burst into our arena unannounced before our first meeting.”

  “We were chasing a criminal,” Kandler said. “You saw her—a changeling.”

  Bastard held up a spiked hand. “That may be so,” he said. “We saw the person you followed in here fly away. We already have people hunting for her. Even so, that does not excuse this intrusion.”

  “We only came here looking—” Sallah started, but she winced and stumbled over her words when she saw Kandler’s glare. “We were looking for, um …”

  “Supplies,” the justicar said. “We ran low on food and water. Otherwise, we would have waited outside the city for the changeling to leave. If we had not been in such dire straits, we would not have dared to bother you. We hoped to resupply and leave without your notice.”

  Bastard nodded at the trio, each in turn. “What happened to you before you came here is of little concern to me. I am charged with maintaining this city until the return of the Lord of Blades. Nothing more.”

  “I understand,” said Kandler.

  “Because of this,” said Bastard, “I am concerned about the innocents you slew here in the arena before my eyes.”

  Burch snarled at this. “We were defending ourselves.”

  “You murdered people for whom I am responsible,” the warforged leader said. No emotion leaked into his voice—at least as far as Kandler could tell. “The penalty is clear—immediate execution.”

  “No!” Sallah said. As she moved forward, the warforged guards to either side of her snatched her arms and held her still. “That’s not fair!”

  “Fair?” Bastard paused a moment before it spoke. “I care not for your knightly concepts of justice and fairness. The Lord of Blades demands retribution for such transgressions.”

  Kandler extended his open hand toward Bastard. He saw only one chance here, and he needed the warforged at ease enough for it to work. “I understand your situation, and I think you understand ours. Maybe I have another solution.”

  Bastard shook his head. “The solution I have is fine.”

  “I’d like to ask for a trial.”

  Bastard cocked his silvered
head at Kandler. “You are a breather. You have no rights here.”

  “A trial by combat.”

  Bastard cocked his head the other way, never taking his eyes from Kandler, then he threw back his head and laughed. It sounded like a hammer tapping an iron mug of mead.

  “You have strong metal, breather,” Bastard said as he brought his head back down again. “But tell me this. Why would one of us risk his life to give you a chance at freedom?”

  “Sport,” said Burch. All eyes turned to the shifter, who shuffled his feet a bit when he noticed everyone was watching him. “People are bored here. They want action, need distraction.”

  “Why would you say that?” Bastard asked, his sapphire eyes narrowing at Burch.

  Burch squinted out at the arena all around them. “Training grounds don’t have stands.”

  Bastard stared at the shifter for a long, quiet moment then turned to Kandler. “Who would you like to fight?” he asked. “Do you think you could defeat me?” The warforged leader preened, the dim light reflecting off his polished spikes.

  “I’ll fight anyone you like,” the justicar said. Kandler to suppressed a shudder. He had just opened the door for the warforged to do with him as he liked. He was less concerned about Bastard’s mercy, though, than in buying Esprë and Xalt more time.

  “Yes, you will,” said Bastard. “I have made enough concessions today.”

  Kandler stood like a stone and waited. Sallah shrugged the warforged hands from her arms. Burch gazed out over the arena, and Kandler followed his eyes. No one had left the place since the prisoners had been taken, and none of the spectators spoke as they waited to learn what would happen.

  Bastard picked up the golden horn that stood on a small, handsome table next to his chair. He put it to his mouth and spoke to the crowd, the horn amplifying his voice so that those in the arena could hear his every word.

  “The breathers we captured petitioned the Lord of Blades for the right to trial by combat! As his lieutenant, I have decided to grant their request!”

  The crowd erupted in cheers.

  “Should I be worried that they’re so happy about this?” Kandler asked Burch.

  Bastard looked back at the justicar then continued to speak into the horn. “If their champion wins this fight, they go free.”

  The crowd booed.

  “If our champion wins, they die.”

  The cheers returned louder than ever.

  Bastard turned to the justicar. “How are you called?”

  “Kandler?” said Sallah. “Who said that he would be our champion? It should be me.”

  The justicar glared at the lady knight. “You’re a fine knight,” he said, “but I’m a better duelist.”

  Sallah scoffed at that. Bastard ignored her and said to Kandler, “How many people have you killed in a duel?”

  Kandler looked at Burch. “What would you say?”

  “I lost count a while back. A score? More?”

  “More, I think.” Kandler looked at Sallah tenderly. “People find out you’re something special, they come looking for you.”

  “You are the breather champion,” Bastard said. “Kandler, is it?”

  The justicar nodded, avoiding Sallah’s frustrated gaze.

  Bastard spoke into the golden horn again. “The breather champion shall be Kandler!”

  The crowd booed.

  “The warforged champion shall be Gorgan!”

  The assembled warforged roared so loud that even Bastard covered his ears.

  “Who’s that?” Kandler asked. “Gorgan?”

  Burch jerked his head at the arena. Kandler watched as one of the titans lumbered out into the middle of the floor and raised both of its weapon-hands in the air, soaking up the audience’s cheers.

  When Te’oma reached the arena, she knew she’d found the kind of trouble she’d been looking for. As she emerged into the arena, the roar of the crowd nearly stunned her senseless, but she managed to keep her wits about her. She reached out with her mind to her cloak, and with each step across the sawdust-covered floor her wings unfurled further.

