Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (29 page)

The battle was joined. The emperor directed his Tophylax Emperia with a corner of his attention, subliminally irritated at the distraction. He had a far more important contest to win, and the half-Shadow child on his altar resisted him mightily.

Sneering at the whelp, the emperor leaned over her with flashing eyes and redoubled his efforts to break through her defenses.

He was in her mind.

The emperor’s soul felt oily and rancid to Shel. She couldn’t resist him with weaves of her own, and was forced to writhe madly but ineffectually as his magic insinuated itself into her flesh. Ethereal talons sank into her, the foul touch reaching every part of her. It made her sick.

There were no words for the struggle between them, and had there been Shel wouldn’t have the time to conjure them. Her body was bound and her soul fettered, but no one had ever been able to conquer her will. She pitted herself against the emperor with every ounce of strength.

In reality, in the domed central sanctuary of his palace, the eternal emperor of the Golden Empire stood hunched over the stone altar with eyes bugging out, vein throbbing at his temple with fearsome concentration, sweat on his brow, fingers curled tightly and quivering where he held his hands up between himself and the girl on the slab. She bucked and writhed against her restraints, her howling wordless, endless.

On some other level, esoteric and strange and knowable only to those with the blood of the Shadows in them, Shel and the Emperor faced one another and fought. His weaves pinched and tickled the folds of her brain, applied calculated pressure to nerve endings which racked her physical body with agony, and melted themselves into her thoughts themselves to spread out. He sought something in her mind, in her memory, which at first she couldn’t categorize.

For her part, Shel resisted. She closed down her thoughts as best she could. Part of her went back to the Midnight Grove, when she sat on the air at the top of the pines. In her far-off contemplation she had often found herself stilling, thinking nothing. She sought that emptiness of thought now in order to deny the emperor what knowledge, she still knew not what, he sought.

He spoke in her thoughts, as silent as nothing and insistent as her own dominant consciousness. It burned in her head, that foreign voice, that intrusive presence, that demanding alien howl. It shook and rattled her brain and sank claws into her spine and shouted its question at her again and again.

What is your name?

Shel. She tried to clamp down but the thought rose unbidden, instinctively. She couldn’t help but think it. Shel. My name is Shel. And there came howling laughter filled with evil delight, and the laughter burned her mind as harshly as the furious demands had done.

Then laughter fell silent and a wave of hate washed through Shel. She hunched in on herself to weather the surging storm of vile emotion. Buried in the hate was a sense of astonished betrayal, and then the question came again.
What is your name?

And even as she thought her own name, Shel understood the truth. Her name wasn’t Shel. If the parents she knew were not her real parents, then what did it matter what sound that man and woman had called her by? It wasn’t her name.

What is your name?

Yes, thought Shel. That is the question.

***

Hulking Tophylax Emperia poured out from the rivergate, spreading to make room for their fellows but offering no opening to the raiders.

There was a narrow platform suspended from the wall over the water, barely large enough for ten men outside the gate. One end of the platform connected to the riverbank at the corner of the palace wall. From the other end of the platform extended the dock, a long finger stretched out across the current. There was certainly not enough room for the battle that was shaping up, and the Sunharbor men took to the water and waded toward shore.

Jacin Verret splashed into the shallows and began to attack the Sunharbor men. Tophylax Emperia charged out into the reeds, quickly spreading over the beach while others waded out into the water. Where they trod, there could be no successful resistance. Blades cut the air and sang their slicing-whistling-whooshing-thwacking song, and soon the blood began to flow.

It was utter chaos around the river gate. If there had ever been any hope for the rebels, Collam thought, it had surely vanished now. He drew his knives and did his best to stay alive. He didn’t think that would be very long. As long as I can, he promised.

Alban shouted Jacin Verret’s name again, slogging through the water toward trying to catch up to the other man. An utterly confused Sunharbor man came at him from the side, and Alban plunged his sword into the seaman’s leg without stopping. He shouted after Verret a third time, but Jacin either didn’t hear or wouldn’t heed.

