Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1)

by Hilary Thompson

  “Sounds like what I know of you, Second Son,” Coren replied, her voice glittering with warning.

  “With these wings and claws, you’ve just become the most valuable weapon the Weshen people have against the king,” Resh said, not backing away. Sy kept watching, uncertain how he could help, or even who he might side with. He understood Coren’s desires. He knew she was right about the Wesh, too. He and Resh could handle it.

  But he also knew he didn’t want her out of his sight, and including her in the rescue greatly increased their chances of getting everyone out without injuries.

  “Is that what you both want of me?” Coren asked, turning to Sy again. He blinked at her, not understanding. “Do you want me to be a weapon in the hands of men?”

  Sy startled, shaking his head.

  “Good. Because your father,” she pointed to both of them, “my General, did not want such a weapon when he was asked to reconsider. If these wings and claws are used against the Restless King, I am the only one who will wield them. Get your own,” she added, and before either of them could react, she scrambled out the window and shot into the air.

  “Nice,” Sy said, glaring at Resh. “Now I have to go find her again.”

  “Let her go,” Resh replied, shaking his head and massaging his temples with his good hand. Sy realized his younger brother suddenly looked quite tired. “She needs to figure this out. I may have said the wrong thing, but you’re doing the wrong thing. Stop trying to protect her, because she doesn’t need it.”

  Sy opened his mouth to retort, but then he realized Resh was right. On both accounts. “You can stay here in case she returns. Rest your arm. I’ll go find Shanta,” he said.

  Resh’s return smile was grateful and almost shy, the look reminding Sy of when they were just boys, still new to Weshen City and learning to be brothers and sons. Those lessons had been hard, but they had driven Sy and Resh close for many years until the hunts had begun to separate them.

  When Coren had been a girl on Weshen Isle, dreaming of freedom and the ability to travel, never once had she imagined it would come to her like this.

  She stretched her wings in the sun, still in awe of their width and strength. She marveled at how they allowed her to swoop through the treetops of the nearby forest and wondered at how natural she felt - as though she’d been in this form her whole life and only just discovered how to use it. She swung toward the NeverCross Mountains, shooting up its icy vertical face and then plummeting down again, testing her balance on the wind.

  Had it been only this morning when Sy had dragged her, helpless, from the passage? Only this morning when she thought she was dying of the Vespa’s poison? How could this form feel as strong and natural to her as the body she’d been born into?

  Even stranger, she’d eaten and drunk nothing all day, had no lemondrine tonic, and yet her strength felt immeasurable.

  She felt more than human, more than Weshen, more than creature. She felt magical, as though nothing could touch her as long as she stayed aloft in the white-blue sky.

  Certainly there were no shadows here in the clouds, and no men either.

  What did she owe anyone, after all this? Sy and Resh would rescue the slaves. Sy could teach the others to find and use their magic. She could fly away now, all the way to Sulit, and be with Kosh and Penna. They could make a new life, in a new country.

  Weshen City had not protected them, so what obligation did she have to protect the city?

  None.

  These thoughts and more like them flitted through her mind as she flew. Higher and higher, until she shot through a misty cloud. The fog and minute droplets blinded her for a second, but then she was even above the clouds. In every direction, there was white. The feathers of her wings glistened with moisture.

  Up here, Coren didn’t need to reach to feel the sources around her; they pushed against her senses, demanding her attention. She closed her eyes, drawing the water sources around her together in a palm-sized sphere that she brought to her lips.

  It was cold and clear as crystal, and she drank deeply, enjoying the freeze that slipped down her gullet and rested in her belly.

  How long would it take her to fly to Sulit? Could she cross the MagiSea without resting?

  Coren slowed her wings and leaned back, sinking backward beneath the clouds again, falling faster and faster until she righted herself just in time to perch on the top branches of an ancient tree. She wished for another message from Maren, but there was nothing up here except her. No-one to make this decision easier or harder.

  Perhaps the very form of the Vespa was a distraction, clouding her ability to decide.

