The Shattered Land

CHAPTER 1

"Daine,” Jode said, his voice low and urgent.

Daine’s head was pounding, and his left cheek burned; he could feel the slash running from cheekbone to chin. He opened his eyes and tried to make sense of his surroundings. The tunnel was made of worked stone, covered with mold and dirt. A shallow stream of foul water was flowing past his boots. A sewer? Pale light came from behind him, casting long shadows across the approaching insects.

Tens of thousands of insects.

It was a living carpet of vermin-an army of beetles and centipedes that stretched out beyond the pool of light. They moved forward in eerie unison, as if guided by a single thought.

A strong hand gripped Daine’s shoulder and slammed him up against the wall, and the tunnel was filled with flame. Daine closed his eyes as the terrible heat scorched his skin, but the fires did not consume him. When he opened his eyes, the tunnel was filled with steaming sewage and the charred husks of the insect horde.

Cold fury filled Daine’s heart. His dagger was already in his hand, and as he turned he brought it up to the throat of his unknown assailant. The face was a familiar one: Pierce was standing just behind him, studying him through crystal eyes.

“Dorn’s teeth, Pierce! What is this?”

“Daine!”

He turned toward the voice. A slender figure shone in the darkness, a woman wearing a coat of stars. As she stepped forward, he recognized Lei. She held her darkwood staff in one hand, and the golden rivets embedded in her green leather vest glowed with a cold light, the only source of illumination in the tunnel. She put her hand on his cheek, tears glittering in her green eyes.

“Do you know where we are?”

Her touch brought a flood of memories-the horrors of the Mourning, the long journey across Breland, Jode’s frail form lying on a mountain of corpses. He recoiled and fell to his knees, retching into the filthy water. Finally he reached up to touch his cheek: the pain was gone, and he ran his fingers over the long scar that had graced his face since the night of the Mourning.

“Daine. Do you know where we are?”

“Sharn. Under Sharn. The sewers beneath High Walls.” He rose to his feet. “Flame! It happened again?”

“Yes,” Lei said. “You told me to stay between you and Pierce and to hold the fire until you gave the order, but when we finally saw the creatures-you just froze.” She let her hand slip to his shoulder, and Daine covered it with his own. “What did you see?”

Daine ground his teeth together. This was the fifth blackout in the last ten days, and they were coming ever more frequently. “Keldan Ridge. Again.”

“Was there anything new?”

Daine nodded. “Planning an assault on the base Pierce and I discovered. Split forces, regrouping at Dorn Peak if it fell apart.”

“Which, apparently, it did.”

“Yeah.”

Almost three years had passed since they’d found themselves on the Dorn plateau just beyond the sinister mists of the Mournland. Until now, the events of that night had been a complete mystery; none of them could remember after the third wave of the warforged assault. Now those memories were finally coming back-but why, and at what cost? Daine’s head still throbbed, and he could barely hold his sword steady; his nerves were frayed to the breaking point, and his restless nights were filled with nightmares.

Daine had always believed that he could handle any problem on his own. As a child of House Deneith, he had been taught to fight his own battles, to stand against any foe. As a captain, he had to keep his own council-to make decisions that could determine the fates of hundreds, but how could he fight his own mind and memories? He squeezed Lei’s hand, finding unexpected comfort from her touch.

“Lei-”

“Danger!” Pierce’s voice rang throughout the tunnel.

Lei spun toward the sound, tearing her hand free and gripping her black staff. Daine raised his sword, cursing inside. Don’t expect one blow to end every fight.

Moments ago the floor had been covered with the charred remnants of a million insects. Now a new host had arisen from the old, a river of gleaming chitin and quivering antenna rising up from the ashes. The creatures clustered together in a dense, unnatural mass-in the dim light the swarm seemed to have the shape of a dark fist. Pierce was prepared for danger, and he lashed out with his flail as the mass approached him. An instant later the swarm was upon him, and he vanished in the depths of the living cloud.

There was no time to waste. Individually, the insects might be harmless, but a thousand beetles acting in unison could chew through the leather and fibrous cords that lay beneath Pierce’s armor plates. Daine had seen the flail pass through the swarm; it was clear that steel would not win this battle, and even if Lei had the energy to produce another flame blast, Pierce would be caught in the burst. Daine swung his sword toward Lei.

“I need fire. Quickly.”

Lei had anticipated the request and was already rummaging through her many pouches. She produced a pinch of powdered volcanic glass and a vial of dark oil; she sprinkled these on Daine’s blade, her features tight with concentration. Within seconds the blade was wreathed in magical flame, shedding flickering light across the sewer tunnel.

Daine sprinted toward the dark mass surrounding his friend. He was still dizzy; the blackouts always affected his balance, and this was the worst yet, but there was no time to surrender to pain. As he closed on the cloud of buzzing beetles, he kept his blade spinning before him, creating a brilliant wall of flame. Dozens of insects fell to the flaming blade.

Then the horde engulfed him.

The world went dark, lost in a buzzing cloud of insect wings. Centipedes were crawling up his legs, wriggling beneath chainmail and cloth in search of flesh. Flies were swarming about his face. Daine closed his eyes and covered his mouth and nose with his left hand, continuing to spin his blade from side to side. He ground his teeth, ignoring the pain of a hundred stings and bites. As moments passed, the cloud of insects began to thin, and he pulled his hand away from his face to crush the creatures that had crawled beneath his armor. Opening his eyes, he saw that Lei had joined the fray. The upper end of her staff was shrouded in flame, and she was staying on the fringes of the swarm, thrusting the flaming brand into the mass of vermin. A moment later Pierce burst out of the heart of the horde, crushing insects by the handful.

