end?'
Shouts sounded from below, and voices echoed from within the tower. He wondered if the children were there, lying in wait for his countrymen, to send them up the stairs in bloodlust to find him.
'When Rashemen is safe,' she said sternly, her voice growing softer as she approached. 'When our people are no longer slaves. We don't have to be alone in this, you and I.'
He drew back. Though she had already tried to kill him once, he feared his attraction to her-and seemingly hers to him-more than her magic. The kindred spirit he had sensed in her since arriving at the Shield was strong and called to him. This frightened him beyond measure, for if he could find common ground with such a woman, what might that say about himself?
'No,' he said, searching her eyes for some hint of reasoning that might hear him beyond her quest for the Word's power. 'None of us are alone in this place. You were right before, about the Shield being a ghost. Its walls and towers are just bones left to dry, but the spirit remains, just like those lost in the city streets.'
'You think the Shield is alive?' she said, drawing nearer still. He tensed but did not move away.
The booted charge of the Rashemi grew closer as they climbed the stairs, and he knew he would lose this chance at stopping Anilya.
'Its past is alive. The day Shandaular was destroyed lives on,' he spoke slowly, still working things out, giving voice to his concerns. He was dimly aware that whatever charm she'd been casting was gone, and he feared the fact that it was no longer necessary. Her fingertips brushed his shoulders, and he met her gaze cautiously, grateful for the masks that prevented desire from overcoming sense. 'And as we become more aware of that past…'
'Bastun,' she said quietly.
'… it becomes more aware of us,' he said, determined to finish the thought that had plagued him. 'We're becoming a part of that day.'
'I cannot concern myself with the past,' she said, sounding almost regretful.
'I believe we'll destroy one another,' he added, still hoping to reach her, but more than aware of the staff at his side and the blade he might summon.
A silence fell between them. The moment trembled on an edge between intimacy and enmity. The Rashemi were at the last landing outside the room, nearing the door. He sensed the first mote of imperfection mar the space between he and the durthan. She blinked, slowly, the motion drawn out as he awaited some reaction to the fate that he suspected might await them.
'So be it,' she said, the words hammered into his chest even as he reluctantly raised the old staff. Anilya shoved herself away from him, falling to the floor on her hands. The axe blade screamed into being, flashing brightly. The door burst open and he paused.
The Ice Wolves charged inside, shoving the sellswords out of their path. Thaena strode in with forearms crossed and Duras close behind. Syrolf limped in with blade drawn, as they all stared at the scene before them.
Anilya lay on the floor with an arm upraised against Bastun's axe. He fell back a step, shaking his head in anger at himself for failing to anticipate her ruse. Thaena's eyes flashed, and a cruel scowl grew on Syrolf s face. The vremyonni's mind raced to come up with some explanation as he backed away from the durthan.
A faint sound drew his attention to the northwest doors. A slow cadence, like the heartbeat of a sleeping bear, stirred a primal sense of bloodlust in his veins. Not a word was spoken as the steady rhythm of beating drums shook the air.
Lament the day that Narfell won, and woe to those were there,
When black wings rose among the char of fallen
Shandaular; When Seven sang a mournful dirge within the hollow Shield, Where restless dead lie still, waiting, to rise and serve again.
The Nentyarch's son, by sword and curse, to tower tall he strides, At morning light, for Breath and Word, still there his fury came; Though cold he found among the fire, he mourned forgotten Flame. Within the walls, inside the halls; to speak the Word that no one heard, Of the Shield and break its silence. Of the Shield and break its silence.
— excerpt from the Firedawn Cycle, canto XII
Chapter Nineteen
'Jhe walls and floors vibrated with the sound of Creel war drums.
Thaena strode into the room as Bastun and Anilya separated before her. The durthan pulled herself to her feet defensively, her eyes never leaving the vremyonni. Bastun lowered his axe.
The ethran stood between them, looking from one to the other as the Ice Wolves filed into the room, the drums affecting them much as they had Bastun-hands on weapons, eyes narrowing, and breathing becoming short and controlled. He imagined the Creel would be in for a shock if they expected their drums to inspire fear.
Thaena's gaze rested upon Bastun as she called out orders to the fang.
'Syrolf, get those doors secured,' she said.
The runescarred warrior led several men to inspect the heavy iron doors, which appeared to have opened sometime in the recent past despite the ice and rust which should have sealed them tight. Duras approached, followed by more of the fang, and Bastun backed away from them, a familiar ache growing in his head.
Thaena gestured and continued, 'Restrain the vremyonni and stick close to the durthan until we know what we're dealing with.'
Bastun's hand was nowhere near the Breath, yet spirits appeared behind the nearing Rashemi. Only faint outlines and bright eyes, they looked down upon him like judges as they walked through and around his countrymen. The pain increased, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. The Breath pulsed like a living thing at his side, growing heavier. He fell to one knee, staring at the floor as the dust appeared to shift and move beneath his feet. Tiny at first, shadows bled through the stone and welled around his boots.
The sorrowful thoughts of the invading mind pushed against his will. Voices whispered throughout the chamber, and Duras stopped, the fang turning their eyes to the ceiling and floors as a thin umbral veil darkened the tower. Curses echoed between the sound of the drums and whispers. Bastun's staff clattered to the floor, rolling away as he clutched the sides of his head, fighting the urge to escape, to wield the Breath and face the enemies separating him from the Word.
Rough hands gripped his shoulders and slammed him against the wall. The sound of the drums shook the stone, and he could not separate the cadence from his own heartbeat. The foreign mind, that face in the mirror, leaked its sorrow, anger, and indignation into his thoughts.
'Why?' he whispered through clenched teeth, not sure if the question was his own. The distant banging of swords on shields reverberated in his mind, joining the drums as the past again imitated the present. He spoke to that spirit in the blade. 'Why did you do this?'
'What are you doing, Bastun?' Thaena asked as she stared at the creeping shadows and watched as her men slowly devolved into a barely held rage. Rounding on him she grabbed his robes and pulled him close. Dreamlike, he imagined he could see the children's dark madness swimming in her eyes as she shouted at him, 'What have you done?'
He heard her voice, but the answer that came streaming forth was not his own. The words he spoke had no meaning to him, the language strange and familiar all at once. He babbled forth anger and tears, a wellspring of loss that he could not control. The children wept with him, the whispers broken by quiet choking sobs. Trapped within memories that did not belong to him, he struggled to decipher bits of the language that escaped him.
'Something's wrong with him, Thaena!' Duras yelled over the cacophony of noise. 'He is not doing this!'
She released Bastun's robes, her hands shaking as she reached for a small dagger at her belt, her eyes darting toward Duras. Thin tendrils of shadow laced her wrists as she wrapped her fingers around the dagger's handle.
Bastun's words came slower, slurred and broken as he fought to regain dominance over the possession. He did not fully comprehend the language he had spoken or the emotion it evoked, but the Breath, closer and closer to
