The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

by James P. Davis

  Anilya glanced once to the western wall exit, the look speaking volumes to Thaena, though it answered few direct questions. The durthan then nodded and joined Thaena at the edge of the bridge.

  The fang formed up behind them, the sellswords alongside. The group began a careful march toward Syrolf who smiled grimly and stood aside to take his place behind the ethran. The cold wind sweeping across the bridge bit fiercely, a wintry beast of icy teeth and claws of snow.

  Making ready for whatever lay ahead, spells ordered themselves among Thaena’s thoughts. Though far from Rashemen, her magic was still formidable.

  An arched doorway appeared through the snow, a blot of darkness within which the weak light of a flame burned. The bridge ended upon a circular landing, a large chamber visible through the open arch. Warriors formed up on either side of the door—the steaming breaths and fierce visages of the Rashemi on one side, the calm assuredness of professional sellswords on the other.

  Slowly, she and the durthan entered the tower, forearms crossed in front of them, palms down in a spellcaster’s stance. A few steps in they both stopped, scouting every inch of the chamber. The wychlaren had not yet breached the central tower. Tattered threads of tapestries hung from rusted hooks. Pieces of furniture lay crumbled to splinters and dust, leaving only corroded bits of metal intact. The windows here were high above, numerous and smaller than in the previous tower. The torch that had drawn them burned in an old wall sconce and illuminated the only other exit from the room—yet another darkened doorway.

  Thaena breathed out in frustration.

  “There is nothing here,” she whispered, but kept her stance all the same.

  “Someone lit that torch,” Anilya said. “Perhaps your vremyonni friend?”

  Thaena did not answer, merely continued through the room toward the door. Anilya kept pace, and Duras led the others inside.

  Beyond the door a dark hallway extended through the tower’s center. Thaena suppressed a shudder, her imagination creating shapes moving through the shadows. She shook her head and blocked these out, sure enough that reality would craft far more convincing things for her to see in time. The passage widened, and she could make out a faint light in the distance.

  The glow of more torches lit the chamber beyond the hall. Sweeping stairways curved along the walls from the balcony she stood upon, down into a once grand feast hall or meeting place. Bones lay scattered across the floor, representing enough bodies for her to envision the battle that must have once taken place here. Nothing moved. Shadows danced and climbed the walls and stairs in the light of torches across the way. Even the air smelled stale and lifeless.

  At the other end of the room, matching stairways rose and wound toward a second balcony almost a full level higher. Thaena squinted into the pits of darkness at the edge of the torchlight. No other exit was visible. The opposite balcony was very near the ceiling, and swallowed in darkness. Duras stood behind her and pointed the fang toward both sides so that they could secure the stairways on either side of the lower balcony.

  “I don’t like this,” he whispered.

  Neither did she. The Nar were being subtler than she had expected. She was bothered by something, a scent or perhaps just instinct, but the air felt thick with magic. Duras joined Syrolf at the stairway, waiting for Thaena to make a decision on their next move.

  A steady noise drew her back to the first chamber. She turned back into the central corridor. Edging closer she made out a labored breathing and recalled the noise she had heard in the entrance hall—the disembodied breath and the whispering of the Shield’s shadowy spirits. Peering into the room from the darkness of the hallway, she watched in horror as a robed woman staggered into view from outside.

  The woman was dressed in the furs and leathers of a Creel, her face a pale white, her eyes and lips shocking shades of blue. Thaena held onto her spell. The Creel woman seemed ready to collapse at any moment.

  Noise erupted behind her, and Anilya screamed. Thaena felt the Weave twitch as Anilya cast a spell. Sounds of battle echoed from the walls. Still watching the Creel, Thaena prepared a spell herself, heart thumping in her chest as the attack they had expected arrived. She whipped her head back, seeing only a chaos of moving forms and bright lights, then returned her attention to the strange newcomer.

  Coughing and stumbling, the woman’s eyes bulged as weak puffs of steam escaped her lips. She fixed her stare on the ethran, hatred in her eyes, but helplessness in her expression. The skin on her forehead split and burned, revealing a pale scar in the shape of a strange sigil. She fell to her knees in the center of the room and leaned back, screaming as white light burst from her mouth and eyes.

