Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (22 page)

Shivering again, Shel realized the room had been growing steadily colder for several minutes. Then it happened.

***

Kal was just about to peek around the corner of her alcove for what felt like the thousandth time when she heard two noises simultaneously. The first chilled her blood and nearly drowned out the second in its volume. It was a scream. It was Shel.

The second sound was the creak of a neglected hinge as a doorway on the other side of the open mezzanine was slowly pushed open.

Kal threw herself out of the alcove, clutching Shel’s talisman in her left hand and pulling a knife with her right. She caught side of the shadowy figure on the other side of the loft immediately. Instinctively, she threw the knife. It sliced the space between them in half, but the third weaver ducked and rolled forward at the last instant. The knife clattered uselessly into a wall. Kal ran forward, reaching for another blade. Her foe slapped the floor and sprang up from his roll.

The dagger flew from Kal’s hand. She raised the carved wooden talisman. Her lips parted to speak the incantation. The word rose in her throat but died on her lips. Eyes burst wide with shock. Lips trembled. The talisman fell from her grasp. Kal sank to her knees with a muted cry of despair.

Rez bared his teeth in a malicious grin and swept her hard against the wall.

***

Shel thought she could see how it was done. Thorne had startled her with the sudden attack. Shel’s face burned with shame at her cry of alarm. He’d managed to surprise her after all.

The third weaver had been drawing warmth out of the air all the time she and the archon circled and postured at one another. She had felt the weaving but had foolishly dismissed it. The third weaver couldn’t press a truly threatening attack unless he could see her. She knew where he was, couldn’t see him, couldn’t be seen; she’d thought that made her safe.

What he could do, she now realized, was diffuse his spiritual essence into the air. Meditating high in her tree at Midnight Grove, Shel had done this many times. She knew that when you examined the air very closely – far closer than possible with the eye – it was made up of infinitesimally small particles that shook and bounced together.

From there, it was a simple task to draw some of these invisible building blocks together in a rigid formation. This was how Sanook had once bound her in bands of seemingly solid air, and how he had then pummeled her with invisible fists.

She had escaped his grasp that time by creating a fireball, her first flame weave. At the time, it had been indignant fury mixed with blind instinct that allowed her to make empty air catch fire. In later training, she had learned that those very same unseeable particles that shook and rattled could be smashed together at higher speeds.

She hadn’t made the connection before, but it was clear to her now. Speeding up the movement so the pieces smashed together faster made heat; it made perfect sense that slowing them down would sap the heat. That was what the third weaver had done, and he hadn’t needed to see his target when the air slipped under and around doors and through cracks in the stone itself.

But then Thorne himself had sprang into action, lunging away from her and planting his feet. His upper hand swept down and his fist surged forward and up in a barreling punch. As his arm snapped out full, the archon opened his fist.

The moisture in the air turned to solid ice at his touch, a frozen spear that flashed across the chamber. Shel threw herself down and to the side.

Thorne’s down-sweeping, open hand balled into a fist at his hip. He bent his extended arm at the elbow and brought that hand in front of his face. This time there was no pause. The upraised hand swept down, the fist at the tip snapped forward. Shel leaped and dove to avoid the spears of ice he threw. Thorne pumped his arms, churning out a frenzied flurry of frozen spikes.

Shel spun in place as one of the ice spears grazed her shoulder. Another impacted on the wall behind her, and a third was already flashing toward her. The air was getting colder and colder. The third weaver had slowed its movement enough for Thorne to freeze it instantly, but the rapid barrage of freeze weaves sucked every remaining vestige of heat from the air.

Shel darted forward then threw herself backward. The next three spears sailed through the air in front of her as she cartwheeled, drawing the full store of power amplification available through her talismans to guide her body through the flip. Her upraised hands slapped the marble floor. She spun through, landing on her feet in a low crouch.

Whipping her arms around to thrust both in Thorne’s direction, she sent out a dozen weaves at once. The lacy nets of energy trapped pockets of air and tightened around them, compressing the air until its cold torpor became an excited frenzy in the claustrophobic trap. Even as this happened, she sent the twelve trapped pockets of air flying at Thorne.

