Embers of a Broken Throne (7 page)

C
hapter 10

T
hey spent the night trying to put as much distance between themselves, the town, and the battlefield. When they finally slowed to a walk, the encounter replayed in Ancel’s head with vivid clarity. Although they had won it didn’t feel like a victory to him. A cohort of over four hundred had been reduced to forty men and women. He’d lost three Pathfinders. The Seifer and Nema warriors were dead, their pets with them. The one blessing was that Mirza suffered only minor wounds Ryne was able to mend. His own lack of serious injury was more the cause of the protection his aura offered than his own skill. He’d been reckless in order to rally his men.

Worse yet was he doubted anyone but Ryne knew how close they’d come to death. In Forging the construct army, he’d used a great deal of his Prima. During the fight, he’d almost called on the voices within Mater to assist him, accepted their power. He shuddered to think what might have happened then, of being corrupted by them.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to himself. Losing Kachien in Randane should have taught him better.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Ryne said.

Ancel glanced over. So mired was he in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed Ryne’s approach across the frost-covered terrain.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Ancel asked more bitterly than he intended. “People died because of me, a lot of them, many essential to our cause. And for what? My ego? Because I wanted to set an example to future deserters? I may have acted as if this was about saving them, about crushing the shadelings and Amuni’s Children, but it also concerned my wish to dissuade others, my word that I would make those who stole from us pay.”

“Sometimes examples are needed.”

“Not at this price.”

“Then take it as a lesson, and find the positives.”

“I don’t see any,” Ancel said.

“Because you’re not allowing yourself to. Your emotions are in control rather than you.”

Closing his eyes for a moment Ancel submerged himself into the Eye. He pushed his anger outside, and replaced it with calm. When he felt as if he stood in the middle of an undisturbed pond, he analyzed recent events.

He opened his eyes. “We stopped some shadeling creation, destroyed what they might have added to their numbers already, and we discovered how our group can kill vasumbrals. It also makes me think they are those among us who aspire to belong to Amuni’s Children.”

Ryne looked at him askance. “How so?”

“They used me. It was common knowledge what my response would be if any dared steal and desert us again.”

“Perhaps you’re not as frightening as you think.”

“It’s not so much about me as it is that they were willing to risk the hangman’s rope, the Green Wastes, and the threat of shadelings. It leads me to believe they wanted someone to chase after this group. Maybe they didn’t expect you and myself, but once that became obvious they sent an army they thought strong enough to take us.”

Ryne nodded, lips pursed. “If not for Irmina’s zyphyl they might have succeeded. Or at the very least forced us to flee.”

Ancel glanced over to where Irmina rode next to the Dagodins. Their gazes locked, and she offered him a smile. Weariness showed in the tightness of her eyes. The horses’ hung their heads, and the men and women rode with shoulders slumped. Some shook themselves from dozing in the saddle.

“Past time to make camp,” Ancel said. With the recognition of their fatigue he noticed his own aches.

“Agreed.” Ryne nodded toward a hill. “The base of that would offer a place to stay warm and the hilltop would give our guards a good vantage.”

“Mirz,” Ancel called as he angled to the likely campsite.

Mirza spurred his horse forward. “Yes?”

“We’ll make camp there. Charra and I will take first watch. Get as much rest for you and the others as you can.”

After a dip of his head Mirza rode to the Dagodins. A brief conversation passed before relieved expressions crossed many a face.

The soldiers settled in under blankets, bunched close together among the rocks. Ryne was a bigger mound away from them. Ancel sat with his back to a boulder on the hilltop, Charra’s white form a few steps away. Irmina had chosen to say close to him.

“You should get some sleep also,” she said.

“I can’t. Enough people have died on my watch. I won’t lose another. Not today.”

“My zyphyl will keep watch. No shadeling can get close without him sensing anyway. Even if they use a portal, he will sense the Forging.”

