Eternal Soul (The Eternal Path Book 1)

by Ivan Kal

  “And then,” she continued, “someone approached me. He told me that he intended to ask for my hand in marriage. He said it so arrogantly, in front of all the court. A man who had never been denied anything. And she was there, looking at it all. I didn’t think, I just…lashed out. I was so afraid that he was going to take me away from her that the first thing that came to my mind to make him change his mind. I insulted him, humiliated him, in front of the entire court. His family, of course, couldn’t take that without responding. I had embarrassed their name. And their wrath didn’t come down on me alone—it came down on my house, and on my father’s name. They didn’t do anything face to face, but everyone knew. All of my father’s deals, alliances, everything that we had, turned to dust. In a year, they destroyed what my family had been building for generations.”

  “And then…” She took a deep breath. “And then my father couldn’t take it anymore, and hung himself. He had barely spoken to me in those last few months…” Ashara said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “And I…I went to her, to ask for help. For anything, really. And she turned me away, spurned me. She looked at me with cold eyes and told me to leave the city. As if our time together meant nothing to her.”

  She reached up and wiped at her face. “And that is how I came to be here. You know the rest. I came here to try and make a new life for myself. See, I’m really an unseemly little girl who has destroyed everything she cared about.”

  “You have made mistakes,” Vin told her. “But you must own them, keep them close. Your past is just the stone of the path you are walking on. And you are not unseemly. I see your soul, Ashara, and it is as bright as a star.”

  Ashara gave him a weak chuckle. “Such a pair of broken things we make.”

  “Perhaps, but we will prosper and grow strong. I promise you that, my friend.”

  Vin held her eyes, and after a moment, Ashara nodded her head in agreement.

  They were not alone anymore—they had each other.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KYARRA

  The bright golden star falls across the sky, and I feel sadness. My heart wrenches in my dreams as I see it turn to red.

  –Excerpt from the Journal of Vardun Con Aroch

  “We need to act, soon,” the King said.

  Kyarra sat across from him, in his state room. She had been summoned early in the morning and had made haste to the palace. The King almost never sent for her, so she knew that it was important.

  “What happened?”

  “The Grand Marshal is pressuring me for an answer to his Emperor’s letter. I doubt that I can delay him for much longer.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve made arrangements with three mercenary companies. Two will arrive with ships from Kahaldia, and the third will march through the Amaranthine pass. They should arrive in two to three months,” the King said tiredly.

  “Will the Empire know?”

  The King shook his head. “My advisors know nothing, and I’ve used untraceable means.”

  Kyarra relaxed. She didn’t know for sure how he arranged for things, but she could guess. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to be ready to close the pass. I’ll delay the Grand Marshal as long as I can, but once he decides to leave, we need to close down the pass immediately. The Black Sun Legions are not obviously positioned to take the pass, but they are still only two months away—and I’m sure that Lashian fragment bearers could get there in an instant and hold the pass by themselves.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  “Good, good…”

  “Do you really think that they will try to invade?” Kyarra asked.

  “Erius is ambitious. I know that he will try to take Tourran. Our only hope is that he realizes how costly it will be for him and backs off before it becomes too late.”

  * * *

  Kyarra left the King feeling apprehensive. She had always known that it was her duty to protect Tourran, yet she had never really thought that she would need to actually do it. Few Eternal Souls had ever had the need to demonstrate their powers. A part of her questioned the King’s will to resist, wondered how different life under the Lashian Empire would be. But she quickly dismissed her thoughts—it was not her place to think on such things.

  Protecting Tourran was her duty, yet she felt somehow inadequate. She was a capable mage she knew, more powerful than many mages her age and even many of her betters. The fragment of power gave her a huge advantage over other mages, but for all of her power she had never actually had to fight with magic. She was far more comfortable with complicated spells that operated on massive scale and required time and patience to cast, spells that no other single mage could hope to cast alone. But a fight between mages was not that, she would need to cast spells fast. To hold several spell-constructs in her mind as she struggled to both attack and defend. And while her spells could be devastating on a large scale, it was not the same thing.

  The power of the Eternal Soul was in many ways an illusion, crafted over hundreds of years and many lifetimes. Kyarra had more power, yes, but she was lacking in knowledge of combat magic. She had much left to learn.

  “Lady Kyarra!” a voice rang out from behind her.

  She turned to see a man dressed in the Royal Guard’s colors walking quickly toward her.

  “Commander Atiok, how may I help you?” she said to the tall blond man who commanded the Tourran Royal Guard.

  “May I have a minute of your time?”

  “Of course, Commander,” she told him.

  “Would you mind coming with me to the servant’s area? I would like you to check up on the palace wards there.”

  Kyarra raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the job for the royal mage?”

  “Master Jeressi is already there, but… He is unsure of his findings.”

