The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

by James P. Davis

  “I see the vremyonni hunger for knowledge is as voracious as I’ve heard.”

  Bastun started but did not turn at the sound of Anilya’s voice. He kept his back to her and let his hand drift protectively to the Breath.

  “Some of us find in books those things that cure the urge to seek adventure,” he said, wondering how she had made her way up to him without being heard or stopped by the guard at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Actually, I tend to find in them just the opposite.”

  “Ohriman is dead,” he said, in no mood to banter around what they both knew. “If you’ve come sniffing around for news of him I think you’ll be more successful closer to ground level.”

  “I didn’t ask,” she said. “Besides, with all the ghosts in this place, I think dead is a loose term at best.”

  Deftly replacing the journals in his pack, he shifted himself to face her. Resting his hands on his knees, he regarded her as he might a new kind of insect.

  “I tend not to think of the dead loosely,” he said. “Take for instance those Creel in the Central Tower. Interesting scars they had, do you not think? Pale, bloodless cuts and scratches—”

  “The Shield itself is a ghost,” she said, ignoring him, “having died long ago, its purpose unfulfilled, lost to the outside world in a shroud of mist and cold. Most scoff at the idea that any structure survives in this place at all, but those who brave the ruins, who get close enough to see, even many of them will deny that it really exists.”

  “And that’s where it should have stayed,” Bastun said, studying the durthan as she peered through arrow slits into the growing darkness outside. “Buried in mist and denial for another thousand years, useless to anyone … save for those ignorant of its history.”

  “You assume my ignorance?” she asked playfully, and she reached up to remove her mask. He gaped at her beauty revealed, her fair skin and dark eyes framed by short locks of night black hair. She smiled at him, a graceful curve in her full lips that barely registered as movement but which changed her entire expression. “Ignorance can be bliss, Bastun.”

  “Knowledge is power,” he said, casting his gaze to the floor, avoiding the eyes and the smile that had broken his thoughts.

  She leaned against the wall and slid down to sit. Her stare never left him. Her smile seemed almost to cast its own shadow over him. Avoiding sight of it did little to erase its presence. Glancing up, he watched as she rested her head on her shoulder and propped an arm over a bended knee.

  “And what’s the use of power,” she asked, “without a little bliss now and then?”

  His cautious stare became wide-eyed alarm as he watched the faint image of the wall become visible through her shoulder. Her entire image shimmered and faded away. Rising to one knee, he caught up his staff and brushed his palm against the Breath. The mental weight of the weapon’s presence was making such fearful movements reflexive.

  Anilya was gone. No footprints in the dust or any disturbance of the loft indicated she had been there at all.

  “Illusion,” he whispered.

  He heard voices downstairs and walked to the loft’s edge. Thaena spoke with Duras as the group prepared to brave the wall. The ethran noticed Bastun watching and gestured for him to join them. Several of the sellswords worked to unbar the western door as he descended the stairs. Nearby, observing their progress, stood Anilya. Her mask back in place, she offered him only the slightest of glances before the door opened to reveal a wall of white.

  Pausing in his descent, he placed a hand over the journals at his side. Their remembered words fluttered around his quiet fears like moths to a flame.

  Pulling his cloak tight over the Breath, he shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his thoughts, and walked the rest of the way down the stairs.

  In a daze he stepped through the open door behind the others. Under the now clear sky he wavered a moment, leaning on the battlements and alarmed by a sudden vertigo. Mist spread out from the walls of the Shield like an ocean of smoky white, unstirred by the storm, to hide the fortress in its folds once again. He looked away from the unseen depths of the mist, feeling nauseous and focusing instead on the calm skies overhead. The night glittered and twinkled as he caught his breath and steadied himself. He marveled at the stars, though if he witnessed stars of the past or the present, he could not be sure.

  chapter seventeen

  They marched through the unbroken snow atop the west wall, the second of the three guard towers in sight. Thaena led the way with Duras close at her side. Bastun struggled to keep pace but found it increasingly difficult to maintain his focus. He kept close watch on the durthan, wondering if she had cast some spell upon him. Maintaining the width of the wall between them, he guided his steps by the battlements. His head ached as he eyed Anilya, who seemed not to notice him at all. As his fingers brushed the pommel of the Breath he felt an uncanny assurance that the durthan had little to do with what was occurring.

