Soulwoven

Chapter Forty-Two

~42~

Wilderleng.

Cole Jin watched Dil’s back rise and fall in front of him as she walked, and he remembered the stories his mother had told him about people who were neither human, nor Aleani, nor Sh’ma, but something else entirely. How they had unusual powers. How they lived in hiding and brought bad luck and ill will upon those around them.

And how they had golden eyes that shone in the night.

A drop of rain splashed from his hood onto his nose. It had been pouring for four days straight, ever since the hills of Steel Hall had appeared on the horizon to the north, but the rain hadn’t dampened Cole’s sense of good fortune.

Overall, he and his friends had been very, very lucky. Everyone had been outside when Alain’s cabin had been destroyed except for Ryse, and the fireball had skimmed right over her.

After Cole and Dil had awoken in the grass, the two of them had found the others camped around the burnt-out remains of the cabin, arguing over whether to leave or stay and look for them. When Quay had asked Cole where he and Dil had been, Cole had spun an elaborate lie about chasing the necromancer through the night. When the prince had asked where Alain had gone, Dil had told him that her grandfather had headed for Lurathen.

Cole hadn’t contradicted her.

He stumped muddily through the green, drenched fields of the Windplain, holding one end of the stretcher that Dil and Len had fashioned to carry Ryse. The weather had been mercifully quiet for most of their journey, but as the light had risen that morning, so had the winds. The air was shrieking from west to east with force, whipping the rain into the eyes of anyone foolish enough to look back the way they’d come.

Cole wasn’t looking back. They had almost reached Eldan City. He caught glimpses of the Three Hills every few minutes through the curtains of rain, and he was beginning to make out the shape of the wall around them, too.

He supposed Dil could probably see the whole thing.

If she was what he thought she was, anyway.

Wilderleng.

Cole soon spotted the dark roofs of Thieves’ Rise, clustered behind Temple Hill like forgotten children begging for a handout. He knew of a place in the Rise where a gang of outlaws had dug a tunnel under the wall. A person could sneak into the city there, for a price.

Two months in the past, he’d shared meals, jokes, and time with the outlaws.

But all that seemed impossibly far away.

Dil drifted back to walk next to him as they approached the city. Her fingers dug lightly into his forearm.

He planted a kiss on her head in return. She’d been almost clingy since the cabin, the grass, and the cave, but he supposed he didn’t blame her. Wilderlengs were the bogeymen of Eldan, especially among the westerners. Her life in Lurathen would have been miserable, living with a secret like that—always careful, always hiding, knowing that only behind closed doors could she be herself.

And now her grandfather, who might have been the only person she knew who was like her, was gone.

Cole squinted through the rain at her. She looked sad, drawn, and worried. There was no sign of the golden swirls he’d seen in her eyes at her grandfather’s cabin.

Maybe she isn’t Wilderleng, he thought. Maybe she’s just worried about her grandfather.

But the idea sounded hollow even inside his head.