to pick the creature out in the dim light and flickering shadows, but the sound of Brendis drawing his blade brought Kandler’s gaze back to the bridge. There! He saw the changeling facing off against the knight.
She feinted a charge at the knight, and Brendis stepped backward, maintaining his guard.
“We finally meet,” the young knight said to the changeling.
Even to Kandler’s ears, his bravado seemed strained.
The changeling smiled at Brendis. As she did, she let her gray cloak unfurl around her. The edges of it splayed out farther, wider, and as the fabric thinned it became leathery and more formed.
Brendis watched in horror, holding his burning blade before him like a shield as the cloak fashioned itself into a massive set of batlike wings.
The changeling allowed herself a short laugh as she leaped onto the rear railing of the ship. The young knight recoiled, bumping into Kandler as the justicar came storming up on to the bridge.
“It’s a flying cloak!” Kandler snapped. “Now fight or get out of the way!”
The justicar snatched the sacred blade from Brendis’ hand. The young knight, still stunned by the changeling’s transformation, did not protest.
Kandler swung the burning sword at the changeling, but she sprang backward and fell into the inky night. “No!” he shouted. “Come back and fight!”
The changeling laughed again as she let her magical wings catch the air and bring her soaring back up toward the ship. “How stupid do you think I am?”
With that, she glided back into the darkness again.
Frustrated, Kandler snarled at the young knight. Brendis stepped back clear of the reach of his sword, still in the justicar’s hand.
“Burch!” Kandler said.
“Right here, boss!” the shifter called as he emerged from the hold. “Where’s my crossbow?”
“Get back down that hatch!” Deothen said to Burch as he stormed along the deck, brandishing his sword at the shifter. “We have the matter under control.”
“Saying it don’t make it so,” Burch scoffed. He spat at the senior knight and headed for the bridge.
Before Burch reached the narrow stairs, Sallah called out to him and then slid his crossbow across the polished deck at him. He stopped it with his foot, then kicked it up and snatched it from the air. “Thanks,” he said as he cocked it. Sallah slid over the quiver of bolts next.
“Sallah!” Deothen roared. “Stop arming our prisoners!”
Burch turned and pointed his crossbow at the senior knight. Deothen ducked to his knees, and the shifter’s shot sailed over his head. A cry pierced the black night beyond the ship’s bow, and Kandler caught a glimpse of a winged shadow turning back into the mists.
Burch snarled and stepped past the knight, swinging his weapon around to cover as much of the sky as he could. “She gets near the ring again,” he said, “I’ll drop her.”
Kandler lowered the flickering blade in his hand and scanned the darkness. On the ground in the Mournland, the air usually seemed still as a grave, but up here, with the airship soaring along, the wind whipped through him like a cold knife. Only the heat from the fiery ring dulled its edge.
As Kandler’s gaze hunted through the sky, Brendis stepped forward to take the weapon back from him. The justicar elbowed the young knight back. “Stay out of my way,” he said.
Sallah drew her own sword and set it ablaze with silvery fire as she raced across the deck, her long, red curls flapping behind her like a battle standard. She clambered onto the bridge where she found Esprл huddled next to the wheel.
“Don’t let her get me again,” the girl said. “Please!”
Esprл was gripping the wheel of the airship in white knuckles, and her entire body was shaking. She squeezed her eyes shut, and Kandler saw the red glow of the fire reflected off tears. The airship lurched slightly upward. Perhaps it was only the ship catching a pocket of air, but it was then that Kandler noticed a distinct trembling in the deck. Esprл was terrified, and it was affecting her control over the ship.
Sallah knelt down next to Esprл and stroked the girl’s golden hair with her free hand. “She won’t get past me,” the knight said solemnly. “I promise.”
Kandler reached down and patted Sallah on the back. When the lady knight looked up at him, he nodded his thanks.
Deothen stood in the center of the deck, directly under the crackling ring of fire that propelled the ship through the night. “Where is she?” he asked. “Has she fled?”
“There!” Kandler stabbed his silver-flame-coated blade past the ship’s rear railing. “She’s out on the rudder!”
As Kandler watched, the changeling slashed at the rudder’s leathery fabric with a black knife, trying to shred it to ribbons. The material resisted her blade’s edge, but she kept at it.
Kandler spied a mooring line lashed around a cleat on the rear railing. He picked up the loose end of it and threaded it through the rear of his belt. With a series of deft moves, he tied a tight knot and then leaped up to the rear railing. From there, he stepped out on to the rudder’s top spar and crept forward, balancing on the narrow beam of wood as the winds whipped around him.
“Kandler!” Esprл screamed.
A crossbow bolt sailed past Kandler and buried itself in the rudder’s frame. The changeling saw it, hissed, and took a step back. Kandler glanced over his shoulder. Burch was coming at them, reloading as he ran. He turned back just in time to see the changeling drop away into the darkness below. Kandler heard the clack of Burch’s crossbow followed by the whisper of a bolt shooting past.
Kandler looked back over his shoulder as he stood crouched on the spar, Brendis’ burning sword still in his hand. “Did you get her?” he asked Burch.
Before the shifter could answer, the changeling came around behind Kandler and blind-sided him from his perch. As the justicar toppled into the blackness, he swung about, let go of the sword, and grabbed the changeling, hauling her down with him. Brendis’ glittering blade arced out and away from them and tumbled through the dark toward the unseen ground far below.
Chapter 44
Kandler wrapped his arms around the changeling’s waist, and she battered at him with her fists as they plummeted through the inky blackness, the wind whipping around them as they fell. The arc of their dive reached the end of the mooring line on the justicar’s belt with a tug that bent him in half and knocked the breath from both of them, but his hold on the changeling never weakened.
The pair’s momentum swung them back and up toward the bottom of the ship’s hull, only feet away from the lower part of the fiery ring. In the blazing light, Kandler could see the changeling’s face clearly for the first time. She was beautiful in her own formless way, her black hair fluttering behind her.
“Release me,” the changeling demanded, “or I cut this line!”
She pushed the edge of her knife against the rope that kept Kandler from following the sword down to his doom. Kandler rammed his head into the changeling’s nose. Red blood spurted onto her ebony skin. He reached up, grabbed her wrist, and pulled the knife away from his lifeline.
“The chase is over,” the justicar said.
Kandler forced the knife around lower, readying it for a stab into the changeling’s exposed side. As he did, he felt something foreign jab into his mind, probing for a weak spot, a switch that would turn him into a drooling madman or a gibbering fool. He fought with everything he could muster, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the psion battered down his defenses and destroyed his mind. Kandler stopped trying to force the knife lower and swung it back up toward the rope instead. It bit into the line above him, splitting some of its vital fibers. The pressure in his head spiked, and he growled like a cornered beast.
“Stop it! These wings won’t hold our weight!” The changeling hissed the words into his ear. “You’ll kill us both!”
“Fine. With. Me.” Kandler spat through gritted teeth. He had let this creature kidnap his daughter once, and
