The Shield of Weeping Ghosts Read online

  “The east!” Anilya cried as the windows of a standing wall bled forth yet another stream of shadows.

  Order dissolved as the shadows flanked them and closed in. The fang shouted, some challenging the shadows to catch them.

  Lightning ripped through the sky again, spreading through the snow and clouds and unnatural fog. Amidst the clouds, in the heartbeat in which they were lit, Bastun saw shapes diving and banking on shadowy wings. Shandaular was coming to life all around them. More corporeal things stumbled into view as they passed.

  Thunder followed. A scream echoed in the thunder’s wake. One of Anilya’s sellswords had lagged behind, slowed by a wounded ankle. Tendrils of the darkness pulled him down into the snow. He shrieked for help, but there was no help to be had. His cries did not last long, and they strengthened those still running.

  Death rode on their heels, and Bastun’s lungs burned with the effort of maintaining his stride. He felt relief as the high towers of the Shield became visible through the fog, although he feared what they might find inside. The mournful wail of the dead rose in pitch as the group crossed the last stretch of ground into the shadow of the Shield’s outer wall. The sound was deafening as the dead reached the border of their territory, a line that they would not cross, many retreating even within sight of the massive fortress.

  Warriors hit the wall and slid to the ground, smiling grimly as they fought to catch their breath. The Rashemi greeted those behind them as if they’d just finished a casual race. Bastun slumped to his knees at the large wooden gates and leaned on his hands, breathing heavily. Though thankful that the dead outside still held a healthy fear of the Shield, he knew from Keffrass’s cryptic remarks that the spirits within the fortress were far more dangerous. When pressed for specifics, the old vremyonni would stare off into space for long moments, remembering, before shaking his head and changing the subject.

  The shadows left behind melted among the ruins, their voices quieter but no less disquieting.

  The gates were open slightly, just enough to allow one to pass through, and Bastun stood to peer in at the ancient castle. Thaena and Duras came to look as well, and Bastun wondered if they had any idea of what they were truly seeing.

  The tops of its high walls and multiple towers were lost in the low clouds, their surfaces remarkably untouched by time’s ravages, as if the citadel had been frozen and set aside. Bastun marveled at the magic that must have been used in its construction. Little decoration broke up the austere architecture save for the stylized archway above the gate, made to resemble what the portal must have once looked like.

  Stepping back, he leaned against the cold surface of the gate and slid down to his knees once again. He collected his thoughts and rested his head on his staff. The others were still calming down, some invigorated by the run through the streets and others already checking their weapons. The latter reminded him that the Creel would be waiting. He knew this in his gut. The lack of any Rashemi guards at the gate lent proof.

  Spells came to mind on instinct, and he closed his eyes to inventory the arcane passages held in his memory. An undercurrent of rhythm flowed through his thoughts as he recalled the Firedawn Cycle as well, the tune resurfacing as he worried about the Shield’s safety in the shadow of the fortress. The memory of Keffrass’s voice echoed among his thoughts.

  Where is your breath?

  He cast a quick glance toward Anilya and Ohriman, careful to shield his eyes beneath hood and mask. They stood apart from the others, talking in whispers and watching him. He focused the magic of his mask to eavesdrop on their conversation even as pieces of the Cycle sang themselves in the back of his mind.

  … to shake the stones, to break the bones

  Of the Shield and steal its Breath,

  Of the Shield and steal its Breath.

  A grim smile spread across his lips as he heard everything but the voices of the durthan and Ohriman.

  Secrets, secrets, he thought, everyone has a secret.

  “So be it,” he whispered and got back to his feet, surrounded by distrust and enemies, with more likely lying in wait just ahead. It had been a cold day when Keffrass had entrusted him with the secrets of Shandaular, and he couldn’t have imagined the day he used them would be colder still.

  Somewhere inside—still hidden and buried, he hoped—lay the folly of Shandaular’s desperate king and the true cause of the city’s ruin.

  He had to find the Shield’s secret and ensure its safety.

