The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

  He had no time to think more on that.

  “The back door!” Kandler said.

  “Xalt’s on it,” Burch said. “Brendis has the windows.”

  The young knight had already shuttered three of the four sets of small, glazed panes. As he reached for the fourth, a frantic, glowing figure hurled itself through the wood and glass, sending it and Brendis flying back into the pub. The thing caught halfway into the pub, the shards of glass left in the window frame stabbing into its gut. It wailed in pain and anger.

  Trapped within the cozy confines of the pub’s main room, the sound hurt Kandler’s ears worse than ever. He gritted his teeth and stabbed his sword straight into the screeching thing’s face as it flailed about. The blade caught it below its chin and slid into the thing’s chest, catching on its spine.

  With another push, Kandler shoved the dead creature back out of the window, blood spurting after it as it cascaded to the cobblestone square outside. Sallah and Burch slammed the shutters closed and barred them, sealing the place tight.

  Outside, a chorus of frustrated wails railed against Ginty’s façade.

  Xalt came stomping up from the back room. “The rear is secured,” he said plainly.

  “What do we do now?” Sallah asked. She flexed her hands in frustration, and Kandler could tell she ached to fill them with a sword.

  Kandler glanced about the place, then walked over and sat on the same barstool he’d used a hundred times before. That had been in another life, one lived in the dying days of the Last War, before anyone had ever conceived of something like the Mournland, before Kandler had taken an elf wife and become a father to her daughter too.

  Forever ago, he thought, looking deep into Sallah’s emerald eyes.

  “Now,” he said, “we wait.”

  Esprë had long since dried her eyes. Now she was just burning mad and aching to do something about it. Over the years of her life—as yet short in the eyes of an elf—she had lost her father, her mother, and now her stepfather as well. She was as alone in this world as she had ever been, and she needed to do something to change that now.

  The delicate, blue-eyed waif of an elf strode to the bridge of the ship, her long, blond tresses snapping in the wind behind her like a war banner. Te’oma stood before her at the wheel, gazing out into the distance. Now that they were above the mists of the Mournland, the changeling spent much of her time searching for any sign of an end to the miles of rolling dead-gray clouds that sprawled off beneath them in every direction.

  Esprë had no idea how high up they were. There was literally nothing around by which she could judge. It was cold, though, chilly enough that she spent much of her time close to the ring of fire that propelled the battered airship through the sky.

  She was amazed that the ship was still together. The thought that the whole thing might fall to pieces beneath her kept her up at night.

  This was no idle wandering of her imagination. On the few times that Esprë had taken the ship’s wheel since she’d awoken here in Te’oma’s care, she could feel the harnessed elemental creature of fire that was bound up in the ring gloating to itself. Even it believed it was only a matter of time before it was freed in a spectacular explosion that might consume everything—and everyone—on the ship long before its remains hit the ground.

  Now, though, that was the last thing on her mind. She wanted something more than just her feet on solid ground. She wanted answers.

  “Where are we going?”

  The changeling turned slowly at the young elf’s words, almost as if she’d been expecting them. Esprë supposed that was possible. Te’oma was a telepath, after all, gifted by fate with strange powers of the mind that let her peer into a subject’s soul and do gods knew what else. Esprë had felt Te’oma rummaging around through her brain before, though, and she didn’t detect the changeling’s presence in there now. She wondered, though, if she would always know it if she did.

  A strange smile splayed across the changeling’s thin, pale lips, somehow caught between sadness and mirth. Te’oma hadn’t bothered with taking a better-formed aspect since they had left Construct far behind. Esprë suspected the changeling felt more comfortable in her natural state

  “Where would you like to go?” Te’oma said slowly, carefully.

  “Home,” Esprë said flatly. She was ready for an argument with the changeling, who had kidnapped her in the first place.

  “Where is that?” The changeling’s eyebrows—so thin and pale they were more of a suggestion—rose as she spoke.

  Esprë stopped for a moment. She hadn’t thought this through entirely. All she knew for sure was that she didn’t trust the changeling and wasn’t willing to go with her anywhere. She didn’t know how she would get away from her, but she knew she had to try.

  “Mardakine?” Te’oma asked. “There’s not much of it left now, is there? How do you suppose the people there will react when they learn it was you who killed all their friends and family in the middle of the night?”

  Esprë recoiled in horror. “How do you—?” She cut herself off before finishing the question. The answer was too obvious.

  “I couldn’t control it,” Esprë said, her voice little more than a whisper that barely carried over the crackling of the airship’s ring of fire. “I didn’t mean … It’s not my fault.”

  “Oh, I know,” Te’oma said, putting a comforting hand on the young elf’s shoulder. “There wasn’t a thing you could have done to stop it, but do you think the people of Mardakine will see it that way?”

  Esprë hung her head low. She couldn’t face going back to Mardakine. The thought of facing her friend Norra, knowing that she’d killed her mother, stopped her breath. Besides, with Kandler gone, there was little else for her there now. She was just a young elf wandering alone in the world. Perhaps any one place would be as good as another.

  “There’s Aerenal,” Esprë said as the thought struck her.