“It didn’t seem to make much of a difference earlier.” He wanted to words back even as he said them.

A brief silence followed before she answered. “I didn’t know what to look for then. Now, I do. Besides, he says the shadelings found us by use of Ryne’s Forge that destroyed the Wraithwood.”

He faced her, frowning. “Is it suggesting Ryne did it on purpose?” He didn’t wish to comprehend such a suggestion much less believe it, but the animosity between her and Ryne had become obvious to him. Whenever he broached the subject she avoided it.

“No,” she said, waving him off, “nothing of the sort. Just that the shadelings were able to find us because of his Forge. When I told my pet of what happened in Aldazhar, he felt Amuni’s Children might have been tracking us in that fashion all along.”

Ancel gave the suggestion some thought. At various times during their trek there had been cause to use powerful Forges. When they first entered the Sands of the Abandoned they had fought off a cohort of Ashishins and Dagodins sent by the Tribunal. Another time they battled a shadebane. There was also the instance where the Forgers delved beneath the Sands to locate water. Last had been an attempt to divert or lessen one of the storms that seemed to chase them since entering Ostania. They had failed in that, but the amount of power expended had been great. The various shadeling attacks during the journey seemed random, but now they made sense.

Coincidence, my students, is nothing more than the birth child of intricate planning.
Galiana’s favorite saying echoed in his head.

“Your pet might be right,” he said.

“That’s not all.”

Eyebrows raised, he waited.

“The earlier storm,” she paused as if uncertain of her words, “the zyphyl helped to lessen it. He says these storms aren’t natural.”

The statement was surprising. “A Forging?”

Irmina closed her eyes, brows furrowed for a moment. “He still won’t say.” She opened her eyes. “But insists they aren’t natural.”

“Can it help with any others? It would go a long way to us reaching Benez.”

Again, she concentrated. “He can divert them, but not stop them.”

“Good enough.” He considered their entire conversation. As much as he wanted to be the one to guard them, he needed rest, a chance to replenish at least a tiny bit of his power. Many a bad decision had been made due to fatigue. “I’ll trust your pet to let us know of any danger,
but
Charra will share the duty.” The daggerpaw made a low sound in his throat that Ancel recognized to be reassurance.

She smiled, and it warmed his heart. “Then come help keep me warm.” She raised her blanket.

Without needing further invitation, he stood and walked over to her. When he lay down behind her the day’s burdens eased from him. Sighing, he hugged her close, taking in the scent of her, and soon fell asleep.

Over the next four days Ancel pushed them as hard and fast as he dared. From time to time they encountered stray shadelings or a few still on their trail. The fights were short and brutal. They lost four more Dagodins.

In order to prevent the chance of being tracked, they avoided Forging whenever possible. Not that he minded. The essences’ corruption made him wary of touching Mater. He witnessed the occasional distorted haze on more than one occasion, and concluded it to be part of the change. Whenever he did Forge, he used a tiny amount of Prima, not wanting to exhaust his stores. The one advantage to doing so was the zyphyl’s report that the shadeling trackers couldn’t see Prima. As long as they weren’t Skadwaz. Ryne had agreed.

Ancel had expected to meet the caravan after the second or third day, but they had obviously made better time than he anticipated. After the fourth day, worry began to set in, but by evening all was well. Through the zyphyl Irmina had seen the refugees.

The reunion with the caravan was both happy and sorrowful. More grief than the former. Father greeted him with smiles before going into one of his rages, and Idnal was forced to subdue him.

As Ancel gazed at the Cogal Drin Mountains towering before them, he wondered what trials waited. The feeling that things had just begun would not leave him, not even when Irmina snaked an arm around his waist and leaned her head on his arm.

