The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

Chapter Sixteen

No words were needed. Syrolf 's eyes told it all.

Too weak to defend himself against the punch to his stomach, Bastun took it and doubled over in pain. The sword at his throat disappeared only for its pommel to come crashing down on his skull. He fell to his hands, vision swimming as the room erupted into chaos.

Shouts and curses surrounded him as Duras tackled Syrolf. Coughing, Bastun crawled against the wall and lay on his side. The fang had become a tangle of legs and arms as supporters of Duras leaped to his aid against those siding with Syrolf. Their eyes were bloodshot and without reason as they punched and kicked at one another. Though a common sight in the berserker lodges, this brawl stemmed from more than simple rivalry.

His eyes clearing, Bastun watched as the floor came alive. The shadows of the combatants peeled away from the stone, growing darker as tendrils reached and snatched. Beneath the curses and shouts he heard the undercurrent of whispers, the nonsensical ravings of the shadowy children as they played in the fertile ground of the Rashemi's minds. The black stream of spirits filled cracks in the floor, bending and twisting as it made its way toward Bastun.

Drawing back against the wall, his hand went to the Breath, making the shadows pull away. Before he could study the effect, the room rippled and changed. Ghostly images overlaid themselves among the fighting Rashemi. Fierce warriors in heavy armor fought with sword and shield through the scene. The faint noise of metal on metal echoed in his mind as if from a great distance. The Breath's steel gripped his hand with claws of ice, compelling him to stand, to skirt this battle and continue on his way to the northwest tower. He fought the will that tried to overcome him and, straining with effort, released his hand from the Breath. As he did the ghostly battle disappeared.

Blood spattered across the floor in front of him, and Syrolf landed on his back. Duras stood over him, breathing heavily and reaching for the fallen warrior again. Others came from behind, grasping his shoulders and hauling him backward. Syrolf turned over, noticing Bastun, and lunged. Blood poured from his nose and stained his bared teeth as he was stopped as well, pulled away from the prone vremyonni to spit and swear.

Thaena walked up between the pair, reprimanding them with little more than a stern glare and a steady hand. The shouting faded as the bloodlust fled from weary muscles and clenched fists. Duras and Syrolf stood on their own, staring each other down but making no move to continue the fight.

Bastun rose to a sitting position and caught his breath. The whispers died away, and the shadows sank back into the stone, the ghosts' sport now finished as a measure of order was restored to the group. Thaena caught his eye, an unreadable light flashing in her gaze. An awkward silence passed between them, which she quickly broke, ordering men to secure the doors and any other entrances or exits. Wind whistled through cracks beneath the doors and shook the broken windows at the far end of the chamber. Bastun leaned against the wall, clutching his stomach, stars dancing before his eyes.

"Hold him," Thaena said, and Duras stepped forward to grasp Bastun's robe. Hauled to his feet, Duras pinned him to the wall. The warrior did not look at him directly, seeming uncomfortable with the situation but obeying the ethran. Syrolf and the remainder of the fang waited expectantly. Despite the blood on his face and a bruised cheek, Syrolf ignored Duras and kept his gaze firmly fixed on Bastun.

Anilya approached Thaena, barely glancing at Bastun, though she again took note of the wavy-bladed sword at his side.

"I have laid an enchantment that should discourage the nighthaunts," she said calmly as if nothing had happened, "but the storm is another matter. We might do well to wait out the worst of it before continuing."

Thaena blinked, looking at the durthan before nodding in agreement.

"See to your men, durthan," she said, her tone still even and full of command as she looked sidelong at Bastun. "I will see to this."

Anilya glanced once toward the vremyonni and turned away. Bile rose in Bastun's throat at the durthan's calm exterior. He fought the urge to spit and call her out in front of the fang, but instead closed his eyes to calm and steady his nerves.

They cannot know, he thought. Not yet. Not until I can prove my claims.

Thaena approached him, standing at Duras's shoulder as she looked him up and down.

"Bring him," she said and made her way toward the back of the room.

Duras pulled him from the wall and shoved him forward.

The fang parted for the procession, spitting and whispering in their wake. Syrolf paused before moving out of the way. Wiping blood from his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic, his expression made promises that Bastun had no doubt he intended to keep. He grabbed Duras's shoulder, looking up at him as the big warrior stopped.

