Soulwoven

by Jeff Seymour

  But as Litnig passed into the gray canyons of the shadowlevel, the colors disappeared. He saw no more soulweaving, no more wealth, no more magic. The buildings Len led them between looked thick and strong, but their windows were glassless, and inside they were empty or strewn with filth.

  Light passed thin and impotent from the plate above through grates along the road. Litnig was glad for the heavy presence of the orphan breaker at his hip. Glad that he was big and he knew how to use it. Glad he was surrounded by others who were armed as well.

  “Are we safe here?” he whispered.

  “Safe enough,” grunted Len.

  Litnig’s eyes turned to Ryse, and she nodded slightly. Her job in the city, they’d decided, would be to keep an eye on the River of Souls and watch for anything unusual.

  Litnig felt twitchy. Desperate-looking, provocatively dressed men and women called drunkenly from corners. Beggars crawled in the gutters. Everywhere the people had dark, shining, hungry eyes.

  The slums of Eldan were one thing. There at least, they’d been close to home.

  But this—this felt wrong.

  They entered an open space that seemed to be a market. What little food was available on its tables was disgusting—days old already, dried out or shriveled or warped. Len guided them through it. Everywhere, the hungry eyes stared at them, and Litnig wished he could shrink into the shadows. He felt people watching him—calculating, wondering, judging. He was tall. He was well fed. He was foreign.

  It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed.

  The shadowlevel’s darkness deepened. The roads beneath the city ran straight as rods and were crossed regularly by others, cleanly laid out, clearly planned. Litnig heard the river he’d seen from the road rushing along somewhere to his left, but he couldn’t see it through the dim alleyways around him.

  Len ducked into a faceless building. It had a picture of a skinny white dragon painted on a sign above its door.

  Litnig licked dry lips, met the eyes of Cole and Ryse, and followed him.

  He entered a room of unadorned stone filled with long benches and tables. A fireplace at one end looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years. More of the dully dressed dregs of Nutharion sat at the benches, their heads lost in cups, their backs swaying like reeds in an uncertain wind.

  Len acquired a large room on the second level of the inn for the party. It was as bare and cold as the common room below, and the “beds” within it were thin planks of wood suspended by rods inserted into the stone walls.

  Water dripped somewhere in the darkness above. Len left and returned with a tiny bundle of wood and dried cow manure to cook dinner over. Litnig and the others pulled out old bread, withered mushrooms, and dry yellow beans for their evening meal. They built a fire in a stone pit near the room’s only window, brought up water from the landlord below, and began to cook.

  A few minutes later, someone knocked on their door.

  Litnig, kneeling on the floor blowing on the coals beneath their soup pot, straightened and caught Ryse’s eye again. She shook her head.

  Len called for the knocker to enter. A man and a woman carried in trays that bore more bread, some watery beer, some glasses, and a pitcher of weak wine.

  Something about them raised the hair on the back of Litnig’s neck. They were tall, slender, quiet to the point of silence. They moved almost noiselessly and spoke little. Their faces were blank masks.

  Litnig watched the others as they poured. Cole tracked the waiters with his eyes. Ryse stared openly, with a frown on her face. Quay and Dil stopped what they were doing to watch them. Even Len seemed suspicious.

  Only the treesoul seemed unconcerned. It buzzed merrily around the cook fire, pulsing feelings of curiosity and awe, as it often did around dinnertime.

  Litnig ground his teeth and thought of other things.

  The servers exited the room without saying a word. Litnig waited until he’d heard their footsteps move down the hallway, then leaned toward Quay. The prince was watching the doorway coolly.

  “My prince,” Litnig whispered. Quay said nothing. “When we get to Aleana, how will we protect the heart dragons? The necromancers—”

  He stopped. The devastation in Eldan City had happened in spite of Ryse’s soulweaving, and he didn’t think the rest of them would be able to help her prevent it from happening again.

  The prince uncrossed his arms and gestured at Len. “I’ve been assured that the Aleani will defend their own.”

