Soulwoven (28 page)

The years seemed to have washed much of it away. He kissed her hand.

“Ha,”
he said again. Yon Phaeon stood and echoed Chesa’s blessing.

Go with God’s grace,
they told him.

And he would.

When Len exited the throne room, Lena was waiting for him.

She stood beside a bench of gray stone. Her arms were crossed over her chest. A sour expression clouded her broad face.

Len was wearing the guardsman’s helm Chesa had given him, but still, he stopped short. Colored banners crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling that ran the length of the hall beyond his wife. Skylights filled the corridor with the brightness of the spring day. The birds that nested in them bustled with song.

“Speak not,” Lena said in Aleani. There was fire in her eyes.
Brimstone in her shoulders.
Thunder in the thick northern accent of her voice.
“Walk with me,” she said, and he did.

It was easy. There were other Aleani in the hall, but they did not look twice at them. They did not recognize him. They did not notice. They did not know.

His wife did.

For a long time, they walked in silence. They strode out of the great hall and into the maze of smaller passageways, courtyards, and gardens that spread over the highest level of the
fenuanspach.
They passed courtiers, servants, soldiers, and guards. The sun lit their path. When they crossed the breezeways and gardens, the wind pulled at their clothes and the scents of flowers filled their nostrils.

Len did not speak. It was enough to walk with his wife again for the first time in thirty years and pretend that such things were normal.

Lena, for her part, said nothing either.

They reached a high, remote balcony that overlooked Du Fenlan. It lay far from prying eyes and overeager ears. Len remembered it. They had spoken upon it before.

Lena leaned one hip against the stone railing that circled the balcony.

“Did you think I would not notice?” she asked. Her brows were stormy and low, the way they got when he had slighted her.

He pulled the stifling helmet from his head.

“I only hoped,” he said, and he bowed.

The calls of hawks pierced the sky. The wind whistled over his ears. His wife’s robe of office fluttered and snapped.

Lena clucked.

She
tsk
ed.

And then her body was close to his and her arms were around him. His hands kneaded the soft skin of her back. Hers ran up and down his spine. She placed a soft, wet kiss upon his cheek, and he returned it threefold.

“Why have you returned, dear heart?” she asked.

Len shivered. He took a moment to bask in the feeling of her hair on his face, her hands on his back, and the heavy heartbeat he could feel through her robe.

“D’Orin,” he replied at last. “The way to D’Orin brings me through.”

Lena’s chin hung on his shoulder. She stroked one of his dreadlocks, and he buried his face in hers. They smelled of rose. It was the scent she had worn on their wedding night, long ago. He clutched her tighter.

“Let him go, Len Heramsun,” she said. Her cheek pressed against his. “It is past time.”

He could see the city over her shoulder—the rich expanse of the Clanhalls below the palace; the wide plaza of the
cherdtspach
beyond that; the steep drop down to the river and the sprawling districts on its other side farther still.

Somewhere in that city walked his children. They had grown up without him, were perhaps already married, already having children of their own. He had pursued D’Orin Threi for most of their lives.

Lena was right. It was past time to let him go.

But in his mind, the monster still leered in the darkness.

Can you keep a secret?

He did not get the chance to explain his thoughts to Lena.

When he lowered his eyes without speaking, she tensed and pushed him away.

“Brechuab al, Len Heramsun!”
she spat. “Your children need you! Your clan needs you! Your
people
need you!”

“Lena—”

“And you remain away for what?
These humans?
These
children?
”

“The heart dragons—”

“There are others who would bear that burden, Len Heramsun!
Your son, your daughter!”

“And what would they do when they came face to face with D’Orin?”

“More than you think!”

Lena opened her hands. He watched them tense and
relax
, watched her eyes burn with her frustration. “
Suluan al, Len,
at least take them with you!”

Len stopped to think. The sun filled his eyes. His tongue felt hot, and his ears, and his cheeks.

Raest would be forty years old already.
Maegan thirty-two.