"You risk too much, protecting him," he said. "He's using you."

Duras pulled away and led Bastun to an archer's loft at the back of the room. Thaena stood beside the bottom step as the vremyonni climbed the steep stairway. He winced at the ache in his legs. As Thaena and Duras followed, the whispering below them became quiet arguments and accusations. He wondered if he had done the right thing, if he had come to help them against the durthans imminent betrayal or to die alongside them-possibly by their blades.

Stumbling over a loose stone, he fell to his hands, and pain lanced through his wounded shoulder. Stifling a groan he crawled to the wall and sat down. Thaena ascended the last few steps, his staff held in the crook of her arm. Duras stood at the top step, blocking access to the loft as Thaena paced. With a sigh, she knelt down, leaning on his staff, and regarded him with anger and pity in her eyes.

"Explain yourself, Bastun," she said.

"What would you like me to say, Thaena?" He asked, his voice strained and scratchy.

"Tell me that they're wrong about you," she replied. "Tell me that you haven't betrayed us to spite the wychlaren or your homeland, that you aren't seeking some hidden power or secret of this place for your own gain. Tell me that everything that is happening here is just coincidence… and not design."

"Do I really need to say any of that?" he answered, looking between her and Duras.

"Damn you, Bastun! This isn't a game! Men have died in your absence, and many of those that remain believe you to be involved. Do you understand that? Can you?"

He didn't answer, his gaze drifting to the floor as he reminded himself that he knew to what he was returning. He cursed himself as the reality of what he faced came to rest on his shoulders. Looking up and seeing his two old friends waiting for him to say something, to settle their doubts, he could not help but wonder if they might have given up on him. "What do you think?" he asked.

Thaena shook her head and gestured over her shoulder where the voices of the fang could still be heard arguing in the room below.

"You know, Bastun, contrary to what you may think about the iron-fisted rule of the wychlaren," she said, just loud enough for him to hear, "what I think may not matter for much longer."

"It matters to me."

Thaena stood and turned away, pacing again. He regretted his words as soon as he'd said them and noted that she had not yet returned his staff. She couldn't know what the item meant to him, but in the spirit it was given, in Keffrass s last moments, it was tangible evidence of trust and forgiveness. Though the staff held some small power he might call upon when needed, neither of them suspected the old blade at his belt represented a destruction beyond their imagination.

"Well," Thaena said at length, "in any case, it won't save your life. That is, if you still care for your own life."

"Of course I care," he replied and shuddered as he recalled the nighthaunt's maw descending toward him.

"Then why did you leave? Why when everything we've experienced here speaks of betrayal?"

"I did what I had to do." Though he wanted to tell them everything, he could not be sure of their trust in him. If they still doubted or took seriously the rumors and accusations of those such as Syrolf, then the Breath would be taken from him. No matter what his warnings, they would know that he had kept it secret and pulled it from its hiding place. He would have played into Anilya's hands perfectly. Despite the trust he wished to earn, he knew he had to lie. "I left to find my own way, my own exile. And… I got lost."

Thaena knelt again, searching his eyes. Duras had remained quiet throughout, tall and still at the loft's ladder. Both of them awaited something more, more than just simplicity and the understanding of old friends. Together, ethran and guardian, they represented a reality he was loathe to face, though once he had lived it and had survived for some time-he was no longer one of them. They did not need him. They did not trust him.

But they wanted to trust him again. Thaena had called out for him in the dark, and the fear he could see in her eyes, the desperation in her voice, drew from him what she needed to hear. Taking a long breath, he delved into the tale of his recent absence-a tale of half-truths and dull, ashen lies that tasted bitter upon his tongue.

He told them of the hidden passages, ghostly children, and the secret library. He spoke of a deep armory and becoming trapped in the central tower's collapse. The varrangoin, the climb, the dying Creel, and the falling bridge… all he told, but the Breath and the Word he kept to himself.

"This prince," Thaena said after he had finished, "what do we know of him? I was not aware the Nar had princes-or kings for that matter."

"It is said that in the last days of Shandaular," Bastun said, reciting the bits of history as he knew them, the poetry of the Firedawn Cycle unwound by vremyonni historians, "the Nentyarch Thargaun of Dun-Tharos had sent all but one of his sons against the walls of the city. This last son was called Serevan Crell, a prince of old Narfell."

