Silver moonlight of the Bright Mother bathed him, and he stood at the sill to let the summer air caress his skin. She watched him from across the scablands, her face full and serene as if all were well in the world. Below his window, the dark void of the river canyon sighed. He nudged a candle stub off the sill and watched it fall past five stories of inn and fifteen fathoms of cliff face toward the swirling waters. Since they’d built the inn upon the very edge of the cliff, and since the top floors jettied even farther over the river, the candle hit the surface well away from the foot of the cliff to vanish without a sound in the black waters.
The view of the broken hills across the river, which normally cheered him, only made him wistful. This was his last look. After tonight, would he ever know beauty again? Would he know anything? As the Bright Mother moon set into the scablands of the opposite shore, her low-angled light etched the rocks in stark relief, a jagged labyrinth of stone. He had always meant to explore those lands, but never had. In patches of darkness between its crags he spotted the campfires of emigrants bound for the Free Lands, another place he’d never see.
As the Bright Mother sank below the horizon, he imagined he felt her protective powers withdraw, even as the Mad Moon, which he knew rose somewhere in the east, marshaled threat and destruction.
He snorted. “Such symbolic timing, Mother.”
Laughter gusted from the windows of the bar far below. His guests were probably betting on the manner of his doom again. He’d started the wagers himself, to keep things light at supper. “Hanging” had been a popular one, along with “tooken by a god,” though his personal favorite was “loved to death by hoors.” They all knew it was a pointless pastime, since all victims of his mother’s curses died under cover of fog. The last two victims had been Harric’s friends, Chacks and Remo. The day before their appointed dooms, they’d fled for the Free Lands, and the fog overtook them. Emigrants had found their bodies on the north road, without a mark on them to show how they’d died.
Harric slammed the shutters on the view, biting back a string of curses against his mother.
The room spun. His head felt heavy. Maybe the apple wine was finally doing its work. He tore off the remainder of his clothes and flopped on his bed to lie sweating in the stagnant air. If sleep would come, he’d have it; no sense watching all night for his doom. Without sleep he’d be dull and vulnerable the rest of the day, unfit for resistance.
He pulled his sword from under his bed and lay with it clasped to his breast in its scabbard. Small help, perhaps, when fighting a mystery, but its weight and edge gave comfort.
He closed his eyes, resolved at least to rest, and fell into a wine-soaked sleep, his last in Gallows Ferry.
*
The fog rose quickly around the cemetery island, drawing spirits from the grave cairns that crowded its stony shores. The strongest of the spirits drifted to the edge of the water. Like the rest, he was a transient citizen of the Unseen; once living, he was still bound to his bones so he might serve his kin until the next should die and take his place. Also like the rest, he hadn’t seen his kin for a single night since he died, for his people feared the attentions of the dead, and placed their graves on river islands where moving water confined them.
It is here, he said of the fog. As she promised. Soon we can cross.
The others stood well back and watched. They were fainter souls, weak but hungry.
They gazed in hope at the fog, which had already begun to calm the violent essence of the river as a blanket stills a fire. They gazed in fear at the sky, which, like the river, had been terribly transformed from the one they knew in life. In the world of the living, the Bright Mother and the Mad Moon had dominated the heavens, while the Unseen Moon—black as the space between stars—lurked in corners, unregarded. In the unseen world of spirits, this inverted. Here the black moon dominated the sky like the hole at the center of a whirlpool, and the sky itself—which in life displayed a mantle of stars—now bore the black moon’s web of souls.
Shuddering, they tore their gaze from the moon whose tides would one day draw them skyward. What happened after that, they knew not. Perhaps the creatures of that moon, which crawled the web like spiders, consumed the rising grave spirits. Or perhaps they wove the grave spirits’ strands into the very web they crawled—a living network of imprisoned souls.
Neither prospect brought comfort.
The spirit at the river’s edge knew better than to stare at the Web of Fate. His eyes lay on the water as he wrapped himself in fog and tested the air above the river with an outstretched hand.
