The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

  When they’d left Mardakine only—damn, was it only days ago? It seemed like a lifetime had passed. In fact, several had.

  When Kandler and Burch had led the knights out of Mardakine to rescue Esprë from the vampires and the changeling who had kidnapped her, there had been seven of them: Kandler, Burch, Sallah, Brendis, Levritt, Gweir, and Deothen. Now three of the knights were dead, and another was hammering on death’s door.

  “We’ve had better weeks,” Kandler said, more to himself than anyone else.

  Burch cocked his head at his friend. “I don’t know,” the shifter said. “It’s not every week we got fresh horsemeat in Mardakine.”

  “I can’t believe you eat that raw,” Sallah called from behind, barely disguising her disgust.

  Burch rolled his yellow eyes at Kandler before responding over his shoulder. “Horse was as good as dead. We got no food. Easy choice.”

  Xalt spoke up from where he trotted along next to Sallah. “I have never been more glad that I do not need to eat.” Kandler thought he heard a hint of a smile in the warforged’s voice, but since the creature’s face couldn’t flex like that—apparently his builders hadn’t considered such a skill worth working into his design—the justicar could only guess.

  The tireless warforged kept pace with his mounted friends easily, never breathing hard or showing any sign of exertion. Perhaps, Kandler thought, it was because Xalt didn’t need to breathe. He apparently only bothered with it so he could talk.

  It had been Xalt’s horse that had fallen lame as they raced away from Construct with what seemed like three score of well-armed warforged following them on foot. The creatures couldn’t keep up with a horse at a dead gallop, so Kandler and the others had pushed their stolen mounts as hard as they could to put some distance between themselves and the wounded city smoking behind them.

  Thankfully, Construct no longer moved. The city itself—or at least dozens of the golem legs on which the thing marched—had been wounded in the battle with Bastard and his titans in the place’s arena. It would be mobile again soon, Kandler was sure, but by then they would be long gone. In the meantime, they just needed to keep ahead of the warforged who were sure to still be chasing them.

  Kandler, Sallah, and Burch had been riding hard all night. When Xalt’s mount went down, they’d just moved Brendis up behind Sallah and kept going. They’d slowed since, hoping to prevent the same thing from happening to their own steeds, and they’d stopped long enough for Burch to butcher the fallen beast.

  Kandler hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d pressed to keep moving on, chasing after Esprë and Te’oma on that airship on which they’d escaped the battle, even though they’d been out of sight for endless hours. The ship was damaged, and from the holes torn in the hull, Kandler guessed that it had no supplies left on it either. Eventually, it would have to stop someplace, and he planned to reach it when it did.

  Burch had pointed out—wisely, Kandler had to admit—that they weren’t likely to find food elsewhere in this blasted waste. Few creatures made their home in the Mournland, and those that did were usually too tough to be edible. It was hard to sink your teeth into a living ball of fire that exploded anytime you got too close, for instance.

  “Think they’re still following us?” Kandler asked.

  “I would guess not,” said Sallah. “Leaving Construct in flames gave us a substantial lead. They must give up the chase eventually, right?” No one responded, and she added, more uncertainly this time, “Right?”

  Xalt cleared his throat. “My apologies, but I don’t believe that. The people of Construct are as dedicated as they are tireless. They will pursue us until we leave their domain.”

  “How far does that extend?” Kandler asked, dreading the answer.

  “The whole of the Mournland.”

  Burch turned around in his saddle and peered back at the horizon. The gray, dead grass on the rolling hills behind them stood frozen in the grave-still air of the land. “Leaving a trail like a battle wagon,” he growled.

  Kandler didn’t need to look back. He’d already seen it. Even Esprë would have been able to track the riders through here. The hoofprints of their steeds stood out as if they were trotting along fresh-fallen snow. He stared forward instead.

  That’s when he saw it: a line of gray stones running from east to west, across the horizon.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Kandler asked.

