The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

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.

Despite pain and the croonings of that evil, Bastun held back the tide that swelled to break him.

This had been the failing of Arkaius. The long-unanswered covenant he had forged in Ilythiiri runes had been too much for Shandaular's king. His desire to save his people had driven him to desperate measures, pitting devils against the Nentyarch's demons. In the end he had turned away from the call of that dark mind in the depths, horrified by what he had created.

Bastun knelt alone on that precarious perch, resisting the weaknesses of his own humanity in order to hold the edges of the Word intact for those he left behind. The power that Arkaius had denied, Bastun reluctantly accepted.

He felt a measure of control transferred to him as strength flooded through his arms and legs. The wound. in his side disappeared. His aches and pains fell away. Spent rage left him hollow, and he sensed the sighing approval of Stygia and its hidden lord. With a strained thought he willed the ice to stop its quaking, and an ominous stillness settled uncomfortably within him.

Anilya approached slowly, shaking with cold, though Bastun sensed little more than a cool, gentle breeze. He looked up, coursing with a torrent of borrowed power, and only faintly felt the desire for vengeance. All doubt and things unnecessary, emotions that could unbalance his control, he made a space for them within. She had chosen her path, and he would make sure only she suffered for that choice.

"You killed him," he said, voice low and growling, amplified into an inhuman sound that grated in his ears. The last memory of his master's face, dying in the snow, flashed through his mind.

Anilya looked at him in fear, then over her shoulder at the nightmarish landscape that surrounded them both.

"You opened the Word, vremyonni," she said, straining to breathe the cold air. "Do not accuse me of trifles like murder!"

The durthan lunged, dark flames spitting from her hands as she sought to take hold of the Breath. The spell licked painfully at his hands and arms, hissing where it touched the buried blade. He stared curiously at the effect as if outside of himself. Anilya pulled and scratched at his fingers, finding them as hard and immovable as stone. The shadowy flames disappeared, leaving bits of his skin brittle and peeling, blackened and steaming. Looking into the durthans crazed eyes, he watched her confidence waver and fade to fear.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "I thought this was what you wanted."

Force gathered around him, and he willed it outward, watching as Anilya was slammed backward. Her body flew through the air and crashed against a spire of ice, then slid to the ground. The sound of breaking bone echoed, the reverberations tingling across his skin.

As he witnessed the violent effects of a mere whim, he wondered what he had done to himself. The swirling power clenched on his innards, twisting and stretching as it sensed the presence of his doubt. Gasping in pain, he pushed away his brief fear and breathed heavily as the pain subsided.

Anilya coughed, blood staining her lips as she pushed herself to a sitting position. She cradled a broken arm and one leg was bent at an unnatural angle. In the distance Bastun could see shapes diving and winging through the clouds. Black feathered wings bore tiny figures ever closer. Waves rolled in the ocean as beasts rose to the surface, spiny backs breaking the water before submerging again. Wiping her mouth on het sleeve, Anilya turned and saw them as well.

"They're coming for you," he said, shaking with the strain of maintaining the caged chaos that flowed from the Breath.

"So it seems," she replied, shifting her shoulders and looking away from the awakening denizens of Stygia, "though I suspect they'll have an eye for you as well." She shook with cold, frost forming in patches on her face and arms. "We could leave together, use this power for the greater good."

"I told you once before," he said. "Your passion lacks sincerity-and there is no good in this."

Pale arms, encrusted with ice, broke the ocean's surface and gripped the edges of the small island. Humanoid bodies, their faces frozen in grotesque expressions, pulled themselves sluggishly onto solid ground, flopping and sliding as they piled over one another. Dark angels, screeching hideous dirges overhead, circled and cast black eyes onto the procession of the damned.

