Marked for Death

Chapter 6

When Kandler and Esprл reached their home, the knights still in tow, Burch was sitting on the front porch waiting for them. “Took your time,” the shifter said.

Kandler grinned. “Knights in armor don’t move so quickly.” He released Esprл’s hand and guided her up the steps and into Burch’s arms. She wrapped her arms around the shifter and hugged him so tight his yellow eyes began to bulge.

“Oof,” Burch said. He pulled himself loose from the elf maid’s embrace and favored her with a wan smile. “Be gentle with your friends.” He tousled her long, blonde hair. Kandler smiled down at the scene for a moment, but a voice from behind interrupted him.

“Justicar,” Deothen called from the edge of the yard, “you have our gratitude and that of the Silver Flame.” He and the other knights unhitched their horses from Kandler’s post as he spoke.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Kandler asked as he turned to watch the knights work. “Just because I took responsibility for you doesn’t mean you can just ride out of here. You owe me more than that.”

Deothen shook his head. “Our horses need tending. It has been a long journey for them, taken with all due speed.”

Kandler tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a full trough and some hay in the stable out back,” he said. “You’re welcome to what you need. Just watch out for Dargent and Cintila.”

“You have other guests?” Deothen asked, his eyebrow arching high enough to match the path of his widow’s peak.

“Other horses,” Kandler said, “and they don’t care much for strangers.”

“Like most of the people around here, it seems,” said Sallah as she led her horse around the side of the house, ahead of the others.

Kandler glanced to his left, but Burch was already gone around the other side of the house to keep an eye on the knights. The justicar looked back at Deothen. “When you’re done,” he said, “come inside. We need to talk.”

“Tell me again why you’re here?” Kandler said. He and Deothen sat across the table from each other in the main room of Kandler’s home. Esprл slouched next to Kandler in one of the room’s other well-worn chairs. Even though a chair still sat open, Sallah and the other knights stood, each in a separate corner of the room, their swords once again buckled around their waists. Burch sat perched on the sill of one of the open windows, picking his teeth with a long, black fingerclaw as he glanced inside the house and out.

“Our Lady Tira Miron, the Voice of the Silver Flame, received a vision that a lost dragonmark has appeared in the Mournland,” Deothen said. He stopped when Kandler held up a battle-scarred hand.

“You’ve said all that before. What more do you know?”

Deothen sat up straight and craned his neck at Kandler as if he could see straight through him to the opposite wall.

“You said you were in my debt,” Kandler said. “It’s time to start evening the score.” He stared deep into the older man’s piercing blue eyes, where he saw a natural distrust of outsiders warring with the duty to repay a kindness done. Duty won.

“We are looking for the Lost Mark,” Deothen said.

“Which mark is that?” Kandler said.

“The Lost Mark,” Deothen repeated, enunciating each word.

Kandler gasped despite himself. He shook his head in disbelief and said, “It has returned?”

“This is what Our Lady tells us. It is why we are here.” Deothen was as somber as he’d been at Shawda’s funeral.

Kandler felt a tug at his sleeve. “What’s he talking about?” Esprл asked as he looked down at her. She seemed to have curled into a ball at the back of the chair’s seat.

“It’s nothing,” Kandler said, but Sallah spoke up from a corner between two windows. The light streamed in around her on both sides, and the dust in the air swirled and danced in the beams as she spoke.

“The Thirteenth Mark,” Sallah said in an eager voice. “Some say it was the first of the dragonmarks to appear, and the first and only to be lost.”

“I’ve heard of dragonmarks,” Esprл said in a voice that surprised Kandler with how grown-up it sounded. “They are magical tattoos that grant the powerful more power.”

Deothen loosed a good-natured laugh. “Close, but not quite,” he said. “They are birthmarks passed down through the strongest of bloodlines. A few rare and lucky members of the blessed peoples have them. These form the bases for the dragonmarked houses. They resemble tattoos, but they arise naturally in those born to them.”

“Blessed peoples?” Esprл asked.

“Humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, elves, and some half-elves and even half-orcs.”

“No shifters?” Esprл glanced at Burch. Kandler followed her eyes and saw his friend still sitting in the window, his clawed feet wrapped around the sill. He wore a smirk on his face.

Deothen sucked at his teeth. “No, child,” he said. “No shifters have ever been found with a dragonmark.”

Esprл gazed at Burch for a moment. The shifter smiled back at her, baring all of his long, feral teeth. Her eyes flew wide as an idea struck her. “Maybe they’re just hidden under all the hair,” she said.

The room erupted into laughter. Burch nearly fell backward out of his window, but he managed to right himself in time. Esprл blushed with embarrassment at first, but when Kandler leaned over and gave her a one-armed hug, she joined in with the rest.

“What-?” Esprл said loudly. Kandler could tell she was eager to move on, so he motioned for the others to shush. “What is the Lost Mark the mark of?”

All laughter in the room evaporated like raindrops on hot coals.

“That’s not important,” Kandler said, trying to change the subject.

“I mean,” Esprл continued, apparently not to be dissuaded, “there are the twelve regular marks, the Mark of Finding, the Mark of Making, the Mark of Storm, and so on. What’s the thirteenth the mark of?” She leaned forward in her seat now, ready for the answer, no matter what it might be.

“The Mark of Death,” Sallah said soberly. “The one who bears it has mastery over life and death.”

Esprл’s brows creased as she digested this. A hush feel over the house. The silence seemed to bother the dark-haired knight, who spoke. “Aren’t there any birds here?” he said as he fidgeted against the wall. “Nope,” said Burch. All eyes turned to the shifter. “Too close to the Mournland. Not much grows around here, not enough for animals to feed on.”

Deothen looked from Burch to Kandler. “Then how do you people survive?”

Kandler tapped his hand on the table a few times before answering. “We trade with New Cyre, mostly. Sometimes with Vathirond or Kennrun.”

Sallah nodded. “We passed through Vathirond on our way here. The justicar there told us of this place.”

“But what do you trade?” Deothen asked. “I can see your needs are many, but what would traders want from you?”

“Things from Cyre,” Kandler said. He hesitated for a moment before he continued. He knew Mardak wouldn’t like him talking to outsiders about such things, but at the moment he didn’t much care what Mardak liked. “This town was founded as a base of operations for a group of people who want to learn what happened during the Day of Mourning. We’ve been here since the end of the war.”

Deothen nodded. “Those must have been two long years. Have you discovered anything?”

“Only a lot of dead people,” Kandler said. “We’ve never ventured farther than the Glass Plateau, a shelf high above the plains, filled with jagged formations of colored glass. The place is filled with never-ending spells that have come to life. And there are things more dangerous than that in the Mournland. Cyre is beyond dead. It’s been… twisted.” Kandler sighed deeply. “The ruins between here and the Plateau are filled with all sorts of things-stuff that used to belong to the dead whose bodies still lie there, never rotting. We gather up some of that and sell it to finance the town and our expeditions.”

“You haven’t gotten very far yet,” Sallah said.

Kandler glared at the woman. She was beautiful but clueless. “Have you ever been to the Mournland?” he asked her.

Sallah shook her head. “No.”

“Then you have no idea-” He stopped short at the sound of a quick two taps then three on the house’s western wall. He glanced at the empty window where Burch had been.

“What is it?” Deothen asked.

Kandler patted Esprл on the back, and she scurried off to hide in her room, then he stood up and walked toward the door. “We’ve got company,” he said.