The Shield of Weeping Ghosts Read online

  The rustle of robes behind him disturbed his thoughts. Turning, he found Anilya regarding him coolly from behind her dark mask—not the mask he had hoped to see. He sighed at his own foolishness, once again happy for his own mask and the emotions it hid.

  The durthan crossed her arms and tilted her head.

  “Yes?” he asked, wondering what she was thinking.

  “Well done, vremyonni,” she answered and winked at him before turning away to join Ohriman and her men.

  Bastun resumed his study of the portal stones and tried to appear nonplussed by the durthan’s attention.

  chapter six

  Grunts of pain echoed softly in the hall as the warriors bound their wounds with strips of cloth or leather. Thaena saw to a few of them, but mostly they worked on their own injuries, leaving the ethran to speak words of peace for the spirits of three warriors who had fallen to the weeping undead. She prayed that they might find their way home and strengthen Rashemen in death just as they had in life. The traditional benediction felt awkward within the cursed city.

  The others sat by and told tales of the warriors’ lives, honoring their memories in the tradition of the berserkers. Duras stared hard at the bodies of men he had led into death. Bastun stayed close to the portal, away from the others, but listening closely and respecting the warriors’ sacrifice in his own way.

  Though weary, Bastun could not force his eyes away from the broken archway. He had tried several times to unravel small bits of the old runes, to decipher their meaning, but their makers had worked the spells in a time of old and secret magic.

  With the vremyonni, he had studied what little history had been available about the Ilythiiri, an ancient nation of elves lost to their own power millennia ago. Though the Ilythiiri had left the surface of the world, bits of their sorcery still remained in places like Shandaular. The shattered portal, like all the city’s dead, had little resemblance to what it had been in life, yet in death it had also refused to lay quiet.

  Fearful of surrounding enemies and the growing darkness in the western forests, King Arkaius had used knowledge gleaned from the Ilythiiri runes for his own ends. Just as a city had grown around the portal, Bastun feared others might also gather around the table of time to steal scraps they neither earned nor fully understood.

  From the corner of his eye Bastun noticed Anilya watching him. Her interest in the portal was no mystery. A durthan could always be counted on to seek out possible power or advantage over the wychlaren, but the way she studied him was unnerving. Closing his eyes, he shut out the world, alone behind his mask and preparing himself for the last trek to the Shield. There he would find more of the Ilythiiri runes, twisted by a desperate king, and he hoped time had molested them with naught but dust and ice.

  Hearing footsteps approaching from behind, Bastun sighed and opened his eyes. Syrolf knelt beside him with a cold look on his runescarred features.

  “What are you doing, exile?” he said, his eyes narrow. “Covering your tracks?”

  Bastun took a deep breath. “I am trying to discover what happened here and why,” he said evenly.

  “Ah, I see,” the warrior nodded then smiled conspiratorially. “So it wasn’t you I saw, here, in this spot, commanding these stones?”

  “I managed to stop them, yes,” Bastun replied as Syrolf stood and looked down at him.

  “Interesting, that,” the warrior said as he paced alongside the portal. “You knew just what to do, didn’t you? Came to where you’d be needed.”

  Bastun stood, staff in hand, breathing measured. Syrolf’s suspicions were tiresome, and Bastun had no desire to justify them.

  “I followed my instincts,” he said, realizing that though he kept his hands to himself, his sharp tongue was bound to do just as much damage. “I followed them toward the spells that I could do something about. I didn’t think to try bashing away at the dried-out corpses protecting it. How did that work out? You didn’t seem quite yourself when we ran into each other.”

  “Men died in that battle, exile!” Syrolf stepped closer, shoulders squared and jaw clenched. “You would dare disrespect them?”

  “No,” Bastun answered, matching the warrior’s stance. “Not them, just—”

  “Syrolf!” Duras interrupted, placing a long arm across the runescarred warrior’s chest to separate the pair. “Stand down. I’ll leave no more dead here than have already fallen.”

