Soulwoven (30 page)

But he couldn’t find it.

THIRTY-THREE

Something hard and scratchy dug into the side of Litnig’s face. His lips pressed up against his teeth. He couldn’t breathe.

His eyes shot open, and he jerked his head away from coarse, twisted rope. Darkness surrounded him. There was more rope below his legs. His hands and arms were tangled in it.

He was
lying
in a hammock half his size.

Water lapped gently against the wood next to his head.

The Rokwet.
The sea.
I’m at sea. Just at sea…

Litnig sat up and coughed. His head ached. His hammock swung from side to side when he moved, and he had to focus on deadening its oscillations so he didn’t get too dizzy. He heard Cole start the coughing of the dry heaves across the cabin. The others seemed to be asleep. A thin line of natural light crept beneath the cabin door.

Aside from the water and the creaking of wood and rope, the morning was strangely quiet.

Litnig heard no laughing, no singing,
no
thumping of feet as the Aleani worked the deck above. He swung dizzily in the air and tried to remember where the floor was so that he could get out of the hammock without falling on his face.

A moment later, he heard footsteps.

He’d barely managed to get his toes down before Aldric Derimsun burst through the door and brought the light of day with him. The Aleani captain’s tattooed face was flush with color. His eyes were shining.

“Heruan, Len.
Syorchuak Van.”
The sentence was followed by a string of Aleani syllables Litnig couldn’t even parse into words.

Derimsun spat and looked around the cabin. “Current pashed us ta’rd
th
’ shar. I wan’ t’ye all on dack in tan minnits. Odd sare, we’ll have a fight on ahr hands b’fore t’ hour’s out.”

There was silence in the darkness. Derimsun left.

“A fight with what?”
Cole grunted after the door closed.

“The Syorchuak Van,” Len replied. “Your people call them Lost Ones.”

Lost Ones.

The words sent a slug of fear down Litnig’s spine. He’d heard nightmare stories of the barbarians in the cold northern wastes of Guedin. The Lost Ones had been the first children of the dragon, precursors to the Duennin—
cursed,
wretched. Sometimes they helped travelers. Sometimes they murdered them.

Litnig had forgotten they were even meant to exist.

A gurgle sounded at the far end of the cabin. Quay was on his hands and knees over a bucket, retching. The prince’s eyes bulged. His back arched. Saliva dripped from his lips.

For a second, Litnig felt bad for him. Over the past few days, Quay and Cole had faced by far the worst of the seasickness. Cole had Dil to take care of him. Quay had no one.

Quay’s heaving stopped. He wiped a shaking hand across his lips. “You heard him,” he rasped. “Quick as you can. Bring weapons.”

Litnig’s sympathy evaporated. He grabbed the orphan breaker and his boots from the chest below his hammock and strode toward the door.

Cole moaned. Dil hopped lightly down from her hammock to give him a hand. Leramis and Ryse slid slowly from their berths.

Litnig left them behind and stomped past his sweating prince without a word or a glance. Let Quay writhe, if he couldn’t stop giving orders for ten seconds. Let him
writhe.

A few minutes later, Litnig was looking at the shore. The morning was cold enough that he could see his breath. There wasn’t
so
much as a whisper of wind in the air. The sun hovered just above the horizon. The orphan breaker hung from his hip.

The Aleani, carrying weapons of steel and iron, glanced disparagingly at it as they walked around him.

Litnig ran his hands over the wood. Let them stare. He’d show them what a man could do with a good club.

He hoped.

Off the
Rokwet
’s port side, six or seven small fires burned on a hill covered in yellow heather. The sea washed onto a gray beach below them.

“Have they spotted us?” Litnig asked.

None of the sailors responded.

A high layer of clouds covered the sky, and the sun broke through it and painted the hill in shades of orange. Litnig spotted tall figures scampering along the beach between silhouettes that looked like canoes.

His stomach twisted.

Anticipation had been the worst part of danger for him since his childhood. Once a crisis was on him, he could trust his body, trust his heart,
trust
his mind. But if he watched a problem come on, he had time to think. Time to wonder about the mistakes he might make, and about what might happen if he made them.

