Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel

by Trip Ellington

  He was alive and furious. Snarling wordlessly, Rez flung up both hands and made a shoving motion in Kal’s direction. Nothing happened. His hate-filled grimace melted into surprise and finally fearful disbelief.

  “What have you done?” he asked, then louder: “What have you done?”

  Kal didn’t know the answer, not really. She had more than half expected the spell, whatever it was, to kill him. Shel had surprised her again, and maybe the younger woman wasn’t as consumed by vengeance as Kal had begun to fear. That thought was enough for her now. She felt a growing sense of peace.

  “Beaten you,” she whispered, and then she slumped back to the floor, unconscious.

  From below came the thunderous crack of splintering wood. Rez jerked his head up at the sound. He held his empty hands, palms up and fingers slightly curled in front of his face. He stared at them with growing terror in his eyes.

  There was shouting now, and quieter voices he couldn’t make out. He felt Thorne’s weaving cease in the same moment that twenty other weavers began to lace their energies together. It was time to go. Scrambling to his feet, Rez ran down the corridor and as far away from those twenty unknown weavers as possible.

  Chapter 25 - The Butcher

  Twenty hulking shapes in spiky, black lacquered armor spread out in a phalanx with the open end facing Murdrek Thorne where he knelt on top of Shel. The archon looked up at the men in their insectile helmets and felt a brief shiver of doubt and fear.

  “Ah,” he said, covering any trace of his true feelings with the ease of decades of practice. Releasing his clenched fist and the siphon he had woven into the urchin girl, Thorne rose smoothly to his feet and dusted off his robes before rearranging them fussily. As he did, he addressed the Tophylax Emperia as a group.

  “Your timing is impeccable,” he told them, speaking to an empty point near the center of the arrowhead formation. “I have defeated the ringleader of this unrest.”

  Coughing and spluttering, Shel rolled painfully over onto her stomach and pressed her palms flat against the floor tile. She drew a ragged breath and started to rise. Thorne planted a boot between her shoulders and pushed her back down, albeit gently. He left his foot resting on her back.

  “You will present her to me shortly,” the emperor spoke through the mouths of twenty Tophylax Emperia, his command resonating in an echoing buzz that seemed to fill the chamber. “Two of your fellow archons yet live. Join them at the palace with all speed, Thorne.”

  Thorne hid his reaction to the summons. He had expected it, of course. More or less. He quickly buried the memory of his brief moment of terror, when he had thought the black armored elite guards would simply cut him down and move on. But no, the emperor didn’t – couldn’t – know of Thorne’s own treachery. The old bugger would irritably draw the surviving archons close to him, hungry for the tribute in souls they brought.

  Four of the others killed! That was victory enough for now, Thorne told himself. The idiot gutter-weaver’s futile attempt at open rebellion would have the emperor on his guard, but she had unknowingly strengthened Thorne’s position. He allowed himself the smallest hint of a smile, and bowed from the waist to the assembled company of bodyguards.

  “As my exalted emperor commands,” he said, sweeping one arm out in a flourish.

  “Waste no more time on theatrics,” intoned twenty disinterested voices. “Collect the girl and that other one you've got hidden in your house. Bring them to me.”

  Thorne suppressed a curse. He had sensed the sudden burst of power from the corridor above. It had been impossible to miss, like a star exploding in the night. Then, all traces of soulweaving on the level above ceased. He didn’t know what it meant, but he had hoped the Tophylax hadn’t felt it. He wanted his agent free, in case he needed him again.

  “Of course,” he said. The Tophylax Emperia hadn’t waited for his permission, naturally. The moment the emperor’s voice cut off, two black-armored hulks had detached themselves from one end of the formation and double-timed it up the stairs.

  Thorne gritted his teeth behind a bland smile and told himself it made no difference. Today Thorne would kill the emperor, and all his precious, soul-drained bodyguards wouldn’t be enough to save the stubborn old mule this time.

  ***

  Three giants in spiky black armor came out of nowhere and started slaughtering Alban’s team. They died shrieking in agony. Alban drew up short, the blood draining from his face as he saw the carnage wrought by the dreaded Tophylax Emperia.

