Labyrinth of Souls

by C. E. Dorsett

Those words stung Jodhaa. Not enough people did the right thing, even when it wasn convenient. Most took the expedient path. There was nothing to gain from their act of compassion. As far as they knew, she was just another student. The sincerity in his voice also took her off guard, like he was surprised by the question.

  “It was.” She smiled, then stared down the hall where her friend was taken.

  She wanted to run down to Raih's room and sit by her bedside, but she didn’t want to impede the healers. The feeling of helplessness returned, but at least she wasn’t alone. These strangers were here to shoulder the burden with her. Her lower lip trembled, but the tears felt farther way.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Darkness

  Darkness. No light or shadow broke the unending void. Raih struggled to clear her mind. Had she woken up somewhere without light? She floated with nothing below her, nor around her. Her senses revolted against the absence of information. She extended her arm out, but sensed nothing. Her arm might not have even moved. The air stood still. No motion, no sensation at all. Not hot, not cold, not comfort.

  She touched her forefinger to her thumbs and felt nothing. The absence of any sensation worried her. This numbness pervaded all her senses. Oppressive sleep weighed on her mind. She wanted to drop off. Trapped between grogginess and drunkenness, fuzziness pervaded everything.

  The thing that bothered her most was not feeling her breath. Her chest might rise and fall, but that swell and release roiled in the same stupor that clouded everything else.

  Something cried in the distance. It sounded like a child. She wanted to run to it, pick it up, and rock it back to sleep.

  Nothing happened.

  Was this death? Raih wondered if she died on the street and this was a limbo beyond life where her mind would just float before falling into a hell, rising to a heaven, or returning to a new life to forget the misbegotten one she had let behind.

  The academy wouldn’t just let her die, would it?

  Ema will be heartbroken when they tell her... If they tell her. What if they don’t, and she thinks I ran off and left her?

  Pain twisted within her. She believed one thing: she would find a way back. There was no other choice. She couldn’t leave Ema like this. Not like this.

  “But how will you escape?” A concerned, feminine voice asked.

  “I don’t know.” Raih said, and cried.

  She saw one of her tears fall away from her like a crystal ball rimed in candle light.

  It grew larger as it descended into the shadows. The orange-yellow edge glowed silvery white. A beautiful young woman with icy hair blown back by a secret breeze sat on the luminous crescent. She looked up at Raih with a comforting smile on her porcelain face.

  “Poor child,” the lady said, “You swim in such suffering. Can’t you see the shore?”

  Raih recognized all the words she said, but they meant nothing to her. Their tone carried their concern, but what shore? Darkness stretched out around her. Nothing more. She didn’t know how to respond to such nonsense.

  “Your features are too fine to carry so much disdain.” The Lady said. “I wish I could help you, dearest, but I have no power here. How many times I have looked down from my father’s palace and felt your grief. I’ve guided you to help and safety many times only to have you reject it and run away. That is why I sent Maran Sar to find you.”

  Did she mean Ema? Raih had never heard her referred to as Maran before. That title was usually reserved for temple priests.

  “She has guided you well, hasn’t she?” the Lady asked.

  Raih nodded, but wasn’t sure if she had a head anymore. “Yes.” She said, her voice echoing in a way the Lady’s didn’t. “Who are you?”

  “Marama.”

  The name was unfamiliar. Ema hadn’t mentioned her once.

  “I prefer Shinojoo.” Another voice said. A naked woman with long flowing hair stepped out from behind the moon. She was ghostly white. Her face was a skull.

  “Your friend keeps asking me not to take you,” Shinojoo said like she was seducing a lover, “But you aren’t in my hands. And this sweet moon maiden can’t save you either. I just had to see what all the fuss was about.” Even though she didn’t have lips, Raih was sure she smirked at her. “Poor little girl, lost and found. Whatever will become of you?”

  “Leave her alone, Shi!” Marama stood up.

  “Why? So she can play with her kitty cat,” the specter laughed. “I never take what isn’t mine.”

  “I belong to no one.” Raih said.

  Shi laughed.

  Marama shook her head, “We all belong to someone or something, dearest.”

  “Oh, the sweet poison of youth.” Shi said. “A king belongs to their throne, a mechanic to the garage. Even dragons belong to the fire. In the end, everything belongs to me.”

  “For a time.” Marama said to the wraith.