His brother staggered onto the deck, pale as the sails above him and leaning on Dil’s shoulder. Ryse, Leramis, and Len followed. Quay emerged last, looking as sick as Litnig had ever seen a man.

At least the sea’s calm,
he thought. Maybe their heads would clear in the crisp morning air.

The minutes passed slowly. The
Rokwet
’s sails flapped. A few birds circled high in the sky. Litnig stood with his friends at the ship’s shoreside rail.

The Lost Ones launched their canoes one by one.

Litnig counted maybe twelve boats, with six or seven tall, shadowy figures in each. The
Rokwet
’s crew numbered thirty-five. Forty-one if he counted himself and his friends. Forty-two if he counted Leramis.

He spared a glance for the necromancer. Leramis was standing on the ship’s forecastle, near the stairs to the main deck. His eyes were focused on the Lost Ones. His brows plunged sharply toward his nose. His lips were thin, like he was
planning,
or maybe even soulweaving already.

Litnig shivered and turned away.

Derimsun said something in Aleani. Len answered. Cole’s arms shook as he held the rail. He was mouthing something that looked like
come on, come on, come on, come on,
come
on.

Litnig had seen his brother fight before. He’d do pretty well, if he could get his guts together and keep his feet under him.

And if he couldn’t, then Litnig would just have to protect him.

Dil stood trembling at Cole’s side. She had her old, battered bow in one hand and an arrow in the fingers of the other. Ryse said something to her, and the shivering girl shook her head.

A bead of sweat rolled down Litnig’s cheek. He slipped the breaker from its belt loop and swished it through the air a few times.

He hoped he could trust it.

Never put too much faith in a weapon,
his father had once said.
Unless that weapon is yourself.

The words still sent goose bumps skittering over Litnig’s skin.

Litnig had never tried to make a weapon of
himself
. He’d watched Cole spend hours playing with his daggers, learning how to move with them, strike with them, parry with them, throw them. But he’d never joined in. A part of him had been afraid of what would happen if he did. Afraid he might be too good at violence. Afraid he might enjoy it.

The breaker felt solid and heavy in his hand, like an extension of his body.

A voice in the back of his head whispered that if it betrayed him, he wouldn’t live long enough to regret trusting it.

But he quieted his doubts. His brother was sick. His friends were afraid.

He had little left to put his faith in.

***

Leramis stood at the
Rokwet
’s rail and watched thirteen canoes dash through low waves. His breath came calm and slow. His legs felt strong and sure. His eyes saw clear and quick.

The ship’s foremast towered uselessly above him in the still air. To his right, the forecastle angled up to the bow. To his left, the six companions with whom he was traveling stood shoulder to shoulder, brothers and sisters in arms, ready to die for one another.

Leramis stood alone.

It wasn’t the first time. As the priests had lowered his father’s coffin into the earth, Leramis had stood alone. As he’d awoken from nightmares as a child, he’d stood alone. As his schoolmates had jeered him, as he’d joined the Temple, and as he’d left it, he had stood alone. He’d grown used to it. He expected it.

It still caused him pain.

The Lost Ones bobbed in a line on the ocean swells just outside of arrow range. They were close enough to see, and to count.

Leramis opened his eyes to the River of Souls and watched them.

They numbered about eighty. Pale, flaxen hair hung long from their heads. Their chests and legs were bared to the North Sea air. Their weapons rested beside them in their boats.

The River passed over them without a stir.

Accounts of the Lost Ones had observed that they didn’t often have the ability to soulweave. Powerful soulweavers, in particular, were extremely rare among them.

Leramis watched the River. He saw nothing that so much as resembled a soulweaver’s eddy.

That was good. It would go easier if they didn’t have soulweavers.

The Lost Ones sat motionless for close to ten minutes. Some of the sailors twitched nervously, clenched their teeth, or gripped the rail until their knuckles turned white.

Aldric Derimsun repeated a word in his own language in the center of the line.

He’s calming them,
Leramis thought.
Good.

And then all the hells broke loose.