  Dropping to the ground between the trees, where the foliage was too dense for flight, Coren began to walk instead, cutting a blind path through the woods. Her wings brushed the tree trunks, and her feathers acted as a thousand sensitive fingertips, letting her feel the living sources inside each tree.

  Soon she came across a narrow stream, and she began to follow it idly, her thoughts still pulsing with indecision. The sound of the water soothed her somewhat, though she would have preferred the crashing of the ocean waves and the cries of the Weshen Isle dawngulls.

  For a second, she almost imagined she did hear the snap of ocean against cliff, and the cries of the birds wheeling in the clouds. Rounding a bend in the stream, Coren stopped dead.

  The water before her was no longer empty and still, but occupied with a horror she could barely understand.

  Two stakes were plunged deep into the mud of each opposing bank, and between them slumped a young boy, each arm stretched wide and tied to a stake. He was naked from the waist up and seemed barely older than Kosh. Her heart stuttered between pangs of grief and surges of rage at whatever was happening to this child. Even as she watched, the water rushed faster and higher past his thighs, wetting the fabric in gulping splashes.

  It rose inches with every second.

  “The water will continue to rise, Nikesh, and you will drown, unless you stop this stubbornness and shift the sources away, or grow that pitiful form a little taller,” a male voice called from the opposite bank, followed by a gruff laugh. The sound of a whip snapping through the air reached Coren a second before the boy cried out mournfully - the ocean and the dawngull she had heard.

  “No-one is coming to help you,” the voice added cruelly as the boy hung his head, almost seeming to strain toward the water.

  Coren ducked behind a tree, still searching the area for the boy’s tormentor but saw no-one.

  “Shift, boy!” the voice yelled, and this time Coren followed the voice to the branches of a tree across the stream. She could barely make out the shape of a man in the low branches, where a whip did indeed dangle from an unseen hand.

  The boy’s head jerked up, and Coren saw gashes across his pale chest, blood-encrusted trails of a whip. His blue eyes were murky and unfocused as he pulled his arms against the stakes again, grimacing as the leather ties dug into his skin. Then his head lolled back down, as though staring directly into the water, which was now nearly to his ribcage. He was giving up.

  There was no more time. Coren raced the short distance to the bank, where her wings could spread wide, and she flapped hard, rising above the boy, then settling down in the water. It was as high as her waist now, and her wings were sodden and heavy. She began to tug at the leather bindings, but they were solid.

  “What is this!” the man cried, dropping from the tree. Wide-eyed, he stared at Coren, pulling a familiar string of prayer beads from beneath his shirt. His lips moved in silent supplication. She heard the words Mirror Magi cross his lips, and her horror at the situation doubled.

  “You are Weshen?” she asked, nearly forgetting why she was in the water. Her talons scrabbled clumsily with the thick leather that bound the boy’s wrists to the poles, but as soon as she sliced one, it fused together again.

  “Stop shifting the sources!” she yelled in frustration, but she wasn’t even certain who she was yelling
at. The water was now to the boy’s armpits, and his eyes had fluttered closed, his body limp and lifeless. With a roar, Coren focused on the poles and managed to shift the wood into pieces. The boy’s body slumped against her, heavier than expected, and she stumbled backward, the imbalance of her wings dangerously close to pulling them both under.

  Staggering to the bank under the boy’s weight, Coren saw the man still standing there, watching her with the sort of awe reserved for the Mirror Magi themselves.

  “You would do this to your own people? To a child?” she cried, heaving the boy onto the slick bank. Still the water rose, sucking at her legs and her water-soaked wings, even threatening to overflow the riverbed. Her words seemed to break through the man’s trance, and his face set in a grim look.

  “I do this to set his power free. He is a slave to the king. We are all slaves to the king, even if we have never been sent to the palace! We must access our true power if we are to break free. Power like yours!” There was a manic look in his eye, and Coren felt the pull of shifting around her. The water rose in columns, blocking her access to the boy and the bank and her own safety.

  Flapping her wings against the surge of water, she managed to rise a few inches, but the man only laughed, forcing the water down onto her in rivers flowing up and down, swirling around her in a cage of murky river-water bars.

