Soulwoven: Exile

Prologue III

III

One hundred and three days before the destruction of Nutharion City

Dil giggled. “A what?”

“A bear licking its toes. You can’t see it?” Cole pointed to a big fluffy cloud near the horizon. Dil thought it looked more like a pile of mashed potatoes. She told him so.

“Oh, c’mon.” He rolled his eyes.

They were lying on a dune just east of what had become a little home for them. Over the two weeks since they’d arrived, what had started as a fire pit in the sand had become a grass-mat-studded driftwood shelter with a sleeping area and a living space. The refuse mound on the edge of the heath beside it was piled high with oysters, crab shells, and fish bones.

Dil was amazed at how comfortable she’d gotten. Life had slowed down, and after the pell-mell madness of the last few months it felt wonderful. She was enjoying herself, even here in the wilderness at the roof of the world. The dangers of Sherduan seemed as remote as those of Eldan City’s alleyways.

But it wouldn’t last, and she knew it.

“You’re worrying again,” Cole said.

He was propped on an elbow next to her, and the smile was gone from his face.

Dil sat up. “There’s a lot to worry about.”

“And nothing we can do about it. We’re alive. We might as well enjoy it, remember?” He said the words softly, and she put a hand over his and patted it.

His mother was dead. It would probably take her grandfather the better part of a year to recover from what the Duennin had done to him. They’d talked about those things a lot. It hadn’t been fun, and eventually they’d made a pact to try not to bring them up anymore.

Some days it worked.

“Those two look like a swan chasing a gosling,” she said.

Cole followed her finger and nodded. “Or a cabin lying on its side.”

She frowned, remembering a fireball smashing through the only home she’d ever known.

“Let’s try a different game,” she said, and they began using Cole’s knife to draw shapes in the sand.

#

They were on top of the hill again as evening fell. Cole had fallen asleep on Dil’s chest. She lay with her head in the sand, feeling the pleasant tiredness of her body after a late-afternoon dip in the ocean to fish up dinner. The sun had been warm that day, and its last rays felt like a gentle kiss on her temple.

It was funny—she felt like she was alone for the first time in weeks. She could think of anything she wanted.

She realized just how happy she was.

If she’d been asked to dream up a perfect life, it would’ve looked a lot like the one she was living. Friends nearby who trusted and counted on her. Someone who loved her spending most of every day at her side. Time and space to embrace the Second River.

She’d heard Quay call the land around them a wasteland, and nobody had corrected him. But that land had given her luxuries she’d never even known she could dream of.

Voices murmured in the shelter as the others cooked dinner. Cole snored every once in a while.

What if we don’t have to leave? she thought. What if the Aleani never come to pick us up?

Would Quay let them stay? Would he try to march them back to civilization over land? And if she refused, would Cole stick with her? Would his brother? Maybe the three of them could be happy, alone in the wastes. Maybe she and Cole could help heal whatever holes had been carved in Litnig’s heart over the last few months.

Maybe the dragon would leave them alone.

The last thought felt hollow, and her happiness blew away like smoke on the wind.

Maybe that’s all happiness ever is, she thought. Maybe that’s all anything ever is.

That thought felt true, and it turned her stomach.

She shifted, and Cole snorted and sat up. She planted a kiss on his cheek, which was crossed with red lines from her shirt and flecked with bits of sand, like just about everything in their lives.

“Smells like dinner soon.” He yawned. “We should head down.”

“Take a look at the sunset before we go,” she said. The sky was painted a dozen pale shades of pink and orange and yellow to the east. They stared at it, together, as the last blinding sliver of sunlight slipped beneath the mountains in which they’d nearly lost their lives.

There and gone, she thought. Leaving nothing but memories and scars.

When they turned around, she saw a sail on the western horizon.

Her gut tightened.

“Holy shit,” Cole muttered. “They came.”

Smoke from the shelter puffed toward the sky.

This is it, Dil thought. We’ll never live like this again.

And as Cole tore down the hill, shouting for the others to get fire out to the piles of wood they’d set up on the beach to use as signals, she found her jaw tightening and her chin beginning to quiver.

Stop, she wanted to say. Stop everything. Don’t make us do this.

The sail moved closer. One of the signal fires on the beach lit up. Ryse sent a flare of soulwoven fire high into the sky.

Dil’s eyes watered.

She had the feeling she’d never be so happy again.