I
ntermezzo
1

T
hrough his looking glass’ short metal tube Kester Merin watched the last of the strangers head into the pass, the dying vestiges of sunlight glinting off helms and armor. He ignored the misty swirls of his breath as it spiraled up. Why anyone would want to find a home in Benez’s ruins was beyond him. The spirits of the dead infested the place, part of the lingering taint left by the Shadowbearer and the atrocities he committed. It was said the man’s ghost roamed the ancient structures, and killed anyone who sought to rob the graves and the city itself of the riches rumored to be buried there. Kester knew of at least a dozen treasure hunters who’d braved these same mountains to venture into the cursed city. None of them ever returned. And yet that did not deter others from this same arduous trek.

Approaching Benez from the south was out of the question. The Netherwood spread southwest from near the Vallum of Light all the way east to the Sorrowful Hills. Near impenetrable, it was a godless place of massive black trees, the reek of decay, brooding shadows, and deformed beasts. He shuddered when he thought of the wood.

As a young hunter renowned for his penchant to seek out infamous creatures, for his willingness to take risks, his bravery, and not to mention his skill, he’d sought to make an even bigger name for himself. The monsters he encountered in the Netherwood had disabused him of such notions. Wolves as big as a pony. Giant dartans, each of their six legs the size of a man, their snake-like necks thick enough to swallow a body whole, and their shells harder than any armor. Rockhounds so large that they put shame to the mountain lions he hunted up here in the Cogal Drin’s heights. With their bodies more stone than flesh, they had shrugged off his arrows as if the steel tips were mere nuisances. The worst of them all were the daggerpaws, manes bristling with hardened bones in the shape of swords long enough to skewer a man whole.

No sane person ventured into Benez.

What he’d seen in the Netherwood and the occasional howls and wails that echoed up through the passes to reach him here at the refuge in the Cogal Drin Mountains made him think of wraithwolves and other shadelings. He could easily picture the wolves, fur bristling black, walking on two legs like the stories claimed. The shadows flitting between the trees gave him nightmares of the tales he heard from old veterans, of men who were more smoke than flesh, whose tainted blades transformed the living into one of the shade’s creatures.

“They’re mad,” Abner said from next to him. The overly tall, wiry Felani had his own horror stories of Benez.

“Hmm, Hmm,” Kester replied absently.

“Worse than mad.” This from Nico, their Astocan counterpart. Mist spilled from the slits on the side of his neck that helped him to breathe. “Keeping daggerpaws for pets.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“And wolves,” Abner said as if they could forget.

When Kester first encountered the group he’d shot an arrow at one of their daggerpaws, thinking the creature was wild. The animal had shifted at the last moment, its bone hackles springing up into hardened knife-like protrusions that ran from its neck to its tail. His arrow clattered away harmlessly. Before the daggerpaw attacked, a man stepped from around the rocky outcrop. With fur covering only his chest and groin, standing a bit over six feet, and built like a draft horse, the stranger stared Kester down and strode through the snow as if the wind howling across the path was a summer breeze. Several other men and women followed, each capable of passing for the scout’s family, and more than one with large wolves or daggerpaws at their sides. Not far behind them came the remainder of the procession, many of them armed.

“What do you think they need all those soldiers for?” Nico asked.

Kester took the tube from his eye. “Who knows? Perhaps they’re finally going to cleanse the ruins. Whatever it is, it’s no business of ours.” He drew his cloak closer around him, gaze still focused on the strangers.

And to think that lot had tried to convince him to accompany them. According to them, the way back was no longer safe. As if it ever was with the treacherous slopes slippery from spring’s thaw and the risk of mountain lions and daggerpaws. But Kester had nothing to fear up here. He called this home, his hunting ground, the place that provided him with his livelihood. A few months from now he would return to civilization with his store of pelts and ivory teeth that would fetch a good price from Harna all the way to Cardia. Ten years he’d been cooped up here. He’d be damned if he returned empty handed.

Kester Merin bent and grabbed a fistful of cold earth. He cast it out before him and said a prayer to Humelen. Perhaps the god could keep those strangers safe.

