Soul's Reckoning bw-3

by Sam Bowring

  Soul's Reckoning

  ( Broken Well - 3 )

  Sam Bowring

  An army of darkness marches on the Shining Mines, stronghold of the light for a thousand years. At their head is the shadowmander, an unstoppable monster created from the souls of the dead.A forgotten race stirs in Whisperwood, led by Corlas, who has been granted ancient powers by a banished god …and Fahren journeys with his old enemy Battu to the Morningbridge Peaks, where he is given a task that shakes him to the bones.Meanwhile Bel rides with all the might of Kainordas behind him. He carries the Stone of Evenings Mild, his only means of drawing his counterpart Losara back into himself, this making his soul complete. Prophecy says that a blue-haired man will end the war forever - and the time has come to look oneself in the eye.The time has come for a reckoning.

  Sam Bowring

  Soul's Reckoning

  The third book in the Broken Well Trilogy series

  To my little blister Anna, as is only fitting in a story about evil counterparts

  Map

  Part One

  Convergence

  It must be an old world, I think. Our recorded history goes back many millennia, but that isn’t why I arrive at such a conclusion. It is more that our knowledge grows fragmentary in the distance, then drops away into nothing, like an undersea cliff. There are no clues as to how much further it goes, and no beginning in sight. Perhaps no beginning exists, just ages that follow one after the other. Perhaps the age we inhabit now will become an unknown abyss to those in the next. I do not know.

  I suppose I do not care. What is remarkable is to stand on the cusp of a new age forming, one foot in the past and one in the future. It almost seems as if change could be instant, forgetful of the centuries that precede it, the years spent building to such a point, the months of strife and struggle …and now, only days.

  Time to break into a run.

  A Quiet Departure

  Bel parted fern fronds with the tip of his sword, managing to avoid the slightest rustling. Ahead a Black Goblin crouched behind the brush, taking in the two hundred or so soldiers camped between the trees – those who had survived the ill-fated charge against Holdwith. The failure still grated on him, and he pushed away memories of Olakanzar being torn from the sky, of Kainordans dying around him. Perhaps he had been too eager to attack, but how could he have guessed that such a monster would be waiting for them?

  Someone started striking a hammer on metal, and Bel made small movements forward, in time with the echoing clanks. As he levelled his sword at the goblin’s back, anticipation of the blow warmed him, and he tensed to thrust. This spy of Losara’s would deliver no report.

  The goblin turned his head almost imperceptibly and sprang away. Bel jabbed too late, coming about as close to missing as was humanly possible, extracting a single bead of blood from the small of the goblin’s back. He rose angrily from the undergrowth as the goblin fled, curving to avoid both Bel and the camp, where soldiers began to notice that something was going on. Bel had a sense of the path trying to form, and yet it failed to solidify. He chased the goblin nonetheless, but the little bastard was quick, and already gaining ground. Bel raised his sword to hurl it, but the goblin was keeping trees between them, and it was difficult to find the right moment. Seconds later he blundered unexpectedly into a stream, his foot plunging into soft mud …and knew that he would never catch up.

  Why had the path failed him? he wondered irritably. A strange phenomenon it was, the way he sometimes saw the steps he needed to tread to achieve certain ends. Certainly the appearance of such preternatural lines was no magic that Fahren had ever been able to explain. His father had once described it as going berserk, but Bel had come to think of that state as a separate thing, for the path did not seem to apply solely to battle – it had also led him to escape when victory was impossible, and even encouraged him to speak with a dragon which he could not otherwise have hoped to defeat.

  Maybe it is fate’s path . Maybe I feel the direction I am supposed to go. He took some comfort from the thought, but then frowned. Then why not show me how to kill a skulking enemy?

  He stabbed his sword into a ripe log at the stream’s edge with an exclamation of disgust, feeling like a man promised a meal and instead delivered an empty bowl. The world darkened to suit his mood …the broken reflections of trees across the water lost their sheen, no longer a barrier to visibility beneath the surface. Leaves curled in the current like lazy dancers, catching on Bel’s legs. Clouds gathered in the sky and the first drops of rain began to fall, advance scouts of the storm that was coming. Circles expanded in the stream to disrupt the path of a water beetle, which changed course to skitter under reeds.

