Soulwoven (27 page)

And then one morning, he opened his eyes and saw bright light on the hair of an old Aleani female.

The grayhair was murmuring softly to
herself
. Her eyes were closed. Clouds of age spots dotted her face, intersected by wrinkles. A pale yellow habit hung from her shoulders.

For a moment, Litnig couldn’t separate reality from dream. He wasn’t sure whether he was human or Sh’ma, whether he’d fought a necromancer or lost a wife. He knew only that his heart was heavy and his body ached.

The Aleani opened her eyes, smiled warmly, straightened, and left.

Litnig looked around. The room he’d awoken in was carved from smooth gray stone and adorned with tapestries covered in brilliant, sharply angled runes. A row of pine cabinets stretched across one wall. Two stained-glass windows dominated the one opposite. Litnig’s bed faced an open-air hallway bathed in bright, natural light.

In one corner of the room was a chair, and in the chair sat a shadow.

It had a shape that Litnig recognized. A white blanket lay over it, tucked beneath its legs like someone had placed it there after the shadow had fallen asleep. Its hair was short and brown. Its face was young. There was a thick scab on its forehead.

Cole.

Litnig managed to sit up. His abdomen felt sore and weak. His legs were as exhausted as they’d been after the march from Nutharion City to Janestown. His left arm was slingless and painless.

He had to catch his breath just from sitting.

A gasp and a crash sounded from the hallway. Litnig flinched. Cole jerked awake and spun toward the noise.

But it was just a girl in loose brown clothes.

Sunlight pooled on the stone behind her. A tray lay at her feet. Next to it, a loaf of bread and the broken remains of a pitcher swam in a puddle of milk.

“Cole,” she said, “he’s awake.”

Litnig’s little brother turned to face him. Cole’s face was taut and sallow. His eyes were red and puffy. His hair was disheveled and unwashed.

Litnig’s throat closed up. His chest constricted. He gasped and sputtered.

A hand cradled his head. Another pressed gently on his chest. “Easy,
Lit
,” Cole said. “Easy…”

Litnig let himself be laid back down and tried to whisper that he was sorry. He didn’t know for what, or when it had happened. But he was sorry. And he was so, so tired.

Before he knew it, he was asleep again.

The next time Litnig opened his eyes, it was afternoon. His brother was sitting awake beside him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“You awake?” Cole asked, and Litnig nodded. He felt better than he had before, but still weak, still feverish, still out of breath.

“What happened?” he whispered. His voice was quiet and rasping. It hurt to talk.

Cole rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled softly.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Cole asked. Litnig told him about the heart dragons, and the scream, and the wall of flames rushing toward him.

Cole nodded. “That was Ryse. She melted the wall and pulled you out of it, but when we got down there you were just—” His voice broke. His eyes watered, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Just lying in her
arms,
and her eyes were white and her hands were shaking and there were tears in her eyes and she was screaming.”

Litnig took long, slow breaths.

“You were
dead,
Lit
.
Dead weight in my arms.
Not breathing, not moving, no pulse. And that—that thrice-damned necromancer, bleeding like a pig, he ripped you out of her arms, started pushing on your chest and ordering us around like he knew anything about you.
Like he cared.”
Tears hung in Cole’s eyes.

Litnig felt very, very tired. His head was hot. His limbs were heavy.

“Necromancer?” he whispered.

Cole wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Not the one you fought.
The other one.
Ryse knows him.
Or knew him.
I don’t know the details, and I don’t care.”

Litnig closed his eyes.
Ryse.
Ryse and a necromancer…

“We’re getting out of here,
Lit
.”

Cole’s voice was strained, and Litnig opened his eyes and saw his brother as he hadn’t seen him since they were kids. Cole was rocking back and forth on the edge of his seat and wringing his hands. His face was red. His eyes were wet.

“I told Quay to go fuck himself. Told him I was taking you
home,
and Dil too. Told him we’d got him this far and he could go the rest of the way on his own, because I wasn’t going to lose you, or her, or anybody—”

Litnig shook his head.

