Soulwoven: Exile (Soulwoven #2)

by Jeff Seymour

  “I am called Lena Heramsun,” the Aleani woman said. When she spoke, her voice filled the chamber. It was thick and low and booming, heavy with years and a blocky accent.

  Ryse’s heart tightened. Len’s wife.

  Lena’s lips pressed into a frown. Her hands squeezed the armrests of her chair. “Ereldite and Alphaestus have questions for you, but they will wait until tomorrow.”

  Ryse remembered watching Len stare west as the canoe brought them toward Sherdu’il. His lips had moved silently, forming thoughts or prayers in a language she didn’t understand.

  “Tonight,” Lena said, “I will hear from you of my husband’s last days.”

  A dozen more images raced through Ryse’s head—fleeting memories of Len, his face grim and dark in the evening light, refusing to talk about his family and why he’d left them, why he’d left Aleana, why he’d chosen not to be king.

  Ryse’s fingers dug into her palms. You had a family, Len, she thought. A real family, who cared about you. And you left them.

  A younger Aleani woman appeared on the balcony near the top of the rotunda—short and animated, dark-skinned and richly clothed. The Aleani who’d led their escort removed his helmet. He looked like Len might’ve forty years earlier, from his high cheekbones to the way he held his helmet in the crook of his arm to the shade of his skin. There was a tattoo of a mountain on his cheekbone.

  You left the Temple, Ryse’s mind whispered back. Was that so different?

  It was.

  The younger Aleani woman moved to the captain of the guard’s side. Other Aleani appeared on the balcony above—old or young, dreadlocked or bald, dressed like nobles or common folk.

  Ryse understood then the tightness in the eyes of the guard who’d been next to her. The sadness was thick enough to breathe.

  All of these people, family or not, were mourning the loss of Len Heramsun.

  Quay made some reply to Len’s wife, but Ryse couldn’t hear him. Her eyes were watering.

  Len—why? she wondered. So much love. And he’d just walked away.

  A hand covered hers.

  Ryse realized she’d grabbed Leramis’s arm for support. The ghosts of old emotions flickered in her heart, and then she looked at his eyes and saw that he too was watching Lena, and not her.

  Friends, she thought. Just friends.

  At the other end of their line, Litnig stood alone.

  And in her heart, Ryse pined for family.

  SIX

  Ninety-five days before the destruction of Eldan City

  Quay sat at a long table. A brazier to his right cast an orange glow over a blue tablecloth, golden plates and chalices, bright steel cutlery, and the sorrow-ridden face of an Aleani woman in a purple silk robe. Half a white cheese threaded with veins of blue lay between the prince and Lena Heramsun. Wine filled a goblet in front of him—heady red stuff that was delicious and strong. He’d left it mostly untouched.

  For a long time, they sat in silence.

  The stories had already been told—everything Len had done since he’d left Du Fenlan. His heroism in Eldan City, his despondency after Soulth’il. And finally, recounted in a voice that smoldered with anger or shook with sadness by an increasingly drunk Litnig Jin, his last hour in the mountains of the dragon. The Aleani had borne the conversation stoically.

  Quay had done the same, though the story had hurt him too.

  Cole’s gone, said his brain. You told him he’d see Eldan City again, and you broke that promise. You broke all your promises.

  The wine was tempting. He’d watched most of the people at the table sink into it, until one by one they’d staggered into the dark, dusty corridors of Heramsun House. In Aleana, it didn’t seem forbidden to drink heavily at a time like this.

  The wine’s bouquet called to him. Oblivion and sleep and abdication of responsibility called to him.

  You’ve failed them, said his doubts. You’ve failed them all. Let go. Stop trying.

  But the world hung in peril, and someone had to decide how to save it.

  So Quay remained at Lena’s table late into the night, while the braziers burned to keep the chill of the mountain at bay.

  He knew without asking that she had stayed for the same reason.