  ‘Which way did he go?’ came a sharp voice, and Bel realised he had gone blank. He turned to see Nicha, the leader of the Kainordan camp, flanked by lightfists. He stared at her a moment, then stabbed a finger after the goblin. Nicha gave a nod to her lightfists and they blurred in pursuit, spraying him with water as they churned through the stream.

  They will earn the kill that should have been mine .

  Only then did he notice the golden bird perched on Nicha’s shoulder.

  ‘A sundart,’ he said. ‘From whom?’

  ‘Gerent Brahl,’ she answered. ‘The Fenvarrow army is heading towards the Shining Mines, and our own forces march to meet them with all possible haste.’

  ‘Holdwith?’ said Bel.

  ‘Holdwith,’ she spoke the word with a kind of forced neutrality, ‘will be given up for now. Better to reinforce our standing defences, and meet the enemy at an advantage. We are ordered to return to Brahl.’ She glanced at the sky. ‘Dusk is not far off. We ride at daybreak.’

  ‘How distant is he?’

  ‘Not far from here, but some three days from the Mines.’

  ‘And the enemy?’

  Nicha’s brow creased in consternation. ‘Maybe a little less, but the Mines are well fortified. If they can hold off the enemy until the bulk of our forces arrive …’

  ‘Yet Losara lingers in Holdwith,’ muttered Bel. ‘Surely his army won’t attack without him.’ He stepped from the stream and retrieved his sword. ‘I want,’ he said, ‘to be notified of any movement out of Holdwith.’

  There was a hint of irritation in Nicha’s gaze, and he wondered if she disliked taking orders from him. She disapproved of his recent action, he knew, both beforehand and afterwards, when she had been proven right …but the mistake had been his to make, and who was she to question him? He held her eyes until she nodded.

  ‘As you wish,’ she said.

  The rain grew heavier.

  •

  Losara stood on the walls of Holdwith, overlooking the dusty plain. Bodies of Bel’s soldiers still littered it from the previous day, and occasionally the wind brought him the stink of them. A group of shadow mages moved about below him, opening holes under the slain so they fell away into the ground. Tyrellan had said he did not understand why Losara paid them this respect, and Losara wasn’t sure either. Was it better to be dead under the ground? The dead did not care – maybe burying them was for the people above. Maybe Losara simply didn’t want to have to look at them any more.

  As for Bel himself, he was not far away, and neither was the Kainordan army that travelled to meet Losara’s own. There would be great ruin soon, and more bodies on the way. Perhaps, Losara thought, while brutal, the shadowmander would at least bring the confrontation to a swift conclusion. There was no force in the world that could stop the creature carved from the legacy spells of hundreds of mages. He imagined it wreaking havoc amongst Kainordans, its great scarlet tail sweeping back and forth, snapping its jaws around Zyvanix wasps as they tried to flit away. Yet even the mander could not sweep through
thousands in a heartbeat, was no guarantee of instant victory. He watched it now on the plain below, sniffing at the dragon’s corpse. The great beast hadn’t fallen fast to rot, and if not for the wounds that covered it, and the dull hue of its remaining eye, it could have been merely sleeping.

  Above the fort was an extension of the Cloud that had crept out of Fenvarrow, proof of Losara’s success on the ground. Away over lands he did not yet control, other clouds gathered – natural clouds that came and went, emptying and re-forming, unlike this one, which was crafted and maintained by magic. It made him wonder if the Fenvarrow way was somehow against nature, forcing this coverage of the land. And yet there was light in Fenvarrow too, for shadow needed it to exist.

  ‘What will happen if Arkus is defeated?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Will there be no more light, no more sun? And what if Assedrynn falls – will all shadow fade away, everything left stark and bare?’

