Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel by Trip Ellington

Author:Trip Ellington
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ellington Marketing, LLC
Published: 2014-03-16T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18 - News From Solstice

Shel sat perched in the uppermost branches of a Winterheart pine, a midnight tree. The bough over which she balanced was more than a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. If she could have looked down and seen through the multitude of overlapping and intertwining branches and boughs bristling with amethyst nettles, the people moving to and fro in the tiny open space around the cave would have appeared no larger than ants.

It wasn’t the slender and fragile bough which held her weight aloft. Shel floated just above it, suspended by her own magical abilities. The proximity of the tree – in fact, of the entire Grove – aided her tremendously. The midnight wood was like a polished glass reflecting an image or a steep-walled canyon bouncing back echoes of sound; these metaphors were imperfect, but so far Shel hadn’t come up with a better explanation.

The trees absorbed her mystical energies when she exerted them, and then bounced those same energies back a hundred fold. Here in the Grove, Shel could command an esoteric power greater than any she had ever imagined. She felt like an immortal goddess, at once capable of anything and aware of everything.

She could hear the heartbeat of every creature in the forest. She could pick out each individual dew drop on any of a million million leaves and uncountable pine nettles. If she wanted to, she could pick out any single individual among the forty thieves gathered far below and peek through his or her eyes. She could smell the bread Cook was baking in the lower cave, and hear the babbling stream where Alban and the other youngest men filled cask after cask to be carried below.

She could stretch herself out, extending her soul to touch the world around her further than she could see. She could hear the sound of far away wings, growing closer with each beat. A messenger bird returning from Solstice. A tiny capsule bound to one leg. A tiny slip of paper rolled tight and slipped inside. Ink, absorbed into the fibers of the paper.

If she concentrated, Shel could have picked out the ingredients that had gone into the ink, identifying the source of each ground powder and liquid.

The experience was overwhelming. It had been six days since Sanook guided her through the arcane ritual by which she had absorbed his essence. “Swallowed his soul,” she reminded herself, barely moving her lips where she floated high over the cave.

It had been nothing like her experience with Aemond. Sanook’s soul was enormous and dense. He had warned her that he carried within him the combined essence of almost two thousand of his people. She wasn’t just swallowing a soul, she was swallowing a nation. Shel felt more like it was herself that had been swallowed.

That was one reason she had taken to sitting in the air near the top of one of the Winterheart pines. Up here, the insistent awareness of so many people pressed all around her was less.

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