Soulwoven

Chapter Fifty-Three

~53~

The night smelled of lilac and cinnamon. Stars speckled the blackened sky. Warm breezes stirred the air. The moon hung heavy in the south.

And Cole Jin fought the urge to fly at a big, fuchsia-haired Sh’ma with his bare hands as it dropped his brother’s unconscious body into a long canoe.

“Hey!” he shouted instead, but no one was paying any attention to him. Two brown-cloaked Sh’ma loaded sacks into the canoe’s black innards from a low, round building near the edge of the Lumos. Tsu’min was talking quietly to Quay. Everybody else was moping around by the water, looking depressed.

The past two hours had watched Cole skulk wordlessly through the crystalline back ways of Soulth’il. After the river had exploded, the Sh’ma had pulled themselves from the water, freed him and the others, dragged Litnig from the river, and prodded everyone into following as they moved northward under the nearly full moon. The big Sh’ma had carried Litnig across his shoulders the whole way.

Cole had limped behind.

“You are heading north. These replace what was taken from you.”

A turquoise-haired Sh’ma handed Cole two daggers in ornate leather sheaths. She was just taller than he was, green-eyed, and freckled. The pale leaves of the trees rustled behind her in the moonlight. She would have been beautiful, if her eyes hadn’t been as cold as the night sky.

“Thanks,” Cole grumbled, and the Sh’ma caught him with the same you’re-not-fooling-anyone look he’d used to get from his mother.

Truth be told, Cole’s days in the White Forest had shown him little to love about the Sh’ma. They could burn, for all he cared.

They might, said his conscience, but he studiously ignored it.

The Sh’ma were handing out weapons and talking to the others as well. Cole didn’t care. He stepped into the black canoe and sat near his brother, and he began arranging Litnig so that he was lying more comfortably. Cole’s brother had a nasty-looking shiner growing under his left eye. His nose was the size and color of a rose pear. Dried blood covered the bottom of his face. Every few seconds, he twitched. Cole wondered if he was having his dream again.

The canoe rocked as someone else stepped into it, and then Dil was dripping water from the edge of her cloak onto Litnig’s face and rubbing the blood off with her thumb. Cole dipped his sleeve into the river and laid it over Litnig’s bruised eye.

Dil gave him a reassuring smile.

He did his best to return it.

As he and Dil worked over his brother, he heard other voices speaking in Eldanian and Sh’ma. The canoe rocked frequently. A mast went up. A large, black sail unfurled. The wind gusted sudden and sharp from the south.

And then the sail filled, and the canoe began to move forward, northward, upriver. The last outbuildings of Soulth’il slipped by. The brown-cloaked Sh’ma melted into the moonbeam shadows on the forest shore.

Cole was tucking a spare bedroll underneath Litnig’s head when someone squatted down beside him. He saw a black boot out of the corner of his eye and knew the foot within it would belong to Quay.

“They still have to call the dragon into the world,” the prince said. “We’re going to try to stop them.”

Cole snorted and helped Dil undo another bedroll to spread over Litnig’s body. “Us and whose army?”

Quay didn’t respond. The southern wind grew stronger, until the sail was taut and humming. The canoe sent spray flying from white-capped waves on the river and ploughed a furrow in the water on its way north.

“I need you to do me a favor,” the prince said.

Cole came up rolling his eyes, ready to remark that he was just about fresh out of favors.

And then he saw something in Quay’s eyes that scared the hell out of him:

Fear.

“Dil, you too.”

Dil stopped dabbing at Litnig’s face. Her eyes shone dull yellow in the moonlight.

“I need you to stay alive.”

Cole took a deep breath.

“The other Sh’ma are staying behind,” Quay said. “I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s not a good sign. Someone needs to tell my father what has happened, and what he is up against if we fail. Leramis and Ryse have other loyalties. So do Tsu’min and Len. You two are the only ones I can trust with this.”

Quay’s eyes flicked toward the shadowy shore, then returned to Cole. “I’d send you now, but you’d never make it through the White Forest without help that Tsu’min isn’t willing to give.”

Cole could feel the warmth of Litnig’s body against his legs. His brother’s chest rose and fell rhythmically.

“You didn’t mention Lit.”

“I know.” Quay ran a hand through his hair. It had grown long and unkempt, and there was stubble, of all things, on the prince’s once impeccably groomed face. “I don’t know what to make of him anymore. There’s something off about him, Co—”

“He’s my brother.”

Quay looked at Cole.

And for once in his life, Cole didn’t look away.

Quay pulled his hand from his hair.

“Of course,” the prince said quietly. “Litnig too, then.”

Quay fell silent. The canoe swung around a bend. The wind followed it. Its mast just cleared a white tree limb that hung shining over the water.

Cole sighed and rubbed his temples. “If you don’t come back with us,” he muttered, “someone will probably just chuck us in prison.”

If we’re lucky, he added to himself, but there was no point in telling Quay or Dil that.

“Don’t underestimate my father,” Quay said. “And give him this.”

Quay reached into his shirt, tugged on something that came away with a tiny snap, and dropped a small, silver ring into Cole’s hand. The band was set with an oval of marbled white jade and tied to a leather cord. Cole had seen rings like it before. Nobles gave them to one another to celebrate births, or birthdays.

Cole looked up from the ring and found Quay staring at him. The prince produced a tiny metal cylinder from his pocket and pressed it into Cole’s palm. It was just large enough to hold a small piece of parchment.

Quay closed Cole’s fist around the ring and the cylinder.

“Do not lose them,” he said. “And good luck.”

And then Quay was gone, off toward the back of the canoe, probably to give the others their marching orders.

Cole leaned against the canoe’s dugout inwale and shut his eyes. The wind tickled his face. Spray from the river misted on his hair. Someone warm and soft sat down next to him and wriggled her head under his arm. He smiled and hugged her close.

The ring was still in Cole’s fingers, and he held it up to look at it again. The moonlight glinted off its polished sides. It was still warm from Quay’s chest.

Behind it, the constellation of the Scythe hung low over the trees.

Cole had never been one to put his faith in the stars, but he knew what those stars meant:

Death. Death for one or more.

He slipped the ring and the message into his trouser pocket. He would tie them around his neck for safekeeping later.

In the meantime, he closed his eyes and held Dil tighter.

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