Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (17 page)

If she concentrated, Shel could have picked out the ingredients that had gone into the ink, identifying the source of each ground powder and liquid.

The experience was overwhelming. It had been six days since Sanook guided her through the arcane ritual by which she had absorbed his essence. “Swallowed his soul,” she reminded herself, barely moving her lips where she floated high over the cave.

It had been nothing like her experience with Aemond. Sanook’s soul was enormous and dense. He had warned her that he carried within him the combined essence of almost two thousand of his people. She wasn’t just swallowing a soul, she was swallowing a nation. Shel felt more like it was herself that had been swallowed.

That was one reason she had taken to sitting in the air near the top of one of the Winterheart pines. Up here, the insistent
awareness
of so many people pressed all around her was less. Up here, Shel felt like she could think a little straighter. There was another reason, one that promised a much greater reward, but Shel was happy enough just getting away from the ground for a time each day.

Kal was down there now, just squeezing out of the fissure that led from the upper chamber to the tiny clearing at the heart of Midnight Grove. She was the leader now, though no one had explicitly said so. They were all following her lead, anyway, still hoping to get Rez back. Their hope – their faith – broke Shel’s heart.

Kal had sent the first groups out on their second day in the Grove. The closest towns were far enough from Midnight Grove for their citizens to feel safe from the dark, wintry magic of the forest. That meant most of the thieving parties were still out. The second group, three men whom Kal had sent to the small city of Winterguard, had just returned that morning.

They had slipped into the wealthiest homes of Winterguard and taken gold, jewels, and anything else that was both lightweight and valuable. Experienced thieves all, they had known how to exchange the stolen items safely for coin. They returned with little coin, of course. They had bought provisions and other supplies, as much as they could carry. Kal expected the remaining four parties back by the following morning.

Kal walked across the small clearing to where four of the men sat on thick logs they had dragged into a circle. They, too, had only returned this morning. The four men, mostly older thieves, had gone out into the forest overnight to hunt. They were talking and laughing in low voice while they skinned their kills and cut the flesh. The girl Rori stood a few yards away from them, watching them from the corner of her eyes while she pretended to stare outward into the dark trees as if on guard duty.

In fact, Rori was supposed to be watching for the bird – a large and intelligent gray-feathered parrot – from Solstice. Shel knew the parrot wasn’t from Solstice originally, but had been brought to the capitol from the Southern Islands by a wealthy courtier. The parrot was even now circling over the Midnight Grove and preparing to swoop down to its inattentive handler.

Shel had been waiting for the parrot for five days. Now that it was here, she decided to go down and hear the news. She spared a moment to examine the small, woody growth bulging from the base of her tree bough. It had begun as a tiny, whirling knot in the wood but now it was a little larger than her two fists held together. This was the other reason she came up here, to pour her energy into that growth. She thought it would ready in a few more days.

For now, however, the news the parrot brought was of higher importance. The gray-feathered bird squawked angrily when Shel rose and stood for a moment before diving off. The parrot flapped madly, racing to get out of her way.

Shel dropped. The boughs and branches below her shifted and moved aside to make way for her. When she was nearly to the ground, her plummet slowed. The lower branches twitched hesitantly, as if repressing an urge to reach out and catch hold of the falling girl in order to lower her more gently.

Standing beside the four hunters and having just asked one of them, Jenus, about the number of game animals in the forest, Kal looked up just as Shel’s controlled fall became a gentle glide until she set one foot and then the other on solid ground as if stepping down from a carriage. At Kal’s side, Jenus was staring at Shel with slackjawed amazement. Kal rolled her eyes.

“What is it with you Soulweavers?” Kal asked, loud enough for everyone to hear. She and Shel had agreed it would be best if the whole gang thought the young woman was a very powerful weaver. They had also decided to keep her Shadowfolk heritage a close-guarded secret. “You've always got to make an entrance, don’t you?”

Shel smiled tightly, and lifted her eyes to the open patch of sky high above them at the other end of a tunnel of midnight-hued tree boughs. The gray parrot had gotten over the fright she’d given him, and was wheeling around overhead in a rapidly circling descent.

