by Jeff Seymour
The sun shone on Litnig through a curtain of mist as he passed under the wall that encircled Du Fenlan. The waters of the River Deru babbled quietly next to him, the fog of a cold night finally beginning to burn from them as the sun rose higher and the morning warmed up.
He’d had time to think, over the long walk back from the mountains, and his thoughts had left him feeling painfully alone. He was acutely aware of the throngs of Aleani that opened before him, closed behind him, stared as he passed. Acutely aware of the whispers. The same reactions had accompanied him in Du Fenlan before, but then there’d been others to share the eyes with. Cole. Ryse.
It was harder, alone.
Ahead, the low white buildings, colored awnings, and towering columns of Du Fenlan sprawled between the dark river and the throne-shaped peak that cradled the city, shrouded in mist.
Litnig felt like they were part of another world, and he was no more than a ghost catching glimpses of them on his way to whatever came next.
***
When he reached the dusty flagstones of the plaza in which he’d met Maia, he stopped and looked for her. She wasn’t there.
She went home, stupid, he thought. He scratched at his beard as he walked toward the house of Clan Heramsun, the only place he could think of to ask after his friends. He hadn’t quite gotten used to the beard yet, nor decided if he would keep it. The sooner you stop looking for her, the happier you’ll be.
Simple and difficult. Like everything in his life seemed to be.
Find Ryse, he told himself. The crowd slowed ahead, bunching around a fire breather’s antics. Then find Eshan and the dragon and stop them.
“Lit-nig J-hinn,” someone rasped under the noise of the crowd.
The hairs on Litnig’s neck stood up. A hand closed on his shoulder, and then the voice was in his ear, hot and fetid. “I am fhrend.”
Litnig turned. The hand belonged to a tall man in a brown cloak. His eyes were pale yellow, his nostrils flat and snakelike, his skin white and scaly.
Litnig remembered a pitching ship filled with monsters and a spear through his back. His blood pooling beneath him. Ryse screaming. Leramis pulling lightning from the sky.
He tore out of the Lost One’s grip and twisted away from it, reached for his sword, opened his eyes to the River.
The Lost One let him go.
It spread its arms wide, palms out. It had shoulder-length white hair and a strong, wiry body. The River swirled in playful whirlwinds around it, like snow kicked up on the plains in winter. The motion didn’t feel threatening.
The Lost One licked its lips and smiled.
Something in its expression reminded Litnig of the way Maia looked at him at times—like he was a child to be taught and guided.
Litnig let go of his sword hilt.
“I have nhews of yhor bhrother,” the Lost One said.
The crowds around them brushed by, staring at the Lost One now instead of Litnig. A cold, crisp breeze kicked up from the north. The Lost One gestured toward the ridge of the mountain that held Heramsun House. Its eyes shone. “But I do not s-hay et here.”
It walked toward the ridge. The Aleani parted before it.
Litnig watched it move away. My brother, he thought.
And then he followed.
***
An hour later, Litnig was standing next to the Lost One on the ridge, gazing north while the wind tugged at his cloak and his stomach growled and the day warmed. The Lost One’s name was Zahayr, and he, like Litnig, had dreams that were very important to him.
Footsteps sounded along the ridge to Litnig’s right. He heard another voice, strong and deep and familiar.
“Zahayr and I have been waiting for you,” it said.
Litnig turned and found a young, heavyset Aleani of dark skin and serious mien picking his way through the rocks along the ridge top.
Raest, he reminded himself. Raest Heramsun.
The Aleani shook his hand and nodded curtly. “Welcome back, Litnig Jin.”
Litnig squeezed the hand. “You look like your father.”
It was true. Raest was dressed a lot like Len Heramsun had been the night Litnig met him—thick traveler’s clothes, two axes on his belt, a robe stretching from shoulders to feet. His dreadlocks had been bound into a ponytail and woven with beads. The only deep difference between him and his father lay in the face. Raest’s was smooth where Len’s had been wrinkled and pitted, and the younger Heramsun had the tattoo of a mountain on his left cheekbone.
