Rori got off one shot with her crossbow, then tossed the weapon aside. It splashed in the mucky, stagnant water close on the bank. Her shot was lucky, more fortunate than Rori would ever know. The bolt found a chink in the armor of the charging Tophylax. It didn’t kill the lumbering brute, but slowed his charge long enough for Rori to draw her knives and take the offensive. When she’d killed him, she darted closer to the dock with her knives held at the ready. Scanning for her next opponent, she also searched for Alban.
Collam dove beneath the water to avoid the sweeping swordstroke. He pushed with all his strength, trying to put distance between himself and the three Tophylax. He felt the explosive pressure of a broad-bladed sword cutting torpidly through the water at his heels, and forced another surge forward before his head burst above the water. He spun around, and found himself hard alongside the dock. The Tophylax were coming toward him, their movements slowed by the waist-high water. Collam grabbed hold of the understructure of the dock and scrambled up.
Kial Pedderson had worked out the weak points now. He stood in the center of the dock, cutting down each Tophylax that approached him. Thankfully, the dock was too narrow for the black-armored brutes to advance two abreast. He didn’t think he’d stand a chance against two at once. He was working hard enough – too hard, probably – just taking them one at a time. He really was too old for the front lines, he thought sadly. Too old, perhaps, or maybe just too long in an office. He was twelve years from the street patrols and eighteen from his last battlefield. Cutting down his latest attacker, he spared a rapid glance down at Kiergan’s lifeless body. He’d be joining him soon, after all.
The massive Tophylax slid from the slick boards of the dock, splashing heavily into the water alongside. The next in line stepped forward without hesitation, its heavy blade held in two-handed readiness. Just as Kial Pedderson thought this would be the one that got him, a wiry old man leaped forward from out of nowhere. Silver steel flashed in the sun, and blood spurted from beneath the eyeless helmet where a flat-bladed dagger had found its way in.
Collam had already drawn another blade, and stood in a slight crouch with his knives spread out to the sides. “Come on,” he huffed at the next Tophylax, not thinking about the words. It was more an instinctive and weary exhalation than any intended challenge. He licked his lips nervously.
“Look to the water,” he snapped over his shoulder at the bewildered Sunharbor man. Collam thought he recognized the fellow from the old days, but hadn’t he been a Suncloak back then? Didn’t matter. They had to work together. With his saber, the other guy could keep the ones in the water from swarming up behind them. Collam was tired and far from fresh, but he saw the same advantage Pedderson had enjoyed and he knew he could hold against one at a time. They had to work together.
That thought had repeated over and over in the back of his mind, ever since the battle was joined and he saw the river men fighting bandits and bodyguards alike, with the Tophylax slaughtering anyone who didn’t wear the spiked black armor. They had to work together, or the Tophylax would murder them all.
***
Shel thought of names, and the emperor ravaged her thoughts, and power pulsed and throbbed around and through them both. The ancient, dark magician snarled in her head and battered her body with furious blows which she didn’t feel. She was too lost, pulled inward and consumed by the battle within herself. Her only spare thought was for the names.
The names spilled through her mind, none of them her own. Faces paraded across her mind’s eye, pale reflections of people she had known. The faces whispered names, their own. One by one they identified themselves and were discarded as the emperor ransacked her memory.
What is your name?
Shel.
That isn’t your name! What is your name?
And Shel understood that if the emperor found her name she would die. Rather, her soul would be swallowed and burned by the ancient weaver, used to keep an empire under his wrinkled, bony thumb. A name was powerful, but only her true name could bind her soul.
What is your name?
Who were her parents, that was another question. Sanook could have shown her, but he refused. Shel thought she was going to die soon, and she would pass without ever knowing who they had been. She would never know who she was. What name had they spoken when she came into the world but before she was taken from them? Had she been taken, or had they given her up? Who were they, and who was she? What had they called her? What is your name?