Yes, he said. The fog grows thick. It is safe to cross.
To Gallows Ferry! a withered spirit cried. To feed!
To see my kin, said another.
No, said the strong one, now their leader. He glided above the sleeping waters toward the shore. We must find Him first. That is the bargain we made with the Lady who brought the freedom of the fog.
Across the surface of the water they sped blindly for the shore, drawn by warm blood and the breath of the living.
Tell the Lady I care not for her bargains, said another, pushing forward among them. He was nearly as strong as the leader, a butcher in life used to eating his fill. Now that I’m free, I shall feed as I please.
You may tell her yourself, said the leader, for she is here.
The Lady, as they called her, stood above the beach like a sad queen upon a platform, surveying her troops before a battle. In contrast to the starved shapes of the grave spirits, she radiated power and light. And while their soul-strands trailed miserably behind them to their graves, hers rose into the web like the flames of a signal fire. And where the spirits covered their nakedness with loops of their ragged strands, she wore hers as a gown of light. Her gaze burned. She peered from the flames of her being like a witch at the stake, mocking the fire.
What is she? one whispered in awe. Is she not one of us? A mortal soul upon this land?
She is, said the leader. But she is more. She has the Sight. She knows the web. She knows its ways.
They huddled before her on the beach, avoiding her gaze. Even the butcher faltered, but then he swelled and pushed forward beside the leader.
The leader bowed. Lady, we have come.
Her voice rose, pure and sad. You know what you must do.
We do.
Then go. She gestured in the direction of Gallows Ferry, though her sorrowful eyes rested on the butcher, as if she knew he would speak.
We must feed first. He lashed his strands angrily. Look at us. We are weak and shriveled like corpses. There are settlers on the road; let their strands fill us first, then on to your business.
I did not free you to feed on peasants.
I say you did not free us at all, he replied. It was the fog that freed us, and maybe it would have come on this night without you, only you somehow saw it would come, and pretend you caused it.
The other spirits shuffled nervously. Some moved away from him, but he stood his ground.
Perhaps it is as you say. She stepped aside and gestured to the road on the bank above. Let us see whether you need me or no.
He hesitated, but then puffed himself and proceeded up the bank beyond her. When she did nothing to oppose him, he raced up the road, free as air.
Several others moved to follow, but the leader pointed to the lowest strands of the web above the trees. Look. Something moved there. Dark shapes like crows at a gallows.
Servants of the Unseen Moon! a grave spirit hissed.
As the figures descended the web, their forms seemed to coalesce, then bleed like ink in water before coalescing again into forms varied but difficult to discern. Half shadow, half soul, they seemed to both generate and swallow the spirit light around them.
They dropped from the web onto the butcher like crows on spilled corn. The butcher cried out, brief and shrill, but his struggle quickly ceased. The moon sprites huddled around him, heads low. When they rose to perch in the web, the butche
r’s empty husk drifted back to his grave on its strands, formless, and fainter now than the shadow of smoke in moonlight.
Are there others who doubt I freed you? The Lady’s sad gaze had never left the beach. None of the grave spirits moved. Very well. Go before me and fulfill your half of the bargain. When it is done, you may do as you like.
The leader followed the path the butcher had taken, and this time the moon sprites above them only watched.
Another grave spirit ventured after the leader and clung to his side. She is truly mighty. The moon spirits do not move! They fear her too.
She has made bargains of her own, said the leader. One can only wonder what sacrifice she made to gain such power.
It matters not to me what she gave, as long as I feed.
The rest of the grave spirits made themselves small and scurried beneath the watchers like rats beneath an eagle’s nest. Then the Lady was behind them, bright and terrible. Fly now, or there will be no time! Strands of spirit lashed from her hands like whips, scoring the air above the stragglers. The spirits sped before her, and she pursued on wings like fire.
The leader of the grave spirits saw that she wept.