The Aleani smiled and sat on a rock. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” Litnig sat down across from Raest, feeling uncomfortable—as if he was an apple in the wrong barrel, garish red against dull green.
Raest shook his head. “In truth, I’m not sure I’m glad to see you.”
Litnig raised an eyebrow, and Raest smiled tiredly.
“Now that you’re here, Zahayr and I will go into the land of his people. Just the two of us.”
The Aleani looked northward, shaking his head and clasping his hands. There was a tremor in them. Just a small one, but Litnig saw it all the same.
“Because Zahayr dreamed it,” Raest said, as if he knew that Litnig would be wondering why.
The Lost One smiled. The dry skin around his lips cracked.
“I have dhreemed of yhu too,” he said. “Yhu go to Nutharee-on.” The name rolled awkwardly from his mouth.
“There’s been word from the Magister, Litnig,” Raest said. “She wants you to go to her, if you’re found.”
A sour feeling built in Litnig’s stomach. The Magister of Nutharion had been a dark, nightmarish figure in the tales he’d learned growing up—a sorcerer who ruled with an iron fist and dropped guilty children from the windows of a black tower.
Raest crossed his arms and looked west, where the last traces of mist were burning off the river. It was getting unseasonably hot, even up on the ridge. “My people have other ideas for you. My mother especially.” His lips pressed tightly together, and his big hands tensed. “But I want you to listen to Zahayr.”
The Lost One’s cloak flapped lazily. It was only brown on the outside, Litnig realized. The interior was lined with white and black feathers, like it was the skin of some impossible bird turned inside out.
Zahayr was looking at the horizon as well.
“Why?” Litnig asked.
The Lost One looked back at him. “Yhor bhrother is there,” he said. “Is that not ehnough?”
Litnig’s blood ran cold. Something like the feet of a spider ran down the back of his neck. Eshan. In Nutharion. Not far. Not far away at all.
“Yhor prinsz s-ent him there.”
Litnig frowned. Why would Quay send Eshan to Nutharion? How would Quay send Eshan—
He grew dizzy, and his hands grabbed the rock beneath him.
Don’t you fucking touch me! An elbow slammed into his cheek. Dil fell from a small Aleani fishing vessel. Cole dove after her into an angry, foaming sea.
For a moment, Litnig couldn’t breathe.
“Cole,” he choked. His throat felt swollen, his tongue thick and unwieldy. “How?”
“Fhound him en the nhorth-lhands,” said Zahayr. The Lost One smiled with half his mouth, like a cat or a hyena or Cole himself. His hand came away from his face and tapped his temple knowingly. “Fhound him en my dhreems.”
The Lost One watched Litnig without moving, the half smile resting comfortably on his face. Raest watched too, rubbing a thin layer of beard on his jawline.
“How do I find him?” Litnig croaked.
Together, Zahayr and Raest told him.
And the loneliness in Litnig’s heart began to evaporate, like mist on the river under a strangely hot sun.
INTERLUDE THREE
Forty-one days before the destruction of Emeth’il
The ghost watches his daughter from the shadows.
She is a vision. A gift. Beautiful and strong, as her mother was at the same age. She has the mind of
her grandmother, and a stubborn streak in which he can see himself. She has done things no one in Aleana has ever done before. Traveled farther afield than anyone, perhaps, but him. Certainly no Aleani has ever chronicled events of the kind she is recording in her book. If it survives, if she survives, her name will live forever.
My daughter, he thinks.
He hid in the temple when she arrived. Heard her voice. Thought it was her mother’s. His reaction, to flee, was curious to him. He ought to have been happy when she slid into the bowl of the mountain and strode toward the temple in which great things were happening. She is his chance to rejoin the world of the living.
But he is afraid to.
In his first life, the ghost was a creature of failure. And that, in the end, was why he chose to die.
He has run from the possibility of further failure. He has run from his daughter and son and wife, whom he does not want to tell that he wasted thirty years of his life and theirs. He is frightened that his presence might poison the wells of their lives as it did D’Orin’s.