  The air shimmered with movement, rippling harmlessly through Thaena and Duras, past Anilya and Syrolf. The strange wave flowed along the wall, ancient images manifesting as they had before. Nar soldiers battled silently against the Shield’s defenders, making Bastun a lone witness to the muted past. Quiet screams stretched tight dying faces lit with ghostly light. He flinched and drew back as phantom swords and spears were thrust through him, finding their targets elsewhere in that other time, though his skin itched at the contact.

  He kept moving as if nothing were amiss, though he could not deny the sudden urge to dash ahead of the group. His headache became a piercing stab, and he gasped as a foreign compulsion warred with his will. An absent-minded touch upon the Breath became a white-knuckled grip as he resisted the strange command to escape his captors and reach the northwest tower—the tower of the Word.

  The need consumed him, ignoring all reason or caution. Stumbling forward, his legs buckled and he fell in the snow. Strange words escaped his lips, a language unspoken for centuries, but unmistakably a dialect of the Nar tongue. He muttered and spit as the others formed a circle around him.

  A blade slid from its scabbard, and Anilya crossed her arms defensively.

  “Get up, exile!” Syrolf said, shoving his boot into Bastun’s ribs.

  He tried to rise, squinting through the chaos of ghosts that surrounded him. Duras appeared and placed a hand on his shoulder. The contact seemed to ground him briefly in the present. His muttering stopped and he rose to one knee.

  “What’s wrong, Bastun? Are you hurt?” Duras said, his voice strident and clear in the silence of the violent images.

  “Get him to his feet!” Thaena yelled. “We cannot stop here!”

  He felt himself being lifted, though by whom he wasn’t sure. Spirits struggled all around them, stabbing and slashing, reliving their ancient battle. He groaned, trying to find his balance, unsure of his footing.

  “He spoke like the language of the Creel!” Syrolf proclaimed, drawing closer with his sword.

  The ghosts paused in their fighting, turning as one toward the center of the wall where a black aura of magic pulsed. Thaena turned as well, then Duras. Syrolf walked past them, his eyes widening as shadows coalesced out of thin air.

  Pain subsiding, Bastun released his grip on the Breath, the bond it had forged between himself and the past fading, his last sight being of the child at the center of the swirling darkness on the wall.

  “They can see it … her … them …” he whispered, drawing a curious glance from Duras. “The children in the stone …”

  In the thrashing shadows stood the eldest girl of the child spirits, her hair waving as before, tossed in some strange watery current. Thaena strode forward, her hands tracing the intricate motions of a spell. Duras cursed and shoved Bastun against the battlements as he rushed to stand at the ethran’s side.

  The wall hummed beneath his palms, vibrating with power, and he pushed himself away.

  “Wait!” he cried. “Stop!”

 
Thaena glanced at him, fury in her eyes as the glow of magic faded from her hands. Flailing chains whipped around the girl in shadow as her head tilted, her weight slowly shifting forward.

  “No,” Bastun muttered in fear and stepped forward.

  A familiar hand gripped his shoulder roughly, stopping him from getting any closer to the ethran. Turning, he spun his staff into the center of Syrolf’s chest. The warrior stumbled backward but recovered quickly. He advanced on the vremyonni even as the shadows erupted in a chorus of pained and angry voices.

  Thaena and Duras fell back from the darkness as the wall shook with a terrible impact. No one moved as the snow’s surface shifted, conforming to the cracks of damage beneath. Anilya and her men were the first to begin retreating from the growing rift. Thaena followed suit as the wall began to crumble before their eyes. With a curse Syrolf fell in step behind the ethran and the fang.

