The wooden ribs cracked but held, and Te’oma bounced back into the room, reeling from the impact. Before she could utter a moan, Ibrido scooped her up off the floor and wrapped his hands around her neck.
“Impressive,” he said as he started to strangle her. “Your drive for survival suits you well. Perhaps in other circumstances we could be true allies. You would be an asset.” He squeezed even harder, and the changeling felt her world start to go black. “As it is, though, you are far too competent a foe to be allowed to live.”
Desperate, Te’oma lashed out blindly with her fists. The dragon-elf’s arms were half again as long as hers, though, and she only found purchase on his biceps. She tried digging into them with her nails, but she could not penetrate his scales. She morphed back into her natural form, but her arms still weren’t long enough. She considered duplicating Ibrido’s form, but a better idea struck her.
The changeling brought her knees up to her chest, and Ibrido laughed at her. “You cannot escape me by rolling into a ball,” he said, just before she lashed out with a two-footed kick that crushed his snoutlike nose.
The dragon-elf dropped Te’oma to the floor. She hit it hard then rolled away, hacking hard, trying to cough away the impressions his fingers had left on her throat. She crawled toward the door as best she could, not bothering to look back. How badly she might have hurt her foe didn’t matter. The only thing she could think about was getting out of that room.
“You bastard bitch!” Ibrido roared.
Te’oma still didn’t glance back, but she heard the dragon-elf suck in a deep breath then exhale it in her direction. A thick, cloying gas enveloped her before she could blink, its acidic fumes eating away at her, stinging her eyes and burning her skin. She screamed in horror, and as she drew in her next breath she sucked the stuff into her lungs. This set her coughing hard enough to snap one of her already cracked ribs.
Te’oma was still wincing in pain as Ibrido snatched her up by the collar of her stolen armor and hauled her to her feet. She coughed blood into his face.
“Having a hard time breathing, are we?” he said. “That is a problem I can help you solve.”
Ibrido reached out with his other hand and grabbed Te’oma by the chin. Then, with relentless force, he began forcing her head around, away from the direction in which he held her shoulders.
Te’oma struggled against the dragon-elf’s incredible strength with what was left of her might. Still coughing that horrible gas from her lungs, she beat at him with her arms and legs, but he just hauled her in closer, drawing her into a terrible embrace she could not resist. She tried to bite the web of his hand, between his index finger and thumb, but she couldn’t do more than scratch his scales as his talons dug deep into her cheeks, drawing blood that flowed down his fingers and into her mouth, threatening to drown her in her own hot fluids.
When her neck twisted to the farthest point she thought it could, Te’oma unleashed a horrid, desperate scream.
Ibrido gave her head one final push and snapped her neck like a dry piece of kindling.
Te’oma felt her body go limp and numb beneath her. Helpless, unable to even raise her arms to defend herself, she did the only thing she could.
She wept. She cried for herself, for her long-dead daughter, and for the rest of her life, which it seemed she would never have.
We caught you red-handed trying to escape,” Berre said. “For that, there will be consequences.”
Kandler bit back a snarl.
“That’s doesn’t matter right now,” he said, pointing his sword over the dwarf’s shoulder at the airship beyond. “You have to listen to me.”
A bolt whizzed past Kandler’s outstretched arm, and he dropped his blade like a hot iron.
“The rest of you, drop your weapons,” Berre said.
She didn’t need to raise her voice for everyone to hear the menace in it. Her time living with so many skeletons had made her used to having her orders followed without question, Kandler realized. He knew that she would not brook any disobedience, however pleasant she might have been to him and the others before.
Sallah sheathed her sword, and Burch slung his crossbow back across his shoulders. Kandler stepped forward, putting up his hands to show that he wasn’t a threat.
“We’re not your problem here,” he said, struggling to keep the desperation from his voice. He had to make her listen to him, and if she thought he was lying, there was little chance of that.
“Stand back.” Berre shoved her battle-axe into Kandler’s face, and he stuttered two steps away.
