Shift of Shadow and Soul (SoulShifter Book 1)

by Hilary Thompson

Corentine stretched her legs. “Most of the men will be on Weshen Isle, right? What can we expect when we land?”

  “I have a spot in mind,” Sy said, handing her the oar and rolling his shoulders to ease their cramped fatigue. “It’s close enough that we won’t need to walk far, but we can still hide the boat.”

  “Won’t the men see us and stop us?” Corentine asked again.

  “They’ll never see us with me leading,” Sy said as he grinned at her. She didn’t smile back, and he resisted the urge to sigh again. He glanced back to the shore, where the beach was gradually widening from a strip of sharp pebbles to a walkable swathe of sand and scrubby grasses. “The only men in Weshen City right now are a few guards who lost on out on summer duty, the old teachers, and the boys too young for the games.”

  “Surely they all know the difference between a man and a woman, though,” Corentine said, gesturing to herself. His grin widened, but he bit it back as her face flushed and she glared at him. Gods, but she was prickly about her looks. “I just mean that even if they don’t know we’re banished, seeing a woman in their city would be a problem.” Her voice was not hiding her annoyance, although she had pushed back the glare to a mere grim stare.

  “Which is why we’ll be careful to stay out of sight.” Sy shrugged. He knew every door and secret passage in Weshen. “But we do have to stop in the city to gather what we’ll need for the mountains. It’s always cold that high up.”

  He pushed up and leaned forward, reaching for the oar. His fingers brushed hers in the exchange, his eyes snagging on her gaze. Was there something new in the curve of her lips just then? His chest tightened, but she blinked away quickly, fixing her amber eyes on the shore instead.

  To the south, Weshen Isle was a narrow line on the horizon, nearly a day’s journey. In order to avoid the Hungry River and NewMoon Falls, they had traveled a wide half-circle against the tides and currents, effectively almost circling the island.

  “There!” he said a few minutes later, pointing at a tight inlet where the rocks had created something more like a harbor. Navigating the constricted opening would be easier with a bit of magic, though. “Pull at the water to help me,” he called back to her as he knelt up in the boat to get a better angle to steer. “Move it in a channel!”

  “What?” she asked, her voice laced with irritation.

  “Imagine the water under the boat and shift it away like you’re digging a channel!” he said. He knew she must be trying, because the tiny craft swayed and bucked as the water dipped and rose beneath it. Sy’s balance faltered, and he fell hard against the side of the boat, but he was laughing as he righted himself.

  “You need practice!” he teased as he knelt again.

  “Well, I’m getting it now!” she retorted, squinting her eyes nearly shut against the light. The boat jerked down as though falling into a crevice, and Sy shouted, “Easy!”

  Coren’s face heated at his command, but she pushed aside her embarrassment and focused instead on the shore, which was approaching too quickly for her taste. Feeling self-conscious, she tried moving her arms in wide, gentle sweeping motions, as if she were swimming. She imagined pushing the water from her path. And to her surprise, the boat straightened, righted, and its course smoothed. A wide grin pushed onto her face.

  She was using magic. And she was helping.

  The crunch of sand on the bottom of the boat broke her concentration, and as the boat beached itself neatly, the water rushed back at them from both sides, its spray reaching several feet above their heads before it crashed down, drenching them.

  She spluttered and scrubbed the salt from her eyes, but she could hear Sy laughing. He reached for her hand and she let him. Together they stumbled onto the beach, collapsing onto their knees in relief and exhaustion.

  “You’re incredible,” he whispered, rolling to his back.

  Coren slid her eyes to him, but he wasn’t watching her. His arm was thrown over his face to block the sun, and his chest was heaving with fatigue.

  He was so different from what she had expected. A First Son, a noble of Weshen. A lethal, highly-trained Paladin. All of this should have created someone as arrogant and entitled as Reshra seemed to be, yet Sy was nothing like his brother.

  In a different Weshen, in a different time, Coren thought fleetingly, she might have allowed herself interest in such a boy.

