Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (28 page)

Alongside the barracks rose a number of storehouses and grain silos. There was enough to supply an entire city. If the palace were ever cut off completely, or besieged, those within wouldn’t succumb to hunger and malnutrition quickly. In theory, the palace could outlast even the most well-prepared and heavily provisioned siege. It was a theory that had never been tested.

Deeper in the grounds were the gardens. Twisted and overgrown, the gardens were a labyrinth of gnarled trees and climbing vines, untended hedgerows and riotously blooming summer flowers that hadn’t felt the chill of summer’s end for a millennium. There was a small chapel at the heart of the palace gardens, a simple white stone shrine all but forgotten.

Beyond the gardens, close against the riverside wall, was the palace proper. Three low wings sprouted equidistantly from the central hub, over which rose a massive dome of marble and glass. The pinnacle of the dome was open, accessible from within. A small, railed balcony topped by a slight roof looked out over the grounds.

One wing held the emperor’s living quarters. Another wing held the chambers where he met infrequently with his archons; now that they were all dead, he would have to find a new use for those rooms. The third wing was like a museum, otherwise empty rooms and corridors filled with an ever-growing collection of mementoes from a thousand years of absolute power.

Beneath the dome itself, in the heart of the Imperial Palace, was the Summer Sanctum: high temple of the emperor’s personal religion of self. It was a round room, a thousand paces across in each direction. The domed ceiling rose high overhead, a narrow stair curling around it to grant access to the dome-top balcony above. Sunlight filtered in from that opening, but faltered long before it reached the golden-veined, black marble floor.

In the center of the Summer Sanctum was the altar, and on this gray stone slab lay a young woman with brown hair and lightly tanned skin. She was bare from waist up, exposing the intricate birthmark-runes that circled her waist.

Shel was awake, but she couldn’t move.

She was held by bands of air, made solid by the emperor’s weaving. She could see the strands woven about her and she could discern the pattern of their lace, but she was unable to untie them. As she had woken, the emperor had forced a vile potion down her throat. The liquid had steamed, burning its way down to her stomach where it roiled and curdled. She didn’t know what the potion was, but she knew what it had done.

She could still feel her soul, burning hot and powerful deep within herself. But she was unable to take hold of the power, unable to extend it in any way beyond her own skin. She was trapped, trussed and ready for the sacrifice.

The emperor himself stood a few feet away. The wizened little vulture of a man wore robes of black and violet and ash, the colors of the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead. His chest was bare, exposing his own runic birthmarks. The patina of gold flakes which had previously decorated and disguised his markings had been washed away, leaving only the pale faded blue of the marks themselves.

It was hard for Shel to see the young man from her dream-vision in this twisted creature before her. Impossible for her to imagine the wailing infant stolen from its mother so many, many centuries ago.

Around the circled edge of the Summer Sanctum were arrayed three dozen Tophylax Emperia. They stood impassively, backs to the wall. Their eyeless helms gave no indication whether they watched with anticipation or merely dozed on their feet. Each hulking soldier was motionless in his spiky, black-lacquered armor. They may as well have been statues. They would move only if the emperor willed them do so.

Twin braziers stood at either end of the altar. Shel could feel the weak heat from their coals on the soles of her feet and the top of her scalp. A putrid scent wafted from the sizzling coals. It was a spicy mix of burning leaves and what might have been human flesh.

The emperor came forward to stand over Shel at the altar. In one skeletal hand he held an ornate dagger of pure silver. The hilt was encrusted with gems that sparkled dimly. The fingers of his other hand were splayed wide, and he raised this claw out above Shel’s body and began to chant in the ancient tongue of the Shadowmen.

A white mist began to form in the air in front of the emperor. It billowed in front of his chest like a globe of smoke. Light flickered and pulsed like the lightning within a miniature storm. Strands of the mist unraveled, snaking out toward Shel as they twined about one another to form a complex, tightly knotted weave she had never seen before.

Shel struggled against her bonds. Tensed muscles strained against solid air; within herself, she fought and raged against the crippling of her soul’s power. It was all useless. The emperor’s weave penetrated her forehead and she felt its cold touch in the damp convolutions of her brain.