So when his daughter appeared before him, he ran away.
Not all the way away. He could not bring himself to do that. He camps on the far side of the ridge, and he haunts her like the ghost he is. Watching. Waiting. Ready to help if he can and must. The Sh’ma and even the necromancer seem willing to grant him this. He understands the reasons the Sh’ma have for doing so. They have lived long and felt great pain of their own. They do not seem to begrudge him his ways of dealing with the agony of existence.
The necromancer he understands poorly, but he cannot refuse this gift simply because he does not understand it.
So he watches.
Maegan Heramsun sits by a fire on which a very large pot of stew is cooking. She stirs it every few minutes, and she writes in her book.
The ghost could reach out and touch her, if he wanted.
But he does not.
He is still afraid.
If you were going to sacrifice yourself for anyone, it should have been for them.
THIRTY
Twenty days before the destruction of Emeth’il
Hard stone met Tsu’min when he sat down. A cave enclosed him in warm, damp darkness laced with the smells of menthol and tiger’s balm. Others sat around him. They grasped his forearms. He grasped theirs. They hummed. He hummed. The white-and-black stone of the chamber of Arenthor glittered in the darkness. A blue crystal circle glowed dimly in the floor. Everything was just as it had been three thousand years in the past.
Except that in the space where Tsu’min’s father had once sat, a young Sh’ma with deep blue hair waited for Tsu’min to lead the circle. The web of souls that he and his compatriots had been building for more than a month pulsed, hummed, and vibrated above their heads. It crawled out from the cavern into the clouds like a living thing, bright and forking, beads of light running over it like ants on a tree limb. It stretched for thousands of miles, and it was still growing.
When all was calm, Tsu’min began to steer it.
Searching for the three souls around which they would create the heart, mind, and spine of Arenthor was a long and difficult endeavor. The web, soaring high above the world, could read the love of creation possessed by all that lived below it. When the person steering the web sensed a candidate, he or she led a tiny filament of souls down to investigate. The souls they were looking for—those which loved the world unconditionally, accepting its wonder and terror alike—gave off a light that dwarfed the dimmer glow of those around them. After two months of searching, Tsu’min and the others had located two out of three.
But there were many souls to comb through yet. It felt like searching for needles in a haystack the size of a city, and once the process had begun, it could not be stopped. If the weavers lost their strength, if the web lost its way, the search would have to be started again from the beginning.
So they wove in six-hour shifts. Soren Goldguard and Maegan Heramsun fed them, fetched them water, prepared their beds. Cared for their bodies so that they could focus on their souls.
Tsu’min let his mind drift along the web. He wove, hummed, lost himself in shadow and light within the depths of his thoughts, saw the souls of the world one by one, bright or dim, loved or hated, kind or spiteful. He wove as his father had taught him to, long, long ago.
***
Five hours later, Tsu’min’s body forced itself by inches back into his consciousness. His legs had grown tired. His back ached. His shoulders felt stiff and hard. It was good that the end of his shift was nearing. Over their months of weaving, he and the other na’oth’na had searched most of the world. It wouldn’t be long before they found the third soul and began contacting the people possessed of them.
The web quivered over Soultholenash. A soul shone brightly in his mind, and he let a careful strand descend to it, as if he was a jellyfish trailing a tentacle into a school of fish. He saw quickly that the soul wasn’t bright enough to be the one he was looking for.
But it was brighter than most. And the particular mix of its light and its darkness, the shape of it, the timber of its glow, kept him fascinated.
He recognized it.
No, he told himself. He willed his mind a different way, but it wouldn’t go. He knew that glow. Knew that soul. Knew it better than any other, would never forget it if he lived for ten thousand years.
His arms shook.
No, no, no, he repeated, but it was no good. He began to lose control of the weaving. The web buckled and warped and stretched, and he felt the others strain to maintain it against the erratic pulsing of his soul.
“Eluama!” he gasped.
