The SoulNecklace Stories

by R. L. Stedman

  “Alden!”

  “Dana!” an answering call, suddenly cut off.

  I followed his voice, reaching for the boat. The water roared its anger around the small craft, upturned it like a child’s toy. Then suddenly Alden’s head lifted above the foam. Coughing, he gasped for air. I pulled him over to the bank, sharp with stones and gravel, and he lay there like a beached fish, his sides heaving. The water running off him looked like liquid gold.

  I solidified beside him and the world returned to black and sober gray. Off in the distance, fireworks still glowed; small sparks lighting at intervals. But here, the world was dark.

  N’tombe stood beside me. “Well done.” She removed her cloak, draped it over the shaking Alden.

  “It’s all right, brother,” I sat beside him. “It’s only me.”

  “Dana?” he sounded surprised. “Have I been asleep? I had the strangest dream.”

  “Shh. You’re safe now.”

  Another person crawled out the river, coughing weakly. Who? In the joy of finding Alden I’d forgotten there were others in the boat. The warrior, with the bleak eyes, where had he gone?

  N’tombe stood up, sniffing the wind. He’s here, she thought to me. I can feel him.

  I followed her, my table dagger at the ready. This was my land. I could feel the strength of the forest, of the river; this Kingdom had never been kind to invaders. I could still win.

  A whiff of decay was the only warning. Down from the tree dropped the soothsayer. He hissed as he fell, his fingers outstretched, ten bronze-tipped daggers seeking N’tombe’s throat. But she was too fast, dropping into the ground, disappearing into the soil, emerging a second later to one side.

  He rolled, leapt to his feet with surprising grace. Sparks shot from his fingernails, fizzing in the darkness. She pulled light from the trees, shaped it to a disc, held it in front of her, deflected his blows so they shot from the golden shield and fell on the ground. He shouted in rage and pushed bolts of light at her, faster and faster, shafts of energy, so cold it burnt. N’tombe sank to her knees.

  N’tombe!

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  Golden light poured from my hand. For a strange moment there were two people standing there – N’tombe, in her ragged skirt and boots, and a little man with a fat, naked tummy and a warm smile. Rinpoche. He smiled and lifted a hand to me, even as he dissolved, wafting into the air; a shower of sparks that spread and widened until they were all about us like fireflies.

  As though in a dance, the sorcerer flapped his arms, lifting first one foot, then the other. Rinpoche’s lights settled on him, glowing where they landed, so the enemy seemed outlined in faint pinpricks of gold. The sorcerer shrieked. The lights moved up his body toward his neck, where they formed a chain that glowed, tighter and tighter. Even from here I could feel the heat pouring from the sorcerer as he writhed and twisted, tugging at the living shackle.

  N’tombe rose to her feet. “Do you yield?”

  The magician pointed his hands at her, shaped cold light between his fingers into a spear. But the Rinpoche’s chain arced, wrapped his neck and his hands, bent him forwards so he couldn’t move. And the weapon the magic worker was building soared into the air.

  N’tombe was on him in a ball of sizzling energy. The man screamed, a terrible sound of fear and agony, convulsing as though impaled. And then, in a movement was both disgusting and remarkable, N’tombe put her hands about the foreign magic worker’s head, and, like a woman unraveling a weaving, pulled greasy smoke from his head. She poured it onto the ground where it lay, steaming briefly before it vanished.

  It took her only a heartbeat to pull the man’s thoughts from his skull and return them to the world that birthed him. The world didn’t seem that appreciative; the grass around the sorcerer was singed and smelt faintly of decay.

  I looked down at my hand. In the dimness it looked the same; all fingers intact. But the circlet of copper had disappeared. Where?

  “Rinpoche?”

  No answer, just a faint sigh of wind on my face. Above me, sparks twinkled like stars, then faded into the cloud.

  “Dana?” said Alden.

  “I’m here.”

  He pulled himself onto his elbows and looked around. “Where is here, exactly?” His voice was faint.

  “Near the Fens.”

