Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 30

~30~

Twenty days before the destruction of Emeth'il

Hard stone met Tsu'min when he sat down. A cave enclosed him in warm, damp darkness laced with the smells of menthol and tiger's balm. Others sat around him. They grasped his forearms. He grasped theirs. They hummed. He hummed. The white-and-black stone of the chamber of Arenthor glittered in the darkness. A blue crystal circle glowed dimly in the floor. Everything was just as it had been three thousand years in the past.

Except that in the space where Tsu'min's father had once sat, a young Sh'ma with deep blue hair waited for Tsu'min to lead the circle. The web of souls that he and his compatriots had been building for more than a month pulsed, hummed, and vibrated above their heads. It crawled out from the cavern into the clouds like a living thing, bright and forking, beads of light running over it like ants on a tree limb. It stretched for thousands of miles, and it was still growing.

When all was calm, Tsu'min began to steer it.

Searching for the three souls around which they would create the heart, mind, and spine of Arenthor was a long and difficult endeavor. The web, soaring high above the world, could read the love of creation possessed by all that lived below it. When the person steering the web sensed a candidate, he or she led a tiny filament of souls down to investigate. The souls they were looking for—those which loved the world unconditionally, accepting its wonder and terror alike—gave off a light that dwarfed the dimmer glow of those around them. After two months of searching, Tsu'min and the others had located two out of three.

But there were many souls to comb through yet. It felt like searching for needles in a haystack the size of a city, and once the process had begun, it could not be stopped. If the weavers lost their strength, if the web lost its way, the search would have to be started again from the beginning.

So they wove in six-hour shifts. Soren Goldguard and Maegan Heramsun fed them, fetched them water, prepared their beds. Cared for their bodies so that they could focus on their souls.

Tsu'min let his mind drift along the web. He wove, hummed, lost himself in shadow and light within the depths of his thoughts, saw the souls of the world one by one, bright or dim, loved or hated, kind or spiteful. He wove as his father had taught him to, long, long ago.

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Five hours later, Tsu'min's body forced itself by inches back into his consciousness. His legs had grown tired. His back ached. His shoulders felt stiff and hard. It was good that the end of his shift was nearing. Over their months of weaving, he and the other na'oth'na had searched most of the world. It wouldn't be long before they found the third soul and began contacting the people possessed of them.

The web quivered over Soultholenash. A soul shone brightly in his mind, and he let a careful strand descend to it, as if he was a jellyfish trailing a tentacle into a school of fish. He saw quickly that the soul wasn't bright enough to be the one he was looking for.

But it was brighter than most. And the particular mix of its light and its darkness, the shape of it, the timber of its glow, kept him fascinated.

He recognized it.

No, he told himself. He willed his mind a different way, but it wouldn't go. He knew that glow. Knew that soul. Knew it better than any other, would never forget it if he lived for ten thousand years.

His arms shook.

No, no, no, he repeated, but it was no good. He began to lose control of the weaving. The web buckled and warped and stretched, and he felt the others strain to maintain it against the erratic pulsing of his soul.