Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1)

by Hilary Thompson

Left alone, the catten stretched and yawned, then knocked Maren’s mug onto the floor with a single swish of its bushy tail. Growling, it licked a single paw in satisfaction.

  “Coren!” a voice screamed as she entered the common yard near her home. Penna rushed at her, her small face wide with fear and panic. The little girl barely hugged her before sprinting away again, toward their house, and Coren broke into a run.

  A wail burst through the summercloth as they stumbled inside.

  There were too many bodies in the sleeping room, and it took Coren more than a few seconds to realize that Tellen was birthing.

  She shoved through the older women who had come to help and knelt by the narrow bed. Tellen’s face was red and sweaty, and her eyes were full of pain and terror. Penna darted in and laid a cold cloth over Tellen’s forehead just as she opened her mouth to scream again. Her body rocked in the bed as the labor pains coursed through her.

  When she quieted again, Coren could hear the women behind her whisper and breathe. She burned to tell them to leave, to get themselves away from her house. But they knew more of this than she did.

  For the second time in one day, Coren needed someone else to help her and her family survive. And oh, she hated it.

  Kosh came in and left again, shooed away by the midwives. After some time, Penna was also asked to leave. Coren told her to find her brother and go see Maren and pick some pineberries for Tellen. The house was silent for several moments, and Coren turned to see the women watching her doubtfully as well, as though wondering if she should go too.

  It was this look which finally fixed her fear into something that clutched and squeezed at her throat. She stumbled to her knees next to Tellen’s bed.

  It had been too many hours. Too many moans. Too much blood.

  She pushed away these thoughts and buried her face in the sheets next to Tellen’s slick neck. She prayed, whispering fierce bargains to the Mirror Magi into the fabric. Eventually, Tellen woke from her drowse and turned her face, feverish lips resting on her cousin’s cheek.

  “It’s okay, Coren. You’ll all be fine,” she whispered.

  And Coren was undone. Shattered.

  She sobbed and clutched at Tellen’s arms, hugging her cousin’s limp body as the older Weshen women hovered over them, finally unsure what to do to relieve the girl’s suffering, or that of her family. Coren had never wished more for the power of magic - any magic.

  But Sorenta had left her nothing but warnings of her whip and a single spell, to falsify a child. Not to save one.

  Finally the baby was pushed and pulled from the womb, but no cry greeted the waiting women. The cord of life had wrapped tightly around its tiny neck, and Tellen stared vacantly at the bundle of still blankets that the midwife held out to her. The woman bent to place the baby in her arms, but Tellen didn’t even lift a finger to grasp her dead child.

  The sun had sunk below the horizon, the sky faded into a sweeping darkness before Tellen gave up her tenuous hold on life. Coren swore she could feel her cousin’s soul brush past as it tore free from her broken body, caressing her hair and cheek in a breeze that shouldn’t exist.

  As a clump, the women left quietly. The house had been dark and silent for a long time when Coren heard Penna and Kosh pad into the room. Penna set a basket of berries on the nightstand. None of them spoke a word.

  Instead, the twins knelt on either side of Coren, their small bodies pressed close to hers, and together they recited prayers for Tellen’s soul, then for the baby’s, to find eternal rest.

  What should have been a life was now a double death, and Coren feared that sort of heavy omen. It spoke of an imbalance in the world - too much dark where there should have been light.

  When they finished the litany, she woodenly instructed the twins to fetch Auntie Maren and their few other friends.

  And numb to her exhaustion and loss, Coren set about preparing her cousin’s body for the pyre of water and fire.

  Chapter 6

  Sy’s mind rejected sleep.

  Instead he sprawled on his bed, which was aggravatingly lush with crisp cotton blankets and feather-down pillows. A cooling ocean breeze drifted through the tent’s open window flap, moonlight slanted across his bare stomach, and a small insect plodded along the canvas ceiling. A girl was murmuring behind the divider wall, and he could hear Resh laugh, low and sultry and full of leisure.