The Tophylax Emperia remained impassive and unmoved at their posts when Shel began to scream.

***

Rezdurth Thorne, rightfully Archon Rezdurth Thorne, strode imperiously through the scorched ruin of the High Market with a grim, wry smile.

He had sent the rest on ahead to the palace. Forty-four ragged men who had fought against one another two days before, sent against the might of five hundred Tophylax Emperia. It was laughable, and Rez did laugh.

He’d left that old goat Collam in charge, with Jacin Verret as his lieutenant. Which was almost the same as if he’d gone himself. Rez laughed again at that thought.

With his coaching, Verret had been able to tap into his innate powers for the first time. The Southern Islander had been aghast at first, but the first taste of the power was always intoxicating. He had been smiling long before he finally succeeded in the task Rez had set him.

Rez was free. He could weave again. The bonds that whelp gutterweave Shel had placed on his soul were torn asunder, and the rightful Archon Thorne was reborn. He had immediately set about glutting himself on the meager store of stolen soul gems his rebels carried. Spoils from the other archons, his former peers and colleagues. He had been so hungry for souls that he had gotten carried away and swallowed up Jacin Verret’s soul along with those stored in the jewels.

Verret’s soul had been surprisingly robust. Rez was glad he’d taken it. Of course, there was the added benefit that he now controlled Verret utterly. The former Suncloak guard was a Soulless now. It took only a tiny fraction of Rezdurth Thorne’s power to animate that puppet.

He still didn’t have the power to challenge the emperor. Not directly, not yet. That was why he’d come to High Market. He was looking for Idris Selban, but the wily soul trader was nowhere to be found. Selban’s home was a smoking ruin. Maybe the sly old fellow was dead. Also missing were the rest of High Market’s soul merchants. Killed, hiding, or fled; it made no difference.

Rezdurth Thorne’s smile had begun to slip into an expression of annoyance by the time he quit the High Market, turning back north through the city to head back to the lower market. He needed souls. If there was anyone left alive, anyone at all who had souls to trade, he would find them. And then he would kill them and take what he wanted.

***

Collam studied the turncoat Suncloak Jacin Verret through eyes narrowed with suspicion. It wasn’t so much that he thought Verret would betray them. He’d heard the Islander speak of the battle for Solstice, and he recognized the bitterness of a soldier who’d lost his faith in what he fought for. No, Jacin Verret had definitely turned his back on the Golden Empire. Jacin Verret wouldn’t betray them.

The problem was, Jacin Verret wasn’t the man who crouched beside Collam at the river’s edge. They and the forty-two other men Rez had sent on ahead were hidden in the tall rushes and water-grasses along the muddy bank, but if any of them were to stand upright they’d be within easy sight of the palace. They meant to go in through the tiny rivergate. But Collam had called a halt to their uncomfortable, squatting march through the reeds fifteen minutes ago, and he wasn’t nearly ready to signal them forward again. Not until he figured out what had happened to Jacin in the night.

Yesterday, the younger man had been full of fire and regret. This morning, it was as if he were a sack that had been emptied. Breaking fast, he had slouched over his morning meal and spoken not a word to anyone. His eyes, when Collam caught sight of them, were vacant and distant. Verret was hollow. But then he’d seemed to come alive. Only, he wasn’t the same now.

Collam had his suspicions it was some dark spell. He’d seen Rez looking pretty vacant the day before they met up with Verret and his men. Just leaning up against the tree with a dopey look on his face and not a thought in his head. He’d sprung alive of a sudden, just like Verret. And…he’d been different too. Collam didn’t want to face it, but whatever had come over Jacin had come over Rez first.

And Jacin had spent most of the night training with Rez. At least, that’s what Rez had told everyone.

It was more than passing strange, Collam thought, and it had his back up. It had to be some nastiness from the emperor, some kind of spell. Collam had heard more than once that weavers could snare a man’s mind, but he never believed that. It was silly superstition. He’d known weavers, and they couldn’t just reach out and possess a man.

