Keith Baker - The Shattered Land

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 Is this even Pierce, or could he have been replaced by some other warforged?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and Daine felt vaguely ashamed for even allowing it to cross his mind; he could just as easily worry that Lei had been replaced by a changeling, but still.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.”