  “But you…you could be more than a slave!” he cried. “You are magnificent!”

  The water crashed down on her head, pushing her under. Coren fought her lungs’ natural motion and forced herself to locate the muddy bottom, using the strength of her legs and arms to propel herself up and up. She burst from the water, wings spreading to their full length, and shifted enough air around herself that the feathers were sucked dry in seconds.

  She knew her strength wouldn’t last long, but it had to be enough. Barreling down on the man, she knocked him to the ground and crawled into his chest, her talons grasping at his neck. The columns of water crashed back into the riverbed. His breath pushed from his lungs, and his mouth gaped open like a fish deprived of water.

  “I would have loved to learn from you,” she said, her voice low with regret for what she was about to do. Her talons tightened on the man’s neck, and he shook his head, frantic as he also realized his fate. Coren closed her heart against his panic and sliced deep into the flesh of his throat, opening the vein of life.

  The water immediately receded, bubbling down to its natural banks as the red of the man’s blood gurgled into the grass, a river of blood flowing to mix with the murky water beside him. His limbs grew still, and his eyes dimmed, and finally Coren pushed to her feet, her wings drooping with exhaustion.

  She turned to the boy, who had curled in on himself, shaking, watching her with a mixture of amazement and terror.

  “I won’t hurt you,” she said, softening her voice. She tucked her wings back and hid her bloodied hands. Now that the threat was gone, her adrenaline ebbed as well, and a deep exhaustion pulled at her muscles.

  The boy lifted a finger and pointed to the tree where the man had been hiding. A pack rested at the base of the trunk, and Coren hurried to grab it. Inside were two skins of what smelled like lemondrine tonic and a cloth-wrapped hunk of bread with cheese inside.

  She offered everything to the boy, and he took one skin, then pushed the rest at her. They both drank deeply, and Coren relaxed into the sensation of renewal. Her wings stretched and shuddered in the dappled light of the forest, shaking away the droplets of river water and blood.

  “Nikesh?” she asked, remembering the man’s taunts. The boy nodded, his blue eyes fluttering open and closed. “Are you injured?” she asked, kneeling next to him. The gashes on his chest weren’t bleeding any longer, but there were also older wounds, some green with infection. His wrists were still bound to the stumps of wood, and she busied herself shifting it all away. Beneath the bands, his skin was raw and blistered.

  “You’re safe now,” she whispered, and a ghost of a smile crossed his face before his head fell limp against the grass again. Coren cursed, darting to the dead man and tugging his shirt free. She wrapped the boy as gently as possible and gathered him in her arms. He was small, but she still staggered a bit under his weight.

  Gritting her teeth, Coren spread her wings and pushed off the forest floor, breaking through the canopy in a burst of broken twigs and stripped leaves.

  It had begun to rain, making her wings soggy and unwieldy, but she turned her body toward EvenFall. The flight back would be hard, but she owed it to this boy to get him to true safety.

  If it had been Kosh himself, she could not be more determined to save this young life from Riata’s horrors.

  Wind rattling the window drew Sy’s attention from the map he was copying. After receiving his message, Shanta had delivered a map of the surrounding area. Resh had convinced her to stay, and now she lounged near the fire, waiting to help them with the Wesh rescue.

  As Sy stared into the stormy darkness beyond the panes, a flash of lightning illuminated a winged figure outside the building.

  “Corentine!” he cried, dropping his pen. Shanta snatched it up before the ink could blot out the map, but Sy was already at the window, pushing it open.

  “Take him,” Coren gasped, shoving a sagging, wrapped bundle at Sy.

  Sy wrapped his arms around the form and Coren climbed onto the sill. Her wings, dripping from the rain, remained half in and half out of the room, and Sy noticed her clothing was barely hanging on her shoulders, red with blood and soaked with rain.

  “What happened?” he asked, forcing himself to stay calm as he placed the form gently on the bed. He unwrapped one end of the ratty blanket and winced at the pale, starved face that lay motionless beneath the fabric.