Cole swallowed hard, and the pain, the hurt, the
betrayal
in his eyes seared Litnig’s heart like coalfire.

“You too?”
Cole whispered. His eyes closed.

Litnig focused on breathing, on staying awake, on trying to clear his head so that he could
talk
to his brother.

“I wish…” he rasped. Cole would need to hear that. “I wish I could.”

Cole’s eyes opened again. “Then just—”

Litnig shook his head, and Cole trailed off.

The sun shone bright and gentle beyond the room. The air felt pleasantly cool on Litnig’s face. The sheets were soft, the mattress welcoming, the pillows fluffed.

His heart pattered fearfully nonetheless.

Once he spoke, there’d be no turning back. Once he let it out, his secret would grow legs and become real. Even if Cole told no one about the dream, the others would see the change in him, see his confusion and his fear, and they’d ask themselves where it had all come from.

A gentle breeze whisked across the stones in the hallway.

“Cole,” Litnig whispered, “I’ve been dreaming.”

Cole blinked and frowned, and Litnig saw the
So
what?
on
his face plain as the descending sun.

So he closed his eyes and kept talking.

“There’s a disc, and three pillars, and these things made out of light…”

Twenty minutes later, Litnig was sitting up and nibbling on a piece of potato bread while Cole stared at the stained-glass windows with his thinking face on.

“And you think,” Cole said, “you think—”

“I don’t
think
anything,” Litnig grunted around the bread. A tray with bread, milk, and a bowl of barley-and-bacon soup on it sat on a table near his bed. He’d had some of the soup and some of the milk, and they felt thick and pleasant in his stomach. His throat hurt a little less. “I just—”

Footsteps resonated in the hallway, and Litnig shut his mouth.

Ryse was walking toward him. Her hair flashed red-gold in the spotted sun. Her robe had been mended.

She looked strong again, and for that, if nothing else, Litnig was happy.

She was a half step ahead of Quay and a skinny young man robed in black. The robed man’s head was shaved. His face was hard and angular. His eyes glittered intelligently.

The necromancer,
Litnig thought, and by then they’d reached his bed.

Ryse kissed her fingers and pressed them to his forehead. “How do you feel?” she asked. Her voice was warm and welcoming, but there was a strained tenor to it, like she was seething about something and trying not to let it show.
Like she was trying to act normal for his benefit.

To him, that felt even more wrong than having a necromancer at the foot of his bed.

“Been worse,” he rasped, and she tousled his hair and smiled the smile he loved more than he should have. The knot in his stomach dissolved into pleasant warmth. The sun caught her hair and lit it on fire. He felt warm, and cared for, and happy.

And then Quay said, “This is Leramis Hentworth. He and Ryse saved your life.”

It was like someone had turned off the sun. The warmth of Ryse’s smile slammed shut in a heartbeat. Her teeth ground together. Litnig could read the words she longed to shout but couldn’t because Quay was Prince of Eldan.

They weren’t kind.

Litnig studied Quay and the necromancer. There was a similarity to the way they held themselves—an unconscious arrogance that set them apart. He disliked it immediately.

The necromancer extended his hand. Litnig took it coldly. He pressed Leramis Hentworth’s fingers and met his eyes and said nothing.

It was Quay who broke the silence.

“Leramis will accompany us when we sail for the White Forest. He has information about those who are breaking the heart dragons. We will bring him to my father, if we can.”

Litnig nearly choked on his own spit. The memory of a snarling face rushed back to him. He coughed sudden and hard, and Ryse and Cole started rubbing his back.

He looked up at Quay feverishly. “I have information too,” he said. “The necromancer’s name was Soren Goldguard.”

“We know,” the prince said. There were bags under his eyes. His cheeks had a sickly cast to them. “He has three companions. We know their names as well.”

Another bout of coughing wracked Litnig’s body. He lay down against the pillows when it was finished and took a deep, ragged breath.

