The Shattered Land

CHAPTER 32

Lakashtai stood stiffly, refusing to surrender to pain. The blades of the warforged had torn into her skin where it had grabbed her, and a few of these razors remained in the wounds. Lakashtai carefully drew each blade out, letting them fall to the snow. She closed her eyes, breathing calmly and deeply, and the blood stopped flowing from the gashes. A moment later the clotted blood flaked and fell away, leaving smooth, unblemished skin. The only hints that she’d ever been hurt were the slashes in her cloak and the tunic beneath. Despite her stoicism, she shivered slightly as the wind lashed her pale skin.

Daine found the sight slightly disturbing for reasons he couldn’t explain. He was used to supernatural healing; the touch of Jode’s dragonmark had saved his life on many occasions, and Lei had crafted a number of healing charms over the years, but Lakashtai-what limits did she have? What else could she do? He dug his swords out of the snow and strode over to her.

“Pierce is looking for tracks, Lei’s studying the warforged, and Gerrion is searching the boat,” he said. “Did you learn anything from our little friend?”

“We must leave quickly,” she said. “Lei did not kill it-him. This body is just a fragment of what we face. There are others, and they know we are here.”

Wonderful. Now warforged are after us? “Do you know what they want? Are they looking for me?”

“No. He did not know who you were, but there was recognition.” She glanced off into the snow, looking for the shape moving through the shadows. “Pierce. Only Pierce was of interest.”

He knew Pierce? Is that even possible? He remembered that moment of hesitation when he ordered the attack and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

Gerrion jumped down from the deck of the ship. “Three dead on board. Stormreachers, all of them-guides and servants.” He smiled. “Less competition for me, at least.”

“Glad something good could come of it.” Daine said. “Lei! We need to get moving!”

She nodded and stood up, a scrap of metal in her hand. Before she turned around, Pierce appeared next to Daine, seeming to materialize out of the snow.

“It is difficult to follow any tracks in these conditions,” Pierce said. “The wind is quickly covering any traces of movement, but a group of people-five, possibly six-headed southwest sometime within the last few hours.” He gestured off into the blowing snow.

Daine found his hand was on his sword, and he forced it away. This is my friend. He’s saved my life a dozen times. As he looked at the metal mask that was his companion’s face, Daine felt traces of doubt. He’s not human. He’s not even flesh and blood. What is going through his mind? Is this even Pierce, or could he have been replaced by some other warforged? It was a ridiculous thought, and Daine felt vaguely ashamed for even allowing it to cross his mind; he could just as easily worry that Lei had been replaced by a changeling, but still. Only Pierce was of interest.

Pierce was still waiting for a response. “Good work,” Daine finally said. “Gerrion! If you know where we’re going, lead the way. If not …” He glanced down at the ruined corpse spread across the snow. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be a good day for guides.”

“Not to worry, captain,” Gerrion said with a chuckle. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of the snow. This way.”

The others followed Gerrion into the wind. They were heading south, and Daine was relieved to see that the path veered away from the trail Pierce had uncovered.

They were walking through a frozen jungle.

Vast trees towered above them, draped in thick vines and moss. Huge, tropical flowers were crusted with frost, strange blooms weighed down with snow. The cold was worse than anything Daine had ever encountered in Cyre, and the icy wind felt like shards of glass digging into his skin. His fingers were stiff and numb, and he prayed that he wouldn’t have to try to wield a blade before they found warmth.

“What did you find?” he called out to Lei.

He would have preferred to keep the conversation quiet, but there was no hope of whispering over the howling wind. Besides, who was he trying to hide from? Gerrion might have saved their lives in Stormreach in the first fight with the Riedrans, and Pierce-even if he did listen to any of these lurking fears, Pierce’s hearing was keen enough to pick up a whisper on a battlefield.

“I’ve only seen a warforged like that once before,” she called.

“… at Keldan Ridge.” He completed the sentence for her.

“Yes. It had none of the standard markers indicating the forge of origin, purpose, nationality, or anything like that. I’ve seen a lot of ’forged who’ve had those marks removed since the war, but that usually leaves traces. This one-whoever made it wanted to keep its origin secret.”

“Why would anyone do that?” he shouted, as the wind picked up.

“I don’t know! The whole design-it doesn’t feel right. It’s as if someone was playing a game, designing a warforged like you might craft a doll for a child, just to see how it might look with teeth and longer arms, but creating new designs is a difficult and expensive process. Once Cannith came up with a reliable design, that’s what they used. A few variant models were produced-the adamantine soldier, the smaller scout-but you don’t make a new warforged just to see what happens.”

“I saw you take something from the body-what was it?”