“Word from Solstice,” she said as Rori – who had also been staring – hastily tugged on the thick leather gauntlet that would protect her forearm from the parrot’s taloned feet. Kal frowned at the redhead as she rushed to catch the parrot, which had resumed its irritated squawking.

When the bird was safely perched on Rori’s leather-clad arm, she brought him over to Kal and Shel. It cocked its head side to side to peer at them with one eye, and then the other before lifting the leg bearing the message capsule and offering it to the honey-haired leader.

Kal looked askance at Shel before carefully removing the capsule from the parrot’s leg and breaking it open to retrieve the tiny scroll inside. Dropping the capsule in a pocket of her light jacket, Kal unrolled the message and quickly scanned it.

“Thorne’s in the capital,” she said aloud when she had finished, crumpling the message and stuffing it in the same pocket as the capsule. “At his city residence in the Noble District, as we expected. The archons are rarely invited to stay at the palace. Several of the other archons have yet to arrive. Timbek Norres sent word by parrot that he would arrive in a week’s time.”

“That’s good news,” said Shel, indicating with a brief hand motion that they should walk toward the cave. Or rather, away from the listening hunters and Rori. Kal nodded, and the two women fell into step.

“Partly good news,” said Kal in a low voice as they walked. “It lets us know how long we've got to act. It also gives us a pretty good idea of just how much longer we can pull off the charade.”

Shel grimaced, but didn’t answer right away. They had reached the fissure entrance. Shel wriggled through and then looked around the upper cave while she waited for Kal. She was pleased to find the chamber empty. Still, she led Kal far to the side before she spoke.

“We need to be in place before the last archon arrives. I want to strike them all together.”

“That’s bold. Maybe too bold,” Kal said. “We'll have to divide our forces. It'll confuse any attempt at a coordinated response, but there’s still Thorne’s men for you to think about. And our own. What happens when they find out Rez is dead, and has been all along? And, confused or not, there’s still the other archons and the emperor himself to think about. How do you plan to get any of us out of Solstice alive?”

While Kal was the universally accepted leader, she had shown a very different side to Shel in private over the past week. The slightly older woman didn’t lack for bravery or intelligence, but the task of taking over for Rez was daunting. She was willing to take on the role in front of the men, but in truth it was such an intimidating burden she was depended on Shel to help carry the weight.

When it came to things like thieving parties sent into the surrounding countryside, Kal was perfectly comfortable and at home. She had planned and orchestrated every move they had made so far, from setting up the new lair to sending out the hunters. She had sent the parrots out to her contacts in Solstice, the Summerfort, and far off North Harvest.

When it came to their true goals, however, Kal was stuck. She knew what Rez had planned, but with him gone she just didn’t see any way they could pull it off. And when it came to reducing his vision of a years-long campaign down to a single daring strike in the capital itself, Kal simply didn’t think it was possible.

Shel, on the other hand, was sublimely confident.

“Thorne is powerful beyond reason,” Shel said. “He may have another weaver with him when I confront him. That’s how he got me last time, but I'll be ready for that trick. And trust me, Kal, I won’t hold anything back. Thorne will go down. He has to. And the same for all the rest of them.”

The younger woman paused, frowning slightly. Kal jumped into the brief silence. “But then what?”

“Then I will take every soul he has,” Shel explained simply. “I will be more powerful than any of the remaining archons.”

“And the emperor…?” prompted Kal. “What about him? The most powerful Soulweaver who ever lived, right?”

“Unless the emperor is a Shadowman, even he cannot match my potential.” Shel said it flatly, without a hint of feeling. Kal felt a chill run down her spine.

“Shel,” she said sadly, searching her friend’s face for a trace of the girl she had known not long ago. She worried about Shel, who seemed to have changed completely since their encounter with Sanook’s ghost. The young woman who stood before her was cold and distant, not the Shel who had fiercely insisted she wasn’t a girl and had laughed boisterously at Maul’s most off-color jokes.

Shel surprised her then, reaching out with both hands to take one of Kal’s own. She smiled, but it seemed more like a mask than an expression.