  Then again, Sorenta’s threat that a boy would cause her to lose everything seemed a bit like old news. Sy and his brother had both already earned their parts in that prediction.

  Sy was aware that she studied him, but he resisted meeting her eyes. That comment had slipped out against his better judgment. It was true - she was incredible, and so much more than a girl he had been commanded to hunt. But because she was more, she must also be less.

  They both rested in the sand a spare few minutes, then Corentine pushed upright, her movements stiff. Her dress was ruined, ripped where he had stolen the fabric for the sail, and crusted with salt and sea.

  “We need food,” she said, kneeling beside the boat. He saw her begin to concentrate on shifting the water from the bottom of the boat. Their bags were soaked through: they’d be lucky if the food was even edible.

  “You’re doing well. It’s faster to just make a hole in the wood, though,” Sy said, coming up close beside her. She flushed and sat back, looking embarrassed. “No, Coren, it’s okay. It takes a while for the magic to make sense - to be useful,” Sy added. She really had done a fantastic job with their landing. Pure instinct and power.

  Damren would be thrilled to gain her as a student.

  He motioned to the bottom of the boat, where he shifted the wood, forming a narrow slit in the boat’s structure which allowed the water to drain. Together they hauled the boat completely onto the sand.

  “Still, I should have thought of that,” she muttered as she brushed the sand from her hands.

  “Can you close the hole?” he asked, wondering if her instincts would also lead her to the mirrored abilities.

  Corentine stared intently at the hole in the wood, her brow wrinkling in concentration. Sy saw her fingers moving too, as though to knit the sources back together. But nothing happened. She scowled at the hole, and Sy held back a smile.

  “It’s just your lack of training,” he reassured her. “The easiest skill to learn is disintegration. Fusion is more complex, like the difference between sorting beach pebbles and weaving fabric. It won’t take you long to learn what little I know,” he added, wishing he could give her more.

  “How long did it take you?” she asked, wringing water from the blanket and dumping the contents of her sack on the beach.

  “I’ve been sneaking away to study with Damren once a season for two years now. But only for a day or two at a time. More and I’d be missed. Someone would have tracked me.”

  “Do you think Reshra ever tracked you?”

  He considered. “I don’t think so, or he would have said something.”

  Coren turned her attention back to the waterlogged supplies, wary of Sy’s glances, which she seemed to find each time she looked in his direction. Although she’d grown more comfortable with him, she didn’t want to encourage any interest.

  He may be handsome, but she wouldn’t disregard Sorenta’s fears surrounding the hunts, and Maren’s warnings concerning children. Coren had lost home and family, but gained power, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize any advantage she had for survival in this new world.

  They worked to spread their soaked belongings along the strip of beach grass. The matches had remained intact in their wax-sealed box, at least, allowing a hot meal of boiled beans and jerky. “What next?” she asked.

  “We need to sneak into Weshen City for supplies. Then we climb,” he answered, pointing at the cliffs which towered above them, just beyond the narrow strip of beach. She stared up at them, unable to even see the tops of the black cliffs.

  “How many men will be in the city?”

  “A few dozen. B
ut it’s much different without my father to keep them in order. Usually they’re drunk by nightfall.”

  “Drunken men are more dangerous.”

  “Possibly. But they’re slower,” he grinned.

  “And Rurok? Is it truly impossible?” she asked, a swell of emotion choking her words. She missed Penna and Kosh s much.

  Sy’s grin faltered. “Coren,” he began, his voice sinking into regret.

  “I know…I know I promised to stay with you, but my family…” She was grateful to him for keeping her safe, but how could she just abandon Maren and the twins?

  He glanced up at the cliffs, then across the water toward Rurok, as though measuring. His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Just…please come with me to meet Damren. Let her teach you how to control your magic. Then perhaps…we can…”

  Coren found herself nodding, but she felt like a coward. If only she could know they were safe. She rose and strode toward the sea to rinse her bowl, blinking back the tears that had begun to pool in her eyes. She plucked some mostly-dry clothing from the sand and scanned for a concealed place to change.

