Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (8 page)

“These are the mountains,” Xander continued, indicating an interruption in the line to the dot’s left. “That is the main pass.” Punctuating the dirt below the line’s eastward curve he said, “That’s the Salmeara Valley. Crossing the western pass; then backtracking south and east takes many days.”

Days my people may not have…

Xander paused, aware that all eyes were watching him. Feeling equally proud and anxious, he hovered the spear’s point over a smaller gap just below and to the right of the dot. “A lesser-known pass lies to the south. Using it will cut our journey in half.”

Arcanadeus placed a soft hand on Xander’s back. “An auspicious start,” the Master said. “You’re in for a double share if this keeps up.”

Damus gently elbowed Nahel in the ribs. “What did I say about the Nesshin?”

Suppressing a smile, Xander wondered if the men of his tribe felt the same satisfaction when the Council acknowledged their worth.

Two guards descended from the stone sentry box. They each spared only a sidelong glance at the motley expedition before heaving the wooden gate open.

Xander strode forward holding his freshly shorn head high. He was leading men back into the same desert he’d fled the day before, and he meant to prove he wasn’t afraid. Though he wouldn’t admit it, the proof wasn’t for his companions, or even himself. It was for his father.

Who was still out there somewhere amid the endless dunes.

The first few hours passed easily, thanks to Damus’ lively songs. Arcanadeus filled the silence between with tales of forgotten objects, places, and peoples. From time to time Nahel would vanish into the wasteland, only to return just as suddenly with news of the way ahead.

No one complained when the afternoon heat arrived—except for Damus. “Hell is rightly famous for its heat,” he said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, “but this is just unreasonable!”

“Thank you,” Xander said.

Damus’ sodden brow furrowed. “Whatever for?”

“Knowing that hell is milder than Mithgar will be a comfort if I die unshriven.”

The Gen looked as though he meant to say something, but he only shook his head and laughed.

Though they’d only been traveling together a short time, Xander felt he was quickly coming to know the other three. Damus’ vanity was balanced by a noble sense of duty toward those he deemed his inferiors. Arcanadeus’ patience and cleverness gave Xander cause to question whether all guildsmen were truly reprobate. But if anyone disproved first impressions, it was Nahel. The malakh’s ferocity matched his bestial looks, but his affable manner made Xander ashamed of having feared him.

Near sundown Xander chose a campsite in the shade of a weathered triangle of rock, and Damus helped him set up their spacious Nesshin tent. Nahel strung his bow and returned with four wild birds from which his arrows emerged pristine. “Worked arrows are tough to break,” he explained.

Xander cleaned and roasted the fowl. His pride gave ample seasoning to their gamy flesh.

After supper, Damus favored his small audience with a haunting melody. Arcanadeus pored over his map. Nahel polished his blades. Xander's mind drifted through exotic worlds conjured by the music as sparks from the fire rose to dance among the stars.

His awareness came crashing back to reality when something jabbed him.

“Your thoughts seem to be wandering far afield,” said Damus, pressing his flute into Xander’s round stomach. “Best keep your wits about you. This is wild country, not a pleasure park.”

Xander swatted at the flute, but Damus removed it with a deft turn of his wrist before the blow connected.

“I have traveled this land all my life,” Xander said, doing his best to project confidence. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

The fire cast a mischievous gleam in Damus’ eye.

Nahel looked up from his polishing. “Don’t get him started.”

The warning came too late. Damus took a deep breath and said, “To the northeast—near enough by ether-runner, but far from such good fellowship—lies a joyless village called Vale.”

“My people travel to Vale each year at harvest time,” Xander said. “I know it well.”

“Nahel and I suffered a lengthy delay there before coming to Medvia.” Damus nodded at Arcanadeus. “They say the villagers nearly burned our good Steersman as a necromancer.”

Arcanadeus spoke without raising his eyes from his map. “A tale best left untold.”

“Some might say the same of this tale,” Damus said. “But young Master Sykes has given challenge, and honor compels me to answer.”

Nahel sheathed one of his swords. “Just make it fast. We need our sleep for tomorrow.”

“Let us turn in now,” Xander said. “There’s little to tell about Vale.”