  Len’s face was hidden behind a mug of the weak beer, but Litnig saw his body tighten and relax, like he was more concerned than he wanted to show.

  Litnig whispered, even more quietly, “What if—what if we—?”

  Quay sighed and turned to face him. “We will not know until we arrive, Litnig, what the situation will be when we get there, so we must simply put all our effort into arriving.” The prince turned away again and settled his back against the wall. “Quickly.”

  Litnig slunk back toward the fire. Quay had a way of making him feel like a big, stupid kid. He caught Cole frowning at the prince.

  Litnig was reaching for a cup of wine when the treesoul pulsed.

  Danger. Fear. Danger. Fear.

  The treesoul’s emotions wrapped around him and passed into him more completely than they ever had before—strong, insistent, surging on a wave of sudden anxiousness. Litnig cast his eyes around the room, but he could find neither the soul nor whatever was unnerving it. Next to him, Quay had straightened against the wall. Cole was clenching and unclenching one hand, his lips pursed and pale. There was fear in Dil’s eyes. Len was leaning back, his hands within easy reach of his axes against the far wall, and Ryse—

  Litnig’s heart pounded. At the end of the room, Ryse was sitting with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly. The treesoul was hovering over her shoulder.

  Litnig whispered her name, and her eyes opened and settled on the wall across from him.

  The door to their room was ajar.

  One shadow behind it looked darker than the rest. A silent shape in gray, with a carefully blank face.

  How long has he been there how much did he hear how in the world did we miss—

  He caught a flash of the man’s eyes. Violet. Abnormally bright. Too young for the baldness of his head.

  The door slammed shut.

  Litnig jumped to his feet and ran.

  The others were moving and shouting as well, but Litnig was fastest. He burst through the door just in time to watch the violet-eyed waiter disappear down the stairs toward the common room. Litnig followed, taking the steps so quickly that he slammed into the wall at their bottom. The waiter had already passed into the inn’s main room, which was suddenly full of people standing or sitting, talking, filled with life where an hour before he’d seen only a few drunks.

  Nine hells, he thought. Why—? But the waiter was already slipping into the crowd, sliding his thin body through the smallest gaps between patrons just beyond Litnig’s reach. Litnig bulled after him, pushing Nutharians aside like they were children, but it was difficult to move, even for him.

  Halfway across the room, the waiter ran into another man and lost his balance.

  Litnig reached through a gap between two large women and managed to grab hold of the rough fabric of the waiter’s shirt. The bystanders shouted. Someone was laughing. A drink dropped to the floor and shattered. Litnig clenched his fist, rotated his arm, pulled the waiter closer—

  The fabric beneath his fingers burst into flame.

  The flash of light startled him enough to make him let go, but there was no heat. By the time he’d recovered his composure, the flames were gone.

  Startled yelling filled the room. Litnig reached for the waiter a second time, but the man grew hazy in his sight, as if light was unwilling to touch him. Before Litnig could grab him, he’d become a fuzzy outline, and then even that outline disappeared into the crowd. Litnig stood in a room of Nutharians who were muttering increasingly angry words at him.

/>   “Drunk.” No sign of the waiter.

  “Buffoon.” Still nothing. He felt Cole at his back, heard a whisper he didn’t quite catch, felt a hand push his shoulder unkindly.

  “Goddamn kidsh think you can jusht walk all over—” A young man in threadbare brown clothes stumbled near the door. The waiter faded back into view behind him, fell briefly to his hands and knees, and then tore out into the street.

  Litnig hurled someone out of the way and followed.

  The street outside was all but deserted, and the waiter’s footsteps echoed off the fat stone buildings that cradled it. The man ran full tilt into the shadows, and Litnig let his legs fly in pursuit. He was half a block behind the waiter, but he could catch him. If he knew his legs, he could catch him.

  The stone canyons of the shadowlevel rose higher above his head. The buildings became fatter, dirtier, quieter. The rushing of the river grew in volume until it echoed off the buildings and the plate like the water was everywhere.