The archon reversed his motion, tracking her backwards across the room. He flung an ice spear straight for her. Before he could send another, Shel’s twelve tightly woven orbs smashed together inches in front of his face. The combined friction and sudden release caused an impressive explosion in Thorne’s eyes.

“Faugh!” the archon cried, one hand flying up to his dazzled eyes as he staggered blindly away from her.

Shel dodged the frozen spear. Before Thorne could recover, she followed up her attack. Wrapping the air behind the stumbling archon in a tight lace of energy, she jerked it forwards. The onrushing net of air caught Thorne from behind and pitched him forward.

Shel could feel the third weaver’s energy twisting and knitting itself in the air overhead on the mezzanine. The attacks weren’t directed at her. Kal! She had to get out from under the loft so she could see what was happening to her friend. She wove a fireball and threw it Thorne’s way, but the sluggish air was slow to kindle and it was barely fizzling when it reached the archon.

Thorne blinked rapidly, but could obviously see well enough to deflect the weak fireball. He batted it aside with one hand, protected in a gauntlet of solidified air. His other hand swept up, fingers contorting and flickering. Dust and grit that lay in the narrow, shallow grooves between the marble flagstones rose into the air and hurled itself into Shel’s eyes.

The Shadowoman threw up her hands to protect her face, but a moment too late. Stinging grit burned in her eyes and she coughed as the sandy granules whisked up her nose and down her throat. Without thinking, she wove a small whirlwind between herself and Thorne and pushed it toward him.

The swirling air sucked up the flying grit in a vortex that wobbled drunkenly across the floor. Thorne bent forward at the waist with his feet planted far apart and brought up both hands, clenching them into fists in front of his chin. As the whirlwind twisted and turned his way, he wrenched his fists around in a circular motion like turning a crank. The whirlwind died instantly, the sandy debris falling back to the floor.

Murdrek Thorne used the momentum he’d stolen from Shel’s whirlwind to launch his body high in the air. Reaching the apex of his climb, he threw his arms out straight and aimed at the young woman. With incredible speed he flew down at her like a massive human spear.

Wiping grit from her eyes and spluttering, Shel barely saw him in time. She threw up her hands and wove frantically. The air was thinner than ever, and she ignored the tiny, invisible particles. Instead, she overlayed her lacy weaving with layer upon layer until it formed an impenetrable barrier of soulstuff. Thorne slammed against it like a wave crashing over a sandcastle. The battling weavers were thrown to the floor, tumbling end over end entangled with each other.

Thorne came up on top, fingers of one hand gripped about Shel’s slender throat with his other fist raised. He straddled her in the center of the floor and glared down at her with undisguised hatred and malice. Wide-eyed, Shel watched the brightening glow of energy building around his drawn back fist.

“Impressive,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “But pointless. The outcome was never in doubt. You're powerful, Gutterweave, but now that power is mine!”

His fist plunged downward, the blinding white mist of his soul stabbing into Shel’s chest and wrapping its icy fingers tightly round her beating heart.

Five hundred men in sleek, black lacquered armor poured steadily through the Highgate, southernmost of the five city gates of Solstice. The chitinous plates of their armor shifted with every step, rattling and scraping and making a sound like giant insects on the move. Razor spikes protruded from the armor in a wild profusion, making these elite soldiers impossible to grapple with. Their heads were hidden beneath massive domed, insectile helmets lacquered in the same flat black as their armor but embellished with reds and blues and greens describing sinister eyes and sharp mandibles. The helmets had no openings, none at all. The soldiers marched in perfect unison.

The Tophylax Emperia had no need of eyesight.

Five hundred of the eternal emperor’s elite personal guard fanned out through the Noble District of Solstice. Where they met resistance, they eliminated it. The Tophylax killed indiscriminately. Thieves, rebels, liveried armsmen – it made no difference to the Tophylax Emperia.

On the Boulevard of Summer Rains, a small band of men in the tan and ochre livery of Archon Gevettan circled tightly around their furious master presenting their lowered pikes to a howling mob of peasants led by four of Alban’s men. Here and there, a Gevettan armsman thrust his lance into the belly of a rioter. The commoners threw cobblestones pried from the streets, or lunged forward with swiping knives.