  Rori seized his arm and pulled him away, screaming in his ear. “Get away, Alban! It’s the Eyeless, we have to get away!”

  One of the brutes tore a man in half at the waist and discarded the blood-spurting halves. Turning, it started purposefully toward where Alban still stood frozen in stunned despair.

  “Come on!” shouted Rori, still tugging at him. Alban finally snapped out of it and broke into a run. Rori kept pace at his side, the both of them throwing panicked looks back over their shoulders as they fled the faceless behemoth pursuing.

  Everywhere Alban looked, it was the same. Three-man squads of the black-armored Eyeless were tearing his men to shreds on every street. His blood ran cold. Shel’s plan had failed; the game was surely lost.

  Rori screamed a warning, and Alban darted to one side as another of the emperor’s elite burst into the street from an alleyway. The monstrous Tophylax swung his sword, but Alban avoided it. Along with Rori, he took a corner and headed in the other direction.

  The new street was nearly identical to the previous one. Alban lost his bearings. A figure exploded out of the hedge lining the side of the avenue, and Alban instinctively attacked before he recognized the man. He stayed the savage sword struck at the last second, his pounding feet stuttering to a standstill as he stared at the man in amazement.

  “Rez!” Alban couldn’t believe it. “What of Kal and Shel? Are they close behind you?”

  “There’s no time for them,” Rori shouted at him, tugging on his arm again. The redhead was lost to her panic. Alban shrugged her off with a scowl.

  “She’s right,” Rez said gently, recovering quickly from the surprise of running into the duo. He glanced around, taking in the chaotic and one-sided carnage all around them. “We'll round up every survivor we can, but there’s no time to stand still. Not for a second. Let’s move!”

  Before he had finished, Rez broke into a run. Alban and Rori followed their rescued leader with glad hearts lightened by the new hope he represented. But as he ran, Alban turned worried thoughts to the two women who had organized this attack and risked everything to save him. Where were Shel and Kal?

  ***

  Jacin Verret stumbled through the smoke-filled alley, blind to where his feet fell. His sword hung limply from one hand. His armor was blackened with soot, dented in places. He was covered head to toe with ashes and blood.

  After killing Rebley, he had struck out for the Noble District. That was where the Tophylax Emperia were; he had assumed it would be safe. Even if the rebels lacked the sense to stand down, the fighting would be one-sided and quickly concluded. Anything at all would be better than the blind chaos which consumed the rest of Solstice.

  But when Verret reached the Archon’s Avenue, he had seen that this wasn’t the case. Just on the other side of the Street of Roses, the fighting was already over. Jacin watched in mute horror as a three-man squad of Tophylax slaughtered all in their path, peasant and archon’s armsman and Suncloak alike. It was brutal and indiscriminate. Jacin Verret turned from the sight and ran away.

  He tried to find his way out of the city. Even without intervention from the Tophylax Emperia, the fighting elsewhere in the city was beginning to die down. It was inevitable. People had been dying far too quickly for it to last for long. Jacin Verret didn’t know which side was winning, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of the city.

  The alleyway he found himself in branched from the Street of Orchids and ran alongside a diamond-se
ller’s. Just ahead, Verret could see where the alley intersected another that ran behind the Jeweler’s Street. If he remembered correctly, that second alley would take him straight to the wall. Verret wasn’t sure what he would do when he reached it. One step at a time.

  A noise from round the corner alerted him, and Verret slowed his steps and hunched his shoulders in nervous anticipation. He had avoided as much of the fighting as he could since leaving the Street of Roses, but here and there he’d been forced to kill someone. He was tired, but he would kill again if it got him out of Solstice.

  The sound was a repetitive chink-chink. Creeping to the corner and cautiously looking around it, Verret saw two men in blood-stained golden cloaks. One of the Suncloaks held a thick metal spike against the bare stone of the city wall. The second man struck it repeatedly with a mallet, driving it into the stone. Another spike was half-buried in the wall at about knee-height.

  They were pounding the spikes into the wall to make hand- and footholds, Verret realized. They were trying to get out.

