The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

by James P. Davis

  In the midst of the battle, Bastun detected the sound of more rocks tumbling from the wall of rubble, his mask picking up the noise of steel sliding from leather scabbards. A second group of seven Nar had crept to the base of the wall in silence, murder in their eyes as they saw Thaena’s exposed back. Bastun cursed and pulled the hood from his head, measuring his breath as he stepped from behind the column to intercept the would-be assassins.

  “Forbiddance be damned,” he whispered and charged forward, chanting a spell and hurling a sphere of ice that exploded in the chest of the lead barbarian. The man cried out in shock and pain, bleeding and gasping for air as he fell.

  Positioning himself between the Nar and Thaena, Bastun challenged them. Long, thin braids framed his mask, and the wind whipped at his cloak, revealing layers of light leather armor. His heart pounded as the freedom of battle built within him. Though Bastun had joined the vremyonni, his master had nurtured and encouraged the Rashemi fury in his spirit. Spells clamored in his mind for release, and he chose quickly as the Nar abandoned stealth to advance on the lone wizard.

  Bastun cast again, and shadows curled from the ground beneath the Nar, becoming solid and wrapping around the legs of three, pulling them down. Two others sidestepped the writhing black tentacles and the third rushed forward, raising an axe to strike. Hissing a command word, Bastun brought his staff forward, the steel sphere at its tip flashing and screeching as it grew into a long, curving axe blade.

  The two axes sparked as they clanged together. Bastun smiled at the surprise in the barbarian’s eyes. He pushed the Nar back before swinging at the man’s stomach. The Nar attempted a block with his own axe, but he was forced to jump back at the unexpected ferocity of the vremyonni. He became entangled in the net of tentacles that had taken his fellow warriors.

  Bastun reversed the swing and ripped open the Nar’s leather breastplate, slashing through flesh and sending the barbarian into the shadowy web. A second Nar came from his left, sneering as he closed with his long blade. Bastun blocked the attack with his axe, defending himself as he chanted, the magic spilling from his mind. Knocking the Nar’s sword aside he thrust out his right hand, slamming a burst of force into the Nar’s chest that sent the barbarian spinning into the wall of rubble.

  The remaining Nar ran past the vremyonni and charged Thaena. Turning, she had no time to prepare another spell. She raised her staff, shock in her eyes. A stream of fire flowed from Bastun’s fingertips as he ran at the Nar’s back, watching the fur cloak burst into flames as the man fell to the ground. Screaming and throwing off the cloak, the Nar tried to rise, and Bastun kicked him in the side, knocking the man on his back. Roaring, he buried his axe in the Nar’s exposed chest and ended his struggles.

  Breathing heavily, Bastun met Thaena’s stare, unreadable behind the mask, but Bastun expected he did not see the gratitude of an old friend, rather the quiet judgment of the wychlaren. Behind her, the other Nar were trying to retreat in the face of the fang’s fury. Few of the attackers remained standing, and the Rashemi suffered only shallow cuts and bruises—nothing to slow down their battle lust.

  Grunting, Bastun freed his axe from the dead barbarian and turned to the Nar still trapped in shadowy tentacles. With a word and a gesture, he threw a small ball of wet clay into the middle of the writhing mass. The snow nearby turned brown as the ground beneath them liquefied and bubbled. A few of the Nar screamed as they sank, intensifying their attempts to escape the tentacles, but within moments the entire grisly scene had disappeared into the muddy soil. Bastun barely glanced at the sodden mess before sprinting toward the open square to assist Duras.

  On the edge of the battleground, he surveyed the fight. Thirteen Nar still stood, backing toward a makeshift barricade of old wood and stone across the wychlaren’s path. Cast-aside torches guttered in the snow, their flickering light shining in the eyes of dead Nar and flashing on swinging blades. Duras fought at the lead, snarling as he traded blow after blow with the Nar. An arrow shaft in his shoulder had broken off in the struggle, but he seemed not to notice the injury.