  That made Kyarra frown a bit. Master Jeressi was what the Mages Guild referred to as a “rogue mage,” which was a very deceptive term. It was only on the northern continent, where the Mages Guild had influence, that any mage that had not attended their Academy was called a rogue mage. Other places in the world had their own ways of teaching mages. Master Jeressi was from the Free Cities, where older mages took on apprentices to pass on their knowledge. The fact that he was unsure of his findings was strange, as he was a very capable mage.

  “Of course. Lead the way, Commander,” she said. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. The spell the King had asked for was ready to be cast at his order. And it was one of her past lives who designed and put the wards in the palace in the first place.

  She followed Commander Atiok down the stairs and into the servants area, until the finally reached the doors to the kitchen. Master Jeressi was standing before the doors and looking intently at the wards on the wall.

  As soon as he noticed them coming, he turned and bowed his head to Kyarra. “Lady Eternal Soul, thank you for coming. I must admit that I am unsure about this, but I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t check everything properly,” the tall, skinny, pale man told her.

  “What seems to be the problem, Master Jeressi?”

  He pointed to the wall and the wards. “This ward right here. Late last night, I felt an alert from this ward. A breach—but when I arrived, everything looked fine. The ward looks untouched. All of the servants and the guards that have permission to enter were nowhere near here.”

  Kyarra frowned. That didn’t happen, couldn’t happen. The royal mage was keyed into all the wards of the palace; he could feel them all. A false alarm was not possible—or at least it had never happened before—and every few years the wards were thoroughly checked for decay. None of the wards in the palace ever had any, as all had been crafted by the Eternal Souls over the years.

  She stepped closer and looked at the ward itself. The glyphs that made the ward glowed faintly to her eyes, and she reached out with her anima and felt the ward itself. The supply of anima that powered it was full, and she traced the
conduit back to the center of the palace, and the anima-wells that fed the power to all the wards in the palace—and she found nothing wrong. Everything was working as it should have been.

  She checked the ward again, and then once more. But each time the result was the same: there was no sign of any kind of tampering. The ward itself was untouched. Yet something nagged at the edge of her thoughts; something wasn’t quite right, even though it seemed like it was. She looked at the ward, thinking, feeling. But still she couldn’t place the feeling.

  “It looks as if everything is in order,” she said finally.

  “It looks so to me as well,” Master Jeressi said. “I just wanted to be certain.”

  “That was only prudent,” Kyarra said, then turned to look at the Commander. “Close down this kitchen. There are others that can be used, and increase the guards in the palace.”

  Both the Commander and the mage looked at her in surprise.

  “You just said that everything is in order,” Commander Atiok said questioningly.

  “I did,” she said, and turned back to Master Jeressi. “But the fact that both of us can feel that something is wrong even when we can’t find anything wrong, tells me that there is more to this than we are seeing. These wards don’t just malfunction. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Lady Eternal Soul is right, Atiok. Please see to it,” Master Jeressi said.

  Commander Atiok nodded and walked away briskly.

  “We should check all the wards in the palace, just to be safe,” Kyarra said.

  Master Jeressi sighed. “Yes, we should. But there are thousands of them.”

  “We can split up?” Kyarra asked, and soon they divided the palace between the two of them and started working.

  * * *

  It took her the better part of the day to cover the palace, and with nothing to show for it. Every ward that she checked was in excellent condition, with no sign of tampering. She walked over to the last ward in her half of the palace, one placed on one of the servant’s doors leading into the palace itself. She walked over to it and started checking.

  This time, as soon as she touched it, she noticed the irregularity. She would’ve missed it if she hadn’t spent the entire day looking at wards. Immediately, she sent one of the guards following her to fetch Master Jeressi. She waited for just a few minutes, and then heard the sound of hurried footsteps.

  “Did you find something?” Master Jeressi asked.

  “Yes. Check this ward.” She pointed above the doors. The ward was supposed to bar entrance to all who weren’t keyed into it.

  He reached with his hand above and frowned. “I don’t see anyth—damnation!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have noticed that. Its power supply is almost half full,” Master Jeressi said.

  Kyarra nodded in satisfaction that he too had noticed. It wasn’t strange in of itself that the ward’s power supply was only half full—they were recharged from the center of the palace at regular intervals. The problem was that all the wards around it had much more anima in their supply. This one stood out.

  “It looks normal as well, no sign of tampering,” Kyarra said. “But why is this one only half full and the other one was entirely full?” she asked.

  Master Jeressi clicked his tongue. “I know why. The wards at the more important rooms in the inner palace are recharged more often. This one less so.”

  “So, someone did do something to the wards.”

  “They must’ve somehow drained them without triggering them, which should not be possible.”

  Kyarra nodded, although she knew of a few ways that it could be done… It would require a lot of power, and she knew that no other fragment bearer was near. They wouldn’t be able to hide from her, not in Tourran. Whoever it was that had done this could hide their power and had a great deal of it. “We need to reinforce the wards.”

  “Yes,” Master Jeressi said. “We should drop them all one by one and put up new ones. We can’t know which ones were tampered with.”