  “He’s alive, but barely. Slavers. He’s a Wesh,” Coren said, her words coming with difficulty.

  “Are you injured?” Sy asked, moving toward her. But she only held up a hand, shaking her head.

  “I’m fine. Take care of the boy.”

  The door banged open then, and Resh entered, balancing a wide tray of food, wine, and a grin that slid off his face when he saw Coren crouched in the narrow window. His moans about a broken arm had been quickly put to rest by Shanta, who forced some herbs down his throat and pronounced him healed.

  Resh cursed mildly at the scene and set the tray down on the table, smudging the map. Shanta cursed fluently back at him, but Resh ignored her, glancing from the still body on the bed and back to Coren, hunched on the windowsill.

  Sy had a flash of fear that perhaps she might stay in this half-Vespa form forever, and that she would hate him for it.

  He blinked as Resh squeezed around him to reach the other side of the bed, offering Coren a towel. She dried her face and arms, eyes sliding between the brothers.

  “I found the child in the woods, close to drowning in a stream.”

  “There are lots of estates where slavers hide between here and StarsHelm. Mostly abandoned,” Shanta said, her eyes on the map.

  “This child was being whipped and tortured to try and force his magic. He’s probably not even old enough to display it, if he has any.” Disgust and horror wrapped her words as she turned her face back to the storm outside.

  “I’ll be back in the morning to hear your new plan for rescuing the Wesh, and I’ll tell you then what I’m willing to do. Treat his wounds, or he won’t live until morning,” Coren added, and then she pushed off the windowsill into the night sky. A few seconds later, though, Sy heard a thump on the roof above them, then footsteps.

  Sy felt his rage growing. How could Coren even think of running from her people now? How could there even be a decision left to make? If this scrap of a boy on the bed hadn’t convinced her to help the Wesh, he didn’t know what would.

  But Magi be damned if he was going after her now.

  He pushed aside the boy’s dark curls and pressed his palm to the child’s forehead, cursing at the fever he found there. Looking up, he caug
ht Shanta’s eye. She nodded and stood, pulling several vials and wrapped pouches from her bag. They both bent over the child, Sy peeling the blanket back so Shanta could work.

  “I should go up there to talk with her,” Resh said, uncertainty in his voice. He bent and pulled a cloak from a bag and held it up in question, but Sy just waved him away, more intent on saving the tiny life before him than on Coren and her continued indecision.

  As the door closed behind Resh, the boy’s eyes fluttered open, making contact with Sy’s anxious gaze.

  “Are you here to save me?” the boy whispered, staring up at Sy.

  Sy flushed and moved back. The boy was delirious: his forehead hot with fever, but his chest like ice.

  “I’ll build up the fire,” he said to Shanta as she bent to rip open the ragged cloth. She rubbed her palms briskly over the boy’s clammy skin, skirting around his open wounds. He began to shake as his body warmed enough to circulate its own blood.

  Sy hurried to finish the fire and dug a fur-lined cloak from his bag, spreading it over the boy’s legs.

  “What a beautiful boy,” Shanta murmured, spreading her thick yellow cream over the wounds on his chest. Sy glanced down, relieved to see color returning to the boy’s s cheeks. His bluish tint cleared to a smooth olive hue.

  “Are you Weshen?” Shanta asked the boy as his eyes fluttered open.

  “Once,” he whispered, closing his eyes again and turning his face away. “Once upon a time.”

  Shanta glanced to Sy. “He’ll be fine, I think, no matter what Corentine said. Give him plenty to eat and drink when he wakes, but do it slowly and start with broth. If he’s been starved, his stomach might reject the food.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m growing more in debt to you each hour we stay here,” he added ruefully.

  Shanta grinned, pressing a poultice to the boy’s temple. “Something’s still bothering me, though. I don’t know where she found him, but even among the local estates, it’s rare to see such wounds on a Wesh slave. Their blood is too valuable for the king’s men to spill recklessly. As soon as I’m done here, I need to go check the news with my crew,” she said, glancing to the ceiling, where Coren’s footsteps could still be heard pacing the roof tiles.