Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel

by Trip Ellington

  It only made sense to make camp as a group. They would go their separate ways in the morning.

  Horum woke long before the others, and when Jacin Verret woke he thought the tavern brawler turned City Watch conscript was simply the first to head off on his own. He expected the men would trickle off one by one, heading for childhood homes or distant family or simply taking to the hills. Then Horum came rushing back into camp talking about Tophylax.

  Verret went back with Horum to the edge of the woods. Crouching in the undergrowth, he saw them. Two of the dreaded Tophylax Emperia, trudging solemnly along beyond the trees. Watching them, he noticed their steps never strayed into the shadow cast by the trees. They walked in the sun, with their eyeless helmets turned toward the trees.

  Like as not, they were hunting the rebels. That’s what Verret told the others when he and Horum got back to the camp. He noticed none of the survivors had departed while they were gone. None had left his group since, either. Most of them had seen firsthand what the Tophylax had done in the Noble District; the rest had heard it from those who did.

  For some reason, they all looked to Verret to lead them. It was his own fault, speaking up like that when Horum brought him back to camp. He should have kept his mouth shut, let the burly common room tough guy explain what they had seen and let the others work it out for themselves. But he hadn’t, and for some reason they all listened to him.

  Jacin Verret had thought about promotions, advancement and leadership once, but that seemed like a long time ago. It was only a few days, though, since he’d thought his future lay with the Solstice City Watch. Now, all he wanted was to find a way home to the Southern Islands.

  So he led them south and west through the interior of the forest, keeping a distance between the open country surrounding the city to the east and – hopefully – from the rebels themselves, who likely hid deeper in the wood. They would skirt the area about the capital and emerge from the trees somewhere a day or two to the south, where the forest thinned out approaching the coast.

  It only made sense to stick together until then. When they reached the coast, and the port towns, they could all go their separate ways.

  Jacin Verret had a sinking suspicion that when they reached the coast, the men following him would find another reason it only made to sense to stick together. He resolved himself not to care; he was bound for the Southern Islands. If these men wanted to cross the open channel with him, so be it.

  He was out front, with Horum somewhere up ahead just out of sight and scouting ahead. Verret walked with his eyes on the occasionally treacherous undergrowth just ahead, watching for brambles and tangling vines. His mind was only half on his footing, though. He tried to recall maps of the southern half of the empire and how far this forest extended toward the coast. He tried to remember the names of the various ports and harbors and the relative strengths of the imperial garrison in each town.

  Verret assumed the crunching footsteps that approached were only Horum, and by the time he looked up from the ground before his feet it was too late. The tip of a spear pressed against his breastbone. The man holding it was grimy and unwashed; there were bloodstains on his brown coat, visible around the dozens of leaves sewn to the fabric in camouflage.

  Verret looked around and saw more of the rebels emerging from the concealing bushes and ferns that grew up all around the maples and aspens that made up this part of the forest. He snapped his eyes back to the one pointing a spear at him. Scowling, Verret wondered if he’d be able to talk his way out of this or not.

  Just then, a second man emerged from the foliage behind the one with the spear. Like the others, his brown coat and trousers were covered with leaves sewn to the fabric. From the knees down, the leaves were brown and dead. Those on his arms and torso were green or fading yellow. Until he moved, Jacin would never have seen him. He wore twin knives at his belt, but carried no weapon drawn. Verret pegged him as the leader.

  Jacin thought the man was in his late twenties, but there was something indistinct about him. He might well have been forty or fifty, though when the light hit his face he might well have been no more than nineteen or twenty. Long and straggly brown hair sprouted in unkempt disarray around his head. His lean, smoothly tanned face was set in a stern expression and he moved with the lithe confidence of a jungle cat. He studied Jacin Verret with hooded gray eyes – no, wait, they were light blue.

  “You lead these men?” asked the man, tilting his head up to peer at Verret from a different angle. The light fell across his face in shifting patterns and Jacin realized his eyes were actually violet.