Lei rummaged in the side pocket of her pack and produced the scrap of metal. It was curved, and flat on one side. After a moment, Daine realized that it was part of the scout’s head-a wedge of steel engraved with an abstract glyph, perhaps a letter in an alien alphabet. Every warforged had a similar mark on its forehead; Daine had always assumed it was a unit insignia or maker’s mark.

“It’s called-”

“It is a ghulra.” Pierce said, interrupting Lei. The warforged had been taking up the rear, and he had silently drifted up behind Daine. “The mark of life.”

Lei glanced over at him. “That’s right. Each mark is unique. No one knows why. It’s something inherent to the design, something shaped when the body and spirit are fused.”

“What do you mean, ‘no one knows why’?” Daine said. “Didn’t your people-House Cannith-design the warforged in the first place?”

“Well, yes …” Lei said, letting the sentence trail off.

“The true origin of the warforged is a mystery,” Pierce’s deep voice was clear even through the wind. “Many say that House Cannith scavenged the most important elements of their work … from Xen’drik, actually, that even Merrix and Aaren d’Cannith did not truly understand the source of the warforged spirit or how they had bound life to metal and stone.”

“You’ve picked up more history than I realized,” Lei said.

“I have been reading. The history of the warforged was a logical place to begin.”

Daine was still thinking about what Pierce had said. “If Cannith scavenged the knowledge from the past …”

“It could mean that there were once warforged in Xen’drik, or at least, something quite similar to the warforged. There may be much about my people that House Cannith does not understand.”

My people. “Pierce, did you know that warforged, the one we killed on the beach?”

“I had never seen it before, Daine.”

There was no hesitation, and of course, Pierce had no expression to read. In a warm, well-lit room Daine might have been able to draw some conclusion from Pierce’s stance; even the warforged had body language, though it took time to understand it. If there was anything suspicious about Pierce’s behavior, Daine couldn’t see it.

“Lakashtai said that it recognized you.”

“That seems unlikely. It may have mistaken me for another warforged of my line.”

Perhaps, Daine thought. He’d never seen another warforged soldier of precisely the same model as Pierce. He’d always assumed this was simply a factor of age; Pierce had been on the battlefield before Daine had learned to talk, but a few other thoughts nagged at the back of his mind. He remembered an encounter with Director Halea d’Cannith at the forgehold of Whitehearth; she had been prepared to offer five elite ’forged units in exchange for Pierce. What did they want with one old ’forged?

Even as he tried to shape a question, they stepped out of the snow and into sunlight.

It was like stepping through a curtain. One moment Daine was surrounded by swirling snow and bitter cold. An instant later he was in a forest, lush and green and with the steamy humidity of any Brelish jungle. His skin tingled, protesting the sudden change in temperature. Looking back, he could see a white wall of the frenzied storm, but not only could he no longer feel it, he couldn’t even hear it. The roaring wind had been replaced by the buzz of a thousand insects and the calls of strange birds.

Daine scanned the trees for signs of motion. He glanced at Pierce, and the warforged gave a slight shake of his head. Daine relaxed slightly-if Pierce couldn’t spot a threat, they were either safe or there was no hope for them. Gerrion was pressing through the brush, cutting a path with a long knife. He held a glowing crystal sphere in his left hand, charged with cold fire.

“What’s next?” Daine called. “A desert?”

“If you’re willing to go a few days out of your way,” Gerrion said, “but this region is relatively stable. We just need to find-ah, here we are.”

He slashed through a final patch of dense vines, and they stepped out into a long, natural corridor running east to west. The path was almost twenty feet across; the ground was covered in brambles and vines, but clear of trees.

Daine stepped out of the forest and felt stone underfoot. “A path?”

“A road. Older than your species, most likely. Though if you want a history lesson, I’m sure one of your friends can do a better job than I.”

Daine glanced back at the others. Lei was talking to Pierce, and she was smiling for the first time since their fight aboard the Gray Cat. The unexpected conflict had momentarily pushed the tension aside-but for the moment it was probably best to let it lie. Lakashtai was walking just behind Daine, her hood pulled low to hide her eyes. Judging from past experience, Daine was sure she’d heard them-if she wanted to talk, she would.

“I always preferred swords to books,” he said to Gerrion. “You want to tell me where we’re going, exactly?”

“No, not really.” Gerrion spun his dagger in the air, as they walked along the ancient road, deftly catching it and setting it in motion again.

“You’re going to, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Daine said.

“Give it a chance,” Gerrion replied cheerfully. His dagger was a web of steel flowing from one hand to the next, remaining in constant motion.

“Then let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh, let’s.”