“There are some things,” Quay said, “that you should know before we move on…”

…and he talked of necromancers and betrayals and strategems, of the whole world being distracted while danger built in an unscrutinized corner. He spoke of isolation, and conspiracy, and scapegoats, and Litnig tried to listen and take it all in. He tried to understand why the necromancers
weren’t
to blame, why they
weren’t
evil, why everything he’d ever known about them was a lie.

But it wouldn’t take in his mind.

He saw only the anger on Ryse’s face and the pain on his brother’s.

And he knew that somehow, things had gone very wrong.

THIRTY

Len stood at a table in the center of a circular stone chamber. The wet freshness of a mountain morning filled the air. Small windows set around the chamber’s roof let in the rays of the rising sun. When the light struck the motes of dust in the air, they glittered like the gold in a pawnbroker’s smile.

The room sat atop the
fenuanspach
and looked down over the rest of the Aleani palace and the capital below. No decorations hung on its walls. It was a good place to think in.
A good place to rule from.

On a dais at the head of the table were two ornately carved
thrones.
One had been crafted of white jade and the other of green. Obsidian, ruby, topaz, and sapphire inlays glittered in their arms and legs.

An old, sun-kissed male Aleani sat upon the green jade throne. He wore a crown of gold set with gems that matched the inlays of his seat. His eyes moved hawklike from subject to subject. He had a broad chest and looked strong enough to sport with a bear.

An Aleani closer to Len in age sat upon the white throne. Her hair was pulled into a long chocolate braid. She wore a circlet that matched the crown of the king to the last detail.

Though her face was beginning to crease, she had once been quite beautiful. Len had played with her in the house of his father, listened to stories with her at the foot of his mother, learned to fight, learned to listen, learned to speak—

“You
trust
these children, Len Heramsun?” rumbled the Aleani on the jade throne. When Len had last lived in Aleana, the king’s name had been
Yon
, and he had been the Speaker for Clan Phaeon.

That had been thirty years in the past.
Before Len’s renunciation of the right to rule.

Yon’s words were spoken in the tongue of Len’s forefathers. The sound of them reminded him of rocks tumbling along a brook in summer snowmelt.

It had been too long since Len had lived on his own land, spoken his own language, eaten his own food and drunk his own drink.

He wondered how long it might be before he returned.

“Yes,” he replied.

Yon grunted. The old Aleani rolled his head from right to left, buried his chin in one hand, and let his ample beard spill over it toward the floor. It had been
Yon
, with his gravelly personality and disdain for politics, who had overruled the Council of Speakers and agreed to aid Prince Quay. Yon Phaeon had become King Alphaestus only because Len Heramsun had not.

And it was well known that Yon Phaeon did not forget his debts.

Chesa Heramsun, Queen Ereldite, Len’s younger sister, owed her throne to Len as well, but she had always been less pleased with the gift.

Throughout the three-day hearing of the Council of Speakers over the heart dragons and the overtures from Eldan, she had sat arrow straight and frowning on her throne. Len had stood at her side in the uniform of a royal guard and watched. Rath Phaeon had thundered. Sedra Derimsun had rolled her eyes and made cutting remarks. Orin Sherinsdottir had kept largely quiet.

And Lena Heramsun had argued circles around them all.

Just the thought made his throat close up.

His wife.
For three days, he had watched his wife. Her dark skin had shone. Her hair had caught the light and
glowed
the strong mahogany he loved so well. Her eyes had been bright, and her body had moved with strength and grace beneath the purple robes of his clan. She had held her own against the clan heads and
Yon
and even Chesa herself—laughed and shouted, shown anger and happiness, beauty and terribleness.

Len would owe his sister for that for the rest of his life.

“Len,” Chesa said. Her voice was as cold as her eyes. “You must promise us to return.”

Len closed his right hand into a fist, pressed it to his heart, and bowed his head.

“Ha, fenuan,”
he said.
“Alebch.”

Chesa rose languorously from her throne and swayed down the three steps that led from the dais to the table. She stopped atop the last, held Len’s temples, and kissed his forehead softly.

“Alek sindt Yenorertyal
,
”
she said.

There had been bad blood between them after he had walked away from his responsibilities and forced her to the throne and his wife into the position of clan head.