Soulwoven

by Jeff Seymour

  Before he gave himself up to sleep a second time, Cole wrapped both arms around her. A warm, calm feeling spread from his chest over his whole body.

  She wriggled closer to him, and he closed his eyes and felt her fingers wrap around his own.

  ***

  Dil hunted lions beneath an amber sky in a forest of violet spruce. A fragrant carpet of needles flew by beneath her feet. She leaped streams, tore through bushes, ran with the spirit of a tiger in her soul and a spear in her hand.

  The cats she chased were beautiful creatures—one as black as sable and the other white as snow. Solid knots of muscle undulated like dancing ropes beneath their coats. She wasn’t sure where she was, or why she was hunting them, or even whether she was going to kill them when she caught up. She hoped not.

  She drew closer and closer, jumped over fallen logs and raced under low branches until the cats were almost within reach.

  She burst into a grassy clearing filled with light.

  The brightness hurt her eyes, and she shielded them with her arm as she stepped forward. She felt warm and comfortable—beloved, as though her grandfather’s arms were around her. A voice spoke softly in her ear. It was kind in its inflection.

  You have my deepest apologies, it said, and Dil wondered for what.

  The voice paused. When it returned, it was filled with admiration. What you do will be forever remembered by the world.

  She had the sensation of a hand stroking her hair.

  The light began to fade, and she thought she saw a man walking into the forest. He wore a cloak decorated with a strange, swirling insignia, white on red.

  The light disappeared.

  The two cats she’d been hunting sat at the edge of the clearing, watching her. The amber sky darkened. The spruce lost their violet hue.

  Dil held out her hands, and the cats walked forward.

  She awoke a moment later and felt Cole’s arms around her.

  Her breath seized in her throat. His body was bigger than she remembered, and stronger. She couldn’t move. She felt too hot, and suddenly it was too much, too quickly. She wasn’t ready. She dug her fingers into the dirt and stared at the fire, eyes wide, heart racing.

  A loud growl split the night.

  It was followed after a long, rhythmic moment by another, then another, blaring and innocent and graceless. Dil’s breath came back. Her body relaxed.

  Cole, apparently, snored.

  Loudly.

  And that reminded her of who he was, and why she’d lain down next to him in the first place, and he became much less frightening.

  Another snore. Dil fought the urge to laugh.

  She noticed Litnig peering at her across the crackling campfire. The trees whispered mindlessly over his head. His eyes held a haunted, questioning look. She smiled at him.

  Tiredly, he smiled back.

  Dil’s fingers were tangled in Cole’s, and she squeezed and leaned into his chest. She hadn’t slept so close to anyone since childhood. It was nice. His body felt soothing against hers. The fire was pleasantly warm on her face. She heard the comforting noises of small animals scurrying in the woods, of birds in the trees, of wind and of sky and of forest.

  She didn’t want to fall back asleep. She just lay there, enjoying the night, until her mind did it for her.

  ***

  On the other side of the fire, Len stood with Litnig and another young man on a vast, empty moor of gray dust and long shadows. The night sky hung cloudless and infinite above him. The ground yielded softly beneath his feet.

  The two humans turned their heads skyward, and Len followed their eyes. There was something lurking in the darkness overhead—a shadow deeper than the rest, heavy and black and ominous.

  It moved toward them.

  The nameless youth raised his hands, and the shadow slowed to a stop. For a moment, it held still.

  The boy faltered.

  He closed his eyes. His cheeks twitched. His lips warped into a painful grimace. The shadow began to move downward again—slowly at first, but with increasing speed. The youth opened his eyes and looked at Litnig with cold, calm surety.

  As the shadow grew closer, he disappeared.

  Len’s guts squirmed. The thing in the stars was wrong. Not evil, but a force more primordial than that—a deeper darkness. A hole in the world that sought to suck all of existence into itself and grind it into oblivion. Len raised his arms to ward it off, but they would not stay above his head.

  The shadow grew closer, heavier, deeper, until it filled the sky. Len felt himself being pulled into its embrace. His body and soul bulged and split.

  Litnig raised his hands.

