The Jack of Souls

by Stephen Merlino

  Harric pushed his pack through and inchwormed after, ribs screaming and limiting him to tiny agonizing movements.

  When he finally succeeded, his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his injuries throbbed. He lay for long moments, listening to the sounds of the stable. Rudy, it seemed, was in a fouler mood than usual, cursing the stable boys and thrashing about by the south doors. By the time Harric crept across the empty stall to the right down the main aisle, the stable master had scared the boys out of sight and stood alone in the south doorway, muttering. Rudy fished a roll of ragleaf from his belt purse and lit it in the lantern, then stepped into the yard to smoke.

  The horse in the stall to the left of Harric’s snorted loudly and snuffed at him through the rails. Farfit, one of Mother Ganner’s blood stallions; he had a bandage at the top of his neck where Caris had bled him to make travelers’ tonics.

  As he let the beast snuff his hand, the three stable boys skulked by with brushes and hoof picks. Wallop and Gander were both nearly twelve, but Honald was only eight, and lived in terror of Rudy.

  Harric hissed their names, and they started and squinted about until they saw him beckoning from the shadows. They lit up at the sight of him and gathered in his stall, glowing with admiration.

  “Harric, you give Rudy that fat lip?” Wallop said. “He’s mad as a dragon.”

  “Fat lip?” Harric grinned, guessing it had been Caris. “No. That was—a knight. A friend. But listen: something’s going to happen here now, and I don’t want you to get in trouble for it. Do you think you can find a reason to leave the stables, all three of you?”

  They nodded. “We could fetch Rudy’s vittles,” Gander said. “He always wants vittles ’bout now, but Ma Ganner won’t abide him near the kitchens with a stink-roll lit up.”

  “Good. Go fetch his vittles, but take your time. Be standing by the kitchen door when you hear him holler, and I promise you’ll see something to keep you laughing a fortnight.”

  The boys nodded eagerly.

  “You leaving, Harric?” Honald asked.

  “Have to, little man.”

  “We’re gonna miss you,” said Gander. “You’re the only thing keeps Rudy in his place. If you go, there won’t be nothing holding him back.”

  “And nobody to give us silver pennies,” said Honald.

  Harric felt a pang of helpless loss. The three were the nearest thing he had to younger brothers, and he took it as an unspoken duty to protect them—especially Honald—from the worst of Rudy’s depredations. “I’ll be back some day. And if Rudy isn’t in his place when I do, I’ll put him there for good.”

  “You promise?” Honald asked, eyes large and worried.

  “I promise.”

  Harric gave each an affectionate pat with one hand while his other moved unnoticed and dropped pennies in their pockets. “Now get his vittles, only make it look like it was his idea. And don’t look too eager…wipe that smile off your face, Honald. Look all tired and ornery. That’s it.”

  The boys shuffled away, and Harric listened to their words with Rudy. After a few grunts from the stable master, the boys’ murmurs faded, and Harric guessed they’d gone to the kitchen. He crept from the stall to the back doors, where the light of the lantern was weak, and opened them for Caris.

  “The boys are gone,” he said as she slipped in. “Rudy’s drunk and smoking.”

  Her eyes were already glazed in the comfort of the horse world. At the sound of his voice she blinked, and frowned, until her eyes lit upon him and focused. “Open the stalls,” she said, eyes distant. “All stalls. Bring them out. We’ll run them up the road. They can’t pursue without horses.”

  Harric grinned, and winced at the split in his lip. “If it wouldn’t hurt so much, I’d kiss you.”

  Too late he realized that simple flirtation was too fraught with human emotions for her to process in her horse-tied state. She covered her ears, sealed her eyes, and lurched away from him. He feared she’d howl as she had on similar occasions, but to his relief she remained silent. He gave her as much space as he could, and after long moments she breathed normally. She gave him a warning glare, to which he raised his hands in silent apology. Then she turned away, submerging herself, he imagined, in the world of horses.

