Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter Five

~5~

Ninety-five days before the destruction of Eldan City

Ryse’s heart hurt.

The sun shone high and hot, battled by a cool breeze off the mountains. A cloud of noise and dust filled the air, and she found herself pressed between Quay and Leramis in a surging sea of brightly dressed Aleani.

All she wanted was to go back to Eldan City and crawl to the only home she’d ever had.

Old, pitted flagstones warmed Ryse’s feet. To her right, the coal blue waters of the River Deru sparkled. A green, throne-shaped peak the Aleani called the Fencircht scraped the belly of the sky on her left, at the heart of Du Fenlan. She remembered looking at it in the darkness and barely seeing it months before, when she’d run her legs off to find someone who’d soulwoven like Leramis.

That was the start of it, she thought. She’d left everyone behind to find him. She’d betrayed their trust, and she’d hurt Litnig.

It feels like so long ago. She scratched her hairline, and her hand came away wet with sweat.

Keep peace with those around you, and Yenor will keep peace with you.

She’d broken that commandment and hurt those closest to her.

And now two of them were dead.

She felt cold and alone, especially at night. It had taken four days of sailing from Patch’s Fingers to reach the bustling Aleani port of Du Nath and three more to be poled up the cool blue flow of the River Deru. Ryse had kept her distance from the others, but she’d also kept an eye on Litnig. Even if she’d hurt him so badly he didn’t want her near him anymore, she was all he had left now.

Because of me. Because I betrayed him, and because of what that made him do.

Ryse swallowed. The lump in her chest grew heavier every time she thought about what’d happened at sea. The guilt wasn’t fully justified—on some level she knew that it was despair welling up and changing shapes, trying to convince her that there was something she could’ve done differently to make everything better—but that didn’t make it any lighter.

Leramis wrung his hands as he walked. Quay had said nothing of Cole’s death, but his face had grown gray and unwell. There were bags beneath his eyes.

She wondered if they felt guilty as well.

I should never have left, she thought. Only the Temple could face Sherduan. Only the Temple could possibly protect the world. Ryse had been stupid and arrogant to put herself above it.

I should’ve stayed and found someone to listen to me. Jen could’ve helped me. If I hadn’t lied to the Twelve, they would’ve trusted me.

People had died. Cole. Dil. Len. Good people who’d never been meant to oppose a force like Sherduan. The kind of people she’d sworn to protect.

An Aleani guard in polished silver armor walked stiffly next to Ryse, a white plume jutting from her helmet. Five more just like her surrounded the rest of the group. Ryse suspected they were being taken to see Alphaestus and Ereldite, but she couldn’t be sure. Their destination had been decided in a hurried conversation at the city’s northern wall, by Quay and a squat, poleaxe-bearing Aleani who walked briskly ahead of them barking orders.

Ryse felt terribly, awfully alone.

She trudged through the broad, hot sweep of Du Fenlan’s lower city for half a mile or so before the street began to climb. The footway grew steep and difficult. To her right and her left, wooden platforms carrying animals and carts jerked shakily up and down the mountain on tracks. She’d seen the donkeys that operated them turning enormous wheels at top and bottom during her first visit to the city. She wondered what their lives were like—how it would feel to wake up every morning and eat, then spend all day in mindless labor, then be rubbed down and fed again and put to sleep at night.