The Road to Death

3

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!”