The Road to Death

34

“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.”

“Let me go!” Sallah said. “You can have her when I’m through softening her up.”

“That’s not you talking,” Kandler said. “That’s your grief. Think for a moment. Think about who you are. Think about the morals you uphold. Cold-blooded murder doesn’t fit with any of that. Would Brendis want you to betray your vows as a knight like this?”

He could feel the lady knight start to calm down, to hear his words and consider them. He knew he had her on her last legs. He pushed her right back off them.

“What would your father say if he could see you now?”

Sallah spun around, ready to slap the words out of Kandler’s mouth. He caught her hand as she brought it back to strike him, and he frowned into her face.

The knight looked up into Kandler’s eyes for a moment, and then the pain, the grief, the agony all melted away into despair. She collapsed forward into his arms, sobbing, “Why?”

Kandler held her in his arms until her body stopped shaking and she could push herself away from him of her own accord. “Thanks,” she said in a raw voice, unable to meet his eyes. She refused to glance back at the changeling as she gave Kandler a small kiss on the cheek and then staggered out of the room.

“I have a burial to attend to,” she said as she passed through the curtain covering the empty doorway.

“I have matters of my own to deal with,” Berre said catching Sallah by the elbow. “Stick with me, and I’ll bring you to him first.”

The two walked out of the room arm in arm. Kandler noticed that the dwarf somehow seemed as tall as the knight as they went.

Sallah gone, Monja leaped off of Te’oma as if the changeling might bite her.

“Thank you,” Te’oma said to the shaman.

“Thank the big human,” Monja said. “If he didn’t need you, I’d have finished you off with my knife.” She slipped toward the door. “I’ll go see if I can help Sallah with the last rites. You can’t be too careful about such things in a fort full of skeletons.”

As the curtain flapped behind the halfling, Kandler turned his full attention to Te’oma. She stared back at him with wide eyes.

“You don’t have to hurt me,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you want.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Kandler cracked his knuckles for emphasis. Burch sat on the edge of the room’s lone windowsill, blocking that avenue of retreat as he checked the action on his crossbow and slipped a steel-tipped bolt into its home.

Te’oma’s eyes grew wide, and she edged back on the bed. As she did, Kandler cracked his neck. Her hands flew up to her own neck as if to hold her head in place.

“Where’s he headed?” Kandler asked.

“I don’t know.”

A bolt stabbed into the wall next to Te’oma’s head. She screamed in surprise.

“Wrong answer.” Kandler grimaced at the changeling. “Don’t think you’re lucky that Burch missed there. Burch never misses, not at this range. That was your warning.”

As the justicar spoke, the shifter slipped another bolt into its home and cranked back the crossbow’s handle. He worked the action slowly, and every click on the weapon’s wheel sounded like a breaking bone.

“The dragon-elf betrayed me,” Te’oma said. “We were supposed to get away with Esprë together, but he betrayed me. He serves another master than mine.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Te’oma said.

Kandler clenched his fists in frustration. “Where is he taking her?”

“I don’t—wait!” the changeling shouted at Burch, throwing up her arms to protect herself as he leveled his crossbow at her. Kandler waved him off, and the shifter rested the weapon back on his lap.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t tell me.”

Burch raised his weapon again, and Te’oma winced at the gesture.

“I can find out!” she said. “After I caught up with Esprë on the airship, I forged a mindlink with her while she was still unconscious.”

Kandler stared at her with a mixture of hope and horror.

Te’oma shrugged. “She’s a slippery young elf. I wanted to make sure I could find her if I lost her again. I can contact her telepathically no matter where she might be.”

Kandler’s heart started to crawl its way out of his heels.

“Can you do that now?”

Te’oma nodded, then closed her eyes for a moment. Her forehead knit with concentration, as Kandler imagined her reaching out to his daughter with her mind. The fact that the changeling had managed to establish such a link with Esprë appalled him, but that warred with his gratitude that they might be able to use it to find her again.

After a long moment, the changeling frowned and opened her eyes. “She’s still unconscious,” she said. “I can’t reach her.”

“How was she when you last saw her?”

“Asleep. I knocked her out psionically.” She put her hands up in supplication. “At worst, she’ll wake up with a slight headache.”

“You’re sure she’s not dead?” Kandler dreaded the answer, but he had to ask.

Te’oma nodded. “The mindlink severs if she’s dead.”

“Do you think he’ll keep her alive?”

She nodded again. “She’s worth much more if she’s breathing.”

“I suppose you could say the same about yourself.”