Unsouled (Cradle Book 1)

by Will Wight

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  [Sequel Page]

  [Also By Will Wight]

  Unsouled

  Cradle - Book One

  Will Wight

  www.WillWight.com

  To Devin, who reads as many web novels as I do.

  Copyright © 2016 Hidden Gnome Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Patrick Foster

  Chapter 1

  Information requested: the Spiritual Origin test of Sacred Valley.

  Beginning report…

  Twice a year, the clans of Sacred Valley test the spirits of their children. Boys and girls of six, seven, even eight summers line up before their clan’s elders. They wear clothes too formal for them: layered robes of muted color for the boys, intricate shadesilk wraps for the girls. Parents line the walls nearby, anxious to hear the nature of their children laid bare.

  One by one, the children step before their clan’s First Elder. He holds a shallow bowl, twice as wide as a dinner plate, that holds nothing more than still water. But it is not water, the parents know. It is madra, raw power of spirit, purified and distilled. The material from which souls are made.

  The first girl in line dips her hand into the bowl, shocked at the cold. A trickle of something runs out of her core, something she’s never felt before, and the liquid changes.

  For her, the madra sticks to her hand, surrounding her fingers like a tight glove. The First Elder smiles, gives her a wooden badge marked with a shield, and declares the nature of her spirit. She has the soul of an Enforcer, a guardian, and will use her great strength to protect the clan. The madra returns to the bowl as the girl returns to her parents. She carries the badge with her.

  The water flees from the next boy’s hand, as though his presence pushes it away. He looks to the First Elder, horrified that he has somehow failed this test, but there can be no failure here. He is given a wooden badge marked with an arrow.

  Each child in line sees one of four responses: the water clings, or it retreats, or it rises, or it freezes. They receive badges accordingly. Shields for Enforcers, who protect the clan from its enemies with strength of arms. Arrows for Strikers, who strike against rivals from a distance. Scepters for Rulers, who bend the powers of heaven and earth. And hammers for Forgers, whose techniques create weapons and wealth for the clan. All things in Sacred Valley can be divided in four.

  And Lindon, of the Wei clan and the family Shi, knows which of the four he wants.

  Hammer, he begs the heavens as he steps up for his turn at the bowl. More than anything, he wants to follow his mother as a Soulsmith, creating wondrous and magical items from madra. Molding the stuff of spirits and Remnants. Please, give me a hammer.

  He’s done his research, and he knows he needs the water to freeze. It’s traditionally considered bad luck to tell children what to expect on the day of their test, but his mother considers ignorance a greater threat than misfortune.

  “Wei Shi Lindon,” the First Elder intones, as Lindon moves forward. The elder stands thin and straight, like a polished walking stick, with a wispy beard that stretches down to the floor. “Stretch forth your hand, and let your spirit be known.”

  Lindon’s mother tenses behind him, but he doesn’t look at her. He focuses on the bowl of madra.

  Chanting freeze, freeze, freeze in his head, Lindon places his fingers into the bowl. It’s colder than he expected, which excites him at first, because the water must already be freezing.

  But the liquid doesn’t grow cold, it doesn’t solidify. It sits there, placid and undisturbed.

  The elder’s white eyebrows draw together into one solid line. He leans over the bowl, his own badge—of polished green jade, bearing the same hammer that Lindon hopes to earn—dangling over the bowl. Impatiently, he seizes Lindon’s wrist and lifts it free. Natural water would have clung to Lindon’s skin, but this madra only imitates water. Nothing sticks. His hand emerges clean and dry.

  As though dunking laundry in a tub, the elder moves Lindon’s hand in and out. A sick feeling bubbles up in Lindon’s stomach as he realizes something has gone wrong.

  Over to the side, his mother holds a whispered conversation with another elder. Several adults are whispering now, and that can’t mean anything good.

  “There is no affinity to his spirit,” the First Elder says at last, and those close enough to hear gasp. “He is empty. Unsouled.”

  Lindon glances to his mother, who has gone utterly pale. He’s never heard this word before, Unsouled, but it doesn’t sound like anything good. At seven, he’s old enough to piece the core of the truth together. He won’t get a badge.

  But they’re right there.

  “Which badge do I get, Honored Elder?” he asks politely, as though he doesn’t understand.

  The First Elder glares at the boy. “You don’t deserve these badges, Shi Lindon.” No clan name. He must be angry, but Lindon knows that if you pretend to ignore an adult’s anger, it often goes away.

  “If you don’t have one for me, I could just…” Lindon reaches out for the hammer-marked badge of a Forger, but the First Elder smacks his hand down.

  “These are not for you!”

  “Can’t I pick one?” It makes perfect sense to Lindon. The bowl tells them which badge to pick, and the bowl hadn’t said anything. So Lindon might as well choose.

  If he has a badge, maybe his mother wouldn’t look so scared. He doesn’t know what it meant to go without a badge. Everybody has one.

  The First Elder signals to one of his subordinates. “We will have a badge made for you, Shi Lindon. To show the world what you are.”

