The Chosen Soul (4 page)

and bright, intelligent eyes. Raven had always respected his judgments. He stopped

before them, nodded at Loki, and, in a quiet voice, repeated Cael’s accusations. He then

asked Raven whether they were true.

Raven had never in her life told a lie. There had been times – many times – that she

had wanted to. However, in each instance, the truth had come spilling out before she

could stop it. As it did this time. She nodded, admitting that Brayden and Selby had been

swallowed up by the ground and that she had wished for it just before it had happened.

The regnant took in the blossoming bruises on her face and the destroyed dress beneath

the cloak she had borrowed from the priests. He was silent for a moment, his expression

remorseful, and he took a deep breath.

Then he nodded and asked Raven to accompany them to the guardhouse.

Loki shook his head. “No. She is innocent. She did nothing but voice what anyone

would have been thinking in such a situation. Those men attacked us. They tried to rape

her. They got what they deserved.”

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The Chosen Soul

The council members began to whisper amongst themselves. The guards tensed,

placing their hands on the hilts of their swords. The regnant raised his left hand, stilling them all.

“I have no doubt, Loki. Unfortunately, Master Selby and Brayden are not here to

stand accused. Your sister, however, is. I am afraid she is going to have to come with us.”

Loki moved like lightning, pushing Raven back several yards away from the group

of men. He then rushed to the nearest wall, where Haledon’s symbol, the double-bladed,

sun-detailed axes, hung above the altar. Without pause, he pulled them down and turned

to face the guards, one heavy, sharpened axe in each hand.

Raven raced to stand between them. “Loki, no!” She faced the council members.

“I’ll come with you. I won’t fight. Just please leave Loki out of this. He has done

nothing but take a beating.”

The council regnant looked from her to her brother, who stood, wide-eyed, several

paces away.

“Very well.” He nodded once again and gestured for her to walk ahead of them.

Loki moved to follow, but Raven stopped, turned to face him, and shook her head

once. Something passed between them in that instant, some unspoken agreement that slid

from gaze to gaze.

He stood still and let her go.

And now she rested, alone, her feverish forehead pressed against the cool metal bars

of a moldy guardhouse stall. She was to be burned on the pyre at sunrise. She smiled

bitterly at the thought. She had never liked fire, nor sunrise, so it was fitting.

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Heather Killough-Walden

As she stood there, eyes closed, thoughts distant, she heard the door to the adjoining

hall unlock and creek open. Raven pulled away from the window and turned to face her

cell door. In a moment, the locks within its iron fittings turned, and that door swung open as well.

Raven stared at her mother and father, who stood in the archway with the attendant

guard. Not able to bear the agony etched into her mother’s features, she at last looked

away and moved to sit on the small straw-filled bed. Her mother joined her there, placing

a warmer cloak over her daughter’s shoulders and pressing a folded bundle of clothing

into her arms. Her father moved further into the room. The guard closed and locked the

door behind them.

The silence stretched, as no one seemed to know what to say first. And then Sarah

was sobbing, holding her daughter in an embrace that Raven could only return with equal

dedication. Their tears fell freely, mingling before they dropped onto the dirty and hay-

strewn floor.

Alastair Grey watched them from where he stood beside the small barred window.

His expression was unreadable.

Minutes passed.

When it seemed Raven and her mother had no more tears to cry, they straightened

and Sarah peered down into her daughter’s face. Her weathered hands cupped Raven’s

bruised cheeks, her fingers shaking as she took in the damage that marred her daughter’s

abnormally exquisite features.

“What did they do to you, little one?”

“I’m okay, Mama. They didn’t…”

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The Chosen Soul

Alastair came forward then. He was a tall and handsome man, his hair long, wavy

and dark, his skin relatively unlined for his age, and his eyes unnaturally bright. Still, his daughter was far lovelier than his appearance warranted. “No, they wouldn’t, Raven,” he

said. “Your father would not allow it to happen.”

Raven looked up at him. Confusion furrowed her brow. “But you weren’t there,

Papa.”

Alastair and Sarah exchanged glances. Raven looked from one to the other. Then

Alastair moved to stand before her, knelt so that he was on her level, and took her hands

in his.

“Raven, I’m afraid there is something your mother and I have to tell you…” He

paused, bit his lower lip, and took a slow breath through his nose. “The night you were

born, a stranger came to call.”

Raven cocked her head to one side as she listened to her father recount the never

before told version of her and her brother’s births.

Nearing the completion of his story Alastair leaned forward saying, “After I’d placed

both you and your brother in your mother’s arms, I went into the family room to thank

the stranger. As far as I was concerned, he was a guardian, sent by Haledon, to save my

wife and children. But when I reached the room, he was gone. I opened the door and

looked outside. The storm had stopped. The sky was clear. There was no sign of the

stranger or his mount anywhere. It was extraordinary. Almost as if it had never

happened.”

Sarah nodded, her gaze introspective. “We had many years to ponder what transpired

that night. It was not until you were nearly five years of age that we heard of the theft at

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Heather Killough-Walden

the Spring of Souls. The theft had occurred the very night you were born. And your father

and I came to grasp the truth.” Sarah looked into her daughter’s eyes then, and held her

gaze steady. “Raven, it was the stranger – the stranger who visited us that night – who

stole the Spring’s eldest soul. And it was that soul that he placed inside of your body.
You
are the Chosen Soul, Raven. That was how he saved you. That was how he saved us

both.”

Raven stared at her mother. She blinked. The world seemed to drift off, far away,

untouchable, unreachable. She suddenly felt strangely invaded, as if there were

something inside of her that should not be there, foreign, uninvited.

