Soulwoven: Exile

Interlude Three

Interlude Three

Forty-one days before the destruction of Emeth'il

The ghost watches his daughter from the shadows.

She is a vision. A gift. Beautiful and strong, as her mother was at the same age. She has the mind of her grandmother, and a stubborn streak in which he can see himself. She has done things no one in Aleana has ever done before. Traveled farther afield than anyone, perhaps, but him. Certainly no Aleani has ever chronicled events of the kind she is recording in her book. If it survives, if she survives, her name will live forever.

My daughter, he thinks.

He hid in the temple when she arrived. Heard her voice. Thought it was her mother's. His reaction, to flee, was curious to him. He ought to have been happy when she slid into the bowl of the mountain and strode toward the temple in which great things were happening. She is his chance to rejoin the world of the living.

But he is afraid to.

In his first life, the ghost was a creature of failure. And that, in the end, was why he chose to die.

He has run from the possibility of further failure. He has run from his daughter and son and wife, whom he does not want to tell that he wasted thirty years of his life and theirs. He is frightened that his presence might poison the wells of their lives as it did D'Orin's.

So when his daughter appeared before him, he ran away.

Not all the way away. He could not bring himself to do that. He camps on the far side of the ridge, and he haunts her like the ghost he is. Watching. Waiting. Ready to help if he can and must. The Sh'ma and even the necromancer seem willing to grant him this. He understands the reasons the Sh'ma have for doing so. They have lived long and felt great pain of their own. They do not seem to begrudge him his ways of dealing with the agony of existence.

The necromancer he understands poorly, but he cannot refuse this gift simply because he does not understand it.

So he watches.

Maegan Heramsun sits by a fire on which a very large pot of stew is cooking. She stirs it every few minutes, and she writes in her book.

The ghost could reach out and touch her, if he wanted.

But he does not.

He is still afraid.

If you were going to sacrifice yourself for anyone, it should have been for them.