  He touched the tousled hair of the body that lay below us on the bank. “What’s this?”

  I’d forgotten the other survivor. “I don’t know.” I turned the body over on its back. It moaned and lifted a hand.

  “It’s alive,” I said, surprised.

  “Well,” N’tombe’s voice was grim voice. “This might be useful.”

  “What did you do with the the other one?” I asked. I didn’t want to name him. Not when she’d killed him in front of me. There was no trace of where he’d been, just a smell of rot.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she wiped her hands on her dress.

  “What of the warrior?” I said.

  “You won’t catch him,” Alden said. “He can swim.”

  N’tombe nodded. “He is not important.”

  In the distance, the sky was turning gray.

  “Sunrise,” Alden sounded surprised, and relieved, as if he’d never thought to see daylight again. He stared up at N’tombe. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She scanned the sky, as though seeking something.

  “I thought I was going to die,” Alden said suddenly.

  I reached for his hand just as the figure on the bank coughed and rolled onto its knees.

  “Little sister,” Alden stroked my cheek. “When I looked at you I thought I was looking at the sun. What happened?”

  “Hush,” I said. “You’re safe now.”

  “That’s not true. We’re not safe yet, Princess,” N’tombe replied. “None of us are.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Stars Are Different

  The Castle was a bedraggled mess. Scraps of paper, remnants of the fireworks, blew in the breeze and clung to the ankles of the guardsmen who held a weary-eyed watch at the gatehouse.

  In the center of the courtyard the bonfire still smoldered, a drifting pall of smoke that seemed to follow me; no matter where I stood, there was always smoke in my eyes. Above the clouds were thickening, shutting out the blue sky, and the wind was chill. The good weather was drawing to a close.

  In the morning light Mother’s face was pale, but she smiled when she saw us. “Alden!”

  Father still wore his dress uniform. “Welcome back, son.”

  Like the Castle, we were a ragged and worn out bunch. N’tombe and I shared a horse, a shaggy palfrey commandeered at the town. Alden sat astride a carthorse offered by a kindly ploughman. Our one prisoner, Fatima, was on a donkey. At first, Alden had wanted her to walk, but “I prefer her to be alive, Prince,” N’tombe had said.

  Alden had looked at the old woman properly then, and nodded. Fatima was obviously ill. She coughed incessantly and spoke only in monosyllables. Her husband, she said, had sunk to the bottom when the wave split the boat in two. Of the two servants there was no sign save their boots; whether that meant they were drowned or had been swept downstream, it was hard to tell. And the warrior, the Lord TeSin, had disappeared into the swamp.

  N’tombe helped me from the horse. “Go get some sleep, Lady,” she said. “You look exhausted.”

  She didn’t look much better.

  “I need to talk with the Guardian,” she added, in explanation to my voiceless protest.

  “We have to find him,” I said.

  “I tell you, it’s not him we need to worry about.”

  “Who should you not worry about?” Owein emerged from the shadows of the gatehouse, a cloak wrapped around him.

  “Please, can we go inside?” I asked. “It’s cold here.”

  It was many hours before I got to bed. First I had to tell my parents, Sergeant Ryngell, Owein, about our pursuit of Alden, about the fight and the capt
ure of Fatima. They listened intently and asked many stupid questions about how we had traveled so far so quickly.

  “It wasn’t that fast. It took hours to get to the castle,” I said.

  “From here to the Fens and back is a day’s ride,” said Sergeant Ryngell.

  I shrugged. We had N’tombe. Did they not understand what she could do? I tried to speak patiently. “Well, we’re here now.”

  Alden, shivering under N’tombe’s cloak coughed. “Does it matter how we arrived? Most important is that we are here.”

  Footsteps clattered up the stairs, nails striking stone. N’tombe had finished talking to Rosa.

  “Why are you still here?” she said, sounding annoyed. “Look at her! Dead on her feet! And look at him,” she gestured to Alden, at his pale face. “He needs rest.”

  “She’s right,” Mother had been sitting in the corner, quietly listening. “We can ask questions later.”