A sly grin curled Damus’ lip. “Have you heard of the Journey to Save All Souls?”

The question gave Xander pause, so rarely did he think of others’ religious practices. “It sounds familiar. A harvest festival, I think—though it ends before my clan arrives.”

Damus shook his head. “A festival? No.
Ritual
describes it better. Each year, right around this time, the people of Vale single out one of their own—usually an orphan, a bastard, or a criminal; failing that, someone unfit for useful work but sound enough in mind and body to travel alone on foot. It is this journey eastward across lonely plains and broken mountains which the villagers believe obtains their salvation for another year.”

“I remember now,” Xander said. “They send someone out to appease their heathen god.”

Damus wagged his finger. “Not a god. Tell me, my learned Nesshin—where do the sojourners go, and why do none return?”

The night’s chill seeped into Xander’s blood as the fire dimmed. He didn’t speak.

Damus continued. “A wild prairie surrounds Vale. Beyond it mountains rise, and beyond them lies a now-empty sea. Between the mountains and the sea stood a city—a great city; perhaps the greatest ever built by men. It began as a fishing village no larger than Vale, but the Guild built its mother house there and greatness followed. The Steersmen called their capital Ostrith, and heavenly fire consumed it in a day.”

Xander hugged himself against the cold. Somewhere in the distance, a night bird cried.

“Not even God’s wrath could wholly erase Ostrith’s grandeur. The city’s life had gone, but its towers and streets remained—the charred bones and dry veins of a monstrous corpse. Ostrith, which had long since forgotten its original name, lingered on as a curse and a byword—the Tower Graves.”

“I have heard of the soulless city,” Xander said, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “I didn’t know it was Ostrith. Most say that the Cataclysm rent it stone from stone.”

“Others say differently; even that the Tower Graves aren’t quite empty. The people of Vale believe that a vestige of the Cataclysm—a last spark of the Fire—still haunts the ruins. They feed it the infirm and the unwanted, lest it devour the world.”

“A morbid superstition,” Xander said, partly to convince himself.

The smooth hiss of the whetstone across Nahel’s second sword came to a sudden halt. He inspected the blade in the failing firelight, sheathed it, and said, “I came across a hermit’s shack in the foothills east of Vale. The owner was a younger man who seemed to take my looks in stride. He invited me in to share one of the rabbits I’d caught.

“That hermit kept things pretty close to the chest at first, but he got more talkative as the night wore on. Finally he told me about his brother, and how they used to romp all over the fields and hills as kids. The old folks warned them away from the mountains, and they stayed away until some other kids dared them to go for a look at the other side. My host turned back after a day, but his brother kept going.”

“And I take it he was never seen again,” Xander said.

“Oh, they went looking when the future hermit got home and told the villagers what happened. They found his brother days later, passed out in the woods, suffering from exposure and thirst. He held on for another week. Never did wake up.”

Xander felt a pang of sadness for the hermit and silently prayed for his brother’s soul. Yet something else about the boy’s death troubled him. “How did he die of thirst somewhere as lush as the lands around Vale?”

“It was the fever that got him,” said Nahel. “And that came from the burn.”

“The burn?”

Nahel nodded. “The hermit told me his brother came out of those woods with his face blackened and blistered. It reminded him of a blacksmith’s apprentice who’d dropped a hot iron on his own foot. The weird thing was that his brother’s burn looked like a hand—as if someone had heated a steel gauntlet till it glowed red and pressed it to the kid’s face.”

Xander stared into the fire’s last crackling embers. They glowed orange-red and gave off a sweet, almost floral, scent as they fed on dry brushwood. Flames had never seemed more like living things to him.

Nahel stood and dusted off his pants. “Everybody get some sleep. I’ll stand guard.”

No one objected.

The next day passed much like the first. Xander led the way. Neither the fierce heat nor Damus’ griping broke his confidence, though looking to the empty sky made him uneasy.

Though Xander felt a bond forming with his companions, his strange gift lay between them like a gulf too perilous to bridge. It was Arcanadeus who took the first step across that distance. “Your face betrays a troubled soul,” he said during a midday rest.

Xander lowered his eyes from the lone cloud drifting overhead to look at the Steersman. Damus and Nahel had gone up to survey the increasingly rugged land from a craggy hill, leaving the two humans alone in a gully at its base. Not even the shade of a rocky overhang blunted the heat’s assault.