  What you are. Not who.

  “Wei Shi Seisha, I suggest you take your son to the next testing. Perhaps the heavens will choose to have mercy on him then.” Seisha, Lindon’s mother, draws him to her waist protectively. To the First Elder, she nods. “Until such time as they do, he will be Unsouled.”

  Lindon’s mother sweeps him out of the hall, riding on a wave of whispered comments from relatives in the clan. She hides him with her body until they escape.

  “Why didn’t I get a badge?” he asked, when they were free.

  “Because the heavens wish to shame us.” Her voice is grim, and here Lindon learns his spirit is something shameful. Until he earns a badge, he will continue bringing shame to his clan.

  So he needs a badge.

  Six months later, at the next test, he smears a drop of his mother’s blood on his palm. The lingering madra there makes the water stir, just for a second, before it returns to its placid stillness.

  He is tested again at eight years old, and this time he comes prepared. He sneaks into the hall through the shadows, scratching a crude circle of runes on the bottom of the table in the hall. He is no scriptor, but this is among the most basic of scripts, and he copies it carefully out of one of his mother’s books. The next morning, when his turn for the test comes, he runs a trickle of madra—the bare amount he can control, as an untrained eight-year-old—into the script.

  The water in the bowl shakes, which should earn him a scepter badge. Not the hammer he hopes for, but h
e couldn’t think of a way to freeze the water. But any badge will be fine; any soul is better than none.

  In the end, it is not only the water that shakes. The bowl shakes as well, and the table with it. It takes the First Elder only a moment to glance under the tablecloth and discover the sabotage.

  This time, the elder has come prepared. He has a badge for Lindon.

  It has a symbol in the middle, but not a hammer.

  The badge looks the same as all the others, smooth six-sided medallions of soft wood, but there’s no picture at the center. No arrow, no scepter, no shield, no hammer. Just a symbol that Lindon recognizes from his mother’s lessons, a word in the old language. It means ‘empty.’

  Empty like Lindon is inside, the elder tells him.

  As the other children grow, they leave behind their wooden badges. Their mastery over madra, their skill in the sacred arts, increases day by day. The earliest among them reaches the Copper stage at nine, upgrading his badge accordingly. The latest is thirteen.

  At fifteen, Wei Shi Lindon is the only one who still has his original badge. Still wooden, still empty.

  Every half a year, when the children have finished their test, Lindon slips in and judges his own spirit again. Every time, he hopes the heavens will finally have mercy on him, as his mother once said. He’s tried seventeen times now.

  The water has yet to move.

  Suggested topic: clan culture of Sacred Valley. Continue?

  Denied, report complete.

  Chapter 2

  Lindon looked up into the purple leaves of the orus tree. This one felt right—he was calmer somehow, standing in the shade of this particular tree, as though it exuded an aura of peace. Wizened white fruit waited among the leaves, far out of reach, and he sensed an ancient eternity behind its gnarled bark.

  Or maybe that was his imagination.

  He raised his hammer and chisel, carving away the outer layer of bark. Then, with utmost care, he chiseled a simple rune into the soft wood.

  When he finished, he compared the symbol he'd left in the tree to the tablet his mother had given him. He wasn't much of a scriptor, but he could at least copy simple scripts, and this particular circle should glow if carved into an ancestral tree. So long as he copied the runes perfectly.

  There were seven runes in this script, and he carefully began chipping away at the second. This was the twenty-fifth tree he'd found and tested over the last three days, ever since his mother had found out there was a tree somewhere in the forest that was about to advance. The Fallen Leaf School kept a monopoly on most trees with any possibility to produce a spirit-fruit, but Lindon had a chance to beat them to this one. As long as he worked quickly.

  Plants had to live much longer to advance than animals did. If a fox or a turtle survived their first century, they would absorb enough vital aura from the world around them to ascend into sacred beasts. These animals cycled madra, advanced in power, and left Remnants just as humans did. The oldest of them could even speak, and legends said some could take human forms.

  Plants did the same, but it took several times as long. Some trees had to stay undisturbed for five hundred years or more before they absorbed enough vital aura to develop a rudimentary spirit, and they would never learn to speak. The orus tree he was looking for had lived at least three centuries, and was on the cusp of ascension.

  Centuries of vital aura concentrated in the wood would nurture its fruit, giving it a potent spiritual power. Even sacred artists at the Iron or Jade stage would pay a small fortune for such an advantage. For Lindon...he only dared to imagine it. This spirit-fruit might strengthen him enough to make up for whatever his soul lacked at birth.

  Before he knew it, he'd finished the script circle. With wary hope he watched his handiwork, rough symbols in pale wood.

  Several breaths later, the runes remained dull and lifeless. This was always the worst part. Had the script failed because there was no madra in the wood to fuel it, or because he'd made some mistake? Careful scrutiny of his mother's tablet didn't show any obvious error, but he could never be sure.