  “He mocks our dead!” Syrolf fumed, a murderous glint in his eye. His raised voice echoed through the chamber, drawing the attentions of everyone to the argument. “We bleed for a traitor and he uses us for his own ends!”

  Syrolf’s hand strayed dangerously close to the sheathed sword at his side as he pushed into Duras’s outstretched arm.

  “You have no right in this Syrolf,” Duras said, struggling to keep the warrior back. “You would disobey the ethran? Do not be a fool! Stand down!”

  Thaena approached, watching the conflict coolly. Bastun had no intention of fighting Syrolf, but he would not back down. He would defend himself if necessary. As it was few trusted him, but any show of weakness among the Rashemi would only add to his troubles.

  “Lack of evidence has been a convenient problem, hasn’t it?” Syrolf said and looked at Bastun. “The exile has been surrounded by evidence ever since and before his trial! Nothing good enough to show him for what he is. Now he manipulates this ruin against us, and we are to do nothing?”

  “Bastun stopped the portal,” Anilya said coldly, standing nearby, her hands folded neatly before her as she stared down the warrior, “and probably saved your life.”

  Syrolf chuckled low in his throat and swept his gaze across the rest of the fang.

  “The durthan speaks for the exile,” he said, smiling. “How many among us are surprised at that? A show of hands will do.”

  The fang shifted and mumbled to one another, none raising their hands, but many nodding their heads in agreement. Thaena approached closer as Duras pushed Syrolf back a pace.

  “Syrolf,” the ethran said calmly, “let’s say I believe you over the durthan. Are you prepared to die in Bastun’s place?”

  Indignation filled Syrolf’s eyes at the question. “Lady Ethran, he is not—”

  “If Bastun is guilty as you say, then the hathran will deal with him,” Thaena said. “Until he is brought to the Shield and officially declared an exile, he is still vremyonni and only a hathran or an othlor may formally execute a traitorous vremyonni. If he is dead when we arrive, the hathran will demand your sword for his life.”

  Even the status of a runescarred berserker could not save Syrolf from the judgment of the hathran. If one of the wychlaren demanded the sword of a berserker, that sword would be returned quickly. Point first. To his credit, Syrolf seemed to be weighing the price of his own sacrifice.

  He raised his hands slowly, though his eyes stared daggers into Bastun’s. He pushed by Duras, passing between him and the vremyonni. He paused.

  “The Nar, these Creel, are here because of him,” the warrior said. “We were attacked by the rusalka on the lake, because of him. Now here he summons the dead to be free of us. No good can come of this.”

  “It’s over, Syrolf,” Duras said. “Let it be.”

  Syrolf did not answer, but his left hand gripped the handle of his long sword. Bastun tensed, spells reflexively readying themselves at his fingertips at the first glimmer of steel at Syrolf’s side. The runescarred warrior froze, unable to carry out whatever he might have been intending, before the edge of a thin blade appeared at his throat.

  Ohriman smirked at the surprised Syrolf, amusement glinting in the tiefling’s catlike stare as he pressed his sword against the warrior’s neck.

  Thaena’s eyes widened, and the rest of the fang drew swords, ready to pounce now that one of their own was threatened. Anilya’s men seemed not to have moved at all, but Bastun could see hands on their weapons and legs bending slowly into positions more suitable for standing at a moment’s notice
.

  “Ohriman!” Anilya shouted. “What are you thinking?”

  “You seem very quick to accuse the wizard, Rashemi,” Ohriman sneered, his voice low and threatening. “Leave him be.”

  “Put that blade down, outlander,” Thaena said, leveling her gaze on the tiefling.

  “There’s no law stopping my blade, Rashemi,” he said, ignoring Thaena. “Remember that.”

  “Put it down!”

  “Order your own men, ethran,” Anilya said. “Ohriman is just trying to protect the one man who might know what’s happening in this city.”

  “By killing one of our own?” Duras said. “I’ll not have any of that!”

  Syrolf and Ohriman stared death into one another’s eyes as the others argued. Bastun saw the situation deteriorating rapidly, ripples of chaos spreading through the two groups with each threatening word. Syrolf glanced back and forth between Ohriman, Bastun, and the others.