  N’tombe humphed. “What of the prisoner?”

  “In the cells,” rumbled the Sergeant.

  “Did you not think to feed her?”

  He shrugged. “She’s a prisoner.”

  “She,” said N’tombe, “is also an old woman.”

  * * *

  Despite my exhaustion it took some time to tumble into sleep. My fingers stroked the bed carvings while I reviewed the day. Had I worked magic? It didn’t feel wonderful, or startling, not like the sparks that the Fire Master struck from his staff – all I did was use the world surrounding us. Maybe “magic’ was only seeing and using the details of life. Not magic at all, really.

  My sleep was crowded with dreams, sharp fragments of memory: shaping the golden river into a weapon, Rinpoche dissolving into sparks, N’tombe unraveling the sorcerer’s thoughts, Alden arguing with a farmer over the loan of a horse. The moist coughs of Fatima, the old woman. Gradually my thoughts calmed until sleep became a relentless, sighing ocean that I fell into, drifting with its tide.

  I dreamed.

  I roused, waking into darkness so black I felt blind. I reached out with my hands, felt for the bed hangings; had Nurse drawn them round me to shut out the light?

  “Who’s there?” A harsh voice out of the darkness.

  Dazed with sleep, I sat still as a stone, trying to silence my heartbeat. Heard a rasp of metal on metal; a sword pulled from a scabbard. I lay back hastily, trying to be invisible. Instead of the softness of a mattress, the thick warmth of bed coverings, I rested on hard stone, cold under my thigh.

  I was so tired. Please, no dreams tonight, let me sleep.

  “What is it?” said another voice.

  Will! Will’s voice! I turned toward it, trying to see him.

  “I thought I heard something,” said the first voice, slowly.

  “It’s so dark,” said Will. “Do you think it will rain?”

  “Don’t smell like it.”

  Will yawned. “At night, all places look like home.”

  The other man snorted. “It’s in the morning that things change. You going to stay talking all night? “Cos if you are, you may as well stand watch.”

  I straightened on the hard rock, trying to find somewhere comfortable to place my hips.

  “Ssst,” hissed the man. “Hear that?”

  “It’s me,” I called.

  “Who’s that?” called Jed sharply.

  But Will didn’t need to ask. “Dana! Dana!” A sharp fzzt of a tinderbox, and a light glinted. “Dana? Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all dark.”

  The little spark moved toward me.

  “There you are,” Will said, joy in his voice, and put his arms around me.

  I pressed my head against his chest, hearing his heart thud and his breath moving in and out. Common, everyday sounds, but oh so precious.

  “Best put that light out,” muttered Jed.

  Will shut the lid on the tiny flame and we were back in darkness, twice as black as before, but now I held Will’s hand.

  “Come on,” he pulled me up. We stumbled our way toward Jed’s impatient breathing.

  There were other sounds too. Horses snuffled in their sleep and, over to the right, the call of a bird, a thin shriek suddenly cut off.

  “Why don’t you have a fire?” I asked “Where are we?”

  “Does she always do this?” Jed asked Will.

  “What?”

  “Pop out of nowhere.”

  “Not usually,” Will said, a smile in his voice.

  “Don’t have anything against you, Missy,” Jed added. “It’s just disconcerting. Still, came in handy a few months back.”

  “A few months?”

  “Aye.”

  So Rosa had been right; I was moving about in time. What time was now, then? “Where are we?”

  “Out on the grasslands. South of the mountains.”

  That didn’t tell me much.

  “Don’t have no fire,” Jed added, “because we’re on the run.”

  “What?”

  “Bit of a long story. You tell her, Will, since you seem to be awake. I’ll try and kip a little, Missy, hope you don’t mind.” He yawned.

  Will pulled my hand. “Come here.” He put his arm about me as I sat against him. I rested my head against his strong shoulder and he murmured into my ear, keeping his voice low. They’d found the king, he said, but they’d not been able to see him. He lived in a golden palace, surrounded by soldiers, all fine warriors, expert swordsmen and archers.

