The Shield of Weeping Ghosts - James P. Davis [72]
A feeling of dread grew within her with each step. She felt out of time and in a place she did not belong. The same could be seen on the others' faces. The alertness of the impending threat seemed overshadowed by a growing paranoia. She had tried to attribute this to the presence of the durthan or the absence of Bastun, but she had been touched by the shadows of this place and felt the madness that hid in its walls.
The northwest tower, a tall spire of unassuming architecture, loomed in the distance.
Despite its cursed reputation, she had never suspected the Shield to be much more than as Duras had described it-just an old castle. As an extension of Rashemen's defenses it served a vital purpose, but the city itself made its strategic value to an enemy almost negligible.
Squinting through the snow, she could barely see the outline of the first guard tower coming into focus. After a few more steps, she paused, reaching out and grabbing Duras's arm. The procession stopped and Anilya approached from her side. Thaena held up a hand to shield her eyes from the snow, peering at the figure that stood before the tower doors.
He came closer, and she found the eyes she had seen on the bridge, ice white and full of a dull, glowing power she could not describe. He spoke, but she could not make out the words. Duras raised his sword. Syrolf walked alongside him, shouting something in his ear.
Lost in the figure's compelling eyes, Thaena barely noticed that all the sounds around her had ceased. Anilya shook her shoulder and she did not respond. Duras turned, reaching for her and saying something, but she did not hear him. Only a gentle wind filled her mind. She knew the cloaked warrior did not see her. He looked through her and through all of them. His whispered spell was meant for another, some other time, but it found her all the same.
She stumbled to her knees, wanting to weep without knowing why. The man seemed so like herself in those moments, lost in time and doomed to wander the unknown, trying to make the world fit into neat little rows that fell apart and unraveled no matter how hard he tried. The magic that held her sat like a weight in her chest. Her senses screamed for her to stand and lead her men, but her limbs would not obey.
Duras and Anilya moved sluggishly to stand before her. The fang rushed forward with swords drawn. Flakes of snow, so swift just moments before, tumbled gently between her and the gaze that held her, crashing around her like boulders. The figure, this royal warrior of iced armor and regal bearing, gestured like a general in battle and turned with a skull-like grin on his suddenly shifting features. A lump formed in her throat as his eyes were lost and he disappeared inside the tower.
Blurs of movement caught her eye at the tower's top. Several night black gargoyles sat in hunched poses on the crenellations. Their skin, so like the color of a clear evening sky, shimmered in the falling snow. Pale, white eyes fixed like sickly stars between long, curving horns. They trembled in place, as if reality fought to remove the nightmares that roosted in its firmament. She struggled to recognize that she was in danger, but she could not focus through the trance that gripped her.
Anilya's hands danced on the air, twirling in the motions of magic. The fang charged as one of the beasts took wing, followed by another. Duras grabbed her shoulder, tried to bring her to her feet. He shouted words that were lost in her mind, stretched into syllables that bounced off one another into obscure, distant sounds. All she could hold onto was the image of ice blue eyes staring at her through the storm. She felt her mind crumbling.
Black wings flapped overhead, their color broken by brief slashes of