  Bastun froze in place, staring into the shadows as if he might communicate with them, plead with them to trust him. The remnant of some horrible memory flitted through his thoughts, a recollection not his own, but somehow imparted to him through the Breath.

  Duras grabbed his arm and pulled.

  “Run, Bastun! The wall won’t stand much longer!”

  Shrugging him off, the vremyonni held onto the battlements for balance. Snow just paces in front of him slid away and fell. Duras grabbed him again, hauling him back toward the tower.

  “Come!”

  Bastun hesitated only a moment before relenting. He fled the pursuing darkness. Somewhere in its midst was the little one, the innocent. Whatever influence she had over the others was gone, and he feared for her as the other ghosts succumbed to madness.

  “She’s not your sister,” he mumbled, but he couldn’t let go of the concern he had for the suffering spirit. “She’s something else. Can’t remember …”

  Stone gave way beneath him and he slipped. He stopped as Duras’s grip on his robes left him swinging over the edge. Pulled back onto solid ground, he nodded to his old friend and the pair ran for the tower door.

  The tremors had slowed, but the shadows continued to flow toward them. Ducking inside, they found the tower mostly empty save for the last few members of the fang, who were descending through a trap door. Duras led the way, and Bastun kept watch on the spirits whose howls and whispers echoed as they entered the chamber, eclipsing the entrance.

  Backing down the stairs, Bastun brought spells to mind, considering one after the other as he thought of a way to stop the maddened ghosts. Duras’s footfalls could be heard below, joined by the shouted orders of Thaena and Anilya. Swords and axes cracked against old wood, creating an escape. Passing a small window, Bastun paused to observe the destruction of the wall.

  Thaena meant to cross it, he realized. The ethran’s intentions of reaching the northwest tower were as determined as the spirits’ intention to stop them. Looking back to the stairs, the shadows crawled closer and grew louder in their pursuit. Thaena would never make it in time.

  Steeling himself, he stopped, flexing his hand and steadying his thoughts.

  “You want this?” he yelled at the shadows, pulling his cloak aside and revealing the Breath. They hissed in answer. “I give it to you! Take it!”

  He gripped the handle and drew the blade from his belt, brandishing the weapon at the crowded darkness. Keening wails erupted from the mass, their chainlike tendrils drawing back into the stone. His vision once again was thrust into scenes of the past. Pain lanced through his skull. It was stronger now. The link forged by the Breath between himself and the Shield’s history filled his ears with the sounds of soldiers shouting orders and boots pounding down the stairs. Ghostly warriors streamed past him like a cold wind raising gooseflesh on his arms and neck. The shadows became a blurry double image, existing in both the present and the past.

  “Are they repeating the past,” he whispered, “or are we?”

  The Breath blurred as well, trailing behind itself as he continued down the stairs. A ghostly arm followed his own, wielding the artifact’s counterpart in the haunting reenactment.

  The blade itself is haunted, he thought, growing stronger the closer we get, the farther we run.…

  Mystified, he caught his own reflection in a sheet of ice along the wall. There, superimposed over his mask, lay the face of a stranger. An older man with a salt-and-pepper beard, wearing dark blue robes, regarded him with a look of mystified surprise.

  Too shocked to examine the spirit, he turned and ran, following in the footsteps of the Shield’s defenders, caught up in their battle as surely as if he were one of them. He suspected that somehow he might be one of them, the hem of his robes trailing a translucent edge as he neared a pale light below.

  Tumbling into a room crowded with the images, he reached through them as if they were cobwebs. The nentyarch’s soldiers appeared among them, and the battle continued. The shadowy children still approached from behind, but they would not near the Breath. The mass of shadows fell in among the ghostly fray, dispersing and joining with the persistent vision. They devoured without prejudice, enveloping defender and attacker alike, losing themselves in the ancient siege.