“Would separation from your kin not trouble you?” Xander asked.

Arcanadeus spread his robed arms. Though clothed from head to toe in black, not a drop of sweat could be seen on his pale skin. “My kin lie dead these many years, but death is a sort of separation.”

Xander nodded, though the Master’s words fed his fear.

“I’d like to know how your own separation occurred,” Arcanadeus said.

His long-practiced secrecy in matters even distantly related to his power urged Xander to silence, but his growing dread and sense of alienation overcame caution. “I was heat-sick. I wandered off from the caravan.”

“Are you sure?” Arcanadeus sounded like a shopkeeper questioning a lazy apprentice. “I’d heard that Nesshin never forsake their own. Why didn’t the others find you?”

The tears stinging Xander’s eyes compelled him to look away. Mere days ago he never would have discussed clan affairs with a relative stranger—least of all affairs that had brought him disgrace. But fear and shame threatened to drown him if he kept them bottled inside.

“They did not find me,” he said at length, “because they didn’t look.”

“Why not?”

Xander hesitated longer than before, but at last he said, “Nesshin only seek their own. I was banished from the clan.”

Sorrow burned in Xander’s chest, but another feeling overshadowed it—relief. Confessing his exile to the pontifex had brought some small comfort, but for reasons he couldn’t explain, telling Arcanadeus had triggered even deeper catharsis.

The Master’s face betrayed no judgment. His voice held only curiosity. “I see. Until now I’d never heard of a Nesshin exile in recent times. Will you expand upon the circumstances as a matter of scholarly interest?”

Xander was surprised by the bitterness in his own voice. “My father doubted that I could follow my people’s ways.”

“He mistook unfamiliar strength for weakness,” Arcanadeus said. “His error may work to your advantage.”

A moment passed. Wind howled over the gulley’s lip.

“You said before that Workings and priestly rites are similar,” Xander said.

A grin bent the Master’s lip. “You’ve a sound memory.”

Xander kneaded the smooth haft of his spear. He drew a deep breath and asked, “Are there any powers unrelated to Mysteries and Workings?”

The Steersman’s grin vanished. Xander feared that he’d finally incurred the disgust of which his father had warned—or at least cast suspicion on himself, but Arcanadeus continued in a matter-of-fact voice. “There are many powers that don’t directly fashion prana—thought and speech, for instance. But nothing in this world is wholly
unrelated
to it. Life itself is a kind of Working, after all.”

Xander’s growing relief emboldened him to press further. “Are there ways of…changing things, like Workings do, just by willing it so?”

“Higher order beings like our good malakh fashion prana as easily as you and I breathe,” Arcanadeus said. “Some of his kind are said to influence the world by thought alone, but such power is all but unheard-of among men.”

The sound of rolling pebbles preempted Xander’s next question. He looked uphill and saw Nahel descending the path with Damus close behind.

I could ask Nahel,
Xander thought. But he feared what the malakh would do if his gift was as unnatural as Arcanadeus said.

Xander woke on the third day to find Arcanadeus consulting his map. The Nesshin peered over the Master’s shoulder, but few of the lines and figures divulged their meanings.

Arcanadeus pointed to a jagged line on the brightening horizon. “Over those hills lies the barren Salmeara valley and Teran Nazim, the forbidden vault of the Guild.”

“I did not know we were so close,” said Xander.

“All thanks to your keen guidance,” Arcanadeus said.

The group trudged into the rising heat of day. Now the Master led them, guided by his colorful map. As the mountains drew nearer, he began mumbling to himself with greater frequency.

Xander hoped that the journey's end was near. His eagerness to find artifacts from before the Cataclysm remained, but he also carried the brooding fear that every passing hour carried him further from reunion with his clan.

The path began to slope—at first gradually in waves of round hills; then steeply over broken rocky terrain. A scent like pitch wafted on the dry breeze.

“Look at that.” Nahel pointed to something poking out of the sand. He stooped and picked up a piece of glossy black gravel. “This doesn't belong here,” he said, crumbling the greasy aggregate between his fingers. “I think it’s man-made.”