One of her parents was a hotblood, the other a Shadow. But which was which? Shel imagined it was her mother who had borne the dermal markings, the birthmark runes. She fancied a lovely Shadowlady, besotted with some handsome hotblood adventurer. Maybe they had been found out. Maybe they’d been put to death. That was why she’d been raised by those hateful people in Vallen. Her parents had been punished. Did they cry out for their child when they died? Had her mother shrieked her name over and over?
What is your name? And a new name formed in Shel’s mind, coming on the heels of her fantasy of her Shadow mother screaming a word she couldn’t make out. She had seen a Shadowlady screaming her baby’s name, hadn’t she? She had heard it, clearly, in a vision. It was a secret name which had never been uttered again. The name was Daerydd.
The emperor seized on the secret name and used its power. Completing his binding weave, he cackled merrily and closed the trap. This girl’s soul would be his, and he would burn it slowly for a thousand years. The Great and Glorious Golden Empire of the Long Summer would never fade from the earth, and winter would never fall again.
Daerydd!
Shel and the emperor were surrounded by billowing shrouds of power, invisible, wispy soulstuff that roiled about them. At the edges of the room, Tophylax Emperia stirred for the first time. They shuffled nervous feet. They felt the pressure of the emperor’s weaving, layer upon layer of intricate, lacy patterns which had built up and up until the invisible power filled the room.
And now it exploded. Masonry crumbled. Stone buckled. Walls blew out, flinging bits of themselves into the sky. Fireballs formed in midair, burning out the oxygen. An icy wind howled, sucked through the gaps in the wall to fill the void left by the fast-burning flames. The emperor, who had once been called Daerydd, was flung screaming from the altar to crash on the floor a dozen feet away. He lay there motionless.
Shel’s physical bonds evaporated, dissolved as if they were no more substantial than smoke. The emperor’s weaves dissipated the same way and she was free. She rose from the altar, not standing but hovering in the air and floating across the room to stare down at her beaten, powerless foe.
Shel smiled darkly. Summer is over, she thought. I am the cold wind.
Chapter 32 - The Final Archon
Rezdurth Thorne squatted in one corner of a tavern bar-room, ignoring the dust and soot and charred pieces of wood that had once been part of the ceiling. A pile of sparkling gems was gathered on the floor to his left, and one by one he lifted the stones to inspect them. He held them reverently with both hands, closed his eyes, and breathed in that which the jewels contained.
The luster of the gemstones faded and vanished, and then Rezdurth cast them aside carelessly to clatter among the ever-growing scatter of dull, lifeless jewels on the floor to his right.
Thorne was squatting in the burnt-out, filthy tavern like some dirty peasant. His power grew by the minute, however, and soon he would seat himself in a far more properly accommodating setting. The smile which never left his lips his sharp and predatory. His dark eyes gleamed with dreams of unlimited power.
In the opposite corner, near the empty doorframe which led to the street, a corpse still smoked. The fire that destroyed more than half of this tavern had burnt out hours and hours ago, its coals gone cold at last. The man – perhaps it had been the tavern owner – had died ten minutes ago, when he unwisely interrupted Rezdurth Thorne.
Thorne had burnt him to a crisp without ever looking up from his treasures.<
br />
Now, however, Thorne did look up. His hands, gently clutching a exquisitely cut and still-sparkling ruby, drifted downward as he narrowed his eyes and concentrated on what he felt in the air. His fingers loosened, and the ruby dropped to the floor between his feet. Thorne hardly noticed and gave no thought to the precious soul imprisoned in the crimson-gleaming facets.
The wave of thundering power was like the shock of a nearby explosion. It buffeted him like the winds of a spinner, the incredibly destructive storms which periodically devastated the southernmost of the Southern Islands. Thorne rose – or perhaps he was lifted. He closed his eyes and leaned back his head, spreading his arms out to either side as the power washed over him. For a moment he hung poised in the corner, balanced on the forward half of his feet his knees still bent sharply forward of his chest and his arms spread. To the right kind of eyes, Thorne glowed.