  The shadow ground to a halt above their heads. Len heard a tremendous crack from Litnig’s direction. There was a flash of light, and then the shadow exploded into a thousand thousand shards of itself—a million little patches of darkness that fled to the spaces between the stars and hid there, no longer dangerous, no longer powerful.

  Len smelled lightning and burnt flesh. He heard a sizzling sound from Litnig’s direction.

  He did not turn to face it.

  The Aleani awoke soon after, bothered by a rock in the small of his back. Next to him, Litnig stared silently into the flames.

  Len squinted at the young man and rubbed his chin. The blood of the Dreamseers did not run strong in the Heramsun family, but it ran deep, in a thin stream left by a few ancestors long ago. Len had dreamed strange things before.

  He had never been good at unraveling their meanings.

  Clouds rolled over the sky. The stars were half-obscured. The moon, slipping toward the horizon, made a thin circle of light against the gray. Len watched it move.

  And then he turned over to sleep once more.

  ***

  Flames licked at the logs that Litnig fed to them, and the young man thought of Ryse.

  She was stretched out near the fire across from him, her hands pillowed under her head, her robe covering her bruises and scrapes again. The smoke blew gently over her, as though it didn’t want to disturb her sleep. The moon caught the white of her robe and made it glow.

  She sighed and shifted, and Litnig’s heart twisted around itself. The feelings he’d had for her as a child had died, and he could feel the seed of some new emotion in their place—something half-formed, waiting for him to give it shape. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted her to be. Maybe a best friend. Maybe a sister. Maybe something deeper, or some amalgamation of the three.

  He was even less sure what she wanted from him.

  He missed his mother. She’d taught him most of what was good in him—shown him a path to manhood that didn’t run through the rage and violence of his father’s tantrums. He’d never asked her about Ryse though. He’d been embarrassed to.

  That was beginning to feel like a mistake.

  Litnig looked back at the flames. They rose and fell in random harmonies, blue near the shifting orange of the coals, then red and yellow like sun-ripened corn rimmed by charcoal as they licked the darkened sky. His joints felt loose and easy, his muscles gently sore. His arm didn’t hurt at all, unless he moved it.

  He found great peace in staring at the fire. He’d felt so much pressure since leaving home—he’d been trying to take care of Cole, and to take care of Ryse, and to stay on Quay’s good side and keep an eye on Len.

  And maybe hardest of all, he’d been trying to live up to his idea of himself.

  In the face of that, he found a certain satisfaction in watching a stack of wood turn into a pile of ash. The wind would scatter the ash. It would fuel the growth of new trees to fill the voids left by the deaths of the old. So reminded of life’s great loop, he felt like no matter what he did, he could never truly fail.

  He took a deep breath of fire-warmed air and forgot the others. For a moment, he was alone with his thoughts, and he didn’t need to be strong—not for Cole, not for Ryse, not even for himself.

  For a moment, he felt free.

  The
n he heard a sharp snap from the woods behind him, and Quay emerged at his side from the darkness beyond the firelight.

  He just went to pass water, Litnig reminded himself, but it didn’t stop his heart from pounding.

  The fire cracked and spit. Its smoke drifted past Quay into the trees. A crow called in the distance.

  After a moment, Quay nodded toward the cloud-hidden moon and said quietly, “You ought to get some sleep.” His legs bent gracefully underneath him. He sat cross-legged next to Litnig and held his palms before the fire. His swords hung at his belt.

  A shiver ran down Litnig’s spine.

  “Can’t sleep,” he muttered.

  Quay looked at him, frowned, and turned back to the flames. The prince didn’t lie down to sleep. He sat with his back as straight as a rod and looked into the fire with an intensity that Litnig didn’t understand.

  Then he spoke.

  “When I close my eyes, Litnig Jin,” he said, “I have visions of the dragon.”

  Quay stared at the fire like he wished he could shape it or extinguish it or stoke it with his will alone. Like he wished he could do the same to the whole world.

  “Sometimes, I see it laying waste to my father’s armies. Sometimes, I see it tearing Eldan City to pieces. Sometimes it simply hangs in the air and smiles at me.”