  He had to find its Breath.

  chapter seven

  Nightal 2, 1376 DR, the Year of the Bent Blade

  The snow was smooth and unbroken, the wind light and silent. Even the mist thinned as they neared the Shield, giving Bastun a better view of their surroundings as the group made its careful way across the courtyard to a series of rising steps.

  The fortress loomed over them, the tops of its towers lost in darkness. High walls bridged one tower to the next, curving the entire structure into a wide embrace of stone and ancient ice.

  Keffrass’s journals had contained sketches of what he had seen, his thoughts written with a mixture of fear and fascination. Before they’d been stolen along with several other scrolls and maps, Bastun had pored over them, devouring all that he could. The Shield’s emptiness, abandoned corridors and silent battlements, had caught his imagination like nothing else he had studied. Standing in its shadow, he could understand his master’s apprehension. Frozen in time, it stood in stark contrast to the ruined city surrounding it. He had the sense that it was watching them, bitter and unforgiving; it waited for them with all the patience of a dark mountain.

  No guards came to greet or question them. No torches lit their way to the main doors. Each step drew them closer to a truth they dreaded to discover. Seeing no sign of the Creel—or any other threat—only served to make them more wary.

  At the base of the steps, Thaena called a halt, ordering two groups of warriors to scout east and west along the walls. Half the fang broke off to follow the command with several of the durthan’s sellswords joining them. They disappeared into the mist, their footsteps through the snow muffled and then gone altogether.

  “Do you think this wise, Thaena?” Duras whispered to the ethran. Bastun turned, trying to appear casual as he eavesdropped. “We face too many unknowns here.”

  “I think we have few choices,” she answered, pacing away from the other warriors. “If we turn back, we leave the Shield to the Nar and the hathran to their mercies. Beyond that, we have the durthan’s presence to consider as well. She cannot be left here.”

  “The durthan we can deal with,” Duras replied. “But you’re right. We must see to the hathran first, though I must admit I—”

  “I know,” Thaena said, cutting him off. “A timely rescue seems less and less likely.”

  With that she turned, motioned for the others to follow, and began ascending the stairs.

  Bastun waited several breaths for the scouts to return, though the size of the outer wall might keep them away for some time. Staring after Thaena, he took a deep breath and took to the steps, slick with a thin coat of snow-covered ice.

  At the stairs’ highest point, twin towers stood sentinel at the end of a large enclosure before the main doors, the gates between them long fallen to dust. Long walls bore ice-encrusted arrow slits angled downward. Bastun eyed those slits closely, imagining the slaughter that might have taken place had an army come to the Shield’s doors unprepared. Unfortunately, only one army had ever been this close—and they had been well prepared.

  The berserkers grumbled and glared at the high walls, one of which had crumbled halfway down its length. The Rashemi did not care for such stonework and enclosed spaces, preferring the wilds of their homeland and simple lodgings close to the ground.

  Their footsteps across the flagstones echoed dully as they neared the large double doors of the citadel. Thaena gestured for Anilya to guard the enclosure’s entrance with her sellswords. Judging by Syrolf’
s glare at Ohriman, it was yet another rare moment where he and the vremyonni agreed—Bastun did not care to have the durthan and her tiefling at his back.

  The wind picked up slightly, whistling across the tops of the walls and spilling snow over the sides. Drifts had piled in front of the doors. As Thaena approached the entrance, the fang spread out with weapons drawn, each with an eye on their surroundings, the durthan, and Bastun. Turning away and narrowing his eyes, Bastun focused on his location, withdrawing into the curiosity of a scholar’s mind that had served as an escape for so many years.

  “What do you see, vremyonni?” Startled, he found Anilya studying the stonework of the nearby wall over his shoulder. “When you look at this place and all the time written into its stones, what do you see?”

  She leaned forward, resting a hand on his arm as she examined the smooth contours of what might have once been a decorative carving, now worn to an indiscernible shape by centuries of exposure. Short, dark hair curled from beneath the edges of her mask, and he caught the scent of wildflowers as she stood back. Suspicious, he remained silent and wasn’t sure she even expected an answer to her strange question.

  “Bastun.”