  The strain of witnessing past and present pressed on Bastun’s mind, increasing the pain behind his eyes. He moved toward the door, squinting through the spirits’ flesh toward solid reality, trying to stay focused. A Nar blade slashed toward his throat, and reflexively he pulled back, returning the strike as he thrust the Breath into the phantom soldier. He gasped as the soldier attempted to parry the blow, his sword passing through the Breath with a shimmer of faint light.

  Bastun stumbled toward the doorway in shock, staring as the soldier was impaled on a pike from behind. He retreated outside. The ground became uneven beneath him, and he fell against a wall of broken stone and rubble. He replaced the Breath in his belt, sighing in relief as the scenes faded and the present reasserted itself in his mind.

  “He saw me,” he said in disbelief, repeating the phrase over and over as he turned to assess the climb before him. Pulling himself higher, he found Duras waiting for him several feet up.

  “Take my hand,” the warrior said, leaning over the edge of the ruined pile the wall had become.

  Accepting the offer, Bastun reached the top and stood beside the warrior, still breathless and wide-eyed from the experience. The others made their way to the second guard tower far ahead of the pair. Thaena stood by, staring after them as they climbed over the fallen wall. The fang set their swords and axes to work again, beating at a frozen door in the base of the tower. Syrolf looked little pleased that Bastun had survived, and he sneered before shouting at the berserkers to quicken their strokes.

  As Duras and Bastun reached them, the group was entering the tower. Thaena greeted them with a nod and turned away. Inside, Bastun noted the first few steps of an old staircase ascending from the dust and rubble of what remained of the tower’s interior. Anilya’s men set to work on a second door, presumably leading through the interior of the next stretch of the western wall.

  “We’ll take as few chances as possible atop the wall from here on,” Anilya said as Duras approached her. “We can use the inner wall to reach the last guard tower and ascend from there to—”

  “That’s presuming we don’t need wings there as well,” Bastun said as he studied the ruined floors above them. He smiled beneath his mask. Staring back toward the last tower, across the field of rubble now being overcome by settling mists, he wondered at that face in the ice. Though slivers of fear and the strange chill of the past’s touch remained with him, the scholar in him could not help but be fascinated by what he’d witnessed.

  Thaena did not reply, turning away to watch the progress of digging the door free of the ice and stone. Bastun shook his head, cursing the timing and promising himself to record all that he remembered in his own journal when given the time. The thought gave him pause and he reflected on the expectation that he would survive the night. Though well-grounded i
n what could occur if what he suspected was true, he was surprised by the stubborn presence of hope in the back of his mind.

  “What happened back there on the wall, Bastun? When you fell?” Duras asked, his voice bringing the vremyonni from his thoughts. “I thought I heard you say something about your sister.”

  There was an odd gravity in Duras’s voice. It banished his fascination with the far past and brought him fully back into the present. He found he couldn’t meet his old friend’s gaze, and he looked instead to the floor. Sitting in his gut like a meal gone bad was the memory of Duras and Thaena’s embrace. He did not yet feel any compulsion to share his thoughts, nor did he trust the voice that would carry those thoughts. The only other to whom he might have confided was dead and buried, Master Keffrass’s grave not yet even cold in his memory.

  “It doesn’t matter now. I—”

  The sound of cracking wood stopped him in mid-sentence, and he turned as the last few splinters of the door fell inward to reveal the coal black darkness of the inner wall.

  The scent of stale air—and something else, familiar yet indefinable—drew him toward the doorway, even as the sellswords fell back, expressions of shock crossing their faces. Several of the fang glanced inside as well, then looked away and whispered prayers to the Three as they marked themselves with runes of warding.

  Bastun studied these reactions as he walked through the group. Thaena blinked slowly and turned her back on the door. Anilya crossed her arms, tilting her head smugly. Nearing the cleared threshold, torchlight flickered into the high open space as if unwilling to disturb the grim peace within. Unflinching, Bastun summoned his own light, holding his staff forward as he entered and descended the first few steps of a short stairway to observe the macabre scene that had so affected his companions.