  “The elf homeland?” Te’oma frowned. “Do you think they’d welcome you back there? How old were you when you left?”

  “Too young to remember it, but I have grandparents there, probably some other family too. They would take me in. They wouldn’t abandon me.”

  Te’oma shook her head sagely. “Have you forgotten about your dragonmark? The Mark of Death?”

  The changeling bent her neck to peer into Esprë’s downcast eyes. “The last time someone bore the Mark of Death, the dragons and elves put an end to their centuries-long war to eradicate her and everyone else in the House of Vol.”

  Esprë’s eyes widened. “They killed the whole of an extended family? Why?”

  “The bearer was a mixed breed of elf and dragon blood. Her parents thought that their love, given life in the form of their daughter, would show the elves and dragons how to put an end to their perennial conflict. In a sense, it did that, but only because it provided both sides with a common foe.

  “Both the dragons and elves saw the very existence of this lady of Vol as an abomination, and they determined to put an end to her and anyone who sympathized with her at once.”

  Te’oma pulled back the collar of Esprë’s shirt, exposing the pattern of her raw-edged dragonmark beneath. “The blood of House Vol must run through your veins. Just think what they’d do to you.”

  Esprë shrugged free from the changeling’s grasp. “Those people who helped you kidnap me,” she said. “They were members of the Blood of Vol, a cult that bears that lost house’s name.”

  Te’oma nodded. “The legend of House Vol lives on in the cult and its fascination with blood. It’s no coincidence that it has vampires in its ranks.”

  Esprë raised her eyes to look into the changeling’s pearly, blank orbs. “You talk as if you are not a member.”

  Te’oma grinned softly. “Smart girl,” she said. “I believe in no gods, only in myself. It’s cost me dearly, but it’s who I am.”

  “Do you think yourself to be a god?”

  “If I was, this trip woul
d have been a great deal easier.”

  Esprë narrowed her eyes at the changeling. “Where are we going?” she asked again.

  Te’oma measured the girl carefully before answering. “To find some people who desperately want to meet you.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?” Esprë pouted at the changeling defiantly, trying her best not to look like a little girl. She was probably older than Te’oma—much older—but her long youth betrayed her still.

  Te’oma reached out and caressed Esprë’s soft cheek with one of her pale, barely formed hands. “That doesn’t really matter.”

  With that, Te’oma stared past Esprë and off into the distance. As the young elf strolled toward the ship’s prow, she did the same. On the horizon, she thought she saw a dark line, an end to the rolling mists they’d scudded over for so long. They would leave the Mournland soon. From there, it might only be a short while before Te’oma turned her over to her compatriots. If Esprë wished to act to save herself, it would have to be soon.

  Only one answer came to her mind as she peered out from the prow. She would have to kill Te’oma and take control of the ship. She could figure out what to do from there.

  Esprë knew she had the power in her to murder the changeling. She’d felt it growing in her for the past few months. So far, the dragonmark’s power had only randomly taken innocents. As horrible as that had been—even before Esprë realized she had been unwittingly behind it—she had no memories of it beyond a few fragments of dreams.

  This would be the first time Esprë would use her dragonmark consciously, purposefully, to take a life.

  The young elf stared down at her hands and began to weep.

  Although Esprë had never killed anyone before intentionally, she’d seen death before, and not just in the strange dreams her dragonmark thrust upon her. When she was little more than a toddler, her mother had brought her to Khorvaire to look for a new life away from the stultifying elf society of Aerenal. They had made the ocean voyage on a large passenger ship that docked at Pylas Maradal, the largest of the port cities in Valenar, the elf colony-nation on the southern coast.

  Soon after Esprë and her mother arrived, brigands had accosted them, determined to rob them and leave them for dead. Esprina had been traveling incognito, and the thieves hadn’t realized the power the sorcerer wielded. Within moments, three of them lay dead in the road and the others had fled.

  “Don’t look, darling,” Esprina had said. She’d wanted to protect her daughter from the horrors of violent death, something that few elves worried about.

  In the Aerenal culture, most elves looked forward to death rather than fearing it. In Khorvaire, though, Esprë had learned to fear death. She had few memories of her homeland, and most of them featured her mother arguing with her grandparents about things she didn’t really understand. There, in Aerenal, death had seemed a distant dream someone else was having.

  It was almost like adulthood. Esprë knew that she’d grow up someday, and she could see what it was like, but in her gut she never expected it to happen. It was too far off.

  Here, in Khorvaire—especially right now—death lurked around every corner. The Priests of Transition were an ocean away, and all a fallen elf had to look forward to was an eternity of oblivion.

  All these thoughts and feelings coalesced into a sick feeling in Esprë’s gut as she strolled nonchalantly—perhaps too much so, she feared—toward where Te’oma stood on the bridge. The changeling looked relaxed, hopeful even, her hands held loosely on the airship’s wheel as she coaxed the ship toward the northeast again. Her blank eyes stayed fixed on the horizon as they sped toward it, never once flicking toward Esprë as she approached.