"You cannot mean to say-" Duras said. "That was centuries ago. Longer!"

Though the warrior had broken his silence, Thaena sat transfixed in her own thoughts. Bastun did not press her on the subject. Clearly she knew something more.

"I can only vouch for what the Creel woman spoke to me," he said to Duras, though he kept his eye on Thaena. "But Narfell was once favored by powerful fiendish lords, and Serevan was suspected a sorcerer of some talent."

"Even if it is true, or even possible," Thaena said, standing and staring at the ceiling and walls as if being watched, "why now:

"Now?" Bastun asked. "You've seen the spirits of this city, the way they act, as if Shandaular is falling every day. The idea of now means very little to those lost in the suffering of the past."

She looked at him-or rather her mask looked at him, for it was a wychlaren stare he felt and not the eyes he had just witnessed outside. There was judgment in the mask and authority to carry out the judgment. For a short time he had forgotten that mask, and it seemed he was going to be reminded.

"This is not the past, Bastun," she said, an edge like iron sliding coldly along the undertone of the statement. "This is now and we must act accordingly. We cannot be swayed by what might be or what once was, Nar magic or fallen princes be damned."

"And what if it matters?" he asked. "What if those things are a part of this? What if you are wrong?"

She tilted her head and regarded him before replying. "If I am wrong, then why did you come back?"

The cold iron hiding in her voice slid home and buried itself in his gut. Even Duras looked at her sharply. She had done all but call him a coward, and he yearned to answer her question with the truth.

But he didn't. He swallowed his words, gritted his teeth, and allowed the moment to wash through him.

His staff clattered to the ground next to him and he took it with a steady hand. His thumb already rested in the wood's grooved scar.

"You are not to leave my sight until this is finished," she said, then made her way to the stairway. "We will wait out the storm and make our way to the northwest tower. As long as you are useful you will not be treated as a prisoner… or worse."

He listened as her footsteps faded down the stairs, felt the gaze of Duras on him before the big warrior left him. Bastun eased himself down on his injured shoulder, pulling his cloak tight as he closed his eyes. Wrapped in cloth and pressed beneath his weight, the Breath remained cold even as he succumbed to a fitful sleep.

The day waned to evening and Bastun awoke in the hushed silence of the guard tower. The storm's howl had lessened to a moan, and he settled in to study the worn spellbook from his pack. Lighting a small candle, he pored over pages written in his own hand. The medium of ink and parchment had a calming effect on his mind, allowing him to focus on only those spells he felt would be necessary in the fight to come. Time became a stranger, something that only happened to other people, as he absorbed the words and gestures of magic into his memory. Though other more passive workings caught his eye, favorites useful for research and learning, he chose only one in the end and used it immediately.

Retrieving the journals taken from the library, he skimmed the entries of the Shield's Magewarden, Athumrani. The fear and paranoia that filled Athumrani was evident, and Bastun suspected there was much the Magewarden had not put to paper. From beginning to end the handwriting's change from impersonal script into hurried and emotional scratching was disturbing in a way that seemed almost claustrophobic. As the walls of safety closed in on the Magewarden, so did the room seem smaller and more threatening around Bastun. The compulsion to burst through the doors and breathe fresh air was strong and familiar. He glanced at the pommel of the Breath at his side, covering it with the hem of his robe and shivering at the memory of the compulsion it had drawn over him.

The second journal was truly a prize, surprising at first, yet the tone of Athumrani's writing made clear why the two books had been together. The first page declared it to be the notes of Arkaius himself, many of which concerned his experiences with the Word-due to the nature of the notes, it went well into explaining Athumrani's frantic state of mind.

Much of the king's research into the Ilythiiri had clearly been torn away, but what remained was a stunning account of the days after the first use of the Word. Bastun imagined the voice of Arkaius, carrying him and the Breath outside, along the wall, and up to the top of the northwest tower. In that tower lay a solid black door that had not opened during any living memory, a door that held the secrets of Shandaular's ruin. The king was filled with regret over what he had worked to create, and he feared for his people as he knew the Nentyarch would send yet another army to claim Shandaular's portal for their empire. Like Athumrani, he too suspected an agent of Dun-Tharos had infiltrated the Shield.