There had been a few moments in Len’s life when he had been aware of making decisions that would change his destiny.
The day he had announced his engagement to Lena.
The day he had taken the position of Clan Head.
The day he had given it up to hunt D’Orin Threi.

His wife leaned forward with the anger of thirty long years in her veins. He saw the pain behind her fury, the plea behind her command, and he knew that he stood at another of the great crossroads of his life—that she was offering him a chance to leave the lonely path upon which he walked.

But he could not do it.

Can you keep a secret?

He lowered his head.

“Lena—” he began, but before he could finish, she had stormed past him and into the palace beyond.

Len Heramsun stood alone on a high balcony, looking over the city in which he could have been king. His wife’s footsteps receded into the palace.

He gripped the stone railing and roared his frustration to the mountains.

And when he had finished, he put the guardsman’s helm back on and walked inside.

THIRTY-ONE

Quay felt like a wrung-out rag.

He wiped a droplet of spray from his nose only to feel it replaced by another. The cold, clear drips ran together and fell onto warm planks of cedar below his feet. He stood on the foredeck of a narrow river galley with green floodplains beaming bright on either side of him.

He was beginning to think he was in over his head.

He’d been making mistakes.
Clear ones.
If Litnig and Dil hadn’t overruled him in the tunnels under the mountains, the loss of Len would have hurt him considerably when he’d reached Du Fenlan. If they’d waited a little longer to enter the tunnels in the first place or taken the roads like Cole had wanted him to, they wouldn’t have encountered the tunnelworm at all.

The errors ate at him, and he wondered how many others he’d made.

The river galley was taking him north to sail for home.

The behavior of the necromancers was making him uneasy. He couldn’t figure out why they were striking one at a time if there were as many of them involved as Hentworth claimed. Their actions smacked of a hidden agenda, and he was concerned that their goals might lie in Eldan City. He wanted to return and find out what was happening there in his absence.

The galley planed elegantly over the flat blue surface of the river Derumar. Its oars dipped and rose, dipped and
rose
, flashing in the morning sun and sending water skyward.

Cole and Litnig and their friends were scattered across the slender sweep of the galley. They wouldn’t speak to him.

Quay rubbed the bridge of his nose. A trace of the scar he’d picked up fighting in Du Fenlan still lingered there, though the Aleani had been kind enough to heal the worst of it.

Quay had Len to thank for that.

The Aleani was watching the mountains slide by with a pained, solemn look in his eyes. The wind tugged at his dreadlocks. His skin glistened in the bright light.

In the days since Len had secured his people’s assistance, Quay had been given supplies, money, and passage north to meet a ship in Du Nath to take him home.

And I would have let him die.

The thought bothered him.
For many reasons.

Quay sipped fragrant water from a pouch on his hip. The oars beat steadily. The sun pounded down.

The members of his party were worn out. They were frustrated. They’d come to resent him.

But he was a prince, and still they followed.

Mother,
he thought.
Saen—what would you do?

The mountains gave him no answers.

As the Aleani galleteer had promised, the northern port of Du Nath became visible midmorning on the galley’s second day of travel. Its whitewashed, multistoried buildings sprawled haphazardly across the coastline and the ancient green delta of the Derumar. The turquoise waters of the North Sea twinkled in the sun beyond it. White beaches sparkled around its periphery. Tall stacks of dark rock caught white-capped waves in thunderous cascades outside the harbor.

The port itself, on which the city centered, was horseshoe shaped and compact. Quay spotted close to a hundred ships crammed into the harbor behind its long seawall. Some flew the colors of Aleani ports. Some hailed from Nutharion or the Barin Isles. Others bore colors the prince had never seen. The merchants of Eldan said one could find anything in Du Nath—Aleani livestock, Nutharian spices, Islander fruits and wood, even smuggled Eldanian horses. When they spoke of its bazaar, it was in hushed, reverent tones.

Quay entered the city of merchants’ dreams in the late morning, just as spring was awakening in the northern mountains. The outer neighborhoods of Du Nath gleamed three and four stories high to either side of him. The river’s blue waters turned green as they flowed into a deep channel lined with stone walls.