  The shifter swiveled in his saddle and peered in the same direction as Kandler. A thin smile spread across the shifter’s feral face.

  “What is it?” Sallah asked, trying to keep any tone of hope from entering her voice.

  “Maybe our ticket out of here,” said Burch.

  When riders reached the line of stones, Kandler saw that they stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see. They were perfectly round, at least the parts that weren’t resting in the earth, and spaced just far enough apart that he could not touch two of them at once.

  “What are these?” Xalt asked. The warforged ran his hand along one of them as a parent might caress a child’s cheek. As he did, bluish arcs of electricity followed his touch, arcing across the stone’s smooth surface like lightning trapped in granite.

  “Does that hurt?” Sallah asked.

  She still sat on her horse, Brendis propped up behind her. The young knight had groaned when they came to a halt at the line of stones, but he had been horribly silent since.

  The horses snorted loudly as they rested for a moment. The riders had pushed them hard to get this far so fast, and they were happy to stop now, even if only for a few minutes.

  “It …” Xalt’s voice trailed off as he searched for words that would not come. “I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s like something light and feathery dancing along my plates. It … it makes me want to laugh.”

  “It tickles?” Kandler arched an eyebrow at the warforged.

  Xalt stared back at the justicar with his unblinking ebony eyes. A noise that sounded something like a giggle escaped from his open mouth. “I suppose that’s right.” He bent his head to stare at his hand running over the stone again. “Warforged aren’t ticklish though. It wasn’t a necessary part of our design.”

  Burch snorted as he leaped atop one of the stones. “First time for everything.”

  “It’s the lightning rail line,” Kandler said, answering Xalt’s earlier question.

  “I’ve heard of these,” Xalt said. “Placed next to each other, they form a repellent field that can carry strings of connected coaches along them as fast as an airship can fly. Aren’t they supposed to glow all over?”

  “I used to ride this line a lot,” Kandler said. “The Day of Mourning put an end to all that.”

  Burch nodded as he crouched like a frog, his legs splayed wide, and peered down to examine the stone. No electricity leaped from the stone to tickle his feet. “Killed Cyre and the rail line too.”

  “Where does it lead?” Sallah asked, peering off toward the east. The line of stones drove straight across the wasted plains until it disappeared from view.

  “Metrol,” Kandler said, “but it doesn’t follow our path. We need to head north too.”

  Burch shook his head. “Follow it, boss. Airship could be anywhere.”

  Kandler squinted at his old friend. “It was headed northeast. If we don’t go that way, we could miss it.”

  “Nothing says it kept northeast,” said Burch. “Changeling’s smart, she hightails it out of here first. We’re smart, we do the same.”

  Kandler ground his teeth. What the shifter said made sense, he knew, but he didn’t want to admit it. If they started questioning the idea that the airship had gone northeast, where would the doubts end?

  “We can follow the line straight into Metrol and through the mists,” Burch said.

  A miles-thick border of dead-gray mist surrounded the Mournland and had ever since the Day of Mourning. It sealed the place off from the rest of the continent of Khorvaire and
all of its former enemies.

  No one fought over the Mournland anymore. It would be like fighting over a graveyard.

  “Can’t you just find your way through it like you did outside of Mardakine?” Sallah asked.

  Burch shook his head. “Maybe. I know Mardakine. Been through the mists there lots of times. Never been this far into the Mournland.”

  “Following the stones would be simple,” Xalt said. “Even I could lead us through the mists by doing that.”

  “Is that why you never left here?” Sallah asked the warforged. “Were you trapped?”

  Xalt cocked his steel-plated head at her. “Warforged don’t need to sleep, breathe, eat, or drink,” he said. “I was thinking of you and the others.”

  “Burch is right,” Kandler said wearily. “We can’t help Esprë if we end up lost in the mists. Back in Mardakine, we saw more than one group of fortune hunters get turned back that way. Those were the lucky ones, most times.”

  “What happened to the others?” Sallah asked.

  “The Mournland,” Burch said with a humorless laugh.

