The Shield of Weeping Ghosts (19 page)

“Before I answer that, think about the path that lies ahead of us and the blood that still must be shed,” Anilya said. “Then ask yourself if you really want to know.”

“Ethran!” SyrolPs voice echoed in the chamber, startling Thaena from contemplating how to answer the question. “We are ready.”

She ascended the stairs, returning to the place where she had watched a woman die and seen eyes of ice in a face far colder than winter.

Berserkers and sellswords parted as Thaena and Anilya entered, making a path that revealed the dark abyss that now dominated the chamber. Wind and snow entered through the open door at the opposite end of the pit, flakes tumbling down and down into darkness. Duras and one other stood near there, already across and double-checking the ropes placed along the curve of western wall. The room seemed far larger now than before.

Syrolf reached for the rope to begin his climb, but Thaena stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“No,” she said. “I shall go.”

The warrior nodded reluctantly and let her pass. The ledge was as narrow as Duras had said, merely bits of the stone floor clinging to old supports. She gripped the ropes tightly and began to climb across. There were spells that might have made the process easier or quicker, but she knew the fang needed to see their ethran’s strength, her resolve. A simple climb for such rugged warriors might be a little thing—there were far more treacherous stretches of terrain in Rashemen—but a leader must lead.

Holes pocked the walls, most filled with ice and bits of stone from the blast that had taken the floor. Thaena focused on her hands and her feet, ignoring the long drop that yawned beneath her. At two-thirds of the way she paused, hearing something echo from below. A growl reached her ears, a tiny far away sound. She moved more quickly, looking toward Duras who reached out his hand, ready to grab her.

The growl grew louder, and the walls began to shake.

“Thaena!”

She heard the voice of Duras as if in a dream. She moved her hands along the rope, finding another foothold, then glanced down, beyond her boots. She reached farther, closer to Duras. Her foot, overextended, slipped on a loose stone and she fell.

The ropes held, though they shook with the walls. The stone she had knocked free fell away into the blackness. The growl receded, growing softer and disappearing. The shaking calmed, but Thaena could not reach the remaining ledge. Her fingers barely held as she raised her leg higher. Her right hand slipped.

The moment became an eternity as her weight shifted, her legs dangling. Her eyes looked downward, and she imagined she could see a tiny light down there waiting for her. Something caught her wrist. Her arm jerked straight and the plummet was over before it had begun. Duras had her.

Pulling her up, Duras grabbed her with both arms and

rolled away from the pit. She breathed deeply in his embrace before meeting his eyes, seeing him once again from the other side of death’s door. They stood slowly, her arms and legs shaking, but sure and strong as she faced the others. The ropes had held to their iron posts, and the worst seemed to be over.

She crossed her arms and dipped her head with true Rashemi pride.

“Who’s next?” she asked, the challenge in her voice bringing a smile to the face of Syrolf as he took the ropes and found a foothold.

+ + + + +

Flakes of snow drifted into Bastun’s light, settling on his robes and slowly melting. The scent of fresh air was both refreshing and alarming. Peering through the crevice just above him, he wondered just how much of the Shield had come crashing down.

Satisfied that the rubble was done with its settling he reached up for the edge of the fallen door and pulled himself toward escape. The others no doubt believed him either far from Shandaular or working against them. The durthan would be awaiting the return of her assassin, and with him the Breath.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled and pushed himself higher. Stone scraped his sides and tore at his robes as he climbed. Keeping the light of his staff ahead of him, he found himself thoroughly buried. Still, flakes of snow managed their way to him, swirling and falling on a distant breeze. Searching the roof of broken and shattered rock, he found what he hoped for. Through a small hole above he could just barely make out a faint gray light.

Trapped in a space far too narrow for his body, he wedged an arm back and fumbled at his pouches. Feeling a cylinder of cold metal he pulled it free and held it up before the light, reading the markings along the side of a silver vial.

“Silver is impractical,” his fellow apprentices had said. He uncorked the vial, recalling their jibes.