  She spent twenty minutes or so in silence after the others left. Her eyes, nearly black in the firelight, glittered and rested on things far above Quay, things the Prince of Eldan couldn’t see. He recalled sitting at a similarly long table and mourning his mother and brother, looking listlessly at luxurious objects while people who didn’t understand his loss offered useless condolences or tried to steer conversations to subjects that seemed utterly pointless with the ash of grief in his mouth.

  He wouldn’t do the same to Lena Heramsun. He owed Len’s family much more than that.

  “He died for you then,” Lena finally said. “But that is not your fault.”

  She straightened. Her robe, a soft-looking thing pinned at her shoulder by an insignia in the shape of a cloven mountain, shifted over her skin like water as she moved. “You’ve barely touched your wine,” she said softly. Her accent was as thick and silky as the drink itself.

  Quay ran his fingers over his goblet. It was warm from the touch of his hand and the glow of the braziers. The wine was warm too, but it seemed meant to be drunk that way.

  “It has been months since I had wine to drink, Lena Heramsun,” he said.

  She nodded, and a soft smile broke over her face. “You are wise for a human child then, Quay Eldani. Your friend Litnig could learn a great deal from you.”

  The word child fell onto the table and lay there among the discarded food and flatware. Quay didn’t bother to respond to it. Len had called him that too, when he’d been angry with him.

  But the mention of Litnig disturbed him.

  Duennin, he thought. Duennin, but still Cole’s brother.

  A shiver trickled down Quay’s back. Litnig had excused himself awkwardly after telling his story, lurched drunkenly toward the wrong hallway, and been led off in the correct direction by the burly Raest Heramsun.

  Without Cole, Quay thought, I have no one to watch him.

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  But he suspected it was he who had much to learn from Litnig. Pieces of the puzzle that had vexed him since his last visit to Eldan City were beginning to fall into place—why the heart dragons had been broken only when Litnig was near, why Litnig’s mother had been killed and the rest of them spared.

  “Why do you think they let you go?” Lena asked.

  Quay brought the wine to his lips. He took the time the drink bought him to compose an answer. The truth, that he thought they’d been allowed to live because their living served some purpose of the dragon’s, wasn’t a thing to be spoken aloud.

  But when he set the goblet down and looked into Lena’s eyes, the lie he was about to tell—that they’d been lucky enough to escape during the confusion of the renegades turning on one another—died on his lips.

  The prince said nothing, and Lena Heramsun leaned forward on her elbows, tented her fingers in front of her chin, and frowned.

  “I know what you think, Quay Eldani,” she whispered. “I can see it in your eyes, your hands, your face.”

  Quay remained silent. There was a draft in the hall, a cool breeze that blew up from somewhere within the underground chambers of the Heramsun complex and passed over him on its way to the mountain outside. It was enough, at times, to raise goose bumps on his skin. He wondered if that was intentional.

  “Then you understand why I have not told you,” he said at last.

  The frown evaporated, and Lena leaned back. She plucked a green grape from a platter to her left, then set it down and smiled.

  “I do,” she said. “And as I said before, you are wise. There are those who would have you put to death. There are those who would take no chances.”

  Quay glanced at the exits of the room.

  But nothing came out of them other than the
cold breath of the mountain.

  “And you?” he asked.

  Lena picked up the grape and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed, it was she who reached for her goblet and took a long drink.

  “I will trust my husband’s judgment,” she said finally. “On this, if not in all things.” When she put the goblet down, it was empty, and there was wine on her lips and fire in her eyes.

  “Tell me,” she said, “when you return to your father, what message will you bring? What can Aleana expect of Eldan?” She leaned forward and clasped her hands. Quay saw the muscles beneath the skin of her arms—saw her strength and was a little frightened by it. “And what would you have me do?”

  The flames in the braziers flickered. The wine glinted soft and oily and red in the orange light. The tablecloth waved back and forth like a piece of torn sky in the breeze. Quay smelled the cheese, the grapes, the wine, the smoke, the thick musk of his own sweat floating up from beneath his collar.

  “Dig in,” he said. “Dig deep, and help me draw out the Duennin who summoned the dragon.”

