Chris Evans - The Light of Burning Shadows

“Wait, I think I see it,” he said. A cluster of low, white-walled buildings appeared beside several palm trees. He looked away and then back. The palm trees were now smudged and fragmented, but now that he’d seen them he could keep some of it in focus.

“Load your men, Sergeant,” Rallie said, “I think it best we get there as quickly as possible.”

“You heard the lady,” Yimt said, “get your arses on the wagon. Move.”

Alwyn walked over to the wagon and began to climb on, not an easy feat with a wooden leg-no matter how magical-then paused and looked around. “Where’s Jir?”

The bengar was sniffing in the sand a few yards away. “Jir, let’s go,” Alwyn said, motioning with his hand. The bengar ignored him and continued to worry at a spot in the sand. He began pawing at it.

“Ally, get your butt on the wagon-the beastie can catch us up,” Yimt said.

“Just a minute,” Alwyn said, walking over to Jir. Alwyn gently nudged Jir out of the way with his musket, then looked down. It was only some cloth. Alwyn started to turn away when something about the fabric made him reach down and grab it.

“We’re getting baked to a crisp out here, Renwar,” Zwitty shouted. There were a few grumbles of agreement.

Alwyn ignored them and shook the cloth a few times to rid it of sand and dust. It was an unremarkable black save for a small section of embroidery just visible at one tattered end. Stitched on the cloth was a green vine. Alwyn looked down at his caerna and placed the cloth beside it.

The color and the vine were a perfect match.

This was part of the uniform of an Iron Elf. But how?

“I’ve half a mind to take off your leg and beat you about the head and shoulders with it,” Yimt said, huffing as he stomped toward Alwyn. “What are you doing?”

Instead of answering, Alwyn called forth the frost fire. It sparkled in his palm and ignited the cloth. There, for just a moment, a tiny white flame burned before being consumed. The pain told him everything.

“Tell me that wasn’t a piece of a caerna…and that I didn’t just see white flame.” Yimt said slowly.

Alywn turned and looked again toward the oasis. “We have to save him.”

“Save who?”

Alwyn lowered his head and shook it slowly. “I don’t know how, but Kester Harkon is here. That’s who we have to save.”

W hy are we risking our live bodies to try and save a dead one?” Zwitty asked. “If something really has Harkon’s body, which makes no sense at all if you ask me, I say let him keep it. Harkon’s got no more use for it.”

Alwyn was tired of arguing the point and kept his mouth shut. Zwitty was far too concerned with his own well-being to understand that it was much more than simply the body-this was a battle for Kester’s soul. Alwyn flexed his fingers around his musket and scanned the ground ahead of him.

The section was spread out in a line moving slowly toward the oasis. Palm trees and some figs grew up around a green area that Alwyn hoped contained a well or even a pond. His head pounded with the relentless heat, his eyes were on fire from the punishing sun. Then there was the sand, which was in everything and everywhere; all over his uniform, boots, and pack; in his eyes, up his nose, in his ears and mouth so that all he tasted was grit. It felt like being simultaneously slow-roasted and ground between scouring pads.

Alwyn narrowed his eyes and pulled his shako a little farther down over his forehead. A cluster of five single-story buildings sat off to one side of the oasis, indicating there might be inhabitants here…though there was no smoke from a fire and no sign of movement. A ridge of sand ran behind the oasis, blocking the view beyond, but until they searched the buildings and the oasis itself, whatever was beyond could wait.

The sun was now scorching the right side of Alwyn’s neck, and he twisted his head and hunched his shoulder to compensate. Alwyn tried to relax his grip on his musket and stay calm. The hammer was cocked, a musket ball and charge were loaded, and the bayonet was fixed. The same thought kept racing through his mind- they had Kester’s body.

“I cannot tell what, if anything, is in there,” Miss Tekoy said, indicating the oasis while walking a few paces to the left of Alwyn. Miss Red Owl was on the other side of Yimt and Miss Synjyn was standing on top of her wagon holding on to Jir. The bengar stared straight ahead, the fur on the back of his neck standing up. Definitely not a good sign.

It bothered Alwyn that the women were there-not that he didn’t appreciate their abilities, but it seemed wrong somehow for them to be putting themselves in such grave danger.

“There is no safe place out here, Alwyn of the Empire,” Miss Red Owl said, displaying her uncanny ability to respond to Alwyn’s thoughts.

“Maybe Jir’s just excited to see all those trees,” Hrem said, attempting some levity. He pointed with his musket toward the palms that lined the small watering hole. “Be a nice change of pace for him after only having Ally’s leg to water.”

They kept walking. Alwyn shivered and stomped his one good leg on the ground. Cold, as if he’d just taken a breath on a snowy night, filled his chest and then was gone.

“But how did they get his body all the way out here?” Scolly asked. “We buried him at sea, just like all the rest of them.”

“He didn’t become a shadow, did he?” Inkermon said. “His soul is lost. It is as I feared.”

“Do we have to talk about this?” Teeter asked, holding his head with one hand. “I’m hot, tired, and hung over, and talking about something out there waiting to steal our bodies and souls is not helping.”

“So stick your head in the sand if you don’t want to listen,” Zwitty said, pointing his musket toward Teeter. “See, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. Bet leavin’ the army don’t seem so crazy now, does it?”

For a while there was only the muffled sound of their footsteps as they plodded through the sand. The silence built until Alwyn felt the need to cough just to hear something, but Yimt spoke first.

“Ever notice wherever you go you can always find a mud hut? It’s true. You know, I’ve lost count of the number of countries I’ve been to,” he said, keeping his shatterbow ready at his hip. “But it doesn’t matter if it’s so far north you sneeze ice, or so far west you find yourself east, you can always find mud huts.”

“How’s that, Sergeant?” Hrem asked.

“Like those ahead,” Yimt said. “Clearly made out of mud bricks. Same with most of Nazalla, too.”

“I’d say they were more buildings than huts,” Teeter said, apparently deciding this was a conversation he approved of. “See how that one there has a window opening? Clearly a building.”

Alwyn looked to where Teeter was pointing. There was a window opening in the wall of one of the structures. He didn’t care, if it offered shade from this sun.

Yimt stared at Teeter for a moment before turning his head back to scan the buildings up ahead. “It’s just that it’s mud. Water and dirt mashed together. Oh, sure, sometimes they mix in some straw, or cattle manure, but in the end a mud hut is a mud hut is a mud hut. I don’t know, I guess I just was hoping we’d go someplace and be surprised for once.”

“I see something!” Scolly shouted, followed by the crack of his musket firing. The sreexes in Rallie’s wagon started screeching. Jir growled and leaped from the wagon, bounding across the sand and into the short vegetation growing around the oasis.

“I think we just got our surprise!” Alwyn shouted, as they all broke into a run.

Scolly crashed through the vegetation first, his caerna flying. Jir let out a piercing roar.