Soulwoven

by Jeff Seymour

  The stairs were uneven and difficult, and Litnig’s legs wouldn’t move like he wanted them to. One of his feet came down sideways. His ankle rolled. His knee locked. His body twisted and tumbled, and then he ducked his head and bounced and somersaulted down the stairway.

  His shoulder smashed against the corner of a step. His arm drifted away from the side of his head. His skull slammed into stone.

  The impact jarred his teeth, his jaw, his nose, his cheekbones.

  Litnig’s eyes snapped shut.

  When he looked out at the world again, he was back in the dream.

  The disc felt quiet and tremulous, like the plains when the green-gray clouds of a storm were massing overhead.

  Litnig picked himself up unsteadily. He held a hand to his aching head. He listened to his heart pound, and he turned in a slow circle.

  The light walkers had returned to the disc.

  Each of them stood before one of the three pillars, pressing its dark counterpart against the stone. Dull chains, like those he’d seen on the pillars before his mother’s death, were appearing next to them and restraining the dark walkers again.

  Beyond the walkers, great thunderheads of darkness towered above the disc. Tendrils of smoke snaked out from them and crawled over its edge.

  The little fingers of darkness were creeping toward Litnig.

  Send them back, said a rich voice behind him.

  Litnig recognized it. He’d heard its words in Eldan City and the White Forest. It didn’t belong to the walkers.

  Send them back and we’ll help, said a second voice.

  Send them back and we’ll teach, added a third.

  The light walkers turned and stared at Litnig. The black clouds drew closer to the center of the disc. They reminded Litnig of the abyss in Sherduan’s eyes.

  Litnig realized why he hadn’t seen the dragon in his mind.

  He didn’t need to be visited by it.

  It was there, in his dream, surrounding the disc.

  It had always been there.

  Send them back, the voices behind him urged again.

  So he did.

  All it took to send the light walkers back into the darkness was the desire to do so. They left the pillars and walked into the clouds. Sherduan’s black fingers retreated before them.

  The dark walkers struggled against the half-realized chains on their stone prisons.

  Good, said the second voice behind Litnig. Now you must restrain the others.

  Litnig willed the chains to form, and to bite, and to bind.

  There was pushback. A part of his heart screamed at his mind not to put it away. The dark walkers’ anger flared in his chest, hot and heavy and strong.

  But not unmasterable.

  The dark walkers fell back against their pillars. The chains wrapped around them and bit hard into the stone.

  The disc hummed.

  Litnig’s arms and legs trembled. His throat burned. His knees gave out, and his head drooped toward the disc.

  A warm hand grasped his elbow and held him up.

  Not yet, said the third voice. You mustn’t leave yet. You need to know.

  Litnig swayed to his feet and turned around.

  Three new walkers stood at the heart of the disc. Their clothes shifted and wisped, like the lines in a pastel drawing as someone’s fingers rubbed them out. Their bodies shone both white and black. One was Aleani, one was Sh’ma, and one was human.

  They didn’t belong in Litnig’s dream. He could feel it. They were foreign to him, and foreign to it.

  His eyes felt drawn to the new human walker. It was tall, like he was. It was heavily built, like he was. It looked strong and intimidating, but an undercurrent of kindness flowed through its stony eyes.

  Litnig knew those eyes, though he couldn’t have said where from.

  Good, said the Aleani. You’ve seen us.

  Now, said the Sh’ma, learn what you are.

  The human placed its hand on Litnig’s chest.

  Its memory came fast and strong.

  So much rain filled the air that for a moment Litnig thought he might drown in it. Lightning snaked across a black sky above him. Warm blood mixed with water and poured from his large hands. Something wriggled and kicked on his back.

  A blade slid from his stomach. His knees gave out. His lips went numb.

  He fell on his face in the streets of an alien city, and he waited for death.

  Why’re you showing me this? Litnig whispered to the things in his dream. The city looked familiar.

  The tip of a long sword filled his vision. It glowed the liquid orange of molten iron, and it steamed in the rain. A thick layer of blood covered it.