  “Suppose I do,” said Verret. With a pensive frown, he regarded the leader of the rebels. Was there a hint of madness in those shifting eyes? Hoping it was his own imagination, he continued. “Jacin Verret, formerly of the Solstice City Watch. We're deserters all, to put it to you plain. We seek no conflict with you and your men.”

  “Deserters.” The leader of the rebels repeated the word slowly, rolling it around as if tasting it. Then he smiled. “How interesting. Could it be you men of the City Watch have turned your backs on the emperor’s peace?”

  Verret narrowed his eyes at the slight undertone of accusation. Was this rebel actually judging them? “We've seen the emperor’s peace,” he said aloud, not bothering to restrain his own bitter resentment. “We want no part of it anymore.”

  “How fortuitous,” the rebel leader said without hesitation. His smile widened, but there was no increase in its warmth. “You understand, then, why we must topple the Eternal Emperor from his throne.”

  He lifted his arms in a signal to the other rebels surrounding Verret’s men. They lowered their weapons, though none put them away. The leader turned back to Jacin.

  “Your men will come with us, Jacin Verret,” he said, still smiling. “And we will talk of the overthrowing of empires. I'll be most interested in speaking to all of your men. You see, we're in need of a soulweaver.”

  Verret screwed up his face, bemused. “There’s no weavers amongst my men,” he said.

  “Perhaps not,” said the man. “But often the talent lies dormant within the uninitiated. Did you know that, Jacin Verret?”

  The rebel leader leaned closer to Verret. His nostrils flared as if he were sniffing the air between them. His smile widened. “Oh, yes. Perhaps it won’t be necessary after all. Jacin Verret, you have a talent within you you've never known. Come. We will discuss it. You and I are going to become well acquainted. My name is Rezdurth Thorne.”

  ***

  Sanook took Shel next to an empty grainhouse. Years melted past and the city of Solstice had grown. There were nine men crouched in the shadowy interior of the empty storehouse. The man who would become emperor was one of them.

  Shel looked around at the men and as her eyes fell on each one, a name echoed in her thoughts. Craston, Norres, Messuren, Wyrran, Baerek, Hallek, Lurzon, and Thorne.

  Thorne. It wasn’t the same man, of course, but an ancestor. This Thorne bore little resemblance to Murdrek Thorne. In fact, Shel was dismayed to note, he looked almost exactly like Rez.

  “The First Conclave of the Archons,” Sanook whispered in her ear.

  The nine men gathered in the shadows spoke in hushed whispers. This was a conspiracy, the conspiracy that would lead to the Summer War. Shel looked around at these men, the first archons, and was stunned to realize what each had in common with the rest.

  Like the man who would become their emperor, each of these men bore the marks of the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead. Like him, their marks were sparse. They were not full-blooded Shadowfolk. Like the future emperor, they were half-breeds.

  “Each of these men was cast out as a babe,” Sanook confirmed her suspicions, still whispering to match the whispers of those they watched. “Left to die in the snows of the Midnight Forest. Yet each has survived, and one has drawn the others to him. They are bound together by their hatred for the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead”

&n
bsp; The First Conclave of the Archons continued before her, but Shel couldn’t concentrate on the words spoken. She looked around at the nine original archons, ancestors of the greedy noblemen she had led the attack against. Half-blooded Shadowmen, every one of them. That meant the noble houses were all descended from the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead. Shel was astonished. There really was such a thing as “noble blood” apparently…and she had it too.

  Who had her parents been, her true parents? Shel didn’t have an answer. She knew now that those wretched people in Vallen, the violent drunk and the broken, bitter woman whose every word was poison, those people couldn’t be her real parents. They hadn’t been marked. They had no magic. She didn’t know who they were, or why they had raised her – if you could call those brief years “being raised” - but she knew they couldn’t be her real parents.