  Harric slipped away and set to work opening the stalls of the mares and geldings first, and leading them out to stand together in the central passage. Their stillness under Caris’s influence was eerie. Though many of the beasts were unfamiliar to Harric and to each other, in Caris’s presence they became as a unified herd, their mood following hers. Even the stallions, when walked out to the floor, hardly seemed to notice each other. Jacky, who was wont to nicker in greeting whenever he saw Harric, stood still while Harric saddled him and slipped the bit between his lips.

  Rudy smoked outside the doors to keep his spark away from the straw, so Harric’s work was swift and easy. But the last horse he released stood nearest the front doors. It was a pampered-looking Iberg stallion—the witch’s horse, judging by the odd-styled saddle on the peg. Ibergs horses were generally high-strung and irritable, but even that beast stayed calm at his touch.

  A voice of alarm sounded in the yard. Someone spoke with Rudy, and Harric heard the words “murder” and “bodies.”

  Harric turned toward Caris to signal trouble, but a movement above him caught his attention. In the rafters he saw a shadowy animal figure—a moon cat!—no bigger than a rabbit, that crouched and leapt and landed on the back of the stallion. The stallion paid it no mind, but the cat craned its long neck toward Harric and eagerly nosed at the stone in Harric’s shirt.

  How? A whiff of aconite from its fur. Oh…the witch’s cat.

  The south doors flew open no more than five strides from Harric, and Rudy stood between them, jaw agape at the sight of all his horses standing calmly in the aisle. “What in the Black Moon…?” His eyes fell on Harric. “You!”

  *

  Caris let loose with a bizarre shouting whinny, and the horses lunged as one for Rudy and the doors.

  Harric grabbed the Iberg’s mane and hauled himself astride as it lunged through the doors and shouldered Rudy into a straw rick. The moon cat clawed its way from the horse up Harric’s sleeve and his shoulder, where it clung like a burr, its long neck craning about, blank white eyes wide and bright. From its fur, a whiff of Iberg perfume.

  Through the yard they raced with the thunder of twenty horses behind them. Three stable boys cheered as they cornered the yard and dove into the road behind the inn, galloping for the gate. Caris passed him on her own mare, Rag, which she must have saddled while Harric emptied the stalls. From that moment Harric made no effort to steer, for he knew the stallion followed Caris, and it was just as well, for its jarring stride sent stabs of pain through his ribs, and it required his full attention to minimize the jolts without stirrups.

  With every stride the witch-stone in the cargo slip of his tunic also swung against his ribs like the clapper of a bell, but he dared not remove a hand from the mane to detain it. He managed to hunch his shoulders and cave his chest in such a way that the tunic cradled it far from his skin, but the jolts still tortured his sides, and there was nothing he could do to keep the claws of the moon cat from needling at his collar.

  The gates stood open, as the old knight had promised. They dashed through and onto the Hanging Road carved from cliff above the river, now bloodied by the light of the Mad Moon glaring over the Godswall. Four-score iron-shod hooves sparked and rang up the hard rock grade, then thundered across the trestles over canyons. To their left, the vast black gulf of air above the river; to their right, vast curtains of echoing stone.

  A bubble of triumph rose from Harric’s lungs and escaped in a shout of joy.

  Free! He’d done it, and he was free!

  He lifted a hand to the cat, which had clambered to a more comfortable station in the crook of his neck and shoulder. “And you, my little beast, are free to stay on!”

  After a mile, the ro
ad rounded a bluff and dropped toward a wooded valley intersecting the main river from the east. As they curved down toward the forest, Harric gazed across the valley to the far side where the road rose up again, resuming its course across the cliff face and burning in the light of the Mad Moon like a path of fire.

  When the road dove beneath the canopy of trees, the herd slowed, hoofbeats abruptly muted on earthen road. Splashes of red moonlight illumined the path, and soon the camps of emigrants sprouted along the landward side. Men and women stood at fires, faces reflecting firelight and curiosity as they peered to the road. At one, he glimpsed the unmistakable figure of the peasant priest in his tentlike smothercoat, squinting out with worried brow.

  The camps dwindled, and they rode through stump lands where wood had been cleared to fuel waterwheels. On the water side they passed a tooler’s yard with docks and the makeshift structures of its tiny wharf.