  “Peace,” declared Verret, announcing himself as he stepped slowly around the corner with his hands held far out to either side of his body. He didn’t drop his sword, but held it loosely and as non-threateningly as he knew how. “I only seek to escape the city, same as you men.”

  They spun on him. Jacin didn’t recognize either of the men, but that was small surprise given how many retirees and new conscripts Pedderson had rushed into the streets to bolster the City Watch. They were armed, but their swords hung at their waists. The second guardsman adjusted his grip on the heavy mallet, but otherwise the pair made no threatening gestures.

  Jacin Verret sheathed his sword in a slow and deliberate movement, then walked forward to join the two men.

  ***

  It was the coughing that saved his life, Collam knew. He’d been coughing for a while now, but not so long that he had gotten used to the idea. They were painful, racking convulsions that shredded his throat and burned in his lungs. The coughing terrified him. It told him he was going to die soon. He was old enough to have seen plenty go this way. The first time his hand came away from his lips flecked with blood, he had wept.

  Clutching at his throat and blinking madly, Collam sat up and saw the fire lapping at the curtains. He was in the common room of a public house in High Market. He and the lads had chased a handful of Suncloaks in here. There hadn’t been any rich folk at their tea, that was certain. Solstice was in flames. Now this house was too.

  He couldn’t remember…No, wait. Jethry and Gaynes chased one into the back, probably through the kitchen. And then Collam and Breven and Lonas faced down them other two. Aye. And the one got the drop on me, Collam recalled. Lights out.

  Looking around, he didn’t see Breven and Lonas. No sign of Jethry or Gaynes either, and there was only the one dead Suncloak. So it probably hadn’t gone well for the lads either, Collam thought. He was still coughing, but he was getting it under control. Wasn’t the same cough; he was so sensitive now, the first wisps of smoke had set him to coughing. Spiked terror into his unconscious mind. Saved his life.

  Ironic, he thought. Ironic that the thing that was going to kill him woke him up before this whole place went up. Ironic that part of him wanted just to sit there and see whether the smoke would kill him before the flames spread across the ceiling, eating through until fiery beams gave way and brought the whole flaming house down on his head. For a moment – just a moment – either way seemed preferable to coughing up blood and black phlegm for the next year or so.

  That was how old Gorman had gone, must be ten…twelve years ago. Gorman had welcomed death with tears and gratitude. Collam never figured on either of those for himself. He got up, one hand over his mouth. He was still coughing, but he forced himself not to suck in breath after each fit. He went to the door and felt at it. It wasn’t hot. He went through, and out of the house.

  Collam didn’t know what he expected to find.

  It was night, but the cloudy sky was brilliantly lit from beneath. The light flickered and danced on the contours of the smoky blanket that lay over the burning city. A hundred fires, a thousand burned in Solstice. The screams and the clatter of swords was gone, but every so often a wailing scream could be heard from somewhere far away down many streets.

  Coughing and hacking, Collam stood on the stoop in front of the public house and stared all round. The only people on the streets were corpses. The Butcher’s bill, he remembered they’d called it in the army back when there’d been an army. All these dead men and women, gone to pay the Butcher. Thieves, merchants who had risen up in anger or shrunk back in fear, armored guards in tattered gold cloaks. Collam hung his head. He hadn’t known what to expect. He hadn’t known whether or not they’d won.

  He still didn’t know, but he suspected they hadn’t. The only victor in Solstice this night was the Butcher.

  Chapter 26 - Truth Revealed

  Someone pulled the hood of coarse, hot wool off of her head and Shel saw that it was one of the hulking brutes in the spiky black armor. She spat, still feeling the scratchy black wool against her lips and nose. She wanted to sneeze.

  The giant soldiers stepped back and faded into the shadows. It was probably the same one that had put the hood on her in the first place, back at Thorne’s manor. She didn’t know why they had covered her head, any more than she knew why they had bound her hands behind her back. The binding of her arms didn’t stop her from escaping; the twenty black-armored giants with their unbelievable combined power were quite enough for that.