Not that he felt they needed a great amount of protection. He wasn’t a man of the world, but he was no fool. He knew Ashishins and Devout when he saw them. Those distinctive pins depicted the sun with lightning bolts striking in front of it. The Lightstorm, symbol of Granadia’s Iluminus and its Tribunal. A matching insignia stood out on more than one tabard worn by the soldiers.

He placed his looking glass to his eye once more. Two flags now hung limp above the disappearing convoy. The wind gusted, the standards flapping out. He gaped, his hair standing on end. He snatched the glass from his face and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Surely he was mistaken. After all, he hadn’t slept in two days. He brought the looking glass up once more.

The flags fluttered still. One, he couldn’t recall. It bore a massive wall with a shield emblazoned in front. The other he could hardly forget. It had been drilled into him. Upon the flapping canvas, a massive rent split a field of forest green trees.

The Setian Quaking Forest.

Any thoughts of his trade goods fled Kester Merin’s mind. Ten years he’d lived at this particular post after relieving the last watcher. In the years since his conscription by the Felani King for the task of lookout in this vale before the final approach to Benez, none but those treasure hunters or archaeologists had ventured this way.

Kester Merin turned and ran, slogging through snow to his horses at the stables next to their outpost. He would need the fastest and most sure-footed. As he threw his saddle onto his mount the other two men caught up.

“What did you see, Kester? What’s gotten into you?” Abner rested a hand on the horse’s neck.

Kester glanced first at the hand and then at Abner. If not for the man being a fellow Felani he would have relieved him of it. “Those people … they were Setian.”

Both men stared at him, eyes wide.

“No, that can’t be,” said Nico in his thick Astocan accent. “The Setian are all dead. Perished during the War of Remnants.”

“I know what I saw. Those were Setian flags their bannermen unfurled.”

“But they had Devout and Ashishin with them,” Nico protested.

Kester shook his head. “If anything it’s more proof. The old stories say the day the Setian return, they will do so with Ashishin at their beck and call.” He climbed into the saddle and gazed down at the men who he’d come to call friends. “I wouldn’t stay around if I were you. Nothing but bad things follow their kind. You know what they say: when the Setian appear so do—”

His words died in his throat at a sound like a sword slicing the air. An awful stench rose, as if death itself had come striding downwind. Kester’s horse whickered, its eyes rolling. The other mounts in the stables bucked against their restraints.

Abner drew his sword and crept to the door. A few strides behind, Nico followed, his blade in hand.

From outside came shuffling footsteps and a snort. Similar noises mirrored the first.

A lump crawled up Kester’s throat as he fought against his mount. Tongue cloven to the roof of his mouth he wanted to yell a warning to his friends but the functioning half of his brain said to remain silent.

Midnight flowed past the stable’s opening, all blackness, claws, fangs, and eyes like blood. He barely got a chance to see the creature before it ripped into Abner’s chest. Blood fountained, its warmth bringing steam to the frigid air.

More footsteps. This time racing for the door.

Kester stopped pulling on his reins and kicked his stirrups. His mount leaped for the entrance at the same time that Nico plunged his weapon through the creature’s eye. Nico was withdrawing the sword when the next beast entered.

Similar to the first it was a mix of tentacles and fur. Skittering sideways on legs longer than a man that protruded from its midsection, the creature spun to face the door, its head swiveling. Deep red eyes, intelligent and malevolent, in a visage that was a mix of human and monster, took in its intended targets. It hissed, teeth and mandibles clicking, reeking like old death.

The horse barreled into it, and then was off and running. Something scrabbled behind Kester, but he refused to look back. Nico’s scream chased him before it cut off.

Head down, he urged his horse through the snow, his true purpose occupying his thoughts along with what he’d witnessed. As an Envoy, his job required him to find the closest location where he could pass word through to one of the Heralds at the Bastions of Light.

The Setian had returned, bringing with them beasts he once thought to be only stories. For the first time in his life Kester truly believed in shadelings.