Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (3 page)

“Business?” echoed Shel as she came hesitantly out from the cell. She was beginning to wonder if she might have been better off staying in the dungeon after all. She had never heard of a soulweaver who wasn’t from one of the noble houses, or at least one of the wealthiest merchant families. But someone like that wasn’t likely to go sneaking around the dungeons. She still had no idea who Rez really was, but this time she resisted the urge to ask again. “What business?”

“I came here to see a man.”

“You're a Soulweaver,” she said bluntly.

“So I am,” Rez agreed good-naturedly.

“And you came into the dungeon – voluntarily – to see a man?”

“That’s right.”

“But you're avoiding the guards.”

“Well, I was. Can we talk about this later?” Without waiting for her answer, Rez started off down the damp corridor. Shel hesitated for a moment, but as his tall form began melting into the deep shadows of the dungeon she found herself hurrying to keep up. If she let him out of her sight, she’d never find him again and she didn’t think she would ever be able to find her way out of this dark pit without some kind of help.

“Okay,” she said as she caught up to the quickly walking stranger. “So, who is he?”

“A friend,” was the gruff reply. Shel frowned, but of course it was much too dark for Rez to see her expression. Probably. He was a Soulweaver, after all. Shel shivered again, and this time it wasn’t from the chill and the damp.

Like most people, Shel had little idea of what a Soulweaver could do. It was the rarest of talents, and she had certainly never met one before. Most weavers were high nobles of the empire, or at the very least rich merchants. She thought back to the soul trader in the market place, trying to entice the young beggar boy with gold.

But that man wasn’thing but a trader. In all likelihood he bought souls where he could for other, far wealthier patrons. He’d work on commission, probably never able to afford buying one of the souls for himself. Even that type was rare in the empire – most people, the ones who had any sense at least, shuddered at the very thought of the soul trade. Nevertheless, it was a legally recognized and accepted business. Still…

Flickering light spilled around a corner up ahead. Shel’s thoughts snapped back to the present as they approached the bend. She could hear voices, faint at first but growing louder as they got closer. She felt herself tensing up. Her legs trembled, wanting to run.

Rez led her around the corner. The stone-walled corridor ended abruptly a few feet from the corner. A sturdy, iron-banded oak door stood in the otherwise solid stone wall. Torches hung from rusting iron brackets to either side of the door, and more light spilled through cracks in the wood. Even as they rounded the corner, a blood-chilling shriek of pain sounded from behind the door.

Shel’s blood ran cold. Rez was leading her directly to the torture chamber.

“Wait,” said Shel, reaching out with one hand to stop Rez from going through the sturdy oak door to the torture chamber. “Wait a minute.”

Her odd rescuer paused, looking back over his shoulder at her. In the flickering torchlight outside the torture chamber, Shel got her first good look at the man who had torn iron bars from their housing with his Soulweaving.

Rez looked to be a few years older than Shel, but she couldn’t put an exact number to his age. He might have been anywhere from twenty to thirty-five. He had a lean face and tall, slender body but he was hardly scrawny of underfed. Where Shel was skinny and lean from necessity, Rez had a more graceful leanness that reminded her of a predatory animal. His eyes – no longer glowing but nevertheless bright and gleaming in the torchlight – were of a shade she couldn’t be sure of; she thought they were gray, but they might have been a light blue or even a severely faded violet. His head was topped by a shock of wild brown hair that sprouted in disarray. His skin was deeply tanned but appeared smoothly supple and unlined. He smiled at her, and the expression had the ease of long practice. He seemed a good-natured, jovial sort of man. She was terrified of him.

“You don’t want to go in?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to her scrutiny. He chewed at his bottom lip in thought for a moment, then nodded. “Actually, that’s for the best. Wait here and keep an eye out. Give us a warning if you hear any guards coming this way.”

Shel nodded dumbly.

Turning away from her, Rez lifted his arm casually. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she knew they were aglow yet again. There was no outward indication of his magic, but then the iron-banded door was abruptly torn from its hinges with a violent crash. The reinforced slab of oak flew into the torture chamber and slammed against the far wall. Shel stepped back even as Rez charged forward into the room.

