They floundered behind him, diving beyond reach of his axe, though the unnerving sound of beating wings grew uncomfortably close. A sudden impact nearly took his breath, and he tumbled with the fiend, freefalling toward the top of the tower. The varrangoin's stinking breath burned his nose as he fought to breathe. It raked his shoulders, teeth snapping just over the handle of his axe. He growled as he fought to keep the fangs at bay, shifting the fall and pushing it toward the stone.
Just before hitting, his defense slipped and he felt the hot piercing sting of the fiend's barbed tail bite into his side. There was no time to cry out as they slammed into the stone. He managed to swing his axe as reality twisted and rolled around him. He heard the varrangoin scream and saw it falling away, one slashed wing twitching as it disappeared into darkness. He quickly rose to one knee and winced at the blinding pain in his side. Looking over his shoulder, the top of the tower lay far closer than he'd expected after the last fall.
Rising to his feet, aching joints screamed in pain as the beast's poison took hold. Spasms wracked his muscles and he struggled to hang on, to ignore the pain long enough for one more effort. Screeching in excitement, the rest of the flock drew closer, their chase almost at an end.
Breathing raggedly, he fumbled in his robes for a small clump of rose petals. He forced out the words of the spell, intoning them carefully and timing the syllables to the nearness of the varrangoin.
Just as their eyes dimmed in the light of his axe, their needle-sharp fangs glistening and long tails twitching, he tossed the petals in the air before them. The air shimmered and grew thick, slowing the creatures. They sniffed and blinked, wings beating at the air sporadically, faltering as they shook their heads, making sneezing noises. Drifting back, one by one, their glowing eyes fluttered as an arcane slumber overcame them.
Bastun wheezed as the rage left him. He lay shaking in a pain that grew by the heartbeat. He crawled, barely hearing the faint sound of bodies smashing against the rocks below. The gravity spell kept him from joining the fiends, but it would not last indefinitely.
Reaching one hand over the edge, he pulled himself up, raising one leg onto the floor just as his other fell straight with the normal pull of gravity. His stomach turned, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Flexing his fingers, forcing them to work, he removed his mask. Rolling slowly onto his side, he began pulling pouches from his belt. He made a pile, studying the contents of each pocket. Shivering with fever, he picked at the items, finding the things he needed, cursing and talking to himself.
"Leave Rashemen? Live by my own rules? Find honor in my own battles? Excellent idea, Bastun." He groaned, tremblingas spasms churned his gut. Grasping a small flask of liquid, he set it aside and kept at his search. "Trade one isolation for another, leave pointing fingers and dishonor for undead soldiers, frozen corpses, tiefling assassins, and flocks of Abyss-spawned acid-spewing demon-bats."
With a handful of herbs he whispered a cantrip, then set them down carefully as they began to smoke and smolder. As the herbs charred and the smoke lessened, he collected and crushed the ashes. Pouring them into the flask, he closed it and shook the contents to mix them.
"Well," he said, teeth chattering, "here's to adventure."
He tipped the flask to his lips and downed as much of the mixture as he could before coughing and spitting. The foul taste of the Rashemi firewine and the burnt herbs flooded his mouth and nostrils. He had come by the idea of using jhuild as a catalyst for simple potions quite by accident, finding some of the stuff left behind by fellow apprentices. Its nearly poisonous properties made it an interesting candidate for treating poisons found in nature and elsewhere. Unfortunately, when enchanted by the right herbs, it became the antidote equivalent of cauterizing a severed limb.
Flashes of pain shot through his body, and he fought to contain his screams. Throat burning and blood boiling, he felt as if he were melting. Pain shuddered through his body. Bright spots danced on the inside of his eyelids. He fell onto his back, letting the potion take hold, breathing deep as fresh snow melted on his cheeks, joining the tears that streamed from his eyes.