  A lean young man squatted behind the sword. He had black hair and a long, crooked nose.

  Eshan, a rich voice thought. My son.

  Eshan frowned. Rainwater ran over his face and poured from his chin. He took a soulforged sword from the cobblestone street.

  The weapon was nothing, the rich voice whispered. The child was everything.

  His second son, whom he’d brought to Eldan City to put into Eshan’s keeping.

  No.

  Rain dripped from Eshan’s black eyebrows. He stretched his long frame slowly to its feet and handed the sword he’d taken to a young woman with long white hair. The blade glowed bright white when she took hold of it.

  No…

  Litnig held up a hand to block the light, but he couldn’t keep it there. His fingers fell back to the stones. Water pooled underneath him and soaked his clothes, his skin, his beard.

  His eyes closed.

  Some time later, they opened again. Eshan and his woman were gone. Litnig’s body felt cold, stiff, and unresponsive.

  He dragged it over frigid water and ridged stone toward the nearest door.

  No, Litnig thought again. Please, no.

  The world dimmed. He lost feeling in his hands, his feet, his nose, his lips. The child on his back squirmed. The shapes around him mixed with ones that Litnig knew from outside of the memory. He saw a courtyard he’d once played in, and the house where Ail the butcher had hit him upside the head for tracking in mud, the doorframe of a home that no longer existed—

  No. No, no, no—

  Cry, little one, the rich voice urged, cry with all your heart.

  And while the lightning cracked and the rain fell, the boy on Litnig’s back wailed the wrenching, magnet call of an infant in peril. The door that no longer existed opened. Two thin legs and two small feet appeared within it, wreathed in yellow light and escorted by a puff of warm air.

  Litnig knew those legs as well as he knew his own. He’d known them for as long as he could remember.

  Forming words, the rich voice said, was difficult.

  “Please,” he croaked. “Please, my son—”

  A pair of young hands reached past him. A buckle on his back slid open. A girlish voice mumbled a question.

  Timid fingers landed on Litnig’s shoulder.

  The question was repeated, but the world was swimming into the future and leaving him behind. His sight grew dimmer. The walker’s memory faded.

  Except that it existed for Litnig too.

  Somewhere in the deep places of his mind, he could recall a night of rain and cold and fear, when the hands of a woman had rescued him from a horror he couldn’t remember. She’d loved him, raised him, died for him, because of him—

  Becauseofyou becauseofyou she died becauseofyou she died she died she died becauseofyou—

  No!

  The word left his mind with the force of a hammer blow. The memories evaporated, and he saw the disc again.

  A soundless wind swept it. It ruffled the clothes of the new walkers. It shook the chains on the pillars. It swirled the darkness of the dragon into an angry, towering mass that threatened to drown the little gray wafer of light beneath it.

  You were born Eranyi Eshati, said the human walker.

  Litnig felt sick to his stomach. His hands shook. />
  You’re Duennin, said the Aleani. Accept it.

  The dark walkers strained against their chains. The links began to crack.

  Letusfree letusfree we will scourgethem hurtthem breakthem makethemleave—

  Litnig fell to his hands and knees, rasped his fingers against the stone of the disc, and screamed. The dream shivered and shifted.

  Outside of it, someone was shouting, “Boy! Boy!”

  Ignore him, said the Sh’ma.

  But Litnig didn’t.

  He smashed his forehead into the disc.

  And then he woke up.

  He was lying on cracked flagstones at the foot of the staircase in Sherdu’il. Crumbling, roofless ruins sagged against one another to his right and his left. He smelled smoke on the air and tasted bile in his mouth.

  The gray sun haloed the battered, bloodstained form of Len Heramsun in front of him. The Aleani’s dreadlocks were blowing nearly sideways in high winds.

  Litnig’s body felt cold and wet. His head felt hot and stuffy. The stone underneath him was damp and foul smelling.

  Len had a hand on Litnig’s arm. The Aleani was shaking him.

  “I’m awake,” Litnig mumbled.

