Soulwoven (36 page)

She pressed closer to Cole.

Alain looked back toward the kettle. In the firelight, he seemed more like a wizened old monkey than a tiger—bent but agile, sharp-eyed and sure.

The old man finished making his potion and hung the kettle from an iron rod over the fire.

“You’ll
be wanting
a meal,” he said. He stood and wiped his hands on his trousers. “I haven’t much to offer, but there’s some venison, and the garden has given me spring potatoes, winter leeks, and wildercarrots. It will suffice.”

Ryse breathed in and out laboriously at his feet. Her hands twitched as she slept.

“Dilanthia,” the old man said, “fetch the venison from the meat cellar and see to its cooking. I want Cole to help me prepare the vegetables.”

Cole tightened his grip on Dil’s back. She patted his hand softly and turned for the door. Her lips mouthed,
You’ll
be fine.

“You two can see to your friend,” Alain said to Litnig and Len.

Litnig sat by Ryse’s side. Len knelt and took her hand in his like it was a child’s.

Alain turned to Quay.

“And you, young man,” he said, “will tell me what has kept my granddaughter from me for the last two months.”

The prince, standing before the open door with the darkening sky visible behind him, crossed his arms and met the old man’s gaze and said nothing.

Alain drew himself up. He stood a full three inches over the top of Quay’s head. The tiger flashed through his eyes again.

“I want to hear every last word,” he said.

He and Quay stared at each other for several long, uncomfortable seconds.

The prince looked away first.

Alain
grinned
his long-toothed smile again and led Cole out a second door into a garden.

The old man’s eyes flashed gold in the dying light, and Cole shivered.

In the end, Quay shared as much of their story as he’d shared with anyone, and Dil roasted the meat over the fire, and Alain finished brewing his tea and woke Ryse long enough to get her to drink some. Litnig sat in hunched silence by her side, looking like he wanted to hold her hand like Len but was afraid to.

Cole chopped vegetables next to Alain and tried to pretend that he felt anywhere close to comfortable.

After everyone had eaten, Cole was banished into the gathering darkness to draw a bucket of icy water up the nearby cliff, bare his arms to the elbows, and wash Alain’s wooden bowls and iron cookware. He stole glances through the cabin door as he worked. Ryse had regained some of her color. The others crouched around her and the fire, sharing Alain’s pipe and talking in low voices.

All but Litnig, who sat alone in a shadowed corner of the
hut.

Cole turned back to the carving board he was scrubbing. The venison had been tender and juicy and delicious as Yenor’s own bones, but it had also been oily as all hells. Getting the board back to some semblance of clean was giving him fits.

He’d always shirked the washing at home, anyway. He had no sense for it.

“That’s probably good enough, Cole,” he heard from behind him. “That thing never really gets clean anyway.” Dil’s fingers fell lightly onto his arm.

He let the board splash into the water and gripped the bucket’s wooden sides.

“Is this how your grandfather treats
all
his guests?”

“Only the ones he likes.”

He could hear the smile on Dil’s face. He dug the board back out of the water, set it on a wooden bench next to the other dishes, and sighed.

“What are they talking about in there, anyway?”

There was no reply.

“Dil?”

When he turned around, she was changed.

Her face was thrust forward into the wind. Her nose twitched. Her weight floated on the balls of her feet. She was flexing and unflexing the first two joints of her fingers on each hand, almost like she was bending them into claws.

“The wind,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

For a second, while his stomach plunged into his feet, Cole thought he caught a glimpse of the tiger in her as well.

“Grandfather!” she barked.

Alain was at the door in an instant, his face thrust into the wind in the same curious way.

“Grandfather—”

“I know. Wait here.”

His eyes flashed a brighter gold than normal. He strode past Cole and took two steps into the grass and the gloaming.

And then he was gone.

He disappeared completely, leaving neither tracks nor bent grass behind. It was like he’d never been there at all.

“Dil, what—” Cole began, but by then she’d ducked inside the cabin long enough to grab her quiver and bow and come back out. Her eyes flashed in the dimness. Her nostrils flared.

