The Shield of Weeping Ghosts c-3

by James P. Davis

  "I thought not," she said, and removed her mask. She rubbed at her eyes before returning her attention to the mazelike patterns on the floor. "Though I suspect you shall be less than helpful in unraveling the secret of this puzzle, eh?"

  Puzzle to you, he thought. Nightmare to me.

  She strolled, searching the runes for the pattern's beginning. Tiny motes of light drifted from her fingertips and struck the floor. Bursts of energy illuminated entire sections of the engraved spellwork. More holes appeared, more ripples and tides of distortion, but little else. Within the disturbance, Bastun caught a glimpse of metal shining through the miasma. He stared at the spot, torn between thoughts of vengeance and any hope of saving those he left behind with Serevan. In the end, both were victorious as he crawled closer to the source of his dread.

  Keffrass had told him, warned him, about this moment, though he could never have known what the choice would be-or where it would be made.

  "You"-he tried to speak and coughed violently, tasting blood and morbidly thankful for the moisture it brought to his lips as he continued. "You mean to go through with this?"

  "Well, it would be an awful waste if I did not," she said, pacing from one series of symbols to the next, narrowing her search with painstaking precision.

  He kept note of her position, a blot of wavering shadow to his right, as he pulled himself across the floor. She continued speaking and he saw her voice more than he heard it, the sound vibrating on the air around him.

  "A waste, especially, of time. Over two thousand years of secrecy and unrest. The wychlaren actually thought they could hold all of this in check."

  Closer now to the shining flash of steel that drew him on, Bastun suspected that time had beaten him as well. He could not know how long he had truly been inside the chamber. The unstable nature of the magic King Arkaius had wrought eroded the accuracy of his senses. Steam rose from his body as he crawled, the heat further damaging his ability to think clearly. Somewhere nearby Anilya still spoke, though he could only hear the discordant aftereffects of her words, a gibberish that helped him to maintain, kept him going.

  With each gain of distance he felt time slipping through his fingers, like tiny threads being severed. He felt himself being undone, torn apart and burned alive, made ready for what was to come. There could be no regrets, no sorrow of the Magewarden, no guilt or hesitation. The thing he sought to touch understood few things about mortals and emotion, but it knew weakness and pain-and it knew hunger; it knew revenge.

  It would devour any indecision, any soft thought, and destroy Shandaular anew.

  Arcs of bright energy sped beneath him, Nar runes glowing an angry green while the more dominant Ilythiiri symbols radiated an aura of blackness. The light burned his eyes even as another swath of the pattern writhed and fell away, revealing a window on the dying city outside. Throngs of people ran through the streets, trying to escape the swords of the Nentyarch's soldiers. Ash and flame showered the crowded masses, cut down in splashes of violence as a massive plume of curling smoke rose from where the portal had been. Arkaius had saved as many as he could and many had escaped the fate of Shandaular, but he could not save them all and his sacrifice was not suffered by him alone.

  "That is the history that will become Rashemen's future."

  Anilya stood a few paces away as the window faded back to stone. Bastun pushed himself up to sit on his knees. His head swam as he looked toward the durthan, his arms limp at his sides, though the bright edge of a simple pommel lay shimmering but an arm's span away. Through half-lidded eyes he watched Anilya pace, the first signs of frustration on her face as she examined more of the patterns. The room's vortex surrounded them at the center of the chamber.

  "Overrun by its enemies," Anilya continued, "left to rot. Spent and useless. Created by cowardice to stand only as piles of stone, ash, and ruin."

  She turned, waving her hands over another stretch of the floor, each step leading her closer to the center of the pattern. Bastun leaned forward, stretching to reach the handle of the sword. His fingertips brushed the pommel, and his breath was stolen as Athumrani's spirit grasped at his hand. He fought the Magewarden's spirit, forcing the ghost's will to obey his own. The leather-wrapped handle was cold to the touch, a respite from the fever of the cursed ring.