  Len’s arm dropped away. Litnig’s shoulder was numb. His stomach felt sore and empty. He swayed to his feet and realized that he’d vomited all over the stones below him. His face was slick with sweat and blood and puke.

  He wiped some of it off and staggered forward. His legs felt weak and untrustworthy.

  Don’t look, said Quay’s voice in his memories. Don’t look, just walk. First the left foot, then the right.

  Len put a hand on Litnig’s arm again. The Aleani said something, but Litnig couldn’t process it.

  Don’t think.

  Litnig staggered through the gray, empty ruins of the city of the dragon, wrapped his arms around himself, and tried to keep from thinking.

  It’s a lie, he told himself. That memory is a lie.

  But his heart didn’t believe it.

  He nearly stumbled right onto the rope bridge.

  The rotting framework of wood and cord lay a few feet beyond Sherdu’il’s last dilapidated stones. It swung and bounced in the wind over the deep gray gorge that flanked the city. Several hundred feet below it, the Lumos frothed and roared like a madman.

  Litnig stopped moving. The wind howled over his head.

  He didn’t trust the bridge.

  “We have to move, boy,” said Len behind him.

  “We’ll die,” Litnig whispered.

  Len put a hand on his back and pressed him forward.

  Litnig clung to the guide ropes at the sides of the bridge. He moved one foot at a time. His legs quivered with every step.

  The river thundered from left to right below him. He felt sick again.

  “Where’re the others?” he mumbled.

  “At the river by now. Waiting, I hope. I doubt the Sh’ma will want to stay put for long.”

  Litnig put one foot ahead of the other.

  He was halfway across the bridge when something felt wrong in his chest.

  There was someone behind them. He could feel it. Someone waiting for the right moment to do something terrible.

  Litnig’s hands shook hard enough to set the rope bridge bouncing. He shut his eyes and stopped moving.

  “Len,” he whispered.

  “Keep moving, boy.”

  “Len, there’s something wrong.”

  “Just keep moving.”

  Litnig looked back.

  Eshan stood at the Sherdu’il end of the bridge. His orange sword glowed in his hands.

  I know, Litnig thought drunkenly. I know what you are.

  The Duennin looked at him and raised the sword. His hair streamed down the gorge in the wind.

  No.

  Eshan cut the ropes mooring the bridge.

  The planks closest to Sherdu’il snapped toward Litnig and fell. Eshan stood in silence, his sword a line of fire against the gray.

  The bridge dropped away beneath Litnig’s feet.

  He turned and snatched at it, and he caught hold of one of the fraying guide ropes.

  The bridge swung him toward the other side of the gorge. The rope in his hands stretched. The wind screamed past his ears. The rock wall in front of him grew closer and closer and bigger and bigger.

  Too fast, he thought.

  But there was nothing he could do about it.

  He put his legs in front of him and exhaled as he hit the wall. His body compressed. His breath rushed out of him. He lost his grip on the rope, but his fingers found one of the bridge’s planks and latched on.

  A weight attached itself to his leg. His knee and hip snapped with the jerk of stopping its fall.

  Litnig clung to the splintered wood beneath his hands and hugged himself as close to the cold, sharp wall as he could. The bridge swung back and forth.

  Eventually, it came to a rest.

  He was alive. He was breathing.

  But he was slipping. His arms were exhausted.

  “Len,” he grunted, “can you grab something else?”

  There was no response.

  “Please. I can’t—” He risked a look down.

  Len was hanging from his leg.

  Below him, the bridge had broken apart.

  Its lines snapped and flailed in the wind. The cliff face in front of them was sheer and slick. There was nothing for Len to grab on to.

  The Aleani looked left at the snapping lines, then right at the cliff face, then down at the roaring river. His forehead was purple and red. Several of his teeth were missing.

  A look of anguish washed over his face.

  “Len, no,” Litnig croaked. “Not—don’t—”

  “Tell my family I’m sorry, boy,” the Aleani said.

  His voice was calm and level. The wind tugged at his dreadlocks.

  Litnig wanted to scream.