  Hidden behind a grove of young lemondrine trees, she stripped the ruined blue dress from her tired body. The comfort of loose hunting pants and a tunic with good movement in the arms soothed her, and she coiled her whip around her middle, just beneath the tunic.

  Armed and covered, she felt better, more herself. Just as she bent to gather her ruined dress, a breeze began to swirl the fallen leaves at her feet. Bits of crumpled leaf caught at her ankles as they hovered, then settled back on the ground. Coren folded the dress and turned, but a wide, green leaf drifted up to cover her eyes, and when she plucked it away, the flesh of it withered and turned to dust in her hand, leaving only the lacy structure of its veins.

  Coren noticed the same hypnotic pull of magic she had felt near the shores of Sulit as she stared at the leaf’s exposed innards. There was something there, but her brain couldn’t quite make sense of it.

  “Sy?” she called, walking toward him. The leaf warmed in her hand, though, and she dropped it on the ground. It fell to the sand, too heavy in its quick descent. Coren stared at the leaf, her eyes widening as some of the veins began to glow like iron in a forge.

  Then she slumped to her knees in the sand, realizing what the leaf was: a message from Maren. The words were plain now, written in tiny, looping letters formed from the red veins of the disintegrated leaf.

  Safe in Sulit.

  M K P

  “Sy!” she called again, her voice more urgent. But when she bent to pick up the leaf, it crumbled into the sand, leaving nothing at all as evidence of what she’d seen.

  “I’m by the boat!” Sy called. She saw his arm waving as he tugged a shirt over his head.

  How would she explain this to him? Would he even believe it? Coren remembered how the Sulit magic had wrapped itself around her, nearly pulling her into the depths of the MagiSea. No, she decided. Sy wouldn’t trust this message. He didn’t know Maren like she did. He would think it was a trick, pulling her to Rurok instead of the mountains.

  Coren gazed into the distance where she knew Rurok lay, too far to see. For a moment, the air felt like fingers on her face and an embrace around her shoulders, and somehow she knew her family truly was safe. As Maren had said, the Sulit witches had been their friends once.

  She would trust her family to wait for her. She would trust in their safety, or she would learn enough magic to bury the witches alive.

  “I will come for you,” she whispered to the breeze. “But I have things to do first.”

  Swiping at her cheeks one last time, she tied her hair back in a loose pile at the nape of her neck and hurried back to the beach. Sy had left their bags empty, packing their belongings instead into the bottom of the boat. She helped him haul it beneath the lemondrine trees, angled to blend into the trunks.

  “It’s fine if you stay here,” Sy said as she rubbed at a knot between her shoulders. “You could rest. I won’t be gone long.”

  “No, I want to see the city.” She picked up her pack. Looking inside, she frowned. It was too empty. She bent to rummage in the boat, choosing a light wrap and a few knives.

  “I know I can get in and out quickly, but it isn’t that safe,” he said, fidgeting with the zipper on his bag. “If the men see you…”

  “They won’t see me. You’re confident in your abilities to keep hidden, and I’m confident in mine. I want to see the city,” she repeated. No longer trapped on Weshen Isle, she meant to see and learn everything she’d spent a lifetime missing.

  He didn’t argue further, and that pleased her. She shaded her eyes against the sun, hiding her smile.

  They walked in the wake of the tide, letting the water erase their footprints. The sun had begun to slant behind them, disappearing into the western horizon.

  “Entering the city at night will be best,” he said as they picked their way through a group of tall rocks. She began to smell smoke and something dirtier. Soon a stark, densely-wrought iron gate loomed before them, bolted to a rough stone wall taller than two men together. At the top of it waited thousands of tarnished spikes, ancient but still sharp enough to slit the feet of anyone trying to scale the wall. A salt-bleached skull was impaled through the eye socket on one of the stakes.

  Coren knew the mountains hadn’t always been Weshen’s main defense from Riata, but seeing such a cold welcome made her miss the openness of the women’s island with a sudden, aching ferocity.

