companion outside. He and his band accompanied me into the city.
'We found the wychlaren's paths destroyed by magic-old magic-just as you no doubt have discovered. Sounds of battle drew us further into the city. Though we saw no evidence of a struggle, we drew close enough to the Shield to know for certain that no Rashemi stood guard to stop us.
'While deciding what to do, we were attacked by the Nar, as you were. We escaped, evading the spirits of this place until we found shelter. We heard your battle, and I decided to come here and speak with you.'
'Why?' Thaena asked. 'Why would you even care what happens to the wychlaren?'
Bastun thought the same question, though his eyes were more open to the bigger picture. He did not entirely trust the durthan, but he understood their point of view well enough to see their reasoning.
'Honesdy?' Anilya said, then added, 'I don't. Although my sisters and I have no use for the wychlaren, we do hold Rashemen itself precious and have no desire to suffer a Nar presence anywhere near it.'
Thaena was silent. The durthan had made a good point. Though wayward, hostile, and steeped in darkness, the durthan did profess to a certain allegiance to the land that Bastun knew might resonate with the Rashemi. They would never trust her, would fight her or her sisters on any other occasion to defend the rule of the wychlaren, but against a common foe like the
Nar… Bastun shook his head, sensing what was to come next and fearing the consequences.
'Just what is it you propose, Anilya?' Thaena asked, her tone less accusing than before.
'A truce,' the durthan replied. 'Temporary of course, but long enough that we might use our combined strength against the Creel before they become too entrenched in the Shield to root out.'
Bastun sighed, drawing an odd glance from Syrolf, whose hand never strayed from the sword at his side.
'And you feel that we cannot defeat these invaders without your help?' Duras asked, the coil of rope still in hand ready to bind the durthan at Thaena's slightest gesture.
Anilya answered unfazed and as confident as before. 'Not at all. The Creel are great warriors, but the berserkers of Rashemen are far greater.'
'Then why would we agree to fight alongside a durthan and her motley band of sellswords?' Thaena asked.
'Because of whomever, or whatever, leads the Creel,' Anilya said. 'Whatever it was that brought them into the City of Weeping Ghosts-ruins they would never normally even risk a glance at-wields a power that evaded the attentions of the wychlaren and the durthan. It is something to be reckoned with, something that requires magic and as much steel as can be gathered.'
Thaena nodded and Bastun's hopes faded.
'Syrolf,' the ethran said. 'Escort the durthan outside to wait with her companion.'
The runescarred warrior complied and took Anilya by the arm. Once the door was closed, Thaena turned toward the fang and looked them each in the eye. Duras stared at the unused rope in his hands.
'Are you truly considering this, Thaena?' Duras asked. 'Will we accept this proposal?'
'Pribeda, otvor vorta,' she said, quoting an old Rashemi proverb. 'Trouble is already here, Duras. We might as well open the gates and face it.'
She held her head high as she addressed the fang.
'This is our only hope to protect the Shield. If any of you find fault in this truce, let it be known now. I will force no one to fight alongside an enemy. The felucca is ready to sail for those who wish to leave.'
None of the fang met her gaze, but neither did any rise to leave or voice any objection. They would follow their ethran to their deaths if they must, despite the company she chose to march alongside them. Bastun could hear the whispering sigh of relief that Thaena let out behind her mask, and he found he did not envy her position.
She and Duras began preparations for the march to the Shield. The fang gathered their supplies and rechecked their bandages in relative silence. Thaena approached Syrolf and the warriors outside with the same decision moments later. Though Syrolf balked and grumbled more than the others he did not leave. For this, Bastun found himself thankful for Syrolf's presence, even when the warrior came to collect the vremyonni once again under his watchful eye.
The snow had thinned outside to only a light dusting of small flakes, but lightning still flashed silently though the clouds. Anilya and Ohriman led the procession toward the sellswords she claimed were waiting for their return. Bastun was eager to be on their way to the Shield. If what Anilya said was true, he would have to assume that the worst was likely to occur. Though the wychlaren venerated the Shield as a well-placed outpost from which to guard Rashemen's borders, there was another power to the Shield that was a secret even among their numbers.
Fire and Narfell may have broken the city, but ice and what lay in the Shield, unnamed, had destroyed it.
He stared after Thaena, wondering how he might gain her trust. He imagined possible conversations full of explanations and memories of their old friendship. To gain her trust again might mean the difference between life and death for the fang. In his heart though, he wanted her to look upon him as she once had, to see understanding in eyes that time lost had forged into an almost mythical beauty. His pace quickened slightly. For so long he had discounted the thought that he might be in love with her as the fantasy of a young boy, or the foolish musings of a man out of touch with reality. But if she could be made to see him as he truly was…
Shaking his head, he smirked, intrigued to find those longings still alive and well within him. Since the trial he had foregone hope of anything meaningful in Rashemen, and he kept his focus on a new life in exile. The life of a criminal.
Though no solid evidence linked him to Keffrass's death, he had felt the rage cast flames through his hands, found the dying body, smelled the smoke and burned flesh. The staff, wordlessly handed to him, bore the scar of his guilt.
And the scrolls of Shandaular… missing, or had he destroyed them?
Slogging through the snow, he pulled his cloak tight around him. Lost time rested on his shoulders like a perching dragon, the coils of its long tail squeezing his chest and silencing his futile protests. He could almost feel Syrolf's breath on the back of his neck, and he increased his speed again, pushing through the snow.
Chapter Five
They called themselves the Swords of the Cold Road, warriors of various nationalities who'd drifted to the Great Dale and Narfell to find bloody work on the trade road running north and south through both lands. Bastun stood waiting for some treachery to be unveiled by the durthan and her twenty-odd henchmen as the two groups met outside a half-destroyed temple to an unknown deity. The Ice Wolf fang kept to themselves, staring down Anilya's sellswords as Anilya and her men approached quietly, weapons sheathed and packs ready for travel.
Bastun wished they would do something obvious to justify his suspicion. The fact that they took half the road as agreed by Thaena and Anilya, trading only a few threatening stares with the Rashemi, unnerved Bastun even more. The fang who wished nothing but to be rid of him were on his right and a band of lawless cutthroats on his left. In the center, he trudged along.
Moving carefully through the ruins, they took several alternate paths to avoid possible ambush points. It was not long before they reached the edge of the first wall, the original defensive wall of a young Shandaular. The chill that Bastun detected as he passed beyond the rubble of that wall crackled in the Weave-and it had little to do with winter.
Few buildings could be seen in the destruction that greeted them in the inner city. Bare foundations lay cracked and half-buried by crumbling stone. Architectural style was lost to the ravages of war and time. Trapped in the ice were bits of bone, hair, and scraps of cloth. Shandaular here was a maze of winding streets, piles of rubble, and the occasional discernable structure that had somehow survived and been left to stand as mute testament to a past that had once been civilized.
Ancient maps of the vremyonni, held together only by cantrips and wishful thinking, laid themselves out in Bastun's mind. He reconstructed street corners and old fountains in his head as they wound steadily northeast past the worst of the ruin.
The feel of fragile parchment between his fingers had been one of the quiet joys of his life among the