“Well, it doesn’t shatter easily,” Bastun had replied.

Pulling his mask up, he tipped the vial to his lips and drank the bitter-tasting liquid within. The magic of the potion coursed through his body, pulsing and rippling through his limbs. His robes and equipment became as light as air, changing along with his body into an amorphous plume of living smoke. Transformations such as this were usually uncomfortable, but the lack of stone jutting into his back and legs was invigorating.

Swimming on the air he slipped through the ruin, flowing through the hole and several others beyond. He was drawn toward the light and soon found himself floating above the massive pile of rubble. The distance upward was quite far. He must have been below the Shield’s central tower.

Broken stairways and dangling doors hung from the walls. Large chunks of ice remained frozen to the stone, collecting the snow that fell from above. Voices echoed from somewhere, but he couldn’t make them out, the magic of his mask lost in his current state. The potion would not last long enough for him to reach the top. He would have to wait for the effects to wear off.

Somewhere within his shapeless body was the ancient blade, the Breath, now free of its secret grave. The magnitude of such a well-concealed legend on his person was astounding, and he couldn’t help but think of the Firedawn Cycle and the lyrics he’d heard once for every year of his life.

… to steal the Breath, to seal the Death Of the Shield and speak the Word. Of the Shield and speak the Word.

Once again the Breath was to be stolen from the Shield and, he imagined, by those who did not understand what they

were stealing. Even hcidid not fully understand the relationship between the Breath and the Word—their strange merging of Nar and Ilythiiri magic—only the destruction that the two were capable of. As he considered, shadows gathered at the edges of the rubble, coalescing hands and bright eyes as the child-ghosts observed his spiritlike form. Their clinking chains and faint whispers echoed around him, but they did not attack.

Seven children in chains, he thought curiously.

The Cycle came to mind again, and the ancient lyrics revealed another of the Shield’s dark secrets. Pity flooded his being, seeming to carry a palpable weight as the potion wore off. His hands felt the stone beneath him, his knees pressed under the growing weight of his returning body. The Breath pulled at his belt as the song tumbled through his thoughts.

They came at dawn to break the wall, by Seven

were they led. To frozen walls and to weary core, Seven cross’d

the plain,

To gates of Shandaular, of fallen kingdom, Seven came.

Shattered souls, bound in chains, by Nentyarch’s crown, the Seven came.

“Children,” he croaked as his throat reformed. He coughed, acclimating his lungs to breathing again. “He sent children to start his war.”

The whispers grew louder and more frenzied as the shadowy spirits shifted in and out of the walls. Standing and turning in a circle, he reached for the Breath, wary of the ghosts. He recalled their fear of the weapon below when he was fighting Ohriman, and though he pitied their fates, he would protect himself against their madness if need be.

Coming back around he froze, finding the smallest standing just a few strides away. She appeared as before, pale and dark

haired. Her bright eyes regarded Bastun with curiosity and also the same odd familiarity he could not fathom. She reached up and he flinched, her movements quick and hard to follow. Touching her continually flowing hair, she brushed away several errant strands and traced her face.

Reaching up to his own face, he traced the edges of the mask in wonder.

The mask, he thought. They must have known the vremyonni caretaker! How could he have kept this secret? Lived here among them?

Even as the question occurred to him he suspected the source of that secret and sighed in understanding: the wychlaren. They would have guarded the knowledge of anyone succeeding where they had failed.

He kneeled down to her eye level. She shied away from the movement, fading for an instant, but did not leave. She averted her eyes from him, hiding her face behind an ivory hand. The others kept their distance, still agitated and confused by the strange meeting between the living and the dead.

“You were sent here to die,” he whispered.

She looked back at him, tilting her head as her eyes widened and her lip trembled. There were no more tears in her—they were left behind with her physical form—but he could see the streaks of those she had cried in life. Pleased with gaining her attention he tried to keep it, to discover why she had come to him.

“You said something before, about the cold prince,” he said.