Then again, Collam had to admit the eternal emperor was no ordinary weaver. He wondered just what such a sorcerer was truly capable of, and hesitated to speculate.

“Collam!” It was a hissed whisper from further along the river bank. Collam couldn’t see the young man through the rushes, but even at a hoarse whisper he recognized the voice. He glanced once more at Verret, feeling uneasy, and then made his painstaking way over the muddy ground to Alban’s side. The much younger man was right at the edge of the water, and as Collam approached Alban parted the rushes and pointed through the gap at something on the river.

Collam ground his teeth down on the curse that sprang to his tongue. The heavily armored, double-masted rivership riding the current toward the river gate dock was no merchant or trader’s vessel. Collam could see rows of men standing to rigid attention on the high deck.

He shook his head. The ship was a bit too far off for him to make out the banner flapping loosely in the wind from atop the main mast. Not that it mattered. Whoever owned that ship, there was little chance they’d come to help Collam and his men.

He was about to signal a stealthy retreat, back to some place they could reevaluate their strategy, when Jacin Verret suddenly stood up and screamed, “Attack!”

***

Kial Pedderson had commanded the Solstice City Watch for twelve years, and walked the streets in a golden cloak for six years before that. Even before he came to Solstice, Pedderson had always been a soldier and a knight of the realm.

His family had been living in Sunharbor since before it was called Sunharbor. A Pedderson had built the stout keep that overlooked the empire’s principal sea port, and a Pedderson had dwelt there ever since. As the youngest of three sons, it had been Kial Pedderson’s fate to spend his life soldiering.

He had begun his career in the colors of Archon Craston, whose holdings included Sunharbor and the surrounding lands. However, due to the proximity of Craston’s fief to the imperial hub, Pedderson had most often fought for the emperor.

Kial Pedderson remembered the uprising in the Southern Islands as if it were yesterday rather than two and a half decades past. He relived it sometimes, in his darker dreams. He remembered the perilous landing and the battle at the beachhead, remembered marching into South Landing with his hot blood pounding. He remembered well how the emperor’s foes were treated.

When the Tophylax Emperia quelled the fighting in Solstice, Kial Pedderson remembered. He thought back to all the Islanders they had slain, whether they be rebel or no. South Landing was an enemy city, and afterwards an occupied one. Whether any given local had been loyal or not was irrelevant. Solstice should have been different.

It hadn’t been. And Kial Pedderson, who had served the eternal emperor with his sword for more than thirty years, decided he’d had enough.

Most of his own men lay dead in the streets or remained unaccounted for. He knew most of the missing had fled the fighting, fled the city. He wondered if they’d struck out separately, or whether there was some group of former City Watchmen hunkered down in the woods somewhere. Pedderson decided it didn’t matter. The ones who were left to him, the few Suncloak survivors still in the city, were not much and besides that Pedderson couldn’t be sure of their loyalty.

So he had sent a parrot to Sunharbor.

The answer had reached him at dawn this morning, and he set out immediately. He hadn’t even taken the time to saddle his horse. He galloped out of the city, pushing the horse hard. He’d ridden downriver and met the ship a few miles south of the palace.

Kial dove into the river and swam out to the ship, hoisting himself up the ladder that was tossed down with the slowly returning familiarity of one who had been away from the sea for many years. His eldest brother Kiergan greeted him on deck, and confided his belief that it was long past time someone stood up to the cruel wizard in the palace.

With a hundred and fifty men, loyal Sunharbormen all, they proceeded up the river.

***

The emperor’s awareness was spread out through each man of the Tophylax Emperia. He knew of the assault at the river gate as soon as it began.

The emperor recognized the colors of the ancient House Pedderson, minor nobility in his Golden Empire and long subjects of the Craston archons. Those colors hadn’t been raised in battle since the glorious Summer War. The emperor knew the significance of this immediately, and directed his Tophylax to slaughter them all.

A second force, a motley assortment of City Watch men and rebellious peasants, rallied out of the high grasses and weeds along the river’s edge. The man leading their charge still wore a few remnants of his Suncloak armor. Waving his bared sword overhead, he bellowed with rage and hurled himself into the fighting without regard for whom he struck out at.