“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.
Chapter 7
Kandler peered around the right corner of his front porch, back toward the town square. The knights lined up in the doorway behind Deothen, each of them peering over their leader’s back as he kept a respectful distance from the justicar.
“Who is it?” Deothen asked.
“Stay here,” Kandler said. “Don’t leave.”
The knights filed out onto the porch as Kandler leaped down and waited for Mardak and his followers to reach him. The mayor walked at the front of the pack of men, with Rislinto striding along next to him, arguing every step of the way. Behind them, they had a score of armed men.
The men chattered among themselves, their gait scattered and offbeat, nothing like the confident march of soldiers. Kandler had led each of them into battle before and knew them all like brothers. Pradak, the mayor’s son, dogged his father’s heels, his face a mixture of excitement and embarrassment. Temmah, the only dwarf in town, brought up the rear. Puffing along hard to keep up with the others, his long beard swayed before him, bouncing off the handle of the battleaxe he carried in both of his wide, meaty hands.
Kandler could hear the blacksmith growling at Mardak. “Stop this madness,” Rislinto said. “The justicar is not our foe.”
“We are at war here,” Mardak said. His eyes darted from Rislinto to the men following them. He spoke as much to them as to the blacksmith. “An army requires a strong chain of command. He refused a direct order.”
Rislinto put his hand on Mardak’s shoulder. “This isn’t an army. It’s our home.”
“All the more reason to protect it.” Mardak shrugged off Rislinto’s hand as they entered Kandler’s yard. “We are being picked off one by one. Any of us could be next.”
The hawk-faced man strode up to the justicar and said, “Kandler, you are under arrest.”
Awry smile found its way to Kandler’s lips. “What are the charges?” he asked. He looked into the faces of the others as he spoke. Only Rislinto dared to meet his gaze, puffing with indignity as he did. The rest bowed their heads sheepishly.
Mardak stabbed a finger at the justicar as he spoke and used it to punctuate his sentences. “You failed to protect us. You sided with these outsiders. You disobeyed me. This cannot be tolerated!”
With each word, Mardak’s anger grew. By the end of his pronouncement, he was spitting out each word like bolts from a crossbow. It was then that a real bolt appeared between his feet.
Kandler cursed under his breath.
Mardak and his men looked up as one to see Burch perched on the edge of Kandler’s roof, his crossbow in hand. He was already reloading.
“Archers!” Mardak said. A half-dozen townspeople broke off from the mob. In a handful of heartbeats, they each nocked an arrow, stretched their bowstrings, and took aim at the shifter. Burch ignored them and drew a bead on Mardak’s heart.
“Stand down!” Rislinto said. “We’ve had enough mayhem today.”
The archers hesitated for a moment. Two of them lowered their bows.
“There will be more if anyone disobeys another order,” said Mardak. “Temmah! Take Kandler into custody!”
The crowd parted around the dwarf, who stood near the rear of the pack, thumbing the blade of his battleaxe. He noticed all eyes on him, and he cursed in the thick tongue of his people. “This is a hard vein of rock,” he said, his face flushed red.
Temmah looked at Kandler. “Will you come peacefully, justicar?” His eyes pleaded with his friend to make this easy.
Before Kandler could answer, the knights stepped into the circle formed around Kandler, their swords drawn and ready. “He’s not going anywhere,” Deothen said.
Kandler shook his head in exasperation. He understood why Burch had loosed a bolt without waiting for a signal. Despite the shifter’s laconic facade, he always stood ready for a good fight. Kandler had thought Deothen and the knights would have been better disciplined though. “Can’t anyone around here do what I tell them?” he asked.
“By Dol Arrah’s sacred sword,” said Mardak, a dark vein pulsing in his forehead as he spoke to the knights, “this is an internal matter. It has nothing to do with you. I’ll thank you to stay out of this.”