  She thought of Rez, and the shock she had felt at learning who he really was. Murdrek Thorne’s older brother. That made him the rightful archon, didn’t it? Shel knew little of nobles, but she thought that was the way it worked. She could see why he’d kept it hidden from everyone.

  Had Rez known the truth that Sanook showed her now? Had he known the origins of his family and their position? Was that why he turned his back on the empire? Shel didn’t know. She wanted to believe the best of him, even now. Especially now, when she saw how truly vile the emperor and his original co-conspirators were.

  The men gathered in the grainhouse spoke of the armies they could raise. They spoke of the small fortunes they had amassed in the world of the hotbloods. They were magicians and wizards. The hotbloods paid them for their weavings, at least in the beginning.

  These were tenacious and resourceful men. They had been left to die as infants, but for whatever reason they hadn’t. Most had been found and taken in by adoptive hotblood parents. One of them had been raised by direwolves as if he were one of the pups. These men were survivors who had learned to use everything available to them. Once established in the hotblood cities, it was small work for them to acquire wealth. Wealth which they could build into power. Power to call on hotblood men with swords and spears and shining armor. Power to strike back at the people who had cast them out as babes.

  Power to bring an end to the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead.

  “I thought there were seven archons,” whispered Shel. “There’s eight of them here, with the emperor.”

  “Indeed,” Sanook agreed. “Observe.”

  One of the archons – it was Baerek – interrupted the man who would be emperor. He reminded the others what it was they contemplated: wiping out an entire race of people, an ancient and powerful race. He said it was wrong, no matter what had been done to them.

  The future emperor sneered angrily at Baerek and claimed they stood at the dawning of a new age. Baerek countered that it would be a sorrowful age, and one without magic. “There is no magic in this world without the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead,” Baerek told the archons. “If you do this thing, you will steal that magic from the world forever. One day all of us will lie dead, and the magic will be no more. Is that what you will?”

  The future emperor didn’t wait to see the will of his fellow conspirators. He lashed out immediately. All who were present could see the misty, interlacing strands of his soulweaving as they burst forth to seize Baerek in a violent grasp. They saw one strand, narrow as a razorblade, swiping across Baerek’s throat. And they saw the blood spill forth.

  The emperor was already in motion before Baerek cried out. The cry became a blood-bubbling gurgle. The emperor reached out to the murdered archon and spoke. “Baerek,” he said. “I call your soul to me, Baerek. Whether you will it or no. I am your Master, Baerek, even in death. I will always be your master, Baerek.”

  Now the course of the misty energy changed. It flowed back into the emperor, drawing out all that Baerek truly was along with it. The emperor absorbed the soul and allowed the body to fall to the ground. He looked round at the remaining archons, daring any to speak against what he had just done. They were silent.

  Thorne rose slowly to his feet, glancing around at his fellows briefly as if to see where each man stood but without really caring. He met the emperor’s eyes bravely and smiled. Slowly, deliberately he raised one clenched fist into the air. “An end to the Shadows in the Forest!” he cried. “An end to their dream! A new age!”

  The archons exchanged glances, or studied the emperor for his reaction, or stared at Thorne in thought. One by one, each man rose to his feet and slowly raised his own fist. The emperor smiled in satisfaction.

  They were committed. The People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead would be destroyed, and the new age of unending summer would commence.

  The eight conspirators raised their fists together, and in one voice they chanted: “May the summer never end!”

  The scene faded away into darkness, leaving Shel alone in an endless void with Sanook. She looked at the Shadowman and shook her head, still not understanding why he had shown her these things. She thought she knew how he had done so, however.

  Sanook wasn’t really there. All of this was happening within herself, Shel knew that. The Sanook who stood floating before her was that reflection of Sanook that lived on inside of her. She had swallowed his soul, and with it any soul Sanook himself had ever swallowed. Each of those souls had had its reflection in him, and now his reflection showed these other reflections to her in a dream vision.