  The sounds of battle had faded behind him, and Bastun heard another noise in the distance. Just below the clang of steel and grunts of pain a low moaning carried itself on the wind. Bastun took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as the battle-lust left his muscles and his heart slowed to a normal rhythm. Concentrating, he whispered a spell, hoping that his message could penetrate the fury in the mind of Duras. Knowing that any spoken words might fall on deaf ears, he willed his thoughts to reach the warrior. The moaning grew louder and closer, and he shouted through the Weave.

  Duras! The dead! They’re coming! Let the Nar retreat!

  Duras shook his head, confused, and shoved the Nar facing him back into the barricade. Thrusting and slashing he did not slow his attack, and Bastun repeated the message. Duras’s fury faltered a bit as the warning pierced through his bloodlust. Shaking his head again and stepping back from the battle, he cast a glance at Bastun, blinking as he tried to calm himself. Taking heaving breaths, he nodded, gritting his teeth as he sheathed his long sword and drew an ivory hunting horn from his belt. Halfway to Bastun he blew a long note on the horn—a call for retreat. The other members of the fang held back their attacks, shaking off their fury as they gave ground to their foes. The Nar, however, mistook the cue and renewed their assault, complicating the situation. Duras reached for his sword, torn between Bastun’s warning and returning to the battle.

  Bastun studied the opening of the square even as Thaena and Syrolf advanced from behind. Calling the correct spells to mind he stepped toward Duras.

  “Go!” he said, meeting the warrior’s gaze with a quiet confidence he hoped would sway his old friend, then added, “Call the retreat again and keep Thaena and the others back. Trust me.”

  Hesitating, Duras nodded and blew the horn as he rushed to stop the others. An odd chill had filtered into the wind, and the scent of death filled Bastun’s nostrils as he watched the warriors fall back against the Nar advance. Arcane words tumbled passed his lips, and from a pouch at his belt he pulled a pinch of sulfur. The sulfur hissed as it burned away, singeing the fingers of his glove. Hundreds of tiny glowing lights appeared all over the ground, silencing the arguments he could hear between Duras and Syrolf.

  Gesturing at the Nar, Bastun watched the lights scurry away, leaving little trails through the snow. Weaving in between the legs of the Rashemi they crawled, glowing embers of living flame, to leap at the legs of the Nar. The ambushers fell back, trying to brush off the hundreds fiery spiders that bit and burned whatever they touched. The Rashemi obeyed the call to retreat, cries of surprise becoming screams of pain behind them as they rejoined the rest of the fang.

  Everyone heard the moaning now—a chorus of wailing voices on a chilled breeze of decay. The dim torches on the ground guttered out, leaving only the tiny lights of the swarming spiders visible through the fog and growing darkness. Bastun backed toward the rest of the group as a deeper darkness crept along the edges of the barricade. Black forms distinguished themselves in the crawling shadow, twisted arms and malformed heads, incorporeal bodies that swam through a multitudinous wave of spirits.

  “What evil have you summoned, vremyonni?” Syrolf whispered.

  Bastun didn’t answer. Reaching Thaena’s side he waved her back.

  “We have to go—now,” he said, trying to be silent, though he knew it didn’t matter against the senses of the dead. The edges of the crawling cloud reached the panicking Nar, and a second set of voices joined the moaning, the screams of the Nar just as chilling as the winter wind. The nimbus of crawling light surrounding a few of the Nar moved through the fog toward Bastun and the fang, trying to escape the grim tide of death.

  Chanting and spreading a fine dust over the snow, Thaena strode forward and slammed her staff into the ground. As she completed the spell, a shimmering barrier materialized between the buildings on the right and the wall of rubble on the left. Walking swiftly, she retu
rned to the group and nodded to Duras.

  “Now we go,” she said coldly.

  The fang moved quickly back the way they had come. No one turned to watch the fate of the Nar. Only Bastun looked to see them beating against the ethran’s invisible wall as the dead engulfed them. Then Syrolf blocked his view, scowling with sword in hand to keep the vremyonni moving.

  After a few blocks, losing themselves in the maze of Shandaular’s streets, Duras broke the silence.

  “What is happening, Thaena? How did Nar get into Shandaular?”

  The ethran didn’t answer right away, her steely gaze fixed on the road ahead. Similar questions were at the forefront of Bastun’s thoughts as well, but he wondered not how the Nar got in, rather why they would come to such a place at all.