  SEVEN

  Ninety-two days before the destruction of Nutharion City

  The stabbing pain started in Dil’s chest.

  She was dreaming, lost in darkness and shadows and blurry, pastel ghosts, but the pain felt real. It reached out from the space between her second and third ribs, just to the left of her breastbone, and it trickled backward until it pierced her entire torso. Her heart broke open, and blood poured into her chest cavity. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. There were hands on her arms and loud voices screaming mournful sounds in her ears.

  It’s all right, said a voice in her mind, calmly detached from the chaos.

  It’s all right…

  Dil woke soon after. Her mouth felt cottony. The space between her ribs still hurt, but it was a dull, quiet whisper of the thing she’d felt in her dreams. Next to her, bundled up under a blanket on the cold ground, Cole was snoring loud enough to trouble the stars.

  Dil envied him. It had been a long day—a long five days, really. They’d walked dozens of miles with Zahayr’s tribe over windy, trackless reaches of mountain and valley, heading southwest toward a place Zahayr called the City of White Bones.

  Cole snuggled up against Dil’s hand without opening his eyes. She smiled.

  Dozens of Quiet Ones—the Lost Ones’ name for themselves—lay around them, wrapped up in blankets on the ground. They were Zahayr’s followers. Drawn, he’d told her, from those in his tribe who believed most deeply in his visions.

  The pain in Dil’s chest flared again and disappeared.

  She sat up. She found sleeping difficult, surrounded by so many strangenesses. There were sounds in the mountains she couldn’t place—deep howls and the hooting calls of creatures she could imagine but couldn’t see. And there were smells she’d never encountered before.

  She pulled her hand away from Cole’s neck. Several campfires burned amid the sea of sleepers, and in the center of them was a larger pit. Those on watch sat around it, staring into the flames or up at the stars.

  As Cole rolled back over and continued his snoring, Dil got to her feet and walked toward the fire.

  There, seated on a log, she found Zahayr.

  The chieftain was wrapped in his cloak of feathers, and a gnarled staff he walked with lay across his lap. He was staring into the flames, and when Dil approached, he smiled.

  “Knhew yhu would cuhm,” he said. He swallowed heavily after the sentence, like it hurt him to speak.

  “You did, huh?”

  Zahayr nodded. “S-haw it en mhy dhreems.”

  Dil sat next to him. A hollow gourd with water in it was on the ground near the fire, and she scooped out a little with a wooden ladle and drank. It was sweet with the taste of a flower that grew in this part of the mountains—like a mixture of apple and orange and clove.

  “What else do you dream of, Zahayr?” she asked.

  His eyes flicked to her and then back to the flames. She caught the ghost of sadness in them. “Mhany things,” he said.

  It was his usual response, and it seemed to be true. When they asked where they were going on any given day, he would tell them of his dreams: To the space between a beaked mountain and the prone body of its younger sister. To a lake shaped like an orchid, with an island of crying switch-trees at its heart. To a valley guarded by a granite giant with a scar across his nose.

  And sure as her eyes, that day they’d find a place that fit the bill.

  Zahayr made other predictions too. About what the foragers would turn up for dinner, or little things that would happen to those of his people who were traveling with them. Once, he’d predicted Cole falling in the mud to within an hour.

  His dreams were small things, little prophecies she could explain a hundred different ways.

  He had yet to be wrong.

  “Zahayr—”

  His eyes flicked up, and he held a finger to his lips. One of his people approached out of the shadows. She was tall, with long, strawlike hair that looked like fractured glass.

  Dil couldn’t put a name to her face. To her great embarrassment, she had difficulty telling Zahayr’s people apart. Even their scents seemed similar to her.

  Give it time, she thought. Give it time and you’ll learn their differences.

  Zahayr and the other Quiet One stood near each other, and the hairs on the back of Dil’s neck stood up. They always did when the Quiet Ones were communicating; words and thoughts flowed between them over the air in a way that Dil couldn’t experience. It was a strange thing to sit next to.