  She hadn’t realized she’d stopped frozen, staring at the wall, until a light touch on her arm broke into her thoughts.

  Chapter 19

  Sy watched Corentine study the city wall before them, thinking how young and vulnerable she appeared.

  Weshen Isle had been hard on her, but he knew the world beyond the island could be much harsher.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, wincing at the words.

  “Of course,” she snapped, stepping forward and to the side, just beyond him.

  She tugged a thin brown wrap from her pack and looped it up around her shoulders and head, hooding her face and camouflaging the curves of her body well enough. She was taller than many women, and slim. She might pass for a young boy in the semi-dark.

  “Keep your hands down,” Sy said, continuing his evaluation out loud. “They would give you away. But I’m sure we won’t be seen,” he added. He’d sneaked in and out of Weshen City dozens of time; he knew its every trick.

  Corentine narrowed her eyes and arranged the fabric to cover her hands.

  Sy slid up to the gate, watching for the pair of guards to pass each other. No-one came or went through this gate in the summer, so it wasn’t heavily monitored. The guards arrived, paused to grumble a few words, then continued their rounds, each heading in different directions.

  Once they had gone, Sy led her to a small door, inset in the stone wall just beyond the gate. He knew it would be locked, and he hoped Resh had remembered this. Sy set his pack on the ground and knelt beside it, feeling along the seams. He felt Corentine’s eyes on him as he searched for what he hoped his brother had provided.

  He grinned as his fingers brushed slim metal sewn into the side of the bag. Ripping the loose stitches, he held it up for her to see.

  “See, Resh is on our side,” he said, reminding himself as much as her, but her expression remained skeptical.

  The key slipped into the door’s lock and turned with a precise click he appreciated, and the two of them darted into the opening. Corentine crouched in the shadows of the nearby guard building as Sy locked the door behind him, then brushed their tracks from the mix of sand and dirt that made up the bare outer ring of Weshen City.

  Several yards in, the dirt turned to grass, dotted with scrubby lemondrine trees and grazing animals. They navigated to the next circle of the city in quick bursts of running and hiding. Although they saw only a few men, and each was as drunk as Sy had predicted, he was still careful. It wo
uld only take one to recognize him or to rouse an alarm.

  “This is the market circle,” he whispered to Corentine as they ducked behind a long-empty fruit stall. Weshen City had a slightly abandoned air to it, with far too few people left to fill its many buildings, and here in the summer nights it was even more pronounced.

  “It’s lonely here in the summer,” he whispered to Corentine as they waited, watching another guard walk through the market. “I stayed here two years ago when the others were on the island.”

  “Your father didn’t force you to hunt the girls that year?”

  Her voice was bitter, and he clenched his jaw. “I was injured from a real hunt. The boat journey would have disturbed my recovery. And it was Reshra’s first summer,” he added, reluctant to agree with her. “Father was less strict then.”

  “And who did you catch the following summer?” she asked.

  “Last summer I was on a mission to EvenFall and didn’t make it back in time for the boats.” This was most of the truth.

  She turned her head to regard him in the pale moonlight, the hood shadowing her face. “So you truly have only caught Lorenya?”

  He startled, nearly giving away their position. How did she know that name? The women must gossip as much as the men. His mouth straightened to a grim line.

  “I have often disappointed my father,” he answered, answering her indirectly. The guard left the area, and it was safe to move. He beckoned, and they sneaked across the open space, keeping to the edge.

  The market stalls were decrepit, falling to pieces where they lay. Sy bit back the disappointment that always accompanied his thoughts of what his people had once been. Now, their numbers were so few because of the Restless King and the Shift following his crowning.

  Sy pushed open a wooden gate, and they passed into another layer of the city. “This is the commoner circle, where most of the men live, and next is the government circle.”

  “Where you live,” she guessed. He nodded, uncomfortable with the distance she kept placing between them. Man, woman. Commoner, First Son. He hoped he could prove to her one day that they weren’t as different from each other as she believed now.