Daine held his ground, lashing out against the diminishing horde. “Pierce, are you hurt?”

“No.”

Over the last few months, Pierce had been growing increasingly taciturn. He’d never been especially talkative; he was built to serve as scout and sniper, and silence was in his nature. Still, Daine felt that there was a change-that his warforged friend was retreating into his own mind-but this was hardly the time to explore feelings.

“See if you’ve got anything in your pack that you can use to make fire.”

“Understood.”

The next few minutes were a horrible blur, the smell of burning chitin blending with the buzzing of dying insects, but the vermin were no match for the flame, and eventually the last of the insects fell or fled. This time Daine was taking no chances, and they crushed and burnt every last shell. He knelt in the carpet of ash and searched for any signs of movement, but minutes passed and no new insects emerged.

“Lei?”

The artificer produced a small crystal half-sphere from a pouch-a device she’d crafted to sense the presence of magical energies. “There’s nothing here, Daine. Whatever power regenerated these creatures earlier, we seem to have broken it. Greykell should be pleased.”

Daine stood up, brushing crushed bugs from his byrnie. “Great. That and a crown will buy me a cup of tal.”

Lei looked at him. “I seem to recall that helping the people of High Walls was your idea.”

“Doesn’t mean it was a good one.”

Pierce plucked his flail from the ashes. Perhaps he was ignoring the conversation; perhaps he simply had nothing to add. Either way, he kept his silence as they began the long walk back to the surface.

There was little conversation as the group made their way through the sewers. Daine knew that Lei wanted to hear about the blackout, but he didn’t feel like talking. Every vision took a toll on his body and spirit. His head was still pounding, and he was exhausted. The memories were far worse than the physical pain: The smell of the battlefield, the sight of friends’ corpses scattered across the battlefield, the fear that he might make the wrong decision and lead the rest of his soldiers to their deaths. These visions seized his mind with a terrible strength, blotting out all other thoughts. When he awoke, all recent memories-everything since the war-were pushed away by the horrors of Keldan Ridge. If it continued to get worse, would he lose his memory for good, or might he be trapped in his memories of the past, forced to relive the battle over and over again?

At the same time, he couldn’t deny his curiosity. None of them could remember that night. Until four days ago, Daine had completely forgotten the discovery of the warforged base. As frightening as the visions were, there was a part of him that yearned to know more-to finally unlock the secrets of that night, the last night before the Mourning destroyed his homeland.

Eventually the trio emerged onto the streets of High Walls. Once this district had served as a prison camp, housing foreigners and others Breland considered a threat to the security of Sharn. Now that the Treaty of Thronehold had brought an end to the Last War, relations between the people of the Five Nations were a little less strained, but while a Sharn guard might treat a Cyran refugee or Karrn merchant with less suspicion than he would have a year ago, the psychological wounds of a century of war wouldn’t vanish overnight, and prejudice still ran deep. High Walls was no longer a prison, but it remained a ghetto. The majority of the inhabitants were refugees from Cyre, people who had lost almost everything in the Mourning. Some were struggling to make a new life in the City of Towers, and these tradesfolk and laborers provided the services that kept the district on its feet. Many refugees were simply looking for a place to waste away, pining for their fallen nation. The other inhabitants were a motley assortment, bound together by misery: beggars, cripples, orphans, and others unwanted in the more prosperous regions of the city. The walls were cracked, cobblestones were missing from the streets, and it rained as often as not. It was depressing, and it could be dangerous, but it was home.

Daine and his companions lived in an old inn. When they’d taken possession, the building had been a shambles; it had served as a home for generations of squatters, and Daine had seen battlefields with less damage. Lei had surprised them all. It was a trivial matter for her cleansing magics to dispel the layers of dirt and excrement covering the walls and floors. Lei was also a fair carpenter, a skill left over from her early training in the schools of the House of Making. Over the last few months she had produced new furniture and acquired a few squares of painted cloth to decorate the common room. Lei had set up a workshop in the wine cellar, and Pierce and Daine even had enough space for combat drills, if they pushed aside the tables. It wasn’t a palace by any means, but there was more than enough space for the three of them, and on a rainy night it was comforting to sit by the large hearth.

Tonight Daine went straight up to his room. He shut the heavy door and laid the wooden bar across it then quickly stripped off his armor. While he’d crushed the life from the insects, the remnants of centipedes and beetles were scattered throughout his clothing and mashed against his skin, and a hot bath and fresh clothes were definitely called for. As he stripped off his belt and breeches, he paused, looking at his belt pouch. A memory returned-Jode’s voice, calling out and waking him from his stupor. Daine reached into the pouch and pulled out a small bundle of black leather. Carefully, he untied the cord and unwrapped the package, revealing a tiny crystal bottle filled with a luminous blue liquid. He slowly ran a finger across the lead seal, tracing the complex dragonmark embedded on the top.

“Jode?” he whispered.

“There are many things you should be concerned about, but ghosts are not one of them.” It was a woman’s voice, low and warm-certainly not Lei.

Daine’s sword was hanging on the handle of the door, and the door was still barred.