A shudder passed through her and the others rumbled. Their chains clinked and clattered against the walls. Shivering and paler than before, she nodded just enough for him to notice. Her eyes drifted to the Breath at his side, his hand upon the hilt.

The prince, he wondered, from the Cycle?

History lessons turned through his thoughts. Late night conversations with Keffrass came to mind, along with old

scrolls and bits of forgotten lore. Narrowing his eyes, he recalled the Creel. The tribe, though often perceived as mere savages, were obsessed with ancient legacies and boasted of powerful bloodlines. The idea was there, on the tip of his tongue, before the realization struck him. When he found it, the name was linked as closely to the history of the Shield and as far away from the present as the ghost that stood before him. “Serevan Crell,” he whispered.

Mere mention of the name had an instantaneous effect. The girl disappeared. The others’ forms grew and trembled, a thundering growl emanating from the shreds of shadow they had become. The walls shook, and he thought he could hear a scream echoing amid the sound of tumbling stone and rubble. Standing on the largest piece of intact floor he could find, he held his arms out for balance and turned in circles again. He prepared for an attack.

Gradually, the shaking stopped, the growls faded, and though the spirits still hovered at the walls Bastun breathed a sigh of relief. Cautiously he knelt, taking stock of the situation. Staring up to the distant light near the top of the tower, he knew he would have to find Thaena and the others. Anilya would lead them to the Word, likely using them as fodder against the Creel.

For several moments, he contemplated the alternative— taking the Breath as far away from the Shield as possible and abandoning his old friends to their betrayer and the Creel. The long years away were apparent in that he didn’t immediately reject the idea. Without the Breath, Anilya couldn’t use the Word. Wasn’t that what mattered?

Still… having an idea and acting upon it were very different notions. He couldn’t abandon the Rashemi.

The low growls and whispers around him became tiny whimpers and fearful noises. The shadows shrank, sinking to the edge of the ruined tower’s many floors. Looking around in confusion, Bastun rose cautiously back to his feet.

A cracking sound echoed from above, followed by a crash as shards of ice shattered on the stone. A mewling wail drew his attention to a block of ice on the wall. Something squirmed inside of it—a dark mass of long limbs writhing in an icy prison until a pair of glowing green eyes turned toward him from within. Raising his staff, Bastun flinched as more ice fell from behind him.

Claws scraped against ice, and leathery wings unfurled.

Taking a deep breath, he called upon his axe.

I374 DR, Year of Lightning Storms The Running Rocks

njoying the quiet and the smell of old books, Bastun stood alone in the center of his small room. Fresh snow melted on his boots and dripped from the hem of his robes. No one had seen him leave. No guards came to witness his return. Two days alone, beyond sight of his fellow wizards and the laws that bound him to remain hidden from the world. Free, more than he’d been in nearly two decades, and he had returned to the Running Rocks.

He was vremyonni, currently the youngest of the Old Ones, and no other place in Rashemen would have him. This was his place. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and lashed out. His knuckles met the stone wall. The familiar sting lanced through his wrist, and his fury subsided for a moment or two, blood welling into old cuts and scratches.

“Welcome back.”

Keffrass’s voice did not startle him. His master was as much a part of the Rocks as the whistling drafts in the upper caverns or the pages rustling in the library.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No,” Bastun answered, then recalled the brief escape. A return to his village under cover of night and magic had shown

him more than he’d been willing to admit for many years— that he would have left anyway, in time. “And… yes.”

“A good answer,” Keffrass said and entered the room, sitting and lighting a candle with a wave of his hand. “There is wisdom in looking back at every regret, every misstep, and realizing the value of tragedy.”

“I do not think I am quite that wise just yet,” Bastun said and leaned against the wall.

“There is wisdom in that as well,” Keffrass replied, his ancient eyes sparkling, though his humor faded. “That mask… it does more than just cover your face.”

“Yes,” he said quietly, closing his eyes and feeling the second visage. “Though I fear it, what it may become, what it will allow me to do.”