The Chosen Soul

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The Chosen Soul

By Heather Killough-Walden

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The Chosen Soul

Heather Killough-Walden

Published by

Republica Press

1008 North Talbot

Windsor, Ontario

N9G 2S3

www.republicapress.com

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2009 by Heather Killough-Walden

No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including emailing, printing, photocopying, or faxing without prior written permission from Republica Press.

ISBN 978-0-9813349-0-5

Available in Adobe PDF, MobiPocket, and ePUB

Printed in Canada

Editors: Emma Holt, Virginia Downs

Cover Artist: Heather Killough-Walden

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With thanks to:

My husband, for his unending support,

Erotica Republic for giving me a leg up,

Christy, for her friendship,

Virginia and Stephanie, for their tremendous editing work,

And to Fran... the Chosen Soul.

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The Chosen Soul – Chapter One

The woman’s screams were coming from inside of the small cottage. He paused

before the wooden door and listened. Despite the raging storm around him, he could

make out every whimper, every word whispered in agonized panic. Her voice had been

worn ragged; she had been crying out in painful desperation for several hours.

He listened for a moment more and then knocked on the door.

Tortured wails continued from the other side, but within a few seconds, the door

creaked open and a haggard looking man of indeterminate age peered back at him from

the cottage’s candle-lit interior.

The screams were much louder with the door open, and they poured out into the rain-

soaked night like curses, mingling with the rising fog over the muddy streets.

“Yes?” the man asked, his brow furrowed. Dark circles beneath his eyes made his

face appear hollow. He stood on the threshold with the hunched shoulders of a man who

has not known sleep in some time.

“I request shelter from the storm, brother. My horse can no longer carry me. The

roads are flooding and have become unsafe. I can tell that this is a bad time,” the stranger continued, with a glance over the man’s shoulder, toward the hall from where the

woman’s desperate pleas could be heard, “and I would not otherwise impose. I am afraid

I have no choice.” The stranger’s voice was smooth and placating.

The man stared out at him for a moment, his eyes glazed and tired. And then he

jumped as another shriek tore through the night, jolting him out of his temporary daze.

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Heather Killough-Walden

“I’m sorry. Come in. Please have a seat. Forgive me,” he said, his voice rough with

fatigue. “I can’t see to your further comfort this night. My wife is birthing our first child.”

The stranger sat at the table, nodded and waved at him with a placating gesture. “It is

not a problem, brother. Go to your wife. I will just rest here.”

The man nodded and was turning around when a short and stout woman dressed in a

white apron and bonnet approached hurriedly from the hall. “Master Alastair, boil the

water. Your son is coming straight away. I’ll need those blankets I asked you for before.

And the alcohol, where is it?” She stood with her hands on her hips, ignoring the stranger

at the table as if she did not see him.

Alastair ran a hand through his hair and motioned for her to follow him into the small

adjoining kitchen. Even as they moved, another piercing scream rang out from the back

room. Conciliatory whispers followed after, indicating the presence of the midwife’s

apprentices.

And then his wife was calling Alastair’s name. He bounded from the kitchen and

disappeared down the hall, the newcomer at the table, for the moment, forgotten.

The stranger listened quietly as the laboring woman grunted under the pressure of the

pushing that she could no longer deny.

Breathe and whimper, push and scream. Again and again, she repeated the suffering

that was the torment of every female soul. Until at last, when the empathetic

apprehension in the house had grown to a nearly un-breathable thickness, she screamed

one final time and the sound was followed by that of a wailing infant.

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The Chosen Soul

Alastair laughed out loud and the midwife gently consoled the exhausted mother.

The stranger remained unobtrusively quiet as the final munitions of child birth continued

in the now much more restful back room.

However, the peace was short-lived.

In a few minutes, the stranger heard the mother cry out once again.

“No, Anna, something is wrong!”

“Darling, what is wrong?” the man asked his wife. “What is happening?” he asked

again, this time his questioning directed at the midwife.