  As he pulled on the Breath, its blade scraped against the floor, a hollow screech of steel that disrupted the vortex of the chamber. He heard the durthan pause her low chanting and turn to face him. Fear gave him the energy he needed to lift the weapon and cradle it in his arms.

  Anilya smiled, though a cruel amusement played through her eyes at what she saw. "A sword, is it? Shall you run me through? Is this what you came for?" Incredulous laughter hid behind each syllable. "You should have killed me when you had the chance-and the strength-to do so."

  He could not defeat her. He knew as much long before entering the Word, had contemplated the moment she would be successful in reaching it. A part of him always knew it would come to this, and that part frightened him more than the Word itself.

  The spell he needed drifted and slid through a haze of pain in his mind. The words, the gestures came slowly, bit by bit. He struggled to ignore the screaming sorrow of Athumrani, the dull ache of his bleeding wound, and the pain of each rattling breath he forced into his lungs. The strength he needed was there-scattered and hiding throughout his body, but there.

  Forcing his eyes to remain open, he watched as if in a dream as shadows gathered behind the durthan. They separated and settled, forming blobs of shifting and blurry darkness, though one appeared as she had in life. The Magewarden's daughter-her name unspoken in Athumrani's ravings, lost to time-did not truly look upon him, but he imagined that she saw him through the image of her father. Her lip trembled, her eyes begged him to stop, and he felt his strength wane.

  "Forgive me," he said, and the words were his own, not the father lost to sorrow and unreason.

  The children faded as he focused on Anilya, saw in her the last fragment of strength he desired. He gathered it to him-all the anger and guilt, to be done with it and court freedom, to spend it all on one choice. On the edge of his own abyss, to stop his enemy, he must grant her desire.

  "Forgive?" Anilya said, confused, and her eyes widened as he reversed his grip on the Breath, the blade angling down, point-first toward the floor. She raised her hands, her voice chanting the first syllables of a killing spell, but Bastun was more prepared.

  The magic leaped from his hand, a simple incantation, but effective. An airy orb surged forward, thrumming loudly and striking Anilya in the chest. She fell backward, her own spell lost in the discordant sound as she slammed to the floor.

  Bastun did not look down, the exact placement of the blade unimportant. Instead he kept his gaze fully on the durthan, his master's murderer. He fed on the anger that welled in him, grasped it and pushed on the sword, pressing it deep into the stone. The floor shook, and a terrible chill flooded through his hands. His fever was banished, the burning of the ring balanced by an unimaginable freezing.

  Somewhere in the vast reaches of ice that appeared in his mind's eye, a consciousness stirred. Dull and slowed by centuries of cold, it reached for him and caressed his soul with a limitless evil.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Bright spots danced at the edges of Thaena's vision, exhaustion's harbingers stabbing through her skull. She kept her balance despite all, staggering away from the hungry frost of the dead prince. Her spells-those that might have any effect at all upon the bleakborn-were nearly spent, and Serevan still stood, still stared at her as his face returned to a semblance of life. Syrolf and two others remained standing, their brethren on the ground breathing but unable to go on.

  Thaena's hands curled into fists as the prince studied her. He squinted as if she were barely there, a figment of his imagination. He had defended himself with the same nonchalant grace, dismembering most of her magic and weathering the rest without a wound to show for her efforts.
Syrolf and the others charged him, slashing and cutting before retreating from his feeding aura, yet his flesh only flushed at their efforts. Scars faded and pale skin grew anew. Despite the futility of the assault Syrolf would go back, again and again, urging his men on for the memory of fallen Duras-to keep the prince from the northwest tower.

  As the runescarred berserker raised his blade and prepared to attack again, Serevan's expression changed. A wave of rippling force left his palm, laying the berserkers flat and sliding them against the far wall.

  "Enough," he said calmly, tilting his head as he stared at Thaena.

  She endured the icy gaze, glancing away once to see that Syrolf was still conscious and trying to rise. Serevan shook his head, sheathing his sword and staring at the floor and walls as if with new eyes. He stumbled briefly, unbalanced, and Thaena nudged the blade of a dropped sword with her boot.