  Raih watched the two spirits circle each other. She wondered if they were about to fight, or maybe embrace. They had a strange, playful seriousness about them. All she wanted was for them to go away, for her to wake up, and for some clarity about what was going on.

  Her vision burdened her. If she had eyes, she wouldn’t be able to keep them open, but the vision persisted, draining her further.

  Round and round, they circled until all Raih could make out were two points of light chasing each other’s tails.

  Raih wondered how long she spent in the darkness. The difference between hours, days, weeks blurred beyond recognition. Once the world returned to its pitch black, time lost all meaning. The more she contemplated her situation, she wondered if only moments passed since she blacked out. This dream trapped her. She talked to a moon maiden and sister death. They weren’t real. They were just stories her parents told her so she would behave as a child.

  The surrounding darkness expanded and contracted like it breathed. She hoped that was a sign she would wake up soon. She never wanted to wake up during a dream before. In fact, she couldn’t recall ever thinking this much in one either, but if this wasn’t a dream...

  Sathi trapped her here. The last thing she remembered was Sathi’s cold eyes boring into her. She lurked in the shadows somewhere. Where was this? Had the beast knocked her out and taken her captive? If so, why hadn’t the teachers stepped in to save her?

  Maybe they hovered around her in the real world, powerless to save her. All her life she was someone’s problem to deal with. What if this time they had better things to do than help someone like her?

  It fit the pattern of her life. So this is where she would die. Alone and forgotten in the dark.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” The echoing chorus said.

  “Sathi?” Raih said, as chains constricted around her chest, arms, and legs.

  She hung from an unseen ceiling by the icy metal.

  Sathi sat across from her on the dark floor in the heap of rags she remembered from their first encounter. She nodded her head.

  “Why did you bring me here?” Raih asked.

  “I only followed you. I watched as Sister Moon and Sister Death greeted you before dancing away.”

  “You were here the whole time?”

  Sathi nodded.

  “Let me go.”

  “I cannot.” Genuine sorrow filled her voice.

  “Why not?” Raih pulled against the chains.

  “I did not bring you here. I cannot set you free.”

  If Sathi hadn’t brought her into the dark place, who had?

  She considered Jodhaa, and the three strangers. They were students like her, and surely they didn’t have the power or the knowledge to trap her like this. Gher was a stranger, but he went out of his way to impress them with his generosity. This wouldn’t serve whatever his purpose was. She wasn’t close enough to Jodhaa to make a valuable hostage.

  Who would or could contain her in this endless black void?

  Her mind blanked. She didn’t know enough people to have enemies. Isolatio
n had the benefit of not ruffling feathers.

  Sathi sat in front of her like a monk praying at a shrine. The first time they met, she attacked without provocation. They had sat facing each other, then she erupted into the gray lion and attacked...

  Why? What made her attack?

  Raih looked down at Sathi. “Why did you attack me in the cave?”

  “Attack you?” Sathi looked up so her glowing eyes met Raih’s. “I would never attack you. You were so scared. You wanted a weapon, so I became a weapon. You ran. I followed. I wanted to pick you up and take you away from here, but that other one blocked the passage. I was so scared. I couldn’t get to you. I roared and tore at the wall until my paws were bloody.” Sathi threw her sleeves back. Her hands were bloody and scabbed, with several fingernails missing.

  Raih lost her words. Sathi had to be lying. They were attacked. They ran. Then Sathi showed up again, and she ended up here...

  Her invitation to the Academy said she was a Shokanshi, an evoking warrior...

  “Sathi, did I evoke you?”

  “Yes, when you looked into the mirror pool.”

  Sathi was the thing moving in the water...

  “I- I didn’t know.” Raih lost her spirit.

  Again, she caused her own troubles.

  The chains tighten around her chest.

  Nothing good had ever happened to her. No one had ever had her best interest at heart. Then she evoked a spirit that could think of nothing else, and she believed it would destroy her. Why?

  Had she become so broken that any offer of help threatened her? At first sight, she assumed Sathi was dangerous. She didn’t give her an opportunity to prove herself. Fear mastered her, controlling everything she did.

  For the first time, she really looked into Sathi’s eyes. They were filled with tears. They were her eyes. How hadn’t she noticed that the only difference between their faces where the cut-like stripes on Sathi’s cheeks and running down her forehead?

  What else had she blinded herself to? Had she been wrong about everything? If she could convince herself that her own face belonged to a stranger, then how could she trust anything she ever thought or believed.