“Trust me, Kal,” she implored the older woman. “I can handle my part of the mission. I just need you to handle the rest.”

“Sanook said something very like that to Rez once,” said Kal. She regretted the words as soon as they were out, but Shel didn’t react to them at all.

“I have something Sanook didn’t,” she said simply.

Solstice. Proud capital of the Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer, the city sat gleaming in a broad and vale of rolling hills and verdant fields. The walls of the city shone in the bright sunlight. Each day, a hundred men set out in the hours before dawn to scrub and clean and polish the outward face of the walls, ensuring its ever-perfect appearance from without.

Standing at the railing of her balcony, from which she could look out over the lower rooftops to the sun setting behind distant mountains far beyond the walls, Shel decided that cleaning crew was a perfect explanation of Solstice on the whole. The city was a frantically polished facade for the benefit of outsiders, a desperate facade proclaiming the glory of the Long Summer.

Within those walls lived the wealthiest and most privileged of all the realm. The poorest of the empire also called Solstice home. Cities always drew in the wretched like magnets, and Solstice took the lion’s share. Even the most wretched and deformed beggar, covered with crusty scabs and oozing sores, couldn’t match the ugliness of the thousands upon thousands of ordinary citizens who would walk past that beggar unfeeling, utterly convinced that the truly poor had only themselves to blame.

Who could possibly be downtrodden in the Great and Glorious Golden Empire? It must be their own fault. The Long Summer was perfect. See? Look at those gleaming walls. Look at the splendor of the High Market, and ignore the squalor of the lower Market district. Skip over the grimy workhouses, the final weak hope for the orphans. Look at the spires of the palaces lining the broad thoroughfares of the Noble District instead.

Shel had lived in this city for seven years, but for the first time now she thought she knew it.

“I hate it here,” she mused aloud.

“What was that?” Behind her, Kal stepped out onto the balcony from inside the suite of rooms the two women had taken as both lodgings and command center. They were on the fourth and uppermost floor of the largest inn in Solstice.

Even though most of the gang were in other inns and hostels, and some gone to ground beyond the city walls, Kal had hired out the entire floor. She didn’t want any strangers wandering around. Kal was positively on edge about this whole thing, Shel thought.

“I said I hate it here,” she repeated, turning from the railing to smile at the other woman. “Solstice. I think it’s the ugliest place in the whole world.”

Kal looked puzzled. “Shel, this city is home to some of the most beautiful architecture in the known world. The Golden Empire is corrupted and evil, but even I have to admit this is an amazing city. What do you mean, it’s ugly?”

“Solstice is the heart of a tumor,” Shel said, her lips twisted with distaste. “It’s the shining symbol of the lie. Everything the empire is, Solstice is it’s miniature reflection. I hate it here. I think I'll burn this city to the ground.”

She saw a flash of alarm in her friend’s eyes. Shel hadn’t missed the brief signs which had slipped through Kal’s guard. She knew Kal was worried about her, and she knew why. Shel worried too, but she worried about bigger things. Thorne. The emperor. Justice for the Shadowfolk, her own people. Justice for every citizen of the empire who hadn’t grown fat and rich off the toil of others. Most of all, justice for Rez and Maul and Sanook.

“I’d get everyone out first, Kal,” she told her concerned friend, shaking her head. “Dunmir, what you think of me!”

Smiling at Kal’s flustered expression, Shel moved past the other woman and went into the main room of their suite. It was a spacious chamber, lavishly decorated in overstated imitation of genuine wealth. The furniture was all sturdy, plush, and comfortable. Aside from the main door, leading out into the inn, two larger, double-doors faced each other from opposite sides of the room. Behind each was a bedchamber as tastelessly decorated and even more abundantly comfortable.

Kal and Shel had rearranged the furniture in the main room, of course. They had set up a long table in the center of the room, with chairs arrayed around it. Three of the seats were occupied at the moment. Alban was there, visibly nervous and doing his best to hide it. Rori stood immediately behind his chair with her hand resting on his shoulder. Beside the young man was Peele, undisputedly the best sneak-thief in the whole gang. On Peele’s other side was Collam, the oldest man in the entire gang.