  “I can’t wait to put the Mournland behind us,” Te’oma said breezily, as if they’d met on the street and were talking about the weather.

  Esprë nodded, trying to appear happy about the change. “I hope to never see it again.”

  The two fell silent then, as they had for the past day. They had little to say to each other. Every now and then, Te’oma would comment on something, and Esprë would usually just nod in agreement.

  As they reached the edge of the Mournland, though, the unspoken tension between the two had grown. To Esprë, at least, it had almost become unbearable, although Te’oma showed few signs she was aware of it. If the young elf had learned one thing in her time in the changeling’s company, though, it was that she could not read Te’oma’s emotions at all.

  “You can see the Talenta Plains,” the changeling said, pointing a thin, pale finger off to the east. There, past the miles of roiling mists that still rolled out before them, she could see a strip of golden green that stretched all the way to where the land met the sky.

  “Nomadic halflings, right?” Esprë said, pretending to be interested.

  The changeling favored her with a smile, still not turning to look at her. “That’s right. You know much for a child.”

  “I’ll bet I’m older than you.” The young elf could not keep the edge from her voice.

  This time, Te’oma did look at her with her blank eyes. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “It must have been strange having a human for a stepfather, born before him and sure to outlive him.”

  Esprë frowned. “I never thought about it much.”

  She felt the dragonmark on her back start to itch and then burn, as if it had a life of its own. Did it want her to use it? Did it suffer from a thirst that only lives could quench? Or was that how she really felt instead?

  The dragonmark burned not hot, but cold, like an icicle lancing through her skin. The chill crept along her shoulders and down her arms until it reached the fingers of her hands. There it pulsated, throbbed, waiting to be set loose.

  “So,” Te’oma said, staring out at the horizon once again, “you’ve finally come to kill me.”

  Esprë’s breath caught in her throat. The look on her face must have betrayed her. How had Te’oma known?

  The changeling narrowed her eyes at the young elf. “I don’t have to be a telepath to know what’s on your mind. Here we are at the edge of the Mournland, and I’m taking you off to Vol knows where. It’s time for you to make your move.”

  Esprë flexed her hands in and out of fists to ease the throbbing cold in them. “I thought you weren’t a part of that cult.”

  “I’m not,” Te’oma said. With that, she threw herself away from Esprë and over the railing that separated the bridge from the lower deck.

  Esprë lunged at the changeling, but she was too late. Te’oma fell away, inches from the young elf’s outstretched hand, and then she was gone, the railing standing like a fence between them.

  The ship pitched forward madly and careened toward the world below. Esprë reached out and grabbed the wheel as she fell against it. She could feel the airship’s elemental striving against her, doing its best to resist her control, but she steeled her mind against it and bent its will to her own. Soon the ship leveled off and flew straight again.

  Esprë leaned out over the wheel and cursed at the changeling. The words, she knew, were more for herself than her captor. If she’d only been smarter or faster or … better.

  “Would your mother want to hear you speak like that?” Te’oma said. “I think that justicar has been a poor influence on you.”

  Esprë let loose a raging stream of obscenities now, finishing up with, “… and the bitch cursed to bear you.” The changeling’s face pinked at the words, which pleased the young elf to no end.

  “If Kandler had spent more time teaching you to fight and less filling your head with filthy words, you’d have killed me by now.”

  “He also taught me patience,” Esprë said, squinting at the changeling. Her voice shook with the anger she’d let take control of her for a moment. “It’s a small ship,” she said. “You can’t avoid me forever.”

  Something foreign stabbed into Esprë’s brain like a knife through her left temple. The right side of her body started to go numb, but sh
e held onto the wheel and glared down at the changeling who stared at her with murderous intent.

  “Get out of my head!” Esprë screamed. “I fought you off once. I can do it again.”

  Pain lanced through her right temple this time, and the young elf felt her knees give way. She collapsed onto the wheel, struggling to force her limbs to obey.

  “You can’t do this!” Esprë screeched herself hoarse as she wept hot, bitter tears that washed away the dragonmark’s chilly hunger. “I’ll kill you!”

  The world spun around her as if she was suddenly the center of the universe. She fought it with all her might, but it was like trying to swim out of a whirlpool that was sucking her down. Just as everything swirled to black, she heard Te’oma say one thing to her.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  Something large, heavy, and angry slammed into the leftmost of Ginty’s shutters again. The sound made Kandler wince, even though he’d already heard it a dozen times before.

  “The shutters are starting to give,” said Xalt, who stood before the window where the coverings had just bent inward a bit. The warforged seemed to be playing a game in which he tried to guess which window the creatures outside the pub would attack next. So far, Kandler noted, he’d been right more often than wrong.

  “They’ll hold,” Kandler said. “The door and shutters are magically reinforced.” Something smashed into the shutters again, and Kandler eyed them warily. “Of course, the thick bands of iron around them don’t hurt either.”

  “Is there anything in a Brelish pub worth breaking down the door for?” Brendis asked. The young knight sat slumped on a barstool near Kandler. He jumped every time something hit the front of the place, ready to hurl himself into battle.

  “Depends how much you like your drink,” Burch said.