Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (16 page)

The sound of laughter came from the shadows, echoing and rebounding on itself until it became a mirthful chorus that filled the cool darkness of the cave. Doubled and redoubled, the sound became somehow more human than less. Puzzled, Shel lifted up her lamp once more.

As the faint circle of its light expanded somewhat around her, Shel caught her first glimpse of the inhabitant of this deep cavern. Seemingly made of shadows, the dark and indistinct figure hovered just at the edge of her light. Even as she spotted the figure, it darted backwards and melted into the deeper shadows beyond her light.

Grumbling, Shel strained to lift her arm higher – and then it hit her. “The inner light,” she murmured, laughing harshly at herself. Lowering her arms, she exerted entirely different muscles. The power within her, contained in her soul, flowed outward from her body. It was invisible to anyone else, unless they too were a weaver, but to Shel’s eyes it was impossible not to see. And it glowed.

A ghostly white light bathed the entire cavern, baring its secrets to her magic-strengthened eyes. She was surprised at the enormity of the chamber, but at the moment she had a more pressing concern. The dark figure stood, starkly illuminated and cut off at last from the protective darkness.

When he threw back the hood of his ragged, ash-colored robes Shel saw that it was no spirit or living shadow. It was only a man in hooded robes. He wasn’t very tall or muscular, but he radiated an imposing presence that she felt through her enhanced senses. His face – bare, she was stunned to realize – was covered with intricate markings that continued down his throat to disappear beneath his robes. Shel found herself grinning, and then she laughed out loud.

“Sanook!” she shouted. “You crafty old Shadowman! We thought you were dead.”

Sanook’s smile abruptly faded, and a sad look came into his eyes. “I'm sorry, Shel,” he told her. “You were not wrong.”

“Now you’d better explain what you meant, Sanook,” said Kal in a stern voice that did little to conceal the concern – more than that, the fear – she felt. An hour had passed since Shel found the Shadowman in the lower chamber, and both she and Kal were anxious to learn where he had been and what he had meant.

The rest of the gang was busy setting up in the enormous lower chamber. For the time being, they had set up their tents in essentially the same layout as the previous night when they had camped in open forest. When that was done, they set about unpacking the things they had brought with them from the fortress.

A few parties were sent out into the larger forest surrounding Midnight Grove to gather timber and other supplies. Plans were being drawn up to begin construction on a fine lodge in the lower chamber of the massive cave. When it was completed, it would house them all. After that, they would build other structures.

Kal had ordered the upper chamber be left as it was. If anyone else managed to find their way to the cave in the heart of the Midnight Grove – highly unlikely – they would find only an empty cave, and hopefully turn back.

So the upper cave was deserted, for the moment, except for Shel, Kal, and the Shadowman. He’d pulled the hood of his robes forward over his face again and sat with his back to one wall. He looked up now, with the same sorrowful look from before.

“I didn’t survive the ambush on the King’s Road,” the Shadowman told them in a low and mournful tone. “Murdrek Thorne used his powerful soulweaving to murder me. My first dream has ended.”

“But that’s absurd,” protested Kal, leaning forward and gesturing passionately with one out-thrust hand. “You sit right here before us, Sanook. I can see you, I can hear you. You're talking crazy!”

Shel, seated on the dusty cave floor at Kal’s side, put out a hand and gently laid it on the other woman’s shoulder in restraint. She peered at Sanook curiously, and some of the Shadowman’s sadness infected her own expression.

“I can…feel you here, Sanook,” the younger woman said, hesitating. Her brows drew down in puzzlement, but she pressed on and tried to find the right words. “Your…presence, though. It’s changed somehow. It’s…less.”

The Shadowman nodded in agreement. “I am diminishing. I will not be able to stay forever. I must go on into the next dream.”

“What are you talking about?” Kal, utterly confused, was looking from Sanook to Shel and back again. The honey-haired thief-turned-rebel had spent plenty of time around Soulweavers and Shadowmen, and she thought she knew about the strangeness shared by both, but this discussion had quickly lost her. “I don’t understand. Diminishing?”

“He’s dead, Kal,” Shel explained. “Thorne killed him with a blast of soul energy.”

“He stole my thunder,” Sanook said with a weak, almost apologetic smile. “Ripped the lightning from my grasp and turned it on me. My body was burnt in an instant. I became ash on the wind.”

“Then how are you here, sitting before me?” Kal demanded. Shrugging off Shel’s gently restraining hand, she leaned forward angrily. She’d reached the end of her patience with this talk. “Explain yourself, Sanook!”

“I am a Shadowman,” he said, still in the same low tone. Sanook was entirely unfazed by Kal’s outburst. “When the first dream ends, we don’t simply cease as do the People of Summer.”

