They turned, and Bastun was pushed away from the northwest tower, away from the Word and the lingering echoes of its frozen hell. Though the prince continued to deteriorate, the vremyonni could find no opening, could not focus to summon a spell. He growled in frustration, the unnatural strength flowing through him finding purpose, and he pushed back.
His strikes were poorly timed, but Serevan moved back all the same. The Weave stirred around Bastun, and he sought its thythm as the Breath moved faster. He battered at the thin, dancing blade of the prince. The phantom scents of smoke and blood stitred him even further. Magic remained elusive, but his thoughts had cleared enough to watch the quick sword and the angle of the following thrust.
Bastun's open hand shot out, grasping the prince's sword. The searing pain in his palm was rewarded by a hiss of anger from the bleakborn. Serevan tugged the blade, drawing into bone, but still Bastun held. He imagined he could snap the weapon like a twig, but the Breath shot forward instead. It tore through the bleakborn's breastplate, scraping against ribs and exiting from his back.
Serevan's struggles stopped, and he stared at the sword inside of him. The gleaming blade dulled as its strange glow spread through the bleakborn's body. Ice formed in clumps, and the prince jerked in pain. Bastun could only stare in wonder as the Breath froze what life remained in the undead prince. Bones cracked under the pressure of newly forming ice, brittle hair split and fell away. The taste of ashes filled Bastun's mouth as Serevan's body deteriorated into a collection of brittle bones. The ancient sword's metal lost its hellborn luster, fading back to runes and small patches of rust and age.
The prince's eyes of ice looked blearily up at the vremyonni, the odd light within them flickering. He raised a skeletal hand held together only by ice and frost. His face was little more than a skull bearing the memory of flesh.
"I much prefer the dream," said a spectral voice from within the destroyed visage, followed by a dry laughter like autumn leaves in a strong wind.
The body slipped backward, falling free of the Breath, and broke as it met the wall. Though the body lay dismembered and silent, Bastun chanted, summoning the Weave to his will. He shouted, the force of the spell shattering Serevan's remains into motes of ice and fragments of bone. Gray light washed over his shoulder, and a strong breeze scattered the prince, stirring up a snowy dust that swirled on the air before drifting away.
Serevan's words haunted him as he turned in a daze to the watchtower. He slid the Breath into his belt as he approached the doorway, preparing himself for the death that surely lay within. Inside, his eyes adjusting to the dark, he found Duras in the place where he'd left him. Nearby, leaning against the wall in SyrolPs arms, lay Thaena, still and silent but for the slight rising and falling of her breast. Five of the berserkers still lived, injured and solemn, waiting with their ethran. Less than a handful of the others still stirred, lying on the floor in pain or shivering with cold.
The dim morning light grew brighter, the sun's heat causing the mists outside to shift and grow thicker. Bastun turned back to the wall, walking into the blanket of mist, and leaned against the battlements. His hands found the deep impressions where Serevan's palms had been, and he stared out into the shadows and phantoms of Shandaular.
"Is it over?" he heard the ethran whisper, her voice echoing from within the tower's all-consuming quiet. "Is it ended?"
"It is ended, ethran," said Syrolf. "It is done."
The pale light of ghostly flames drew Bastun's attention to the western gates of the city. Plumes of black smoke mingled with the mists as the memory of screams and wailing cries reached his sensitive ears. Ghosts began again their ritual-the flames, the demons, the children, their chains, and the armies of a misguided prince. Bastun pitied them, understanding the plight of being slave to an inescapable past, but he was now free and those chains would no longer hold him.
"It is truly a new day," he said under his breath.
Chapter Twenty-six
Nightal, I376DR, Year of the Bent Blade
Snow fell softly from gray skies brightened by morning's light. The day ushered in a silence that could be felt and seen around every corner, down every stairway, and hiding amidst the towering heights of each tower. It was a waiting quiet, a brief respite from the play that would erupt shortly after sundown. Even in its dormancy, Bastun could sense the strange vibrations of the Weave in Shandaular. The ability to see and feel so much that should be invisible worried him.
He found if he concentrated well enough, he could ignore the haunting memories of the Shield. The images came and went so fast they wete giving him headaches and he was grateful to be free of the barrage. Faces had appeared that he recognized as if familiar, though he could not recall the names. The cutsed walls of the Shield did not deal in names or identity, only visions and voices, fractured moments of daily life. There was much he could study and learn here, much that he felt compelled to do, but his curiosity could wait awhile longer.
He kept his hood pulled low, frightened that the places and things he had seen would be there for all to see in his stare. He touched the edges of his mask from time to time, making sure he was concealed, that no one could witness the hell that had stained him so.
With Thaena at their lead, the group set out from the Shield and into the empty streets of Shandaular. None looked back, tradition and superstition keeping them focused on the road ahead and keeping the smordanya at their backs.
Every moment passed as an eternity. Bastun gazed at the sky, guessing at the sun's position and calculating the daylight left before nightfall. Through it all, the others avoided him. He was isolated as before, but now the reasons seemed to have changed. When he caught the odd stare or two, they looked upon him with the respect given to those that wore the masks of Rashemen, of wychlaren and vremyonni. No one asked him what had occurred in the northwest tower. None whispered or repeated old rumors. They saw in him the vyrrdi, the mystery, and did not question his manner or his silence.
The feeling was uncomfortable and strange, causing him to retreat further into his deep hood. Somewhere inside, there was a sense of accomplishment and of completion that flickered to life. This too he was unused to dealing with, and he ignored it for the moment, content to assist and work against the marching armies of time that he sensed growing closer and closer despite the hours left until sunset.
Snow-covered lanes slowed progress to the docks where the Rashemi felucca had been tied. Bastun breathed deep of the outside air, looking more closely at his surroundings, seeing them for the first time in the relative light of day. The cold did not bother him in the slightest. The Flame, the ring that had protected him from Serevan's hunger and Stygia's chill still warmed him, though its effect had lessened considerably. He was grateful for the comfort but felt an odd twinge of concern at the thought of removing the ring. He clenched his fist around it, curious, but patient.
Sheets of ice across Lake Ashane gleamed a pure white, bobbing slightly, though the day would soon come when the lake's surface would move very little. The northern winter had begun, and the tendays ahead would make them look back on fitful storms and blizzards with longing for such balmy times.
The felucca was as they'd left it, securely tied, sails stowed and ready to be unfurled. Bastun stared at the hazy horizon, imagining the forests at the water's edge and searching himself for any longing to return, any sense of unfulfilled obligation he might have overlooked in his haste to leave his old life behind.