Soulwoven

by Jeff Seymour

  The air moved.

  The disc quivered and began to turn back the way it had come. Litnig’s heartbeat strengthened. His vision started to clear.

  Soon, the walker’s feet were back on the disc, and then so were Litnig’s. The disc came up underneath him until his knees, then his elbows, touched it. The strength of the walker filled him, flowing like golden sap along his bones.

  The disc went horizontal. The walker let go.

  Litnig knelt on the gray stone.

  I’m breathing again, he thought. His chest heaved. He could hear his lungs making deep, healthy inhalations over his head. The disc hummed with gentle energy. Its glow, though dim, seemed steady.

  The walker crouched in front of him. There was sympathy in its narrow, almond-shaped eyes. And kindness. And understanding. It opened its fingers and extended one white palm toward Litnig. He thought of the Aleani walker’s bead.

  Litnig took its hand. His body jerked.

  The walker’s memories filled him.

  Baggy pants flapped around his knees. He wore no shirt. His muscles were strong and wiry, and his toes dug bare and callused into soft moss.

  Tall trees shone on all sides of him in shades of white, silver, and pale green. The ground was blanketed in a rolling carpet of emerald and amber moss. Turquoise and ruby flowers perfumed the air with the scents of tangy fruit and incense. A city of iridescent crystal, built in and among the trees, stood in front of him and shone with rainbow colors in the dying light of the day. He held a fishing pole in his hand.

  Others stood nearby—tall, laughing figures with brightly colored hair.

  He wasn’t human. He was Sh’ma.

  Other memories flew by. He was taught to read the wind and stars and forest, taught soulweaving, history, philosophy, mathematics, engineering. He learned of humans, and he peppered his tutors with questions—what were they like? Where did they live? How did they speak? Could they think? Could they soulweave?

  Could they love?

  The last question earned him three strikes of the cane across his back.

  Later, he walked barefoot through a sea of endless trees until he came to a place where the earth trembled and smoked. In the valley of fire and iron, his people taught him how to wield heat and soulweaving to make weapons and armor. He listened, and he learned, and he worked.

  A century passed. Humans danced in his dreams. His arm raised and fell on glowing soulforged steel.

  Stories reached him of a free city to the south.

  He left the valley of fire and iron, and he walked until he found it. It stood tall and bright on the shores of a large lake, full of new smells, new sights, and new people.

  Aleani.

  Humans.

  There was freedom there, the freedom to do whatever he wanted, and in that intoxicating atmosphere he found the answer to his question. Humans could love. They did love.

  They loved freely.

  He gave his heart to the dark hair and sparkling eyes of a human woman. She gave him a daughter in return. For the first time in his life, he felt truly happy.

  The memory changed and sharpened. He stood next to the surging waters of the lake by the city and watched flames leap from crystal buildings. The wind carried smoke and screams. He held weapons he had forged long in the past.

  The Sh’ma Ith’a had come with soul and sword to put down the disobedient. The free city was dying. The humans were dying. The Aleani were dying.

  His wife and his child were dying.

  The memory shifted. His home lay before him. The bright crystal beams of its roof had broken and collapsed. The door he’d spent a week carving and shaping had shattered. A woman with dark hair and brown eyes lay bleeding on the floor in what had once been a bedroom. She cradled a motionless shape in her arms. She wept. She moaned. She screamed.

  The River of Souls opened before him in all its beauty and turbulence. He shouted at the woman in Sh’ma, then again in human.

  But she wouldn’t help him heal her.

  She died clutching the remains of their child and a dream lived in defiance of all he’d once been taught.

  The memory shifted again. He stood in the street. Sh’ma with weapons and armor took martial postures before him. Sh’ma who were purging his city, his dream, his life.

  Tens of thousands of souls flowed to his body, and he wove them into a shockwave. Three of the Sh’ma fell down. Three remained standing.

  He had no chance. He was a craftsman, not a warrior.

  The thrust of the spear caught him hard in the chest.