  A part of Litnig’s brain registered the risks he was taking. He didn’t know the city, didn’t know his enemy. He’d left Len alone with Ryse and Dil and Quay. But he was moving so fast he scarcely had time to think.

  And he could catch the man—he was so close already—

  They tore around a corner so quickly that Litnig’s feet slid on a patch of gravel. He flailed for balance, and then his foot caught and he was off again, gaining.

  He raced through turn after turn, deeper and deeper into the darkness. The waiter’s baggy gray shirt fluttered from his arms. His shorn head shone with sweat. The light from the grates above grew orange, unnatural, conjured. The shadows grew heavier.

  Litnig lost track of the way back, but it didn’t matter. With every step, the man grew closer. With every step, he pumped his arms within Litnig’s reach. It was just a matter of timing, and Litnig had always been good at timing. He counted steps in his head, waited for the rhythms of their strides to match.

  One. Two. Now!

  As Litnig reached for the waiter’s arm, the man changed direction and tried to shoot into a small alleyway, but it was too late. Litnig’s fingers closed on rough, woolen cloth. He leaned back, skidded on the flagstones and trusted his weight to bring them both to the ground, was already planning his next move and how to get on top and wrestle the man into submission.

  The waiter turned to face him.

  His eyes flashed violet for just a moment before they began to glow a swirling, pearly white. A jolt of fear shot down Litnig’s spine. He dropped the man’s arm and tried to push him away, and then he felt his chest explode.

  FIFTEEN

  There was a crushing sensation followed by a horrible release, and Litnig was thrown off of the man and into the air. He hit the ground hard and skidded across rough flagstone until he slid into the side of a building. He couldn’t breathe. His arms and legs flailed madly when he tried to get them underneath his body. His chest felt like an anvil had fallen on it.

  He managed to get his hands under control, grabbed the sharp white stones of the wall behind him and pulled himself to his feet. The shadows swam. The soulweaver—he had to find the soulweaver before—

  An arm encircled his shoulders.

  “Just breathe, Lit, breathe…”

  Cole.

  No—he thought, but he couldn’t speak. His brother started to rub his back.

  “Yenor’s eye, Lit, what happened? Did you get jumped or—”

  Litnig shook his head and gestured violently toward the alley.

  “Nothing there, Lit. Relax. Just breathe.”

  Litnig stood and watched the darkness. His eyes cleared. Nothing moved in the shadows.

  Relief sank into him bone deep. He was in no shape to fight a soulweaver. He didn’t even really know how to. Stupid. So stupid not to have realized what was happening in the inn and turned back then. So, so stupid.

  Cole slipped his head under Litnig’s arm and took his weight. Litnig’s legs buckled. Breathing felt like sucking down gobs of fire.

  “C’mon, Lit. Hells!”

  Cole dropped him, and Litnig fell to his hands and knees. The pavement looked blurry. He realized he was coughing.

  “What in Yenor’s bloody name happened?”

  Litnig took a few halting gasps.

  “The waiter,” he rasped when he trusted his voice enough to speak. He took another breath in three parts, sat down, and leaned against the side of the building. Cole’s face looked ashen in the shadows. It occurred to Litnig that his brother had chased after him without understanding why he was running.

  “That waiter—” His breath came a little easier. He found the sorest spot on his chest and rubbed. “He was spying on us. And he was a soulweaver.”

  Cole went stone still.

  A warm breeze kicked up and whirled dust and grit into Litnig’s face. The plate dripped nameless muck onto the street from above. A rat scurried by somewhere in the shadows.

  And Litnig continued to breathe.

  “Yenor’s eye, Lit.” Cole swallowed. He put both hands on the back of his head and stared at the ground, then the plate, then the alley, and finally back at Litnig. “He could have killed you.”

  A denial reached Litnig’s lips, but he didn’t voice it. There was real, solid fear in his brother’s eyes. Fear he’d never seen there before.

