Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter 42

~42~

Minutes before the destruction of Emeth'il

Soren's feet flashed over leafy paths. He leaped streams, ditches, logs. The town of Emeth'il twinkled in the sun ahead of him.

It wasn't going to twinkle for long.

He could feel the dragon, racing from the west over Soultholenash, a tidal wave of darkness covering leagues in minutes, flying hard toward him, toward the Sh'ma, and toward Tsu'min Nar'oth.

No, he thought.

He'd slept well, and for only an hour longer than the sun. When he arrived at Tsu'min's camp, he'd been happy that the nar'oth hadn't been there, and that fresh tracks had run toward the town from the camp's eastern edge.

Fool, he told himself. Fool to believe he'd won a victory. Fool to believe he'd re-energized the being most capable of summoning Arenthor.

Fool to think he'd outmaneuvered Sherduan.

The dragon knew. The dragon always knows. And it's coming for him.

He wished briefly that he still had Len Heramsun with him—proof that he could at least thwart the will of those who'd summoned the dragon.

But he hadn't seen the old Aleani since he'd left the volcano. He would have to do this alone.

The dragon wouldn't care about the town—Emeth'il was a bump on a frog's ass compared to other settlements in the world. A few thousand Sh'ma fishing the waters of the I'o'ai Nar'olua would glow less brightly with life than half the towns in Eldan. Soulth'il would have been a better target.

The dragon would be there for Tsu'min, and for Tsu'min alone.

Soren drew closer. So did Sherduan. The path he was on ran into another, then another, then another, until the first buildings appeared through the last of the trees.

Soren pulled at the River of Souls and begged it for speed, speed, speed. The town rose around him, gleaming orange in the slanting light on one side of its streets and dripping with purple shadows on the other.

Sherduan's silhouette blotted out the rising sun, and Emeth'il plunged into darkness.

Soren shivered. The terror of a thousand Sh'ma welled up around him. They stood dumbly in the streets, turning to face the shadow in the west and their own deaths.

When the River pulsed, Soren dropped to his stomach. He heard a sound like the shrieking of a hundred boiling monkeys.

The heat and death of the dragon's breath sheared through the town over his head. The ground shook. Buildings fell. An enormous body swooped past.

The monster soared over him.

Soren jumped to his feet and began to run again.

Faster, he thought. Faster...

To his right, the dragon wheeled over the sparkling bay to come back for a second pass. Gulls flocked and screamed in the thousands, and Sherduan plunged through them like they were snowflakes.

Soren raced over carts and around screaming Sh'ma already dead whether they knew it or not. A few—a very few—were trying to grab their shocked neighbors and herd them toward the forest, into the buildings, anywhere but out in the open where the dragon could find them and kill them.

It wouldn't matter.

Only one thing mattered in the dying minutes of Emeth'il, and that was the life of Tsu'min Nar'oth. He formed a deep swell in the River ahead of Soren, like a whale leaving a whirlpool in the ocean as it dove.