  He turned to see Thaena motioning for him to join her at the entrance. Anilya’s hand fell away as she continued to observe the ancient walls with the casual grace of an experienced conspirator. Thankful for the interruption, Bastun quickly took his leave of the durthan and her cloying perfume.

  “The doors,” Thaena said. “I detect no wards upon them, but I sense something here that eludes my magic. Can you examine them as well?”

  “Of course,” he said. He glanced once again at the durthan who had wandered back to stand with her men. Shaking his head slightly at what to him seemed the greater mystery—the durthan—he studied the doors for signs of disturbance. The wood was new, fashioned in Rashemen and set with large iron bracers, simple and unadorned.

  A spell came to mind and he stepped into the drift before the doors in order to reach them. Before he could cast, his boot struck something solid in the snow. Cautiously, he prodded the drift with his staff, causing it to tumble away in clumps from the hidden object. His eyes widened as he pushed away more and more snow.

  Glistening white hands and arms reached from the snow, preserved in the pose of their horrible final moments. Faces appeared as he brushed away the snow, each frozen in a screaming rictus, as if pleading with whatever had felled them to either spare them or let them die. Thaena stared at the bodies piled against the doors, then knelt to reach for a dropped necklace of bear claws and teeth. Each of the corpses bore a similar talisman, the trappings and clothing of Rashemi berserkers on each one.

  “Bear Lodge,” Duras whispered, though his voice thundered in the silence of the grisly scene.

  “The hathran’s fang,” Thaena added, turning the necklace over her wrist.

  “No surprise that,” said Ohriman, the tiefling approaching nearby and observing the bodies with a disgusted sneer. “Setting up camp in a place like this, bound to find it a bit colder sooner or later.”

  “Hold your tongue, outlander,” Duras growled, “or I’ll hand it to you.”

  “These were Rashemi,” Thaena said sternly, though her eyes never left the bodies. “They certainly did not freeze to death.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that they did, Lady Witch,” Ohriman replied with a mocking bow, then added as he straightened, “Just that there’s a reason most folk avoid Shandaular.”

  A dark patch on the eastern wall drew Bastun closer, sparking a memory. Kneeling, he avoided looking at the icy body of a young berserker, a man barely old enough to join the fang.

  Brushing some snow away from the stone, Bastun found a darker substance mixed beneath it. Pulling his hand back, the familiar scent of brimstone filled him with alarm as he uncovered another sigil of ash, just like the ones that marred the wychlaren’s path. A bone-numbing cold stole his voice and he doubled over in pain, rolling away from the wall and struggling to breathe. Once-sightless eyes blinked at him and rolled in their sockets, bits of ice falling away from a furrowing white brow as the dead man’s jaw opened to issue a weak murmur of hunger.

  The others backed away quickly, frost forming on their weapons as more of the bodies began to break the ice that surrounded them. Pale flesh cracked, gaping jaws closed, and waves of freezing cold reached out for the warmth of the living.

  Thaena stumbled into Duras, breath steaming from behind her mask. Bastun scrambled backward on his hands as the dead pushed away from the wall and tried to rise.

  “Bleakborn,” he croaked, his throat raw and aching with cold. There were stories of outlanders lost to Rashemen’s harsh winters, cursed to rise again by circumstance or vengeful spirit—or, he realized, by dying at the hands of another bleakborn.

  He tried to call out, to warn the others, but his voice came as barely more than a whisper.

  “No … flame,” he managed though none could hear him. Some among the fang dropped weapons and cursed the growing frost on gloves and sword hilts. Thaena’s voice rose above the others, chanting the beginnings of a spell that filled him with dread. “No … flame!”

  He rushed to stop her but slipped and fell to his hands and knees. The ethran’s forearms glowed with heat, fire leaping from her palms. Several of the bleakborn were engulfed, writhing in the flames. The nearness of warmth was a blessing before it was sucked away.

  The flames died, swallowed by flesh that blushed and plumped as the frozen blood within thawed and began to flow. Rashemi faces, restored to a horrific semblance of life, twisted into horrified grimaces as if some dim memory of death had sparked in their minds. They stared at hands that were no longer icy claws. The effect was brief, holding for a heartbeat before the patches of white spread, a pallor of death reclaiming their cursed flesh. They whined as the heat bled from them, raising their arms, hungry for more as they advanced on the living.