Kial Pedderson raced down the length of the dock, his saber held high. He didn’t waste breath on boast or challenge, but ran with his mouth held firmly closed. He blew huffing breaths blew out between his lips with increasing frequency, and his pulse thundered in his ear. The first Tophylax coming down the dock squared up to him, and Pedderson brought his saber down and around and felt it glance off the lacquered armor and catch against the spikes. He whipped it back and searched the mostly unfamiliar armor for chinks as he prepared a follow-up stroke.

Kiergan was right behind his younger brother, exultant and filled with nervous excitement. If Kial had ever envied his position as the eldest and the heir, the youngest brother had never shown it. But, oh, how Kiergan had envied his brother’s adventurous life over the years. Now, at last, the brothers would share a final adventure. He almost didn’t care whether they won or lost. It seemed a worthy cause, to unseat the undying monster from his throne, but mostly Kiergan relished this chance to fight at his brother’s side.

Seeing the Tophylax raise its broad-bladed sword, and his brother fumbling to find a viable attack, Kiergan Pedderson raised his own saber high and set his feet against the deck in a seaman’s fighting stance. Though he’d never seen real action, like all the boys in Sunharbor, noble and peasant alike, he had learned to fight on the rolling deck of a ship. That’s what killed him, the unnecessarily solid and sturdy stance he struck in preparation. The Tophylax needed no further preparation than the intent to kill, and with a swipe of its massive blade it cut Kiergan Pedderson in half.

Blood splashed Kial’s face and his vision swam. A haze of rage fell across his eyes, but as the Tophylax hauled back its sword he drove his own blade forward and into the crease beneath the Eyeless’arm. He felt his saber bite flesh and knew he’d avenged his brother. That was the best he could have for the moment; later, if he lived, he would mourn. If he indulged in it now, he would see his Kiergan again all too soon.

Rori got off one shot with her crossbow, then tossed the weapon aside. It splashed in the mucky, stagnant water close on the bank. Her shot was lucky, more fortunate than Rori would ever know. The bolt found a chink in the armor of the charging Tophylax. It didn’t kill the lumbering brute, but slowed his charge long enough for Rori to draw her knives and take the offensive. When she’d killed him, she darted closer to the dock with her knives held at the ready. Scanning for her next opponent, she also searched for Alban.

Collam dove beneath the water to avoid the sweeping swordstroke. He pushed with all his strength, trying to put distance between himself and the three Tophylax. He felt the explosive pressure of a broad-bladed sword cutting torpidly through the water at his heels, and forced another surge forward before his head burst above the water. He spun around, and found himself hard alongside the dock. The Tophylax were coming toward him, their movements slowed by the waist-high water. Collam grabbed hold of the understructure of the dock and scrambled up.

Kial Pedderson had worked out the weak points now. He stood in the center of the dock, cutting down each Tophylax that approached him. Thankfully, the dock was too narrow for the black-armored brutes to advance two abreast. He didn’t think he’d stand a chance against two at once. He was working hard enough – too hard, probably – just taking them one at a time. He really was too old for the front lines, he thought sadly. Too old, perhaps, or maybe just too long in an office. He was twelve years from the street patrols and eighteen from his last battlefield. Cutting down his latest attacker, he spared a rapid glance down at Kiergan’s lifeless body. He’d be joining him soon, after all.

The massive Tophylax slid from the slick boards of the dock, splashing heavily into the water alongside. The next in line stepped forward without hesitation, its heavy blade held in two-handed readiness. Just as Kial Pedderson thought this would be the one that got him, a wiry old man leaped forward from out of nowhere. Silver steel flashed in the sun, and blood spurted from beneath the eyeless helmet where a flat-bladed dagger had found its way in.

Collam had already drawn another blade, and stood in a slight crouch with his knives spread out to the sides. “Come on,” he huffed at the next Tophylax, not thinking about the words. It was more an instinctive and weary exhalation than any intended challenge. He licked his lips nervously.