  “You see, Syrolf,” Bastun said, “no one wins here. You kill me, Ohriman kills you, and then everyone tries to kill each other.”

  “You planned this,” Syrolf said. “Turning us against one another!”

  “I’m not the one holding the sword,” Bastun said, flexing his fingers and feeling the Weave around him ready to respond. The Shield was close enough now that he might elude the conflict and reach it alone. At the moment, he would readily abandon them all.

  Syrolf released the grip on his sword, and Ohriman slowly pulled his blade away from the Rashemi’s neck. The arguments fell silent as the pair faced one another.

  Syrolf took a step backward and turned as Ohriman made to sheath his sword. As soon as the mercenary’s hilt touched scabbard, the berserker spun, drawing his sword against the tiefling. In the blink of an eye, Ohriman’s blade appeared and blocked the attack, their steel singing as it met and held between them.

  Their arms strained and pushed. Syrolf’s lip curled as he found the wiry mercenary’s strength to be far more than expected.

  Ohriman’s demeanor remained calm. Bastun swore the man looked as if he could have yawned at any moment. The others stood still, waiting to see if blood would be drawn between the two—there were no wychlaren laws to protect the tiefling. Despite his dislike of Syrolf, Bastun hoped Ohriman would lose. If Syrolf fell, the entire fang might rush to avenge his death.

  With a final shove the pair parted. Syrolf merely grunted and turned away. Ohriman walked back to his men and gracefully sat down, drying the condensing mist from his blade with his cloak. Duras stood in Syrolf’s path and grabbed his cloak roughly, batting the sword from his hand.

  “Get some rest,” he said angrily and pushed Syrolf to the ground. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  Syrolf glared and leaned against a block of stone. Another warrior passed him a skin of watered-down jhuild, the infamous Rashemi firewine, with a pat on his shoulder. Syrolf drank slowly, wincing only slightly at Thaena’s whisper of admonishment as she passed. Glancing once more in Bastun’s direction, he looked away and stared at the ground, seething.

  Silence returned to the hall, and both groups settled back in their places. Thaena prepared her spell components, while Duras maintained a close eye on Syrolf, who paid no mind to anything but the wineskin in his hand.

  Shaking his head, Bastun resumed his place beside the portal, more comfortable with a puzzle of destructive magic than trying to figure out his fellow mortals.

  Duras came to sit by him, wrapped in his cloak and sighing as he rested his legs.

  “That was … bracing,” he said quietly, his eyes drifting to Syrolf and Ohriman.

  “No blood spilled,” Bastun answered, still unsure of how to act around the warrior. “Well, not yet at any rate. How long do you suspect this truce will hold?”

  “That depends.” Duras raised an eyebrow as he considered the question. “Mostly on how much opposition we’ll face at the Shield. And I say the more the merrier for this band.”

  “Common enemies,” Bastun said, nodding.

  “It does tend to keep the swords side by side,” Duras replied.

  Bastun recalled his vision of the phantoms surrounding the fang as they fought the weeping undead, their ghostly blades blurring alongside Rashemi steel.

  “When you were fighting those things, did you … feel anything strange?” Bastun asked, unsure if what he’d seen was even real.

  “Something.” The warrior closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “There was something—terribly cold. And a memory, as if I’d been here before, fighting the same battle. Does that make any sense?”

  “Perhaps,” Bastun replied, biting his lip and caressing the edges of a cracked rune in the portal. “I thought I saw something.”

  In truth Duras’s memory meant far more to Bastun than he cared to say within earshot of the durthan and her lackey.

  “I wouldn’t have let Syrolf kill you,” Duras said, interrupting the vremyonni’s thoughts. “I want you to know that.”

  “Well,” Bastun replied, looking around the hall and taking in the odd stare or two from the fang and the sellswords alike. Thaena kept to herself and had made no move toward the pair. “That makes two of us.”

  Duras smiled and glanced back at the durthan and Ohriman.

  “Was Anilya right in what she said? Do you know what’s happening here?”