  Tears filled her eyes, burning and blurring her vision.

  This wasn’t a dream. Every heaven and hell lived within her waiting for their opportunity to enter the world. She refused to let them out, so they pulled her in.

  She trapped herself in this dark hell. Her fears and doubts formed every link in the chain. She was the force holding herself back. How had she hidden her emotions from herself? She hated her parents for dying in that squall breach. Deep down, she blamed them for leaving her alone, and she hated herself for not saving them or dying herself. Their loss and the indifferent world that took them became a shield keeping her from engaging in her life.

  Her uncle spent all of his time working to provide for them. Her aunt tried to open her eyes to the wonder of the world and let go of the pain she protected more than her own life. Her grandparents didn’t cry because she looked like her mother, but because she kept bringing up their death to excuse her behavior.

  She wasn’t a jinx. She was a slave to one moment she wouldn’t let recede. If she moved on, she thought it would betray her parents memory. It wouldn’t. It would honor their life. Punishing herself for events beyond her control served no purpose.

  The chains broke.

  Raih collapsed on the hard ground and cried.

  She felt Sathi wrap her arms around her.

  Sobbing harder than she ever had, the reality of all she had lost echoed through her. Not only lost, she pushed so many people and opportunities away so she could hold onto her grief. It was the only real companion she had ever had.

  Ema had found a way into her heart despite all her best efforts, and she thought she had made a new friend in Jodhaa.

  From now one, she would drive herself to embrace whatever life brought her way. To do anything else would betray not only the memory of her parents, but her own life.

  She wailed at the darkness and held onto Sathi’s hand. The darkness broke.

  Opening her eyes, the lamplight filled the small room with a warm orange glow. A small, furry creature sat on her chest nuzzling against her cheek purring. It wasn’t Min Min. It looked like a white tiger cub.

  “Sathi?” She whispered.

  The cub pressed even harder into her tear stained cheek.

  She smiled.

  Min Min circled above her bed singing a soothing song.

  Jodhaa sat in a chair next to her bed praying.

  “You’re here.” Raih asked, her voice cracking.

  Jodhaa started and looked up. “Raih? Are you all right?”

  Raih felt fresh tears in her eyes. “I will be.”

  Someone stood up in the corner of the room.

  Raih recognized him as Master Sosin from the dais when she arrived.

  "You are a stubborn one," He smiled. "I have never seen a Pakhet manifest as a tiger before."

  Raih instinctively petted the white tiger cub. "What happened?"

  "When you entered the labyrinth, you should have seen a reflecting pool. In it, your familiar spirit took its first form."

  Raih remembered the eyes and teeth she saw under the water. "You called her a Pakhet."

  "Yes, a Pakhet is a protective spirit." Sosin sat at the foot of the bed. "You must have been terrified. They are not uncommon for a first summon, but they usually take the form of a lion. It is exceedingly rare for them to be any other cat."

  "She was trying to protect me."

  Sathi hadn't attacked her in the cave. She wanted to carry her away from what she feared.

  "She reacted out of pure instinct." Sosin said. "All summoners are born with a twin spirit, but the twin slumbers until called or needed. In effect, they are born when they manifest in our world. You left the reflecting pool before she formed."

  Raih ran through her time in the labyrinth. "I left the pool before I got what I wanted." She stood in her own way. Her fear drove her away from the mystical experience she wanted more than anything.

  Sathi purred.

  "Don't worry," Master Sosin said. "In time you will do amazing things together."

  "Why isn't she a lion? Did I do something wrong?"

  "No. Tigers carry the spirits of our ancestors and are fierce protectors. They are mediator spirits. I can see why your name was carved so deep in your stone."

  Raih wanted to ask about the ritual that brought her here, but she was too tired. She looked at the stripes on Sathi's face and named them for her mother, father, and grandparents.

  "Rest up," Master Sosin said standing up, "Your lessons will begin soon."

  Letter to the Reader

  Hello,

  My name is Charlie, and I wrote this novella. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to read my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  I would love to discuss the book with you. You can contact me on:

  Twitter: @cedorsett

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ashdancer/

  You can also visit: https://www.ashdancer.com where I post more about the setting and other projects in this setting.

  Raih and Jodhaa will return soon in the continuation of this story. If you join the facebook group, share your voice to the future of the setting.

  Thank you again for you time and interest. My work means nothing without you.

  Charlie