“By the Silver Flame,” Sallah said, “be careful!”
“It’s just a bump,” the justicar said. “It’s not easy to control this beast.”
Sallah turned and pointed to the ring of fire surrounding the ship. She understood that Kandler wished to protect his daughter, but this was too important to tiptoe around.
“You see that?” she said to Kandler.
“It’s hard to miss.”
“That’s an elemental creature of fire,” she said. “The dragon-marked shipwrights who created this craft bound it into this ring with powerful magic. Just look at the carvings along the retaining arch.” Sallah paused to calm herself down and to let her words sink in. “Break that arch, and you let loose the elemental. It might not be too happy about being bound up all that time. It might decide to take it out on the child behind the wheel.”
“Or the mouthy lady in the armor,” Burch said. “Point taken.” He signaled Esprл to bring the ship up a bit. The ship lurched upward into the sky and hovered a few feet over the ground.
Sallah scowled at the shifter, but before she could respond, Kandler tapped her on the shoulder and pointed down the length the ship’s rail. “There’s a rope ladder there,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”
The two scrambled down the ladder and onto the hill. Kandler scanned the crest while Sallah strode down into the hollow.
“The warforged must have started out here,” Kandler said loud enough for Sallah to hear over the crackling of the fiery ring. “I’d guess they ambushed the knights when they rode into that hollow.”
Sallah bent over and ran her hand along some of the stunted, gray grass. Then she stood and held it up. Crimson stained her fingers.
“They’re not here anymore,” Kandler said. “Who do you think won?”
Burch looked down at Sallah from the ship and said, “War-forged. No doubt.”
The knight shook her head. “If that’s so, where are the bodies?”
“What’s that over there?” Burch said, pointing down to a fold in the hollow. “Something shiny.”
Sallah hissed and launched herself up the hillside, uttering a silent prayer to the Silver Flame as she went. Kandler dashed along the crest of the hill and beat the lady knight to the spot. He knelt down reverently before the things Burch had seen from the ship. As Sallah reached him, he turned to let her see what they were.
“Their swords,” Sallah said, horrified as she looked down at the sacred blades of her fellow knights. “No knight would ever willingly give up his sword to a foe. They must be dead.”
Chapter 36
“There aren’t any bodies,” Kandler said as he looked up at Sallah. She seemed so hurt, he needed to hold out some hope for her to cling to. “They could still be alive.”
Sallah shook her head as tears welled up in her emerald eyes. “They are sworn to keep their holy swords by their sides at all times. They would have fought with them till their last breaths.”
Kandler stood and put his arms around the lady knight. She lowered her head but managed to fight back the tears. She did not pull away.
“Trail goes that way,” Burch called down from above. “Lots of people.” The shifter scanned the grass along the top of the ridge. “Some dragged.”
Sallah pushed away from Kandler and craned her neck to talk to Burch. “You think they were captured?”
“Warforged don’t eat.”
“By the Flame!” Sallah said, shocked at the shifter’s words. “What made you suggest that?”
“You only carry bodies for food-unless the bodies aren’t dead.”
The knight nodded. “I suppose so.” She looked along the ridge in the direction Burch had pointed. “Then there’s still time. We must go after them.”
“Come on,” Kandler said as he reached for the rope ladder and handed it to Sallah. “Even I can see the trail. Warforged leave large footprints.”
Sallah hauled herself up the rope ladder and then reached back behind her for the swords of her fellow knights. Kandler handed them up to her one at a time, hilt toward her, then followed her up the ladder.
“Let’s go,” Sallah said to Esprл. The girl smiled as she brought the ship a bit higher into the air. Kandler joined his daughter on the bridge while Sallah found Burch peering over the bow, where they both hunted for signs of the trail.
Esprл nudged the airship forward at Burch’s signal. As the ship moved along, Kandler looked up at the ring of fire.
“What do you think our chances are of sneaking up on anyone in this thing?” Esprл asked.
“It depends how fast you’re going,” Kandler said.
Esprл coaxed a bit more speed from the airship and let the wind blow through her hair. She looked up at Kandler and smiled. He smiled back.
The sky had grown a darker shade of gray. Esprл rubbed her eyes, and Kandler remembered that he hadn’t slept since the night before-and not much then. The cool air whipping past him made him more alert, but he longed for his bed back in Mardakine.
Remembering his home, he remembered his last few days there, and the weeks before that. Anxiety had been gnawing at him for some time as his suspicions about his daughter grew. Kandler reached around and pulled the collar of Esprл’s shirt away from her back.
There it was, just above her shoulder blades. A dragon-mark. When he’d first seen it, he’d thought it was black, but this close he could see it was mottled with many colors, mostly vivid blues and greens. Around the sharply defined edges, her skin was marbled with red, almost as if the mark had sprung painfully from the flesh beneath.
“I…” Esprл said quietly. Her smile vanished. “I didn’t think you knew about that.”
Kandler let the collar go. He’d seen enough. “I didn’t think you did either.”
“It itched when it first came in.” One of Esprл’s hands snaked back past her neck to scratch at the dragonmark, as if even thinking about it irritated the skin again. “Then it burned. Now, I don’t notice it much.”
Kandler stood there mute. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He just wanted his daughter back, for them to have their old life back.
“Are you going to arrest me?” Esprл asked in a small voice.
Kandler was so surprised he coughed. “What? No! Why would I do that?”
“Because,” Esprл said. A tear rolled down her cheek, but she kept her eyes glued to Burch and Sallah at the bow. “I… I killed all those people.”
It took Kandler a moment to figure out what the girl meant. Then it hit him. The people of Mardakine who had disappeared. He shivered in the evening air then reached out and hugged his daughter, shaking his head.
“You didn’t kill them,” he said. “The vampires did.”
It was Esprл’s turn to shake her head. “I think they turned Shawda into that thing that attacked the knights,” she said. “But she was already dead.”
Kandler narrowed his eyes at the girl. “What makes you say that?” he said slowly.
Esprл bowed her head. “Every night before each person went missing, I saw them. In my dreams. I saw them running.” She held her breath for a moment and closed her eyes. “I saw them die.”
Kandler ran his hand through Esprл’s hair. “Those were just dreams,” he said. “You can’t control those.”
Esprл looked up at Kandler, her face soaked with tears now. “That,” she said, “is what I’m afraid of.”
Kandler hugged the girl tighter as he wiped her eyes dry.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. He tried as hard as he could to believe that.
“Up there!” Burch called from the bow.
Kandler looked to where Burch was pointing. In the distance, smoke rose from a hollow in the hills.
“Does the trail head that way?” Kandler asked.
“Straight,” said the shifter.
“What’s the plan?” Sallah asked.
She and Burch turned back to look at Kandler. At Kandler’s direction, Esprл brought the ship in low over the crest of a hill and nestled it into the deepest part of a hollow.
“Does this thing have an anchor?” Kandler asked Burch.