Flame, and we cannot expect any to protect us but ourselves. If there is anyone here to blame, it is us.”
“Or him,” Burch said, pointing a thumb at the paralyzed warforged still shouting wordlessly into the helmet bound across his face.
“He is no threat to us now,” Deothen said. Although he did not approve of having to muffle the creature’s shouts, he understood Burch’s reasons. “I applaud your mercy.”
Burch flashed a cold smile that bared his sharp, wolfish teeth. “That thing could live there forever like that, blind and trapped. I don’t call that mercy.”
“Killing the helpless is an evil act,” Deothen said. “You avoided that path.”
“Barely,” Burch said, fingering his crossbow.
“We need to get going,” said Kandler. “Do what you can to get Brendis fixed up.”
Deothen shook his head. “We need to bury our dead.”
“That will take too long. This fight slowed us down enough.”
Deothen remained clam and steadfast. This was not an issue on which he was prepared to negotiate. “Our traditions demand that we dig our fellow knight a proper grave. Under better circumstances, I would insist that we bring his body back to Thrane to find its home in his family crypt. We need to press forward, true, but not before we administer the final rites in full.”
“If we don’t get moving now, my daughter may soon need the same ceremony.” Kandler stared at the knights in disbelief. “The man is dead. There is nothing else to do for him, and a girl’s life hangs in the balance.”
“We have our duty,” Deothen said. He understood the justicar’s anxiety, but the traditions surrounding dead fellows were long established. The knight feared to fail to respect them in such a horrid land.
“Aren’t you so-called knights sworn to uphold the greater good?” Kandler asked, his rage evident in his voice. “Or does your ‘good’ only cover what’s good for you?”
Sallah took two steps forward and slapped Kandler in the face. “You will not speak to Sir Deothen like that!”
Kandler rubbed his jaw. Deothen put his hand on the hilt of his sword, afraid that he might have to step in to defend Sallah from the justicar’s fury. He was happily surprised to see Kandler speak reasonably instead. “You just lost a friend,” the justicar said, “so I’ll let that temporary lapse into insanity slide”
Sallah tried to slap Kandler again, but he caught her wrist. “You only get one,” the justicar said.
This only angered Sallah more. Deothen put his hand on her shoulder. At his touch, she seemed to remember her station and her duties-and neither involved fighting the justicar. She flushed with embarrassment, then pulled her hand from Kandler’s grasp and walked back to look after Brendis.
“Trail’s getting cold, boss,” said Burch. The shifter moved to his shaggy horse.
“We must adhere to our traditions,” Deothen said in a tone he hoped brooked no argument. “Gweir deserves a proper burial, don’t you think? Didn’t you bury your wife?”
Kandler screwed up his face and spit on Deothen’s polished steel boots. The senior knight refused to acknowledge the act, waiting for the justicar to speak.
“My wife lay here for nearly three years before I could come back for her,” Kandler said, growling out each word like a sword on a grindstone. “The whole of the Mournland is an open grave.”
“Not for Gweir.”
“I didn’t realize the Silver Flame was a cult that cared more about the dead than the living.”
“Without our traditions-our religion-our lives are worthless.”
Deothen said a silent prayer that the justicar might somehow understand. When Kandler turned and strode away, Deothen knew the effort had been in vain.
Kandler mounted his horse. He sneered down at the knights before he left. “You’re already worthless to me. Bury the dead, if you like. But you’re on your own.”
The justicar and the shifter spurred their horses toward the black waters of the ford and put the knights behind them.
Chapter 21
Kandler and Burch rode hard through the black waters of the ford. The tar-colored liquid seemed to pull at their horses’ legs, but they spurred the beasts on and won their way through. Once across the river, they turned north and headed up the valley.
The two friends galloped along in silence, giving the horses their head. As their mounts began to tire, they slowed to a trot.
“Still got the trail, Burch?” Kandler asked.
The shifter nodded. “Like following a herd of hammertails.”
Kandler looked sidelong at his friend. “What do you know about the big lizards?”
Burch paid no attention to Kandler’s surprise. The justicar knew the shifter enjoyed these rare moments but would never admit it to him. “Scouted the Talenta Plains five years back. Rode with the little people.”
“The halflings? On those clawfeet?”
“Clawfoots. Good mounts. Not fast as these, but bigger teeth.”
The two trotted on for a moment. “You always manage to amaze me,” Kandler said.
Burch said nothing for a while, and they put a good two miles behind them. Finally, Burch spoke. “I’m thinking, right?”
Kandler glanced at him, then back at the trail. “What’s on your mind?” he said as evenly as he could. He recognized Burch’s tone. He took it when he wanted to bring up something Kandler wouldn’t like.
Burch wrinkled his broad, tanned forehead. “Those knights. We could use their swords.”
Kandler nodded. He knew what the shifter wanted to say, but he didn’t agree. “We could use the swords, but they could be hours digging a grave and praying. Hours.. And every minute Esprл is farther away. We’ll do all right without them. Did you see how those warforged mangled them? They’d just get in our way.”
“That old knight saved your skin.”
“You’d have done the same for me.”
Burch looked up at Kandler on his taller horse and nodded. “True enough. Then we’d be even up.”
“I thought I had two on you these days.”
“Forget about that siren?”
Kandler laughed. “She wasn’t going to kill me.”
“She’d have had you first, then killed you.” Burch smiled. “Like a spider.”
“There are worse ways to go.” Kandler said. They both laughed at that, and for a moment the Mournland didn’t seem like such an awful place.
The sensation didn’t last. As the two rode, the sky grew a darker shade of gray. The lightning in the distance grew closer.
“That a real storm?” Kandler asked.
Burch shaded his eyes and squinted at it. “Looks like it’s on the ground.”
“Think it’s a living spell?”
“Chain lightning like that isn’t natural. Got to be a spell. Might be hunting.”
“What does a spell eat?” Kandler tossed it out as a rhetorical question. He should have known that Burch would tackle it. The shifter seemed to have an answer for everything. He didn’t talk much, but that’s because he was always thinking. When he did speak, you knew he meant it, that he’d given the matter due consideration. Kandler liked that.
“It doesn’t eat. It… zaps.”
“What?”
“Everything has a reason to live. A living spell like that lives to be cast, over and over. A living lightning spell zaps.”
Kandler thought about that for a moment. A notion sprang into his head that he could not get rid of. “Think it might zap Esprл?” he said.
Burch cracked his neck. “It’ll zap the changeling first.”