  The blow pinned him to the wall of his broken house. He hung there, struggling to breathe. His wife was dead. His child was dead.

  His dream was dead, and the city that had nurtured it was burning.

  Air filtered into what was left of his lungs in tiny, desperate gasps. A Sh’ma whose face he couldn’t see slid a knife across his neck. Blood filled his throat. His eyes rolled back in his head. His body jerked beneath him.

  His heartbeat sped, then slowed, then died.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was Litnig Jin.

  He shivered in front of the walker. Sweat chilled his face. His breath was short, his heart unsteady, his head feverish.

  The walker knelt in front of him. Its light filled his vision. Litnig understood—the pain in its eyes, in his heart, in the stony faces of the dark walkers…

  He reached for it, but his legs gave out. His head hit the disc.

  His eyes closed.

  The dream disappeared.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Skitter.

  Chirp.

  Snuffle.

  Skritch.

  Leramis listened to the rats through the wall.

  “Eating well today, are we?” he murmured.

  The dank, musty smell of wet stone filled his nostrils. The ceiling dripped slimy water into puddles on the floor. A tallow lamp over his head lit the dingy corners of his small cell, and a wooden door across from him stood closed and barred.

  Two days.

  The Aleani had kept him locked up for two days.

  No one had spoken to him since his initial interrogation. He’d had only the rats for company.

  He wondered if the next time he spoke, it would be to his executioner.

  If only I’d been a little faster.

  He’d been late arriving to Du Hardt—had caught just the dying whispers of Ryse’s eddy in the River as she disappeared underground. And the collapse in the tunnels had cut him off from the prince and his party before he’d been able to make himself known.

  That had been difficult to swallow. He was glad they’d survived the mountains without his help.

  Ryse is alive.

  The thought brought a smile to his face.

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside his cell. A gruff voice spoke in Aleani. The lock on the door rattled and turned.

  Leramis turned his eyes upward to watch it.

  The door creaked open. His neighbors through the wall stopped their snuffling. A halberd-bearing Aleani eased himself into the cell.

  Quay Eldani, with a scab across the bridge of his nose, followed. The prince wore long gloves, fine trousers, and a rich, silver-lined black doublet.

  The door creaked shut. The rats began to scritch and scratch again.

  “Prince Quay,” Leramis said. He slipped his hands into his sleeves. “I have a message for you.”

  Quay remained silent. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His doublet bunched and folded as he crossed his arms. His companion fidgeted.

  “Tell me why you’re here,” the prince said at last.

  Leramis licked his lips and spread his hands. “Have the Aleani shared what I told them, or—”

  “Tell us where D’Orin Threi is,” the guardsman growled. His eyes flashed.

  The prince glanced briefly at his companion. His hands tightened on his arms.

  He made no move to overrule the question.

  Leramis’s gut
tightened. Quay’s motions didn’t escape him. Neither did the import of the Aleani’s words. Rhan’s intelligence had mentioned Len Heramsun.

  Leramis wasn’t entirely sure how to play the situation, so he told the truth. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  “Do not play games with me, boy,” the guardsman said. He leveled his halberd at Leramis’s chest.

  Leramis sat down on the wooden bench, bolted to the wall, that served as his only piece of furniture. The halberd followed his movements. The rats in the neighboring room squeaked.

  The prince said nothing. Neither did Len Heramsun.

  At a loss for how to continue without provoking the Aleani and worsening the likelihood that the prince would help him, Leramis simply said all he could.

  “D’Orin Threi Heramsun didn’t return to the Order after he murdered his grandfather,” he said. “When your people declined our help in tracking him down, we lost him.”

  Len Heramsun’s hands tightened around the shaft of the halberd. “I told you not to play—”

  “I’m telling you everything I know,” Leramis said. He let his eyes flash up.

  The Aleani said nothing, but his grip on the halberd didn’t loosen.

