The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [89]
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