“You don’t want us,” he said. “You want Esprë.”
The Captain of Bones fidgeted a moment as she weighed the truth in the justicar’s words. “Where is she?” she asked. “What have you done with her?”
“We were trying to escape,” Kandler said. “That much is true, but we were tricked, betrayed. We don’t have her any more.”
Berre scowled at the justicar. “Where is she?”
Exasperated, Kandler pointed at the Karrnathi airship again, this time with his finger. “Why don’t you ask whoever’s in charge of that ship?”
Berre turned to gaze out at Keeper’s Claw and gasped. The skeletons crewing the airship had tossed off all of the mooring ropes and drawn in the gangplank, cutting off access to the ship from the top of the fort’s rear wall. All it waited for was for someone to take the wheel and fly it away.
“Who would dare?” the dwarf asked.
“It’s the changeling,” Burch said. “She never left the fort.”
The windows framed by the ribs of the ship’s horrific masthead shattered, sending broken bits of wood and shattered glass cascading down to the ground behind the fort. A body followed along with them, spilled toward the ground. Whitish but covered with blood, it fluttered down slowly on tattered, black wings that could not keep it aloft.
As the body disappeared behind the back wall of the fort, Burch looked at Kandler. “All right,” the shifter said, “I could be wrong about that too.”
The door to the captain’s quarters in the lower part of the forecastle opened, and a tall, powerful creature covered with green scales strode forth. He wore a black cloak that seemed to have some sort of insignia of rank embroidered across a fold near the wearer’s chest. The green-scaled creature stopped for a moment to stare down at the crowd assembled near the fort’s open gates. Then he sprinted toward the rear of the airship.
“Sailors of Keeper’s Claw,” Berre shouted. “Halt!”
The skeletons on the airship ignored the captain and kept about their work, preparing the ship to leave.
Berre cursed. “The bastard has one of our command cloaks,” she said, “one with a rank at least as high as mine.” She cupped her hands around her lips.
“Soldiers of Fort Bones,” Berre called in her loudest voice, “stop that ship!”
The skeletons inside the fort turned as one to face the airship. Those armed with crossbows loosed their bolts at the craft, several of which bounced off their fellows on the deck of the ship. One or two caught in an eye socket or between a couple ribs, but they did no real hurt. None of them found the stranger.
“The half-dragon!” Berre said. “Kill the half-dragon!”
As the skeletons loaded another round of bolts into their crossbows, Kandler launched himself forward, with Sallah and Burch following close in his wake. Berre started to protest but cut herself off before she distracted any of her soldiers from the more vital target of the half-dragon.
As Kandler raced past Monja and Xalt, they joined the others chasing after him. He charged for a ladder near the fort’s rear wall and hauled himself up it as fast as his arms would take him. He knew that Esprë had to still be on that ship, and he was determined not to let it leave without him. He hadn’t come so far, gone through so much, to lose her again.
By the time he popped through the walkway floor and hurled himself to the top of the wall, though, he was already too late. Ibrido stood on
the bridge, the wheel in his hands, and the ship was scudding away. The justicar could do nothing to prevent it.
He leaped atop the crenellated wall and gauged the distance to one of the ship’s mooring lines. It hung far out of his reach, but a desperate leap might put it within grasp. He crouched low to jump and shoved out with all his might, stretching his fingers as far as they would go in the vain hope that they might catch on one of the fast-moving ropes and give him one last chance at saving his daughter.
As his feet cleared the fort’s wall, though, a pair of hands reached out from behind and snatched him back by his sword belt. The nearest rope skated by his fingers, just out of his reach.
Kandler fell back to the walkway behind the wall, tangled in the arms of whoever it was who had robbed him of his—of Esprë’s—final chance. “No!” he raged. “No!”
The justicar drew back his fist to smash into the face of the person who had stopped him in mid-leap, but his eyes fell on Sallah’s beautiful features. His hand froze behind him. “You?”
