Soulwoven

Chapter Fifty

~50~

Soulth’il. The Bright City. The Cradle of the Sh’ma.

The snakelike metropolis at the heart of the White Forest wound along the bottom of a river valley between two high ridges. Miles of white-trunked trees surrounded it. Thousands of years of craftsmanship lay behind it.

Leramis Hentworth had never thought that he would see it.

But eleven days after meeting Tsu’min Nar’oth, he descended the southwest ridge of the Nuar Soulth’nth and watched the crystal prominences of Soulth’il glitter in the descending sun.

The city was every bit as beautiful as he had been led to believe.

Leramis had seen a great deal of beauty in the White Forest—motionless, aquamarine lakes filling the bottoms of deep dales; the shimmering, red-green foliage of the Nuar Ramith; the verdant, lofty heights of the volcano Sh’ma’ame; and the sheer living vastness of the unspoiled sea of trees that was the Olenash Sh’ma.

None of it compared to the valley in front of him, or to Soulth’il.

The vista on the hill was almost beautiful enough for him to forget the circumstances under which he was seeing it.

The trail took Leramis from the crown of the ridge. Soulth’il disappeared behind the pale leaves of the forest. White tree trunks surrounded the necromancer. The rainbow gilt of old leaves passed beneath his feet. The dark backs of his friends and Tsu’min rose and fell conspicuously against the brightness around them.

Leramis had known several Sh’ma, back on Menatar.

He had never known a Sh’ma like Tsu’min.

The party’s flame-haired guide had the oldest eyes of anyone Leramis had ever met. They looked even deeper than those of Nia’na Ayth’ma, the eldest Sh’ma in the Order.

And she had lived for over a thousand years.

Leramis exhaled slowly and took care not to twist an ankle on the gnarled tree roots that wreathed the path.

Tsu’min had said little over the week and a half since Leramis had met him. He responded tersely or not all if anyone asked him a question.

Leramis found his silence unnerving.

The party bunched at the bottom of the ridge, where the trail crossed a deep, fast-flowing stream, and Leramis ended up pressed close to Litnig’s back. The big young man looked taut as a rope. He had looked like that for the whole journey through the forest, and he’d kept as far as he could from everyone.

Especially Tsu’min.

Litnig’s not a man, Leramis reminded himself. He’s Duennin.

Ryse waded through the water in front of Leramis with her robe bunched around her thighs. The necromancer had agreed to keep the things he’d seen in Eldan City from the rest of the party at her request, but he couldn’t keep them from his own mind.

Such power.

He’d seen the redness in Litnig’s eyes, and he’d seen the way he wove, and he’d known what Litnig was.

Leramis’s foot slipped into a hole. He took a shivering, involuntary breath.

Tsu’min’s questions had opened his eyes. The soulwoven barrier around Crixine had clearly weakened, if it hadn’t dissipated entirely. Even alone, she had the power to have broken the heart dragons several times over. If the barrier around Eshan had weakened as well, the two of them could have released Sherduan months before, even without the help of D’Orin Threi and Soren Goldguard.

But they hadn’t.

They were waiting for something.

Leramis’s eyes settled on Litnig again. The younger man was helping a silent Len Heramsun onto the far bank.

Not man, Duennin.

It was too easy to forget.

Litnig had shown power that dwarfed Leramis’s and Ryse’s. And then Crixine had shown them all that even his power was meaningless before hers.

Leramis stepped out of the stream and glimpsed the shining reaches of Soulth’il through the trees again. The leaves whispered under his feet.

Tsu’min was old, he told himself. Tsu’min was powerful. Tsu’min was wise.

The other heart dragons had not been broken until Litnig had been close to them.

Leramis could only hope that Tsu’min knew what he was doing.

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