A shout of alarm from within was cut off short, and Shel heard a dull thump that could only have been a body hitting the wall. A moment later, she heard a murmur of voices. Rez must have found his friend.

Shel waited nervously, pacing back and forth in the narrow corridor and staring back the way they had come. She wanted to get out of this dungeon. Rez might be her only chance at escape, but she wasn’t certain accompanying him was really any better than staying in her cell.

She didn’t know all that much about Soulweavers, except that outside the nobility and the richest families they were extremely rare. She had heard once that weavers used to be more common, but Rez was the first one she had ever met. The first she knew of, at least.

Weavers gained their awesome powers by collecting souls. That alone was enough to make Shel’s skin crawl. She had known people, a few, who took the bounty of gold and joined the Soulless. It wasn’t fatal, it wasn’t even particularly harmful. Except that the Soulless seemed to lose interest in everything around them. Retreating into themselves, those who sold their souls inevitably withered away. They were still alive, and apparently just as conscious and aware as ever. They didn’t lose their memories or abilities, they just lost their will.

The weavers, on the other hand, gained much. Shel had heard that a weaver could command all the knowledge and power of any individual whose soul he or she had acquired. She had always believed that the other benefits – the mystical power weavers were said to command – was more myth than anything else, but now she had seen what Rez could do. When he tore the bars from her cell, when he knocked that oak door from its hinges, he was using the spiritual essence of other people who had chosen to give up their souls. It was a chilling thought.

Could she trust a man like that? Did she have any choice about it at this point?

Realizing she no longer heard the murmur of voices, Shel crept up to the doorway and peered through. She gasped at what she saw. The torture chamber was every bit as bad as she had imagined, packed with stretching racks and devices that could serve no purpose other than inflicting pain. Near the center of the room, a man hung suspended from the roof by thick leather cords wrapped around his wrists. The man’s feet dangled a foot or so over the ground, and his body swayed gently back and forth.

He was naked. Dark bruises stood out all over his body, punctuated here and there by deep cuts and lacerations crusted over with dried blood. Ribs showed clearly through his skin, and it was clear he hadn’t eaten properly for weeks, maybe months. His face was haggard and drawn. Patchy gray stubble grizzled his jaw. His crooked nose had been broken many times. At first glance, Shel thought he was dead.

But the man’s eyes shone with a defiant vitality. He was alive, though Shel wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t be better off dead.

“I won’t,” the man said firmly, his voice surprisingly strong if a little hoarse. Neither he nor Rez seemed to notice Shel peeking through the door. “I won’t do it!”

Rez hauled back with one hand and slapped the man across the face. The haggard torture victim swung to and fro from his creaking leather straps and spat blood on the floor at Rez’s feet.

“What choice do you have?” hissed Rez angrily. “You’d give it to them instead?”

“This dream is ending, yes. But there are other ways,” whispered the victim.

“What are you talking about?” demanded Rez. “There is no other way, and you know it. Maybe you don’t appreciate what I've risked in coming here. We have to hurry.”

“I won’t,” the beaten man insisted, glaring angrily at his latest tormentor. Shel shivered at the determined look on Rez’s face and backed hurriedly away from the door. She had no idea what was going on between those two, and she didn’t want to know. She just hoped Rez would hurry up and keep his promise to get her out of here.

Clanking sounds of metal echoed through the darkened corridor at Shel’s back. The guards!

“We've got to go!” she snapped in a tense whisper, bursting into the torture chamber. Rez spun toward her, frustration plain on his face. The torture victim stared at her in open-mouthed shock, then began struggling against the leather straps binding his wrists together. Blood, caked and crusted over half-healed abrasions, cracked and split and flowed slowly down the man’s arms.

There was something else, beneath the crusts of dried blood and the coated grime that covered the man’s sagging flesh. Markings, all over his body. They were hard to make out beneath the filth and blood but Shel saw them and her blood ran cold. A thousand tiny tattoos, or birthmarks; strange symbols. She had seen them before.

“Guards?” asked Rez, and Shel pulled her eyes away from the brutalized torture victim.

“They're coming!”

Rez turned back to the torture victim. “Last chance, old friend.”

“Who…is she?”

