Soul Shade (Soul Stones Book 2)

by T. L. Branson

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “The night the soulfiend attacked, it killed Sowena’s parents and burned down their house. My wife and I were the first to respond that night. Maggie was bringing Sowena back to our home when the creature attacked again.”

  Will rubbed his face. “Have there been any other attacks? Sowena said something about someone named Haston?”

  “Harstens,” Rowland corrected. “Lizzy Harstens was Sowena’s best friend. Last night, the soulfiend attacked their home. Lizzy and Violet, Lizzy’s mother, didn’t make it. But her father, Harry, survived and is lying catatonic like Maggie.”

  Will winced. This wasn’t an isolated incident. This soulfiend was preying on Luton. If he didn’t do anything, it would keep killing. At the same time, the threat of an army of elves about to invade Aralith and murder thousands seemed a more pressing issue. Still, he had to do something.

  “Who is Luton’s governor?” Will asked.

  “Why?” Sowena asked, stepping out from the bedroom.

  “I need to call an emergency meeting and I want as many people there as possible,” Will said. “Do you know him?”

  “No,” Sowena replied. “But I know someone who does.”

  Ocken knelt down and placed two fingers on the man’s neck. A steady pulse greeted him. With a slap across the man’s face, Ocken attempted to wake him.

  “Any luck?” Ocken asked.

  “Nope,” Robert said. “This one’s alive, but unresponsive.”

  “Same,” Ocken. “This was Will, all right.”

  “He can’t be far,” Robert said, rubbing his arms to stay warm. “Their bodies aren’t even cold, yet it’s freezing out here.”

  “Agreed. It’s like they’ve been hiking or sitting around a fire,” Ocken said. “Why would he attack them, though?”

  “They do look like a rough bunch. Maybe they tried to rob Will,” Robert offered.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Ocken said, unconvinced.

  He was growing increasingly worried for Will. Arguing with the queen, charting off on his own, killing people without apparent cause—if they didn’t catch up to him quick, Will was going to get himself into real trouble. But the sun hung low on the horizon and it was growing ever colder. They needed to start a fire of their own if they wanted to stay warm tonight.

  Then, Ocken had a better idea. He looked up in the sky, and sure enough the soft glow of city lights rose up just beyond the horizon.

  “It’s getting late,” Ocken said. “If I’m right, Luton is just over the ridge here. What do you say we find a nice inn or tavern?”

  “You want to turn in?” Robert asked. “We can’t stop now. We’re so close to catching up to Will.”

  “It’s going to be another cold one. Don’t you think it would be better to call it a night?” Ocken said a bit more forcefully.

  “Do you want to find Will or not?” Robert said. Then pointing at the sky, he continued, “Tonight’s a full moon and we’ve got a clear sky. We’re not going to get a better night. Besides, if we keep moving we’ll stay warm. He can’t be that far ahead.”

  “Fine, we keep going, but if my nose falls off from the cold I’m taking yours.”

  “Please, Lukas, you have to believe me,” Sowena pleaded.

  “I do, I do,” Lukas said. “But I have a reputation to protect. If I go running off to the governor about this, the whole town will think I’ve been speared by the Triton, and then how will I run my business?”

  “They’ll listen. They have to listen,” Sowena said. “After the Harstens—”

  Lukas shook his head. “Everyone thinks the Harstens died because they left the window open and froze to death.”

  “Maybe for Lizzy’s parents, but Lizzy was outside when I found her. How do they explain that?” Sowena argued.

  “She could have been trying to sneak out and fell, hit her head, and froze while she was unconscious,” Lukas reasoned.

  “Is that your professional opinion having been at the scene?” Sowena asked.

  “Well, no, her eyes were open… and she looked like she had been running from something when she died,” Lukas replied.

  “Then you can tell the governor as much,” Sowena said. “Look, I’m not asking for much, I just need you to get him to call a meeting. You don’t even have to mention the soulfiend; I don’t care how you get him to do it. Tell him there’s a malaria outbreak or something and you need to issue safety precautions.”