He could escape that soul no better than a raindrop could escape a storm. His consciousness drew closer to it until, in the dim shadows of his mind, he caught a glimpse of the body that surrounded it. A short, slope-shouldered Sh’ma with long blue hair and laughing turquoise eyes.
It was a different body. But the soul, the soul—
“Eluama!” he shouted again, and then the big Sh’ma was at his back, gripping the arms of Ayaya to his left and Oata to his right, taking his place in the circle and settling the weaving, preserving the web. Tsu’min fell backward onto the rough stone of the cavern floor. He couldn’t catch his breath. He searched for coldness, for the calm that had sustained him for thousands of years, but it was gone. His veins surged with fire and lightning.
It can’t be, he thought. It can’t be, not now, not when the world is on the brink of destruction.
The air pressed tightly around him. Small fingers touched his shoulder.
“Tsu’min? Do you need—”
“Air,” he rasped. He staggered to his feet. “I need air.”
He felt young, as if thousands of years had melted away and he was once again Eraic a’Soulth, a half-breed with no future, no identity, no place, and a young Sh’ma with sea-green hair was smiling and talking with him, laughing and sharing her time, her voice, her face.
He lurched up a stone stairway into the temple. Staggered past the smell of stew cooking, the sleeping mats laid carefully around the airy, open space. He wrapped his arms around himself. His skin felt cold.
Somewhere, a part of him knew that was bad.
His jaw shook, and he stumbled outside, where his legs gave way and he found himself on his knees in bright, wet grass. He dug his hands into the soil and let his chin fall to his chest. His mouth began to salivate. His lungs heaved.
Never in the long history of the Sh’ma had a soul been reborn. Never in history had one been given a second chance. His father had told him so.
Tsu’min lifted his eyes. High clouds streamed over the summit of Sh’ma’ame like ribbons, stretching over the sea to the east and the unknown beyond.
Why? he asked. Yenor—why?
Time passed. He wasn’t sure how much until there were footsteps in the grass behind him, and Ayaya’s measured voice said, “It is her.”
“Sh’a’e,” he whispered. It was her.
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He should have guessed Ayaya would come. Of those on his shift, only she had known Mi’ame. Only she might have recognized her soul and understood.
“What will you do?” she asked, switching to Eldanian.
Like him, Ayaya was half-human and half-Sh’ma, though she was younger than Tsu’min—born of the reckless, freewheeling years of the city of Miuri’il. Her hair was more yellow than orange, and it hung to the back of her neck. There were six piercings in her ears, another in her nose. She was short for a nar’oth, and freckled. Keepsakes from her human father, she’d told him long ago.
Ayaya sat next to him, wearing a dull green jacket that whipped behind her in the breeze. She was kind enough not to meet his eyes. Instead, she reclined and stared with him at the clouds.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He heard some of the others eating within the temple, either unaware of or unconcerned by his oddness during their shift. They knew he was exhausted. Likely they found that excuse enough.
The face he’d seen through the web hung in his memory. It wasn’t Mi’ame’s. The eyes were too young, the lips too thin. The hair was too dark, the chin too narrow, the forehead too broad.
Yet somehow, compared with the face her soul had once worn, it was hers. It lived with her, breathed with her, while her old face had frozen stiff in his arms and never moved again.
His eyes watered. “I don’t understand,” he said at last.
Silently, Ayaya reached over and held his hand.
The wind teased the clouds, and time passed. Tsu’min’s blood calmed. He smelled the stew again, and he realized that he needed to eat and sleep. His body felt childlike, as if the being he’d once been had awoken from a long slumber and claimed him.
Hours slipped by. The others on his shift ate and slept and woke. The sun moved toward the horizon. Soon he was almost due to lead the weavers once more.
“If I can’t concentrate…” he said, and Ayaya squeezed his hand and turned to face him. Her eyes shone gold and orange in the fading light. Her hair twitched in the breeze, and her freckled cheeks stretched upward in a sad smile. She squeezed his hand a second time.