  Thaena fell back in horror, her spell lost as the woman’s body tore apart in a thunder of energy that shook the walls. A wave of frigid air and ice chased the concussive force of the blast, knocking the ethran onto her back. Dazed, the sound of cracking stone roused her and she crawled toward the ice slick that had formed close to the explosion. The woman was gone, the floor a crumbling ruin that dropped away into darkness. Dust and snow drifted in the open space between Thaena and the bridge that had brought them here—the bridge from which they were now cut off.

  Staring at that span of stone her eyes were drawn to a figure standing at its edge. His white hair flowed in the howling wind and his sunken eyes regarded her with a gaze that passed straight through her. Ivory skin matched the ancient armor encrusted with snow and ice. She was lost in his stare, a glare of purpose that sent chills through her body, numbing her senses. Before he turned away, Thaena noted the design on the man’s breastplate—a leafless black tree on a circular red field, the standard of Dun-Tharos.

  He disappeared into the snow and mist.

  “Thaena!”

  Duras’s voice broke the odd trance in which she found herself, her head aching and her ears whining from the blast. She pushed herself to her feet and leaned against the wall for a moment before rushing back to her guardian and the others.

  Duras met her at the balcony, his large frame silhouetted against a wall of glowing ice. The torches on the other side of the chamber provided the glow. Anilya, shaking out her hands and flexing her fingers, had apparently provided the ice. Safe for the moment, Thaena took in the scene and considered their options.

  “How many are there?” she asked, striding forward to glare at the ice wall that separated them from their attackers.

  “Not many,” Duras answered. “Some archers on the higher balcony. A few others along the opposite stairs.”

  “They have a wizard,” Anilya said.

  A heavy rattling sound reverberated through the chamber, shaking the floor and walls as a large shadow reared behind the ice. Long and sinuous, it slid over the ice wall like a lamprey seeking a soft patch of skin. The shadow receded, growing smaller for a moment before rushing toward them. It cracked against the ice wall, shaking the room again and creating weblike cracks around the point of impact.

  “And that?” Thaena asked, wide-eyed.

  “Bones,” Syrolf answered as he approached from the stairway, his voice unusually calm—a sign that many might misconstrue as non-threatening, but to a berserker it was merely the first stage of the battle-lust. “Wizard summoned them just before the wall went up.”

  “What was that explosion we heard?” Duras said. “I thought I heard you screaming.”

  Thaena looked away from the writhing shadow, blinking as the situation came into focus.

  “The Creel destroyed the entrance hall,” she said, recalling the newly open pit behind them and the bridge beyond. “We’re trapped.”

  The shadow slammed into the ice wall again, this time followed by several smaller impacts. The tiny shadows of arrows could be seen embedded in the ice.

  Thaena pictured the tower in her mind. The lower levels a ruin, the path to the bridge now a gaping well of stone and ice created by a Nar woman’s sacrifice.

  These Creel are mad, she thought.

  “And
they are trapped as well,” she said aloud, then to Duras, “Prepare the fang. Be ready when that ice falls.”

  He held her gaze for a moment. All that could be said was understood as he turned to join the berserkers on the stairs.

  “Your strategy?” Anilya asked when they alone stood on the balcony.

  “They are ready to die,” she said and crossed her arms to match the durthan’s stance. “That’s why they’re here. We should be prepared to do the same.”

  “Fair enough,” Anilya replied, flinching as the beast thudded once again against the wall, then she added, “But if we don’t have to? Are you prepared to do what is necessary?”

  Thaena found herself staring at Duras, sword in hand, ready to charge down the stairs. His dark eyes turned to her, and she could not bring herself to think of not looking into those eyes again. She turned to the durthan, heart thumping in her chest, anger in her throat, and fear creeping through the back of her mind. In the end she found the decision surprisingly available—almost easy.

  “Do what you must,” she said coldly.

