“Such a shame,” said the fat man, still leering at her. His voice had fallen to a hoarse whisper, and his arm was tighter than ever about her waist. His gold had already disappeared, unnoticed, beneath her cloak – now Shel just had to get away from him. He wasn’t letting go. “But surely, one glass of wine…”
“My father doesn’t want me drinking wine, kind sir,” Shel said, making a face. “He says I'm too young for it yet.”
“Ah,” began the fat merchant, but before he could continue there was a loud clatter just behind them. The fat man jumped back, his beady eyes going wide as they fell on his heavily laden cart, which had begun rolling back down the hill. “Oh no!” he cried.
Shel jumped back in the opposite direction, and for an instant the cart was between her and the fat man. Then, picking up speed, it plummeted down the hill. The cart swayed ponderously from side to side as the rickety wooden wheels clacked over the uneven cobblestones. The fat man threw up his hands and raced after his cart, momentarily forgetting all about the pretty girl. Shel turned and ran in the other direction without thinking.
It was a stupid thing to do. Every good thief knew better than to run from a mark; if you had to run, you were caught already. Shel didn’t know why she ran, and she forced herself to slow down almost at once. There was a thundering crash from behind her as the fat man’s cart reached the bottom of the hill, crashed over a curb and overturned in the middle of the street. He’d be far too busy to come looking for her…
“You there, halt!”
Shel cursed under breath. Suncloaks! There was no way they’d seen her take the purse, but they must have seen her run as soon as the cart went careening down the hill. At best, they’d assume she’d set the cart loose for some reason. Shel broke into a run again, catching sight of the two men in their bright, golden cloaks coming toward her from a side-street. She cast her eyes frantically about, looking for Rickon or West or any of the others. They were nowhere to be seen!
Shel was starting to panic. Racing, she turned onto the next side-street and then cut down an alley way. She took every turning she found, but she could hear the pounding of boots on her heels. The Suncloaks shouted for her to stop, and then they stopped shouting and just chased after her. How could she have been so stupid?
Shel turned another corner and collided with a broad-chested man. Bouncing back from the impact, she fell painfully on her backside and sprawled in the street. Looking up, Shel felt her pounding heart skip a terrified beat. Of course, the man she’d run into was another Suncloak. Even before the two guardsmen pursuing her rounded the corner, he’d lifted his cudgel in warning and grabbed the scrambling girl by one wrist.
“Why the hurry, little girl?” he demanded with a sneer.
“Let me go!” Shel struggled against his grip, but it was hopeless. “Let me go, let me go!”
“Shut up,” said the Suncloak. He lifted his cudgel and the last thing Shel saw was the heavy wooden club coming at her face. Then there was pain and blackness.
Chapter 2 - The City Dungeons
The darkness receded a bit but didn’t go away. The air was stuffy and dank, but cool. Blinking, Shel pushed herself up to a sitting position on the damp, straw-covered floor. She thought it was straw, anyway. She could barely see. She squinted and blinked against the oppressive darkness, trying to figure out where she was. Then she remembered.
The fat man, the purse – it was gone now – and the Suncloaks. Shel rubbed at her head, feeling the painful lump near the hairline. There was little doubt where she was. The Solstice dungeons.
It wasn’t a place most people ever saw. Shel didn’t even know where the dungeons were located in the city. Most people never thought about them. Of course everyone knew the dungeons existed; they were hardly some dark, hidden secret. Even the Great and Glorious Empire of the Long Summer hadn’t succeeded in completely erasing crime. Shel knew that first hand, and not simply by virtue of her life as a thief.
Shel didn’t want to follow that line of thought, but in these dismal surroundings it was impossible for her not to think of her father. A violent and hateful drunk, he had never been satisfied with their life in the small village of Vallen in the northern foothills. Where most all the citizens of the empire were content to work and contribute to the greatest society the world had ever known, Shel’s father was a malcontent and a troublemaker. He had also beaten Shel and her mother in his drunken rages, and the day he was carted off in chains by a company of Suncloaks had been one of the happiest days of Shel’s life.