  “Not really.” It was a safe lie, avoiding the fact that he couldn’t truly know for sure. “Though I doubt we’ve seen the last of the Creel. In fact I suspect the durthan was telling the truth about what she saw before meeting us.”

  “Truly?” Duras raised an eyebrow. “Humph, then what is she lying about, I wonder?”

  Bastun looked toward the durthan, who had ceased staring at him, and wondered at her true motives. She could not have known he knew anything about Shandaular, unless she was merely basing her guess on his luck with stopping the portal. It was common knowledge that the vremyonni had studied the city long before the Shield outpost was established by the wychlaren. However, Bastun was far too young to have been among those scholars. Bastun continued puzzling over the matter as the two groups rested in silence, waiting for Thaena to give the order to march.

  The ethran seemed to need no rest at all. She produced healing salves for the more seriously wounded among the fang and then paced in front of the hall’s entrance. Bastun found moments of rest here and there, not really exhausted so much as trying not to appear impatient.

  This became all the harder when the voices returned outside.

  Scattered at first, he heard them swiftly gathering. He recalled the black tide of souls that had swept through the Creel earlier and imagined the waves of darkness rising in the streets. Slowly the others began to hear the voices as well, and Thaena clapped her hands together once to gain everyone’s attention, the nearness of the spirits giving her an immediate audience.

  Words were unnecessary as the fang stood at the ready. Anilya roused her men as well and joined Thaena at the entrance. Duras took his place at the head of the fang. The vremyonni took one last look at the broken pieces of Shandaular’s portal, trying to hold the image of the Ilythiiri runes in his mind, then made his way toward the others.

  “How far to the Shield, Duras?” Thaena asked.

  “Less than a mile, directly south,” he answered.

  “We’ll need to be quick,” Anilya added as the howling darkness outside grew louder.

  “Indeed,” Thaena said. “Same marching order as before. We’ll run the distance to the gates and hope the spirits don’t follow too closely. Understood?”

  “Yes, ethran,” Duras replied without hesitation, eliciting nods of approval and boastful assurances from the rest of the fang.

  “And if they do follow?” Anilya asked.

  Thaena gave the durthan a half-lidded stare through her mask, tilting her head as she answered matter-of-factly. “Then we stand and die fighting, as Rashemi should.”

  The ethran stepped outside. Dawn was still a ways away as the two gr
oups exited the chamber, but clouds heavy with snow and the thick fog eclipsed the pale light of sunrise. Bastun hovered a moment at the rear, looking around the corner of the hall’s curving exterior. The mist made everything a dim silhouette, and walls seemed to melt into blackness as the spirits moved through and around them like a spreading flame. Every tortured voice, every wail felt directed at him, grabbing his heart and pounding it harder. Still, he could not look away. Scents of smoke and burning flesh reached his nose. Like ghosts themselves the smells tugged at the primal urge to flee.

  A shout from Duras broke his bondage, and he quickly took his place as the group began a steady charge ahead of the spirits. The Rashemi ran, focused only on reaching their destination, but Bastun noted the looks of panic among the sellswords as the sound of the wailing shadows became screeches of frustration and inhuman desire. Only Ohriman maintained his stride and composure.

  Chancing a look over his shoulder, Bastun could see where the Hall of the Portal had been. The advancing spirits had overcome it. Bastun searched through the fog ahead for the first glimpse of the Shield’s gates. It felt like an eternity, the limited visibility making progress unfathomable.

  Lightning flashed through the clouds, lighting up the fog. Catching movement from out of the corner of his eye, Bastun saw a narrow alley flooding with shadows. Ephemeral arms stretched out for the warmth of the living, and pale patches of light bobbed in pairs through the mass.

  “Beware the west!” Duras yelled.

  Muted thunder mumbled in the wake of the lightning as the group edged away from the western side of the road, jumping over broken bits of wall and other structures protruding from the snow. More spirits tumbled into the street and merged with the moaning army of ghosts. Bastun pumped his legs harder, eyes focused on the path ahead of him.