Wirr gave him a skeptical look. “A sword? Dav, we can find one for you, but… is there really any point?”
Davian hesitated, then glanced across at Aelric.
“Aelric. I will understand if you don’t want me to, but… may I Read you? If you let me, I can access your memories, relive some of your training. I don’t think it will give me anywhere near your level of ability, unfortunately—I’ve read that physical skills don’t translate very well due to the bodies being different—but even just knowing some of the basics would help.”
Aelric stared at Davian, wide-eyed, for a long few moments. He licked his lips, looking nervous, and Wirr felt sure he was going to refuse.
Then he sighed. “That’s all you’ll see?”
“Yes,” Davian assured him.
Aelric gave a slow nod. “Anything I can do to help.”
Davian inclined his head gratefully, then stepped forward. He touched Aelric lightly on the forehead and closed his eyes, standing like that for several seconds. Wirr and Dezia looked on with silent curiosity. As far as Wirr could see, there was nothing to indicate anything unusual was happening.
After a few more moments Davian opened his eyes again, stepping back. “Thank you.”
“That’s all?” Aelric rubbed his forehead where Davian’s hand had been, looking uneasy. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“That’s all,” said Davian with a smile.
Wirr stared at his friend, fascinated. “Did it work?”
Davian shrugged. “I should get myself a sword… after that, I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”
Wirr went to help Davian secure a weapon; by the time they returned to Aelric and Dezia, sunset was vanishing into dusk, leaving only a slowly fading glow and plunging the flat plains that approached Ilin Tora into a deep murk.
They had been standing there for less than a minute when Wirr spotted a flicker of movement in the distance. A few moments later, a horn blasted from somewhere down the wall.
“Here they come,” muttered Aelric.
A mass of glinting black resolved itself from the gloom that covered the plains, moving faster than Wirr would have believed possible as it surged forward into the narrow pass. It was hard to tell in the fading light, but Wirr thought there were a couple of hundred men rushing into the enclosed space below—three hundred at most.
“Where are the rest of them?” he wondered aloud, nerves making his voice tight.
Aelric shook his head. “This is just the first wave. They know that having more than two hundred men in here at once is a waste of energy.”
Wirr didn’t respond, chewing at his lip as Dezia walked forward to join the other Andarran archers at the front of the wall. The order to draw rang out, and Dezia notched an arrow, her actions deliberate and her hands steady. Wirr couldn’t help but admire her composure.
Then the Blind were in range and arrows were raining down upon them. Wirr’s heart sank as he watched the men below rush onward, unfazed. The archers fired again, and again, but it didn’t seem to matter. Wirr didn’t see a single enemy soldier falter, let alone fall.
The oncoming black mass hit the wall like a wave as the last of the light faded from the sky.
The next few minutes passed in chaos.
All along the First Shield, screams rang out as attackers started appearing like wraiths along the battlements, reaching over with preternatural speed and strength to pull soldiers over the wall and to their deaths. They were little more than black shadows, silent, appearing from nowhere and vanishing behind the parapet again within moments.
Wirr had already begun retreating when a darker shape against the night sky shifted in the corner of his eye. Davian leaped forward, blade whipping out; there was no sound except that of metal on metal, but his sword met solid resistance and the owner of the armor was sent flying backward into the darkness.
“They’re not using ladders,” Davian warned Wirr. “You should get further back. They could be coming up anywhere.”
“How is that possible?” asked Wirr.
“It has to be the armor,” interjected Dezia, who had also retreated a little, but was still smoothly firing off arrows whenever she caught sight of movement. She allowed herself a quick glance along the battlements. “It must allow them to climb the wall somehow.”
Wirr followed her gaze. There were plenty of men crowding along the parapet, but already it looked as though the Andarran front line was thinning. Replacements were being ushered up the stairs at the back, but Wirr could already see the futility of it. The Blind might be heavily outnumbered, but each attacker was going to be worth too many defenders.
“It’s blocking kan, too,” added Davian grimly, his sword lashing out at another Shadow. His movements didn’t look anywhere near as assured as Aelric’s, but Wirr could tell Davian knew how to handle a blade now. “I can’t push it past those El-cursed helmets.”
“Wonderful,” said Aelric, already a little out of breath. He flinched back as another blade slashed out from the blackness. “We’re not going to last an hour if we can’t see them. I take it neither of you can do anything about that?”
Wirr hesitated, then closed his eyes, tapping his Reserve. Focused inward. Cautiously he drew from the pool of molten light, then… twisted it. Condensed it, made it brighter, as he’d done countless times before.
Nothing happened.
“El-cursed Tenets,” he muttered. He issued a frustrated shake of the head to Aelric as the other man backed away from the edge of the wall for a moment, giving Wirr a questioning glance. “It’s still trying to use Essence with the intent to cause harm to non-Gifted.”
Things passed in a blur after that. Wirr was reluctant to leave his friends, but he knew he was needed elsewhere; soon enough he had joined the Gifted from Tol Shen, healing those soldiers who were still able to stagger away from the front lines. Wirr was the strongest of the group, and he threw himself into the work. It was all he could do to concentrate, to block out the screams of the injured, the scent of men soiling themselves, and the hot, sticky feel of blood.
