Matt Forbeck - Ghosts of Ascalon

"Bear's bones!" Gullik said. "What could be worse than an army of ghosts?"

Dougal led the team to the mouth of the alley, which opened up on a wide street that had once been a center of commerce in the city. As he reached the street, Dougal stepped back and waved his arms to present the scene to the others. "What's worse?" he said. "All the bodies from which they came."

The bones, armor, and weapons of the soldiers that had been fighting at the time of the Foefire littered the streets. Most of the skeletons lay there still intact, having had to endure only a couple of centuries of weather and sun. Unlike on other battlefields, birds and other animals refused to pick at the flesh here, the ghosts and the Foefire itself keeping them far away.

The first bodies lay at the mouth of the alley, and as Gullik brushed past one of them, it fell to pieces. The bones clattered and the armor clanged on the cobblestones, startling them all. Gullik cursed his clumsiness, then withdrew behind Dougal again.

"Nothing is holding those bodies together but memories," said Riona.

"Those memories are fading fast," said Dougal. He pointed at a small square that the street opened onto. "That's the way we're headed."

"And where are we going?" asked Ember.

"Ultimately, to the royal treasury, beneath the palace. Finding a way down once we reach it is another challenge. When Adelbern set off the Foefire, the buildings were shifted, and some of the lower stories were crushed by the upper. The king's chamber, atop the Sunrise Tower, was mostly unscathed. It should have some access."

"You say 'should' like you do not know," said Kranxx.

"We never got that far," said Dougal. "But then, we broke into the city at night."

Dougal crept up the street slowly, picking his way past the bodies and struggling to find a path that was wide enough that he could reasonably expect Gullik to be able to navigate it. Although Dougal was certain he'd given the norn plenty of room, Gullik still bumped over an occasional body, sending bones, weapons, and armor clattering along the cobblestones.

Dougal hoped that the ghosts would not be as active now, with the sun still on the rise, as they might be at night. Due to the city's high walls and surrounding buildings, though, shadows would hold on to the night long into the day.

And despite the fact that they had previously encountered the ghosts at night, it did not mean they were afraid of the day. Or any less lethal.

Soon they reached the street that led to the main square. As they drew closer, Dougal grew more and more tense. At one point he noticed he was unconsciously holding his breath. He had to force himself to breathe.

It was then that he realized where he was. Intentionally or not, he had brought the others to the very place where he had last seen Vala and Dak alive. He had struggled so hard to blot it from his memories that he didn't recognize it at first. But when he saw a familiar set of armor lying on the street in the center of a large bloodstain that the years had not done enough to fade, it all came flooding back to him.

He knelt down next to the skeleton that had once been his friend, and he reached out to touch the front of the helmet it still wore. "Dak Turnbull," he said. "How did it all go so wrong?"

Riona came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Is it really him?" The pain on her face made her look much older.

Dougal stood up and found himself in Riona's embrace. "It's all right," she said. "Finishing the job here will make it right." Then she stopped and Dougal felt Riona's breath catch in her chest at something she saw over his shoulder.

"Oh, no," she whispered in his ear.

She might have said something else, but Dougal couldn't hear it. The sound of someone shouting from up the street drowned her out.

"Alarm! Alarm!" an ethereal, strident voice cried. "The walls have been breached! Invaders are in Ascalon City! Alarm! Alarm!"

Dougal spun around to see who was screaming at them. A ghostly figure stood across the street, pointing and yelling at Ember. She wore Ebonhawke armor and bore a greatsword in both hands. For a moment Dougal thought it was Vala herself, returned from the dead, and for that moment he was transfixed by the idea. But the mists around her face cleared to reveal a stranger, one of the watchers. That was when Dougal realized someone else was yelling at him.

"Dougal Keane!" Ember shouted. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around to look at her.

"What?" he asked, still stunned by everything roiling about in his head.

"That!" Ember stabbed a finger in the direction of another street that emptied out into the square. Dougal remembered from his research that this road led to the soldiers' barracks, although he was sure it had been centuries since anyone had slept there.

A column of ghostly soldiers stormed down that road, rushing into the main square. Dougal recognized them at once as part of the same force that had killed his friends the last time he'd braved the streets of Ascalon City. These were the spirits of people slaughtered by the Foefire, like the simple shepherds they'd met near the Dragonbrand, only far more dangerous. He gazed into their faces and saw no love there, no compassion for the living, just madness and an all-consuming lust for death.

"Bear's blood!" Gullik said as he unlimbered his axe. "This will be a battle worthy of any saga!"

"You're a fool!" said Ember. "You can't beat them all!"

"I will not die without a fight!"

"Try not dying at all!" Kranxx said as he smacked the norn on the back of the head. "Run!"

"This way!" Ember sprinted away from the column of ghosts. She moved with the lumbering grace of a lion, weaving her way between and over the bodies scattered along the ground.

"Dougal!" Riona reached for Dougal's shoulders. "We need to go!" She snatched Dougal's hand and pulled him along, following the charr. Dougal stumbled along after her as best he could, although his feet felt as if they were bound with stones.

"We can't outrun them!" said Riona. "Head back for the gates."

"Too many between there and us!" said Dougal. To the others he shouted, "Follow me! We're going to the palace!"

Riona shot Dougal a hard look, and he said, "The ghosts think as they did in life. They try not to leave the city itself. So they should not violate the king's chamber without approval." He grabbed her arm and hauled her along with him for a few steps until she was back up to speed. She punched him in the back as she finally matched his pace.

"You idiot!" she said. "Why did you wait? What did you see?"

Dougal bit his tongue. This wasn't the time for the kind of discussion such words demanded. Instead, he just ran.

They wound their way through the streets of the city, racing toward the royal chambers. Because Dougal knew the way, Ember and Gullik, still carrying Kranxx, slowed down for Riona and him to catch up. Now in the lead, Dougal sprinted straight for their goal, and hoped that it was still standing.

Ahead of them rose a pillar of light, the energies of the Foefire itself coalesced into a single blade raised against the sky. When Adelbern summoned the Foefire on the battlements, he opened a sinkhole down through the catacombs that laced the foundations of the city. From that sinkhole rose a tower of radiance, the lasting memory to his great spell.

They turned right before they reached the luminous pillar, snaking through narrow alleys half-filled with rubble, leaving the ghosts behind. At last they reached the open court before the palace itself.

Dougal's heart quailed for a moment, for the lower reaches of the palace were blocked, their entrances crushed, the upper floors pancaked onto the lower ones. A single long staircase reached up along an inner wall. Dougal checked his mental map and saw that it would lead to the royal chambers themselves.