  “Tell the others too,” said Len. He licked his lips and looked down, then up again. There was fear in his eyes. “And go back to them.”

  Len’s fingers dug deeply into Litnig’s calf and thigh. His chest was pressed against the back of Litnig’s knee.

  The fingers loosened.

  They hesitated.

  And then they let go.

  The thick, matted touch of dreadlocks brushed Litnig’s calves.

  Litnig tried to shout something manful and pained, but all that came out was a boyish squeak.

  He watched Len’s body fall. He expected the Aleani to move, or to flail, or to drift gently downward, but he didn’t. Len dropped straight into the gorge, bounced once against the wall with a wet crack, and then spun and rolled and tumbled until he struck the river, so far down that Litnig couldn’t even hear the splash.

  The wind froze Litnig’s fingers. The wood chilled his palms. He could still feel Len’s imprint on his calf, and his thigh, and his knee, where the warmth was fading.

  His breath came in choked gasps. His head spun. He clung to the remains of the bridge.

  Don’t think. Climb. Just keep moving.

  Litnig found a wooden plank above him and pulled himself up. He rested. Then he did it again. And again. The planks didn’t break. The ropes didn’t snap. His feet found wood to rest on, and then he used his legs and his trunk to climb instead of relying on his wasted, shivering arms.

  Don’t think.

  He reached the top of the gorge. His fingers sank into cold, soft scree. He dragged himself away from his death.

  For a moment, he lay on the ground just breathing.

  And then he lurched to his feet, staggered forward, and climbed onto the path down the cliff.

  Don’t think.

  “Lit!” someone screamed. “Lit!”

  Litnig put one foot ahead of the other and fought the downward slide of his body. He leaned on the stone of the cliff, and he stumbled and slipped and swayed down the path toward his brother.

  Cole hoisted one of Litnig’s arms over his shoulder. Rys
e slid beneath the other. Dil stood just behind them. “Are you all right? Where’s Len?” Cole asked.

  The others would be waiting by the river below. They’d be seeing only him returning. They’d be wondering the same thing.

  “Gone,” Litnig mumbled.

  Don’t think.

  They kept moving. The ground beneath Litnig’s feet leveled out and became a pebble beach. The rush of the river grew louder. A black sail flapped in the breeze.

  Litnig leaned on his brother, even though it sickened him to do it. He didn’t want to profane Cole with his presence. He didn’t want to let him love a lie.

  He didn’t want Cole to die for him too.

  The others called out questions. Cole answered them. Litnig drifted toward the black craft that would take him from the mountains.

  Don’t think.

  He settled against the edge of the canoe and wrapped himself in a cloak. The boat slid from the shore into the river. The sail filled with wind. The current spun the craft around and took it south.

  Litnig leaned his head against the damp, freezing wood behind him, closed his eyes, and tried not to think.

  SIXTY

  Tall gray cliffs flew by above Dil’s head.

  Freezing spray foamed up from the river Lumos and landed on any bit of skin she left exposed. High clouds blew in endless streams over the tops of the mountains. Even wrapped in her cloak, even pressed against Cole’s side, she felt cold.

  Dil faced rearward in the bow of the canoe and watched Tsu’min handle the tiller. The Sh’ma’s left arm hung limp against his side. He was breathing hard. There was a cut on his cheek. Below him, the others huddled in a lumpy, brown mass of tattered cloaks and bruised bodies.

  Except for Len.

  Len was gone. Forever.

  Dil swallowed and did her best to ignore the chills creeping up her limbs. Tsu’min should’ve known what was going to happen in that city, she thought. He should’ve told us we’d have no chance.

  The Sh’ma looked exhausted, but not surprised.

  Dil tugged at Cole’s cloak, but all of his attention was on his brother. Litnig’s eyes had closed. His head had slumped against his shoulder.

  So Dil sat and contemplated the fire-haired Sh’ma into whose hands she’d placed her life.

  Tsu’min’s eyes glowed white. His good hand moved the tiller deftly back and forth, and the canoe sped southward around jagged rocks and white-haired rapids.