The Shield of Weeping Ghosts (37 page)

a spell. He growled in frustration, the unnatural strength flowing through him finding purpose, and he pushed back.

His strikes were poorly timed, but Serevan moved back all the same. The Weave stirred around Bastun, and he sought its thythm as the Breath moved faster. He battered at the thin, dancing blade of the prince. The phantom scents of smoke and blood stitred him even further. Magic remained elusive, but his thoughts had cleared enough to watch the quick sword and the angle of the following thrust.

Bastun’s open hand shot out, grasping the prince’s sword. The searing pain in his palm was rewarded by a hiss of anger from the bleakborn. Serevan tugged the blade, drawing into bone, but still Bastun held. He imagined he could snap the weapon like a twig, but the Breath shot forward instead. It tore through the bleakborn’s breastplate, scraping against ribs and exiting from his back.

Serevan’s struggles stopped, and he stared at the sword inside of him. The gleaming blade dulled as its strange glow spread through the bleakborn’s body. Ice formed in clumps, and the prince jerked in pain. Bastun could only stare in wonder as the Breath froze what life remained in the undead prince. Bones cracked under the pressure of newly forming ice, brittle hair split and fell away. The taste of ashes filled Bastun’s mouth as Serevan’s body deteriorated into a collection of brittle bones. The ancient sword’s metal lost its hellborn luster, fading back to runes and small patches of rust and age.

The prince’s eyes of ice looked blearily up at the vremyonni, the odd light within them flickering. He raised a skeletal hand held together only by ice and frost. His face was little more than a skull bearing the memory of flesh.

“I much prefer the dream,” said a spectral voice from within the destroyed visage, followed by a dry laughter like autumn leaves in a strong wind.

The body slipped backward, falling free of the Breath, and broke as it met the wall. Though the body lay dismembered and

silent, Bastun chanted, summoning the Weave to his will. He shouted, the force of the spell shattering Serevan’s remains into motes of ice and fragments of bone. Gray light washed over his shoulder, and a strong breeze scattered the prince, stirring up a snowy dust that swirled on the air before drifting away.

Serevan’s words haunted him as he turned in a daze to the watchtower. He slid the Breath into his belt as he approached the doorway, preparing himself for the death that surely lay within. Inside, his eyes adjusting to the dark, he found Duras in the place where he’d left him. Nearby, leaning against the wall in SyrolPs arms, lay Thaena, still and silent but for the slight rising and falling of her breast. Five of the berserkers still lived, injured and solemn, waiting with their ethran. Less than a handful of the others still stirred, lying on the floor in pain or shivering with cold.

The dim morning light grew brighter, the sun’s heat causing the mists outside to shift and grow thicker. Bastun turned back to the wall, walking into the blanket of mist, and leaned against the battlements. His hands found the deep impressions where Serevan’s palms had been, and he stared out into the shadows and phantoms of Shandaular.

“Is it over?” he heard the ethran whisper, her voice echoing from within the tower’s all-consuming quiet. “Is it ended?”

“It is ended, ethran,” said Syrolf. “It is done.”

The pale light of ghostly flames drew Bastun’s attention to the western gates of the city. Plumes of black smoke mingled with the mists as the memory of screams and wailing cries reached his sensitive ears. Ghosts began again their ritual—the flames, the demons, the children, their chains, and the armies of a misguided prince. Bastun pitied them, understanding the plight of being slave to an inescapable past, but he was now free and those chains would no longer hold him.

“It is truly a new day,” he said under his breath.

+

Nightal3, I376DR, Year of the Bent Blade

now fell softly from gray skies brightened by morning’s light. The day ushered in a silence that could be felt and seen around every corner, down every stairway, and hiding amidst the towering heights of each tower. It was a waiting quiet, a brief respite from the play that would erupt shortly after sundown. Even in its dormancy, Bastun could sense the strange vibrations of the Weave in Shandaular. The ability to see and feel so much that should be invisible worried him.