Slowly, Bastun turned his head downward, unable to look upon the foul souls as they sought purchase on the ice. The slight weakness pained him, but the unnatural strength did not fade. The power did not so quickly punish this flaring spark of humanity. Claws scraped and drew his attention to the left where he spied a serpentine monstrosity writhing over a distant block of ice. Its pale blue eyes met his and he found a part of himself hiding in its multifaceted gaze. He shuddered, and the pain grew a bit more, but subsided more swiftly as if the power of Stygia were reshaping each lapse to its own design.

"Don't look away, Bastun," Anilya said hoarsely, and he looked at her blue-tinged lips, frozen droplets of blood clinging to her chin. "Remember this. Remember all of it."

The first of the condemned souls grasped her ankle, and she winced as her injured leg was tugged. Try as he might, he could not look away, could not abandon the need to see the fate of his friends' murderer. He whispered under his breath, in equal parts praying to the Three and recounting all that had brought him to this moment, this choice, this grim acceptance.

Anilya had not the strength to scream or cry out, but the damned did it for her as they pulled her inexorably to the ocean. Bastun heard in their voices a lament for their own existence, the dim memories of lives and deaths and torments suffered. He realized the curse of Shandaular and its Shield was birthed in the depths of this place, in the unceasing repetition of a frozen hell. Its power rushed in his ears, leaving him numb as a tangled mass of limbs and faces engulfed the durthan.

"Remember it, vremyonni!" she called out. "Remember the power! Rashemen may yet have need of it!"

The first splashes of falling bodies broke the water, and she was gone, the voices of her captors gone with her. In a daze, Bastun lowered his eyes and stared at the hilt of the Breath, studied the strange hands, his own fingers wrapped tightly around this fulcrum between worlds.

"It is done," he muttered, and yet he knew it could not be true, briefly imagining having to repeat the words every morning for eternity. The thought broke through the separation between will and flesh, and he pulled at the blade. Ice cracked and split as the sword shifted. The runes along the Breath flared, and he felt the walls he had built around his humanity begin to crumble. Pain flared behind his eyes, and he tugged harder, his new strength breaking the magic's grip. The walls of the Shield flickered around him, indistinct and transparent.

He rose and braced his feet on either side of the embedded Breath, straining and staring into the storm-laced skies above. Dark-winged angels, fiendish minions of Levistus, dived from their heights and fixed him in their black-eyed stares. The Breath glowed with a brilliant white light, and it felt as though he were tearing a limb from his body as the blade began to slide free from the clinging ice.

Flashes of darkness, stone, and lightning danced before his eyes. Black wings surrounded him, enveloped him in soft, downy feathers that reeked of perfume and death. Scarlet lips whispered in his ears, promising unimaginable pleasures and ancient secrets.

He fell away, tumbling backward as if struck. A cold stone floor arrested his fall. The Breath clattered and clanged as his arms fell out to his sides. Ilythiiri runes squirmed in the ceiling above, their magic fading once again into dormancy. They settled back into their patterns, entwined inside the knotwork of the Word's symbols. Bastun's head rolled from side to side. He stared at the walls and the mirage of power that swirled through the chamber.

Sitting up he raised the Breath before him, its once simple blade now filled with an unholy power. He stood carefully, looking upon the Word and the Breath with new eyes. It was more than a mere portal or gate; its influence still curled and swam through his body. Closing his eyes he felt something new. Reaching out with his thoughts he could sense the high walls of the tower, each stone in its foundation, every open door and errant breeze as if the Shield were an extension of himself.

The eastern walls, mostly a shell now as their interiors had crumbled long ago, warmed slightly as the first gray light of a winters dawn tried to penetrate Shandaular's mists. Much closer though, he could sense another presence on the Shield's walls.

Bastun's body moved with a preternatural strength and balance despite the mess of his thoughts. Part of his mind focused on descending the stairs, keeping alert, and finishing what he had begun-what had begun long ago. The rest of him felt a mess, a jumble of emotions, questions, and doubts. His cheeks were cold, a few tears freezing before they could roll away, but he could not determine for whom they fell.