“Look to the water,” he snapped over his shoulder at the bewildered Sunharbor man. Collam thought he recognized the fellow from the old days, but hadn’t he been a Suncloak back then? Didn’t matter. They had to work together. With his saber, the other guy could keep the ones in the water from swarming up behind them. Collam was tired and far from fresh, but he saw the same advantage Pedderson had enjoyed and he knew he could hold against one at a time. They had to work together.

That thought had repeated over and over in the back of his mind, ever since the battle was joined and he saw the river men fighting bandits and bodyguards alike, with the Tophylax slaughtering anyone who didn’t wear the spiked black armor. They had to work together, or the Tophylax would murder them all.

***

Shel thought of names, and the emperor ravaged her thoughts, and power pulsed and throbbed around and through them both. The ancient, dark magician snarled in her head and battered her body with furious blows which she didn’t feel. She was too lost, pulled inward and consumed by the battle within herself. Her only spare thought was for the names.

The names spilled through her mind, none of them her own. Faces paraded across her mind’s eye, pale reflections of people she had known. The faces whispered names, their own. One by one they identified themselves and were discarded as the emperor ransacked her memory.

What is your name?

Shel.

That isn’t your name! What is your name?

And Shel understood that if the emperor found her name she would die. Rather, her soul would be swallowed and burned by the ancient weaver, used to keep an empire under his wrinkled, bony thumb. A name was powerful, but only her true name could bind her soul.

What is your name?

Who were her parents, that was another question. Sanook could have shown her, but he refused. Shel thought she was going to die soon, and she would pass without ever knowing who they had been. She would never know who she was. What name had they spoken when she came into the world but before she was taken from them? Had she been taken, or had they given her up? Who were they, and who was she? What had they called her? What is your name?

One of her parents was a hotblood, the other a Shadow. But which was which? Shel imagined it was her mother who had borne the dermal markings, the birthmark runes. She fancied a lovely Shadowlady, besotted with some handsome hotblood adventurer. Maybe they had been found out. Maybe they’d been put to death. That was why she’d been raised by those hateful people in Vallen. Her parents had been punished. Did they cry out for their child when they died? Had her mother shrieked her name over and over?

What is your name? And a new name formed in Shel’s mind, coming on the heels of her fantasy of her Shadow mother screaming a word she couldn’t make out. She had seen a Shadowlady screaming her baby’s name, hadn’t she? She had heard it, clearly, in a vision. It was a secret name which had never been uttered again. The name was Daerydd.

The emperor seized on the secret name and used its power. Completing his binding weave, he cackled merrily and closed the trap. This girl’s soul would be his, and he would burn it slowly for a thousand years. The Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer would never fade from the earth, and winter would never fall again.

Daerydd!

Shel and the emperor were surrounded by billowing shrouds of power, invisible, wispy soulstuff that roiled about them. At the edges of the room, Tophylax Emperia stirred for the first time. They shuffled nervous feet. They felt the pressure of the emperor’s weaving, layer upon layer of intricate, lacy patterns which had built up and up until the invisible power filled the room.

And now it exploded. Masonry crumbled. Stone buckled. Walls blew out, flinging bits of themselves into the sky. Fireballs formed in midair, burning out the oxygen. An icy wind howled, sucked through the gaps in the wall to fill the void left by the fast-burning flames. The emperor, who had once been called Daerydd, was flung screaming from the altar to crash on the floor a dozen feet away. He lay there motionless.

Shel’s physical bonds evaporated, dissolved as if they were no more substantial than smoke. The emperor’s weaves dissipated the same way and she was free. She rose from the altar, not standing but hovering in the air and floating across the room to stare down at her beaten, powerless foe.

Shel smiled darkly. Summer is over, she thought. I am the cold wind.

Rezdurth Thorne squatted in one corner of a tavern bar-room, ignoring the dust and soot and charred pieces of wood that had once been part of the ceiling. A pile of sparkling gems was gathered on the floor to his left, and one by one he lifted the stones to inspect them. He held them reverently with both hands, closed his eyes, and breathed in that which the jewels contained.