Finally, though, his Reserve began to empty, and he looked up to see the Andarran line was dangerously thin, threatening to break. Even as he did so, a horn rang out with two quick blasts. The signal to fall back, abandon the First Shield.
He headed for the stairs, numb as he glanced back to see black-clad soldiers pouring over the parapet, dispatching anyone too slow to retreat.
They were losing.
* * *
Asha stared up at the Second Shield in horror, stomach churning as the screams of the dying echoed around the pass.
She glanced behind her at the long line of Shadows that followed in her wake, suddenly uncertain. Were they too late? Word of the Blind’s sooner-than-expected attack had reached them only an hour earlier; though she’d done her best to organize the Shadows quickly, she could see that the First Shield had already fallen.
She stared for a moment longer, then drew a deep, steadying breath and grabbed the arm of the nearest soldier. “Where’s General Parathe?”
The man blinked at her in surprise, his gaze shifting over her shoulder to take in the small army of Shadows behind her. “I’m not sure if—”
“Just tell me,” said Asha, putting as much cool anger into her tone as she could manage.
The soldier blanched, then gestured toward the top of the wall.
Asha gave a sharp nod. She turned to Gaell, an older Shadow who had helped her distribute the Vessels to everyone else.
“Keep everyone here. I’ll see where they want us,” she told him.
Gaell nodded, turning to let the others know as Asha hurried off. Several soldiers paused to give her curious looks as she shouldered her way toward the Second Shield, but none moved to stop her.
Asha climbed the stairs two at a time, quickly spotting General Parathe once she was at the top. She was about to head toward him when there was motion to her left, and a blue cloak suddenly stood in her way.
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“What do you think you’re doing up here?” the young Administrator asked, his tone grim.
“I’m here to help,” Asha replied, staring the man in the eye. “I just need to speak to the general. Please let me past.”
The Administrator stared at her in disbelief for a few moments.
“Nonsense. Get off the wall,” he sneered eventually. “You’re only going to get in the—”
Asha gestured, a small movement. She’d managed to practice a little with the ring today, knew enough to control its strength now. And there wasn’t time for this.
The Administrator stumbled backward as if shoved hard in the chest, tripping and sliding several feet before coming to a sprawling halt.
Asha walked past, ignoring the startled stares from those around her who had seen what had happened.
“General Parathe,” she called when she was within hearing range.
The general looked up, frowning a little when he saw who it was, but waving her through the cordon of men surrounding him.
“Ashalia, isn’t it?” said Parathe, examining her with undisguised curiosity. “The Athian Representative.”
Asha nodded. “I’m not here in that capacity right now, I’m afraid,” she said. “But I do have a hundred Shadows with me, and we all have Vessels that can be used as weapons. Just tell me how we can help.”
The general stared at her for a few moments in silence.
“Do you now,” he said softly, a flicker of hope in his weary eyes. “Anything that can get rid of this El-cursed darkness?”
Asha nodded; there were a few Vessels that would create plenty of light, even if that wasn’t their primary purpose. “Some that can heal people, too,” she said, noting a wounded man being carried down the stairs.
Parathe nodded slowly, staring out into the darkness toward the First Shield.
“Send a few of them up,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Asha nodded, exhaling in relief and hastening back to find the others. The presence of the Shadows had already caused a small stir on the ground, but thankfully the soldiers there had too many other concerns already to have become confrontational. Soon she was hurrying back up to Parathe with a small group of Shadows in tow, and the general quickly allocated them to various points along the wall.
“Where do you want me?” she asked Parathe as he sent the last man on his way.
The general shook his head. “I need to keep you safe,” he said. “I don’t know any of these people, and they don’t know me. If they listen to you, I have to make sure you don’t come to any harm.”
Asha grimaced, but accepted the general’s logic with a reluctant nod.
Parathe turned to the muscular man at his right, a tall soldier with gray hair and an old, thin scar above his eye. “Hael. Give the Shadows the order.”
Asha stiffened at the familiar name. This was Hael—the man from Erran’s vision? In the back of her mind, she suddenly wondered where the Augurs were in all this. She watched the middle-aged man as he signaled to two Shadows standing at the back of the Shield. He looked no different from, and no more threatening than, any of the other soldiers along the wall.
She turned her attention to the Shadows he had motioned to. Each held a long, thin white rod; at Hael’s gesture they pointed the Vessels at opposite sides of the pass and closed their eyes.
Two lines of light burst into existence, molten streams of twisted energy pulsing along the smoothly cut walls of Fedris Idri, throwing everything into sharp relief. For a moment everything paused; even Asha, who had been expecting it, was shocked at the sudden brightness.
She looked over toward the edge of the Shield, now able to see the black-armored men as they scrambled over the parapet. She shivered as she took in the unsettling, eyeless helmets—and then her stomach churned as she recognized the design etched onto the front of them.
It was the symbol she’d seen on the side of Davian’s neck, that night he had appeared in her room. The one that had been cut into his skin.
She gave the attackers her full attention now. In the distance, atop the First Shield, she could see more of the Blind standing among the Andarran corpses that were littered across it. These had no helmets, though.