*
Harric woke in pain, bony hands around his throat. He twisted against their hold until he tore away and shot upright as his enemy dissolved into fog.
Staring about in confusion, he gulped the air. His candle had dwindled to a guttering stub, but it was enough to illumine the stream of fog sieving through the shutters and burying the floor. Already it stood as high as the top of his mattress.
He bolted from bed, sending his forgotten sword skittering to the floor, where it disappeared beneath the fog. Something cold entwined his knees. Something hard seized an ankle. He cried out and wrenched free, tripping to the door and throwing it wide to plunge down the stairs, only to find the stairwell overflowing with fog. White hands like the hands of drowned men reached from its surface to grasp at his arms.
He cried out, stumbling backward and thrashing to the window. Throwing the shutters wide, he saw the Mad Moon full on the horizon, its red skin blazing like fire. A sea of blood buried the valley to the height of his window—the fog, stained red in the crimson light of the moon.
The fog filled the valley in all directions. Only the peak of the inn and a few distant hilltops stood above the tide, tiny islands of safety.
Harric clambered through the window to stand on its sill, and grab a rung of the roof ladder beside it. Fire-red tendrils of fog slid up his knees as he stepped onto the lowest rung. He swung his other foot to the next rung, but something seized it and nearly jerked him into the void. Kicking wildly, he tore his foot free and pulled himself up with his arms.
Fear pulsed in his temples. His feet flew up the rungs. Only six more rungs to the edge of the gable above his chambers, and then he could grab the rope knot that dangled over the lip of the roof, swing a leg over, and crawl up the shingles to the roof peak above the fog.
As he clambered the last rungs and grabbed the knot securely in his fists, bony hands seized his left leg. He kicked free long enough to fling the leg over the lip of the roof, but they descended upon his right foot on the rung and wrenched it free.
Without solid purchase on the edge of the roof, his free leg slipped back, and he swung out above the void.
Harric roared. Dangling above the fog, something in him broke. The rage he’d bottled burst free and filled his limbs with fury. Stomping downward with his free foot, he broke his captor’s grip. He pulled himself up, swung a leg over the lip of the roof, and hauled his body onto the shingles.
On all fours, he scrabbled up the slope. When he reached the peak above the fog, he collapsed across it and lay panting and trembling. Only then did he realize he’d screamed his voice raw, and his feet and fingers bled from the sharp slate shingles.
When he caught his breath, he stood on the pinnacle of the roof, a tiny island in a flaming sea. His naked body shivered. There was no higher point in Gallows Ferry: to the west, the crimson moon set fire to an endless sea of fog; to the east, immediately behind the inn, the fog lapped against the cliff of the Godswall, and even with a running leap it stood too far from the inn to reach, and too sheer to climb if he could. The cliff loomed above the tiny island, a granite wall a full mile high.
He was trapped. And naked. And as the fog rose, his island dwindled.
Harric shivered again and rubbed his bruised throat. So it was the fog itself that executed her curses. Or something in the fog. And this is how Chacks and Remo must have died. He remembered their faces as they begged for mercy at his mother’s grave, the night before they fled Gallows Ferry.
“Is that what you want of me, Mother? Want me to weep and beg?”
The fog swallowed his words. Already it submerged the top of his window below, and licked at the edge of the roof. Searching tendrils twined up the slates, questing and retreating like the tongues of serpents.
The Mad Moon glared across the sea, the blistered eye of its angry god. And now beside it, like the crow-plucked socket of its twin, stared the black void of the Unseen Moon. A pulse of fear shot through him. It was rare to notice the black moon’s place in the sky, and bad luck to stare when you did. Yet he found himself transfixed. It seemed not a moon but a burn-hole in the canopy of stars, blacker somehow than the night itself. It seemed to swallow the light of the nearest stars and humble even the fire of the Mad Moon beside it.
Something moved across the face of the Unseen Moon. A shimmer barely glimpsed, like a reflection from the depths of a well.