The mother screamed once more.

“Oh,
by the gods
… There is another. Another child. She is having twins!”

This time, the woman’s piercing howl split the night as none of her other cries had.

In the dining room, the stranger’s lips curled into a smile.

*****

The Sage Keeper of the Spring peered down into the swirling depths of the fount that

he had been sworn to protect since he was a mere twenty years of age. Tonight, the pain

in his old bones and joints was temporarily forgotten. All that mattered was the small

black space of emptiness that now swirled along with the whiteness in the vast expanse

below.

This was very bad.

The theft had occurred during twilight, when the line between day and night was

blurred and all of those who lived in the shadows, flanked by existence and fantasy,

animated for the length of a thousand heart beats and wreaked havoc on an unsuspecting

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Heather Killough-Walden

world. At a time when he and the other Keepers should have been most vigilant, they had

instead been overwhelmed by the sudden storm, bullied by unforeseen torrential rains and

whipping winds into fortifying the keep in any way that they could.

At some point between leading spooked horses into the covered stables and

reinforcing the moat wall with bags of sand, he had realized that every Keeper within the

ancient citadel was now preoccupied with fighting the storm. The Spring had been left

unattended.

He had realized it too late.

For in that brief lapse of vigilance, someone had entered The Spring’s Sanctum and

done exactly that which its Keepers had guarded against for thousands upon thousands of

years.

A soul had been stolen. And as the Sage gazed down at the darkness where its light

had once been, he came to yet another grave conclusion. The soul chosen had been the

oldest, brightest, most beautiful and powerful spirit within the Spring. Its absence actually seemed to vex the spirits that now swirled around the emptiness left behind. While he

watched, this troubling unease spread throughout the Spring like a ripple upon the once

calm surface of a glassy lake. The souls no longer swam in a seamless spiral. Instead, a

few darted out of their normal paths like large, errant fireflies and some actually appeared to be confused as to which way to go.

The Sage Keeper gravely shook his head.

*****

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The Chosen Soul

Alastair Grey had never been so frightened. He had once been stabbed in the gut by a

nervous mercenary when the caravan he was traveling with had been waylaid by thieves

during his youth. He had been scared then. He remembered the fear of an end to life, to

existence; a blackness that no one, as of yet, had managed to return from. He recalled the

fear of losing everything that he’d ever owned.

He was more frightened now; perhaps because he was older, perhaps because he was

wiser, or perhaps because he had so very much more to lose. The fear gripped him like a

vice, squeezing his lungs till he could hardly breathe, causing his vision to tunnel inward even as he fought to regain control over his emotions.

He gazed down at his wife, at her tear-stained face, her parched and bleeding lips,

and the pain in her amber eyes that stabbed through his chest as surely as any

mercenary’s blade ever had. She squeezed his large hand in hers as the midwife’s

apprentices bustled around her prone form. The midwife, herself, remained at the foot of

the bed, her capable arms beneath the modesty blanket. Alastair watched as the adept

woman felt inside of his wife’s belly, her lips pressing into a line more grim with each

passing second.

Finally, she straightened, and her bright, age-lined eyes peered up at him. The

expression on the elder woman’s face was disconcerting.

“She’s breached. The cord has wrapped around her neck. It’ll take some work to

unwind, but we may not have the time. Sarah’s contractions are coming harder and faster

now. Each one constricts the child’s airways a little more. Already, she has been without

breath for too long.”

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Heather Killough-Walden

Alastair stared at the woman. A strange kind of numbness had seeped into his limbs.

His hearing came and went and he wasn’t certain he’d understood her correctly. As the

color drained from his tired face, he forced himself to ask. “What are you saying, Anna?”

“I’m sorry, Alastair. I may not be able to save your daughter, and Sarah’s life is now

in danger as well – ” Her reply was cut off as Sarah screamed yet again, the contraction

visibly tightening her swollen belly and ripping a guttural cry of agony from somewhere

deep inside of her.