All about Thorne, the dust and soot didn’t stir. The walls, two of them charred and ending abruptly a foot or so lower than they once had, didn’t shake. Nothing was happening here.
What Thorne experienced was an echo of what happened elsewhere. It was a shockwave, all right, and Rezdurth Thorne knew at once the meaning of the entirely psychic storm he had just weathered. He couldn’t tell, solely from the aftermath, who had been the victor. But he knew that the confrontation between the Emperor and the half-blood Shadowgirl had just ended.
Thorne made his decision in an instant. While he had already absorbed the bounty from most of the gems he had gathered, a significant number remained to be tapped. However, the contest which had just ended some miles away had been decided by an enormous use of power. The victor would never again be so thoroughly exhausted, not if Thorne waited a thousand years for his chance. The chance – the only chance – was right now.
His palms slapped against his thighs as his knees straightened. Thorne rocketed up from the dirty tavern floor, shot like an arrow into the cloudy sky.
***
All around the river gate, in exactly the same instant, each and every Tophylax Emperia simply stopped. Whatever the spiky-armored soldiers had been doing, they froze. Some, off-balance, toppled over. They made no attempt to right themselves, even those which fell beneath the water.
***
Shel stood over the ancient, broken man who had once been emperor. His eyes still wide with shock, Daerydd stared back up at her with incomprehension. She had tricked him, made him utter his own name without recognizing it. He had never heard it before in his life, not that he could remember. It was the name given by a mother he had never met. A name which, for a thousand years, no single soul had dared whisper to him even when he swallowed them.
His weaving had turned upon him immediately and irrevocably. All his power was torn from him in a heartbeat. In a whisper. In a single word.
Daerydd’s mouth fell open but no words emerged. A low, whining moan cut off abruptly as he clamped his jaw shut. The Soulless man shook his head. He couldn’t remember what he had meant to say.
Shel caught his eyes with her own, searching him. She nodded, satisfied by what she saw. One of her hands curled loosely, as though she were holding a round object. Daerydd’s eyes dropped from her face, and he stared with wonder at the increasingly bright glow which only they two could see. Shel drew on the wooden ornaments in her hair, channeled her power through them like she was spinning her yarn before using it to weave. The single threads grew as she spun them through the midnight wood. She had so much. She had it all.
When Daerydd looked back up to Shel’s face, he flinched away from the fiercely glowing eyes and the frightening, merciless smile.
Overhead, the dome collapsed in a sudden cataclysm. Masonry dust exploded into the chamber in an immediate, blinding cloud that descended like a curtain. Heavy stone blocks tumbled ponderously to the floor. Sunlight burst through the now-open roof. Stones crashed into the floor, cracking and shattering the marble and sending up another billowing cloud of dust.
Shel instinctively threw up her arms. The motion was unnecessary. In the same breath, she extended her soul and wove its strands into an invisible shield over her head. Tumbling blocks of stone impacted on her aegis, crumbling and falling away. The flying dust was everywhere, and Shel prepared another weave and pushed it outward from her body to dispel the dust. A circular area all around her rapidly cleared, even as the debris rained down on everything else.
Another empty bubble of clean air floated downward through the swirling dust. Within this woven pocket of clear air, Rezdurth Thorne stood with his arms crossed over his chest and his dark eyes locked on Shel. He was surprised, yet pleased.
So, the Gutterweave had beaten an emperor. Somehow. But she was young and inexperienced, and no doubt exhausted from the battle. This would all be over soon.
Thorne alighted on the cracked marble floor several paces away from Shel and the cowering, frail old man who had been the mightiest ruler this world had ever known. The dust began to settle. The walls shuddered and groaned, and small pieces of debris continued falling from the shattered dome overhead. Shel turned slowly around to face the final Archon.
Thorne wasted no time, attacking the moment his feet touched the floor. Already surrounded by a tightly meshed bubble of solid spirit, he extended the shield in front of him. Feeding heavy threads of power into the weave, Thorne sent a spear of energy lashing out at Shel.
