James Davis: The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

A man entered the gates, soldiers in his wake. Clad in armor, he stared with piercing blue eyes upon the fortress and its tall towers. The coat of arms on his cloak bore the crimson field and barren tree of Narfell, the conquering empire. Lips set in a cruel smile, he ascended the blackened steps and glanced once, casually, upon the ruin he had created.

History was carved into the stone walls by their battle, memory written in cracks, the encroaching ice, and the moaning shadows left in the children's footsteps. Blood soaked into the cold stones, swallowed by something that shouldn't have existed. The Shield did not recognize the passage of time, unable to comprehend the nuances between one moment and the next. The difference between what was and what is, it would never know-but because of one moment, one curse of fate, the Shield remembered.

They came at dawn to break the wall, by Seven were they led. To frozen walls and to weary core, Seven cross'd the plain,

To gates of Shandaular, of fallen kingdom, Seven came.

Shattered souls, bound in chains, by Nentyarch's crown, the Seven came The army charged with chilling song the Seven at their head,

By flame and fiend the path was forged, the end of Shandaular.

In tears did they drown; Seven they were, weeping, to the Shield. Within the walls, inside the halls; to break the bones, to shake the stones Of the Shield and steal its Breath. Of the Shield and steal its Breath.

— excerpt from the Firedawn Cycle, canto X

Nightal, I376 DR, Year of the Bent Blade

A night, the deep blue waters of Lake Ashane became a black mirror of stars and clouds. Sheets of thin ice floated here and there, cracking against the hull of the two-masted felucca as it sailed toward the western shore. The winter wind cut like a knife through all but the thickest cloaks, chilling bones and creating a crust of frost on the serpentlike bowsprit.

A scent of smoke drifted on the air, carried from bonfires still burning in the villages and cities of Rashemen. The fires burned once every year to mark the singing of the realm's memory, the Firedawn Cycle. The air hummed with the ancient tune, though the passengers of the ship were miles away from the solemn festivals and the voices of the wychlaren.

In fur cloaks, long swords, and thick hide armor, the Rashemi warriors sat stoically in the cold. Berserkers of the Ice Wolf Lodge, they emulated their totem spirit and would show nary a shiver to complain of any discomfort. Some manned sails and rigging, pacing the deck and warily eyeing the icy waters. In the stern sat their ethran, one of the wychlaren, for whom they would lay down their lives and obey to the strictest measure.

These warriors, thirty or so, sitting to starboard and port of the ship, were the heart of Rashemen. The wychlaren were its spirit.

The ethran sat high in the stern, her painted mask covered in symbols of magic, brown hair flowing in the wind. Only her eyes were visible through the mask, and they shone like steel. She had spoken only once since they'd begun their journey and this to the helmsman to inquire as to the length of their voyage. Satisfied with his answer, she had been silent ever since, casting not one glance at the bow or the figure huddled in the curve behind the bowsprit.

No one looked at him. Instead they watched the waves and smelled the lake's scent frozen in the winter breeze. A few whispered quiet prayers and bit their thumbs, entreating the spirits of the lake to allow them safe passage, despite their ungrateful cargo. Faith was easy to come by in the world of the Rashemi; survival was another matter entirely. Each knew their prayer did not fall on deaf ears, but that in turn those who heard them were under no obligation to protect them. Swords were close at hand, armor was fitted tight, and eyes remained alert for any sign of movement.

Through his own mask Bastun watched and listened, observing how strange and foreign his own people had become to him. Behind the bowsprit, he sat in their presence yet so far away from them in mind and spirit he wondered if all his years had happened someplace else, some other country. Bastun's escorts to the lands beyond Rashemen were as full of rumors about him as if he'd become a myth, one of Rashemen's great beasts of legend. Absently, he traced the dark mask that covered his face, so similar to Thaena's and yet garnering a pale reflection of the respect an ethran was afforded. From forehead to jawline it covered his features, carved of a light but durable wood and inlaid with silver whorls and tiny designs resembling thorny vines. It marked him as a vremyonni, the title of all male wizards who chose to remain in Rashemen.

Enchantments in the mask enhanced his hearing, enough that he could detect the faintest intake of breath or the quietest whisper among the warriors. He observed them intently, for when he'd been younger he desired to become one of them. Tales abounded of the berserkers' strength and ferocity. The wychlaren, too, were venerated in songs and epic poems, their magic forging the realm of Rashemen from the ashes of an ancient war. In all of the vaunted tales and stories, the vremyonni were a footnote-a wise sage here, a forged blade there, and rarely a name to remember or speak of. There would be no tale of Bastun to tell around a campfire on a cold night.

Children had no need to hear stories of treason or murderers.

Leaning forward, Bastun regarded the staff across his lap, feeling the old wood and leather wrappings on its grip. Though spells and incantations had no true master, no real signatures, being forces of the Weave bound only by the will of the caster, Bastun swore he could sense the presence of his teacher in the grain and the knots.

A few of the warriors noticed the movement and tensed, their breathing interrupted. Bastun paused, smirking beneath his mask as they calmed and settled back into their seats along the rail. He did not care about the rumors they spread or what they believed, but if he could not gain their respect he would accept their fears and assumptions. Staring at the staff, feeling the old wood in his hands, the magic it held tingled beneath his fingertips.

Light thumps against the hull of the ship signaled another series of ice sheets slightly thicker and more tightly packed than the others. Thaena stood from her seat in the stern and looked out across the surface of the lake.

"All is well, helmsman?" she mumured.

"Yes, ethran," the man answered. "The ice will slow us some, but little else."

Bastun could hear the nervousness in Thaena's voice and see the determined focus in her eyes. It was unusual for an ethran to be put in charge of a fang, even on such a mission as this, but Thaena had always been ambitious. Even as a child, sitting around the bonfires for the Firedawn Cycle, she had sworn that one day she too would be a hathran. Though the othlors, the oldest and wisest of the wychlaren, truly ruled Rashemen, the hathrans were the face of that rule and the ethrans their dutiful students.

He could almost remember the face behind the mask, despite the years that separated the adults they had become from the children they once were.

While studying the ethran, Bastun noticed the warrior beside Thaena looking at him-Duras. Tall and lean, Duras had also been there in that village just south of the Ashenwood in the heart of Rashemen. He and Bastun had sworn that they would join the Ice Wolf Lodge together, blood brothers to defend their homeland and make great legends of their lives. Duras nodded and looked away, appearing uncomfortable. Bastun turned as well, peering over the rail toward the western shore, still not visible beyond the veil of mist and clouds that gathered there.

The wind strengthened and the sails strained as they rocked the felucca through waves that had grown choppy and splashed higher along the front of the hull. Bastun leaned back into the curving hollow behind the bow and pulled his cloak tighter, cradling his staff against his chest. Near the head of the staff, a curving section covered in runes and tipped with a sphere of heavy steel, Bastun traced the dark line of a scar in the wood.