  Kandler ignored him. “Some never got out of the mists. They just wandered around until they ran out of food and water. Others made it through but ran into one kind of predator or another.”

  “Warforged,” Sallah breathed. As she did, she noticed Xalt looking at her, and she blushed a bright red. “You’re not all bad,” she said sheepishly.

  “Thanks,” Xalt said without a trace of irony in his voice.

  “Not just warforged,” Burch said. “Carcass crabs, living spells, things worse.”

  “Worse than a—what kind of crab?”

  “Carcass crab.” The shifter bared his teeth. “Giant crab likes to bury itself under bodies on a battlefield. Corpses stick to its shell when it moves.”

  Kandler nodded. “That was my first thought when those warforged attacked back near the monument.”

  “Wouldn’t have been the first time,” Burch said.

  Sallah shuddered despite herself. As she did, she noticed Kandler watching her, and her eyes turned steely in response.

  “What’s worse than a carcass crab?” she asked.

  “People,” said Kandler. “There aren’t too many of them here in the Mournland, but those few are usually up to no good.”

  “We’re here.”

  “We destroyed a good chunk of Construct and killed some of the most powerful warforged that lived there.”

  Sallah lowered her eyes. “Point taken.”

  “The worst of them are the scavengers, people who pick through the corpses hunting for things to steal. Some parts of the Mournland are thick with them. The worst of them is Ikar the Black and his crew. They’d kill you for your hair.”

  One of Sallah’s hands absently stroked her long, red curls. “You can’t be serious.”

  Kandler gazed at her warmly. “It’s beautiful hair.”

  “Ikar sometimes works out of Metrol,” Burch said, shattering the moment between Kandler and Sallah.

  The justicar found himself more drawn to the young lady knight every passing day. He hadn’t been with another woman since Esprë’s mother had died on the Day of Mourning. He’d been too busy helping carve out Mardakine and protecting its people from threat after threat—including that of Ikar the Black. Love hadn’t ever entered his mind.

  This wasn’t love, though, he told himself. He barely knew the woman, and she certainly knew little enough about him.

  He was going to have to change that.

  “All right,” Kandler said. “Let’s head for Metrol. Once we make it to the Talenta Plains we can head north for Karrnath. I’m afraid that might be where this changeling is headed.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier for her to just head north then?” Xalt asked. He grew uncomfortable for a moment as all eyes turned toward him. “I follow geography,” he said with a shrug.

  “Maybe,” Kandler said. “Maybe the changeling doesn’t even know where she’s headed. Remember she barged into Mardakine with at least a score of those Karrnathi zombies, not to mention that bloodsucker Tan Du and his vampire spawn. With them all gone, she’s probably desperate. It’s hard to tell what she might do.”

  “You breathers never cease to amaze me,” Xalt said. “A warforged would consider the girl lost and go back home.”

  Kandler fought an urge to rip off the creature’s tin-plated head. “Esprë is my home,” he said instead. “There’s nothing for me back in Mardakine.”

  “Why don’t you leave us and return home then, Xalt?” Sallah asked, transparently doing her best to turn Kandler’s mind from mayhem.

  “We just about destroyed my home,” the warforged said. “I don’t think I’d be welcomed back with open arms. I’m sure,” he said, focusing on Sallah, “that you would be welcomed in Flamekeep.”

  Sallah smirked. “The Knights of the Silver Flame do forgive those who repent their sins,” she said, “but for me to fail in my mission would be a disaster of the highest order. The Mark of Death that Esprë carries has the potential to alter the face of the planet. She cannot be allowed to fall into evil hands.”

  “So much for that,” Burch said evenly.

  “Enough!” said Kandler, giving his steed his heels and steering the beast to follow the line of stones to the east. The others quickly fell into line behind him. “East for now and then north,” he called back as he urged his mount to a steady trot. “I won’t give up hope for her—ever!”