  “Malaria?” he asked. “You know that only thrives in tropical climates.”

  “Whatever,” Sowena said, throwing her hands up in the air. “I don’t really care, just please do this for me.”

  “Why?” Lukas asked.

  “I found someone who thinks he can help, but he wants to talk to everyone together,” she explained.

  Lukas looked away as if in thought, then said, “All right. But don’t ask me to do anything like this again, okay?”

  Sowena sprang forward and wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you!”

  Thirty minutes later, Sowena stood beside Will on the platform in the town square. She shifted about nervously and pulled her hood up. All through the square people stared at her. There was a general hum about the crowd, but Sowena was convinced they were whispering about her.

  “What’s she doing here?” a voice said from the side. “And who’s this?”

  Sowena turned as Governor Abell stepped onto the platform.

  “Lukas, what’s going on here?” he asked. “I thought you said this was about dysentery.”

  “Dysentery?” Sowena mouthed to Lukas.

  He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Governor, I didn’t know how else to get you to agree to this.”

  “Get me to agree to what?” Abell said, his eyes shifting between Sowena and Lukas. Then he started shaking his. “Oh, no. This isn’t about that crazy story some bard brought in about mythical creatures, is it?”

  “I—”

  The governor held a hand up, silencing him, then walked over to Sowena and said, “Look, Sowena, I’m sorry about your parents. The fire was a tragic accident, but that’s all it was: an accident. You have to get this through your head.”

  “I am not making it up!” she shouted in frustration.

  The crowd hushed as all eyes turned toward the platform. The governor moved toward them and said, “I’m terribly sorry to take you all away from your homes so early this morning. Please, go back—”

  “Excuse me,” Will said. “I’m the one who called this meeting.”

  “And you are?” Abell asked.

  “Will Su—” Will started to say, then paused. “Who I am is not as important as who I work for. I am the emissary of Queen Maya Ravenwing.”

  Sowena gasped, as did the crowd.

  He knows the queen and didn’t say anything? Who is this man? she wondered.

  The silence broke as people began whispering harshly to one another. Someone shouted “traitor!” from the back of the crowd.

  Governor Abell hushed them and remarked, “You look a little young to be part of the queen’s official council. Why should we believe you? I wasn’t notified of any royal business coming to Luton.”

  “I never intended to come here,” Will said. “I’m on my way to Celesti.”

  Will glanced to the north and did a double take when he caught sight of the smoke that still billowed into the sky. It seemed to make him nervous, though Sowena couldn’t tell why.

  “But,” Will continued, “on my way, I came across Sowena here and what she had to say concerned me.”

  “Liar!” someone shouted at Sowena.

  “Murderer,” another dared to say.

  Sowena moved away. That they would believe she’d killed her parents and tried to cover it up with a fake story hurt more than she could verbalize.

  “Go back where you came from! Luton doesn’t need the queen!”

  As Will sighed, something crackled and a blue glow covered the stage at Sowena’s feet. The crowd screa
med.

  Sowena looked over her shoulder, then spun and fell back at the sight before her. Will’s right hand had turned blue and a long staff of blue light sat in his hands. Those closest to the stage tried to scramble away, while the ones in the back refused to budge, wanting to see what was going on.

  “Hold!” Will said, raising his left hand. “I won’t harm you. I possess the power of the goddess Lotess and am bearer of her stone, the Soul Render. I am a member of Maya’s personal guard and council, and you will hear me.”

  The people settled and a silence fell over them.

  “What Sowena has told you is true,” Will said.

  Shouting, screaming, and arguing erupted once more.

  “Silence!” Governor Abell said.

  After a few moments, the square quieted enough for Will to continue. “The creature that is roaming your countryside is called a soulfiend and it’s beyond dangerous. By my count, it has claimed the lives of six individuals.”

  “Six?” someone asked.

  “Yes. The Restaricks, Maggie Pendley, and a family by the name of Harstens?” Will asked, looking at Sowena. She nodded, then he said with more conviction, “The Harstens family.”

