Matt Forbeck - Marked for Death

Esprл dashed around the table and flung herself at her stepfather. Relief washed over Kandler like a wave. He gathered her up in her arms and hugged her tighter than he had since her mother’s death.

“It’s all right,” he said softly in her ear, tears rolling freely down his face. “I’m here now.”

“Boss?” Burch said as he tapped Kandler on the shoulder. “Want to say hello to our host?”

The shifter’s tone told Kandler that something was wrong. Kandler swung Esprл around in his left arm and held his sword at the ready in the other. He looked up and saw a gaunt elf standing behind a desk nearly covered with a book and papers coated with arcane writing.

“Two sets of visitors in one day,” the old elf woman said, her voice like rustling leaves. “This is a special day.”

Before Kandler could respond, he heard hoofbeats in the courtyard-a sudden clatter followed by the sound of the horses leaving. Kandler turned and raced back out the door, Esprл still in his arms and clinging to his neck. Burch and Sallah were hot on his heels.

As he reached courtyard, he saw all four horses stampeding away across the drawbridge. The changeling stood in the stirrups of the beast in the rear, urging them all forward into the mists.

“Is the changeling leaving without a farewell?” the elf said as she emerged from her tower. The others parted before her as she stepped into the courtyard. “I can’t tolerate such rudeness.”

With a gesture from the wizard, the drawbridge began to rise. Still crossing it, the horses whinnied in fear as they felt the planks move beneath them, but Te’oma shouted and kicked her heels into her mount’s sides, urging them on.

The far end of the bridge continued to rise. The horses raced toward its limit at top speed, and when they reached it they leaped out into the mists.

Kandler’s horse cleared the gap with Burch and Sallah’s close behind. Te’oma’s mount seemed to almost lose its nerve, but the changeling spurred it hard, and the beast jumped over the abyss.

The horse’s rear hooves scrambled as it landed on the far side of the chasm and it slid backward toward certain doom. Esprл squealed in fear and reached out to the changeling, although there was nothing she could do. Kandler pulled the girl back toward him, never taking his eyes away from the scene before him.

With a desperate effort, the gelding’s rear hooves managed to find a crack in the rock, its hoof caught, and it pushed itself up and forward to safety. It galloped off into the mists, carrying Te’oma away with it.

Kandler raced a few steps forward and shouted after the fleeing changeling. “No!” Then he realized he still had Esprл in his arms, so he turned back and handed her to Sallah, who held the girl away from her at arm’s length, as if she’d been tossed a wild animal.

Kandler raced up to the bridge and started to hunt for a winch, lever, or any sort of mechanism that would let him bring the bridge down. Behind him, he heard Esprл say to Sallah, “You can put me down. I won’t bite.”

Kandler glanced back to see Esprл back on the ground for just a moment before the girl hurled herself at Burch and wrapped him up in her best impression of a bear hug.

The justicar gave up and stormed back toward the others. “Lower the bridge!” he said to the elf. “We have to go after her.”

As the justicar waited for a response, he took a good look at the elf for the first time, and his jaw dropped. Her yellowed, wizened skin stretched thin over her skeleton like old parchment, but out here in the dimness she seemed to be glowing from within, like a light blazing behind a leathery shade.

“It can’t be,” Kandler said, stunned by what he saw. “I mean, you… you can’t be.”

The elf smiled, revealing her teeth, which seemed to be barely attached to her faded gums. She shook her head. “I’m not,” she said. “Close but not quite.”

“Not what?” Sallah said.

“One of the ascendant councilors,” Kandler said, nearly every other thought fleeing from his head. “The ancient dead of the elves.”

“I am dead,” the elf said, “but still I walk this world.” She looked out at the mist. “At least as far as I care.”

Sallah stepped back and put her still-blazing sword between herself and the elf. “No undead creatures can stand before the light of the Silver Flame,” she said.

“So I am told,” the elf said. She reached out and patted Sallah’s hands on the hilt of her sword. “But I am not one of those abominations that stroll about at the whim of some lowly necromancer. No.” She shook her head. “I am one of the deathless.”

“I beg your pardon, my lady,” Kandler said in the elf tongue, his wits returning to him. “Could you see fit to lowering your drawbridge so we can pursue the thief who has entered both your house and mine?”

The deathless elf smiled and answered him in her native language. “You are mannered. You may call me Majeeda.”

“My Lady Majeeda,” Kandler said with a worried smile, “could you find it in your heart to lower the bridge for us? We thank you for your hospitality, but urgent matters call upon us, and we sadly must part company with you.”

“What are they saying?” Sallah whispered to Burch.

The shifter shrugged. “Do I look like an elf?”

“He’s asking her to let us go,” Esprл whispered.

Majeeda threw her hands wide. “Why should you wish to do leave so soon?” she asked. “Do you not have what you came for?”

She looked over at Esprл and smiled. The elf girl clutched Burch tight and sidled around far enough behind him that Majeeda could only see her face.

“Of course,” Kandler said. He smiled at Esprл, and the girl relaxed a little. Burch reached back and tousled her hair. “But there is the matter of the one who recently abandoned your graces. She must be punished for her actions, or I fear that she may repeat them.”

Majeeda nodded. “I understand your concern, but I wish for you to stay with me a while longer. The changeling you seek has already left my home. She no longer offends me or concerns me.”

Kandler held back a frown. “I appreciate your thoughts and your offer of continued hospitality. It saddens me that this changeling who caused you such concern should roam unpunished, but that is a matter I can hope to take up with her at a later date.”

The justicar licked his dry lips before he broached the next subject. Dealing with ancient elves was always tricky-he remembered how difficult it had been to ask Esprina’s parents for her hand in marriage-but this was worse. Esprina would have married him either way. He sensed that Majeeda’s wrath was not something he wished to incur.

“I know your feelings on the matter of undead,” the Kandler said. “I share your revulsion at the horrible monstrosities. When we pursued the changeling in here, she was in the company of one of the most terrible breeds of these creatures.”

Majeeda raised her painted-on eyebrows. Kandler could hear her skin crinkle with the movement. “The vampire, you mean?”

Kandler nodded and waited.

A thin smile crept across Majeeda’s dry-leaf lips. “He is no longer a concern to anyone, least of all himself.”

“What happened?” Kandler asked, forgetting the mannered patterns of the elf language for the moment and slipping into the common tongue.

“He tried to leave without my permission.” Something close to anger clouded the deathless elf’s eyes. “I granted his wish for an early departure, although not perhaps in the means he would have preferred.”

Kandler switched back to the elf language again. “I hesitate to trouble you with matters so mundane my Lady Majeeda,” he said, “but could you elaborate upon the vampire’s ultimate fate?”