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Come with me, and be absolutely quiet.” Her eyes met his. They shone wide and foreign—half-afraid and half-excited. He saw the flutter of her heart in her neck. “Not a sound, Cole. Promise me.”

He nodded and grabbed a long knife from the stack of dishes he’d cleaned. She pulled him into the prairie. He didn’t have time for
so
much as a glance toward the others.

The tall, big-grained grass soon swallowed them. Dil led their way through it. Her hand was iron tight around Cole’s.

He crept in silence behind her.

He’d always been a quiet mover when he wanted to be. It’d served him well in Eldan City, whether he was sneaking through the slums at night or hiding from his father when the big man was in one of his rages. He was proud of his stealth, but he knew his limitations.

In that field, he didn’t seem to have any.

It was like he and Dil weren’t even there. The wind and grass parted for them. The soil cushioned their footfalls. Their clothing clung to their bodies so tightly that no sound could escape it. When Cole looked behind them, he saw no tracks to show where they’d been.

Dil snuck half-crouched along a wide, curving route through the grass and up a slow incline.

All Cole could do was follow.

After a few moments, they stood atop a small hill, looking down on the ocean of grass between the forest’s edge and the cabin.

“Here,” Dil breathed, and it was as if the wind had breathed it. She nocked an arrow to her bow and dropped to one knee. The breeze pulled gently at her hair. A few stars winked cold and merciless in the blackening sky above.

The moon rose big and yellow on the horizon, and when it caught Dil’s eyes, Cole’s heart jumped. Her pupils had shrunk. They were two points of darkness, surrounded by a swirling bath of yellow light.

He caught a flash of movement in the grass below. Two shapes became visible on the prairie. One of them stood tall and black in the grass. The other crouched low, like an enormous cat or a person on all fours. Cole heard a growl.

The low shape shot toward the tall one.

A jet of flame roiled out from the bigger figure. The smaller one darted out of its way, skidded to a halt, and leaped again.

The tall shadow danced nimbly to the side. A wall of fire scorched the night in front of it. Before the flames faded, Cole caught a glimpse of a black robe behind them.

Necromancer,
he thought.

Next to him, Dil’s eyes flicked rapidly to and fro. Her hands gripped her bow. Her torso looked as rigid as a rock.

Their friends were within earshot. Cole’s gut told him to shout for help, but he looked at Dil and bit his tongue.

Promise me,
she’d said—

The hairs on his arms stood up. Thick fingers of lightning snapped out in all directions from the tall shadow. A loud
crack
and rumble filled the air.

A wild yowl, half human and half beast, followed.

Cole saw a muscle tighten in Dil’s face. A gust of wind carried the scent of burning grass and a sickly stench from the direction of the lightning.

Dil didn’t move. The black-robed figure stalked through a ring of scorched grass toward a crumpled form on the ground.

Shoot it,
Cole thought.

Dil held her pose and licked her lips and didn’t move.

She’s afraid she’ll miss. Afraid she’ll get us killed.

Motion and shouting erupted from the direction of the cabin.

The necromancer turned to face the voices and abandoned the silent form on the ground. A ball of blue-white fire formed between its hands. The flames were small at first, but they grew bigger and bigger, until the fireball was the size of a house and the necromancer had to step back to avoid getting caught up in it.

Cole glimpsed a female, pale-skinned face within the black robe in the blue-white light.

And Dil finally moved.

“No!” she screamed.

She loosed her shot.

It was too late.

The necromancer finished her weaving. Dil’s arrow missed. The fireball lost its blue tint and turned the liquid orange of normal flame, and then it dropped to the ground and shot forward as if whipped from the end of a sling. It snapped and hissed and popped and rolled over the earth, blazing a wide swath through the grass and casting long, shifting shadows on the plain.

Cole watched helplessly. The fireball was a hundred feet from the cabin, then fifty, then twenty-five. He couldn’t see his brother or his friends. He couldn’t do anything to help them.

Dil shrieked.

The fire rolled through her home like the cabin had been built out of toothpicks.

A geyser of fiery splinters shot into the air with a resounding
crack.
The flames dropped over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.