An uluating cry rang out from the boats. The Lost Ones’ paddles struck the waves. Their canoes shot forward.

Derimsun cried out. The twang of Aleani bows filled the air. Ryse hurled spears of energy toward the canoes. Lost Ones fell one by one from the fast-approaching boats.

Leramis pulled deeply from the River and built a ball of souls the size of his chest in the air.

It would take more than picking off individuals to overcome the numerical advantage the Lost Ones possessed.

Ryse should have known that.

Leramis finished constructing the ball and breathed the energy of his soul into it. His mind filled with one word, one image, one thought:

Fire.

The souls erupted into flame.

Leramis put the pressure of his will behind them, and they popped like a cork toward the canoe at the head of the Lost Ones’ flotilla. A heavy swell pushed the little boat wide of the fireball’s path, but the souls tore a momentary hole in the sea wide enough to swamp the canoe anyway.

Leramis exhaled slowly, and then he wove a second fireball and let it fly.

Two more canoes flipped. Another exploded in a geyser of splinters and Lost Ones and steam. Ryse and the
Rokwet
’s archers continued to pick off solitary Lost Ones. Two boats lost enough rowers that they fell behind the attack. The momentum of the charge faltered.

For a moment, Leramis thought the Lost Ones might not even make the ship.

Then some of them stood up.

Derimsun shouted a word Leramis didn’t understand. The crew dropped to the deck and huddled behind the bulwarks. The sailor closest to Leramis grabbed his leg and tried to pull him down.

Leramis kicked his hand away. He could guess what was coming.

It didn’t concern him.

The Lost Ones standing in the canoes raised blowguns. They took a few seconds to train them on the ship, and then at some unseen signal, they all fired at once. A volley of darts filled the air. Some flew toward Leramis. Others took a steeper angle upward.

Leramis wove.

The haze of darts came on quickly, but Leramis had enough time to pull a few hundred souls into a glowing half dome in front of him. He filled his mind with the image of burning wood.

The darts burned to cinders a full yard before reaching him.

With half of his breath, Leramis kept his shield alive. With the other, he began to weave another fireball. There were still six canoes left in good shape, and more than enough Lost Ones in them to make for a bloodbath if they reached the ship. He needed—

The River pulsed.

A ball of souls rushed toward Leramis from the boats. He sucked in a sharp breath.

The souls ignited.

He couldn’t weave quickly enough to deflect or dissolve the ball. His shield was woven to catch projectiles, not souls.

The fireball hit him in the chest as he tried to twist out of its way.

The world slowed down. His heart flared in white-hot pain. He smelled burnt flesh.

He was in midair, falling, and the souls of the River disappeared. The world went black.

No—

The thought flashed across his mind clear as lightning. The River had betrayed him. There had been nothing, not even a ripple.

There should not have been a soulweaver.

***

Ryse crouched wide-eyed behind the bulwark and watched Leramis crumple like a straw doll in a fist. A shriek tore from her lips. Her hands and legs raced forward, and she had scuttled halfway across the
Rokwet
’s deck before she even realized what she was doing.

She’d felt the fireball before it hit. She’d known it would be too fast for Leramis, known he wouldn’t be expecting it. If she’d been standing with him—if she’d just been standing with him—

He was dying. He was dying because she’d been proud.
And because she’d been angry.

Voices tore through the air around her. Hands grabbed for her and missed. A hail of darts fell on the ship, but she ignored them except to tear her sleeve free when one pinned it to the deck.

The sailors near Leramis cowered behind their cover.

A moment later, Ryse was at his side.

His face had turned the color of a cloudy sky.
His body spasmed.
His eyes were open and unfocused, and his hand twitched in a frozen claw in the air above him.

Ryse took a deep breath. Still-energized souls were worming their way deeper into Leramis’s flesh. His chest was smoking. His robe and whatever had been beneath it were gone, and his torso was a twisted mess of red and black. The air smelled of burnt skin and death.

You’ve been trained.

She wove a shield over herself and
Leramis,
then sucked the souls from the necromancer’s chest. When they were gone, she leaned forward and placed her hands directly on his warm, still-bleeding flesh.