by Jeff Seymour
SOULWOVEN: EXILE
Jeff Seymour
Cover Illustration by Ronnie & Kendall Roderick
Cover Design by Kendall Roderick
Copy Editing by Michael Valsted
Map by Abby Howard
Soulwoven: Exile. Copyright © 2014 Jeff Seymour.
Digital First Edition
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual organizations, events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
For permissions, special requests, or ordering information, contact the author at www.jeff-seymour.com
Other books by Jeff Seymour
Dark Epic Fantasy
Soulwoven
Short Stories
Three Dances
What Lies in Darkness
To Cass,
my light in the darkness
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Prologue
I
One hundred and seventeen days before the destruction of Nutharion City
What was left of the light was fading.
It was the gray time between sunset and full dark, when the world falls deeper into shadow, and things lose their shapes. The time when you cling to the last shreds of light, looking for shelter or a way to create your own illumination to keep the oncoming darkness at bay.
Litnig grabbed for a root and missed.
Cole caught his wrist and kept him from falling.
The brothers were working up a small, sandy cliff above a stream somewhere west of the River Lumos, heading for the sea and shivering in a light breeze. It was cold, but not freezing. Not as cold as it could’ve been.
Litnig felt as weak as a child. Cole had told him what had happened after he passed out in the canoe—the river, the flood, the way Dil pulled him out of the water and breathed life back into his lungs. The rest he remembered for himself—the awful glow of Sherduan’s red eyes after the Duennin released it, the shame of fleeing for his life, Len’s sacrifice—
—tell my family I’m sorry—
The memories hurt. He didn’t want anyone else to die for him.
Cole’s face appeared at the top of the cliff. Dark eyes. Brown hair. Lips pressed thin with concern. The tiniest beginnings of a moustache starting to grow. His hair puffed out shaggily around his ears.
“C’mon, Lit,” he said. “Almost there.”
***
A mile or so from the top of the cliff, Litnig caught his first glimpse of the sea.
Its waters were charcoal gray in the dying light, and the sand around its edges looked the same color. Washed free of anything vibrant. Damp and miserable.
Like me.
Litnig listened to the others drag themselves along behind him.
It’ll get better, he told himself.
It had to.
***
By the time the light faded fully, he and the others were huddled in a little sheltered space between three dunes near the beach. Ryse, pale and cold in her white robe and finally willing to be near him again, had scavenged enough driftwood and dune grass to build a fire. The necromancer Leramis Hentworth sat by her side. Quay Eldani—Eldan’s frowning prince and the one who’d led them all so far from home—was working off to one side in the flickering light, carefully writing a message in charcoal on a piece of parchment. The skinny, red-haired Sh’ma named Tsu’min who’d led them on the final stretch of their journey was out on the strand, turning his ancient eyes on the stars and the sea.
Cole had disappeared somewhere with Dil, the brown-haired girl from Lurathen he’d fallen in love with. They’d been spending more and more time alone.
Litnig was glad for that. Cole deserved to have someone in his life he could trust. Someone Litnig wouldn’t get killed.
I should go, he thought. As soon as I can. Before someone else gets hurt trying to protect me.
He settled against one of the dunes and let his head sink into the sand.
Something rustled on the other side of the fire. Ryse muttered a few words about needing a moment alone and wandered into the grass beyond the dunes. Leramis tensed. His eyes landed on Litnig.
Which was strange. He’d never seemed nervous around Litnig before. He’d always treated him like a nobody.
Why would he be nervous now?
He knows, Litnig thought. The necromancer’s eyes darted away from his, as if he didn’t want to be seen watching Litnig too closely. He knows what I am. Duennin. Born to burn the world. Monster. Unnatural. How could he—?
Litnig caught a flash of Ryse’s robe as she disappeared into the darkness, and he realized.
She knew.
He felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. Her silence. Her sickness. The way she hadn’t been willing to look at him or let him close to her. The fear she’d seemed to have of him until their confrontation with the Duennin in Sherdu’il had been over.
She knew, and she didn’t tell me.
The tears crept forward again.
My mother, Ryse—they killed my mother.
If she’d told him, maybe he could’ve saved her. Maybe he could’ve saved Len too.
The anger of the dark walkers from his dream—the black statues whose gnashing teeth had set him on his path so many months ago—whispered through his chest. The strength he’d lost came with it, working its way through his veins like whisky or poison.
I don’t want your strength, he insisted.
It came all the same.
By the time Ryse returned from the grass and sat next to Leramis, the anger had grown hotter.
Let it go. You’re leaving anyway, remember? It doesn’t matter. Focus on the future.
Skeins of cloud scudded across the stars. The sea crashed its endless fingers against the shore, again and again.
Think about that, he thought.