  Quay’s face betrayed no fear, but the emotion sparked on its own in Litnig’s heart and grew with every word the prince said.

  Why’s he saying this? Litnig wondered. Why talk to me? Why now? Why here?

  And deeper, more insistent than the rest:

  Why has everyone seen the dragon but me?

  “I do not feel the need to eat, or sleep, or rest,” Quay said, but Litnig’s heart was thundering with that last question and he had no ears for the prince’s words. Ryse had seen the dragon. Cole and Len, he was fairly certain, had seen it too. He didn’t know about Dil, but now Quay—

  “You do not trust me, and I do not blame you. My chief concern is not for you or Cole or Ryse or even for myself.”

  Ryse had seen the dragon when she wove souls. Cole and Len, he thought, had seen it in their dreams. Quay when he closed his eyes.

  I can’t soulweave, but my dream—why hasn’t it come into my dream, or caught me when my eyes close?

  “I may make mistakes, Litnig, but I do not make decisions lightly. We serve a cause more important—”

  Litnig stared into the flames. He wrapped his good arm around his knees like he was a child.

  Quay stopped speaking. When Litnig turned to look at him, he found the prince’s eyes fixed on his.

  Ryse groaned in her sleep.

  The moan was a deep, mournful sound that stretched into a long, loud, frightened one. She had a tortured look on her face. Her body was curled in the fetal position, twitching.

  Litnig scrambled to her side as quickly as his body would take him. He recognized the fear on her face.

  It was the same as he’d seen in Eldan City.

  A lump lodged itself in his throat. He touched her shoulder with his good hand.

  She sat up and grabbed his arm. Her nails dug into his skin. Her eyelids shot open, and she looked wildly at the shadows around the fire until her eyes found his face.

  He ignored the pain of her grip. He knew, knew, that it was necromancers in Du Fenlan. Knew they would have to move, knew the others needed waking.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking about the dragon.

  He heard rustling and commanding whispers behind him. Ryse’s breathing calmed. Her hand left his arm.

  The dragon, he wanted to ask her. What does it look like? What does it say?

  But her skin was pale, and there was sweat on her face. He couldn’t bring himself to voice the questions.

  He licked his lips. Her eyes met his.

  “Is it—?”

  She nodded. Her chest heaved. So did his.

  “If you want to stay here…”

  She shook her head and pulled herself to her feet. He rose with her.

  A hardness came over her eyes. He could see the veins bulging on her temples. “I’m the only one who can sense them, Lit, and—”

  She looked north, and something in her changed.

  Goose bumps rippled over her skin. The hairs on her arms and neck stood on end. Her eyes widened, and she took a deep, shuddering breath. When she spoke, the bitterness in her voice had been replaced by wonder and a breathless trace of fear.

  “Yenor will protect us,” she whispered. “We should go.”

  Quay’s voice echoed over Litnig’s shoulder. “Should we run?”

  Ryse closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they glowed pearl white.

  “Yes,” she said.

  And then they did.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Ryse’s feet pounded a rocky, hard-beaten path. The River of Souls swirled in bright eddies around her. She still felt a little of the fever that had overtaken her in the tunnels, but she ignored it.

  The valley ahead of her, a wide river plain surrounded by high mountains and dominated by a city that crept up the seat of a throne-shaped peak, was rich with souls. They poured over the tops of the ridges in heavy swells, rushed along the valley floor, pooled over villages and towns and crossed the night in great auroral arcs.

  Fighting had already begun inside the city. The River was flooding into it in a vortex of light that roared over not just it but the whole valley. The Heart Dragons of Aleana hadn’t been broken—Ryse thought she would’ve felt it if they had been—but they were clearly at risk.

  It wasn’t the danger to the heart dragons, however, that had set her heart racing.

  Before the torrent of souls flowing into Du Fenlan had obscured all detail, she’d thought, just for a moment, that she’d felt the eddy of a soulweaver she hadn’t seen in more than two years. A soulweaver who’d been in the Academy with her. A soulweaver who’d died in the White Forest just before she’d gained the robe.

