Soulwoven: Exile

Chapter Nine

~9~

Ninety-six days before the destruction of Emeth’il

The jade bead felt cold and slick between Tsu’min’s fingers. His lungs burned. A sheen of sweat struggled against the smoothness of his shirt. The stars wheeled overhead, and he raced over rough, shard-flecked stones between the darkened buildings of Du Fenlan. The River of Souls swirled in his eyes, and he siphoned a stream from it into his legs, his arms, his torso—using the strength of the River to augment his own.

For all that, by the time he reached the Cherdtspach, Litnig was gone.

He cursed.

Tsu’min crossed the empty expanse of the market and leaped onto the homes and shops below. The faint eddies in the River that marked Litnig’s passing ebbed into straggling wisps that grew harder to track. Tsu’min jumped from rooftop to gravel-covered rooftop, rushing down, down, from terrace to terrace into the deep valley of the River Deru. The buildings had changed since he’d been there with Mi’ame, but their layout hadn’t.

He’d been outwitted. Litnig was the only reason he’d stayed with the human children so long and the only reason he hadn’t yet returned to his homeland. The Duennin who’d released the dragon wanted something from the boy, and that meant he was important.

Tsu’min cursed again.

If Litnig was gone, then a key piece in maintaining the safety of the world had passed beyond his grasp.

Not passed, been taken. Litnig’s eddy was being erased, eased into the natural flow of the River so subtly that Tsu’min couldn’t track the process. Whoever was with him was clever and powerful.

Calm, he told himself. The rooftops slipped by. Like the River. Calm and implacable.

He had a backup plan. He always had a backup plan. Even if the boy and his brother could no longer be watched, the prince and the soulweaver remained within reach. The ties that bound the little group of children Tsu’min had come across in the woods were fraying, but they were strong. The children would return to one another if it was in their power to do so. Tsu’min had seen it happen before.

And when Litnig Jin returned from wherever he was going, Tsu’min and his compatriotswould find him again.

By the time Tsu’min reached the Deru, Litnig’s eddy had disappeared. The hundreds of thousands of tiny lights in the River of Souls floated slowly above the waters, as though the Duennin had never passed by.

Tsu’min took a long, deep breath.

The Aleani had built a broad, manicured avenue that wound beside the Deru’s gleaming surface. The river splashed gently against it as it rolled north from the deep mountains.

And as he watched the swells of the river, the memories rolled over him. High laughter tinkled in his mind. A gentle voice called from his past, smiling, teasing, pulling him back.

This place, he thought.The currents of the Deru shone silver. The wind by the waters carried the rich, green scent of the Fenlan river valley. The farms outside the walls would be bleached by the moonlight, the mountains that cradled them purple, lumpen silhouettes in the night. The water splashed by, just as it had when he’d walked on the banks of the Deru at Mi’ame’s side.

Stop, he told his mind.

It did, but the rush of the memory still sang in his veins. His chest heaved and his heart thumped. Mi’ame’s jade bead remained in his hand, cold and slick and ancient.

Tsu’min looked up from the river.

The constellation of the Warrior hung huge on the western horizon. Litnig would be headed that direction, but Tsu’min couldn’t guess to where or with whom.

And that infuriated him.

Tsu’min had become a calm person by long exertion. I haven’t failed, he told himself. Not yet.

But visions of his lost love danced in his mind, and he gripped the jade bead so tightly it left a purple dent in the skin of his hand.

#

By the time Tsu’min returned to the home of Lena Heramsun, the dent in his palm had faded. His legs burned. His arms felt heavy. The sweat on his body had dried, and the cool mountain breeze no longer chilled him so deeply.

Leramis Hentworth and Ryse Lethien were waiting for him.

They were robed in faded black and tattered white respectively, and they leaned on a stone railing at the outer edge of the Heramsuns’ rotunda. They watched as he walked, and they didn’t speak until he reached them.

“Litnig’s gone then?” Leramis asked.

Tsu’min nodded.

“Do you know where?” The words—Ryse’s—floated on a skin of relief and disappointment, guilt and loss, worry so thick that Tsu’min couldn’t tell where one feeling stopped and the next began.

He shook his head. A last bead of cold sweat ran from his scalp down his temple, and he listened to the turning of the world. The Aleani city had settled down to sleep. The birds had quieted. So had the rats. Every so often a marmot squeaked in the rocks. That was all.

“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Ryse asked. She was sweaty as well, had clearly chased after Litnig some way herself before giving up and returning.

How many times had some child asked him and Mi’ame that of another?

Briefly, he forgot that Litnig was Duennin and the world was at stake. He felt closer to Mi’ame than he had in centuries, and he simply said, “Yes.”

He left Leramis and Ryse to ponder that word beneath the stars. The orange glow of Lena Heramsun’s home welcomed him back. The Aleani Assembly was convening the next day. He’d been asked to speak before it.

He knew what Tsu’min Nar’oth would say at that convocation. He knew what the person he’d once been would have said, and what Mi’ame would have said as well.

He didn’t yet know whose words he would use.

But between his fingers, the jade bead had grown warm.