The crackling bolt of power impacted against her own shield with a hot sizzle which rapidly dissipated. Untouched, Shel smiled and lifted one hand to playfully bat at her hair. Dark wooden ornaments, woven amongst the locks, clicked together dully.
“You are far too late,” she said, with an almost good-natured laugh. “Sorry.”
“How did you defeat him?” Thorne gestured to the Soulless old man at Shel’s feet. Daerydd still lay on the floor, a blank expression on his open-mouthed face. The emperor was gone; the body, though it lived, was an empty shell. This half-blooded peasant girl had taken everything he had been. “How?”
“He sought a name.” Shel shrugged. “I named him.”
Thorne had always heard there was power in a name, a true name. He had never understood that ancient saying until now. He still didn’t know the details of the emperor’s secret ritual, but it centered on a name. What name? The last archon looked at Shel with a sinking feeling. She remained sublimely confident beneath his gaze.
“Even if you knew,” she said, guessing his thoughts with a smile, “you’d never be able to beat me. Not now, little archon. It doesn’t matter anyway. I have no intention of fighting you, Murdrek Thorne.”
So she knew. It mattered little. Thorne tightened his shield in anticipation as Shel extended one hand, but no attack came. Daerydd whimpered as ghostly fingers crawled into his robes and lifted out a glittering jewel. Thorne understood at once, and despaired.
“No, don’t!” he cried.
Shel crushed the gemstone to dust.
A soul, released from its confinement, flew into Thorne’s body. The invader spread through the form of Rezdurth Thorne, seizing the vessels and organs and taking control. It chased Thorne through the tunnels of the mind and the solemn chambers of the heart and there, it devoured him.
Rez staggered, clutching one hand to his chest and sucking in a loud, gasping breath. Maintaining her shield, Shel waited calmly.
When Rez had caught his breath, he turned an awe-struck look her way. “You've done it,” he said. The last Rez remembered, the girl he’d rescued from the dungeons of Solstice was fleeing Thorne’s guards in the Sorrel manor, and his brother was just completing the weave that would pluck out his soul. He looked around him now at the ruined chamber and the paralyzed Tophylax at the walls – Rez knew them from before he stepped down as Archon – and whistled in appreciation. Clearly, he had missed a lot. “Shel, I don’t know how…but you've done it.”
“Not yet,” she surprised him by saying. Shel took a slow, almost dainty step across the rubble-strewn floor toward Rez. “One task
remains, I'm afraid. Tell me something, though.”
“What’s that?” Rez had an uneasy feeling that grew as Shel took another step closer. His eyes flickered over to the fallen emperor and back. He wondered if that monster had ever truly been young. Well, of course he had. Was he as innocent as Shel had been, before learning to control the power? Was it the power itself that had ruined his soul?
“How old are you, Rezdurth Thorne?”
Rez flinched away from his full name. He truly had missed much. Rez hadn’t used his house name for so long, he wasn’t even sure anymore why he kept it secret. Perhaps out of habit, along with all the other secrets he kept. Well, this girl must know all those secrets now.
No, he told himself, not a girl. Not at all, not any longer. He smiled at the memory of her temper regarding that subject. Shel was truly a woman now, truly and completely grown up. It saddened him greatly to see it, and he thought back to his own melancholy youth and grim awakening to the cares of adulthood. So long ago, now…
“Assuming I was in that jewel no more than four months,” he told her, seeing no reason to hide the information, “then I am seventy-four years old.”
A single note of laughter burst from Shel’s lips.
“I thought you might be thirty-five when we first met,” she told him. “And then I thought you must be about twenty or so. I did wonder about that quite a bit.”
Returning her smile, Rez explained. “It’s the weaving. Nobody knows why or how, but the more souls you weave the longer you stay young.” He resisted the urge to glance again at the ancient, shriveled old man on the broken flagstone floor.
“Yes,” Shel agreed. She already knew. “Still,” she went on, giving her head a tiny shake. “Seventy-four. How old was your father when he passed the title on to you?”
Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel Page 24