Time disappeared as exhaustion replaced pain. Though his mind was alert, he waited for feeling to return in his extremities. The rage-state left him tired, but the release and the comfort it gave him was exhilarating. Few others had trained as he had, studied the magic that he wielded-the magic that he sometimes feared wielded him. Vremyonni were expected to be quiet and studious, lead lives toward those endeavors, but Keffrass had led him to the place he needed-the anger that yearned for battle.
Where is your breath?
No time, Bastun thought and tried to sit up.
Blinking in the pale light, he breathed evenly and took in his surroundings.
An open door lay at the other end of the room, allowing the weather to drift inside and down into the pit he'd just escaped. Snow was piling there, and he could make out fresh footprints that had not yet filled in. Behind him was a short hallway. Torchlight flickered beyond. Wincing, he sat up and gathered his things, replacing his spell components and items in his pouches and pockets before rising to his feet.
He donned his mask again. This he did with much thought and a brief pause, staring at it, through it, then letting it cover his face. It was the symbol of an allegiance he no longer carried, but by necessity and the magic it held, he would bear it a little longer.
He explored the hallway and the massive chamber beyond. Bones covered the floor, broken and suggestive of some sort of lost shape. Snow piled here as well. Falling through windows along the staircases, it laced all it touched with white. But for the wind, only his footsteps disturbed the silence in the room. It was a grand hall, high and likely once adorned with all manner of decoration and tapestries. This was the home and the study of King Arkaius and, Bastun imagined, the bjrth-place of the Breath and the Word.
A faint sound disturbed his thoughts, drawing his attention to the high balcony. Cautiously he ascended the stairs, his legs aching with each step. The noise he heard seemed a slow, rasping breath-a dying breath, and one he'd have missed without the mask. Peering over the top step, he found the source of the breath and the eerie silence.
Bodies covered the floor. Dressed in the furs and armor of the Creel, the fallen warriors lay unmarked, no sign of blood around them. Pale scars graced their arms and faces, the edges like streaks of frost-burn. Bows, arrows, and swords were strewn around. At their center was one in dark robes bearing a rune-covered dagger-a priest or wizard. The breathing came from a young woman lying against the balcony's rail.
She did not move or seem to notice Bastun's approach. Like the others, he found no blood around her, but she was weak and appeared to be dying. Taking no chances, he kicked her sword away, the sound causing her eyes to flutter open. Kneeling down to eye level, Bastun made sure his axe was visible and doused its light with a whispered command.
Her eyes widened and her hand slid along the floor, searching for her lost blade. He was surprised by her sudden liveliness, having underestimated her condition. She tried to push herself up, and he raised the axe and murmured a spell. Waving his hand, he shouted the last of the spell, summoning glowing bands of force that encircled her wrists and throat. Bound against the railing, she snarled and struggled, but her strength quickly failed.
Getting comfortable, Bastun sat and laid the axe across his knees. Meeting her eyes, he spoke in Common.
"We will have words, you and I," he said. He briefly squeezed her throat with the spell. Wheezing breaths escaped her when he released the grip, but she smiled, baring her teeth like a trapped animal.
"A word will indeed be spoken, wizard," she hissed. "And neither of us will speak again."
"What word is that?" He sensed a pride in her bearing that could work in his favor.
"The last word," she said with a smirk, "the word of the Prince and the old blood."
"This Prince, he brought you here?"
She drew her lips into a thin line,
frowning and looking away defiantly. She struggled against the spell again, causing Bastun to raise his axe and slam its shaft against the floor. Its light blazed in her eyes.
"I have magic that can wring the truth from you if you like," he said, "but it will not be pleasant."
She stared at him, considering her alternatives before answering. "No," she said, slumping and shivering in obvious pain. "We came to him. Those of us who believed."
"Why? Why is he here?" Bastun kept his voice firm, but he was not quite prepared to believe that a two-thousand-year-old prince of Narfell had drawn anything to himself but rot and dust.
"Our priests say that he searches for the Breath." Her voice bespoke the passion and the fury she felt. "That he covets the Word, and that he will summon a cleansing flame, returning the long lost empire to our people… the bloodline… will rule again."
