Soulwoven

Chapter Fourteen

~14~

Litnig Jin’s heart felt sore and nauseous.

A round, tiered city squatted a few miles ahead of him like a spider in the dust. Beneath his feet, a red road slipped toward its creeping outbuildings inch by inch. The wind licked his scalp. Two rivers, one to the north and one to the northwest, winked orange and gold in the sinking sun as they fed into the metropolis and merged.

He stood close enough to Ryse that he could hear her breathing. In. Out. In. She was almost near enough that he could feel the heat of her body, the sweat that soaked her robe—

Joy. Curiosity. Joy.

Joy.

The treesoul buzzed over his head, and he swatted it away like he would a horsefly. He had gotten used to the thing’s telepathy over the week since he’d crossed into Nutharion, but he had not gotten used to the soul itself. Ryse told him he could see it because it had been coated in thousands of others, that it was a self-sustaining weave of incredible complexity. When she spoke of it, she used the same tone of voice she had once employed to lecture him about the slums.

He did not trust it. Nor the ancient, tree-bound soulweaver who had given it to her.

Try as he might, Litnig couldn’t forget the emotions on Ryse’s face as she’d communed with the tree—Concentration. Surprise. Consternation. And then, momentarily, shy, creeping embarrassment. She had blushed.

Ryse had never once in her life blushed for him.

He didn’t think of himself as a jealous person, but with her—with her he found it difficult not to be.

Think of other things, he told himself.

The city ahead of him was unlike any he’d seen before. It looked like one coherent piece of construction, its buildings linked to each other and built layer upon layer upon layer, getting higher toward the center until a slim tower, taller by half than any he’d seen in his life, shot from the middle of it like a baton.

Nutharion City, he thought. Centerpiece of the powerful, soulweaver-ruled mageocracy to the west of Eldan. Focus of a thousand nasty rumors that his father had always told him smelled of lies.

He inhaled deeply through his nose. They were upwind of the city, and the air smelled of green grasses and growing corn and the smallness of the rural world. He could still hear the songs of crickets in the fields beside the road.

He wondered how long that would last.

#

It was not long. A few hours later, Litnig stood inside the quiet shadow of the spider-city, tilting his chin to look up at it. The main road plunged ahead of him into a deeply shaded corridor beneath a flat layer of stone and mortar. Dozens of squat buildings supported the manmade plate, and on top of it yet more of them grasped like dirty fingers for the sky. Closer to the center of the city, he could see another plate built on top of them, and above and further in he saw more buildings and more plates; pillars glittering in the dying light; greenness that spoke of gardens and parks.

“There are seven plates,” grunted Len Heramsun’s voice below him. The Aleani had craned his head back the same as Litnig’s. “And the city grows more expensive and more high-class as you rise.” He was frowning, and after a moment he gestured to the darkness beneath the lowest plate.

“Come,” he said. “We belong in the shadowlevel.”

Litnig shared a glance with his brother as the Aleani stumped into the dusk beneath the city. Len claimed to have been to Nutharion City dozens of times, but Litnig couldn’t bring himself to trust him. Neither could Ryse or Cole. The three of them had talked in whispers the night before about who would watch the Aleani while they were in the city. Litnig had eventually drawn the duty.