  By the time the changeling reached the center of the arena, the batlike appendages had her aloft. Before anyone in the arena could do something about it, she was soaring over their heads, the beating of her leathery wings pulling her higher into the sky and over the arena’s far wall.

  As Te’oma banked down over the roofs of the warforged apartments beyond the arena, her mind wandered back to the day her patron had granted her the privilege of being bonded to her bloodwings. At first, the idea of being bonded—physically, mentally, and permanently—to the fibrous, living creature had repulsed her. She had heard tales of others whose bonding had not gone so well. Symbionts of that sort possessed their own animal intelligence, and sometimes their will proved more powerful than that of their hosts. As a psion, Te’oma had trained her mind to be dominant over all of those around her, but being attached to a symbiont potentially meant fighting that battle every hour of every day for the rest of her life.

  Fortunately, Te’oma’s bloodwings had been young, fresh, and pliable. They had submitted totally to her will, so much so that they were even willing to shrivel up into little shreds concealed beneath her shirt when she so commanded.

  Te’oma hung low over Construct, working her wings hard to move slowly. She had seen archers lining the arena’s upper bleachers. If she could stay below their line of sight, she would be unassailable.

  As she flew, she reached out with her mind, scanning for the thoughts of the one she hunted—Esprë. She knew the justicar wouldn’t have abandoned the girl long before entering the arena to rescue his friends, so she guessed that Esprë was nearby. The shifter and knight had been with him, but not the warforged who had burst into the apartment. That meant this warforged was most likely with Esprë.

  Thoughts of all sorts flitted through the changeling’s head. Nearly all of them came from nearby warforged who were wondering what was happening in the arena. Te’oma discarded these thoughts as she encountered them. She found them uniformly cold and lifeless. Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and especially the halflings were a jumble of thoughts, emotions, desires, all mingling together like a muddied pool. Warforged were more like a stream—just as many particles perhaps, but all separate and flowing in the same direction. She found their single-mindedness disturbing.

  After a few minutes, she risked swinging around closer to the stretch of open area that skirted the arena, and she heard a young girl’s mind cry out—Kandler!

  The changeling smiled. She looked down and saw the warforged with the dirty white tabard standing next to the elf-girl as they leaned against an empty merchant’s stand. They gazed up at the arena’s wall, allowing Te’oma to glide in silently and land on the next street over. As she willed her wings to return to their cloaklike guise, she pulled out a black-bladed knife and listened, then slipped into the merchant’s stand via its rear counter.

  “I’m sure your stepfather will be all right,” the warforged said to Esprë. “We just need to wait here to find out for sure.”

  “Can’t you take me in to watch?” the girl asked.

  The warforged opened his mouth to speak, and Te’oma saw her chance to strike. “Such violent places are no place—”

  “What is it, Xalt?” Esprë asked. “What—?” She cut herself off as the warforged turned and she saw the black knife in his back.

  Te’oma leaped over the merchant’s counter and kicked the warforged in the face. He turned, fell flat on his face, and did not move again.

  Esprë screamed and whirled to run, but Te’oma was quicker. She reached out and grabbed the girl by her arm. Shrieking, Esprë slapped and clawed and punched. Te’oma caught her other arm and shook her.

  “Stop that! Stop it, Esprë! You know it has to be this way!”

  “You killed him! You killed—!”

  “No!” Te’oma gave the girl a good, hard shake. “No, Esprë!”

  The fight wen
t out of the girl. She sagged to her knees and burst into tears.

  “I just took the fight out of him,” Te’oma said. “He’ll live. Killing a warforged isn’t that easy.”

  “H-he’s not dead?”

  Keeping a tight hold on the girl, Te’oma turned to look at the warforged. He wasn’t breathing, but that meant nothing. Warforged didn’t breathe.

  “The knife was just to get his attention,” she said, though she had no idea if it was true. It didn’t matter, as long as the girl believed it. “I needed him shocked long enough to knock him senseless. He may … leak a little, but he’ll be fine.”

  “Where’s Kandler?” Esprë asked.

  Te’oma smiled as she pulled the knife from the warforged and slipped it back into its sheath. She put an arm around the girl. “Still in the arena,” she said. “I expect he’ll be dead soon, along with the others.

  Esprë tried to break away from Te’oma. The changeling grabbed her by the arm and pulled the girl back in. “I have to help him!” Esprë said.

  Te’oma shook her head. “You’ll just get yourself killed!”

  Esprë glared at the changeling. “What do you plan to do with me now?” she asked.

  “We need to find a way off this city,” the changeling said. “But that’s not enough.” She started walking, the girl in tow. “I’m not carrying you all the way to Karrnath. We’ll need horses, food, and—” Te’oma stopped in her tracks and stared out toward the horizon. “I’d wondered what had happened to that.”

  Esprë squinted in the direction of the changeling’s line of sight. “Is that the sun breaking through there?” the girl asked.

  “The sun never shines in the Mournland,” the changeling said with a grin, but then she remembered the light that had cascaded over that old elf wizard’s tower. “Almost never anyhow. That’s the ring of fire around an airship, and it’s coming this way.”

  Te’oma looked back over her shoulder at the arena. “Yes,” she said as she pulled the girl along toward the towering wall. “This might be something worth sticking around for.”