  Litnig took his hand off of his chest and stared at his palm. Gravel from the street had lodged in it. He was bleeding.

  He hadn’t even felt the pain.

  ***

  Ryse faced a wretched excuse for a fire in a wretched room in a wretched inn in a wretched city and felt utterly wretched. An old, splintering chair creaked under her weight. Dil, Quay, and Len stood around her in a semicircle.

  She’d known—the shaved heads, the unusual quietness, the way the River had bent around them—she’d known what their waiters were, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it, hadn’t wanted to fight two necromancers in close quarters in the middle of Nutharion City. And because of that fear, she’d failed. Again.

  That was new, the fear. A few weeks before, she would’ve faced any threat calmly, with the knowledge that Yenor was behind her. But after the Old Temple, she could think only of the dead, of the dragon’s horrible, smiling face, of her training and how it had failed her, and of how she’d been so wrong about so much.

  And now she’d told Litnig and Cole that she could protect them, and she’d been wrong about that too.

  She gripped the black limbs of the chair. She trusted nothing the Temple had taught her, she realized.

  Not even my own power.

  She took a shaky breath. A mug of tea that had long grown cold sat on the floor next to her. Dil had made it for her after the others helped her into the chair.

  Ryse shut her eyes. She was supposed to be strong. Yenor was her ally.

  For a moment, she doubted.

  Even as she did, the placid, loved feeling she’d always associated with her god’s presence washed over her. Her fear melted away. Her breathing slowed down. She looked up from the flames and heard heavy footsteps, and she was unsurprised when the brothers Jin entered the room a moment later.

  They looked terrible. Cole’s face was a color of gray she’d seen only in the rawest recruits of the Academy. Litnig’s was little better. His left hand was rubbing his chest.

  She frowned. “You’re hurt.”

  “I’m fine, Ryse, it’s just a bruise.”

  She rose and put her hand on his chest. His skin felt hot through the fabric of his shirt.

  “Let me see,” she said.

  His hand wrapped lightly around her wrist. “It’s fine, Ryse. Really.” His voice was quiet, filled with more concern for her than for himself.

  She turned away from him before he could see her frustration. She wanted to scream at him to just let her help him, that all she wanted was to bloody well make up for the mistake that had gotten him hurt in the first place.

  Instead, she turned to Cole. The
younger Jin brother’s eyes were fixed on the wall.

  “And you?” she asked.

  Cole jerked as if he was surprised to find her in front of him. His voice sounded far away. “Fine,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t even there.”

  Ryse returned to her seat before the fire unused, unwanted. She heard the brothers telling their story to Quay, heard the prince and Len discussing what it meant, but she knew already.

  While she’d been worrying about Len, necromancers had been looking for them and necromancers had found them.

  The words of the others filtered through her mind.

  “Then we race to Du Fenlan as quickly as possible.”

  “We could go home instead—”

  “It is a good plan, princeling. We should leave now, if the others can manage it.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Ryse flushed.

  “I can handle it,” she whispered.

  More silence followed, and she wondered for a second if Len had been talking about someone else. Feet scuffed the stone floor. Quay spoke slow and heavy.

  “Good,” he said.

  She heard packs opened, stuffed, closed.

  “Get your things,” said the prince. “We won’t rest again until we reach Du Hardt.”

  SIXTEEN

  Peace.

  Leramis Hentworth sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, across from a peg where the black robe of the order he’d forsaken much to join hung. The walls around him creaked in the wind. It was late spring, and still cold near the sea in Menatar. He had no fire. He needed no fire.

  The fire was supposed to be in his soul.

  The necromancer kept his back straight, let his head nod forward until his chin rested nearly on his chest. His hands lightly touched the ends of his knees. In his mind, he envisioned an endless field of soft, warm light, waiting to wrap him in a quiet embrace.

  Peace.

  It had been two and a half weeks since the Heart Dragons of Mennaia had been broken. Two weeks since word of it had reached the Order of Necromancers. One week since he’d been asked to make himself ready for a long journey.