  By his side Lalenda smiled faintly. ‘No, my lord,’ she said. ‘I have read enough during my days in the library to know that Arkus is not the sun, nor is Assedrynn shadow. They are the gods of these things, and draw their power from them, but the things came first.’

  Losara frowned. ‘Then where did the gods come from?

  ‘It is not known,’ said Lalenda. ‘Only that they are the givers of life, our souls grown from their Wells. Maybe there was an original creator, who created them also. Maybe they came from somewhere else, found our world empty and made it their own. Or maybe Arkus was born of the sun, Assedrynn from the shadows, scions of the forces they represent.’

  Losara folded his arms. These were daunting questions, and he did not feel there were any answers to be found in pondering them.

  ‘Perhaps there is no answer,’ said Lalenda. ‘Perhaps the gods just are , like trees and clouds and wind and sea. A part of the world, like any other.’

  ‘Except the wind,’ said Losara, looking up at the Cloud he had brought here, ‘does not ask me to kill thousands on its behalf.’

  •

  She reached up to Losara’s neck, to trace his skin with the very tip of a claw. Breaking the uppermost layer, she left behind the slightest furrowed line. Grinning, she signed it into an ‘L’. He did not seem to notice, for he had already drifted back into that deep place where he spent so much of his time, lost in strange thought. At any rate, as soon as he turned to shadow and back again, he would be unmarked once more.

  Below, the mages burying the dead paused warily as the shadowmander moved amongst them. It poked at the ground where a body had just gone down, but the spark of light in the soldier’s soul that had once attracted it was gone. Lalenda was glad indeed for the creature’s existence – if it could turn the tide of battle in their favour, there would be no need for the other idea that Losara hesitantly entertained, the idea that had driven him to go to Bel, to travel with him and learn about him. He had not spoken about it much since, and she hoped that meant he had given it up, and did not simply withhold his thoughts because they upset her.

  Then her eyes misted. Her hand fell from Losara’s neck, her knees turning to water. She collapsed, powerless to stop it, but did not feel herself reach the ground, as her mind was taken over by a vision.

  She was standing somewhere …she wasn’t sure where. There were things around, maybe trees, but they were blurry, faded into a background mess of other indistinct objects, maybe people. Someone was holding her hand, but he was indistinct too, phasing and shifting as if his body could not settle on a permanent form. There was blue around his head, though it, too, took no definite shape. Something seemed to be tugging at him from his other side, and she leaned out to peer across his chest. There, holding the man’s other hand, the only clear being in the entire picture, was a lithe woman with long ringlets of red hair, her nose studded with a tiny emerald, her eyes green–gold. Although Lalenda had never seen her before, she knew that this was Bel’s lover, Jaya – and she was trying to pull away the man who stood between them.

  The world came crashing back in. Lalenda blinked, finding herself staring up at the Clouded sky. Losara was kneeling by her, his shadowy hand on her brow, looking concerned. Relief took over his expression as he saw she was conscious.

  ‘A prophecy?’ he asked.

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows, brushing away his hand angrily.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I saw …’ What, precisely, had she seen? She wasn’t sure. And, for the first time, the prophecy itself had not seemed entirely sure either. Yet she knew what she feared.

  ‘I thought you had discounted that notion,’ she said.

  ‘What notion?’ he answered, but a moment later his face betrayed that he knew exactly what she spoke about. ‘Ah,’ he went on, admission in his tone. ‘I never said I’d discounted it, only that I hoped it would not come to that – that I could win in other ways, perhaps with the shadowmander. But if it comes down to it, as a last resort …I fear the gamble absolutely, but …’

  ‘Or maybe Bel succeeds,’ she said quietly.

  His void-like eyes seemed to bore into her heart. ‘Lalenda,’ he said, ‘please …tell me exactly what you saw.’

  •

  The moon, high above, did little to breach the Cloud. They had not brought any dark ice with them, but a few lanterns from the fort had been lit. Losara felt uneasy about using Kainordan fire, as if it was some kind of hypocrisy. They did not need much, however, only slight illumination, to make organising a little easier.