Rez looked at Shel over his shoulder with a puzzled frown. “Her? Street thief. I found her in the cells and thought…” His eyes widening, Rez whipped his head back around to stare at the hanging man. “No.”

“Come closer, girl,” said the tortured man. “Come here.”

“What?” Shel took a few steps into the room, bringing her closer to Rez and the hanging man. She didn’t want to look at him. “Rez, we've got to go. Whatever you came for, get it over with.”

The torture victim was still squirming against his bonds. Suddenly, one hand slipped free of the binding leather strap. Coated with thick, viscous blood that was half congealed even before it seeped from his wounds, the freed hand shot down and out and grabbed hold of Shel. Startled, the girl cried out and tried to pull away. The dying man’s grip was impossibly strong, and she couldn’t get away.

“Yes,” whispered the dying man. Bloodshot eyes focused on Shel, and he squeezed Shel’s wrist tightly. “Child,” he said hoarsely, “my name is Aemond.”

His eyes rolled up in their sockets and for a moment Shel thought he was gone. Then he began to chant, lowly at first but with steadily rising volume. The language was unfamiliar to her, the words sharp and strange and heavily laden with a forgotten mysticism. They were like physical shapes expelled from the dying man’s lips to fly toward Shel, creeping and crawling across her skin and burrowing inside.

“What are you doing?” she cried, forgetting the guards and Rez and the dungeon. She forgot everything except for the broken, dying creature who had taken her by the arm and was chanting his dark, foreign magic. Shel felt her eyes drawn to the markings on his arms and chest, barely visible.

His eyes opened wide, filled with a pulsating white glow that seemed to evaporate, turning to a misty steam that rose up from the burning sockets. More of the mist seeped from his nostrils, his mouth, even his ears. The smoky haze drifted downward, heavier than air. It settled around Shel.

Pain exploded through her body, a thousand miniscule eruptions of agony that bloomed and spread. Intense waves of pleasure followed in the wake of the pain, and then the pain came again. Shel cried out wordlessly, arching her back and howling up at the heavy stone ceiling. She shivered with the ecstasy and writhed in feverish torment. Almost as soon as it began, it was over. Shel stumbled, head reeling. The dying man released her and she fell.

Rez’s arms wrapped around her, hauling her back to her feet. He was shouting something but she couldn’t hear. She looked at him curiously, unable to comprehend the desperate look on his face.

“What…?” Her own voice sounded strange in her ears, slurred and distorted as though she were drunk.

“We have to go,” said Rez, sounding angry. “Now.”

Shel nodded weakly and Rez let go of her. She tried to walk but immediately pitched forward. Rez caught her again, saving her from a headlong fall. Her vision swam, and Shel squeezed her eyes shut against a wave of vertigo.

“I…” Shel swallowed, tried again. “I don’t think I can.”

“No,” she heard Rez say from somewhere very far away. “No, I don’t suppose you can. All right.”

The world fell away. It wasn’t weightlessness she felt, but something similar. Had gravity turned itself around, was that why she was flying upwards and back? There was something firm against her belly now, something a little bit bony. Shel realized Rez must have thrown her over his shoulder. That’s why she felt like she was bouncing up and down: he was running.

“Put me down…” she muttered. “I'm all right.”

“No, you're not.” His voice betrayed no strain. It was like she really was weightless. He was strong. Maybe he was weaving, maybe that’s why she wasn’t a burden. Shel didn’t like the idea but what could she do?

Voices, shouting. Other sounds that vibrated in her ears. Warmth, and a blinding light that pierced the tightly shut lids of her eyes. The sun. Somehow, they were outside. Wind whistled in Shel’s ears, the rushing air tickling its way over her arms and legs. Shel fought to open her eyes, but when she did everything was a bright, spinning blur.

“Where…?”

“Shh,” hissed Rez. “You're fine, you're safe. Just relax.”

How could she relax? Shel didn’t know what was happening to her, and it seemed like an awful lot of things were happening. She had closed her eyes almost at once to block out that sickening, spinning blur of light. She tried opening them again. Shades of brown melted together but refused to form a clear picture. They were out of the dungeons, but where was he taking her?