Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 39

~39~

Three hours before the destruction of Eldan City

Ryse pulled gloves of wool and leather over her hands.

Walls built from bleached, split wood stood around her like the bones of a starving cow. A roof of sticks and old thatch and cold mud dripped rainwater onto her head. A fire crackled in a small pit before her.

It was the 19th of Leafmonth 7983. She was dressing in the slums of Eldan City.

And once again, she was going to return to the Temple of Eldan.

She shivered. She didn't want to make that journey. Not after all that had happened.

But she would. Because in spite of everything, the world was still worth saving.

24 Stormonth, 7959

My name is Syamie. I was taken by the man called Aegelden Elpioni in the White Forest on 3 Leafmonth 7959. He brought me to the place they call Bymarsh, and there a council of men dressed in white sent me south, through oceans of grass to a city of stone and three hills called Eldan. There I was taken in chains before the man named Reth, whom they call Yenor's Highest...

Ryse's mother's journal lay at the bottom of one of the backpacks, tucked carefully between blankets and spare clothes. Its black covers had grown more tattered and worn since Ren had handed it to her. Its pages of crisp, gentle writing were more pored over and cried over and beloved.

Its words rarely left her mind.

Ren leaned against the wall next to the dozen planks of wood he'd set up as a door to their little hovel. Three bedrolls sat beside him. So did three beat-up backpacks. In case something went wrong. In case they had to run.

The gloves warmed Ryse's hands. She flexed her fingers, wiggled her toes. Her stomach growled. That was new—a development of the last week or so and another sign that her health was returning, like the hair on her head and her legs and her armpits, or the patches of dry, cracked skin that were decreasing daily in size, or the muscles that felt stronger and more limber.

Again and again she saw the horrors that Aegelden Elpioni had inflicted upon her mother, her brothers, and her. The journal, the only link she had to her mother beyond a few scattered memories, had become sacred to her, and its words had hollowed an awful pit in the dark places of her soul.

But the world was in danger. She had sworn to protect it.

So she would make Aegelden Elpioni listen to her.

3 Darkmonth 7959

...Aegelden treats me kindly. He feeds me fruits and soft cheeses, offers rich wines and sits near me and asks me to tell him of my home. He frowns when I inform him that the others mistreat me, when I show him the bruises and the cuts. He says he will make it stop, but there is a coldness behind his eyes and I do not believe him.

The wind of early autumn whistled through the planks of Ren's door. Her brother stood motionlessly, a black-haired ghost with bright blue eyes and a Twelfthman's robe, somehow older and younger than her at the same time. He'd spoken little of the life he'd led before pulling Ryse from the dungeons of Division Four. Most of what she knew of him she'd learned from Jen; he was nineteen, and he'd been a captain in Division Twelve since fifteen. Aegelden had been grooming him for something, but Ren hadn't told either her or Jen what.

Ryse's scarred lips trembled—they did that now, sometimes for minutes at a time, until her heart glowed with anger and she felt ready to tear the world apart for what it had done to her.

Not the world, she reminded herself. People. The world is still worth saving.

At Ryse's feet, Jen Ryddych sat hugging her knees. She wore a brown robe, and its folds and her dark hair mingled indiscriminately on her back. She stared motionlessly into the depths of the fire.

She had refused to go back to the Temple.

Ryse's lips trembled again. Jen hadn't had anything to say about Ryse's brother Tomenar. But Ren had. A monster, he'd called him.

It had been Tomenar who'd come to her cell with Aegelden in the darkness and scarred her face.

17 Darkmonth 7959

...I told Aegelden today of the half breeds, and something changed in him. He grew quiet. His eyes flashed, and for a moment he was silent. I changed the subject of our conversation several times, but always he returned to the half breeds. I can see the beginnings of some plan forming in his mind.

I am afraid that I have made a terrible mistake.

Jen's white robe—the robe of a Temple soulweaver—lay folded at Ryse's feet. She put it on for what she expected to be the last time.

"Be careful, Ryse," Jen whispered. She was sitting with her back to Ryse and Ren and her head half-turned toward the door. The firelight danced on her skin. Her fingers clenched and unclenched over the rough wool of her robe.

Ryse swallowed. Her hands shook.

She wasn't sure what would happen when she and Ren returned to the Temple. Ren had been watching it for weeks, had seen Aegelden return from Menatar. But she didn't know whether he would be alone, whether they'd have to fight him, whether they'd even be able to reach him.

And she wasn't sure, when she did reach him, whether she would be able to look past what he'd done.

23 Darkmonth 7959

...they have taken everything. They came in the night, both of them—Aegelden first and then Reth and then Aegelden again. They have killed me, and they promise to do the same again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. They want offspring. They want half breeds.

I am lost, alone. I hurt. I cry. I shiver and shake and flinch at the smallest noises in the dark, and there is nothing here to comfort me. I cannot speak, cannot weave, cannot hold the pen without shaking. Yenor help me, I cannot even feel.

Vengeance called to her—a deep, dark yearning from the bleakest places in her soul. If confronted with the opportunity to take it, she wasn't sure what she would do.

She left Jen by the fire. Ren's door fell from its makeshift bindings at her touch, and her brother followed her into the slums and an autumn night. Ice-rimed mud crunched beneath her feet. A filth-spattered, fetid warren of tents and hovels and seething, miserable humanity stretched before her. A warren she'd grown up in, seen too much in.

A wasteland she was going to try to save.

As she and Ren strodeinto the city, the moon rose, but what light there was seemed small andinsignificant.