  His mages gathered on the plain south of the fort, hopefully away from the eyes of any Kainordans watching. Standing somewhat apart from them was Tyrellan, and every now and then the mander slunk out of the night to return to him, as if checking on its anchor to the world. A group of goblins and men, ordinary soldiers who had followed the mages to the fort after it had been taken, also waited. All were silent, as ordered, even in their minds. Only Losara and Roma conversed, in whispers, just outside the open gate to Holdwith.

  ‘Is everyone here?’ said Losara.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ replied Roma. ‘The fort is empty.’

  ‘Very well, then. Let us move.’

  Roma held up a hand and blue energy coursed over his fingers. He waited until certain that all had seen it, then used it to point southwards. In response a thousand pairs of feet began to walk in that direction, their pace as yet unaided by magic. Losara could not risk the outpouring of power required to move so many at great speed, lest they be sensed by the light mages nearby. Some distance would have to be put down first, keeping the fort between them and the enemy.

  Losara wondered if the offshoot of the Cloud would remain after they departed, leaving not a single shadow soul in Holdwith. Certainly it would disappear if the light took the fort back. They were welcome to the place – it was no longer much more than a broken shell, battered by magic and dragon fire. If Kainordas wanted to expend valuable soldiers and resources repopulating it when Losara had no desire to return anytime soon, that was something he had no issue with.

  Air moved as Grimra wafted past, the ghost’s low growl a familiar heralding for Lalenda these days. She arrived by Losara’s side a moment later, and allowed him to take her hand, for which he was glad. She had been strange with him ever since her vision, angry and quiet. He understood, to a degree – what she had seen was disturbing, and he shared her trepidation over whether it would come to be, and how. An indication of him resorting to his back-up plan? Or of Bel succeeding in drawing him in, using the Stone to turn him into nothing more than the odd thought here and there?

  After an hour or so of walking in silence, Losara judged that they were far enough from the fort to use magic without being sensed. Hold , he sent out, and all drew to a stop. We head west , he continued, with all possible haste.

  Mages began to channel and, shadows in the night, speed west. The soldiers were taken care of by the more powerful, and Roma helped boost Tyrellan along. Losara lifted off the ground with Lalenda and, hand in hand, they flew o
ver the departing mass.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Lalenda, and he followed her gaze. The shadowmander had no problem keeping up with Tyrellan as he bounded across the plains next to Roma. ‘Such a powerful weapon you have created, my lord.’

  ‘It has its flaws,’ said Losara.

  ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘it will be enough. You will not need to try the other way.’

  ‘I hope not, my love. I really do.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Let us see how we fare at the Shining Mines.’

  Hither and Thither

  Bel moved through the camp in the early morning. Fires were being stamped out and horses loaded as the soldiers made ready to ride to Brahl. Of the wounded, most could now ride, or at least suffer being strapped to horses’ backs. Only a few had been beyond saving by Nicha’s mages, and these now rested in the ground.

  As he glanced around for Jaya, he saw a scout gallop into camp at full pelt and drop from his horse before Nicha. The man seemed excited and, as he spoke, Nicha glanced over to Bel. He raised a questioning eyebrow and she gestured at him to approach. He did so, arriving as the scout departed.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said.

  ‘You wished to be informed if there was any change at Holdwith?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘The scouts report no one mans the walls this morning. Not only that, but there’s no sound from within. And the south gate is lying open.’

  Bel experienced a sinking feeling. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Yes. It seems the shadow has abandoned Holdwith.’

  ‘Any sign of the mander?’

  ‘None.’

  Bel rubbed his eyes. So Losara had snuck away in the night, almost certainly to join his army – the army that was closer to the Shining Mines than Brahl was. Yesterday Nicha had voiced her hope that the soldiers already stationed at the Mines would be able to hold off the enemy until the rest of the Kainordan forces arrived, but if Losara had the mander in tow, Bel feared the worst. He had been hoping that the creature was somehow tied to Holdwith, because it had not been able to cross a kind of invisible line when last he had faced it. Now he knew it must be mobile somehow, and Losara had taken it …and there was only one way he could think of to ward it off.