Until she had learned to steal, that is. The Great and Glorious Empire of the Long Summer might offer plenty of opportunities for even the lowest of its citizens, but Shel had long since discovered that nothing truly compared to the life of a thief. She was no fool, and she saw the heavy burden of taxes on her fellow citizens. She was no beggar, not some layabout who thought the rest of the world should just hand her a decent living. But there was work, and there was work. Shel had learned a trade, but it was one she enjoyed and was even proud of – it just happened to be one that most of the empire frowned upon.
Most of the people of the Great and Glorious Empire were farmers. Agriculture fed the people, but Shel had seen how hard that life could be and rejected it in unconscious imitation of her disreputable father. Farmers struggled under the weight of taxation, but they also waged a constant battle against small animals and natural poachers. But no one ever suggested sticking the rabbits and groundhogs in the city dungeon. That was how Shel had come to think of herself: like the rabbit, who nibbled away at the gardens of the empire.
But it had landed her here just the same. She was a long way from Vallen, but it seemed she would share her father’s ignoble fate anyway. The dungeon was chill and dank, its atmosphere thick with a cloying despair that crept under her skin. Shivering in the darkness, Shel shook off these dark thoughts. She had to do something about her situation.
Her eyes had adjusted as much as they were going to. Shel could now make out some of the details of her cell. Solid stone walls surrounded her on three sides. Thick iron bars blocked the doorway. She tugged at one of them, making a face in the dark as her fingers slipped over the slimy, corroded iron. She wiped her hand on her breeches and sat back down on the floor, fighting a rising tide of despair.
“Okay,” she said to herself. “Okay. Oh, Dunmir. Oh, no.”
The Suncloaks had taken the gold and tossed her in the dungeon. She didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe they simply threw prisoners in a cell and forgot about them. Or perhaps they’d return for her any moment to lead her off to a summary execution. Neither possibility – nor any of the others that flitted through her mind – were appealing.
A blood curdling scream drifted into her cell from some distance. The terrible sound froze the blood in Shel’s veins. Her mouth fell open in shock and then the man screamed again. It was a long, drawn out scream of unbearable agony. Somewhere nearby, a man was being tortured.
Shel’s hands clenched in white-knuckled fright at her sides. She was trembling all over. She didn’t even notice when she began mumbling to herself, whispering the same words over and over. “No, oh no, oh please, oh please no, oh no, oh please…”
“Shh!”
Startled, Shel jumped to her feet and spun around in the center of her cell searching for the source of the hissed warning.
“Who’s there?”
“I said hush,” whispered the voice. It was directly outside her cell. Cautiously approaching the iron bars, Shel peered through them into the hallway. An indistinct, man-shaped shadow moved against the darkness beyond her cell. “Well, well,” he said, looking her over. “What have we here?”
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Rez,” was the whispered reply. “Enjoying your stay?”
“You're joking.” Shel stared at the shadowy figure, straining to make out details. She didn’t think he was a guardsman. But who was he?
“Not at all,” Rez said with a quiet
chuckle. “At least we're out of the heat, yeah? The intolerable, endlessly sweltering heat of the Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer. Faugh! I, for one, could do with a bit of winter. What about you?”
“What are you talking about?” Shel demanded. “Who are you?”
“I told you, I'm called Rez.” The shadow moved, crossing arms over its chest. Shel heard a faint tapping, and realized the man was tapping one foot as he studied her.
“You're no Suncloak,” she said. None of the guards would speak that way about the empire. She didn’t think she’d ever heard anyone say something bad about the Long Summer. “Who are you?”
“You keep asking me the same question,” said Rez, sounding curious. “Are you broken?”
“Do I look like some mechanical contraption?” snapped Shel, irritated by the man’s curious manner of speaking. He chuckled again, and Shel’s irritation rose another notch. “I am not broken,” she insisted.
“Trouble with your memory?” She heard him snap his fingers. “Of course! They hit you over the head, didn’t they?”