Cole’s jaw clenched. In the darkness left by all the light, he could see little more than the flashing purple afterimages of the fireball. He couldn’t tell who’d made it out of the cabin before it had been smashed. Litnig, Quay, and Len, he hoped, but Ryse—

He didn’t want to think about Ryse.

He clutched his knife and turned back toward the necromancer. The black-robed silhouette was running east in a zigzag pattern, parallel to the forest’s edge.

Dil fired arrow after arrow at it as it fled. She shot until the necromancer disappeared into the dusk, and then she threw her bow to the side and charged downhill toward the ring of blackened grass.

Cole tried to follow, but Dil was too fast. She scrambled and slid down the slope with a quickness he couldn’t have matched even if he’d been able to see his footing. He lost his knife and nearly turned an ankle twice before he got to her.

She was kneeling in the ring of scorched grass and cradling a twisted black shape against her chest.

“—the cave—” Cole heard.

His stomach turned over. The voice was Alain’s. Cole recognized the cloying scent he’d failed to place before.

Burnt flesh.

Cole drew closer.

Dil’s grandfather was almost unrecognizable in her arms. His hair was singed and shriveled. His skin was covered in an arcing network of red and black burns. He wheezed and shook.

Dil murmured something unintelligible, and Cole heard Alain growl, “No!
Must…with them.
Just…cave!”

The last word came out in a roar that would’ve suited an old, dying bear.

Cole reached Dil’s side. He stretched out his hand to touch her shoulder.

Alain whispered, “Then take…Cole…”

Cole froze.

Dil laid her grandfather down. Her eyes glowed fiercely. The tiny dots of her pupils had all but melted into the swirling flow of gold in her irises. Tears swam down her face and dripped from her chin.

Cole spread his hands and shook his head. “Dil, I don’t—”

She pulled his hands down and thrust them under Alain’s armpits. The flesh was sticky and hot. Liquid oozed between his fingers. He fought not to gag.

“What—”

“Don’t speak, Cole,” Dil whispered. “No one else can see this.”

If the others were still coming, they’d be there any second.

Cole closed his mouth and struggled to lift Alain’s torso. He heard voices and the sounds of people running through the grass. His name was called. So was Dil’s.

Dil grabbed her grandfather’s legs and stood. Her eyes flashed.

A few steps took them into the sea of grass, and Cole knew that no one would find them unless they wished to be found.

FORTY

Cole passed under the rustling canopy of the Forest of Lurathen. His feet felt slow and awkward under the weight in his arms. The pale light of the moon disappeared. Dil’s back grew ghostly gray in the shadows.

He shambled onward.

Soon he was breathing hard. His arms got sore. His hands ached. Sticks and rocks and streams passed by underfoot, but the brush didn’t seem to touch him.
Or Dil.
Or Alain.
He felt as if he wasn’t moving at all—as if a world of shadows and sound was turning slowly around him instead.

Alain’s breath grew more labored. The old man’s flesh had cooled beneath Cole’s hands, but the oozing of his wounds had kept up. The reddish-yellow fluid that was leaking from them was hardening on Cole’s skin.

Dil shuffled along ahead of him in silence. Sometimes, when they rested, he could hear her breathing as hard as he was.

It wasn’t all that hard not to think about what was happening. Nothing seemed real. Cole half expected to wake up on the floor in Alain’s cabin at any moment.

That moment never came.

He lurched into a small clearing, and suddenly the world was more than just shadows and sound. A round patch of grass glowed green in the moonlight before him. Three hummocks within it encircled a pool of glassy black water. The space was ringed by a wall of brambles and tightly spaced birch trees. The air smelled of leaves and sharp mint.

Dil slowed down.

Don’t think,
Cole told himself. His back ached. His shoulders and forearms were solid, fiery knots.
Help Alain,
then
go back to the others.
Those were the real concerns. He could figure out what was happening and why after it was all over.

Dil stepped into the water with her grandfather’s legs still tucked tightly under her arms. The pool’s mirrorlike surface broke into a cascade of ripples that shimmered from one end of it to the other. Little flickers of captured moonlight raced around the edges of the water and collided, annihilating or augmenting each other in chaotic, sparkling clashes.