Bastun sighed in frustration. More torn pages left a gaping hole in the preparations Arkaius had made in keeping the Word secret. All that remained were the king's last thoughts, making ready for the imminent attack and his intention to sacrifice himself in destroying the portal. His people would escape to the far south and the Nentyarch would be denied his prize. Common history of the realm told of these events, though Bastun wondered who it had been-in those last moments as Shandaular was razed by the Nentyarch's army-who actually used the Word.

"I see the vremyonni hunger for knowledge is as voracious as I've heard."

Bastun started but did not turn at the sound of Anilya's voice. He kept his back to her and let his hand drift protectively to the Breath.

"Some of us find in books those things that cure the urge to seek adventure," he said, wondering how she had made her way up to him without being heard or stopped by the guard at the bottom of the stairs.

"Actually, I tend to find in them just the opposite."

"Ohriman is dead," he said, in no mood to banter around what they both knew. "If you've come sniffing around for news of him I think you'll be more successful closer to ground level."

"I didn't ask," she said. "Besides, with all the ghosts in this place, I think dead is a loose term at best."

Deftly replacing the journals in his pack, he shifted himself to face her. Resting his hands on his knees, he regarded her as he might a new kind of insect.

"I tend not to think of the dead loosely," he said. "Take for instance those Creel in the Central Tower. Interesting scars they had, do you not think? Pale, bloodless cuts and scratches-"

"The Shield itself is a ghost," she said, ignoring him, "having died long ago, its purpose unfulfilled, lost to the outside world in a shroud of mist and cold. Most scoff at the idea that any structure survives in this place at all, but those who brave the ruins, who get close enough to see, even many of them will deny that it really exists."

"And that's where it should have stayed," Bastun said, studying the durthan as she peered through arrow slits into the growing darkness outside. "Buried in mist and denial for another thousand years, useless to anyone… save for those ignorant of its history."

"You assume my ignorance?" she asked playfully, and she reached up to remove her mask. He gaped at her beauty revealed, her fair skin and dark eyes framed by short locks of night black hair. She smiled at him, a graceful curve in her full lips that barely registered as movement but which changed her entire expression. "Ignorance can be bliss, Bastun."

"Knowledge is power,'' he said, casting his gaze to the floor, avoiding the eyes and the smile that had broken his thoughts.

She leaned against the wall and slid down to sit. Her stare never left him. Her smile seemed almost to cast its own shadow over him. Avoiding sight of it did little to erase its presence. Glancing up, he watched as she rested her head on her shoulder and propped an arm over a bended knee.

"And what's the use of power," she asked, "without a little bliss now and then?"

His cautious stare became wide-eyed alarm as he watched the faint image of the wall become visible through her shoulder. Her entire image shimmered and faded away. Rising to one knee, he caught up his staff and brushed his palm against the Breath. The mental weight of the weapon's presence was making such fearful movements reflexive.

Anilya was gone. No footprints in the dust or any disturbance of the loft indicated she had been there at all.

"Illusion," he whispered.

He heard voices downstairs and walked to the loft's edge. Thaena spoke with Duras as the group prepared to brave the wall. The ethran noticed Bastun watching and gestured for him to join them. Several of the sellswords worked to unbar the western door as he descended the stairs. Nearby, observing their progress, stood Anilya. Her mask back in place, she offered him only the slightest of glances before the door opened to reveal a wall of white.

Pausing in his descent, he placed a hand over the journals at his side. Their remembered words fluttered around his quiet fears like moths to a flame.

Pulling his cloak tight over the Breath, he shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his thoughts, and walked the rest of the way down the stairs.

In a daze he stepped through the open door behind the others. Under the now clear sky he wavered a moment, leaning on the battlements and alarmed by a sudden vertigo. Mist spread out from the walls of the Shield like an ocean of smoky white, unstirred by the storm, to hide the fortress in its folds once again. He looked away from the unseen depths of the mist, feeling nauseous and focusing instead on the calm skies overhead. The night glittered and twinkled as he caught his breath and steadied himself. He marveled at the stars, though if he witnessed stars of the past or the present, he could not be sure.