Ghosts flitted by as time rolled in random directions around him. The memories of the Shield were his memories, though the details were fleeting as if the stone were alive and forgetting things as it aged. The past was all that remained, the only life left for the crumbling fortress to live. There was a kinship between he and the Shield that he was loathe to admit, but he could not deny it.

He recalled his first arrival at the gates, staring at the high towers and walls. He had been so eager to get inside and see for himself this place he had known in tome and scroll. Now, he only wished to escape. He had forged his peace, with KefTrass and himself, in blood and in ice, and had buried pain and regret in the deepest hell he could find.

The length of the walls and the various towers of the Shield spread out before him, and he found himself outside. Predawn light lit the eastern sky, glowing across the ocean of mist that rolled and eddied just below the battlements. Leaning on those crenellations, staring out across the ruin of Shandaular, stood the youngest son of the Nentyarch.

Serevan, his faced half-ruined with flesh slowly creeping backward into death's grimace, did not turn at Bastun's arrival. The prince looked upon a city that was not burning, not dying, but dead, a cursed shell of the city he remembered.

"Time is broken," Serevan muttered as Bastun approached. "The empire is gone. My father is gone."

Bastun paused at the prince's words, keeping the Breath before him as he eyed Serevan.

"You know this?" he asked, his voice resounding with the same power it had taken in Stygia. It echoed and vibrated through the wall, and the prince turned. Pale brows furrowed over the icy, lidless eyes.

"Yes, wizard," he rasped. "I have always been aware of time's passage. Trapped in my own mind, forced to relive the past, to witness my own foolishness. An eternal nightmare, a dream from which I cannot awaken."

Silhouetted by glowing mist, he turned away from the battlements and stared up to the top of the northwest tower, the cradle of the Word. Behind him, Bastun could only see darkness within the watchtower where he had left Thaena and Syrolf. No sound came from within. The pang of alarm he felt became a chill down his spine. He tilted his head at the odd sensation and regarded the cold prince thoughtfully.

"You opened it," Serevan said, still gazing upon the weathered stone of the tower. He did not ask, merely stated a fact that both of them knew, could feel in their bones. "Athumrani sought vengeance when he betrayed me and sacrificed himself. He found it. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yes," he answered without hesitation, then reconsidered the question. His own past, his own ghosts, were quiet within him. The tetrible weight of life on his shoulders had lessened, and the future seemed less an escape than the freedom he had sought. A dull ache tested in his knuckles, the gleaming blade of the Breath still in his hand. The sword, so heavy before, was nothing to the strength he felt now. Something of Stygia's touch remained, hiding beneath his skin, and he found a hint of regret slipping amidst his scattered thoughts. "And… no."

"Hmph. Sacrifice, the purest currency between devils and men," said the prince, and he gazed upon Bastun through orbs of ice in hollowed sockets, his rictus grin growing as the ravages of undeath reclaimed flesh and separated it from illusion. "One never truly knows the price until it is paid."

Bastun was never more aware of his own heartbeat than at that moment, staring into the ruined face of Serevan Crell, pondering the meaning of sacrifice and its price. Faint wisps of steam escaped from around the edges of Bastun's mask, and he breathed a little deeper. His pulse quickened as the air between them grew thick, whatever strange truce that had caused them to speak to one another ending as quickly as it had begun. The prince edged his body sideways in a fighting stance, his tattered cloak and white hair stirred in a morning breeze.

"We must end this here, wizard," Serevan said, his voice now more hollow than before, rumbling out from a withering throat. He drew his thin blade, joints cracking with frozen flesh. "I want what I came for."

Bastun stepped back, raising the Breath.

"You still mean to have this?" he asked, staring from the sword to the bleakborn. "After all that you have seen?"

"I see the world that is and the world that was," the prince replied, glancing once again at the weathered stone and mist-covered landscape of the city. "I cannot deny the fate that was handed to me-but truth be told, I much prefer the dream."