  “For the good of Rashemen,” Anilya said, a dark smile in her eyes as the ice wall split down the middle and began to crumble.

  Yellowed fangs burst through the ice, revealing the skull of some fiendish beast at the end of a whiplike neck of bones. A row of spines lined the thing’s jaw and long horns swept back from its equine head.

  Thaena fell back as the thing lunged and crushed the balcony’s railing between its teeth. Anilya had her back to the wall, her voice summoning things that the ethran did not wish to contemplate. Thaena’s own hands began to twist and turn as she cast, her voice echoing in the space between stone and ice.

  Arrows flew from the opposite balcony and through the hole in the ice, but clattered harmlessly to the floor. The Creel archers would be useless unless their creature opened the wall further. The bone-beast thrashed against the ice, pushing its way through as it unleashed a rattling growl from the bones in its throat. Finishing her spell, Thaena opened her mouth to roar back.

  Her voice rose in a powerful scream, the sound amplified by magic into a thunderous roar. Everyone covered their ears, the warriors backing away from the ice wall as it cracked and fell, shaken apart by the ethran’s shout. The wave of sound produced rippling spasms through the undead beast. Bones fell away and broke apart in midair—only to be pulled back into the serpentine form’s interlocking pieces.

  Anilya completed her spell, and a black swirling cloud appeared over the head of the beast. As the last of the ice wall crumbled, the berserkers led the charge down the stairs with a war cry. The sellswords loosed arrows up into the higher balcony to slow the bows of the Creel and keep their wizard busy.

  The durthan spun her hands with the growing cloud, her head rolling on her shoulders. The darkness took shape and groaned with monstrous voices. Lurching forward, the beast’s head swung back and forth as it faced Thaena. Studying the swaying bones and the fanged skull, she began another spell.

  It lunged again and she rolled to the side, whispering magic. The massive head crashed into the floor of the balcony, cracking the stone where she had stood. Rising to one knee Thaena threw her hands out, releasing a fan of flames to engulf the skull and neck of the bone-serpent. Fires leaped to life among the dried bones, but the beast merely drew back to strike again.

  From above, bits of Anilya’s cloud broke away. Shreds of darkness, shaped into floating robes and gnarled claws, moaned as they flew through the chamber. Yells and curses echoed from below, the pile of bones at the base of the undead beast producing grasping arms and biting skulls. The fang hacked at the bones even as half-formed skeletons surrounded them. Thaena could not see Duras among them.

  Glancing quickly at the serpent, she ran down the stairs, casting as she neared the bottom. The whoosh of flames and the rattling of bones followed her descent. Heat pressed through her cloak as the skull neared and she completed the spell. A shimmering shield of force appeared over the warriors even as another volley of arrows rained down from the Creel’s balcony.

  The arrowheads flashed as they touched the shield, most of them deflected by the enchantment, but many still found their marks. Several sellswords and berserkers cried out as they were struck and then pulled down by the swarm of bones and skeletons. Before Thaena could react, bone jaws clamped on her legs and hips, lifting her into the air. Floor and walls fell away as she was lifted higher and shaken like a rag doll. Pain erupted in her left hip, a fang pressing her hard against a blunted tooth in the bottom jaw.

  Smoke entered her lungs and flames licked at her skin. Her stomach turned as the chamber swam before her eyes, blurring as the beast shook her from side to side. Crackling fire and screams filled her ears as she fought to conjure a spell.

  Her vision filled with spots of blackness, the pressure making her nauseous and dizzy. She struggled to breathe in the smoke and heat. Between one bone-jarring shake and the next she felt certain she would die here in a room full of bones. Anger gave her a measure of renewed strength. She gripped her hands together, her left holding tightly to a small pearl ring on her right as she fought to mouth the words of a spell.

  The serpent raised her high, bones rattling and turning in its neck as the fangs opened wide to get a better grip. She fell, rolling to the back of its throat, screeching the last of her spell. The pearl crumbled to dust that became a large, cloudy gray sphere of swirling air. Obeying her will, the sphere slammed into the skull, shattering teeth and bone as the jaw closed. Darting left and right, the sphere demolished everything it touched, snuffing out flames and breaking the bone-beast apart.

