Several feet away, Serevan lurched awkwardly toward the Breath on legs of bone and withered flesh. Bastun grasped upon the magic trapped in his mind. The Weave responded as he chanted, voice reed-thin and the words painful to speak. Whispering the name of the final rune, a tiny white mote of light appeared in the air and drifted toward the prince. Blue flames gathered around the light as it careened and swirled like a snowflake. Landing at the bleakborn's feet, it exploded upward, an azure bonfire of wintry chill.
Consumed by the cold lire, the prince collapsed, curling onto the floor as his last vestiges of warmth were burned away in the freezing flame. Bereft of their prince, the undead Creel moaned and howled, the vigor of their attack renewed.
Thaena summoned bright spheres of sparkling energy that danced and darted around them. Dragged by Syrolf to the wall, Bastun pushed himself up, still shaking the cobwebs from his mind, but aware enough that the sharp edge of steel on stone caught his attention.
Through the blackness of tattered garments and incorporeal shapes he could see her. She stood unharmed among the spirits, ignored by them as they screamed and clashed with the handful of Rashemi. At her feet lay the twitching, desiccated corpse of Serevan. For a moment he wondered at the image, thinking her a ghost. Despite the darkness and howling dead that separated them, he knew he looked into the durthans eyes-and he knew she was smiling. In Anilya's hand, its point resting on the floor, was the Breath.
With a casual grace she turned and left, stepping out into the winter night with all that he feared in her grasp.
Chapter Twenty-three
Newfallen snow crunched beneath Anilya's boots. The dead lay scattered around the wall-acceptable and well-planned losses in exchange for what she sought. Even the Nar had performed their duties well, buying into her tale of the risen prince and a newfound Narfell. Only the Creel had such ambition, and she had approached them fully confidant that they would believe her tale. They had followed her across plain and Cold Road to the gates of Shandaular, fearless zealots in search of destiny.
"Pity the entire tribe wasn't as foolish," she muttered and recalled the destruction of the wychlaren wards, how well it had reminded the unwitting hathrans of the true nature of the city they had chosen to entrap themselves within. As Rashemi magic failed, the Shield resumed its nightly course with a vengeance through once protected halls. Outnumbered and unprepared for the curse within the walls, all had gone mostly as expected. Except for Ohriman. She sighed, missing the tiefling's company with a passing fondness. The Breath flashed pulses of cold up her arm as she neared the entrance to the northwest tower, making her forget the fallen assassin completely.
Howls and cries still reached her from within the guard tower-the actual battle unseen for the raving wraiths' dark forms. The vremyonni, exile or not, had resisted her far more than she had expected, but his presence, and the company that it had brought, had proven a boon beyond measure. Her foray into Rashemen, posing as a traveling hathran to infiltrate the Running Rocks, had yielded more than she had hoped for and yet far less than what she needed. Finding the Breath without one of the hathrans' pet wizards was not a task she had looked forward to, but then Bastun had appeared and performed admirably.
His voice and that of Thaena's could be heard above the din behind her, hurling spells at the restless dead. The Rashemi fervor for battle was curious to her in light of their inaction against the enemies that surrounded them. Only when faced by the threats they feared did they do something other than watch and wait for the next invasion of their precious homeland. Shaking her head, she ignored the end of her convenient allies and looked instead to the task at hand.
She studied the blade of the Breath, marveling at the intricate patterns entwined along its length. Ilythiiri runes dominated much of the pattern, the long-forgotten elves' brand of magic as of yet unfamiliar to her, but its effects on the history of the world unmistakable. By magic and ambition their nation was thrown into ruin, forced into the deep of the Underdark. The origins of the drow echoed in some small part of the blade she carried and no doubt thundered through the folly of King Arkaius in the sealed chamber above.
A hoarse whispering caught her attention, and she paused on the threshold of the tower. With a wave and a word she struck the vibrating chords of the Weave and felt magic sing through the air around her. Snowflakes pulled together, gathering in clumps, compressing themselves into shards of ice that hovered and waited by her command. At a single nod she hurled them through the doorway and heard them shatter and crack.
A sharp smell of death on a winter wind wafted from within and spoke of the silence and relative peace that awaited her. Satisfied that she would remain unmolested by any remaining
Creel or the self-important shamans that led them, she entered the tower and instantly felt a charge in the air. Gooseflesh rose on her skin, and the Breath tugged at her wrist like an excited child. The first steps of a frost-shrouded stairway on her left led upward into a forbidding dark. The sword begged to be taken to its place, to the lock upon the door to which it alone was the key. Peering intently at the crossguard, she sensed a sentience inside the weapon, hidden thoughts slipping beyond her scrutiny.
Giving the sword its lead, she followed, holding on to its cold as she took the first step and breathed in a scent of power.
Bastun could number them now, counting as he did through the sweat and pain, desperately seeking the energy to keep moving. A dagger in his hand glowed a dull red as it slashed through the twisting face of a diving wraith. It felt solid only for a moment, like stabbing into loose sand being washed away by a strong tide.
"Six," he muttered, then, "Five."
Syrolf took another, his blade trailing shreds of shadow as shrieks faded to whistling on the wind. The remaining Rashemi numbered five as well, a handful of berserkers panting and heaving with each weary swing. Their famed bloodlust was cut short by the cold touch of the howling spirits. Bastun staggered along the wall, intent on following the durthan. The wraiths moved to stop his escape, the fighting Rashemi in their wake.
He slumped against the stone, catching his breath and reaching within for the strength to cast another spell. More bodies littered the floor, now visible as the wraiths' ranks dwindled. From across the chamber, heart-wrenching sobs reached his ears and he tried not to see her falling over the prone form.
Thaena had found her guardian and had broken. Her mask flung to the ground, her tears fell over Duras's face, streaming down his cheeks. The sorrow in her eyes bordered on madness. She paid no mind to the wraiths or her fallen fang. She had not seen the return and escape of the durthan. Nothing mattered to her save the love lost and all that had lain unresolved between them.
Bastun saw himself, saw the body of Keffrass, and felt the grief of that passing. He imagined his own body lying in the several places he should have died in his long path to this stretch of wall. There were no tears to pave his way into the afterlife. The empty well within him, the void he felt himself becoming, surged with something as he felt himself disgusted with the mere notion of self-pity.
He pushed away from the wall, slashing and cutting at spirits that flew too near, his other hand tracing intricate symbols in quick graceful movements as he chanted.
Four, he thought as a wraith was spitted on the blade of a berserker.
The young man's face was yet another familiar stranger, his name a mystery, though Bastun was sure he'd heard it spoken once or twice. It was a trait that he loathed finding in himself, but he did not dwell on the shortcoming.