  Voices started to rise once more, but the governor stayed them and said, “The Harstens died of hypothermia.”

  “While that may be true,” Will said, “Sowena tells me the soulfiend attacked them, and by the way she described the events and by my personal experience with these things, I’m inclined to believe her.”

  “So—so what do we do?” one of the citizens asked.

  Finally, Sowena thought. They’re taking this seriously. They’re taking me seriously.

  “Soulfiends are creatures of darkness. They’re repelled by contact with direct light, but I know of no way to actually wound them,” Will said. “The best thing for you to do is stay indoors at night and keep the lamps burning.”

  “Some of us can’t afford to run our fires all night,” a man said.

  “You can’t afford not to,” Will said. “To disregard that is to risk death. This creature cannot be stopped. Your weapons won’t damage it.”

  “How do we know this isn’t just a ploy by the crown to scare us into submission?” a woman asked, pushing her way to the front of the crowd. “Rumors say the kingdom is falling apart, going back to the old way. Mayhap the ‘queen’ doesn’t want to lose her kingdom and she’s crafted a tale to make us afraid and come begging for help?”

  “Yeah! We don’t need you!” another voice shouted.

  “Free Luton!”

  A chant rose up in the wake. “Free Luton! Free Luton! Free Luton!”

  “Fine!” Will yelled. “But don’t blame the queen when your loved ones start dying.”

  Will stormed off the platform using the back staircase and Sowena chased after him.

  When she caught up she said, “Where are you going?”

  “To Celesti,” he said.

  “So that’s it?” she said.

  Will stopped. “What’s it?”

  “You’re just going to leave us? I was coming to Maya for help. Her people need help—your people.”

  “Those” he said and pointed to the square, “are a bunch of ingrates who can’t tell their nose from their rear. Why should I help them?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Sowena said, shaking as tears formed in her eyes.

  Bryn hissed as Khate applied the salve to the open wound on his forehead. Khate hadn’t seen him directly sustain the wound, but there was a lot about the previous night that Khate didn’t remember.

  It all felt like a dream to her. In some regards it seemed too fanciful—like it was straight out of a novel. Lava pits, dragons, magical stones, and a narrow escape? A year ago, Khate wouldn’t have believed any of it. Well, besides the magical stone bit. Those dastardly things had a way of pushing into her life.

  But on the other side of things, Khate was faced with the very real fact that she had almost died—multiple times over. She had never considered herself danger averse, but looking back on the previous twenty years, the last time she’d come this close to death was when she, Ocken, and a few others had captured the Soul Siphon for her brother-in-law.

  The notable difference between then and now was that Ocken had been a strong man in his prime, and Bryn was well… Bryn. And while there was nothing wrong with Bryn and he was great company, he didn’t provide her with a measure of comfort or safety either. Not that she needed anyone. She’d learned to take care of herself. As of late, though, she’d been lonely, and that was a place Khate never wanted to be again.

  What she wouldn’t give to have Ocken by her side now. He would know what to do, but that thought raised another concern.

  She had done a lot of thinking about Ocken lately. In many ways she blamed him. It seemed that every time he stepped into her life, tragedy struck. When they’d first met, her sister had died in childbirth. Though Ocken had nothing to do with that, Khate couldn’t help but deflect some of her anger onto him.

  Then he’d had the audacity to show up at her door years later. She had left Shadowhold to get away from all that political drama, yet he’d appeared and dumped it on her doorstep.

  What was she to do? She couldn’t ignore it. She’d never have forgiven herself if she had let that poor girl die. So she got involved, and her husband had ended up dead.

  Of course, that wasn’t Ocken’s fault, either. Drygo was the one who’d conquered Celesti. But for the first few years Khate had needed someone to blame, and she struggled with blaming the widower of her late sister, so she had blamed Ocken.

  Now she wondered if she hadn’t been too hard on him.

  “Come on, we should get going,” Khate said. “We need to get back to Kent and find a way off this rock.”