“Maybe,” said Shel irritably. “Is that what happened to you? I've never met someone so addle-brained as you, Rez.”
Rez chuckled again. “So you do remember. That’s good, but what about manners? You've forgotten those, I think.”
“What?”
“I told you my name,” said the man, shrugging. “It’s only fair and proper to tell me yours.”
“Shel,” she said, some of her irritation ebbing. Not by much, but a little. “Can you get me out of here? You're no Suncloak, that’s for sure.”
“You want to get out?”
“Of course I want to get out!”
“Hmm.” Rez tapped his foot some more. “I suppose I could get you out. But it’s going to make a bit of noise. What if the guards hear it, and come to investigate?”
Shel didn’t know what to say to that. She stepped closer to the bars, barely stopping herself from reaching through them desperately. “Can you get me out, or not?”
“That all depends.”
“Depends? On what?”
“What are you in for?”
“Excuse me?” Shel was confused. The strange man’s odd manner of speaking made no sense. Who was he, that he was wandering around down here in the city dungeons? If he wasn’t a Suncloak…
“What did you do?” Rez clarified.
“Oh, that.” Shel shrugged, not sure if he would be able to see the motion or not. “I robbed a fat merchant of his purse. But that’s not the problem, I've done that a hundred times. I made a mistake, though. I ran. They always know you're guilty if you run.”
Rez’s chuckle almost became a full fledged laugh. “That they do,” he agreed. “All right. Stand back.”
“You'll get me out?”
“Stand back,” he repeated. Shel moved hastily away from the bars. As she backed away, she saw an unearthly light begin to glow in mid-air beyond the bars. Gasping, Shel realized the ghostly glowing was emanating from the stranger’s eyes.
“Soulweaver,” she muttered under her breath as she hastily scooted away from the iron bars. A creaking sound came from those bars now, and even in the darkness she could see them beginning to bend and stretch outward. The glow from Rez’s eyes grew in intensity until it was nearly blinding in the otherwise dark pit of the dungeon. The iron bars grated against their stone housings. Then, with a terrific, wrenching sound they were torn free and fell with a clatter to the stone floor outside the cell. Rez’s fiercely glowing eyes faded, leaving stark afterimages floating in Shel’s eyes.
“Come on out,” he called softly. “And be quick about it. The dungeon guards are lazy and inattentive, but that sound will draw them out for sure and I still have business to see to before we take our leave of this foul place.”
“Business?” echoed Shel as she came hesitantly out from the cell. She was beginning to wonder if she might have been better off staying in the dungeon after all. She had never heard of a soulweaver who wasn’t from one of the noble houses, or at least one of the wealthiest merchant families. But someone like that wasn’t likely to go sneaking around the dungeons. She still had no idea who Rez really was, but this time she resisted the urge to ask again. “What business?”
“I came here to see a man.”
“You're a Soulweaver,” she said bluntly.
“So I am,” Rez agreed good-naturedly.
“And you came into the dungeon – voluntarily – to see a man?”
“That’s right.”
“But you're avoiding the guards.”
“Well, I was. Can we talk about this later?” Without waiting for her answer, Rez started off down the damp corridor. Shel hesitated for a moment, but as his tall form began melting into the deep shadows of the dungeon she found herself hurrying to keep up. If she let him out of her sight, she’d never find him again and she didn’t think she would ever be able to find her way out of this dark pit without some kind of help.
“Okay,” she said as she caught up to the quickly walking stranger. “So, who is he?”
“A friend,” was the gruff reply. Shel frowned, but of course it was much too dark for Rez to see her expression. Probably. He was a Soulweaver, after all. Shel shivered again, and this time it wasn’t from the chill and the damp.
Like most people, Shel had little idea of what a Soulweaver could do. It was the rarest of talents, and she had certainly never met one before. Most weavers were high nobles of the empire, or at the very least rich merchants. She thought back to the soul trader in the market place, trying to entice the young beggar boy with gold.