Whispers teased at the edge of Harric’s mind: We see you.
A shiver crawled up his spine.
Fly to us. Be free.
The black moon kissed the horizon. It was setting, which meant dawn was near, for it always set before dawn. As it touched the fog, an oily stain seeped onto the surface of the sea, spilled ink on red linen. The stain meandered across its surface until it touched the shores of Harric’s island. A path. In the distance he imagined huddled figures on the path, shapes as dark as the moon itself, beckoning.
Fly to us. Fly and be free.
Harric shuddered. He imagined himself stepping from the roof onto the path and plunging thirty fathoms to the river. Even if he survived the icy shock, he’d never rise from the whirlpools. No one ever did. The figures called him to his death.
Death…and then what? The black moon’s belly? Oblivion? A new mother’s womb and another run at happiness? Depends on whom I ask. Surely one must be right.
A tingle of horrible hope ran through him. Might this path to the Unseen be an offer of freedom in the afterlife—of protection from his mother’s ghost, which surely waited on the other side as she waited in his nightmares? Or should he wait for the fog to reach him and then fight—weaponless and naked—against a sea of clawing hands?
The fog boiled above the eaves, near enough to touch. In it Harric glimpsed faces desperate and hollow. Its hands and tendrils grew bolder, scrabbling toward his toes. A bold arm flung from the fog and scraped his heel.
Jump. Fly.
Harric crouched, heart pounding, legs tensing to spring.
“Harric?” said a familiar voice. “What are you doing? Where are your clothes?” The voice seemed near, yet whole worlds away. Gods take it for interrupting!
He reset a slipping foot and tensed to spring, only to watch in dismay as the Unseen’s path and figures faded from the fog. Stars winked where the Black Moon had been.
“No!” he gasped.
The Mad Moon followed its brother beneath the horizon. The sky paled. Golden sunlight glimmered on the few hilltop islands in the west, and the stagnant air finally stirred, shifting hair from Harric’s eyes.
“Harric! Answer me.”
Harric stared in confusion as crimson drained from the fog and Caris’s head and shoulders rose through it directly before him. Big as she was, she could stand on the sill of his window with her head above the fog. Her face floated before him
, a dream interrupting a nightmare.
“Harric, what in the black moon are you doing?” She clamped a strong hand around his ankle. “If you jump, you make her stupid doom come true!”
Claws erupted from the fog and seized her hair from behind, hauling her head back and peeling her away from the gable.
She yelled, twisting aside while clinging to the roof with one hand and to Harric’s ankle with the other. Then she dropped as if something knocked her feet from beneath her, and her grip jerked Harric’s foot from the slates.
He fell, slamming his side on the roof before she released him and he plunged over the edge into the fog. Somehow, he caught the lip of the roof with one hand and slowed his descent enough for Caris to snatch his wrist. His fingers lost hold, and this time he swung downward in her grasp and crashed against the ladder beside the window, jarring his arm in its socket.
He cried out in pain. Caris cursed steadily.
Harric groped until he found the bottom rung of the ladder, and hooked a knee over it. Before he could propel himself up, icy hands collared him and squeezed. He pried at them with his free hand, but they were bone hard and slippery. More hands grabbed his ankles and dragged him from the rung to swing free again in Caris’s grasp. She groaned and tried to lift him, but the fog countered with such terrible strength that her grip slipped from his wrist to his hand.
“Grab something!” she cried.
Harric dared not release his grip on the hands at his throat, and he struggled in vain to free his legs.
Wind gusted his hair sideways and banged a shutter above. One of the claws on his ankle released him and he flung his knee back onto the rung. Another gust cut across the face of the inn, and its force seemed to literally blow the strength from the hands at his neck. He pried the fingers free and grabbed the ladder. He sucked cool air into his lungs.
As sunlight streaked the morning sky, the grasping hands withered like paper in fire. Faint screams of pain echoed around him, weirdly present yet distant. To ground! It is done!
The Jack of Souls Page 2