James Davis - The Shield of Weeping Ghosts

"Explain yourself, Bastun," she said.

"What would you like me to say, Thaena?" He asked, his voice strained and scratchy.

"Tell me that they're wrong about you," she replied. "Tell me that you haven't betrayed us to spite the wychlaren or your homeland, that you aren't seeking some hidden power or secret of this place for your own gain. Tell me that everything that is happening here is just coincidence… and not design."

"Do I really need to say any of that?" he answered, looking between her and Duras.

"Damn you, Bastun! This isn't a game! Men have died in your absence, and many of those that remain believe you to be involved. Do you understand that? Can you?"

He didn't answer, his gaze drifting to the floor as he reminded himself that he knew to what he was returning. He cursed himself as the reality of what he faced came to rest on his shoulders. Looking up and seeing his two old friends waiting for him to say something, to settle their doubts, he could not help but wonder if they might have given up on him. "What do you think?" he asked.

Thaena shook her head and gestured over her shoulder where the voices of the fang could still be heard arguing in the room below.

"You know, Bastun, contrary to what you may think about the iron-fisted rule of the wychlaren," she said, just loud enough for him to hear, "what I think may not matter for much longer."

"It matters to me."

Thaena stood and turned away, pacing again. He regretted his words as soon as he'd said them and noted that she had not yet returned his staff. She couldn't know what the item meant to him, but in the spirit it was given, in Keffrass s last moments, it was tangible evidence of trust and forgiveness. Though the staff held some small power he might call upon when needed, neither of them suspected the old blade at his belt represented a destruction beyond their imagination.

"Well," Thaena said at length, "in any case, it won't save your life. That is, if you still care for your own life."

"Of course I care," he replied and shuddered as he recalled the nighthaunt's maw descending toward him.

"Then why did you leave? Why when everything we've experienced here speaks of betrayal?"

"I did what I had to do." Though he wanted to tell them everything, he could not be sure of their trust in him. If they still doubted or took seriously the rumors and accusations of those such as Syrolf, then the Breath would be taken from him. No matter what his warnings, they would know that he had kept it secret and pulled it from its hiding place. He would have played into Anilya's hands perfectly. Despite the trust he wished to earn, he knew he had to lie. "I left to find my own way, my own exile. And… I got lost."

Thaena knelt again, searching his eyes. Duras had remained quiet throughout, tall and still at the loft's ladder. Both of them awaited something more, more than just simplicity and the understanding of old friends. Together, ethran and guardian, they represented a reality he was loathe to face, though once he had lived it and had survived for some time-he was no longer one of them. They did not need him. They did not trust him.

But they wanted to trust him again. Thaena had called out for him in the dark, and the fear he could see in her eyes, the desperation in her voice, drew from him what she needed to hear. Taking a long breath, he delved into the tale of his recent absence-a tale of half-truths and dull, ashen lies that tasted bitter upon his tongue.

He told them of the hidden passages, ghostly children, and the secret library. He spoke of a deep armory and becoming trapped in the central tower's collapse. The varrangoin, the climb, the dying Creel, and the falling bridge… all he told, but the Breath and the Word he kept to himself.

"This prince," Thaena said after he had finished, "what do we know of him? I was not aware the Nar had princes-or kings for that matter."

"It is said that in the last days of Shandaular," Bastun said, reciting the bits of history as he knew them, the poetry of the Firedawn Cycle unwound by vremyonni historians, "the Nentyarch Thargaun of Dun-Tharos had sent all but one of his sons against the walls of the city. This last son was called Serevan Crell, a prince of old Narfell."

"You cannot mean to say-" Duras said. "That was centuries ago. Longer!"

Though the warrior had broken his silence, Thaena sat transfixed in her own thoughts. Bastun did not press her on the subject. Clearly she knew something more.

"I can only vouch for what the Creel woman spoke to me," he said to Duras, though he kept his eye on Thaena. "But Narfell was once favored by powerful fiendish lords, and Serevan was suspected a sorcerer of some talent."

"Even if it is true, or even possible," Thaena said, standing and staring at the ceiling and walls as if being watched, "why now:

"Now?" Bastun asked. "You've seen the spirits of this city, the way they act, as if Shandaular is falling every day. The idea of now means very little to those lost in the suffering of the past."

She looked at him-or rather her mask looked at him, for it was a wychlaren stare he felt and not the eyes he had just witnessed outside. There was judgment in the mask and authority to carry out the judgment. For a short time he had forgotten that mask, and it seemed he was going to be reminded.

"This is not the past, Bastun," she said, an edge like iron sliding coldly along the undertone of the statement. "This is now and we must act accordingly. We cannot be swayed by what might be or what once was, Nar magic or fallen princes be damned."

"And what if it matters?" he asked. "What if those things are a part of this? What if you are wrong?"

She tilted her head and regarded him before replying. "If I am wrong, then why did you come back?"

The cold iron hiding in her voice slid home and buried itself in his gut. Even Duras looked at her sharply. She had done all but call him a coward, and he yearned to answer her question with the truth.

But he didn't. He swallowed his words, gritted his teeth, and allowed the moment to wash through him.

His staff clattered to the ground next to him and he took it with a steady hand. His thumb already rested in the wood's grooved scar.

"You are not to leave my sight until this is finished," she said, then made her way to the stairway. "We will wait out the storm and make our way to the northwest tower. As long as you are useful you will not be treated as a prisoner… or worse."

He listened as her footsteps faded down the stairs, felt the gaze of Duras on him before the big warrior left him. Bastun eased himself down on his injured shoulder, pulling his cloak tight as he closed his eyes. Wrapped in cloth and pressed beneath his weight, the Breath remained cold even as he succumbed to a fitful sleep.

The day waned to evening and Bastun awoke in the hushed silence of the guard tower. The storm's howl had lessened to a moan, and he settled in to study the worn spellbook from his pack. Lighting a small candle, he pored over pages written in his own hand. The medium of ink and parchment had a calming effect on his mind, allowing him to focus on only those spells he felt would be necessary in the fight to come. Time became a stranger, something that only happened to other people, as he absorbed the words and gestures of magic into his memory. Though other more passive workings caught his eye, favorites useful for research and learning, he chose only one in the end and used it immediately.

Retrieving the journals taken from the library, he skimmed the entries of the Shield's Magewarden, Athumrani. The fear and paranoia that filled Athumrani was evident, and Bastun suspected there was much the Magewarden had not put to paper. From beginning to end the handwriting's change from impersonal script into hurried and emotional scratching was disturbing in a way that seemed almost claustrophobic. As the walls of safety closed in on the Magewarden, so did the room seem smaller and more threatening around Bastun. The compulsion to burst through the doors and breathe fresh air was strong and familiar. He glanced at the pommel of the Breath at his side, covering it with the hem of his robe and shivering at the memory of the compulsion it had drawn over him.