  She had swallowed old Aemond’s soul as well. How many of her people did she carry inside her, thanks to Aemond and Sanook?

  She thought it was probably every single one of the People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead, at least all of those who hadn’t been swallowed by the emperor instead.

  “Yes,” Sanook said. “You are very powerful, Shel. Perhaps more powerful than the Eternal Emperor. But mere power isn’t enough to face him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of power,” Shel told the Shadowman. She looked up at him with wide, glistening eyes. When she spoke, it was in a hushed whisper. “My parents. My true parents. Who were they? Show me, Sanook, if you care for me at all. Show me my real parents!”

  “I'm afraid I cannot,” said Sanook. “I am sorry, Shel, but I must not show them to you. Not now, not yet. Even if I could do so, I sense our time is at an end.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I have kept you asleep, Shel. Don’t be alarmed. I meant no harm, and no harm has befallen you. But the emperor was always impatient, and I believe he has found a way to force us to wake. This dream is ending, Shel. I will see you in another.”

  And then the Shadowman faded away and was gone. The darkness around her faded as well and Shel knew he was right: the dream was ending. Just before she woke, a chilling thought struck her. Was it truly this dream he spoke of? Or another?

  The People Who Swallow the Souls of the Dead had always believed life itself to be a dream, and death another.

  Chapter 30 - The Final Struggle

  An hour’s walk from the southernmost gate of Solstice, the Imperial Palace sprawled along the banks of the River Autumn. Surrounded by walls even higher than those of the city, the palace was an enormous complex of interconnected buildings spreading over an area larger than the city’s Noble District and High Market combined.

  The massive barracks of the Tophylax Emperia sprouted up alongside the outer wall, black stone and sludge-gray mortar. The barracks was built to an irregular design and had an almost organic look from the outside.

  Alongside the barracks rose a number of storehouses and grain silos. There was enough to supply an entire city. If the palace were ever cut off completely, or besieged, those within wouldn’t succumb to hunger and malnutrition quickly. In theory, the palace could outlast even the most well-prepared and heavily provisioned siege. It was a theory that had never been tested.

  Deeper in the grounds were the gardens. Twisted and overgrown, the gardens were a labyrinth of gnarled trees and climb
ing vines, untended hedgerows and riotously blooming summer flowers that hadn’t felt the chill of summer’s end for a millennium. There was a small chapel at the heart of the palace gardens, a simple white stone shrine all but forgotten.

  Beyond the gardens, close against the riverside wall, was the palace proper. Three low wings sprouted equidistantly from the central hub, over which rose a massive dome of marble and glass. The pinnacle of the dome was open, accessible from within. A small, railed balcony topped by a slight roof looked out over the grounds.

  One wing held the emperor’s living quarters. Another wing held the chambers where he met infrequently with his archons; now that they were all dead, he would have to find a new use for those rooms. The third wing was like a museum, otherwise empty rooms and corridors filled with an ever-growing collection of mementoes from a thousand years of absolute power.

  Beneath the dome itself, in the heart of the Imperial Palace, was the Summer Sanctum: high temple of the emperor’s personal religion of self. It was a round room, a thousand paces across in each direction. The domed ceiling rose high overhead, a narrow stair curling around it to grant access to the dome-top balcony above. Sunlight filtered in from that opening, but faltered long before it reached the golden-veined, black marble floor.

  In the center of the Summer Sanctum was the altar, and on this gray stone slab lay a young woman with brown hair and lightly tanned skin. She was bare from waist up, exposing the intricate birthmark-runes that circled her waist.

  Shel was awake, but she couldn’t move.

  She was held by bands of air, made solid by the emperor’s weaving. She could see the strands woven about her and she could discern the pattern of their lace, but she was unable to untie them. As she had woken, the emperor had forced a vile potion down her throat. The liquid had steamed, burning its way down to her stomach where it roiled and curdled. She didn’t know what the potion was, but she knew what it had done.