At the center of his bodyguards, Kelven Gevettan sagged with exhaustion but refused to yield. Arms weaving through the air, he cast his energy out from his person. He alone could have seen the misty white arms of his soul stretching forth, but Gevettan stood with his eyes shut firmly in a face composed in concentration.

An older man in the seething crowd hurled a stone, snarling with hate like a rabid animal. Gevettan’s invisible hand struck the missile aside in midflight. An hour ago, the archon would have whipped his misty appendage back to pummel the old man. He was too tired for that now. He had to conserve his energies, weaving only to prevent injury to himself and his guards. Though he regularly practiced weaving before, he’d never had to use it in combat. His initial panic burned into a dull fervor of survival. Who would attack the archons?

Through his intense concentration, Kelven Gevettan slowly became aware of new arrivals in the pitched battle in the street. He felt their marching vibration through the pavingstones at his feet. He sensed the motion of the air being draw into their lungs. He knew a rippling echo of the fear that suddenly expanded through the howling mob.

Gevettan opened his eyes, dropping his tired arms and smiling with undisguised relief. Seven Tophylax Emperia waded into the rioting peasants. The mob still seethed, but all its efforts turned now to escaping the terrible soldiers in the black lacquered armor. Rarely seen, the emperor’s elite were oft spoken of in whispers. Called the Eyeless Men by most, they had gained the stature of legends. Feared throughout the Golden Empire, their infamy had swelled to rival even the hated Shadowmen.

Gevettan was no superstitious peasant. He knew the truth about the Tophylax Emperia. It far exceeded their reputation.

Tophylax Emperia couldn’t be killed. That was more than some imperial decree; it was a fact. Gevettan had once seen one of the black-armored soldiers decapitate himself – at a whimsical command from the emperor. The headless Tophylax Emperia had then competed in a joust before re-attaching his own head.

These same soldiers had fought at Midnight Grove, one thousand years ago. There they had slain Shadowmen in their master’s name while the man who would become emperor flew in the dark skies above and flung lightning into the midnight trees. The armor they wore now had been looted from the dead of that battle. It was widely believed that the lacquered plates absorbed the souls of all who fell in battle to the emperor’s elite guards, to be funneled directly to the emperor.

If that was so, they claimed many souls this day. A cheer went up from Gevettan’s circle of bodyguards as the Tophylax Emperia swung their enormous broadswords through the shouting, fleeing mass of peasants. The archon saw one black-armored brute disembowel six men with a single whooshing sweep of his seven-foot blade.

It was all over in seconds. Amid perhaps five dozen corpses, seven Tophylax Emperia stood unscathed and unmoved by the carnage they had wrought. Of the rioters, none had escaped.

Kelven Gevettan stepped through his circle of men, striding forward to express his gratitude. He expected the Tophylax Emperia would escort him to the palace, and he was already composing a far more elaborate expression of gratitude for the emperor. He knew he’d have to lay it on thick this time. He was in the emperor’s debt, and that was a nasty place to be…

Seven feet of burnished steel, fully eight inches wide, slid through Kelven Gevettan’s ribs. The archon looked down at the sword piercing his chest and the black gauntleted hand that had put it there. Raising his eyes, Gevettan shook his head in confusion. He didn’t understand.

The voice that emanated from within the garishly lacquered helmet was ghastly and inhuman. It was like the sound of foul gas whistling from a bloated carcass when it was cut open. Somehow, this terrible sound formed words. The emperor’s words.

“There is no place for the indolent and frail in my empire.”

Speaking the emperor’s words, seeing with the emperor’s eyes, and motivated solely by the emperor’s own will, the Tophylax Emperia savagely twisted its sword in Gevettan’s chest and wrenched it sideways. Blood sprayed and the archon fell, gasping and still trying to speak. His stunned bodyguards broke formation and ran for their lives.

Seven black-plated arms lifted, palms extended rigidly out. Seven invisible, woven mistings burst from those palms. The emperor’s magic seized Gevettan’s soldiers and crushed out their lives. When it was done, the seven Tophylax Emperia moved on. There was yet killing to be done.