  "This-this is not a trick… Athumrani. Wh-what has he done?"

  Slowly kneeling to retrieve the sword, Thaena paused as the prince's body wavered, a double image flickering in and out around him. The double's mouth was silently screaming, its face contorted in pain before falling away and disappearing. It left Serevan staggering, dropping to one knee. The pale light from outside, that first dim glow of dawn, faded away, overtaken by a renewed darkness. Night returned as all wind stopped, the air frozen, and Thaena felt herself stilled.

  She had never in her life experienced such a profound quiet and sickening dread, as if all creation would topple at the resounding echo of a single heartbeat. She started as the first cries came from beyond the walls, growing into a chorus of wailing and weeping voices. The last remaining torches guttered out. Panic rose in her chest, overcoming reason as she took up the sword and rushed the incapacitated prince.

  He looked up, eyes clear, seeing her plainly for the first time. The thrust of her strike forced itself through air thickened by a pervasive and malevolent chill. The blade met his outstretched hand, stabbing through his palm, grating against the metal guard on the edge of his gaundet. She sobbed as she pushed, grief and anger powering the tip of the sword into his breastplate. It screeched to a stop, half a hand's length through the armor. Serevan made no sound, gave no indication of pain as he stood and regarded her.

  The open fingers of his pierced hand closed tightly on the blade. Crystals of ice formed on the steel, rushing down to her hands and feeding at what felt like her last reserves of energy. She tried to scream, to give voice to the chaos of emotion that had replaced her insides. Naught escaped her save a raspy whisper of choking breath.

  "No," was all that he said as she felt her legs grow weak.

  He shoved on the blade. The pommel struck her chin and she swooned, the sword pulling free as she fell back in a daze. SyrolPs arms caught her, pulling her away from the bleakborn.

  Serevan stared thoughtfully at the pair, then at the closing wound in his palm. "The Word opens again, and death does not come for his pittance."

  He turned on his heel and strode for the open doors, tattered cloak billowing behind him.

  Thaena lunged, sword in hand, after the prince, but Syrolf held her back.

  "Forgive me, ethran," he said weakly, "but we have done all we can. The Shield will not let him die easily… and we are in no condition to explore the limits of that strength."

  She did not struggle long against his grip, slumping on her knees as the voices of the dead sang a distant dirge of despair. Her half-lidded gaze sought some spark of light from the world outside, a link to the natural order of things. She found nothing but the dying embers of a steaming torch. She lost herself in its glow, alone at the end of all things.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  'The floor fell away, stone fracturing and splitting to reveal an expanse of indiscernible shapes and infinite pits. Otherworldly winds blasted Bastun's body, a forceful gale in contrast to the stillness of the Breath and the feel of solid ground beneath him. He crashed through glassy barriers, plummeting, shattering the veils between reality and those realms that lay in wait on the other side. Glimpses of passing things caught his eye, shifting and scurrying through dark corridors, seeking holes through which they might crawl into mortal worlds and minds. Other visions came as well, more immediate to his concerns, fleeting and misleading, showing him times that were and those that could be.

  He saw Thaena, beaten and weak, her eyes dull and lifeless, as Syrolf held her amidst the remnants of her fang. She looked upon the retreating form of Serevan and the darkness that had taken hold of the world outside the Word. The prince gazed out with awakened eyes upon the ruins of Shandaular and the quieted walls of the Shield. In a blink these visions were replaced, over and over again, each more horrible than the last as Bastun descended further into a deeper cold. Every muscle in his body tensed at the growing power that pulsed through the Breath, yet he fought to hang on to the only solid object that existed.

  Legions of beasts populated the blurring places and corridors that flew by. Some turned, catching his eye, watching him disinterestedly before returning to tasks of flame and iron. Fiends of horns and leather wings, claws and needlelike teeth, thrashed against the transparent walls of the tower. He could still feel the Shield around him, the enclosed space, the smell of stale ait, and the magic of ancient runes humming in his ears.