They just… stood there, motionless. Watching.
“Asha?”
The familiar voice interrupted her thoughts, and she tore her gaze away with a shiver to see Wirr kneeling beside a wounded man only a few feet away, staring at her in surprise. Her friend let the last traces of Essence vanish into the man’s newly healed side, then stood, hurrying over to her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, concern in his tone.
A long horn blast echoed along the wall, the signal Parathe had arranged for the Shadows to attack.
The area in front of the Second Shield exploded into a cauldron of light, wind, and fire.
The soldiers along the top of the Shield stopped as one, watching in awe as the pass below vanished under wreaths of thick, swirling smoke, which flickered an ominous red with the light of the fierce flames beneath. Several men covered their ears as shrieks of power ripped through the night, bolts of Essence sizzling down from the Second Shield into the maelstrom.
A thunderous gust of wind suddenly swept down, catching up the black-clad men clambering over the wall and casting them back out into space like rag dolls. Asha watched as they vanished, screaming, into the cloud of crimson smoke. She spotted one or two holding on and flicked her wrist at them; they sailed off into the air like the others as Wirr looked on, frozen to the spot, openmouthed.
“Prince Torin!” It was Parathe, shouting over the cacophony that still thundered around the pass. “The Shadows look to have things under control for the time being. Get some rest!”
Wirr glanced around, spotting the group of Shadows who had joined the Gifted and had started healing some of the wounded. He sagged with visible relief, and for the first time Asha realized just how pale and drawn he looked. She didn’t know how many people he’d healed, but it was evident he’d pushed himself to the brink.
Even so, Wirr looked about to protest before eventually giving a reluctant nod. “You fetch me if I’m needed!” he yelled to Parathe. He threw a questioning glance at Asha, but she shook her head, indicating that she was going to stay. She was needed up here.
Wirr gave her a tired smile, squeezing her arm in farewell before joining a trail of weary soldiers limping down the stairs.
Soon the initial thunder of the Shadows’ attack quieted, and an eerie hush descended on the smoke-filled pass. The silence was still broken by an occasional ear-piercing shriek as one or another of the Shadows fired bolts of energy into the chaos below, but the ringing in Asha’s ears slowly faded.
Finally confident that the Blind had broken off their attack, she crept forward to the edge of the Shield and peered down. Smoke still obscured some of the gap between the First and Second Shields, but enough was visible to know that the Blind had withdrawn, regrouping atop the First Shield and out of range of the Shadows’ weapons.
There were plenty of bodies below, and her stomach lurched as she realized that few of the ones she could see were clad in black. Either the Blind had dragged away their dead, or—more ominously—not many of those who had been blasted off the Second Shield had been killed by the fall.
“We’ve pushed them back for now,” said Parathe as he joined her at the parapet. He stared down into the smoke-filled pass below, his expression pensive. “Those flames are too hot even for them to get through, I suspect… but there’s only stone down there. Nothing that will burn of its own accord.”
Asha gave a thoughtful nod. “If we rotate fresh people onto those Vessels every so often, we should be able to keep the fires going indefinitely,” she said in response to the implied query.
Parathe exhaled, a relieved sound. “Thank the fates,” he said. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did…”
He was silent for a few moments, then clapped her gently on the shoulder
. “I’m heading down to check how everyone is faring below, but stay alert. If you see anything, have someone fetch me. You’ve given us an advantage, but these El-cursed Blind don’t strike me as the type to give up. It’s not over yet. Not even close,” he concluded, gazing through the shimmering red haze toward the First Shield.
Asha watched as Parathe walked away, wondering if the general knew exactly how true those words really were.
“Not even close,” she repeated quietly.
* * *
Wirr flinched as another shriek of power cut the air, echoing off the walls of Fedris Idri.
He glanced back up toward the top of the Second Shield, swaying a little as exhaustion threatened to get the better of him. He knew he needed to sit down, to rest, but already the screams of the dying were beginning to weigh on him. Even with the Shen Gifted and the Shadows still on the wall, he was one of only a handful of people who could truly help the wounded.
“I wonder how long they can keep that up,” came a voice from behind him.
Wirr turned to see Davian following his gaze upward. His friend looked haggard, but uninjured.
“Davian!” He embraced the black-haired boy in relief. “I lost track of you. I didn’t know…”
Davian gave him a tired grin. “Can’t say it wasn’t a near thing, but I’m all right. And Aelric and Dezia are, too; they’re around here somewhere. We all fell back after the Shadows… did what they did.” He shook his head dazedly at the memory, as if still unwilling to believe what had just transpired.
Wirr knew exactly how he felt; he was still trying to comprehend the implications of the Shadows’ ability to use Vessels. “Did you see Asha?” he asked.
Davian frowned. “She’s here?”
Wirr was about to reply when he spotted his father approaching, walking alongside a fatigued-looking General Parathe. Wirr gave Elocien a weary smile, and the two embraced.
“My father,” he explained to Davian after stepping back again. “And General Parathe.”
Davian shook hands awkwardly. “Pleased to meet you, General. Your Grace.”
The Shadow of What Was Lost Page 64