look like a tattoo made from black ink-sometimes bounded in red, as if it erupted from the skin.”
“Like a mole?” Kandler asked.
“I suppose,” said Sallah. “But no mole ever granted such power. Like a mole, however, these start out small and can sometimes grow larger. The bigger they get, the more powerful they become.”
Kandler gazed off into the distance and nodded. “I was afraid of that.”
Sallah narrowed her eyes at the justicar. “You don’t strike me as a man who is afraid of much.”
“So why do you do it?” Kandler asked, changing the subject. “Why are you a knight?” He wanted to talk about something else, anything else.
Sallah drew back from the bars a bit. Her face fell into shadow.
“I am a Knight of the Silver Flame, a paladin pledged to uphold the good and holy teachings of the Voice of the Flame and to bring justice and enlightenment to the world.”
“I didn’t ask who you are,” Kandler said. “I asked your reasons for it.”
Sallah stammered for a moment. “I was born to-Shush!”
“What?”
“Quiet!” Sallah held the palm of her hand up to the bars in the door’s window as she moved a step toward the stairs that led to the main floor. Her armored boot scuffed on the stone floor. “I hear something.”
Kandler stood up and moved as close to the door as his chains would let him. He listened for a moment but couldn’t hear a thing.
Burch held back and cocked his head to one side. Horror spread across his face. He rushed toward the door and held up his chains. “Let us loose!” he said.
“The dwarf charged me with keeping you here,” said Sallah.
“Those are screams!” Burch said. “People are dying!”
Sallah looked to Kandler. He pleaded with her with his-eyes, but she turned and started to leave.
“Stop!” Kandler shouted. “That’s our town up there!”
Chapter 10
Kandler hoisted his chains and set his foot against the wall. “Help me!” he said to Burch. “Maybe we can break them together.” He knew it was a long shot. Rislinto had forged each link with skill and care. Still, it seemed their only hope.
Burch rushed over to lend a hand. As the shifter began to pull, Kandler heard the sound of a key scraping in a lock behind them. The two looked back to see Sallah shove the heavy door in on its black, oiled hinges. They dropped Kandler’s chains and turned to hold up their shackles up for her.
“No tricks!” the lady knight said as he stepped into the room.
“Hurry,” Kandler said. He didn’t want to panic her, so he kept his voice as steady as he could. He felt a small tremor in it, but he hoped she wouldn’t hear it.
Sallah brought the key up to insert into the lock on Kandler’s manacles, but at the last second she stopped and gave Kandler an appraising eye. “Maybe I should go up and check it out first,” she said.
“No time!” said Burch. He snarled. Kandler realized that Sallah had gotten too close and the shifter was ready to strangle her with his chains. He put up a hand to stop his friend.
“Look,” Kandler said, as he grabbed the knight’s wrist, “if you go up there and get killed, we could be stuck down here for what little will be left of our lives.”
Sallah looked at her wrist and then into Kandler’s eyes. She pulled her arm free angrily. “I’ll just have to chance that.”
Sallah turned to leave. Kandler grabbed her by the gleaming metal collar of her armor and pulled her back toward him. “I can’t let you do that.”
Sallah swung around and backhanded Kandler to the floor. Incensed, she stomped over to where he was, pointed down at him, and said, “You can’t stop me.”
As the words left Sallah’s mouth, the chain binding Burch’s wrists sailed over her head. Before she could react, the shifter put his knee into her back and pulled the chain tight. It snaked up along her armor and came to rest under the chin where Burch pulled it taut in an instant.
Sallah dropped the key as her hands darted up to pull the chain from her throat. Before she could get a good grip, Kandler lashed out and kicked her feet from under her. The lady knight went down hard with Burch still on her back, pulling the chain even tighter.
“Hold her!” Kandler said as he scrambled across the floor to pluck up the key. “Try not to hurt her.”
“I’m trying!” Burch grunted. Sallah struggled under him, swinging him to and fro on her back as her fingers sought purchase under the chain. “She fights like a troll!”
Kandler shoved the key into the lock on his manacles and turned. The shackles fell free.
Sallah, who had managed to get to her knees, growled with rage. “Whoa!” Burch shouted, as if he were trying to calm a bucking horse. To Kandler, this only seemed to make the knight even angrier.
Sallah was taller than Burch if no heavier. She stood and rammed her back toward the wall, crunching Burch between her armor and the unforgiving stone. The air rushed out of the shifter’s lungs. When Sallah hauled on his chain this time, it slipped from his fingers, and she was loose.
“Let’s talk this over!” Kandler said. He held both hands up in front of Sallah in what he hoped was a calming manner.
Sallah shrugged her way free of Burch’s chain, and the heavy links fell on the shifter’s head. She drew her blade and brandished it at Kandler as she spoke. “I will have that key,” she said.
Kandler slipped back toward the wall to which he had been anchored, gathering his chain as he did. He began to swing the loose links before him, spinning his manacles about so the chain whirled like a spoke on a wheel. “You’ll have to kill me to get it.”
Sallah feinted at Kandler with her blade, and he knocked it away with his chain. As the lady knight searched for a hole in the justicar’s defenses, she sidled away from Burch, who was still gasping for breath. “As you wish,” she said to Kandler.
Kandler sent his chain whirring about faster. Sallah poked at his moving shield again. The chain knocked the blade away, but the contact disrupted the shield for a split second. She prodded at it twice more with the same result each time.
“We don’t have time for this!” Kandler said. With the cell door open, he could finally hear the commotion in the town above. He hoped Esprл had found her hiding hole, just as he trained her to do, but he wasn’t willing to bet her life on it.
Sallah drew back her blade and stabbed it at Kandler’s chest, passing through his chain-shield near his hand. The chain wrapped around it like a constrictor.
Kandler wrenched at the chain, hoping to pull Sallah’s weapon from her grasp. Instead of resisting the pull, though, the lady knight pursued it. As she closed, she reversed her grip and smashed Kandler in the face with the pommel of her sword.
The blow knocked Kandler from his feet, and he went down in a cascade of chain links. Sallah slid her sword free, and Kandler found himself staring down its point.
“I’ll run you through,” Sallah said. She held out her open hand for the key.
Kandler ran the back of his hand across his face. It came back blooded from a cut in his lip. As he held open his hand, the blood shone red against the silvered key in his palm.
The sounds of shouts and screams echoed faintly down the stairwell and into the open cell. Kandler moved to get up, but Sallah pinned him down with her blade again.
“You can’t tell me-” Kandler started.
“Silence!” Sallah said. “I need to think.”
The lady knight pursed her lips but never looked away from Kandler. A drop of sweat ran from her hair down her cheek. Her emerald eyes burned as she narrowed them in thought. Kandler realized he was holding his breath.
Sallah’s mouth formed a frown. For a moment, Kandler’s heart dropped into his stomach. “You are sworn to