He found if he concentrated well enough, he could ignore the haunting memories of the Shield. The images came and went so fast they wete giving him headaches and he was grateful to be free of the barrage. Faces had appeared that he recognized as if familiar, though he could not recall the names. The cutsed walls of the Shield did not deal in names or identity, only visions and voices, fractured moments of daily life. There was much he could study and learn here, much that he felt compelled to do, but his curiosity could wait awhile longer.

He kept his hood pulled low, frightened that the places and things he had seen would be there for all to see in his stare. He touched the edges of his mask from time to time, making sure he was concealed, that no one could witness the hell that had stained him so.

With Thaena at their lead, the group set out from the Shield and into the empty streets of Shandaular. None looked back, tradition and superstition keeping them focused on the road ahead and keeping the smordanya at their backs.

Every moment passed as an eternity. Bastun gazed at the sky, guessing at the sun’s position and calculating the daylight left before nightfall. Through it all, the others avoided him. He was isolated as before, but now the reasons seemed to have changed. When he caught the odd stare or two, they looked upon him with the respect given to those that wore the masks of Rashemen, of wychlaren and vremyonni. No one asked him what had occurred in the northwest tower. None whispered or repeated old rumors. They saw in him the vyrrdi, the mystery, and did not question his manner or his silence.

The feeling was uncomfortable and strange, causing him to retreat further into his deep hood. Somewhere inside, there was a sense of accomplishment and of completion that flickered to life. This too he was unused to dealing with, and he ignored it for the moment, content to assist and work against the marching armies of time that he sensed growing closer and closer despite the hours left until sunset.

Snow-covered lanes slowed progress to the docks where the Rashemi felucca had been tied. Bastun breathed deep of the outside air, looking more closely at his surroundings, seeing them for the first time in the relative light of day. The cold did not bother him in the slightest. The Flame, the ring that had protected him from Serevan’s hunger and Stygia’s chill still warmed him, though its effect had lessened considerably. He was grateful for the comfort but felt an odd twinge of concern at the thought of removing the ring. He clenched his fist around it, curious, but patient.

Sheets of ice across Lake Ashane gleamed a pure white, bobbing slightly, though the day would soon come when the lake’s surface would move very little. The northern winter had begun, and the tendays ahead would make them look back on

fitful storms and blizzards with longing for such balmy times.

The felucca was as they’d left it, securely tied, sails stowed and ready to be unfurled. Bastun stared at the hazy horizon, imagining the forests at the water’s edge and searching himself for any longing to return, any sense of unfulfilled obligation he might have overlooked in his haste to leave his old life behind.

Nothing. There was nothing calling him, nothing awaiting him. Beautiful though Rashemen might be, and numerous the memories he had made there, it was not enough.

He and Thaena stood side by side as the dead were carefully loaded onto the felucca. The number of men onboard would be doubled since their landing here, but the bodies could not complain of cramped quarters, would not call for jhuild or water, had no need to walk on deck staring out across an expanse of floating ice. The few survivors would drink for them and sing songs of battle, glorious epics and dirges to please the spirits of the Ashane. And they would look upon the lake and the sky, the world around them, with eyes for the dead, their brethren fallen that they might live to fight another day.

Bastun whispered a spell, raising the body of Duras into the air. The berserkers made way, solemnly watching as their former leader was gently laid at the bow, his head forward such that he would be the first to have returned to his homeland when the ship made landfall. Thaena made to follow, and Bastun touched her arm, anticipating this moment, though whatever prepared words he might have had were lost in view of her tear-filled eyes.

“I’m not going back with you. I will stay here… for a time, before moving on,” he said, shifting his hood so that he could see the edge of her shoulder.

“I assumed as much,” she said, hesitantly, mastering her voice past the grief lodged in her throat. “I do not fully understand all of what happened here, but I know we were—I was

Ii7rrIner oKrťnr aKrťnr en manv rhincre “

Bastun said nothing, only nodded slightly as she turned to look over his shoulder. The Shield was invisible from where they stood, hidden as it should be amid the mist and ruin of the dead city. He recognized that silent stare, having no need to see the familiar face beneath her mask to know the regret she felt.