It didn’t work. His mother’s pale hand stretched out on blood-soaked cobblestones in his memory. Len’s body hit the cliff wall with a wet crack.
“Good news!” Cole’s voice. His brother’s voice. Focus on that. “Dil thinks there’s oysters out in the water. Tomorrow she’ll see if she can get some.”
Everybody else smiled. They’d been eating mice and snakes for three days. It would be nice to have a proper meal.
Litnig’s frown didn’t crack. He stared at Ryse across the flames. She was beaming, running her hand through the fiery halo of her hair and laughing in relief with the necromancer she’d fallen in love with long ago.
You lied to me, he thought. How long did you know? And when did you tell Leramis?
People were clapping Dil on the back. The girl from Lurathen had a shy grin on her face. Cole’s hand slipped into hers. Someone talked about a bird’s nest they’d spotted atop one of the dunes and finding an animal to send Quay’s message with.
The sand around the firelight was a whirlwind of hope.
Litnig felt like a pit of darkness, festering at its edge.
II
One hundred and nineteen days before the destruction of Eldan City
Quay watched the bird take flight.
It was a little sickening. Dead things weren’t meant to take wing. And this one was big enough to blot out the rising sun over the dune grass as it soared westward, toward the mountain city of Du Fenlan hundreds of miles away.
; But a prince of Eldan made use of the tools that were available. And the best Quay had was a dead albatross, a necromancer, a scrap of paper, and a little metal tube to send a message in.
Because he’d failed. Terribly.
“You think they’ll send anyone for us?” Cole asked. He stood next to Quay atop the dune, along with Leramis and Ryse.
Quay frowned. Truth be told, he didn’t have much hope anymore. He’d fucked up so royally trying to stop the dragon from being summoned that he no longer trusted his instincts. On top of that, he knew very little about how Sherduan had been stopped before—just some vague stories about its counterpart, the white dragon Arenthor, being called into the world by the Sh’ma. Nothing he was willing to stake the lives of everyone he knew on.
He wanted to tell Cole that. Wanted to confide in his best friend and beg his forgiveness.
But there were others around, and he had their morale to think of.
“Yes,” he said shortly.
Cole rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want to have an honest conversation, fine.” He walked down the dune toward the beach, where Dil and Litnig were roasting oysters over a fire.
Quay’s stomach rumbled. Oysters from Cenar had been a delicacy back in Eldan City, even in the palace. They’d eaten them twice a year on feast days, except for once when his mother had convinced his father to have them served for his birthday.
The prince sighed.
He missed his dead mother. And he was worried about his father and his people.
Eldan City was one of the biggest population centers in the world. If Sherduan was going to embark on a campaign to end all life as Tsu’min had said it would, the city would make a good place to start.
Leramis raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The necromancer was staring after his bird. His black robe flapped around his ankles in a blessedly warm morning breeze.
“Well?” Quay asked.
Leramis turned around. Ryse stood by his side, her hastily shortened white robe leaving her calves bare to the wind. She had her arms wrapped around her chest. Cold, probably, even with the warm breeze. They all were.
“It should make it, I think,” Leramis said. He sighed and wiped his hands on his robe. “I’ve never tried to send one so far, but the weave went well, and the bird was in good shape.”
Leramis looked over Quay’s shoulder, and Quay followed his gaze. Everyone else was around the fire. Dil had started handing oysters to people. The Wilderleng girl had gotten up and plunged into the surf just as the western sky started to lighten. The North Sea was cold enough to kill a man if he swam in it for too long, but Dil had stayed in for nearly an hour, diving and bringing up little bits of food from the ocean floor.
She had strange powers. Nobody could tell him quite how they worked, and Dil was so sensitive about the subject that he’d decided it wasn’t worth asking her. She’d saved their lives several times. That was all he really needed to know.
“My prince, ah…” Leramis cleared his throat.
Quay turned around. The necromancer was looking sidelong at Ryse, as if seeking confirmation of something. She swallowed and stared out to sea. Her face looked as frozen as a winter sunrise.
Not cold, Quay realized. Her arms were crossed over her chest because she was worried.
“There’s something we think you should know,” Leramis finished.
A familiar uneasiness woke up in Quay’s gut. People never started conversations with him like that unless they had something unfortunate to tell.
“It’s about Litnig…”
Quay’s uneasiness grew.
And grew.
And grew.
III
One hundred and three days before the destruction of Nutharion City
Dil giggled. “A what?”
“A bear licking its toes. You can’t see it?” Cole pointed to a big fluffy cloud near the horizon. Dil thought it looked more like a pile of mashed potatoes. She told him so.
“Oh, c’mon.” He rolled his eyes.
They were lying on a dune just east of what had become a little home for them. Over the two weeks since they’d arrived, what had started as a fire pit in the sand had become a grass-mat-studded driftwood shelter with a sleeping area and a living space. The refuse mound on the edge of the heath beside it was piled high with oysters, crab shells, and fish bones.