  So much had happened in just a single day, and Sy had no more patience for his brother’s casual ways or their pampered summer lives.

  If the magic were returning, Weshen was hurtling once more to a future of war, an arrow flying at the heart of the king. Sy worried the king would disappear and deflect the arrow again, but he wouldn’t dissipate like the Vespa.

  King Zorander Graeme had a singular way of reassembling his sources, coming back generation after generation to hunt the Weshen hunters into an early extinction.

  The possibilities and then the impossibilities rose in waves, beating against him. Suddenly growing too restless even to pretend sleep, he pushed out of his bed so quickly that it nearly tipped, the blankets sliding in a heap to the woven floorcloth.

  He went over each of his lessons, from childhood on, as he paced the square room of his tent. During the Sacrifice two generations before, the Mirror Magi had sucked all the magic from Weshen people and blanketed the NeverCross Mountains with it, creating impervious protection from Riata. Stories were told of those Weshen left defenseless beyond the mountains, and how the Restless King had found them all and scraped the magic from their bones.

  Since then, everyone inside Riata and out believed that no Weshen would be born with magic until the Sacrifice was no longer needed to protect them.

  And yet…there had been banishments in Sy’s lifetime due to the use of magic. Once even a young boy, rumored to have shifted a man back into mere dust and droplets. Some maintained he had used Sulit or Umbren spells instead, and after seeing what Corentine had done to the Vespa, he guessed it must be the same magic. But which…Sulit, Weshen, or Umbren?

  If only he could question Damren now, or search her salvaged books.

  As Ashemon’s First Son and a respected Paladin, he was permitted to travel as he liked. He had sought out the most vicious of MagiCreatures in hopes of finding their talismans’ power. It had all come to nothing until three years ago, just before his first summer hunts. Deep in the caves of the NeverCross Mountains, he had found an even larger source of power: a library of lost magical lore, and Damren, the woman who had become his teacher.

  No girl from Weshen Isle was likely to have access to any sort of magic.

  And yet.

  She had known a Vespa. And Vespas were drawn to shifter magic. Lemondrine tonic was a Sulit concoction, but it restored shifter magi when they had depleted their power, and she had drained his waterskin without flinching at the taste.

  Excitement filtered into his limbs, quickening his pace. He peered around himself in the dark, realizing he had paced his way out of the tent completely, and down to the ocean. His toes were sunk deep into the damp sand.

  A flicker of light farther down the beach caught his restless attention, and he walked to a small rise in the encampment. Slightly below him, near an isolated portion of the women’s beach, a great bonfire raged, surrounded by a small group of dark figures. He didn’t remember ever seeing the women celebrate on their own before.

  He moved carefully down the slope and toward the gathering, careful to stay out of sight.

  Abruptly, Sy realized he was watching a funeral.

  The melody of wailing grew louder, then shifted into a haunting song. The bonfire began to move, pushed slowly into the water, toward the faraway mouth of the Hungry River. It had burned down enough that Sy could see a flat platform holding a wrapped body, and a smaller bundle set atop, now fused together in ash. Mother and child.

  His heart fell in grief for this tragedy.

  As the raft floated farther out to sea, the singing quieted, and the f
igures on land began to move away, a few at a time. Some were hunched over with old age, and two were small - other children. There were not many.

  As the fire floated along its ocean path, the beach emptied, except for one lone, dark shape kneeling in the sand. Sy had crept close enough to see the profile of her face, ghosted in the silver moonlight.

  Of course it was Corentine.

  His heart twisted in sympathy for this girl. He barely knew her, and yet he felt a certain responsibility for her now. He wanted her life to be simple and happy, her days to be carefree like the other girls’.

  Even as he thought this, though, Sy realized such a change would make her a different person - perhaps a lesser person.

  When life hit hard enough to crack, people either came apart or they healed stronger than before. Corentine was strong for a reason, he was certain.

  The tide had shifted and water had begun to lap at her dress, swirling the fabric around her, but still she didn’t move. Sy remained, watching in solidarity, wishing he could comfort her, but knowing he wouldn’t be welcome.