  “To answer your question, Prince Quay—I’m here to make sure you understand what’s happening to the world.” Leramis licked his lips. The prince didn’t move a muscle. “Several years ago, two soulweavers came to Menatar. They showed the powerful draw in the River that speaks to long training in soulweaving, but neither of them could so much as light a match with soulcraft.”

  The prince’s face remained blank. So did the Aleani’s.

  “It was like watching two champion weightlifters, with the physiques to prove their prowess, struggle and fail to lift a single gold coin.”

  That got a better reaction. The prince frowned. Len Heramsun scoffed.

  “They claimed to be Duennin,” Leramis said.

  The prince’s frown deepened. “And you helped them.”

  Leramis nodded. “We did. That has since proven to be a mistake.”

  Len bristled. A loud thunk echoed from the floors above. The rats next door squealed and growled.

  Quay gestured for Leramis to continue.

  “We found a complex, self-sustaining weave wrapped around their souls. It prevented them from making contact with the River. There was some disagreement within the Council of Taers as to whether we ought to alter it, and we did not. In general, our Order seeks not to intervene in the affairs of the world.”

  “In general, you seem to do a very poor job of that,” Len Heramsun spat.

  Leramis ignored him. He kept his eyes on Quay.

  “Earlier this year, the two soulweavers disappeared. So did Soren Goldguard, a powerful necromancer of the Order.”

  “And a minor Eldanian noble,” Quay interrupted. “I know. Make your point.”

  Leramis swallowed. Rhan hadn’t mentioned that the Eldanian prince was so irritable. No one had.

  The rats next door had another disagreement. One of them slid into the wall hard enough to shake it.

  “We believe the three of them are working with D’Orin Threi to destroy the heart dragons,” Leramis said. “Our agents saw them in Eldan City the day the Heart Dragons of Mennaia were destroyed. And it was Goldguard who broke the dragons here.”

  The sight of him was seared into Leramis’s mind. The blue eyes, the blond hair—the hatred and the superiority.

  I knew him before he was like that, he thought, but he pushed the memories away.

  He turned his eyes to Len Heramsun.

  “If you seek D’Orin Threi,” he said softly, “look for him in Soulth’il.”

  Quay uncrossed his arms. “The Heart Dragons of the White Forest are still intact, then?”

  Leramis shrugged. “As far as the Order knew when I last spoke with my comrades. I might know more if I hadn’t been kept under lock and key.”

  Footsteps moved down the hall outside. The rats stopped their pageant until they’d passed.

  Quay squatted down so that his eyes were level with Leramis’s.

  “Tell me why I should believe you,” he said. “Tell me why I should ask the Aleani not to hang you to pay for the lives lost two days ago.”

  The ceiling continued to drip. Somewhere in the halls beyond, Leramis heard the loud bark of an Aleani laughing.

  Leramis had known the prince’s question, or one very much like it, would come. He’d spent two days mulling over what he would say when it did, and how he would say it.

  He stood up. The prince did as well.

  Leramis tugged on his robe’s soft collar until he could peel his left arm from it. The action exposed the left side of his chest.

  “Do you remember what I did the night the Heart Dragons of Aleana were attacked?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Leramis pointed to the long scar that stretched from his left collarbone across his chest.

  “I didn’t have this when that night began,” he said. “Soren Goldguard gave it to me as I stood with you.”

  “I remember,” Quay said. His voice was cold and flinty. “I remain unconvinced.”

  Leramis’s eyes narrowed. “I saved your companion’s life. At considerable risk to my own.”

  Len Heramsun’s face showed the briefest flicker of surprise. The Aleani hadn’t been there when Ryse had pulled her big friend from the crystal wall, nor when Leramis had ignored the blood pouring from his own chest to get the young man breathing.

  “I remember,” Quay said. “I remain—”

  “When the worm attacked you beneath Du Hardt, I pulled fire from the air to aid you.”

  Quay shook his head.

