Forest of Souls

by Lori M. Lee

  “What if I took her away from the Dead Wood? Somewhere far.”

  He shakes his head. His hands are clasped behind his back. Although he wears an unassuming gray tunic and robes, his presence commands the room. “It’s no use. Once the disease has taken root, distance makes no difference.”

  I want to rage and scream and cry. But Saengo sits quiet and pale, as if frozen with shock, so instead I ask, “Then what can a light stitcher do for her?”

  A light stitcher is a lightwender who can summon light and heal wounds and illnesses. Some years ago, Saengo and I jokingly made a list of ailments we wondered if a stitcher could cure: warts, laziness, incontinence, and acute idiocy.

  But even the greatest shaman healers have been unable to cure the rot. I pause beside the table. Our breakfast has been cleared away, leaving only a bowl filled with clusters of longan. At a festival last year, we’d bought a bucket of the small, round fruit and hidden ourselves on a rooftop overlooking a street choked with revelers. When Jonyah and his friends passed beneath our roof, we flung the seeds at his head and then laughed at his confusion.

  My eyes squeeze shut against the stinging sensation behind my lids.

  “The healer isn’t a light stitcher. She’s a shadowblessed. Hlau Theyen sent for his own personal healer. She’ll be here by tonight.”

  I turn to frown at Ronin. “Tonight?”

  The sooner, the better, of course, but how can a shadow-blessed travel from Kazahyn to Spinner’s End in half a day? That shouldn’t be possible unless she meant to arrive by wyvern. I’d read about how the Kazan rode wyverns into battle against the shamans in wars past. That the Kazan have found a way to coexist with such fearsome creatures, one of Thiy’s deadliest predators and the inspiration behind many a story, is truly a marvel.

  “Yes,” Ronin says, without explanation.

  “If I die,” Saengo says abruptly, “will Sirscha lose her magic forever?”

  My fingers dig into my thighs. “You’re not dying.”

  Her voice is soft but insistent. “But if I do—”

  “But you won’t.”

  “No,” Ronin says, interrupting us. “Shamans who lose their familiar need only bond with a new one. Don’t think on that now. Given how resilient you’ve been and the early stage of the disease, you should be in no immediate danger. Phaut will alert you when the healer arrives tonight.”

  Phaut opens the door for him. She gives us both a troubled look and then follows him into the hall.

  “I’d wondered about the rot,” Saengo says. “But it hadn’t felt real. Not until now.”

  I press my fist to my stomach, against the knot there that makes me wish for my swords. It’s a stupid impulse. The rot isn’t something I can fight.

  Or can I? The rot is a sickness of the soul. If I can supposedly shepherd souls back to the living, maybe I could heal one.

  “I want to try something.” I kneel in front of her. My gown gathers around me in golden layers.

  She doesn’t react when I take her hands in mine. Unfortunately, I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing. I can’t even summon my craft yet. But if there’s the slightest chance I can heal her, I have to try.

  I close my eyes and recall that searing heat at the moment my craft awakened—but I twitch my head, discarding the memory as the pain of that night floods my senses. I can’t yet bring myself to examine the details of Saengo’s death, a moment dipped in bronze, immortalized in my thoughts.

  Instead, I return to the Dead Wood, when the trees closed around us and I thought our deaths imminent. I squeeze my eyes tighter, searching for that spark of magic and the memory of those twinkling orbs. Everything goes silent, as if even the flames crackling in the fireplace are waiting for …

  Nothing. Nothing happens.

  I dampen my dry lips. Saengo’s despair swells through me. Flecks of heat dance beneath my skin, but I can’t hold on to them. All I can feel is the inevitability of failure, again and again and again.

  With a hiss, I release her hands and lurch to my feet. Covering my face, I resume pacing. An apology lodges in my throat.

  “It was worth a try.” Saengo draws a deep breath that seems to straighten her spine, despite the weight of it all trying to pull her back down. “What else can we do?”

  Her words give me strength. Neither of us are giving up. I turn to face her, my gown sweeping around me. “Like I said yesterday, we have to tear it out by its roots. We stop the infection at its source.”