The thin blade darted quickly and Bastun parried. It came again and again, each slash ringing strident tones on the Breath as Bastun backstepped. He had fought this battle before and lost, the memory of the wound in his side still painful, though nary a scar now remained. His breathing came quicker; his pulse raced. Magic seemed slippery and evasive, his thoughts turning to chaos as ghosts flitted past.

They turned, and Bastun was pushed away from the northwest tower, away from the Word and the lingering echoes of its frozen hell. Though the prince continued to deteriorate, the vremyonni could find no opening, could not focus to summon a spell. He growled in frustration, the unnatural strength flowing through him finding purpose, and he pushed back.

His strikes were poorly timed, but Serevan moved back all the same. The Weave stirred around Bastun, and he sought its thythm as the Breath moved faster. He battered at the thin, dancing blade of the prince. The phantom scents of smoke and blood stitred him even further. Magic remained elusive, but his thoughts had cleared enough to watch the quick sword and the angle of the following thrust.

Bastun's open hand shot out, grasping the prince's sword. The searing pain in his palm was rewarded by a hiss of anger from the bleakborn. Serevan tugged the blade, drawing into bone, but still Bastun held. He imagined he could snap the weapon like a twig, but the Breath shot forward instead. It tore through the bleakborn's breastplate, scraping against ribs and exiting from his back.

Serevan's struggles stopped, and he stared at the sword inside of him. The gleaming blade dulled as its strange glow spread through the bleakborn's body. Ice formed in clumps, and the prince jerked in pain. Bastun could only stare in wonder as the Breath froze what life remained in the undead prince. Bones cracked under the pressure of newly forming ice, brittle hair split and fell away. The taste of ashes filled Bastun's mouth as Serevan's body deteriorated into a collection of brittle bones. The ancient sword's metal lost its hellborn luster, fading back to runes and small patches of rust and age.

The prince's eyes of ice looked blearily up at the vremyonni, the odd light within them flickering. He raised a skeletal hand held together only by ice and frost. His face was little more than a skull bearing the memory of flesh.

"I much prefer the dream," said a spectral voice from within the destroyed visage, followed by a dry laughter like autumn leaves in a strong wind.

The body slipped backward, falling free of the Breath, and broke as it met the wall. Though the body lay dismembered and silent, Bastun chanted, summoning the Weave to his will. He shouted, the force of the spell shattering Serevan's remains into motes of ice and fragments of bone. Gray light washed over his shoulder, and a strong breeze scattered the prince, stirring up a snowy dust that swirled on the air before drifting away.

Serevan's words haunted him as he turned in a daze to the watchtower. He slid the Breath into his belt as he approached the doorway, preparing himself for the death that surely lay within. Inside, his eyes adjusting to the dark, he found Duras in the place where he'd left him. Nearby, leaning against the wall in SyrolPs arms, lay Thaena, still and silent but for the slight rising and falling of her breast. Five of the berserkers still lived, injured and solemn, waiting with their ethran. Less than a handful of the others still stirred, lying on the floor in pain or shivering with cold.

The dim morning light grew brighter, the sun's heat causing the mists outside to shift and grow thicker. Bastun turned back to the wall, walking into the blanket of mist, and leaned against the battlements. His hands found the deep impressions where Serevan's palms had been, and he stared out into the shadows and phantoms of Shandaular.

"Is it over?" he heard the ethran whisper, her voice echoing from within the tower's all-consuming quiet. "Is it ended?"

"It is ended, ethran," said Syrolf. "It is done."

The pale light of ghostly flames drew Bastun's attention to the western gates of the city. Plumes of black smoke mingled with the mists as the memory of screams and wailing cries reached his sensitive ears. Ghosts began again their ritual-the flames, the demons, the children, their chains, and the armies of a misguided prince. Bastun pitied them, understanding the plight of being slave to an inescapable past, but he was now free and those chains would no longer hold him.

"It is truly a new day," he said under his breath.