The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

by James P. Davis

  Sitting up he raised the Breath before him, its once simple blade now filled with an unholy power. He stood carefully, looking upon the Word and the Breath with new eyes. It was more than a mere portal or gate; its influence still curled and swam through his body. Closing his eyes he felt something new. Reaching out with his thoughts he could sense the high walls of the tower, each stone in its foundation, every open door and errant breeze as if the Shield were an extension of himself.

  The eastern walls, mostly a shell now as their interiors had crumbled long ago, warmed slightly as the first gray light of a winter’s dawn tried to penetrate Shandaular’s mists. Much closer though, he could sense another presence on the Shield’s walls.

  Bastun’s body moved with a preternatural strength and balance despite the mess of his thoughts. Part of his mind focused on descending the stairs, keeping alert, and finishing what he had begun—what had begun long ago. The rest of him felt a mess, a jumble of emotions, questions, and doubts. His cheeks were cold, a few tears freezing before they could roll away, but he could not determine for whom they fell.

  Ghosts flitted by as time rolled in random directions around him. The memories of the Shield were his memories, though the details were fleeting as if the stone were alive and forgetting things as it aged. The past was all that remained, the only life left for the crumbling fortress to live. There was a kinship between he and the Shield that he was loathe to admit, but he could not deny it.

  He recalled his first arrival at the gates, staring at the high towers and walls. He had been so eager to get inside and see for himself this place he had known in tome and scroll. Now, he only wished to escape. He had forged his peace, with Keffrass and himself, in blood and in ice, and had buried pain and regret in the deepest hell he could find.

  The length of the walls and the various towers of the Shield spread out before him, and he found himself outside. Predawn light lit the eastern sky, glowing across the ocean of mist that rolled and eddied just below the battlements. Leaning on those crenellations, staring out across the ruin of Shandaular, stood the youngest son of the Nentyarch.

  Serevan, his faced half-ruined with flesh slowly creeping backward into death’s grimace, did not turn at Bastun’s arrival. The prince looked upon a city that was not burning, not dying, but dead, a cursed shell of the city he remembered.

  “Time is broken,” Serevan muttered as Bastun approached. “The empire is gone. My father is gone.”

  Bastun paused at the prince’s words, keeping the Breath before him as he eyed Serevan.

  “You know this?” he asked, his voice resounding with the same power it had taken in Stygia. It echoed and vibrated through the wall, and the prince turned. Pale brows furrowed over the icy, lidless eyes.

  “Yes, wizard,” he rasped. “I have always been aware of time’s passage. Trapped in my own mind, forced to relive the past, to witness my own foolishness. An eternal nightmare, a dream from which I cannot awaken.”

  Silhouetted by glowing mist, he turned away from the battlements and stared up to the top of the northwest tower, the cradle of the Word. Behind him, Bastun could only see darkness within the watchtower where he had left Thaena and Syrolf. No sound came from within. The pang of alarm he felt became a chill down his spine. He tilted his head at the odd sensation and regarded the cold prince thoughtfully.

  “You opened it,” Serevan said, still gazing upon the weathered stone of the tower. He did not ask, merely stated a fact that both of them knew, could feel in their bones. “Athumrani sought vengeance when he betrayed me and sacrificed himself. He found it. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes,” he answered without hesitation, then reconsidered the question. His own past, his own ghosts, were quiet within him. The terrible weight of life on his shoulders had lessened, and the future seemed less an escape than the freedom he had sought. A dull ache rested in his knuckles, the gleaming blade of the Breath still in his hand. The sword, so heavy before, was nothing to the strength he felt now. Something of Stygia’s touch remained, hiding beneath his skin, and he found a hint of regret slipping amidst his scattered thoughts. “And … no.”

  “Hmph. Sacrifice, the purest currency between devils and men,” said the prince, and he gazed upon Bastun through orbs of ice in hollowed sockets, his rictus grin growing as the ravages of undeath reclaimed flesh and separated it from illusion. “One never truly knows the price until it is paid.”

  Bastun was never more aware of his own heartbeat than at that moment, staring into the ruined face of Serevan Crell, pondering the meaning of sacrifice and its price. Faint wisps of steam escaped from around the edges of Bastun’s mask, and he breathed a little deeper. His pulse quickened as the air between them grew thick, whatever strange truce that had caused them to speak to one another ending as quickly as it had begun. The prince edged his body sideways in a fighting stance, his tattered cloak and white hair stirred in a morning breeze.

  “We must end this here, wizard,” Serevan said, his voice now more hollow than before, rumbling out from a withering throat. He drew his thin blade, joints cracking with frozen flesh. “I want what I came for.”

  Bastun stepped back, raising the Breath.

  “You still mean to have this?” he asked, staring from the sword to the bleakborn. “After all that you have seen?”

  “I see the world that is and the world that was,” the prince replied, glancing once again at the weathered stone and mist-covered landscape of the city. “I cannot deny the fate that was handed to me—but truth be told, I much prefer the dream.”

  The thin blade darted quickly and Bastun parried. It came again and again, each slash ringing strident tones on the Breath as Bastun backstepped. He had fought this battle before and lost, the memory of the wound in his side still painful, though nary a scar now remained. His breathing came quicker; his pulse raced. Magic seemed slippery and evasive, his thoughts turning to chaos as ghosts flitted past.

  They turned, and Bastun was pushed away from the northwest tower, away from the Word and the lingering echoes of its frozen hell. Though the prince continued to deteriorate, the vremyonni could find no opening, could not focus to summon 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 rhythm as the Breath moved faster. He battered at the thin, dancing blade of the prince. The phantom scents of smoke and blood stirred 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 backwar
d, 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 Syrolf’s 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.

  chapter twenty-six

  Nightal 3, 1376 DR, Year of the Bent Blade

  Snow 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 were 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 cursed 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 wrong about … about so many things.”

  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 tears. 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 warrior’s 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.