  Kyarra’s eye twitched in annoyance. It would take days, but she knew it was the wisest course of action. “We must,” she said finally.

  * * *

  It took them a better part of a week to take down and reapply all the wards in the palace. That in of itself was actually an achievement, as it would have taken any other mages several months at the least. But with Kyarra’s fragment of power and Master Jeressi’s knowledge of wards, it had gone far quicker. Jeressi had been far greater help than Kyarra initially thought he would be, and she found that she actually liked the pale man.

  It had been interesting working with another mage, especially with someone who was as skilled as he was. It took a lot of power for someone to apply a ward, as anima for inscribing the ward needed to come from the mage and couldn’t be taken from the surroundings. That was the reason why wards were always created over a long period of time, and long before they were needed. Jeressi, as it turned out, was a master at wards—his master had been one of the great Mage Lords of the Free Cities, one who specialized in warding. His expertise outshined even her own. With his help, they had even managed to improve on several of the wards.

  It had been grueling work, and Kyarra was glad that they had finished. The Guard was on alert, but there was no way of knowing who the culprit was. One of the suspects had been the Guild mage—they were the ones who had a big grudge against Tourran, even though steps toward mending that relationships were being taken. However, the King had forbidden them from even questioning the Guild mage. And Kyarra understood why, as it had taken a long time for the Guild to allow someone from to Tourran into the Academy. In any case, there was nothing else to be done at the palace, and Kyarra had retreated to her library.

  She spent the last two days there researching wardings, trying to see if there was anything relevant in the mind-gems or in the magical books she possessed. She hadn’t had that much luck, as her former lives had mostly never had a need for taking down wards quietly and without anyone noticing. Why would they, when they could burn them away easily with magic? The raw power that the Staff of Storms provided them tended to make most of their spells overpowered, and for the lack of a better word, brutish. Kyarra could command more power than any mage could imagine, and so working with that magic delicately was not her strong suit. She wasn’t bad at it, but she knew that she wasn’t near the level that the mages who didn’t have her amount of power were at, as they were forced to adapt.

  She closed yet another book on wards, and sighed in frustration. She didn’t like unanswered questions, especially ones that concerned magic. She reached over to the next volume of Magical Wards written by Farah Con Aroch when a chime interrupted her. She turned toward the entrance of the library in annoyance. She had given clear instructions not to be disturbed. But she got up nevertheless and walked out of the library.

  Outside, she was met with an angry Ovar. “Two days! Two days, Kyarra!”

  She winced at his loud tone. “Don’t yell, Ovar. What is it?”

  “You’ve been inside of that library for two full days!”

  “I had research to do.”

  “You also need to take care of yourself. When was the last time you ate something?”

  Kyarra scratched her head, thinking about it. “I had food brought up a few hours ago.”

  “Hah, if only. That was yesterday evening.”

  Kyarra frowned, but as he had mentioned food, she did notice that she was hungry. “Fine, I’ll go eat something.”

  “I swear, Kyarra, you need to find someone nice and relax for a bit. At least for a short tumble in bed,” Ovar said determinedly.

  Kyarra rolled her eyes at him. “Ovar, please.”

  “Fine, fine.” Then, as if he had just remembered why he was here, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Right. Here, this came in for you.”

  Kyarra looked at it and groaned. “Again? No, I’m not going again.”

  “You promised to be a more active membe
r of the court, Kyarra.”

  “And I meant it, but I just went to one of these things! And wait, isn’t the harvest feast in just over a week? Why do we need a gathering just before it?”

  “You need to go, especially now, considering our guests from the Empire. The Eternal Soul needs to be seen.”

  She groaned again and threw her head back. “Fine. When is it?”

  “Three days from now.”

  “Great, I’ll go. Now let me be! I still have research to do.” She waved the old man away, and stepped back through the warded doors.

  “Wait!” her guardian cried. “You didn’t eat anything!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ASHARA

  Ashara stood leaning on the wall and watched as her employer tried to convince an old Tourran noble to buy his grain, with very little success. She had been working as an aide to the head of a small merchant house for two weeks, and already she was growing frustrated. Haris Olos was a good man, but he wasn’t really a good merchant. He was good with numbers, but he couldn’t close a deal if his life depended on it. His merchant house was struggling to survive. The fact that Ashara had managed to get a job with no references spoke a lot about the state of his affairs. She watched him struggle with the noble, until the older man shook his head and started walking away. Seeing an opportunity, Ashara quickly walked over to Haris.

  “He didn’t accept your offer?” Ashara asked.

  “No, damn him! He wants me to sell to him for less.” Haris shook his head. “If I don’t sell this grain, we are finished. This is my last chance,” he said, although Ashara felt that it was more spoken to himself than for her.

  “Can I try and change his mind?” Ashara asked quickly.

  Haris just waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter, do what you want,” he said, defeated, and walked over toward his office.