  The monsters, appearing and disappearing with a scratch of hungry claws, did not disturb him so much as those few that looked as human as himself. Something in their flashing eyes made him look away, afraid to see the corrupted souls behind their cruel and dispassionate stares.

  Bursts of lightning surrounded him as he was engulfed by a blanket of swiftly moving clouds. He closed his eyes against the brightness, thunder pounding and shaking his bones with each strike. Motes of pain danced across his knuckles, and it seemed as though they might split, such was his hold on the Breath. The unnatural storm grew more intense. There were no breaks between the lightning and thunder, both existing as one in the wind and stinging rain of ice that stung his flesh and tapped against the surface of his mask. The chaos threatened to tear him away from his anchor, send him spinning into a nowhere that had no place for sentient beings or coherent thoughts. He screamed, trying to force one small note of something into the maelstrom of nothing.

  At the end of his breath he inhaled, and everything stopped. Silence slammed into being, leaving a deafening ringing in his ears. Cracking open his eyes, he found himself kneeling. The Breath was before him, still in his unceasing grip, yet now its blade lay buried in ice, not stone. A twilit sky lay at the distant horizon of a vast ocean of ice and jagged peaks. Lightning danced across the sky, so high above that its thunder no longer had a voice with which to reach him. He exhaled a long breath of steam, eyes widening, hands aching, as he prepared for what was to come next.

  This was the end. The destination that had been a hair's breadth away from everything he knew, yet all the forces of reality and nature kept them apart. One of many planes of existence, it had waited for him in that narrowing space between the Breath and the Word-a frozen hell known as Stygia.

  The very air felt alive, circling him and studying this mortal that dared tread upon unhallowed ground. The ground shook as the mystic nature of Stygia began to gather around the Breath. The sword trembled, and ice formed within its ancient runes, crawling up to his hands. It began as a slight tingle in his fingers, cold and volatile, searching and almost curious. The sudden flood of power that followed nearly broke his determined grasp.

  It pooled in his gut, rose, and sloshed through his chest in icy waves of pure energy. His skull filled with burning, he bore down on the Breath. The pain electrified every fiber of his being, but he kept control.

  The spirit of Athumrani, so long bound to the ancient sword, fell away in that first jolt of power.

  The memory of the Magewarden's death, swift and violent, tore him open, releasing the gathered power of Stygia across the whole of Shandaular. The fires had snuffed out. Soldiers and commoners alike
had been slain. The Word had opened and, in the instant before closing, it consumed Athumrani's life and laid waste to the city it was meant to defend.

  The memory of the grieving father's death left a taste of ashes and copper in Bastun's mouth, but unlike Athumrani he did not bring sorrow with him to place upon a frozen altar in an uncaring hell. Stygia devoured sorrow, ripped away love and compassion.

  Bastun imagined himself a vessel. He allowed the power to tear through his body and spirit. Long jagged wounds opened and closed in his skin as he pulled the power into himself, denying it entrance to the world. Each rip brought tears to his eyes, yet focused them, sharpening his vision as he spent his rage. Slowly, the cold reseating of his skin became less painful and more numb. Stygia accepted the currency he had brought, though he wondered what he had purchased in return.

  Several strides away, on the edge of the ice, the durthan stirred beside the black waters of the Stygian ocean. From the limitless depths of that dark sea, he sensed the attention of an ancient mind and felt its touch flow through the rush of power in his body. Malicious thoughts marched along his arms like an army of needles.

  The reasonless tempest of Stygia's power became a living thing as evil caressed and crushed all at once. It whispered loving words in his ears, crooning and cajoling him to release his control, to open the doors of his willpower and loose hell upon a world that had no use for him. It shouted and screamed, the thunderous voice echoing as if submerged, tearing at the insides of his flesh in frustration to free itself.

  He could see it, buried somewhere in the ocean's dark-a glacier bearing a dark blot of the prisoner within: Stygia's frozen devil-prince, Levistus.

  The ice shook and cracked around him, geysers of water bursting from beneath. White faces of the damned sobbed and screamed from within the shifting blocks. Anilya rose on her hands and knees, crawling away from the rising waves of the ocean.