Dil was amazed at how comfortable she’d gotten. Life had slowed down, and after the pell-mell madness of the last few months it felt wonderful. She was enjoying herself, even here in the wilderness at the roof of the world. The dangers of Sherduan seemed as remote as those of Eldan City’s alleyways.
But it wouldn’t last, and she knew it.
“You’re worrying again,” Cole said.
He was propped on an elbow next to her, and the smile had gone from his face.
Dil sat up. “There’s a lot to worry about.”
“And nothing we can do about it. We’re alive. We might as well enjoy it, remember?” He said the words softly, and she put a hand over his and patted it.
His mother was dead. It would probably take her grandfather the better part of a year to recover from what the Duennin had done to him. They’d talked about those things a lot. It hadn’t been fun, and eventually they’d made a pact to try not to bring them up anymore.
Some days it worked.
“Those two look like a swan chasing a gosling,” she said.
Cole followed her finger and nodded. “Or a cabin lying on its side.”
She frowned, remembering a fireball smashing through the only home she’d ever known.
“Let’s try a different game,” she said, and they began using Cole’s knife to draw shapes in the sand.
***
They were on top of the hill again as evening fell. Cole had fallen asleep on Dil’s chest. She lay with her head on the sand, feeling the pleasant tiredness of her body after a late-afternoon dip in the ocean to fish up dinner. The sun had been warm, and its last rays felt like a gentle kiss on her temple.
It was funny—she felt like she was alone for the first time in weeks. She could think of anything she wanted.
She realized just how happy she was.
If she’d been asked to dream up a perfect life, it would’ve looked a lot like the one she was living. Friends nearby who trusted and counted on her. Someone who loved her spending most of every day at her side. Time and space to embrace the Second River.
She’d heard Quay call the land around them a wasteland, and nobody had corrected him. But that land had given her luxuries she’d never even known she could dream of.
Voices murmured in the shelter as the others cooked dinner. Cole snored every once in a while.
What if we don’t have to leave? she thought. What if the Aleani never come to pick us up?
Would Quay let them stay? Would he try to march them back to civilization over land? And if she refused, would Cole stick with her? Would his brother? Maybe the three of them could be happy, alone in the wastes. Maybe she and Cole could help heal whatever holes had been carved in Litnig’s heart over the last few months.
Maybe the dragon would leave them alone.
The last thought felt hollow, and her happiness blew away like smoke on the wind.
Maybe that’s all happiness ever is, she thought. Maybe that’s all anything ever is.
That thought felt true, and it turned her stomach.
She shifted, and Cole snorted and sat up. She planted a kiss on his cheek, which was crossed with red lines from her shirt and flecked with bits of sand.
“Smells like dinner soon.” He yawned. “We should head down.”
“Take a look at the sunset before we go,” she said. The sky was painted a dozen pale shades of pink and orange and yellow to the east. They stared at it, together, as the last blinding sliver of sunlight slipped beneath the mountains in which they’d nearly lost their lives.
There and gone, she thought. Leaving nothing but memories and scars.
When they turned around, she saw a sail on the western horizon.
Her gut tightened.
“Holy shit,” Cole muttered. “They came.”
Smoke from the shelter puffed toward the sky.
This is it, Dil thought. We’ll never live like this again.
And as Cole tore down the hill, shouting for the others to get fire out to the piles of wood they’d set up on the beach to use as signals, she found her jaw tightening and her chin beginning to quiver.
Stop, she wanted to say. Stop everything. Don’t make us do this.
The sail moved closer. One of the signal fires on the beach lit up. Ryse sent a burst of soulwoven light high into the sky.
Dil’s eyes watered.
She had the feeling she’d never be so happy again.
ONE
One hundred days before the destruction of Nutharion City
The black rocks rose.
The black rocks fell.
The black rocks rose.
The black rocks fell.
“It’s not working,” Cole muttered into his sleeves.
He leaned on the railing of an old Aleani fishing vessel. The sea frothed and heaved. A wide, taut sail snapped and creaked. In front of him, whitecapped waves bobbed around a series of flat rocks.
His stomach tumbled and rolled and dropped until he could barely pick out which direction was up anymore.
“Just hang in there,” Dil said. Her hand rubbed slow, gentle circles on his back.
His stomach tried to throw up, but there was nothing in it. He dug his fingernails into the railing and grimaced.
The fit passed, and he let his head slump again.
“I thought they said we’d see land by now.”
“They did.” Dil’s fingers continued their circling. “It’s out beyond the rocks, hidden in the fog.”
Cole raised his head. There was a heavy bank of clouds beyond the flat-topped rocks. He couldn’t see anything inside it other than spots of lighter and darker gray.