  Broken pieces of the jaw continued to bite and snap ineffectually. Thaena held tight to bones inside its throat as the bone-beast reared and shook. She could see the floor far below as she fell forward, clinging to a broken tooth. Concentrating on the sphere’s flight of destruction, she watched as half the skull was ripped apart into flying shards. The neck collapsed, bones clattering against the walls of the chamber as the sphere of wind hurled the bone-beast’s bits away from the whole.

  The grasping limbs and skeletons below faltered as the sphere tore apart the magic that had created them. Many melted back into the serpent’s body as it attempted to maintain its shape, but the berserkers destroyed them. A few arrows still fell among the warriors, but far fewer than before and with much less accuracy. A shuddering rattle passed through the undead form, a tide of snapping bone that pulled painfully at the ethran’s shoulders and elbows.

  She slammed against the stairs, fresh pain erupting from the wound in her side. Her fingers slipped from the tooth and she fell as the undead-serpent disintegrated around her. She hit the stone floor, and the wind was forced from her lungs. Bones rained to ground, burying her legs. Choking for breath, her vision fading, she tried to raise her head to find Duras. The berserkers still fought, advancing up the stairs as bloodcurdling screams echoed off the walls.

  Pain flooded Thaena’s senses, and her head fell back even as Anilya appeared over her, kneeling down with outstretched hands, her dark eyes glittering behind her mask.

  Beyond the durthan, high above, shadowy wraiths swarmed around the ceiling and dived one after the other into the Creel’s balcony. Each dive preceded a scream, and though bile rose in Thaena’s throat at the method, she relished the sounds of her enemy’s fear and pain.

  Anilya’s voice whispered words of magic, her mask and dark hair merely a blot to Thaena’s half-lidded gaze. The durthan’s spell mingled in the cacophony of noise as the ethran’s haze of pain drew her into oblivion.

  chapter twelve

  Gleaming eyes peered at Bastun. Tiny hands, dark and translucent, reached out and caressed his robes, brushing against his skin. Bastun shivered, each touch carrying the chill of the grave, but he did not resist. He kept moving forward. Ghostly chains rattled from their wrists. The manacles left scars that only the dead could bear. These he observed carefully, wincing at each chill-inducing touch. Their
spectral bonds seemed familiar, but he had not yet placed the memory, and without knowing what they were, dealing with them could be dangerous.

  Glimmers of light drew him to an open room, the light from his staff reflecting on walls coated in ice. Steps measured and slow, he made no quick movements lest the spirits become angry. He indulged their curiosity with feigned complacency. Anything to keep their voices—and their painful intrusions into his private thoughts—at bay.

  He counted seven of them, these childlike ghosts embedded in the walls of the Shield. In their quiet pleading whispers he detected bits of their language, words in ancient Nar that provided some insight as to their origins, but little else.

  Through long halls and dark stairways he marched, surrounded by the spirits, studying them and being studied by them. The smallest slipped around corners just ahead of him. Her bright eyes kept a constant watch as he followed the vremyonni markings on the walls. He had tried to speak to her, but this had angered the others. A long, very tangible cut on his right arm was a testament to the pain they were capable of dealing. Spells lay but a whispered word away, and he was growing weary of the constant presence of the spirits. If their previous encounters held true, their curiosity could only last so long before madness once again set them upon him.

  Stepping out of the hallway, he breathed deeply as the space between himself and the walls opened up. A flight of descending stairs lay at the opposite end of the room. Moving toward them he kept his head down and his eyes up.

  The spirits withdrew, keeping to the shadows of the hallway as Bastun widened his stride, noting the vremyonni mark on the top step. The significance of the spirits was secondary to his pursuit of the Breath. Taking the first step, he heard their cries and growls become louder, more agitated. Looking over his shoulder, he saw their forms churn at the edges of his light. They hovered just inside the previous hall. At their center stood the largest, an older boy with dark brown hair and eyes of smoke.