“I know that,” Kal said. “Your souls survive and pass on. Another of your people absorbs the essence that was you. But you're sitting right in front of me. Not some stranger, Sanook, but you. It is your face, your form. No other has absorbed you.”

“No,” Sanook agreed. “Not yet.”

Kal’s face wrinkled in confusion, her next heated argument dying on her lips. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand.”

“Mine is an ancient race,” Sanook said. He looked up, and the lamp-light slipping into his cowl reflected off a haggard face. “In another time, my death would have been foreseen, prepared for. My
kuun'es'ek
would have been at my side, ready to swallow my spirit when the dream of the body reached its end. Another time…”

Sanook lowered his head again, face slipping back into shadow. His sorrow radiated off him, so strong that even Kal felt its touch. She glanced at Shel, and the younger woman’s lips were pursed in thought, brows drawn down over her eyes in speculation. Kal thought she saw realization in Shel’s eyes, but for the life of her she couldn’t guess what Sanook was trying to explain.

“Do you know the story of Midnight Grove?” asked Sanook. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “It was here that my people suffered the final defeat at the hands of the emperor and his minions. They had stolen so many of our secrets, and they used each of these against us. He had our forests cut down, razed with fire…anything to destroy the midnight trees. Winterheart pines, you call them. For a thousand generations, my people harvested the midnight wood. We used it to focus our power. These trees have souls, you know. Powerful, ancient souls. They were our allies. Now, these midnight trees about this cave are all that remains of our forests in the lands of summer. They are helping me even now, giving me focus. It is only through the trees that you may see me.”

“You're saying you're a…” Kal hesitated over the word. “A ghost?”

“A spirit,” said Sanook. “A reflection.”

“There was no one to take his soul.” It was the first Shel had spoken up since they sat down in this corner of the upper cave. “No koona, koona-”

“
Kuun'es'ek,
” supplied the Shadowman.

“Right,” said Shel. “No one to swallow his soul. He was the last.”

“Oh, no,” Sanook said, lifting his face again. Kal saw determination in his eyes, and something else. The Shadowman gazed at Shel with something soft in his eyes, something like affection. “I am not the last of my people. In the lands beyond the sea, beyond the reach of the neverending summer, my people still dwell in the midnight forests. Your emperor’s victory was far from complete.”

“But here, in the empire,” pressed Shel. She seemed strangely insistent about it. “There aren’t any others left, the emperor killed them all. You were the last.”

Sanook smiled. “No, Shel.”

“No.” Shel’s voice rose in pitch, and the girl jumped to her feet. Kal didn’t understand what had upset her. “You were the last!”

“My soul was brought here by the trees,” Sanook said calmly, showing as much reaction to Shel’s outburst as he had previously shown Kal’s. “But not to be a wafting spirit. If my soul remains unswallowed, it will shrivel and fade into nothingness. That is the true death. I was brought here to continue life. The trees brought me here to you, Shel.”

“But…” Shel’s eyes had gone very wide. She shuffled backward a step, shaking her head.

“Why did you not ask me about the markings?” Sanook asked, cocking his head to one side. “I could have told you their meaning.”

“Shel?” Kal rose slowly, hands out to the side. She didn’t want to alarm the girl any further. Kal still didn’t know what was going on, but she was getting the general idea. It explained the dawning understanding she’d seen in the girl’s eyes a moment ago, but from the look on her face Shel hadn’t had a clue before now. “Shel, it’s all right…”

“I was born in Vallen.” Shel’s voice was barely more than a whisper. The blood had gone out of her face and she stood as if frozen. Her words came slowly at first, but as she went on they sped up, growing fierce and bitter. “My father was a drunk and a rogue. My mother was a tavern maid with no care for her honor. By the time I could walk they despised one another. By the time I was nine, my mother was murdered and my father in the dungeon. You're wrong, Sanook. You have to be.”

Now Sanook rose as well, and came forward to stand in the center of the lamp’s weak circle of light. Shadows danced beneath his hood. With outstretched hands, he approached Shel. She shied away a step, and the Shadowman paused and lowered his arms.

“I am very sorry,” he said. “Truly, Shel, I don’t know what occurred. I do know that my essence wouldn’t have been drawn to this place without purpose. I can sense you, every bit of you now. Unhindered by my mortal body, my senses are not confined to the physical. I see so very much, but that aspect of the past is yet hidden from me. Those people who raised you-”

Shel spat viciously in the dirt at Sanook’s feet. Kal drew back, stunned by the flash of raw hate in her friend’s face.

“I raised myself,” declared Shel, slapping one hand against her chest. “Me, alone. Not them. They never looked out for me! They never taught me how to live! They never did! Well, I didn’t need them, did I? I got out on my own and I learned to get by. Won’t catch me lazing in the gutter holding a cup and sad look. No, not me. I watched and I learned and I got myself to work, and I didn’t need them for any of that! Didn’t need them, didn’t want them, didn’t love them!
They
never loved me!”