  Her lips twist to one side. “What does that mean? You’re going to destroy the entire Dead Wood?”

  My hands fist around the spidersilk. “Yes. It’s infecting you. As long as it exists, you’re at risk.”

  Her gaze slides away from mine. She’s skeptical, and I don’t blame her. It’s an outrageous declaration. Fear, guilt, self-doubt—all these things eat at my resolve. But I push them away.

  “I’ll learn how to free the souls in the Dead Wood. Once that’s done and you’re healed, we’ll get a pardon from the queen. Then you’ll be able to do whatever you want. You can go back to the Company or travel the kingdom or go home and be with your family. I’ll make sure to come see you every few weeks to renew our bond. Other than that, you can live your life however you choose.”

  Saengo’s eyes soften. She stands and pulls me into a hug. “You’re going to make the finest Shadow Evewyn has ever known. Kendara would be a fool not to have you, and we both know she’s no fool. But if that isn’t what you want anymore, then I expect you to come back to me. We’ll travel Evewyn first and then the world.”

  I hug her back. Through the vise squeezing my throat, I whisper, “It’s a promise.”

  FOURTEEN

  It takes less coaxing than I anticipated to convince Phaut that I need to venture into the Dead Wood. Ronin never forbade me from going in there, so although she’s wary, her curiosity over my craft wins out.

  Ronin won’t be happy about my decision to destroy the trees rather than control them, but he doesn’t need to know. Not just yet. And maybe Thiy shouldn’t need the Dead Wood anyway. Maybe what Thiy needs isn’t a wall to divide its peoples but a bridge.

  But the first step is to learn how to summon my craft. Theyen said only genuine danger might invoke my magic, and the most dangerous things here are the trees.

  Phaut and I garner quite the attention passing through the gate. Servants stare and the soldiers watch, perplexed, but nobody stops us for questioning. I’ll bet this is the first time they’ve seen anyone willingly step out of the gates without Ronin. They don’t even know how they should react.

  Saengo waits in the courtyard, practicing her archery. She wanted a more physical means of exorcising her anxiety. We have that in common. With Ronin’s permission, the soldiers have set up a wooden dummy for her. She’s already loosed arrows into the dummy’s head and chest by the time I even step past the troll-bone palisade.

  As we reach the white drapes, it takes every bit of courage I possess to lift aside the veil and keep walking. The first gnarled tree stands less than ten paces away. Its branches press against Ronin’s webbing, which snares around its knots and angles.

  My breaths quicken. I reach for my swords.

  “I’ll be right here,” Phaut says softly, as if afraid to draw the attention of the trees.

  My fingers flex around the hilts of my swords. I take several deep breaths as I recall the sting of Kendara’s stick against my legs, raising welts. One strike for every flinch, every wince. One strike for every time my face gave away a moment’s pain or indecision. She repeated the lesson for weeks until my legs were bruised and swollen, until I could end a fight without betraying a single emotion.

  When my heart has calmed, I take a purposeful step into the trees. Then another. I count my paces, but I don’t get far before the trees rustle. My skin prickles with rising fear. I stop twenty-five paces into the Dead Wood. I can still glimpse the white veil of Spinner’s End. Swords at my sides, I wait.

 
The awareness of something ancient and angry stirs around me. I suddenly realize why the presence in the garden maze felt familiar—it had felt a little like this. Whatever’s back there is tied somehow to the Dead Wood, although I’ve no idea how that’s possible, unless the gardens are closer to the trees than I thought. But then what about the creature I’d heard scuttling over the cobblestones?

  Now is no time to let my thoughts wander. Although I know what to expect, the sight of faces surfacing from within the decaying trunks still spills ice down my spine. Knobby, fractured fingers press outward, stretching gray-green bark that flakes off like dead skin. The burls of their eyes squint and weep sticky sap.

  My hands shake. I grip my swords so hard that my fingers go numb. To keep my legs in motion, I turn in a slow circle. That warmth of magic sparks in my chest. I try to focus on it, but my breaths come faster and my heartbeat resounds in my ears.