  “I’m not going anywhere but to my ship,” Bryn said stubbornly.

  “Your sorry excuse for a ship is charcoal now,” Khate said, then added, “though I’d say that’s an improvement.”

  “Bah!” Bryn said waving. “It’s not the ship, lass, it’s my men.”

  “I’m not sure how anyone could have survived that,” Khate said with a frown.

  “All the same, I’m not going anywhere until I see it with my own eyes,” Bryn told her.

  “All right,” she conceded. “Let’s get going, then.”

  Ocken woke with a start as something jumped on his leg. He flung a hand out of pure reflex and connected with a small furry form. A squirrel shrieked and scurried away, chittering as it went.

  “Mornin’,” Robert said, stoking the fire.

  “Well,” Ocken said.

  “Well what?” Robert asked. “Go ahead and say it.”

  “Either Will decided not to sleep last night, or he stopped in Luton like I told you he would,” Ocken said. “We traveled until nearly first light and didn’t see a single thing that leads me to believe Will came this far. Not a track, broken branch, or a campsite. Nothing.”

  “Fine, I’m sorry. Let’s go back,” Robert said. “Just not until after I’ve had breakfast—or lunch, or whatever time it is.”

  “The good news is,” Ocken said, standing and stretching. “We’re ahead of him, so if he’s going to Celesti like we think he is, he’ll have to pass us on the way.”

  Ocken walked away from the fire a short distance to relieve himself. As he was staring aimlessly, something caught his eye in the sky.

  “Hey, Robert?” Ocken yelled over his shoulder.

  “Yeah?” he called back.

  “Did you start another fire to the north?” Ocken asked. He turned and jogged back to the small clearing where they’d settled for the night.

  “No, why?” Robert replied.

  “We’ve got smoke rising into the sky up ahead on the road,” Ocken answered.

  “Hah!” Robert said. “Will is still ahead of us.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Ocken said. “It’s too big and too far away to be caused by Will.”

 
; “Then what?” Robert asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ocken said. “Change of plans. Will can wait. We’ll find him when we find him. We’re going to Celesti. Now.”

  20

  Nearly a day had passed and night had once again fallen before Khate and Bryn made it back to the River Raider—or what was left of her. Khate probably could have made the trek through the jungle in about four hours, but Bryn couldn’t move more than a few hundred feet at a time.

  He had gotten pretty banged up. Though he didn’t complain about the pain, Khate knew he was hurting. The old man had been through a lot, and Khate blamed herself for much of it. She should have refused his company, though she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t happy to have him there with her.

  Somehow, the prospect of facing everything alone seemed too much, even for her.

  “My ship,” Bryn said, running a few paces and falling to his knees in the sand. He began to cry. “Oh, my ship—and those poor lads. They trusted me, and some dragon has gone and turned them into fried chicken.”

  “Who’s got fried chicken,” a voice said behind them. “I could sure go for some."

  “PD!” Bryn said, standing and rushing to give him a hug.

  “Whoa,” PD said. “What happened to you?”

  “Never you mind, lad,” Bryn said. “Where are the rest of the boys?”

  “Aden and Sylas are out looking for food,” PD said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the jungle. “But Kaeden,” he said with a sigh, “Kaeden didn’t make it. He was up in the crow’s nest using the spyglass to see what was going on, and before we knew it the dragon was on us. He didn’t have time to climb down, so he jumped…” PD turned his head away and grimaced. “Snapped his neck on the fall.”

  Bryn sank to the ground and broke down in silent sobs. As he took a breath, his crying grew louder. PD held him and patted his back.

  When Bryn calmed down, he said, “He was my niece’s boy. What am I going to tell her? She trusted him to me. Poor boy had a hard time holding down a job. I told her it was safe work. He just had to keep us from running aground. That was all. That was all.”

  “I don’t mean to be insensitive,” Khate said. “But we really need to get moving. We have to find another ship and get out of here before that dragon finds us again.”