The fires of Shel’s scornful fury burned themselves out quickly, and by the end of her diatribe the young woman was on the verge of tears. Seeing her friend’s face crumple from rage to abject, abandoned desolation like that seized and wrenched at Kal’s heart. She rushed forward, taking Shel in her arms and drawing her close.

“Shel!” she cried. “Shel, hush now, Shel…”

“If they didn’t love you,” said Sanook, moving closer, “it is because at least one of them wasn’t your true parent, Shel. Perhaps even both of them. I don’t know.”

At his words, Shel sobbed loudly in Kal’s arms. Seeming to shrink down almost magically, as if becoming a little girl again, Shel turned her face against Kal’s chest and wrapped her arms around the older woman’s waist. There she shook and muffled her cries against Kal’s breast.

“Sanook, stop it,” Kal snapped, glaring at the Shadowman or specter, reflection, whatever he was. “You're upsetting her.”

“It isn’t my wish to upset you, child.” Sanook spoke softly, a note of consoling mixing with the infinite sadness in his voice.

“I am not a child,” said Shel, but the angry words were muffled and barely audible. Despite the intense emotions of the situation, or perhaps because of them, Kal smiled and nearly laughed at Shel’s reflexive defiance.

“Of course you're not,” she said, kissing the top of Shel’s head. “You're the bravest woman I've ever met, Shel. Brave and noble and strong. Those people, they don’t sound a bit like you. You're not a bit like them.”

Sanook murmured agreement. After a moment, Shel released her grip on Kal and pushed slowly away from the older woman. Sniffling, she wiped at her eyes in irritation. She pulled herself together quickly and drew herself up.

Kal smiled encouragingly, and Sanook moved forward again.

“The blood of my people continues in you, Shel,” he said. “If it were not so, you could never have absorbed Aemond’s spirit. You could have taken it, yes, but never folded it into your own the way you have. That is the difference between our people and the others. Our souls cannot be burned away like fuel for the emperor’s magic, and they cannot be absorbed by any but another Shadowman. Aemond must have recognized you in the moment of death, but I – foolish old Sanook – failed to see until now.”

Shel bit her lip, fighting another wave of overwhelming sorrow. She clamped down firmly on the sadness and forced herself to meet Sanook’s eyes.

“And now I'm meant to absorb yours,” she said, then held up her hands as if to keep Sanook away. “But I don’t want to, Sanook, because then you'll be gone.”

“I'll only be gone if you don’t,” Sanook told her, smiling. “Swallow my spirit, Shel, and I will be with you always.”

“It’s not the same,” argued Shel. “Aemond’s been with me since the day I met Rez, but he isn’t my friend. I don’t even know him. I can’t talk to him, Sanook. He can’t be my friend!”

“Perhaps now that you know the truth, this will change.” Sanook shrugged. “I cannot say for certain. But Shel, you must trust me. When this is done, you will always be able to hear my voice…as I will hear yours.”

The dark-haired young woman studied the Shadowman for a long moment. At last, she spoke. “What must I do?”

“Kal,” said Sanook, turning momentarily away from Shel. “You must leave us now. What transpires next isn’t for human eyes.”

Shel sat perched in the uppermost branches of a Winterheart pine, a midnight tree. The bough over which she balanced was more than a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. If she could have looked down and seen through the multitude of overlapping and intertwining branches and boughs bristling with amethyst nettles, the people moving to and fro in the tiny open space around the cave would have appeared no larger than ants.

It wasn’t the slender and fragile bough which held her weight aloft. Shel floated just above it, suspended by her own magical abilities. The proximity of the tree – in fact, of the entire Grove – aided her tremendously. The midnight wood was like a polished glass reflecting an image or a steep-walled canyon bouncing back echoes of sound; these metaphors were imperfect, but so far Shel hadn’t come up with a better explanation.

The trees absorbed her mystical energies when she exerted them, and then bounced those same energies back a hundred fold. Here in the Grove, Shel could command an esoteric power greater than any she had ever imagined. She felt like an immortal goddess, at once capable of anything and aware of everything.

She could hear the heartbeat of every creature in the forest. She could pick out each individual dew drop on any of a million million leaves and uncountable pine nettles. If she wanted to, she could pick out any single individual among the forty thieves gathered far below and peek through his or her eyes. She could smell the bread Cook was baking in the lower cave, and hear the babbling stream where Alban and the other youngest men filled cask after cask to be carried below.

She could stretch herself out, extending her soul to touch the world around her further than she could see. She could hear the sound of far away wings, growing closer with each beat. A messenger bird returning from Solstice. A tiny capsule bound to one leg. A tiny slip of paper rolled tight and slipped inside. Ink, absorbed into the fibers of the paper.