  A hundred memories gaped before her as she ran: a boy with a drawn, darkened face drinking tea. A warm conversation in which she’d learned that he too had never known a real family. Stealing time away from lectures and drills to meet him in empty hallways for a moment’s shared smile. The thrill that had shot through every bone in her body the first time he’d held her. The taste of his lips…

  The darkened walls of Du Fenlan loomed above.

  Ryse could feel the soulweaving inside the city more clearly close up. There were two necromancers. Their weaving had a distinct, twisted aspect—pulled at the River in a way that was too easy, like a cart rolling unchecked down a steep hill. There were others weaving as well. Aleani soulweavers, she figured. They created smaller whirlpools in the River’s flow.

  The necromancers were frighteningly powerful. And one of them wove just like a man she’d been told was dead.

  Her mouth felt dry. The others stood in front of a small door cut into Du Fenlan’s massive wooden gates. Len was shouting at someone.

  Through a slit in the door, Ryse spotted orange light and a pair of beady eyes. She couldn’t understand the words of the Aleani on the other side of the gate, but his tone was clear. They wouldn’t be let in.

  She started weaving.

  She laid a web of souls over the door and stepped forward. Her voice surprised her with its coldness.

  “We are coming in,” she said. “If you value your life, you will step back.”

  She scarcely registered the gatekeeper’s face. Aleani, dreadlocked, tattooed, it didn’t matter.

  He moved, and she blew the door off its hinges.

  She was running then, racing past columned buildings of limestone along a river and then moving up a steep hill tinted blue in the moonlight. Flagstones flew by under her feet. Souls streamed past her in the thousands.

  Leramis’s father had been a scoundrel and a lush. The soulweaver she’d sensed could have been an illegitimate brother, a sister, a cousin. It didn’t have to be him. But he’d been powerful, woven
so smoothly, so surely—

  Just like these necromancers.

  Ryse outdistanced the others. She had to know, even if it was neither the time nor the place to find out. She wanted to protect the heart dragons, and she wanted to protect her friends, but she also needed to ascertain whether Leramis was alive, what in the world he was doing with the necromancers if he was—

  And why he’d let her cry for him if he’d lived.

  The disturbance in the River centered on a bright limestone temple set into the hill she was climbing. The building looked eerily similar to the one she’d once guarded in Eldan City. It was garlanded by huge white columns that supported a pyramidal roof. A short flight of long white steps led from a small plaza up to its door. The door itself formed a tall rectangle of darkness in the moonlight.

  Tall houses loomed above her, but she scarcely noticed them. The night was clear and crisp. The River surged throughout it.

  She ran as fast as her legs would move.

  A crowd of Aleani surrounded the temple. Ryse heard the crack and thunder of heavy soulweaving within the hill. A bald, armored Aleani staggered out of the darkened doorway carrying a yellow-robed, blood-covered shape. He roared something at the onlookers in a language Ryse couldn’t understand. They looked at one another and didn’t move.

  Ryse drew closer. The temple’s entrance beckoned from the center of a wall of polished, rose-colored granite. The crowd parted like wheat. The shouting Aleani shut his mouth.

  Thousands upon thousands of souls were flooding through the door and into the temple beyond, moving in a rush so heavy it brought the wind with it. A bolt of light lit the temple interior, then another, and a third. There was an explosion. Ryse saw a shape she hoped was already dead blasted into pieces.

  She stepped through the rose door, and she knew pandemonium.

  Souls flew about her like blind-fired arrows, pulled in a hundred different directions by dozens of soulweavers. Spears of light tore through the air. Explosions woven from hundreds of souls rocked rows of undead. Heavyset Aleani corpses ran amok—not moving slowly like the ones in Eldan City had, not meaning to terrify or to chase or to haunt, but to kill. Kamikaze skeletons and half-rotted corpses hurled themselves at banks of soulweavers and guards, where they tore and rent until they were cut to pieces or blasted apart. The undead seemed chaotic, insane, not calmly driven by a single will. Some of them were even ripping at one another.