  “Prove that you wanted more than to get me to take your side before the Aleani, Leramis Hentworth,” he said. “Prove that you didn’t help me just to buy time while your order looses Sherduan on the world.”

  The prince didn’t blink, even when the ceiling dripped directly onto his shoulder. The flame of the lamp flickered. A draft swept beneath the door. A new set of rat sounds started up from the neighboring cell, and the room filled with urgent squeaking.

  Quay Eldani turned to go.

  Leramis tucked his arm back into his sleeve. Old memories ran through his head, and he recalled a set of dreams that had never fully died.

  “Do you remember me, Quay Eldani?” he asked.

  The prince turned back around. His eyes glittered in the lamplight.

  “I met you, when we were children. You and your brother came to the Lars Dors’ School for Boys. We spoke.”

  The prince’s face betrayed nothing. The chorus of rats intensified.

  “I told you then that I would serve your realm until my dying breath, and that I would do great things for you. We drank to it.”

  Leramis grabbed a cup of water from the floor near his bed and raised it.

  “To Eldan,” he said. “Lerr nakar Quan Eldany.”

  He drained the cup. It tasted foul—brackish water spiced with mold and whatever bits of dust had drifted into it from the prison air.

  When Leramis finished, he wiped what was left of the water from his lips and set the flimsy vessel down again.

  “I serve a different cause now, Quay Eldani,” he said. “But I’m still trying to help you protect your people.”

  Quay didn’t speak. Neither did Len. The squeaks from the adjoining room became hisses and screams and growls. The wooden wall between the cells shivered as more than one animal slammed into it.

  “Hentworth,” the prince said after a moment. “I remember.” He didn’t return Leramis’s toast. He turned instead for the door.

  Leramis tasted ash and fear. His heart rose into his throat. One of the rats next door gave a loud, long squeal, and the sounds of rodent struggle ceased.

  “Bring me a stool,” Quay said to the guards outside the cell.

  Len Heramsun said something in Aleani. The door opened. A stool was pushed through.

  Quay set it
in front of Leramis and sat down.

  “Tell me more, necromancer,” he said.

  And Leramis did.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Litnig faded in and out of consciousness. He caught glimpses of white light and thick darkness, wooden beams and stone pillars. He heard warm voices and his own breathing, but he was never truly in the dream or the real world.

  And then one morning, he opened his eyes and saw bright light on the hair of an old Aleani female.

  The grayhair was murmuring softly to herself. Her eyes were closed. Clouds of age spots dotted her face, intersected by wrinkles. A pale yellow habit hung from her shoulders.

  For a moment, Litnig couldn’t separate reality from dream. He wasn’t sure whether he was human or Sh’ma, whether he’d fought a necromancer or lost a wife. He knew only that his heart was heavy and his body ached.

  The Aleani opened her eyes, smiled warmly, straightened, and left.

  Litnig looked around. The room he’d awoken in was carved from smooth gray stone and adorned with tapestries covered in brilliant, sharply angled runes. A row of pine cabinets stretched across one wall. Two stained-glass windows dominated the one opposite. Litnig’s bed faced an open-air hallway bathed in bright, natural light.

  In one corner of the room was a chair, and in the chair sat a shadow.

  It had a shape that Litnig recognized. A white blanket lay over it, tucked beneath its legs like someone had placed it there after the shadow had fallen asleep. Its hair was short and brown. Its face was young. There was a thick scab on its forehead.

  Cole.

  Litnig managed to sit up. His abdomen felt sore and weak. His legs were as exhausted as they’d been after the march from Nutharion City to Janestown. His left arm was slingless and painless.

  He had to catch his breath just from sitting.

  A gasp and a crash sounded from the hallway. Litnig flinched. Cole jerked awake and spun toward the noise.

  But it was just a girl in loose brown clothes.

  Sunlight pooled on the stone behind her. A tray lay at her feet. Next to it, a loaf of bread and the broken remains of a pitcher swam in a puddle of milk.

  “Cole,” she said, “he’s awake.”