  She knew what they were, of course. Tophylax Emperia. The Eyeless. She’d heard them called something else: the Emperor’s Eyes. She understood why now. They were Soulless. Rather, they had been Soulless. Now, a single powerful soul inhabited them all. They were puppets; the emperor held the strings. The emperor was the strings.

  The woolen hood had done as much good as the tight cords on her wrists. You blinded someone when you didn’t want them to know where you were taking them. There was only one place the Tophylax Emperia would take someone.

  She was hanging by her arms. Thick manacles circled tightly round her wrists, fixed to chains that hung from the darkness above. She couldn’t make out the room she was in. A narrow beam of pure white light shone down. The outer edge of this moonbeam caressed Shel in its glow. There were two men standing in the center of the circle of light on the floor. She could see nothing else.

  One of the men was Thorne. The other was ancient and terrible.

  The Eternal Emperor of the Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer was a tiny, wizened creature with sagging, wrinkled skin and rheumy, squinting eyes. His entirely hairless head bulged atop a fragile neck and stooped, weary shoulders. His wiry frame was no more substantial than if he had been made of sticks with some cracked, old leather stretched across the middle.

  He was shirtless and wore a cape of golden silk and loose, cream-colored trousers. His bare chest was blazoned with an iridescently shimmering tattoo of the sun. He leaned on a gnarled wooden staff that was quite a bit taller than he was. A massive amber jewel topped the staff, catching the light.

  The emperor hobbled closer to where Shel hung suspended at the edge of the light. Murdrek Thorne remained where he was. With the emperor’s back to him, the archon allowed himself to show a fleeting trace of emotion. Was it…irritation? Fear? Shel couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. She looked down at the ruler of all the realm and marveled at the intense and undeniable power which radiated from this tiny, misshapen figure.

  He stood inches from her. Shel’s feet dangled an inch or so off the ground, but even without the added height the emperor would have stood barely as tall as her breast. He looked up at her with his sagging, red-rimmed eyes. Their irises were the color of the sky at noon in the high summer. She could almost see white flecks of cloud drifting across them, disappearing behind the impenetrable black of his tiny, sharp pupils.

  “Hm,” he said. The emperor’
s voice was a hoarse croaking deep in his throat, impossibly low and hard to hear. “Hah,” he added, then craned himself around to peer balefully at Murdrek Thorne. “You couldn’t have claimed this one, Thorne. You may have proven more powerful – but only just! And beaten her you might have, but defeated her? Hah! Never. She’s a Shadow.”

  Thorne’s studied mask cracked in surprise. He reacted almost as if the emperor had slapped him across the face. He took an unthinking step forward, one arm jerking up to point at Shel. “What?” he cried. “No, my lord. They're all dead, at long last. I killed the last of them myself.”

  “Indeed, hm?” The emperor turned back to Shel. With great effort and strain, he lifted up the end of his staff and poked it into her belly. The strain was real, but the effort was showmanship only. Shel felt his true muscles flexing, and then her sleeveless leather vest tore open down the front and fell away, exposing her. The emperor’s staff pointed directly to the faded blue markings encircling her waist.

  “A Shadow,” the ancient ruler said again with a satisfied hmph.

  Thorne stared at Shel, amazement turning to revulsion. “So,” he said. “The gutterweave turns out to be a Shadow-lass.”

  “Hm, yes,” said the emperor, lowering his staff and leaning heavily against it once more. “Fortunate for you my Tophylax arrived when they did, Thorne.”

  “I had beaten her,” Thorne hissed angrily. “My lord,” he added belatedly.

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course,” the emperor said with a wheeze of deathly laughter. “Beaten her, yes. But not defeated, no? I think not, Thorne. Hm. I think not.”

  The archon narrowed his eyes. There was something in the emperor’s words, some further meaning he wasn’t privy to. Careful to keep it from showing on his face, he wondered if the old vulture knew of his own plans…

  “You see, Thorne,” the emperor continued, turning and hobbling away from Shel. When his back was turned, the light from above dimmed almost imperceptibly. “You simply cannot wrest the soul from a Shadow by force. Hmm, no indeed.”