Cole, Litnig, Ryse, and Dil watched the city. Leramis watched Ryse. Len watched the water.

And Quay watched everyone look at anything but him.

Not a mile beyond Du Nath’s first buildings, the river fed a wide, calm pool. At its far end, a thin yellow line betrayed the top of a gold-leafed dam. Smiling, curly-haired busts of half-Aleani, half-fish creatures thrust out below the dam’s waterline with arms open in welcome. On the far side of the dam’s arch, the Derumar plunged into a steep defile and wound through stone channels for a half-mile or so before spilling into the harbor. In the bright sun, it looked like a shining silver cord.

The galley slid alongside one of the wooden piers along the left bank of the pool, and its captain called to an officious-looking Aleani on shore. Sailors jumped from the galley to the dock and tied the craft down with coils of thick rope. A gangplank was brought out from below. Sheepskins emerged from the hold in huge stacks, and bundles of cloth, rope, and furs went ashore under the watchful eyes of Aleani merchants.

Quay deposited a few coins in the hand of the smiling Aleani river captain and left the galley without a backward glance.

The prince descended behind Len and three burly porters along a narrow stairway into the shade below the dam. The others preceded him.

In the lower part of the city, the presence of Du Nath’s bazaar was unavoidable. Tall white archways yawned into it from the main boulevard like the mouths of barkers. Beyond them lay an enormous, circular plaza filled with smoke, dust, awnings, musicians, merchants, and more. The streets thronged with Aleani and humans in bright dresses, solemn robes, airy southron clothes, rich tunics, tattered rags. The air smelled of cooking lamb and fish and saffron and anise and a dozen things Quay couldn’t recognize.

Cole looked at the crowd as though he would’ve given anything to be within it, and needles of guilt pricked Quay’s heart.

“Fuck you, Quay. We’re going home, before you get someone killed.”

The words had hurt more than Quay could afford to let on. Of all his companions, Cole was the one whose voice
mattered
the most to him.

And of all of them, he was most unwilling to give Cole up.

The prince took a deep breath of salty air. His father’s library held a few accounts of the northwestern coast of Guedin, and Quay knew more or less what to expect from the coming voyage: spires of jagged rock against which the sea crashed endlessly.
Huge cliffs of sheer slate.
Dark forests that ran right to the edges of pebbled beaches.
Breathless, primal beauty.

He felt excited. His eyes drifted up toward the cloudless sky.

He forced them back down.

Our dreams die
today,
his father had told him long ago. The two of them had been watching the funeral procession of Quay’s mother and brother.

He’d been right.

Quay had a people to serve. It was in the dirt, with his mother and his
brother, that
his dreams of anything else belonged.

Beyond the bazaar, hundreds of Aleani and humans buzzed along the waterfront, loading and unloading a fleet of wallowing cogs, sleek caravels, wide-decked fishermen’s boats, and tall carrack ships. Shrill whistles and flapping canvas filled the air. The harsh calls of gulls echoed over shouting, laughing, and cursing in a bubbling polyglot.

Len plunged into the maelstrom of dockworkers. The porters followed him.

So did Quay.

The burly Aleani led them slowly along the docks. They weaved, bumped, and jostled their way past ship after garish ship until, as if some invisible fence had been crossed, the chaos of the merchant zone evaporated. The piers became spotless and ordered. Every knot was perfect. Every rope had been coiled impeccably. Pennants of blue and white flew from every mast.

They’d reached the fleet of the twin thrones.

Quay craned his neck with the others to look at the vessels they passed. The Aleani warships were dromon-style craft built to inflict or withstand heavy assault. The biggest of them boasted three masts, tall sides, and room for double banks of oarsmen.

Eldan had few ships so expensive. Quay wondered what had possessed the Aleani to build so many—what threat they faced in the North Sea that Eldan didn’t in the south.

Cole nearly walked right into Leramis in front of him. The necromancer excused himself for Cole’s mistake, and Quay’s mind flashed to his father and the fleet that he would be mustering in Densel.