Madness, Bastun thought as the woman shuddered and tensed. Her head lolled to the side, and she mumbled. He stared in wonder, looked at the bodies around them, and shook his head in disbelief.
"The Creel are as lost as we are," he whispered. "There is no flame to summon in this place. They have no idea what they're doing, what they're dying for."
"We die for the promise," she murmured, her eyes rolling. "The old Order… twilight… failed us. Their old man is dead. Prince Serevan rises with a promise… of power."
The moment the name was spoken Bastun grabbed his axe. Rising slowly, he watched the shadows around the woman deepen and grow thick. Tiny hands gripped her legs, little fingers digging into her flesh. The children screamed as she stirred, and her pitiful cries joined them. They roared and wrapped their chains around her, pulling themselves out of the stone and pushing themselves through her.
Bastun looked away and stepped toward the stairs, careful not to gain their attention. He could not help her, had no magic that could harm the spirits now. His quiet prayer for her quick death went unanswered. Her cries followed him down the stairs, back to the hallway, and drifted past him to bury themselves in the pit of the tower.
He rested his hand on the Breath and stared across the pit at the long bridge. His old friends would die if he left them and took the Breath as far away as he could manage. The durthan, if she survived, would look for him. The man, the prince, or whatever it was calling himself Serevan Crell, would fail, might search for Bastun as well. The Creel tribesman would remain, hold the Shield, and perhaps convince the rest of their tribe to join them. The wychlaren would come for him, the vremyonni also. These thoughts raced through his mind, analyzing the paths and possibilities open to him.
"I would become the exile they believe me to be," he said aloud, staring into the dark void beneath him. "Not one drop of Rashemi blood on my hands, and I would be hunted as a murderer and a traitor."
Tiny whimpers reached him, echoing from the far side of the room. Peering into the shadow he could see the faint form of the little one, huddled against the wall and staring wide-eyed toward the gruesome scene that played out in the room at his back. She was so much like the memory of his sister-an echo of a past he could not change. A simple dare-to spy the wychlaren of the Urlingwood-had sent her away from him and forged the life he lived amid rumor and accusation. When Keffrass was slain and the Shield scrolls stolen, the groundwork of his apparent guilt had already been laid by his foolish childhood game.
He'd never mustered the courage to challenge their perceptions of him-had never cared to defend his own honor.
"This last thing," he said, walking to ropes that still hung along the side of the pit, "then freedom."
He grabbed the ropes, found a foothold, and edged himself along the wall.
"Win or lose. In body"-the cries of the Creel woman faded away, leaving only the wind to answer him-"or in spirit."
Chapter Fifteen
Snow, lit by the eerily silent lightning, painted the path before Thaena. She and the fang pushed through the wind and piling snow. The first of three guard towers along the west wall was hidden by a storm that slowed their march to a crawl. Duras forged a path just ahead of her. There had been a silence between them ever since their conversation in the central tower. It was a silence she was loathe to break, but she feared giving it room to grow. Between the thunder and the wind she had excuse enough not to probe the subject for now. Love or no, she could not justify stopping to mend their misunderstandings.
A feeling of dread grew within her with each step. She felt out of time and in a place she did not belong. The same could be seen on the others' faces. The alertness of the impending threat seemed overshadowed by a growing paranoia. She had tried to attribute this to the presence of the durthan or the absence of Bastun, but she had been touched by the shadows of this place and felt the madness that hid in its walls.
The northwest tower, a tall spire of unassuming architecture, loomed in the distance.
Despite its cursed reputation, she had never suspected the Shield to be much more than as Duras had described it-just an old castle. As an extension of Rashemen's defenses it served a vital purpose, but the city itself made its strategic value to an enemy almost negligible.
Squinting through the snow, she could barely see the outline of the first guard tower coming into focus. After a few more steps, she paused, reaching out and grabbing Duras's arm. The procession stopped and Anilya approached from her side. Thaena held up a hand to shield her eyes from the snow, peering at the figure that stood before the tower doors.
