Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 37

~37~

Minutes before the destruction of Nutharion City

The stairs raced by, cold under Dil's feet; she'd kicked off her silly Nutharian shoes as soon as she could. Visions of the dragon ran through her mind in an endless loop. Her lungs felt as if they were about to take flight through her mouth, and her heart as if it might beat so fast she would die.

Cole squeezed her hand.

The visions faded. Her heart slowed down.

She squeezed back.

Bells rang out in the city. First one near the northern limits, then more and more, until their calls filled the air. There would be movement out in the opulence of the Skylevel—candy-robed soulweavers rushing from estates and pouring up ramps from the city below. They would be flowing like a river toward the Cityhall.

Litnig, pounding down the stairs behind her and Cole, sounded angry. "Cole?"

"I didn't think it would work," Cole grunted. He looked haggard and gray, and his hand was cold.

Dil reached the roof of the Cityhall and stopped. The first soulweavers were pouring into the courtyard from below, and rain had begun to fall over the city in heavy, shifting curtains.

The dragon came on.

It swam through the air like a snake, snapping its long body back and forth, surging forward on the wind. Even so far away she could feel its eyes. She remembered cowering before it underneath Sherdu'il, remembered breaking and running and knowing that all hope was lost, that nothing would remain of them or anything else when it was done.

Breathe slowly, she told herself.

Cole squeezed her hand again. The soulweavers were lining up in ranks. Officers wearing white sashes rode red horses among them, barking orders over the hiss of the rain.

Pyell's face had twitched just once as Dil turned to run, as if the Magister had swallowed something particularly bitter—an unripe olive maybe, or the wrong kind of greens. And suddenly Dil had known that Pyell didn't think the soulweavers would succeed. That she was sacrificing all of them—hundreds of people—for the sake of an encounter with the dragon and the hope that she would learn something from it.

Her heart twisted. It wasn't right that anyone should act like that, but it seemed especially wrong for someone as young as Pyell to.

The dragon sailed over the darkened, empty slums to the north, then disappeared beneath one of the lower plates.

"We should go," Cole said.

"Go where?" muttered Litnig.

Dil listened to the heavy movements of her lungs, of Litnig's, of Cole's. She heard not one bird, one mouse, one insect. Ahead of her, the soulweavers shifted nervously, their officers muttering on their proud horses.

Her throat closed up again.

Cole's right, she thought. We shouldn't be here. She opened her eyes to the Second River. We shouldn't be here, none of us—

The crack of thunder sounded, and the roof of the Cityhall shuddered. The golden souls of the Second River slid northward and rebounded.

A shriek like the screaming of a thousand horses split the air.

White light poured over the lip of the courtyard from the plates below. The clouds turned a terrible shade of swirling green. The city rumbled. The wind roared against Dil's face, her lips, her hair. The rain intensified, soaking her flimsy dress, pooling against her eyebrows and running down her face.