Soulwoven

Chapter Twenty-Nine

~29~

Litnig Jin faded in and out of consciousness. He caught glimpses of white light and thick darkness, wooden beams and stone pillars. He heard warm voices and his own breathing, but he was never truly in the dream or the real world.

And then he opened his eyes to see bright light on the hair of an old Aleani male.

The graybeard was murmuring softly to himself. His eyes were closed. Clouds of age spots intersected by wrinkles dotted his face. A pale yellow habit hung from his shoulders.

For a moment, Litnig couldn’t separate reality from dream. He wasn’t sure whether he was human or Sh’ma, whether he had fought a necromancer or lost a wife. He knew only that his heart was heavy and his body ached.

The Aleani opened his eyes, smiled warmly, straightened, and left.

Litnig looked around. The room he’d awoken in was carved from smooth gray stone and adorned with tapestries covered in brilliant, sharply angled runes. A row of pine cabinets stretched across one wall. Two stained-glass windows dominated the one opposite. Litnig’s bed faced an open-air hallway bathed in bright, natural light.

In one corner of the room stood a chair, and in that chair sat a shadow.

It had a shape that Litnig recognized. A white blanket lay over it, tucked in beneath its legs like someone had placed it there after the shadow had fallen asleep. Its hair was short and brown. Its face was young. There was a thick scab on its forehead.

Cole.

Litnig managed to sit up. His abdomen felt sore and weak. His legs were as exhausted as they’d been after the march from Nutharion City to Janestown. His left arm was slingless and painless.

He had to catch his breath just from sitting.

A gasp and a crash sounded from the hallway. Litnig flinched. Cole jerked awake and spun toward the noise.

But it was just a girl in loose, brown clothes.

Sunlight pooled on the gray stone behind her. A tray lay at her feet. Next to it, a loaf of bread and the broken remains of a pitcher swam in a puddle of milk.

“Cole,” she said, “he’s awake.”

Litnig’s little brother turned to face him. Cole’s face was marked with lines of careworn agony. His eyes were red and puffy. His hair was disheveled and unwashed.

Litnig’s throat closed up. His chest constricted. He gasped and sputtered.

A strong hand cradled his head. Another pressed gently on his chest. “Easy, Lit,” Cole said. “Easy—”

And Litnig let himself be laid back down and tried to whisper that he was sorry. He didn’t know for what, or when it had happened. But he was sorry. And he was so, so tired.

Before he knew it, he was asleep again.

#

The next time Litnig opened his eyes, it was afternoon. His brother was sitting awake beside him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“You awake?” Cole asked, and Litnig nodded. He felt better than he had before, but still weak, still feverish, still out of breath.

“What happened?” he whispered. His voice was quiet and raspy. It hurt to talk.

Cole rubbed a hand over his scabbed face and exhaled softly.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Cole asked. Litnig told him about the heart dragons, and the scream, and the wall of flames rushing toward him.