  “There is a city,” said Will. He told me of its crowded streets, its silver fountains, the fortune-tellers, the beggars and the slaves.

  “Is the king really eternal?”

  “I don’t know. But he comes out at the moon’s eclipse. They say that from year to year, as far back as their ancestors remember, he has done this and he has never changed. There are carvings, illustrations, Dana; some beautifully worked on fine paper. The guards told me that the old paintings show him much as he is now; shrunken, white-haired and unchanging.”

  With a pang I thought of Rosa; she too was shrunken and aged. “So, what happened?”

  “We ran away,” Will said, “because of this.”

  He jabbed me with his elbow as he fumbled in his belt. “Sorry.” He pressed something small and rough into my palm.

  “What is it?” The size of a bean, it felt rough under my fingers.

  “It’s an entry token. To the Kingdom.”

  I’d seen one before, but where? The sky was lightening with the dawn. Off to the east, the gray shapes of trees were dimly visible, growing below this outcrop of rock on which we sheltered.

  “It fell from my belt when I was sparring,” Will said.

  “And that’s why they want you?”

  He nodded, his face ghostlike in the gray light. “Their king has been seeking the Kingdom for decades. There’s a reward offered for one of these. I had to kill three guards to get away.”

  Why should this king who has everything want us?

  “They’re readying for war, Dana. A navy has been prepared, the like of which has not been seen for many generations. And an army. They are recruiting soldiers.”

  “They told you all that?”

  “Of course. I was an elite guard; they trusted me. The ancient one has sent out travelers. They have discovered the Kingdom, Dana. The Arm of the Eternal is heading west, toward us. Toward you.” Will swallowed. “I was distracted. I was stupid. I’d sewn the token into the inside of my jerkin. The threads must have worn; it came loose, then fell out. Kasar caught it. The guards stared at it and at me, and I could tell that they knew I was a spy.” He added sadly, “I had to kill them. Otherwise their king might use me to betray you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two of them reached for their knives. They were on me so fast, I didn’t have time to think. I reacted; they died. But the third, he was my friend. I didn’t want to hurt him.”

  I reached for his hand and held it tightly. “What did you do?” When you kill s
omeone, you take away all he has, and all he will ever be.

  “A choice between you and Kasar? No choice at all. I strangled him. He wasn’t expecting it; it was easy.” His voice was sad. “But, Dana, he took a very long time to die.” He sighed. “Jed and I hid their bodies. We’ve been running for a week. We think we’re safe, but with that city, how can we be sure? They have soldiers everywhere.”

  We sat quiet, then I realized what he had told me. “The king sent out travelers, you said?”

  “Apparently. An odd group: a Noyan, that’s a general; a sorcerer; a merchant and his wife.”

  “Merchant? What does this merchant look like?”

  “The guards told me he was very old, and spoke their language like a child. His wife, though, spoke ‘as one with education’ ...” Will’s voice trailed off, as if remembering. “Dana, this sounds crazy, but I think I met them. They were at the Crossing.”

  Fatima. Hadn’t she been in my dream too? I had been so busy thinking of the villagers and the raised sword that I had forgotten she, too, had a token to the Kingdom.

  Then, I remembered: ships, and fishermen blown off course, and my father’s nervousness. Everything had been forgotten in the retrieval of Alden. How blind, how stupid we had been.

  “Those ships.” I lifted my head from his shoulder. “Will. You must come home.”

  He stared at me. I told him of Alden’s rescue, about the soothsayer that N’tombe had fought and killed and of the ships that the fishermen had seen.

  “It’s not that easy. Do you know how far away we are, Dana? Here, even the stars are different.”

  The sun lifted above the horizon, a ball of golden fire, as I reached to Will’s face, pulling his head down toward me. “Come home, Will,” I kissed him fiercely. His lips were warm and soft. I looked into his green-brown eyes and said the words I’d been carrying in my heart. “I love you. You must come home.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Surrounded

  Why did we always kiss just as we were being pulled apart? I lay in bed, trying to retain the taste of his lips on mine.