  Their mouths stretch wide, but there’s nothing inside except the aged whorls and rivets of the bark. My attention snags on those lips formed of wood and rot. They’re moving in sync, and I realize with a sinking dread that they’re all mouthing the same thing. A single word, again and again: Run.

  My breath sticks in my throat, and I nearly do just that. But through the haze of fear, my instincts latch onto a single thought, which keeps me in place—can the spirits talk?

  The roots behind me lift. I whirl to face them, watching as they shake off a crust of earth. Dirt scatters across my boots.

  Pulse racing, I ask through clenched teeth, “Why are you telling me to run?”

  If the spirits can somehow communicate with me, then they can tell me what’s keeping them tethered here.

  But there’s no answer as the faces retreat and the trees shamble closer. A single tentacle-like appendage snags my foot. I slash at it. It recoils, thrashing like a snake.

  Something stains my blade. At first, I think it’s sap. It laces the roots and clings in viscous strings to the branches over my head. Another root snares my leg as something sharp rakes down my back. My swords blur through the air as I cut myself free. The branch drops at my feet, something wet and viscid sliding from its fingerlike ends.

  More branches snatch at my hair. All thoughts of trying to communicate vanish. I can’t focus. I can’t think or see anything but those horrible eyes, clammy fingers, and ragged nails shredding at me, mouths screaming as the roots crawl from their throats and rip their faces in two. My swords move purely on reflex, because my mind is paralyzed with terror, screaming at me to obey the trees and run.

  Something like a hoarse rasp disrupts the trees’ wails. I seek out the sound, which seems to have come from a thick trunk, misshapen like the rest but unusually swollen. The molding wood leaks black sap, as if bloated or waterlogged. Bark fractures and then peels away as the tree buckles. Something reaches out from within.

  Like my nightmares made real, blackened, shriveled arms elbow away the dead bark as the creature hauls itself from the recesses of the tree. What was once a head strains next through the gap, followed by a collapsed torso, ribs protruding at all angles.

  Sisters, protect me, I think with a terror that pins me in place and crushes my lungs. As the creature’s wrecked hands touch the ground, clumps of hair fall from its shoulders. The hair is white.

  This creature—and the slime that coats the trees—is what’s left of my shadowblessed assassin.

  He is a ruin of bone and gristle. Even as his body drops to the ground with a wet thud, he is clearly still a part of the Dead Wood. What remains of his skin and muscles stretches from his raw skull and shoulders to the tree’s innards in fleshy strips like gruesome puppet strings. His face is gone, the pit of his mouth the only indication of something once human.

  The stump of his torso ends abruptly, the tail of his spine enveloped in thick gray vines. As his fingers dig into the earth and his broken body slides toward me, I release a horrified cry and slash my swords at his limbs. Blood gone black and thick spills onto the dirt. His throat makes a croaking sound as the tree tries to reel him back, pulling the strings taut. He flops like a caught fish, and I can’t bear it a moment longer.

  I kick viciously at a root and run, almost tripping as another root shoots into my path. My swords flash at even the slightest movement as I dart through the trees that contort and quake. My breaths are thin and uneven, my lungs refusing to function. His hatred gropes at my retreating back as the souls howl at my intrusion.

  Bursting from the woods, I slam straight into Phaut.

  “Whoa, whoa!” She grabs my shoulders.

  I shove past her, unable to think or breathe until the white veil closes behind us and the path returns beneath our feet.

  I angle my face away from the guards who watch us with renewed curiosity. My cheeks burn with shame, and my chest heaves with each breath. Saengo calls my name, but I’m shaking so hard I can barely focus on anything except putting one foot in front of the other. I don’t even remember walking through the castle, but suddenly I’m in front of my door, and all I want is a scalding bath to scrub away the feel of those dead branches and the shadowblessed’s remains.

  I push inside, slamming the door shut behind me. Phaut’s hand shoots out, catching it.

  “May I come in?” she asks.

  A refusal catches in my throat. It was kind of her to go out there with me when she could have said no. I’m pretty sure her orders to remain at my side at all times exclude my stupid impulses to go into the Dead Wood. I gesture for her to enter. Nodding in thanks, she slips inside a moment before Saengo appears at the threshold as well, breathless from running. Saengo’s guard hovers behind her in the hallway.