She felt sick.

“We still did not know, however, who the stranger had actually been. We realized he

had to have been powerful enough to make it past the Spring’s safeguards, and perhaps

even to create the very storm that helped allow the theft to take place.” Alastair shrugged.

“However, we had no true notion of who he was… until tonight.” He straightened and

peered down at his daughter.

Raven turned to face her father, comprehension dawning on her beautiful features.

“What happened to Brayden and Selby was his doing, Raven. The stranger’s. He

came to your aid when you needed him, heeded your call as a father would," Alastair

swallowed, his jaw tense as he continued, “because that is what he is. The moment he

took your soul from the Spring, he became your sire. The body I helped give you was

changed, altered forever, when that soul reached its core.”

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The Chosen Soul

Alastair knelt before her once again. “What happened to Selby and Brayden explains

much. It is apparent, now, that the stranger was one of the Lords of Abaddon. And you

are his child.”

Raven shrunk back away from her father and stood on shaky legs. She moved,

somewhat wobbly, to the opposite wall and hugged herself against another

uncharacteristic chill.

When she spoke, her voice was very soft and cracked slightly beneath the staggering

weight of what she had just been told. “You are telling me that I am the daughter of a

devil?”

Behind her, Alastair and Sarah glanced at one another. Sarah stood and moved to

Raven, drawing her into her arms and holding her tightly. “You are
my
daughter, Raven.

Always and forever. And I don’t care what the consequences, I swear that you will not

die on the morrow.
I
will not allow it. Devils and council members be damned.” She

released her then and moved to the door. She looked back over her shoulder at her

husband, and he nodded.

Then he, too, hugged his daughter, kissed her trembling form on the forehead, and

peered down into her blue-black eyes. “Have faith, Raven, most of the townspeople do

not wish to see you executed. It is Selby’s father that has them in the palm of his hand.

He is threatening to halt trade with Norraim if they don’t…” He pulled her into another

tight embrace, and then, with one last kiss on her brow, he left her and joined his wife

near the exit. The two of them nodded once more at her and then Alastair rapped twice on

the door.

In a moment, the guard unlocked it and led them out.

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Heather Killough-Walden

When Raven was alone, she found herself sliding down the wall, her legs no longer

able to support her. Her mind spun, reeling, dizzy with the information she had just been

handed. She was the Chosen Soul. The infamous stolen spirit from the Spring of Souls in

Kriver. The stranger – her
father
– had traveled far to deposit her soul within her body.

Kriver was a very great distance from her isolated village. And one would have to

venture through the forest… over the mountains… very few people were said to have

completed the trip. Raven realized that that was why her parents had not heard of the theft from the Spring of Souls until five years after it had happened. But then, a Lord of

Abaddon would not have to make the trip as a mortal would. In fact, it would mean no

more than magical transport. Devils possessed such abilities as mortals possessed the

ability to walk and talk.

Raven closed her eyes and laid her head back against the wall. Outside her window,

the night grew long, the shadows deepened, and the moons rose higher in the sky.

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The Chosen Soul

The Chosen Soul – Chapter Four

Loki aimed the bow with a slightly unsteady hand. The guard was turned away from

him, gazing at something in the distance that Loki could not see. His back made for a

broad target, open and waiting.

Loki swallowed the dry lump that had formed in his throat. A trickle of sweat

threatened his left eye. He let out a shaky breath.

He couldn’t shoot a man in the back. This was not the way he had been raised. This

was not the kind of fight he had ever planned on fighting.

But if he didn’t take the shot, do what he had to do, Raven would be killed.

Loki held his breath again and waited. Maybe the man would turn around. Not that

he would see what was coming. Loki remained well hidden in the thickets of the dark

forest that abutted the guardhouse. The shadows there were absolute, the underbrush soft

and wielding, the canopy of trees above him blocking all light from the double moons in

the night sky. Only the sound of his heart beating would give him away.

That, and the arrow he was about to imbed in the unsuspecting guard’s chest.

*****

Raven jolted awake for the hundredth time that evening. Her back ached from where

she rested, stiffly, against the dank stone wall. She moaned, the sound echoing off of the

boundaries of the cell around her. She thought about her father.

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Heather Killough-Walden

What would happen if she called him again right now? Would the devil save her

from her mortal fate? Would he unlock the door? Distract the guards?

She shook her head, frightened now of her own thoughts, and attempted to think

them away.

Her brother had not come to see her along with her parents. Raven knew her brother

better than anyone alive. If he hadn’t come to comfort her, he had had a good reason.

Still, she wondered how he would react to the news of the stranger and the Spring of

Souls. Loki had always been the ‘good’ sibling. He was quick to obey, first to offer help,

and he’d been fond of Haledon since he was a child. In fact, he had sworn her to secrecy

when he’d admitted that he was hoping to one day become an acolyte in the sun god’s

temple.

Would he judge her?

She was the daughter of a devil. There were nine lords of Abaddon. And she was the

scion of one of them. She wondered which one. She recalled that Haledon’s acolytes

despised one Lord, in particular, above the others. Lord Malphas, ruler of the eighth

circle, known as Caina, was Haledon’s sworn enemy. His eternal plane of ice and cold

and desolation was the antithesis of all that Haledon, the god of sun and light and

goodness, stood for.

Raven rubbed her eyes and fought back tears. She thought she knew her brother well

enough to be certain that he would not abandon her, no matter who her sire happened to

be. But one never knew. Human beings were far from perfect, and they were allowed to