  The next afternoon, when the riders and Xalt reached the top of a tall hill, Kandler called a halt. They’d ridden hard since the first suggestion of dawn in the east, and they were all tired, thirsty, and sore. From the hilltop, they could see for miles around in any direction.

  “Good place,” Burch said as he leaped to the ground from the back of his horse, which shivered as he moved off, seemingly glad to be rid of him. “See anyone coming from forever away.” He paused. “Course, they can see us too.”

  Kandler dismounted, then cracked his neck. “No fires,” he said, “just like before. Don’t want to draw any more attention than we have to.”

  The justicar stretched his legs as he approached Sallah’s horse. He and Xalt helped the lady knight bring Brendis down from behind her. The dark-haired young knight was finally conscious, due to Sallah’s ministrations that morning. Once awake, he’d personally tended to his own battered flesh.

  “The magical powers the Silver Flame grants its finest adherents do not reach into the Mournland,” Sallah had explained to Kandler. “As knights of the Flame, though, we have some power of our own, and the pall that hangs over this land has not diminished that. It is but a candle compared to the Silver Flame, but it still can light the way.”

  Even so, every movement caused Brendis pain. He winced as his feet touched the ground, nodding his thanks to Kandler and Xalt even so.

  Sallah was beside her fellow knight in an instant, putting herself under his shoulder, letting him lean on her as they made their way toward where Burch sat. Already fishing around in his pack, the shifter pulled out a well-wrapped bit of still-bloody horseflesh and offered it to the knights. Sallah accepted it for them as she helped Brendis sit on the withered, gray grass, but neither of them opened it yet.

  Kandler sat down next to Sallah and favored her with a wry smile. She smiled back at him softly.

  “Is there no way we can cook this?” the lady knight asked, holding up the package Burch had handed her.

  “Only if we want every creature in these parts to know we’re here,” Burch said. “Warforged patrols probably still on our trail.”

  “Do you really think so?” Sallah asked. “Construct must be hundreds of miles behind us by now.”

  “Not far enough,” the shifter spat.

  “He’s right,” Xalt said. The warforged stood on the south side of the hill, peering back the way they’d come. He had no need for food and little for company. The crucible the group had found themselves in over the past few days had cemente
d them together, but Kandler didn’t doubt that the creature still felt a bit like an outsider sometimes. Whether or not that bothered him, the justicar couldn’t tell.

  “There they are,” Xalt said, pointing behind them with a thick finger, the only one left on that hand.

  Kandler squinted in the direction the warforged indicated. There, just on the edge of the horizon, he spotted a scattering of dark dots. He couldn’t tell if they were moving.

  “Are you sure?” he asked the warforged. “That’s leagues away.”

  Xalt nodded. “I’ve been watching for them ever since we topped that rise they’re on now. When we broke camp this morning, I feared that they might have gained ground on us. I am sad I was right.

  Kandler cursed then looked over at Burch. “Get a fire going, would you?” he said.

  “Why not?” The shifter shrugged. “They already know we’re here, and we’re still hours ahead of them. Might as well have full bellies.”

  Within minutes, Burch was roasting bits of horsemeat over a crackling fire made mostly of the Mournland’s gray-green grasses and a stunted shrub that looked like it had died years ago but just never knew to fall over from it.

  As the others gorged themselves on the fresh-cooked food, Kandler wandered off to the eastern edge of the hill and gazed out into the distance. There, on the horizon, he saw a smudge of gray that was darker than that of the grass or the sky, poking up from the surrounding land.

  Metrol, or what was left of it.

  Beyond it, the mists that covered the sky of this forsaken land cascaded down to the earth, forming a backdrop between the city’s battered skyline, which he’d once known so well, and the Cyre River, which he thought must be sparkling in the rays of the unseen sun.

  Kandler heard Sallah coming up behind him before she spoke. Her step was firm yet light, unlike Burch’s scamper, Brendis’s heavy limp, or Xalt’s thudding stroll. Her hand fell on his shoulder in the same way, and he reached his own hand up to hold hers in place.