At the last word pain flared, and he was thrown from the portal stones and slammed on his back. He lay there, measuring his breathing, power still vibrating beneath his skin. Taking up his staff, he watched the runes waver once, but their light resumed unabated. He gaped in frustration, gripping the staff with white knuckles as he turned to the battle.
Frustration and the sudden need to fight filled him. They were not disappointed. One of the sobbing undead charged him from the right. The axe blade screeched from his staff, and he slashed at the thing's dripping eyes. It stumbled backward, the sockets of its eyes now joined by a deep wound through its face. It came on still, shrieking as it swiped at his arm. Its bony fingers tore through his robes and skin, the injury burning as the claw drew back to strike again.
Ignoring the wound, Bastun slashed, nearly severing the creature's arm at the wrist. Before the undead could recover Bastun summoned a quick spell. The words flew across his tongue and a wave of energy pulsed from his open palm. Struck by the spell, the soldier faltered and stumbled backward. The wheep's lifeforce chilled Bastun's flesh as it drained into him, its eyes ceasing their constant stream of black tears. A single moan escaped the thing before it collapsed and lay still.
Anilya passed him, nodding her approval as he turned to face the next undead.
Falling back to call upon another spell, Bastun paused as a wavering sound caught his attention. A ripple of power flashed through the room, silencing all but the wails of the spirits trapped in the portal. The undead soldiers stopped fighting, facing the maelstrom of energy above the portal and whimpering as it began to fade. The fang took advantage of the pause and hacked the soldiers to the ground. Their inhuman cries grew weaker as the portal's glow flickered several times and went dark.
Duras shook his head. The strange light disappeared from Syrolf s eyes. Dazed, the other scouts all fell to the ground. Bastun exhaled and dismissed the axe-blade from his staff, feeling every muscle scream for immediate rest. He gazed in wonder at the portal, dormant once again.
As the last of the undead were left in pieces on the ground, several Rashemi howled in victory. Ohriman and his sellswords celebrated less vocally and found places to sit and rest their weary sword arms. Thaena attended to the wounded, and no one acknowledged the lone vremyonni or his efforts in their victory.
Bastun sat near the shattered blocks of the portal archway and studied the relic and the unfamiliar magic carved in its surface. The portal was to have been the ancient Nentyarch s prize, a gateway to the far south and expansion of the empire, but this portal was only a shadow of that which Shandaular had contained. The roots of the city's destruction lay in the shattered portal's dark elven runes, yet the full purpose to which they had been put, the scrolls had hinted, still lay ahead of him, within the Shield's defenses.
The rustle of robes behind him disturbed his thoughts. Turning, he found Anilya regarding him coolly from behind her dark mask-not the mask he had hoped to see. He sighed at his own foolishness, once again happy for his own mask and the emotions it hid.
The durthan crossed her arms and tilted her head.
'Yes?' he asked, wondering what she was thinking.
'Well done, vremyonni,' she answered and winked at him before turning away to join Ohriman and her men.
Bastun resumed his study of the portal stones and tried to appear nonplussed by the durthans attention.
Chapter Six
Grunts of pain echoed softly in the hall as the warriors bound their wounds with strips of cloth or leather. Thaena saw to a few of them, but mostly they worked on their own injuries, leaving the ethran to speak words of peace for the spirits of three warriors who had fallen to the weeping undead. She prayed that they might find their way home and strengthen Rashemen in death just as they had in life. The traditional benediction felt awkward within the cursed city.
The others sat by and told tales of the warriors' lives, honoring their memories in the tradition of the berserkers. Duras stared hard at the bodies of men he had led into death. Bastun stayed close to the portal, away from the others, but listening closely and respecting the warriors' sacrifice in his own way.
Though weary, Bastun could not force his eyes away from the broken archway. He had tried several times to unravel small bits of the old runes, to decipher their meaning, but their makers had worked the spells in a time of old and secret magic.
With the vremyonni, he had studied what little history had been available about the Ilythiiri, an ancient nation of elves lost to their own power millennia ago. Though the Ilythiiri had left the surface of the world, bits of their sorcery still remained in places like Shandaular. The shattered portal, like all the city's dead, had little resemblance to what it had been in life, yet in death it had also refused to lay quiet.
Fearful of surrounding enemies and the growing darkness in the western forests, King Arkaius had used knowledge gleaned from the Ilythiiri runes for his own ends. Just as a city had grown around the portal, Bastun feared others might also gather around the table of time to steal scraps they neither earned nor fully understood.
From the corner of his eye Bastun noticed Anilya watching him. Her interest in the portal was no mystery. A durthan could always be counted on to seek out possible power or advantage over the wychlaren, but the way she studied him was unnerving. Closing his eyes, he shut out the world, alone behind his mask and preparing himself for the last trek to the Shield. There he would find more of the Ilythiiri runes, twisted by a desperate king, and he hoped time had molested them with naught but dust and ice.
Hearing footsteps approaching from behind, Bastun sighed and opened his eyes. Syrolf knelt beside him with a cold look on his runescarred features.
'What are you doing, exile?' he said, his eyes narrow. 'Covering your tracks?'
Bastun took a deep breath. 'I am trying to discover what happened here and why,' he said evenly.
'Ah, I see,' the warrior nodded then smiled conspiratorially. 'So it wasn't you I saw, here, in this spot, commanding these stones?'
'I managed to stop them, yes,' Bastun replied as Syrolf stood and looked down at him.
'Interesting, that,' the warrior said as he paced alongside the portal. 'You knew just what to do, didn't you? Came to where you'd be needed.'
Bastun stood, staff in hand, breathing measured. Syrolf's suspicions were tiresome, and Bastun had no desire to justify them.
'I followed my instincts,' he said, realizing that though he kept his hands to himself, his sharp tongue was bound to do just as much damage. 'I followed them toward the spells that I could do something about. I didn't think to try bashing away at the dried-out corpses protecting it. How did that work out? You didn't seem quite yourself when we ran into each other.'
'Men died in that battle, exile!' Syrolf stepped closer, shoulders squared and jaw clenched. 'You would dare disrespect them?'
'No,' Bastun answered, matching the warrior's stance. 'Not them, just-'
'Syrolf!' Duras interrupted, placing a long arm across the runescarred warrior's chest to separate the pair. 'Stand down. I'll leave no more dead here than have already fallen.'
'He mocks our dead!' Syrolf fumed, a murderous glint in his eye. His raised voice echoed through the chamber, drawing the attentions of everyone to the argument. 'We bleed for a traitor and he uses us for his own ends!'
Syrolf's hand strayed dangerously close to the sheathed sword at his side as he pushed into Duras's outstretched arm.
'You have no right in this Syrolf,' Duras said, struggling to keep the warrior back. 'You would disobey the ethran? Do not be a fool! Stand down!'
Thaena approached, watching the conflict coolly. Bastun had no intention of fighting Syrolf, but he would not back down. He would defend himself if necessary. As it was few trusted him, but any show of weakness among the Rashemi would only add to his troubles.
'Lack of evidence has been a convenient problem, hasn't it?' Syrolf said and looked at Bastun. 'The exile has
