Beyond The Shadows by Brent Weeks Page A

least a damn good fake. “You can be the king you’ve always wished to be.”
    Lantano Garuwashi stood for a long moment, eyes hot and then cold, trapped between his desires and his honor. He swallowed.
     “You swear you will bring me my ceuros?”
    “I swear it.”
    Lantano Garuwashi took the hilt.
    Logan and Kylar rode at the head of Logan’s five hundred horse and nine hundred foot. Logan’s bodyguards rode ten paces back,
     giving them privacy. The sharpened-tooth simpleton Gnasher rode in his usual spot beside Logan, but he didn’t care what they
     might say; he just liked to be close. Kylar unrolled a worn letter.
    “Whatcha got?” Logan asked.
    Kylar gave him an inscrutable look, shrugged, and handed it to him. In small, tight handwriting, it said, “Hey, I thought
     it was my last one, too. He said I got one more for old time’s sake. He might even have been telling the truth. Be careful
     who you love. Don’t follow prophecies. Don’t let them use you to bring the High King. Your secret is your most important possession.
     You’re more important than I ever was, kid. Maybe for all those years I was just holding it for you. MAKE NO DEALS WITH THE
     WOLF.”
    “I assume this all means something to you,” Logan said.
    “Not all of it,” Kylar said.
    “Who’s the Wolf?” Logan asked.
    “Someone I made a deal with right before I found that letter.”
    “Ouch. And the High King?”
    Kylar grimaced. “That was part I was hoping you could help me with.”
    Logan thought. “There was a High King who held Cenaria and several other countries maybe four hundred years ago, but Cenaria’s
     been held by lots of different countries in the last thousand years. Sounds like an Ursuul thing. They’re the only ones in
     Midcyru in a position to rule over other kings. I’d guess they’re dredging up a prophecy to give themselves legitimacy. Is
     the secret what I think it is?” Logan asked.
    “Here we are,” Kylar said. They had circled Ezra’s Wood, looking for signs of the Lae’knaught. Kylar said it was something
     Logan needed to see for himself.
    Fifty paces away, Logan saw a wall of dead men. Hundreds of them pressed against an invisible barrier, trying to escape the
     forest. In places, bodies were piled twenty feet deep as men had clambered over the dead, hoping to reach the top of the invisible
     wall. There was no movement. No one was merely injured. Every body had been mangled, torn with sharp claws that must have
     had godlike strength. Helmets had been crushed flat. Heads were simply missing. Swords had been snapped like twigs. Even the
     horses were dead, heads torn off, sinews ripped through the skin, some muscles snapped instead of torn.
    For as far as the eye could see into the sequoys, there was only devastation, and as far as the eye could see west and east,
     Lae’knaught were pressed against an invisible wall. They’d tested every place they could before dying, and found it everywhere
     impregnable. Gore still drained from the bodies, sliding against the wall like glass, but strangely, there was no smell. The
     magic sealed in even the air.
    Logan heard vomiting from his bodyguards.
    “The villagers of Torras Bend say someone tries to go into the Wood every generation. It happens so much that their term for
     suicide is ‘walking into the Wood,’” Kylar said. Logan turned. Kylar’s eyes were hollow, stricken. “I did this,” Kylar said.
     “I lured them here so they’d fall into the Ceurans’ trap instead of you. These souls are on my tab.”
    “Our scouts heard the fighting. That’s why we held back. What you did here saved fourteen hundred lives—”
    “At the cost of five thousand.”
    “—and maybe saved Cenaria.” Logan stopped. It wasn’t making a dent. “Captain,” he said. “Bring the men forward in groups.
     I want everyone to see this. I don’t want any Cenarian to ever make the mistake we almost did.”
    Kaldrosa Wyn saluted, obviously glad to be