But that man wasn’thing but a trader. In all likelihood he bought souls where he could for other, far wealthier patrons. He’d work on commission, probably never able to afford buying one of the souls for himself. Even that type was rare in the empire – most people, the ones who had any sense at least, shuddered at the very thought of the soul trade. Nevertheless, it was a legally recognized and accepted business. Still…
Flickering light spilled around a corner up ahead. Shel’s thoughts snapped back to the present as they approached the bend. She could hear voices, faint at first but growing louder as they got closer. She felt herself tensing up. Her legs trembled, wanting to run.
Rez led her around the corner. The stone-walled corridor ended abruptly a few feet from the corner. A sturdy, iron-banded oak door stood in the otherwise solid stone wall. Torches hung from rusting iron brackets to either side of the door, and more light spilled through cracks in the wood. Even as they rounded the corner, a blood-chilling shriek of pain sounded from behind the door.
Shel’s blood ran cold. Rez was leading her directly to the torture chamber.
Chapter 3 - The Torture Chamber
“Wait,” said Shel, reaching out with one hand to stop Rez from going through the sturdy oak door to the torture chamber. “Wait a minute.”
Her odd rescuer paused, looking back over his shoulder at her. In the flickering torchlight outside the torture chamber, Shel got her first good look at the man who had torn iron bars from their housing with his Soulweaving.
Rez looked to be a few years older than Shel, but she couldn’t put an exact number to his age. He might have been anywhere from twenty to thirty-five. He had a lean face and tall, slender body but he was hardly scrawny of underfed. Where Shel was skinny and lean from necessity, Rez had a more graceful leanness that reminded her of a predatory animal. His eyes – no longer glowing but nevertheless bright and gleaming in the torchlight – were of a shade she couldn’t be sure of; she thought they were gray, but they might have been a light blue or even a severely faded violet. His head was topped by a shock of wild brown hair that sprouted in disarray. His skin was deeply tanned but appeared smoothly supple and unlined. He smiled at her, and the expression had the ease of long practice. He seemed a good-natured, jovial sort of man. She was terrified of him.
“You don’t want to go in?” he asked, seemingly oblivi
ous to her scrutiny. He chewed at his bottom lip in thought for a moment, then nodded. “Actually, that’s for the best. Wait here and keep an eye out. Give us a warning if you hear any guards coming this way.”
Shel nodded dumbly.
Turning away from her, Rez lifted his arm casually. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she knew they were aglow yet again. There was no outward indication of his magic, but then the iron-banded door was abruptly torn from its hinges with a violent crash. The reinforced slab of oak flew into the torture chamber and slammed against the far wall. Shel stepped back even as Rez charged forward into the room.
A shout of alarm from within was cut off short, and Shel heard a dull thump that could only have been a body hitting the wall. A moment later, she heard a murmur of voices. Rez must have found his friend.
Shel waited nervously, pacing back and forth in the narrow corridor and staring back the way they had come. She wanted to get out of this dungeon. Rez might be her only chance at escape, but she wasn’t certain accompanying him was really any better than staying in her cell.
She didn’t know all that much about Soulweavers, except that outside the nobility and the richest families they were extremely rare. She had heard once that weavers used to be more common, but Rez was the first one she had ever met. The first she knew of, at least.
Weavers gained their awesome powers by collecting souls. That alone was enough to make Shel’s skin crawl. She had known people, a few, who took the bounty of gold and joined the Soulless. It wasn’t fatal, it wasn’t even particularly harmful. Except that the Soulless seemed to lose interest in everything around them. Retreating into themselves, those who sold their souls inevitably withered away. They were still alive, and apparently just as conscious and aware as ever. They didn’t lose their memories or abilities, they just lost their will.
The weavers, on the other hand, gained much. Shel had heard that a weaver could command all the knowledge and power of any individual whose soul he or she had acquired. She had always believed that the other benefits – the mystical power weavers were said to command – was more myth than anything else, but now she had seen what Rez could do. When he tore the bars from her cell, when he knocked that oak door from its hinges, he was using the spiritual essence of other people who had chosen to give up their souls. It was a chilling thought.
Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel Page 2