  He had just turned to go, feeling he should leave her to the solitary prayers, when a shriek of grief and despair - maybe even anger - erupted from Corentine. The air seemed to course with invisible lightning up and down the beach, and Sy felt the hairs on his neck lift.

  He choked out a curse, then clapped a hand over his mouth against the sound, watching in shock as the shape before him on the sand shrunk in on itself, becoming smaller. Younger. A girl of maybe ten now crouched in the surf, her face raised to the moon as a sob wracked her body.

  And Sy’s walls of logic and careful observation collided, crumbling with the force of an unavoidable truth. He knew, and his soul swelled with the knowledge and the hope of change.

  There was no question in his mind any longer. He knew this magic - could even perform it himself. Corentine was no traitor: she was a Weshen shifter.

  And she had somehow learned Double magic.

  Sulit witches had begun to gather in the Listening Forest. They whispered their true names to the pink-leaved trees, which passed the knowledge on the air to the renewed heart.

  “I am GrandScream.”

  “SmokeFist.”

  “You will call me ShadowStrike.”

  “BloodChaser has come.”

  And the coven was formed, and the covenant was signed.

  The heart sighed in satisfaction of its second life, stretching wide enough to reach the cold walls of the crystal box. The box itself sparkled with dew in the shadows, and the witches watched it with covetous eyes. One day, if they survived the coming trials, one of them might earn the heart’s favor.

  “Which of you will go to StarsHelm Palace?” the trees asked the witches.

  The witches laughed, the sound like a splattering of summer rain on the leaves of the Listening Forest.

  “Be still, my heart,” ShadowStrike answered. “For one of us has been waiting in the palace all these years.”

  Chapter 7

  It was late afternoon when Coren woke, and the sun was heavy and hot as it slanted in the window. She blinked into the thick silence of the house for a few seconds before the events of the previous day and its long night poured back into her like a tidal wave.

  Thank the Mirror Magi for Auntie Maren, who had taken the twins home with her last night as Coren waited alone in the sand, performing the final parts of the vigil. She had stayed much longer than tradition expected, watching the pyre and questioning the gods’ plans until the fire was too small to see, drifted into oblivion on the southern MagiSea.

  The waves of grief shoved at her again and again, her breath coming in short gasps and heaves until she could focus enough to remember the methods that had saved her when her mother died. Systematically, she wiped her tears and closed her heart. She shut away memories of Tellen and hopes for a new baby. She stomped down any idle thoughts of traveling beyond the island or Vespas or magic or odd General’s sons.

  More than ever, she must be strong. For Kosh and Penna. No matter what the gods gave her to bear, her reason for living was still to protect her family.

  Coren rose shakily from the too-hot bed in the too-empty room and staggered to the pitcher of water. She gripped it with both hands and gulped straight from its rim. Her body felt as though it hadn’t had food or water in days. And although she knew it wasn’t true, she also knew their cabinets were too bare for comfort.

  Perhaps the supplies from the men would be enough this year. Perhaps - and Coren hated herself for thinking it - but perhaps having fewer mouths to feed would help it to be enough. And yet, she knew that somehow her family’s history would shadow them forever, keeping their house lonelier and more frugal than most.

  So Coren began to dress for hunting.

  As she wrapped the whip around her arm, another unwelcome thought flickered into existence in her tired brain. She could let the General’s First Son catch her. She could offer him a son. Girls who provided a male heir to such a boy were honored and cared for, even beyond the child’s eighth birthday.

  But her throat closed, her heart nearly ripping open again at these thoughts. No. She would simply hunt more often, and Penna would practice her sewing instead of her fighting. And Kosh would be gone in a year.

  Fighting tears harder than she could remember since her mother’s death, Coren raced toward the plains.

  Her sack filled rapidly with groundbirds, rockrabbits, and even an oversized snakka, which she coiled tightly and knotted with twine. Its unmoving silver form looked a little like her whip, which was shimmering between brown and silver-streaked bronze, and nearly burning to the touch.