“It was too far,” she said as she panted for breath. “You could have been killed.”
Kandler punched his fist into the floor behind the lady knight’s head, then stood up to stare after the airship as it sped away into the night. Already, all he could see of it was the ring of fire and some of the rear parts of the ship silhouetted against it.
He swore he could hear something else over the crackling of that massive wheel of flames though, something dry and painful, something that sounded like laughter.
The justicar turned on the lady knight, who now stood behind him, watching the airship over his shoulder. Her emerald eyes shone with pain but showed no regret. He knew she’d have made the same choice over and over again, no matter what it might cost her. He didn’t care.
“That was my call to make,” he said as he shouldered past her and slid down the ladder to the fort’s open yard.
“Explain yourself,” Berre said, stepping square into Kandler’s face, although she was at least two feet shorter than him.
“We were trying to escape,” he said. He didn’t care what she thought of that or what she might do to him. He only knew he had to get after Esprë fast. “It went wrong.”
He stormed past her, heading for the stables. Three of the horses, saddled up and ready to go, had wandered out of their stalls after Burch went sprinting past them. Kandler strode up to one and mounted it. As he grabbed the reins, he saw that the gates to the fort were closed and a handful of Karrnathi skeletons stood dropping the gates’ ironbound bar back into place.
“Get that out of my way,” Kandler said to Berre as she stalked after him.
“I’ll do no such thing,” she said. “You are my guest here, but you are not permitted to come and go as you please.”
Kandler put his hand on the pommel of his sword. “It wasn’t a request. I’ll kill you and everyone else in this backwater pit.”
“You are not in charge here,” she said, drawing her battle-axe.
A hand reached up and held Kandler’s sword arm in place before he could bring forth his blade. The justicar looked down to see Xalt staring up at him.
“Don’t try to stop me,” Kandler said.
“I want Esprë safe too,” the warforged said, keeping his hand—the one missing the finger he’d lost standing up to his cruel superior—on Kandler’s, “but you are no good to her dead. The ship is gone. This horse cannot catch it.”
Kandler slapped Xalt’s hand away and kicked the horse into a trot toward the gates. As he reached them, he dismounted and strode up to the bar holding them shut. With a mighty shove, he pushed up on the bar, dislodging it from its home.
“Guards,” Berre said, “bar the gate.”
A half-dozen skeletons leaped forward to obey the order, pressing the heavy bar back into its brackets. Kandler bent his knees and shoved up against them, struggling with his every muscle. He knew he couldn’t win. There were too many of them. Even if he drew his sword and beat them all into a pile of broken bones, scores more stood ready to take their place. And with every moment Esprë grew farther away.
Someone pounded on the gates then, a desperate, hammering knocking that rattled them from end to end. It took Kandler a moment to realize the sound had originated outside the fort’s walls.
“Open up!” a strained voice called over the top of the gates. Kandler would have recognized it anywhere. It belonged to Burch.
“Didn’t you hear him?” Kandler said, not caring for an instant how the shifter had wound up outside the fort. Perhaps he’d tried a jump for the mooring lines himself—without Sallah to stop him—and had come up short. At least he’d tried. At least he’d had the chance.
Berre nodded. “Open the gates,” she said.
The skeletons who had been pushing down on the massive bar reversed themselves and pulled the heavy, banded log out of its brackets with one practiced move. Then they moved as one to push the gates outward into the night.
As soon as the gates cracked open wide enough, Burch sidled through into the yard, bearing someone’s slack body in his arms. At first, hope leaped in Kandler’s heart that it might be Esprë, that the shifter, his closest friend, had somehow found a way to rescue his little girl.
Then Kandler saw the clothing and armor that had belonged to Brendis, the chain mail, the breastplate, the red tabard embroidered with the silver flame. He wondered if Burch had gone outside to recover the young knight’s corpse.
But then he saw the long, blond hair and bone-pale skin of the changeling poking out above the tabard’s collar. Blood the same color as the tabard covered her face, even running into her eyes. Her neck hung at an unnatural angle.
