The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [114]
His pulled a fistful of dust from within his robes. Scattering it on the ground in a rough circle he willed the words of his spell into each particle. Dust became a brown mist, darkening to a deep umber and rising with a crackling noise. The spinning storm of magic lashed out at the wraiths, pulling them in and tearing at their forms. It grew and spread, hiding them all within its folds. The Rashemi watched suspiciously, backing away from the thundering magic.
As it consumed the undead and tore them apart, Bastun heard a quiet scratching at the floor. One warrior, one of the first to fall when darkness had claimed the chamber, lay pale and drained nearby. The vremyonni watched in horror as the body's fingers twitched and splayed. He felt sick as a similar noise arose behind him and then again far to his left.
The dying breath of a fallen warrior nearby hissed away slowly, steaming in the cold air for a moment before ceasing. Within an arm's length of the dead man, ice shattered and popped as the ancient prince of Narfell clenched a clawed fist.
Bile rose in Bastun's throat and he swayed away from the thinning cloud, its shrieking burden destroyed and leaving only the scent of decay. His eyes rolled as he turned from one corpse to the next, noting signs of movement or growing shadow.
"The dead are defeated," he mumbled, recalling passages from the notes of Keffrass concerning the Shield's peculiar curse. Only now did the obscure ideas and discoveries he had studied fully make sense as he added, "And long live the dead."
He met the blank stare of Thaena from across the room. The light of her eyes was gone, and for a moment he feared that she too had joined the ranks of the walking dead. Faint puffs of steam still escaped her parted lips. Duras lay cradled in her arms, thankfully peaceful for the quiet death that ordinary steel had given him.
Finding his balance, Bastun shook his head and picked up a discarded sword.
A groan rang in the air. Dark translucent hands peeled away from one of the bodies followed by a thin arm and the wispy trappings of a desecrated soul. Movement forced stale air from the lungs of another wraith still trapped in flesh, its horrid wail of grisly birth echoing through the short-lived silence. As newborn wraiths crawled from Rashemi corpses, Bastun realized not all of their previous adversaries had been of the Creel-some had likely been of the Rashemi, of those fallen far below in the entrance hall and left to rot.
Familiar strangers, the faces without names, shuffled off the coils of death to haunt him anew. The point of his sword raised slowly, ready to end himself for fallen friends and with acquaintances never made. A hand pushed against the center of his chest, and he started as Syrolf appeared in front of him, looking over his shoulder.
"Go," the warrior said, his grumbling voice now even more so. "Stop the durthan."
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "It's too late, I-"
"It's only too late if you've decided to quit," Syrolf said. "I don't know what she's planning, but I'd rather not die knowing she succeeded."
Bastun took a step backward, staring at the rising dead, at the weary warriors that hacked at writhing bodies and insubstantial spirits. Their ethran stirred slowly, her attention torn between Duras and her duty. She took up her discarded mask loosely in her hand and stared at it as if betrayed. The bones beneath Serevan's white armor cracked as he tried to rise, straining at the ice that had frozen him to the stone.
The vremyonni's boot crunched on snow. Flakes fell on his shoulders and hair. He realized that despite all, he was leaving. Logic drifted to the surface of his thoughts, and reluctantly he latched himself to it, filling his willpower with what must be done. He would leave his comrades to die and commit himself to the duty of a vremyonni.
As he turned away, the image of Anilya, gripping the Breath and walking toward the northwest tower, burned itself