  The fang moved to defend their ethran. Wide-eyed as he surveyed the closing circle of undead, Bastun summoned his axe blade. Anilya’s voice rose in casting and she spun as her sellswords formed their own semi-circle. Battle cries, blades, and cracking ice echoed within the enclosure. Raising his axe, Bastun searched for his place in the circle, turning as he listened to the chaotic rhythms—and detected an inconsistency.

  A bleakborn shattered as the durthan completed her spell. Thaena grunted as she took another off its feet, muttering arcane phrases to keep it down. A clang of steel on his right, a dying sellsword gasping for breath on his left. From above he caught whispering and a rustle of robes.

  The dark figure on the eastern wall moved before Bastun could get a better look, but its voice continued to whisper words of magic. Bastun charged forward, sidestepping a stumbling berserker, the man’s arms coated with thin ice. A bleakborn hissed as it knelt to finish its grisly feeding. Horrified, Bastun slashed at its skull, using the strike to slip past the combatants. The blade split through flesh and bone as he turned with the swing.

  Bolts of flame arced from above and he dived forward, the edges of his robes singed and steaming in the snow. The figure above disappeared again, but its aim had been true. The nearly beheaded bleakborn rose, its flesh healed, and reached toward the vremyonni. He cursed as the undead’s freezing aura gripped him. Pushing himself up along the ruined wall, Bastun struggled to summon a spell through the cold.

  Ohriman appeared, kicking the bleakborn down and slashing at its grasping fingers. Blood spilled and became a black ichor as it hit the ground. Not waiting to thank the tiefling, Bastun turned to the wall and began to climb, finding easy hand- and footholds in the crumbling stonework.

  Wind and snow greeted him atop the wall as he stood and peered through the mist for the figure on the tower. Stalking forward, he glanced once at the battle below, his allies barely visible through the haze. Only Anilya stood out, her arms raised as she chanted a dark language over the bodies of several fallen sellswords. Bastun shuddered and ignored
the durthan, focusing on the tower.

  The figure appeared, dressed in long robes and a furred cloak with a brace of amulets around his neck and braided into his long, unkempt hair—the look of a Nar shaman. Even across the distance that separated them, Bastun could see a spark of madness glinting in the Creel’s eye. Spying Bastun, the shaman snarled, baring his teeth as Bastun approached.

  “What do you want with the Shield?” Bastun asked as he adjusted the angle of his axe, edging forward and determined to discover if he faced a simple barbarian or something more sinister. “Why have you come?”

  The Creel’s answer was a string of arcane syllables, summoning a smoky darkness that enveloped his hand. Bastun charged, muttering a curse. With a quick spell he might have killed the shaman, but he needed answers. He dodged left, skirting the edge of the wall as a ribbon of darkness shot past him. It grazed his arm, searing as it passed through robes and flesh. Growling through the pain, he darted forward, ducking beneath another bolt of shadow, and shoved the Creel backward.

  A dagger flashed in the shaman’s hand, but it proved no match for Bastun’s axe. Wincing at the pain in his arm, he separated the Creel from the dagger, taking several fingers in the process. Reversing his swing, he cracked the butt of his staff into the screaming man’s jaw.

  The shaman, his pain-filled screams cut short, toppled back to the tower’s edge, but Bastun caught the front of his robes. Dazed, hanging over the long drop, the Creel’s head rolled back, smeared with blood and spitting teeth.

  “Why have you come here?” Bastun yelled, shaking the man and threatening with his axe. His injured arm burned with the weight, but he managed to hold on as the dangling man coughed and laughed weakly.

  “You are … fool … witch-wizard,” he replied in a broken Common, blinking and trying to focus on his ruined hand.

  “Why? Why am I a fool?” Bastun asked, his arm aching with strain.

  “Old blood … is come here.” The shaman’s eyes cleared, madness shining in them as he glared in fury. “He put … house back in order … his Breath … to end you!”