  “We’ll return to the second wall,” Thaena answered. “I remember seeing an intact gatehouse. We shall tend to our wounded and discuss the situation there.”

  Duras nodded, apparently not wishing to press her further on the subject, and moved to direct the lead warriors toward the gatehouse.

  Bastun noticed a trail of little spots appearing ahead of his every step—each one a bright scarlet, dripped from the wounds of the warriors. Some of them pressed against deep cuts, while others tried to disguise a slight limp. This behavior too—though a common point of pride among all berserkers—was also taken from the wolf, who would hide or attempt to ignore injury to stay with the pack. It was another reason Bastun wished he’d been one of them—and also one of the primary reasons he was not and never would be.

  “You wasted no time ignoring the rules of your exile, Bastun,” Thaena said, still looking forward.

  “I did what I thought best,” he replied. “I—I meant no disrespect.”

  “The Nar have … changed things,” she said, her eyes scanning the shadows among the ruin, and let the matter of rules and laws drop. He too could not keep from wondering if another ambush awaited them, though his heart raced at her nearness. “The Shield’s hathran may be in need of our assistance.”

  “You suspect the Shield to be in danger?” he asked.

  “I can imagine few other reasons for the Nar to be here, in this broken city,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “And no one comes here without a good reason.”

  He said nothing else, thinking of his own reasons for being brought here and the life he might know upon leaving again. The presence of his old friends tangled his thoughts and hopes for a different life. At the moment he wished that the wychlaren had chosen someone else to lead this mission, someone he could look straight through and despise without complication.

  Thaena glanced at him, her eyes unreadable within the wychlaren mask, and whispered, “Thank you, Bastun—for ignoring the rules.”

  “There’s no need, Thaena, I—” he said, trying to catch her eye before she returned to careful study of the dark corners they passed, but she seemed already far distant again, “It’s nice … to hear something familiar.”

  “Familiar?”

  “Your voice, speaking my name,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

  She looked at him once, before quickening her stride to join Duras at the head of the formation. Bastun watched her until she became just another blur in the fog, another set of anonymous footprints in the snow. Sighing, he chided himself and shook his head.

  “You’re welcome,” he said under his breath.

  After his sister’s funeral he had not been allowed to meet or speak with anyone before being taken away to the Running Rocks. The wychlaren had thought it best. The rumors were spreading, and due to his magical talent he would be joining the vremyonni. They thought that with time the stories would be forgotten and that the rumors would fade away. Thaena and Duras had become a dream and Ulsera a nightmare. Seeing his old friends both now made that dream more real and his nightmare even more so—the memory that he had been the one to send Ulsera to her death.

  The snow grew deeper as they walked, the footsteps before and behind Bastun growing louder and more forced. Even in the wind he could hear the return of the whispers. Glancing over his shoulder, Bastun saw Syrolf striding close on his heels as if leading an angry mob, which he likely did. The fang called him prejhenovani, or “one who summons evil”—and considering the Nar attack, Bastun felt inclined to agree. Misfortune seemed a traveling companion he could not shake.

  He looked to each of the obelisks they’d passed before the ambush, and he contemplated the ash smeared in Nar symbols atop them. The warriors they’d fought could be the least of their worries if they encountered the author of those symbols.

  chapter four

  Cracks in the stone gatehouse were encrusted with ice unaffected by torches or the gathering warmth of so many bodies inside the lowest level. The stone had charred, but not so much as the structures within the third wall, the ones closest to the Shield where demons had swarmed among the flames and screams.

  Every few moments, when wind stirred the fog, the faint silhouette of the distant fortress appeared. Bastun marveled at the endurance of such a monument—hidden for so long, forgotten by the world—and shuddered at the thought of what lay buried inside.

  In a corner of the room, through a small arrow slit, he stared outside and listened for the voice of Thaena. She had taken a chamber upstairs to confer with Duras and Syrolf. It had been left to the rest of the fang to keep watch over the vremyonni while binding their wounds and using wychlaren salves to staunch bleeding. Their eyes, when they found him, left little to the imagination. They were Rashemi and Bastun had chosen not to be; the berserkers were rarely open-minded on the subject of loyalty. Sighing, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, close to a sizeable crack that reached from foundation up to the ceiling and beyond. The voices of the ethran and her warriors whispered through his mask.

