The Shield of Weeping Ghosts (8 page)

The glass sculpture rose sharply into the air, spinning wildly. Exhaling carefully, Bastun stopped its motion by degrees until it floated calmly at eye level. It drifted to the right, Bastun’s every breath a matter of pure control as the magic spent itself from him. Bastun directed it to sit within a second circle. The sculpture landed silently and he released it from his control.

The power fled from his limbs, the Weave reforming itself into natural patterns as he fell to his knees, lightheaded and smiling again.

“Good,” Keffrass said, then added, “Always remember your breathing, your focus. Master the breath ,and control the word.”

+ + + + +

Power surged through Bastun’s body, leaching from the portal and skewing his senses. The voices of those in the vortex crowded his thoughts, pressing and shoving to be noticed, to be granted mercy from their torment. Twisting his eyes away from their sickly light he saw the battle flowing around him. Time slowed and showed him the faint outlines of warring spirits, some intertwined with the fang, the proximity of the phantoms’ bloodlust infecting Duras and shining in SyrolPs eyes.

Pain flared in Bastun’s head and he shut his eyes, unable to grasp at the strands of magic that held him. The voices, those

trapped for centuries, tore at his focus and foiled his attempts at control. The ruined portal could likely never be what it once was, but the magic of those who crafted it would endure. He choked in its grip.

Where is your breath?

The memory of his master’s voice forced his eyes open. Slowly he inhaled and touched upon the wild stirrings of the rage within him. The maddened voices faded. He pulled away from the stones, his hands still clinging to the runes. The pattern flickered before him. He could not break it, but he struggled to disrupt it. His body hummed with energy as he exhaled, whispering a spell of disenchantment.

At the last word pain flared, and he was thrown from the portal stones and slammed on his back. He lay there, measuring his breathing, power still vibrating beneath his skin. Taking up his staff, he watched the runes waver once, but their light resumed unabated. He gaped in frustration, gripping the staff with white knuckles as he turned to the battle.

Frustration and the sudden need to fight filled him. They were not disappointed. One of the sobbing undead charged him from the right. The axe blade screeched from his staff, and he slashed at the thing’s dripping eyes. It stumbled backward, the sockets of its eyes now joined by a deep wound through its face. It came on still, shrieking as it swiped at his arm. Its bony fingers tore through his robes and skin, the injury burning as the claw drew back to strike again.

Ignoring the wound, Bastun slashed, nearly severing the creature’s arm at the wrist. Before the undead could recover Bastun summoned a quick spell. The words flew across his tongue and a wave of energy pulsed from his open palm. Struck by the spell, the soldier faltered and stumbled backward. The wheep’s lifeforce chilled Bastun’s flesh as it drained into him, its eyes ceasing their constant stream of black tears. A single moan escaped the thing before it collapsed and lay still.

Anilya passed him, nodding her approval as he turned to face the next undead.

Falling back to call upon another spell, Bastun paused as a wavering sound caught his attention. A ripple of power flashed through the room, silencing all but the wails of the spirits trapped in the portal. The undead soldiers stopped fighting, facing the maelstrom of energy above the portal and whimpering as it began to fade. The fang took advantage of the pause and hacked the soldiers to the ground. Their inhuman cries grew weaker as the portal’s glow flickered several times and went dark.

Duras shook his head. The strange light disappeared from Syrolf s eyes. Dazed, the other scouts all fell to the ground. Bastun exhaled and dismissed the axe-blade from his staff, feeling every muscle scream for immediate rest. He gazed in wonder at the portal, dormant once again.

As the last of the undead were left in pieces on the ground, several Rashemi howled in victory. Ohriman and his sellswords celebrated less vocally and found places to sit and rest their weary sword arms. Thaena attended to the wounded, and no one acknowledged the lone vremyonni or his efforts in their victory.

Bastun sat near the shattered blocks of the portal archway and studied the relic and the unfamiliar magic carved in its surface. The portal was to have been the ancient Nentyarch s prize, a gateway to the far south and expansion of the empire, but this portal was only a shadow of that which Shandaular had contained. The roots of the city’s destruction lay in the shattered portal’s dark elven runes, yet the full purpose to which they had been put, the scrolls had hinted, still lay ahead of him, within the Shield’s defenses.

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 durthans attention.

+

(jrunts of Pam 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,” Basan 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.