“Keffrass told me many things I thought I had forgotten over the years,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “But occasionally, at certain random moments, I recall the greatest of wisdom in the simplest of memories.”

She turned, listening as he continued.

“The finer points of magic were difficult for me at first, learning among the vremyonni as a child. I was so full of anger all the time, homesick and lost. Finding the focus needed to manipulate the Weave took more effort and patience than I had.” He smiled slightly behind his mask. “With one of my first spells I injured a raven by accident, and the bird’s pain drove me to teats. I swore I would never use magic again.”

He turned toward Thaena, smile fading, eyes shadowed within his hood and narrowing as he made his point.

“But Keffrass sat me down, calmed me, and said, ‘It is not what you have done that matters, it is what you will do that counts.’ “

Thaena looked away slowly, staring at the northern horizon for long moments. Hidden by mist and distance lay the Firward Mountains and beyond that Erech Forest. Somewhere in that distance, many believed, lay the dark meeting places of the durthan sisterhood. Bastun feared for his friend, feared that Anilya’s voice, in spite of all that had happened, had not yet been quieted for either of them.

“And the raven?” she asked.

“I mended its wing as best I could,” he answered. “One day it flew away, and I never saw it again.”

The ethran nodded, folding her hands before her as she made to leave.

“Farewell, Bastun,” she said. “The Land will miss you, as shall I.”

He watched her walk the long dock slowly, the remaining Ice Wolves waiting to assist her boarding, when a dim shadow fell over his shoulder. He turned to find Syrolf behind him, the warriors stealth surprising him. The runescarred face stared him down for several moments, expressionless, though a well-hidden grief could be seen in the redness just around his eyes. He said nothing, but finally raised an eyebrow and managed what may have passed for a brief smile as he clapped Bastun soundly on the shoulder and shook him as one might a fellow berserker after a long battle.

Wordlessly, his hand slid away and he followed his ethran to the felucca and assisted with the unfurling of the sails.

Bastun stood on the shore, snow gathering on his shoulders and around the hem of his robes as he watched the vessel and his countrymen push off into the Ashane. The gray disk of the sun had slipped ever closer into the west when he could no longer make out the felucca’s masts through the mist or hear the low humming songs of the Rashemi across the water.

Glancing once to the north, to the unseen places from which Anilya had come to Shandaular, he whispered a prayer for Thaena and then one for Rashemen.

Turning away from the lake, he made his way back to the Shield.

+ + + + +

The library slowly succumbed to the vremyonni s sense of organization. Minor spells had dealt with the dust and ice, sealing cracks in the windows and stone. The energy that flowed through him was in direct opposition to the amount rest he had of yet to take advantage of. He had dealt with the body of the old vremyonni in the loft first, making sure he was laid to a proper rest.

Bastun repaired the bed and the desk nearby and took an old chair from one of the guard posts. He found candles there, too, and an old lantern and some torches to light his way as night fell over the city. He found he could not sit still until all was in order, everything in place as he imagined it should be.

He kept the Breath at his side throughout it all, in the back of his mind working out how he might once again hide the weapon from the world—or if he should. He had not seen the spirits of the children since his return and wondered if he would need to defend himself.

Despite these concerns, he found himself blissfully alone and free. Though he looked out upon a city full of the suffering dead, stood within a fortress unwittingly cursed by good intentions, and held at his side the key to a frozen hell that had left its cold mark upon his spirit—he saw a hope in the future he could not have imagined several days ago.

He double-checked the library from top to bottom, making sure it would serve him well in the coming months of winter. Satisfied and making mental notes for improvements in the days to come, he delved furthet into the work that needed to be done. He ascended into the loft and sat down at the old, weathered desk. A large tome—the first he had collected for study—lay before him unopened, the text on its cover unreadable. He pulled back his hood with shaking hands and made to remove the first of his gloves.

The Flame glowed with a soft orange light on his ring finger. The skin of his hand was pale, more so than normal. He flexed his fingers and still refused to remove the ring, still unsure of what other purpose the ring served, though in truth he was loathe to dwell on the subject just yet.