  “Most of the fang will be fine,” Duras said, “and they shall be more than ready should we encounter a second ambush.”

  “That is one thing I think we can be sure of,” Syrolf said. “For all we know they could be on their way here now.”

  “No,” said Duras, “I don’t think they would brave pushing past the spirits we encountered to attack an enemy in a fortified position. At least, not until dawn.”

  “We will not wait for dawn,” Thaena said, her voice firm. “These Nar have moved too close to Rashemen. They threaten our outpost at the Shield.”

  “Is that not the least bit coincidental?” Syrolf asked. Bastun could hear him pacing as he continued. “That the Nar are here? Now of all times?”

  No one answered, and Syrolf stopped pacing. Bastun strained to hear, curious to know if these three knew something he didn’t—or more importantly knew something that they shouldn’t.

  “What do you mean?” Thaena asked.

  “Considering recent events and decisions made in—”

  “Just get to the point, Syrolf,” Duras said, an edge in his tone.

  “The vremyonni,” Syrolf answered. “No, I mean, the exile.”

  “You are suggesting that Bastun may be responsible for the Nar attack?” Thaena asked.

  “Ridiculous,” Duras said.

  “You haven’t even considered the notion yourself?” Syrolf said. “On the ship we were attacked by rusalkas—in the presence of an ethran, no less! Now here we find Nar tribesmen and our safe paths compromised by their magic? Go downstairs and see for yourself. Not a soul down there hasn’t considered that the exile is behind whatever is going on.”

  “There’s no point!” Duras said. “What could Bastun possibly gain?”

  “It is not my business to think like an exile or a murderer,” Syrolf answered, “but I have some experience in trusting my gut … and keeping a sharp eye on one who has made it clear that his loyalties do not lie with Rashemen.”

  Syrolf’s words hung in the air. Bastun fought the scream building in his chest, the pressure of his frustration almost too much to bear as he pretended to doze against the wall.

  �
��Bastun is not a murderer,” Duras said at length, his voice low, but Bastun could hear a menacing tone behind the words. He could imagine the burning stare between the two.

  “And you know this for sure?” Syrolf said. “As I heard the tale, the evidence at the vremyonni’s trial told an uneven tale. The theft of several scrolls? He didn’t have them, but he knew what was in them. I heard they spoke of Shandaular. The death of Keffrass? No solid evidence, but he was the only one there. He stood at that trial, with the sole possession of his dead master in his hands, and requested to be exiled. A sentence traditionally carried out here in this place. He knew exactly where he would be taken.”

  “Do you question the judgment of your superiors, Syrolf?” Duras’s voice rose further.

  “Should I even bring up what they say about his sister—?”

  “Enough!” Thaena snapped, and the pair fell silent.

  Bastun gripped his staff tightly in trembling hands, his thumb resting in the weapon’s narrow scar as he counted his heartbeats one by one until they slowed. Though Syrolf had said little of the details, Bastun’s thoughts raced with memories of the past.

  “I apologize, ethran,” Duras said.

  Syrolf said nothing. Thaena walked toward the wall closest to Bastun, just above him. He imagined she looked out over Shandaular from the arrow slit there just as he had. She could surely feel as well as he that something was amiss in the fragile order the wychlaren had established in Shandaular. The Weave was strong in the city, but wild and wavering, as if it were reacting to some old wound. Their spells had worked well enough, but the taste and feel of the magic was different. Like a warning.

  “We have little reason to suspect Bastun of any involvement with the Nar,” Thaena said.

  “I disagree, ethran,” Syrolf said. “We should—”

  “But,” Thaena continued, quieting the warrior, “he has chosen his exile, for whatever reason, and cannot be viewed as loyal to Rashemen because of it. It is not in my nature to trust such a man or to respect his choice, but I will also not place blame on him every time I stub my toe. Our mission was to bring him to the Shield for examination by the hathran and then to see him away to the west, never to return.