  The world has so many wonders, she thought.

  Her rib cage barked briefly again, and she burped. Maybe she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her. The Quiet Ones cooked with herbs and spices she’d never tasted. The food was always good, but it didn’t always sit as well as she would’ve liked.

  The Quiet One whom Zahayr was speaking to looked at Dil, smiled, touched her throat, and melted into the shadows.

  “She hasz asked mhe the s-haym ques-tyun,” Zahayr said. He picked up a piece of wood and added it to the flames, then reached for the ladle and took a drink of water. When he finished, he wiped his hand across his lips and looked at Dil expectantly.

  “What?” she asked. The wind out of the trees carried the smells of pine and squirrel and owl and bobcat and something she didn’t recognize. She leaned into it and inhaled deeply, her mind feeling more agile as the curtains of sleep slipped away.

  “Thehr are mhore ques-tyuns yhu ask t-oo.”

  Dil swallowed. She had lots of questions about the future, like what would happen to her and to Cole, whether her grandfather would recover from his wounds, and whether she’d ever see her friends or her homeland again.

  But she wasn’t sure she wanted answers to all of those questions, even if Zahayr could give them. There were some things it was better off waiting to find out about. Like falling in the mud.

  Still, with a prophet offering his wisdom, it was hard to say no.

  The Quiet Ones had said some strange things on the night they rescued her and Cole. Things she had yet to learn more about.

  “When you found us, Zahayr, one of you said we were chosen.”

  Zahayr nodded.

  “Chosen by whom?” she asked. “And for what?”

  He stared into the flames. His fingers, long and white and flaking, clutched his staff and then relaxed. “Cho-sen bhy Yehnor,” he said. His eyes looked frightened. “I dhu not knhow what fhor.” He swallowed again and brought his ladle to his lips.

  Dil opened her mouth to ask him another question, but he kept talking.

  “Yhu are n-ot the only wuh-huns,” he said. “Yhu have fhrends cho-sen.” He tapped a hand to his chest. “I am cho-sen.” He shook his head slowly. “The dhreems dhu not say fhor what.”

  Zahayr swallowed. A dove cooed in the darkness. Dil’s chest ached again.

  “Wuh-hun more,” he said. “Then we s-hle
ep.” He smiled tiredly, like he was doing the world a favor by remaining awake. It was a strange expression.

  “Why do you call Cole and me the Sleeper and the Waker?” Dil asked.

  It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at first. She’d figured the Quiet Ones named people like Eldanians did—more or less at random, or because they liked the sounds of the words. But they all had names that described who or what they were, like Zahayr—which meant prophet or dreamseer.

  And that frightened her a little.

  The smile fell from Zahayr’s lips. He closed his eyes, placed his hands on his knees, and stood. His joints cracked as he straightened, and he winced.

  “I dhu n-ot tell yhu yet,” he said. He touched a hand to his throat. “Bhut I w-ill s-oon.”

  Dil returned his gesture. Zahayr looked at her sadly, then walked into the darkness.

  The fire burned. The larks and dayheralds stirred. The sky turned gray, and the shapes on the ground metamorphized from dark, shadowy things into curled people under blankets. When you couldn’t see them closely, the Quiet Ones looked almost human.

  Like me, Dil thought. Almost human.

  Her chest panged.

  She shivered, crossed the camp, and slid back under the blankets with Cole. It would be another half hour or so before breakfast, if she was lucky.

  She wanted to spend the time as close to him as possible.

  EIGHT

  Ninety-two days before the destruction of Nutharion City

  The drums pounded.

  So did Litnig’s heart.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the woman.

  A room of pale stone stood snowy with moonlight around him, still warm with the day’s heat though it was getting close to morning already. The air smelled of clean, crisp linen. Beside him, ghostlike curtains floated over an open door to a balcony that overlooked Du Fenlan. The drums came from there, somewhere across the city. The faintest hint of pipes sailed on the wind along with them. Orange lights twinkled in the distance.