The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [20]
The snow had thinned outside to only a light dusting of small flakes, but lightning still flashed silently though the clouds. Anilya and Ohriman led the procession toward the sellswords she claimed were waiting for their return. Bastun was eager to be on their way to the Shield. If what Anilya said was true, he would have to assume that the worst was likely to occur. Though the wychlaren venerated the Shield as a well-placed outpost from which to guard Rashemen's borders, there was another power to the Shield that was a secret even among their numbers.
Fire and Narfell may have broken the city, but ice and what lay in the Shield, unnamed, had destroyed it.
He stared after Thaena, wondering how he might gain her trust. He imagined possible conversations full of explanations and memories of their old friendship. To gain her trust again might mean the difference between life and death for the fang. In his heart though, he wanted her to look upon him as she once had, to see understanding in eyes that time lost had forged into an almost mythical beauty. His pace quickened slightly. For so long he had discounted the thought that he might be in love with her as the fantasy of a young boy, or the foolish musings of a man out of touch with reality. But if she could be made to see him as he truly was…
Shaking his head, he smirked, intrigued to find those longings still alive and well within him. Since the trial he had foregone hope of anything meaningful in Rashemen, and he kept his focus on a new life in exile. The life of a criminal.
Though no solid evidence linked him to Keffrass's death, he had felt the rage cast flames through his hands, found the dying body, smelled the smoke and burned flesh. The staff, wordlessly handed to him, bore the scar of his guilt.
And the scrolls of Shandaular… missing, or had he destroyed them?
Slogging through the snow, he pulled his cloak tight around him. Lost time rested on his shoulders like a perching dragon, the coils of its long tail squeezing his chest and silencing his futile protests. He could almost feel Syrolf's breath on the back of his neck, and he increased his speed again, pushing through the snow.
Chapter Five
They called themselves the Swords of the Cold Road, warriors of various nationalities who'd drifted to the Great Dale and Narfell to find bloody work on the trade road running north and south through both lands. Bastun stood waiting for some treachery to be unveiled by the durthan and her twenty-odd henchmen as the two groups met outside a half-destroyed temple to an unknown deity. The Ice Wolf fang kept to themselves, staring down Anilya's sellswords as Anilya and her men approached quietly, weapons sheathed and packs ready for travel.
Bastun wished they would do something obvious to justify his suspicion. The fact that they took half the road as agreed by Thaena and Anilya, trading only a few threatening stares with the Rashemi, unnerved Bastun even more. The fang who wished nothing but to be rid of him were on his right and a band of lawless cutthroats on his left. In the center, he trudged along.
Moving carefully through the ruins, they took several alternate paths to avoid possible ambush points. It was not long before they reached the edge of the first wall, the original defensive wall of a young Shandaular. The chill that Bastun detected as he passed beyond the rubble of that wall crackled in the Weave-and it had little to do with winter.
Few buildings could be seen in the destruction that greeted them in the inner city. Bare foundations lay cracked and half-buried by crumbling stone. Architectural style was lost to the ravages of war and time. Trapped in the ice were bits of bone, hair, and scraps of cloth. Shandaular here was a maze of winding streets, piles of rubble, and the occasional discernable structure that had somehow survived and been left to stand as mute testament to a past that had once been civilized.
Ancient maps of the vremyonni, held together only by cantrips and wishful thinking, laid themselves out in Bastun's mind. He reconstructed