“You want to tell me what a Sulatar is?”

Gerrion froze, and in that moment of shock, he failed to catch the spinning dagger. Daine caught a glimpse of steel flashing toward his eyes, then the blade stopped, suspended in midair. Lakashtai reached up from behind them, plucking the dagger from the air.

“An Elvish word,” she said, handing the weapon back to Gerrion. “It means ‘bound flame.’ In the older dialect, you could interpret it as ‘one who binds fire,’ I suppose. Why is this significant?”

Daine glanced at Gerrion, but the half-elf had returned the dagger to its sheath and picked up his pace, pulling ahead of them. “The spirit on the water called our friend Gerrion a ‘child of the Sulatar.’ Seems to be a touchy subject.”

“Child of the bound flame,” Lakashtai mused. “Child of the firebinders. It is a shame I did not see this spirit myself.”

“How did you manage to meditate through the boat being tipped over, anyhow?”

“It’s … not that simple. My soul was submerged within, leaving the body temporarily unattended.”

“It also mentioned a ‘season of flame.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Lakashtai ran a finger across her perfect lips. “Interesting. I don’t see why it would be relevant, but it is-”

“We’re here!” Gerrion called. “I told you it wouldn’t be far from our path, and trust me, it will be worth the time.”

There was a clearing up ahead almost two hundred feet across. A long, flat mound stretched across the space, rising up six or seven feet from the road.

“Who built this?” whispered Lei, coming up behind him.

“Built what?” Daine said.

“Look around you.”

He did. A long mound, surrounded by trees. Trees with no branches. Trees with strange inscriptions winding around their trunks.

“Look up.”

There was a roof over the clearing. Nearly forty feet from the jungle floor, it was now falling to pieces-but its original purpose was perfectly clear. The trees weren’t trees at all; they were pillars carved from the trunks of massive densewood trees, set around the mound. The mound itself-dirt and weeds had risen up around it, but it was a platform of light stone.

“Daine, Lakashtai!” Gerrion called down to them. “Come up here-I’ll show you why we made the trip. As for you, Lei, you should study the notched pillar in the corner. For a scholar like yourself-well, I think you’ll be fascinated.”

Daine shrugged and climbed up the steep edge of the platform, then reached down and helped Lakashtai make her way to the top. “What’s so interesting …” He stopped as he saw what he was standing on.

It was a map.

Two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, it seemed to have been carved from a single vast slab of stone-though Daine couldn’t imagine how such a thing could be quarried or transported. There were craters across its surface where chunks of densewood had fallen from the canopy, but much of it was still intact. The serpentine shapes of rivers wound down from the edges toward the center, and mountain ridges rose up a few inches from the base. He could see the spires of towers surrounding tiny cities.

It was as if he were a god, straddling the entire continent.

“Why are we here again?” he called, making his way over to Gerrion. The half-elf was examining a small castle that seemed to have been painted in black enamel. “It’s something to see, I’ll give you that, but I thought we already knew where we were going. It’s too big to be useful anyway-the only way I could make any sense of it would be from thirty feet in the air.”

“I suspect that wasn’t a problem for its creators,” Gerrion replied. “Besides, just think: years from now, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about the time you saw the biggest map in Xen’drik.”

“I trust you have a better reason than that,” Daine replied.

Lakashtai had been studied their surroundings intently, illuminating the map with the eerie light radiating from her eyes. “There,” she said, pointing to a massive densewood boulder a few feet away. “Our destination is in that crater.”

Gerrion smiled. “I hope that’s not a bad omen, but, even if we can’t get there directly, we’ll still be able to save a few days’ travel.”

“What are you talking about?” Daine snapped. “You drag us through the snow to see a map just to show us a place we already know how to get to? How does this save us time?”

“Patience, captain,” Gerrion replied. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He dropped to one knee and reached for the tiny castle.

Before Gerrion’s fingers reached the carved tower, there was a burst of motion on the treeline. There was no sound, no burst of fire or smoke, but a patch of vines vaporized as if caught in an intense explosion. Five people strode into the clearing. Four were identical: warforged scouts, duplicates of the hunched creature they met on the frozen beach. These scouts were spread in a semicircle around a huge cloaked figure at least nine feet tall and with the build of an ogre.

“Be still.” The voice was like a rush of sand or metal particles thrown against the wind. It seemed to flow all around them, carrying across the clearing with no need for volume. “Throw down your weapons, and you may yet live.”

Daine’s blades were in his hands in an instant, and he was charging, ready to leap from the platform and join up with Pierce and Lei on the ground. Then Gerrion placed his hand on the dark tower, and everything changed.