Benjamin Tate - Leaves of Flame

And then they lurched down a widening stairwell and out into a grand hall.

Columns rose from floor to ceiling, thick and etched with hundreds of names and dates and deeds, a history of House Gaurraenan. The walls were lined with massive tapestries, interspersed with banners and paintings, urns and statues. The marble floor was coated with blood, bodies everywhere. At the far end of the hall, where three thrones stood, the level of the floor rising toward them in wide steps, the Cortaemall were battling a large force of the Gaurraenan Phalanx.

Even in the one swift glance, Colin could see the fight was hopeless. There was nowhere for the Gaurraenan to retreat to, nowhere for them to run. Their desperation was as thick on the air as the stench of death.

“Aielan’s Light,” Vaeren breathed at Colin’s shoulder.

Colin blinked, and saw the hall as it stood now, littered with the remains of thousands of dead. The tapestries were gone, the statues and urns broken. The columns containing the history of the House had been mauled, two damaged so badly they’d shattered, chunks of stone scattered around the jagged stump of the base.

Reality wavered and the past reasserted itself, a woman’s scream rising to echo through the chamber. She cowered near one of the thrones, the guardsmen of the House surrounding her. Another woman stood beside her, a band of twisted gold in her hair, her stance regal, her clothes too fine and elegant to be anything but a noble’s. The Alvritshai warriors fought savagely to protect her, but she did not flinch from the carnage. She glared out over it, her eyes filled with contempt.

Gaurraenan’s wife, Colin realized. The Lady of the House.

Her gaze turned toward him and something inside Colin’s stomach seized. He gasped, clutched at his gut, leaned forward over the pain, even as fresh tremors coursed through his body.

“Eraeth!” Vaeren shouted.

Hands grabbed both of his arms beneath the shoulder, tried to raise him upright, but new pain shot through his body.

“We have to stop,” Aeren said from somewhere to Colin’s left. He could no longer see any of the group, could only see the past, the dead and the dying, the blood and bodies. He could feel their hands, but he couldn’t see them. He could barely hear them.

“No,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He waved with his staff toward the mouth of the corridor across the long stretch of the hall, then realized they wouldn’t be able to see it, not with their torchlight. He could only see it because the entire hall was lit with the burning sconces of the past. “There. Go there.”

They didn’t hesitate. Lifting him up between them, Vaeren and Eraeth hauled him across the hall, his feet dragging on the floor. He gasped as another wave of pain swept through him, sucked in a ragged breath, heard Siobhaen demand harshly, “What’s happening to him? Look at his arms! It looks like he’s fading, as if he isn’t really there!”

And then they were through the hall, into the corridor beyond, but the pain didn’t stop. It escalated and he gasped, “Get me out. Get me out before it catches me completely.” Pain lanced through his arms and legs and he cried out, the cry ending in a moan, but he suddenly realized what was happening, why it was so painful. He’d been wrong. He’d thought the past was intruding on the present, that it was surging forward. But it wasn’t. The past was trying to drag him back, trying to pull him there, into the horror, into the miasma of death. Somehow, it had become a riptide, an undertow, trying to suck him down into the blackness that Cortaemall had visited upon the place. That’s why they could see him, why they reacted to him-the lord in the pass who had glared at him, the lady in the hall. He was actually there. He was caught between the past and the present and it was ripping him apart.

Horror spread through him at the realization and he frantically clawed toward the present. He was nearly completely caught in the past now; he could see nothing of the present, only the carnage of the halls. Even as Eraeth and Vaeren dragged him forward, he saw three Cortaemall Phalanx butchering a mother and two children, all three cowering at the base of a wall, the woman’s hands raised imploringly even as the cattans fell. Two more chased a group of servants down a side hall, cutting them down from behind, the women shrieking as they ran. Colin’s gorge rose as he tried to draw back, but the only reference he had was the insubstantial hands that pulled him along the corridor.

The hands.

Instead of reaching for the present, he focused on the hands holding him upright, closed his eyes to the death and destruction on all sides, tried to shut his ears to the sounds. He drew in a ragged breath, slowly, through his mouth, and pulled himself toward the pain in his arms and armpit where Eraeth and Vaeren gripped him so tight he could already feel his arms tingling where they’d cut off the circulation. He pushed through that growing numbness, enfolded himself in it, and felt the past receding, the shouts and cries of the hunted in the halls of Gaurraenan growing fainter. Through the prickling of his arms, he heard Aeren commanding the rest of his Phalanx to move faster and realized he hadn’t been able to hear them at all a moment before. Hope surging in his chest, he pulled the tingling closer, strove toward it with every beat of his heart, used it as his lifeline to the present. The past began to pull away, but he could feel its greedy undercurrent still attempting to draw him down into its depths. He mentally kicked at it, as if he were truly trapped underwater and struggling upward toward light and air. He felt the pressure of the undertow in his chest, squeezing-

And then, the past wrenched free and he gasped, even as he heard the rest of the party cry out in triumph. Brittle, frigid wind slammed into his face and he sucked it in sharply and opened his eyes. The death grip on his arms and shoulders relaxed.

They stood on an outcropping of stone carved into the shape of the prow of a ship, stairs descending the sides of the mountain on either side, the steps barely visible through the drifts of heavy snow and layers of ice. Two stone statues-Alvritshai in robes and regal poses, arms stretched out and down in benediction toward the remnants of a huge city on the hills below-stood at the height of the stairs.

Colin tried to gather his feet beneath him, to support himself, but he had no strength left. He collapsed to his knees, the frigid air burning into his lungs. It stung, felt as if it were slicing through his chest, his heart, but he breathed it in deeply, using the sensation to push away the last remnants of the past and anchor himself in the present. He sobbed, felt tears burning cold against his cheeks and at the corners of his eyes.

“We’re here,” he gasped. “We made it.” He sucked in one more deep breath, then murmured, “Welcome to the White Wastes,” before the present overwhelmed him and he sagged forward into unconsciousness.

Colin woke to warmth.

He gasped and jerked upright, tendrils of a nightmare pulling away from his mind like tentacles, retreating back into the depths of the darkness. He groaned and settled back down, aches coursing up and down his entire body. Without moving, he surveyed the firelight dancing with shadows on the stone ceiling overhead and the wall at his side. The fire crackled, out of sight, but he heard nothing else. No movement, no voices. He breathed in the scent of the fire’s cedar smoke, the lingering sizzle of fat from some animal cooked over flame, and beneath all of that the sharp taint of cold.

“The city,” he whispered to himself. “We’ve made camp in Taeraenfall.”

“We have.”

Colin flinched away from the voice, regretted the motion as a muscle in his neck spasmed. He rubbed at it with one free hand as he turned and glared at Aeren. “I didn’t think anyone was here.”