Soulwoven

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Cole nodded. “That was Ryse. She melted the wall and pulled you out of it, but when we got down there you were just—” his voice broke. His eyes watered, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Just lying in her arms, and her eyes were white and her hands were shaking and there were tears in her eyes and she was screaming.”

Litnig took long, slow breaths.

“You were dead, Lit. Dead weight in my arms. Not breathing, not moving, no pulse. And that—that thrice-damned necromancer, bleeding like a stuck pig, he ripped you out of her arms, started pushing on your chest and ordering us around like he knew anything about you. Like he cared.” Bright tears hung from Cole’s eyes.

Litnig felt very, very tired. His head was hot. His limbs were heavy.

“Necromancer?” he whispered.

Cole wiped his eyes with the back of a sleeve. “Not the one you fought. The other one. Ryse knows him. Or knew him. I don’t know the details, and I don’t care.”

Litnig closed his eyes. Ryse. Ryse and a necromancer—

“We’re getting out of here, Lit.”

Cole’s voice was strained, and Litnig opened his eyes and saw his brother as he hadn’t seen him since they were kids. Cole was rocking back and forth on the edge of his seat and wringing his hands. His face was red. His eyes were wet.

“I told Quay to go screw himself. Told him I was taking you home, and Dil, too. Told him we’d got him this far and he could go the rest of the way on his own, because I wasn’t going to lose you, or her, or anyb—”

Litnig shook his head.

Cole swallowed hard, and the pain, the hurt, the betrayal in his eyes seared Litnig’s heart like coalfire.

“You too?” Cole whispered. His eyes closed. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

Litnig focused on breathing, on staying awake, on trying to clear his head so that he could talk to his brother.

“I wish—” he rasped. Cole would need to hear that. “I wish I could.”

Cole’s eyes opened again. “Then just—”

Litnig shook his head, and Cole trailed off.

The sun shone bright and gentle beyond the room. The air felt cool and pleasant on Litnig’s face. The sheets were soft, the mattress welcoming, the pillows fluffed.

Litnig’s heart pattered fearfully nonetheless.

Once he spoke, there would be no turning back. Once he let it out, his secret would grow legs and become real. Even if Cole told no one about the dream, the others would see the change in him, see his wonder and his fear, and they would ask themselves where it had come from.

A gentle breeze whisked across the stones in the hallway.

“Cole,” Litnig whispered, “I’ve been dreaming.”

Cole blinked and wiped his eyes clear, and Litnig saw the So what? on his face plain as the descending sun.

So he closed his eyes and kept talking.

“There’s a disc, and three pillars, and these things made out of light…”

Twenty minutes later, Litnig was sitting up and nibbling on a piece of potato bread while Cole stared at the stained-glass windows with his thinking face on.

“And you think,” Cole started to say, “you think—”

“I don’t think anything,” Litnig grunted around the bread. A tray with bread, milk, and a bowl of barley and bacon soup on it sat on a table near his bed. He’d had some of the soup and some of the milk, and they felt thick and pleasant in his stomach. His throat hurt a little less. “I just—”

Footsteps resonated in the hallway, and Litnig shut his mouth.

Ryse was walking toward him. Her hair flashed red-gold in the spotted sun. Her robe had been mended.

She looked strong again, and for that, if nothing else, Litnig was happy.

She was a half-step ahead of Quay and a tall, skinny young man robed in black. The robed man’s head was shaved. His face was hard and angular. His eyes glittered deep and intelligent.

The necromancer—Litnig thought, but by then they had reached his bed.

Ryse kissed her fingers and pressed them to his forehead. “How do you feel?” she asked.

Her voice was warm and welcoming, but there was a strained tenor to it, like she was seething about something and trying not to let it show. Like she was trying to act normal for his benefit..

To him, that felt even more wrong than having a necromancer at the foot of his bed.

“Okay,” he rasped, and she tousled his hair and smiled the smile he loved more than he should have. The knot in his stomach dissolved into pleasant warmth. The sun caught her hair and lit it on fire. He felt warm, and cared for, and happy—

—and then Quay said, “This is Leramis Hentworth. He and Ryse saved your life.”

It was like someone had turned off the sun. The warmth of Ryse’s smile slammed shut in a heartbeat. Her teeth ground together. Litnig saw the acid bubbling in her veins. He read the words she longed to shout but couldn’t because Quay was Prince of Eldan.

They were not kind.

Litnig studied Quay and the necromancer. There was a similarity to the way they held themselves—an unconscious arrogance that set them apart. He disliked it immediately.

The necromancer extended his hand. Litnig took it coldly. He pressed Leramis Hentworth’s fingers and met his eyes and said nothing.

It was Quay who broke the silence.

“Leramis will accompany us when we sail for the White Forest. He has information about those who are breaking the heart dragons. We will bring him to my father, if we can.”

Litnig nearly choked on his own spit. The memory of a snarling face rushed back to him. He coughed sudden and hard, and then Ryse and Cole were rubbing his back.

He looked up at Quay feverishly. “I have information too,” he said. “The necromancer’s name was Soren Goldguard.”

“We know,” the prince said. There were bags under his eyes. His cheeks had a yellow cast to them. “He has three companions. We know their names as well.”

Another bout of coughing wracked Litnig’s body. He lay down against the pillows when it was finished and took a deep, ragged breath.

“There are some things,” Quay said, “that you should know before we move on—”

—and he talked of necromancers and betrayals and strategems, of the whole world being distracted while danger built rapidly in an unscrutinized corner. He spoke of isolation, and conspiracy, and scapegoats, and Litnig tried to listen and take it all in. He tried to understand why the necromancers weren’t to blame, why they weren’t evil, why everything he’d ever known about them was a lie.

But it wouldn’t take in his mind.

He saw only the anger on Ryse’s face and the pain on his brother’s.

And he knew that somehow, things had gone very wrong.

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