He came closer, and she found the eyes she had seen on the bridge, ice white and full of a dull, glowing power she could not describe. He spoke, but she could not make out the words. Duras raised his sword. Syrolf walked alongside him, shouting something in his ear.
Lost in the figure's compelling eyes, Thaena barely noticed that all the sounds around her had ceased. Anilya shook her shoulder and she did not respond. Duras turned, reaching for her and saying something, but she did not hear him. Only a gentle wind filled her mind. She knew the cloaked warrior did not see her. He looked through her and through all of them. His whispered spell was meant for another, some other time, but it found her all the same.
She stumbled to her knees, wanting to weep without knowing why. The man seemed so like herself in those moments, lost in time and doomed to wander the unknown, trying to make the world fit into neat little rows that fell apart and unraveled no matter how hard he tried. The magic that held her sat like a weight in her chest. Her senses screamed for her to stand and lead her men, but her limbs would not obey.
Duras and Anilya moved sluggishly to stand before her. The fang rushed forward with swords drawn. Flakes of snow, so swift just moments before, tumbled gently between her and the gaze that held her, crashing around her like boulders. The figure, this royal warrior of iced armor and regal bearing, gestured like a general in battle and turned with a skull-like grin on his suddenly shifting features. A lump formed in her throat as his eyes were lost and he disappeared inside the tower.
Blurs of movement caught her eye at the tower's top. Several night black gargoyles sat in hunched poses on the crenellations. Their skin, so like the color of a clear evening sky, shimmered in the falling snow. Pale, white eyes fixed like sickly stars between long, curving horns. They trembled in place, as if reality fought to remove the nightmares that roosted in its firmament. She struggled to recognize that she was in danger, but she could not focus through the trance that gripped her.
Anilya's hands danced on the air, twirling in the motions of magic. The fang charged as one of the beasts took wing, followed by another. Duras grabbed her shoulder, tried to bring her to her feet. He shouted words that were lost in her mind, stretched into syllables that bounced off one another into obscure, distant sounds. All she could hold onto was the image of ice blue eyes staring at her through the storm. She felt her mind crumbling.
Black wings flapped overhead, their color broken by brief slashes of sharpened steel as the battle erupted. Thaena watched as they dipped and rose, disappeared and reap
peared elsewhere. One of the durthans sellswords fell screaming, a beast pinning him against the stone. It lowered its indistinct face to the flailing man, its horrible visage melting into smoke and shadow to engulf the warrior's head. The screams were muffled. The flailing arms slowed and fell still.
Thaena rubbed her hands together in frustration, tying her fingers in knots-a habit she had not indulged since she was a child. Tears rolled from her eyes and spilled into the corners of her mouth. Her mind struggled to escape, trapped in a labyrinth of magic and false emotion. Snow, swords, and shadowy wings overwhelmed her senses. She recoiled in horror and sadness. The part of her that fought the spell, that knew what was happening, used her voice to scream. Spells slid among her thoughts with a slippery grace, swimming through the cracks of nonsense she could not banish.
Random memories of childhood asserted themselves. She recalled running through the forests with her friends, finding insects and birds, identifying them to give names to the beasts in her world. Few butterflies visited Rashemen, save in the spring, and she did not remember any of them with wings as large and black as the creature that Duras fought a mere stride away.
They are not butterflies, she told herself. I am in danger. We are all in danger. I have to help.
Then the cold eyes overwhelmed her moment of clarity, and again she felt small and confused.
"I wish Bastun were here," she whispered. "Bastun would know what they are."
Bastun stepped out into the howling wind, cloak pulled tight against the bite of winter, but no such chill came. He leaned into the gale, averting his eyes from the multitude of blinding flakes, and carefully crossed the bridge. Warmth spread throughout his body, and he feared the poison was not yet done with him, but there was no pain. Curious, he continued his crossing, loosening his cloak and marveling at the comfort he felt in weather known to kill the unprotected.
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