Of course, he thought, it’s vain to think that I am being drawn to anything. More likely the Sovereign Host, or the Dragon Eberron itself was drawing the Sphere to this time and place, looking to remove it from this world by trapping it in its own corrupted pattern. I’m no more than a piece of the puzzle to make it happen.
Then he remembered Keiftal’s words from seemingly so long ago: “You can accomplish things that can no longer be done any other way.”
Midnight drew nigh, and the phantoms became more real. He knew from experience that the ghosts of those who fought and died here all lingered about the area, but tonight they took on the most substantial form he had ever seen, manifesting with a clarity he didn’t expect. Heretofore, the apparitions had been ghostly, wispy, hideous caricatures of soldiers of all races. But tonight, they seemed like true ghosts.
Above, lit by a phosphorescent campfire, he saw the banner of Aundair, a resplendent dragonhawk on a blue field. A military camp resolved into being all around him, jumbled by the translucence of the spirits.
Repetitive experience over the last two years made it difficult for Teron not to attack the apparitions as they formed, but he restrained himself.
An Aundairian guard leveled a spear at him. “Halt! Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m from the monastery,” he answered.
“The monastery was destroyed last year,” retorted the guard. “I heard there were no survivors.”
“Destroyed?” echoed Teron, feigning surprise. “How?” The guard looked suspicious, so Teron held up his hands consolingly. “I was on a mission deep in the Reaches,” he lied. He patted his hand on the black leather bag. “I was supposed to recover this, and I just got back. Here, here’s my papers,” he added. He showed his papers to the guard but put them away quickly before the guard saw the date written by the issuing official.
The soldier relaxed somewhat. “All right, move along.”
“What happened to the monastery?” Teron asked.
The soldier leaned on his spear and shuddered. “We’d been camped just over there, about ten miles or so, waiting for the Thranes to move. Then … I don’t know what it was, but one morning we heard this terrible row come over the plains, and this vast chill shadowed the air. Our scouts came in and told us not to go to the monastery. Now here we are anyways, and I wish we’d never come. This place just felt wrong, understand? There’s this.”
A horn sounded in the night, and soldiers raised the rallying cry. “Thranes! “yelled the guard. “Sneak attack!” He turned and charged off into the night.
Teron continued moving toward what he believed to be the center of the Crying Fields. The battle spilled out near him, Aundairian soldiers engaging Thranes in a ragged, chaotic melee. One Thrane eviscerated his foe and charged Teron, waving a scimitar. Teron tried to dodge, but the Sphere he carried resisted the sudden movement, and the bag’s straps held him in place. The Thrane swung his scimitar down to where he expected Teron to move, and the ghostly blade traced only a long, thin slice in Teron’s arm.
Teron kicked out quickly, but his foot passed harmlessly through the ghostly form. The Thrane turned for another attack, and Teron quickly extricated himself from the bag’s straps. The soldier swung overhand, intending to split Teron like a fish. The monk ducked and rolled beneath the hanging leather bag. As he rolled, he heard a loud clang as the Thrane’s scimitar struck the Sphere and shattered. Teron rolled cleanly through the Thrane’s legs and to his feet. He turned to strike the Thrane, but the soldier, seeing his weapon gone and a monk ready to strike, turned and fled.
Teron looked at the bleeding cut on his arm. He had never been wounded so … so physically before. Above, the last wisp of Eyre slipped behind Therendor’s shield. They were not quite yet in conjunction, so he knew the dangers would only grow. And while he could strike back by focusing his magic, he knew he did not have the ability to fight all the way to his destination.
He grabbed the Sphere and moved on to where he believed the center of the Crying Fields to be, trying to stay low and unseen. He cowered like a camp follower, hoping that by acting non-threatening, he’d be ignored. He moved along through the fields, surrounded by knots of soldiers fighting, killing. In his years in the Quiet Touch, he never saw armies this large clashing, and he realized that indeed this area held the dead from many long years of war, all returned to fight once more.
He passed into a Thrane camp, curiously quiet but surrounded by the sounds of battle as its occupants fought against threats at all quarters. He looked around, but the ghostly remnants of tents, wagons, soldiers, and corpses littered the area, obscuring the terrain. He realized that he could no longer orienteer himself toward the center; he was as close as he could reasonably get.
“Psst! Brother!” He heard a female voice, speaking common with an Aundairian accent. In the darkness a shadow moved, hunkered low, silent as it walked. Teron moved over toward it.
In the moonlight he saw a young monk, probably just past the examination. Her head was shaven and her tunic ill-fitting. The young woman darted her head back and forth. “Where are the reinforcements?” she asked. “Prelate Quardov said he’d bring reinforcements, but I haven’t seen them anywhere! Have you seen them?”
Teron shook his head.
“I have to get out of this camp and back to the monastery,” she said. “I think they’re going to attack in the morning. But we can’t prevail against these numbers. I fear the monastery will be burned …” She looked about, feverish in her determination, and snuck away without another word.
Her words gave him pause to think. Keiftal had often told of how the Thrane army had camped for days near the monastery before they used the Sphere. He was in a large Thrane camp. He just had to find the general’s treasure tent.
He smiled. This was exactly what those in the Quiet Touch were trained for.
Thranes were nothing if not efficient. When on the march, the army always organized its camp exactly the same way. That way, soldiers could move easily about in any camp, no matter how the units or soldiers might get shifted around. It also meant that those infiltrating the camp had an easier time of it. Teron got some bearings by checking the arrangement of the wagons and scouting the pathways between banks of tents. Once he had deduced where in the camp he was, he moved toward the command center.
He moved along the open walkways, keeping to one side so as to seem inconsequential, shuffling his feet as though tired, hanging his head subserviently. He had done it often before, and he moved not simply as one who belonged there, but as one who was weary of being there and wanted to go home. In a sense, his posture was no disguise at all.
Ahead, he could see guards around the command center, illuminated by the flames of a ghostly fire. As he drew close, the fire grew stronger, starker, changing from an echo of a fire to what appeared to be the real thing. Teron looked up. Somewhere behind Therendor, invisible to mortals, Eyre moved closer to its appointed conjunction. Teron wished he could see it to better gauge what time he had left.
Regardless, he knew his time was running out.
Then a strong tenor voice broke through the darkness. “Drop it, monk.”
Teron whipped around, shielding the Orb behind him. There was nothing to be seen in the darkness.
He heard Praxle chuckle in the moonlit night. “Now how will you use your big ugly fists, monk?” he asked mockingly. “How will you strike that which you cannot see?”
Teron spun in place as the Orb continued its sedate progress forward.