  With a sigh, he looped the hammer and chisel back onto his belt, picking up the bottle that was his day's supply of water. A few out-of-season orus fruits had been his only meals, but he couldn't take the time to travel all the way back to the Wei clan. He'd be fine for a few days.

  As he took his first step away from the tree, a flash caught his attention. Lindon scanned the depths of the forest first, looking to see where the light had come from. It might be the sun reflecting off a piece of metal, maybe a forgotten tool or coin.

  The script flickered, sending out a spark of light. It was dim, and it guttered like a candle in the wind, but there was no mistake: his circle had worked. He'd found an ancestral tree.

  Like a fish on a hook, his gaze was pulled up to the specks of white amid the tree's purple leaves. A normal orus fruit was like a pure white peach, and grew only in Sacred Valley. Lindon had grown up eating them in everything from pies to juice, but apparently the outside world considered them delicacies. They had no special properties, only a unique flavor.

  Fruit from an ancestral orus tree looked no different, but a bite would deliver him years' worth of purified vital aura that he could process into madra. He wanted to claw his way up the bark, but the nearest branch was far too high to reach. He should come back with his sister, or at least a ladder. If only he could find his way back before the Fallen Leaf disciples did.

  Lindon was still staring up into the tree when something shook the underbrush to his left. Seconds later, a snowfox darted out of the bush and froze, examining him.

  With pure white fur and three tails waving in the air, the snowfox was as unique to Sacred Valley as the orus tree. The symbol of Lindon's Wei clan was a White Fox, in honor of the valley's snowfox. One in particular.

  Like Lindon, this fox was miles north of his home. It gazed at him for another breath before something larger crunched closer, and it darted off.

  A young man emerged from the woods, hair mussed and covered in scratches. A copper badge hung pinned to the right side of his chest, and he wore a jacket lined with white fox-fur.

  Lindon knew him. Wei Mon Teris, a member of his clan a year younger than Lindon. He was a danger.

  “Cousin Teris,” Lindon greeted him, bowing formally with two fists pressed together. “This one is honored to see you here.”

  “Out of the way!” Teris shouted, bowling past Lindon. Behind him, another young man and a young woman followed. Both of them were fourteen- or fifteen-year-old members of the Wei clan, and both of them Coppers.

  Lindon's wooden badge hung heavy on his chest, but to hide it would be to accept his shame. He stayed bowed over his fists as they ran past him.

  Deliberately casual, he backed up against the tree. If they saw the script shining, they would ask him what it was for. His only chance to take the fruit was to keep them occupied with something else.

  He cursed the fate that had led three members of his clan here, so far from home. At least they had ignored him, continuing their hunt for the fox.

  Which was, strictly speaking, illegal.

  When he heard someone making their way back, Lindon gathered his few belongings and started running. He had hoped they would leave him alone, overlooking them according to their usual habit, but he wasn't even lucky enough for that.

  Nor was he lucky enough to make it three steps before Teris caught him.

  Upon reaching the Copper stage of the sacred arts, one's spirit opened. Teris could harvest the vital aura of the world, processing it into his own madra. He could use that power to fuel his body, so when he grabbed onto Lindon's elbow, there was no possibility of resistance.

  Lindon was jerked around, but he kept a smile on his face. “Cousin Teris, how can this one serve you?”

  Teris wasn’t tall enough to look Lindon in the eye, so he spat at his feet. “We've hunted that three-tailed snowfox for a day and a night. Thanks to you, we might lo
se it.”

  “Excuse my ignorance, Cousin, but has Elder Whisper blessed this hunt?”

  Teris' ugly look was the only confirmation Lindon needed. Elder Whisper did occasionally allow the hunting of snowfoxes, but only under carefully controlled conditions. He most certainly would not tolerate three young Coppers running down a snowfox at the foot of Yoma Mountain.

  Whisper was the reason the symbol of the Wei clan was a white fox.

  But even his eyes couldn't see everything. Myth said the meat of a snowfox would strengthen the madra of those following the Path of the White Fox, as virtually everyone in the Wei clan did.

  There was no logical reason it should be true, as far as Lindon knew, but many believed it. So Elder Whisper had therefore banned all hunting of snowfoxes without his explicit permission.

  Teris formed a fist, and the air around it rippled as he gathered his power. “Are you being impertinent, Unsouled? I don’t like that look on your face.”

  Lindon's heart tightened. Teris was only Copper, but the shield on his badge showed he was an Enforcer: born to focus his madra into physical strength. He could kill Lindon with a blow, even if he probably wouldn’t. Murdering someone below your level was an unspeakable shame. If Teris killed him, and the news made it back to the clan, Teris would remain a dishonored pariah for the rest of his days.

  But there was something uniquely terrifying about facing down someone capable of caving in his ribs with a punch. No one was close enough to save him.

  Lindon bowed again, and spoke even more humbly. “This one begs your pardon, Copper Cousin. Please, this one has gathered a few chips together, and it would be an honor if you would take them.”

  He glanced up to gauge if Teris would take the bribe, but the Copper boy was looking past Lindon. Something had grabbed his attention.