  Coren was suddenly fiercely glad something else had seen as much death as she had.

  The sack was heavy over her shoulder as she trudged toward Maren’s. The wild energy that had sent her to the plains was gone. Penna ran to her as soon as Coren opened the gate, the small girl’s embrace nearly buckling her knees. Coren managed a smile for the sweet child. She and Penna would have each other, at least.

  Kosh appeared then and relieved her of the blood-stained sack, holding it high to keep it from Maren’s catten. He began to spread the animals on a bald patch of Maren’s garden, examining their joints and wounds. He would skin and dissect them too, if allowed.

  Coren had often watched him take apart each beast to see how it worked, then rebuild the tendons and bone in much the way the King’s Alchemists were said to do with their magical machinery. In another world, she thought, one without need for the Separation, Kosh could have trained for such an honorable job, instead of the inescapable and violent deaths that awaited Weshen hunters.

  “You and the twins are welcome here any time,” Maren said in a low voice, as they watched the twins argue over what to do with the snakka’s luminescent fangs.

  “Thank you. For keeping them last night. But I will manage, like I always have. Tellen isn’t the first to leave me.” This last part was more an admittance of self-pity than Coren normally indulged in, but Maren just sighed.

  “Have some tea,” she said instead, taking a sun-warm mug from the garden wall.

  Coren took the mug obediently and stared into its cloudy liquid as though it might give her a vision. She glared at her wobbly reflection - Maren certainly had persistence. Never failed to offer the nasty stuff.

  A sigh escaped her, but when she inhaled again, the tea filled her nostrils with lemondrine and salt. And suddenly that scent had a context - it smelled just like Syashin’s water yesterday. Coren raised her mug and took a small, exploratory sip. The flavors, which shouldn’t even have been drinkable, flooded her cottony mouth with relief.

  She turned up the mug and drained it in one long drought, feeling energy sear through her limbs like lightning across the sky.

  Maren grinned and squeezed Coren’s arm with a bony hand. “I thought you might eventually learn to like my brew.”

  Coren looked at her sharply, but the old woman only cackled. Her muscles
tingled like they needed to be stretched with movement, although she’d been running the plains for hours that morning.

  “Where did you get this recipe anyway?” Coren asked.

  Maren grinned and glanced back to the children. “Depends on who is asking.”

  Coren rolled her eyes. “I’m asking, Maren. Just me.”

  “Then I got it from a Sulit witch.”

  Coren nearly dropped the mug. “What did you say?”

  Maren smiled around a sip of tea. “The Sulit used to be our friends, you know. Allies, even. Before we shut out the entire world trying to lock the door behind the Restless King. He’s taken so much more than you know,” she added, her expression darkening like the feathers of one of her prized stormcloud chickens.

  “I’ve had that drink before, you know,” Coren said, ready to drop her own information on Maren’s unsuspecting mind.

  “In my kitchen.”

  “On the plains. After that Vespa disappeared. Ashemon’s First Son gave it to me.”

  Maren watched her closely, one eyebrow raised in interest. Waiting. Coren sighed. Why did she even try to shock the woman? “How would we know if the magic were returning?” she asked instead, finally putting words to thoughts she’d pushed away for years.

  Maren shrugged and leaned forward conspiratorially. “How can something return when it never really left?”

  “Maren, what do you really know?” Coren leaned heavily against the garden wall. She needed answers, not riddles.

  “Yes, I’ve kept many secrets from you, and I’m sorry. But your mother…”

  “Was insane. I know. But none of the Weshen have had magic in two generations!”

  Maren said nothing, but simply upturned her mug. Instead of spilling on the ground, though, the liquid churned in the air, a tornado of tea. A smaller spiral of white salt separated itself, followed by a few drops of murky yellow juice. The rest, water clear as the air, formed itself into a crystalline sphere. Coren steadied herself against the wall and bit back a curse as she watched Maren run a finger through it, spinning the sphere in mid-air but never breaking its edge.