“She’s still alive,” Burch said.
Is there anything you can do for her?” Kandler asked Monja as they followed Burch into the fort’s infirmary. The shifter carried the changeling to the nearest bed and set her down on it, arranging her neck in a position that looked less painful. Although she had stopped bleeding, she still left crimson streaks on the bleached white sheets where the shifter moved her across them.
The halfling shrugged. “It’s in the hands of Olladra now,” she said. “I can only offer up my prayers and see if the fickle goddess of fortune smiles on our wayward changeling.”
“I thought you’d want to kill her,” Sallah said, trooping in after Kandler and Monja, with Xalt and Berre on her tail.
Kandler looked down at the battered changeling, her breath rattling in and out of her in shallow, ragged bursts. He felt a mix of pity and wrath that he could not reconcile. Part of him felt that no one deserved to suffer like this, but another part said that if anyone did have such agony coming to her, it was this changeling.
He shook his head at Sallah’s question. “No,” he said. “She’s the only link we have to Esprë now.”
“Then step aside and let me work,” Monja said.
The halfling stepped up to Te’oma’s bedside and placed her hands on each of the changeling’s ears, cradling her head in a gentle grasp. Te’oma’s breath came shorter and shorter now. Without the shaman’s intervention, Kandler knew she wouldn’t have long. From the fear he read in her blank, white eyes—the tears which ran pale, pink streaks through the blood on her cheeks—he could see she knew it too.
Monja chanted a short series of words in a language that Kandler could not understand, at least not in his head. He felt their warmth and comfort in his heart.
The little shaman’s hands began to glow with a golden light. As she spoke, the light ran down through her palms and fingers and crawled along Te’oma’s flesh. Where it passed, blood stopped flowing, skin knitted back into shape, and bones healed as strong as they’d ever been.
Kandler heard the sound of the changeling’s neck healing. The bones popped clear and sharp as they meshed back together into their original form. The golden light effused Te’oma’s entire body, washing over her in benevolent color before finally fading away to nothing.
The changeling’s breathing returned to normal, and a healthy hue filled her cheeks once again. She relaxed back into the bloodstained bed sheets, the pain that had wracked her body now gone. She slept peacefully now, even in the armor and tabard she’d stolen from Brendis.
“It’s all right,” Monja said softly, as if not wanting to disturb Te’oma’s rest. “She will live.”
“Good,” said Sallah, who stepped forward and slapped the unconscious changeling with all her might.
Te’oma’s wide, white eyes flew open, and she half sat up in bed. Her eyes wandered for a bit before focusing on the furious, red-haired knight standing over her. Then, perhaps out of some kind of confused reflex, she morphed into Brendis’s form.
Sallah froze as she looked down into her dead compatriot’s eyes. The wrongness of it appalled her in many ways, Kandler could tell. The lady knight had only learned of her friend’s murder moments ago, and now with the changeling seeming to mock her grief she lost the tenuous control she had on her temper.
Sallah’s fist smashed into Te’oma’s jaw, knocking her back into the bed. The changeling’s head landed on the pillow as blood spattered on the wall behind her from her split lip.
Monja leaped on top of the changeling, interposing herself between the two ladies. “Stop!” the shaman said, holding up her hands in Sallah’s face. “I just fixed her up!”
“I’m not going to kill her,” Sallah snarled, “just make her wish she was dead.” Then she leaned over the halfling’s shoulder and shouted down at the changeling, who tried to squirm away from her across the bed.
“You had to kill him, didn’t you?” she said. “You couldn’t just tie him up. You had to choke the life out of him and then leave him naked and alone in that Flame-damned horse stall. You—”
Kandler reached out, grabbed Sallah around the waist and pulled her back from Te’oma’s bed. “We haven’t got time for this right now,” he hissed into her ear. “She’s an evil, awful bitch, but we need to ask her about Esprë.”
The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2 Page 18