  “What happened?” Saengo shuts the door with more care than I had.

  Phaut stands awkwardly in the middle of the sitting room. “It didn’t go very well.”

  I fling my swords onto the sofa. “Must you gloat about it?”

  “It’s not gloating if I’m stating a fact. Still,” Phaut says, voice softening, “it took great courage for you to even step foot into the Dead Wood. And you remained there for longer than I had expected.”

  I slump onto the sofa and begin yanking my boots off. “I don’t need your flattery.”

  Phaut’s brows dip and the lines around her mouth go taut. With a curt bow, she turns to leave.

  I wince, feeling like an ass even without the weight of Saengo’s glare. “Wait.”

  Phaut pauses with her fingers on the doorknob. I rub my hands over my face and then down my braid before tugging angrily at the ends. I glare at my trembling arms, unnerved by how rattled I am. It will be a long while before I’m able to silence the memory of that shadowblessed hauling his mutilated body out of the tree.

  “I’m sorry for snapping at you. I just …” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Something … someone was … it was fresh. It came out. It was … terrible.” I know my words make little sense, but Phaut seems to understand because her eyes go wide.

  “There was someone new in the trees?” she asks, surprised.

  “I think so,” I say carefully.

  Saengo stiffens and then goes very still.

  Phaut looks uncomfortable as she rubs her thumb over the pommel of her sword. “I suppose that explains why no one’s been able to find Kamryne today. Poor fool.”

  I look away, rubbing my arm. “A member of the staff?”

  “A squire, actually. He’s been with us for over a year, so he should have known well enough to stay away from the trees. I don’t think this has ever happened before. Lord Ronin will want to know as soon as possible.”

  So my attacker was a castle servant, and an old one at that. Curious. If staff members or soldiers have wound up in the trees in the past, Ronin wouldn’t very well spread the knowledge. It would set a deadly precedent—that Spinner’s End isn’t safe even with Ronin here.

  “I regret that you had to experience that,” Phaut continues. “Those taken by the trees become … well, I needn’t explain it to you. The tr
ees devour the bodies over time, and it’s only because he was newly taken that he wasn’t yet … fully absorbed. Their souls remain trapped as well. The older the soul, the more a part of the Dead Wood they become until they are no more than wood, rot, and rage.”

  I shudder. The shadowblessed, Kamryne, is beyond any help save what my craft could provide, and instead of standing my ground and calling my magic, I let fear consume me. “I shouldn’t have run.”

  “I admit I was prepared to dislike you when you first arrived. In my experience, lightwenders can’t always be trusted to handle something as sacred as the source of another shaman’s life and magic. But you’re much braver and tougher than I expected. And you fight as fiercely as any Nuvali sun warrior.”

  I angle her a curious look. “Thanks?”

  “Come on.” Saengo holds out her hand. “You can help me stab things with sharp objects. That always makes me feel better.”

  The sun has set by the time Theyen’s healer arrives. To my annoyance, the healer insists on working with Saengo alone.

  Phaut sits with me in the waiting room. She drapes her long, lean body over the sofa and pokes at the pile of books resting on the end table.

  Since Saengo has been through enough today, I didn’t tell her my suspicions about who might have sent that assassin after me. It makes me uneasy having to trust Theyen’s own healer to care for her, but the woman had seemed genuinely concerned with Saengo’s condition. It’s the only reason I’d relented and left them alone, Ronin’s orders or not.

  If that shadowblessed assassin was working for Theyen, it begs the question of how my death would benefit him specifically. Saengo said that a soulguide would be significant for the shamans. Maybe Theyen thinks that if I’m killed by a shadowblessed, it would infuriate the Empire enough to nullify his engagement.

  But it could also lead to war. Would Theyen really go that far?

  While Phaut pages through a book about the mythologies of the Nuvalyn Empire’s western provinces, the ones that border the Dead Wood, I open a compendium of the Shamanic Callings. I flip past the first four: fire, water, earth, and wind. I’ll read them more thoroughly later. Right now, my interest is in the Calling of Light.