  As soon as they crossed the rocky ridge near the middle of the valley, the caravan camps ceased altogether, and Caris finally slowed the herd to a walk. She stopped them in a shallow stream that crossed the road, where they stood blowing and snorting like tooler’s bellows. The Iberg’s stallion’s neck steamed with sweat. Harric’s ribs blazed with pain from the jarring, and his legs ached from clasping without stirrups. He groaned in general misery.

  Behind them, the distinctive cadence of the Phyros grew louder beyond the crest of the ridge. The herd began to shy. Caris maneuvered Rag beside Harric and motioned for him to climb over to sit behind her saddle. He guessed that calming the whole herd would be too difficult near a Phyros.

  “What about Jack?” He indicated his horse, still wearing his saddle.

  She shook her head, expression strained. “Can’t.”

  He sensed her urgency, so in spite of the pain it caused his ribs, he wrapped his fist in her cloak, placed one foot in the stirrup she offered, and hauled himself across.

  The Phyros exploded over the crest of the hill, and Caris gasped as if in pain. The herd shuddered, then shied. Almost as one, they bolted away up the road. Caris sagged, letting out a long sigh of relief. Rag still breathed in great gusts, but otherwise seemed unfrightened as the Phyros slowed to a walk behind them.

  “Bye, Jack,” Harric muttered, as his horse disappeared with his saddle.

  He arranged himself on the blanket behind Caris’s bulky saddle and laid his hands on her waist, where the curves of metal felt hard and strange beneath his palms. The moon cat sniffed at her hair from his shoulder, and peered into Harric’s face. Its eyes looked blind—milk white, without pupils—but it seemed to gaze about like any other cat. It had probably been asleep near the witch’s saddle when Harric moved the stallion and disturbed it. The cat sniffed his nose, and Harric stared back, amused. “I name you Spook,” he murmured. “You’re my pet now.”

  Caris jerked her head. “Mm?”

  The towering shadow of the Phyros approached, with Brolli’s pony clattering down the ridge behind it, Brolli bouncing awkwardly in the saddle. When he stopped beside them he seemed dazed by the ride, hunched and panting as if it had been as hard on him as on Harric.

  “Bravely done, lads,” the old man said, emerging in a patch of ruddy moonlight. His bald head shone faintly. “Now that ring. Let’s have it.” He extended an armored hand from the intimidating height of the Phyros.

  Caris was so horse-tied she showed no evidence of hearing.

  Harric frowned. He cleared his throat. “What ring?”

  “Don’t play daft,” the knight growled. “I’ve been more than patient with your foolery. I mean the ring in the nut box.”

  “There was a ring in the nut?” Harric indicated Caris with a nod. “Then she’s got it.”

  “She?” The old knight scanned her armor, and another qualm of disgust crossed his face. “She, is it!”

  “Yes. She.”

  “Well, girl? Where is it?”

  Caris returned his gaze abstractedly, like a ragleaf smoker who’d had more than strictly necessary.

  “She’s concentrating on keeping her horse calm,” Harric said, not wanting to interrupt her trance. “She’s probably got it in her pack, unless she figured out it was a box and opened it.” That struck Harric as mildly funny. He’d left her the nut as a joke, but had actually given her a valuable ring. “Maybe she’s wearing it. I’ll see if I can get her glove off.”

  As Harric moved to find Caris’s hand, the old man’s jaw dropped, and his ragleaf tumbled from his lips into the stream, where it snuffed with a tiny sigh. A qualm of doubt rippled through Harric. What if Caris had rejected the trinket as she did the squire’s silver? She might have thrown them out the window and into the river, or simply left them on the floor of his chambers.

  Harric teased her left hand from the reins. Then he coaxed the gauntlet off. On her smallest finger, three interlaced rings of witch-silver glowed as if red hot in the light of the Mad Moon. Harric smiled in relief. “There. See?”

  The old man released a string of blistering oaths.

  Brolli’s laugh barked in the darkness. “She isn’t your sister, is she?”

  “No. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Caris put her warm hand on Harric’s and drew it tighter around her waist, then lower, below her belt. It was a gesture that came from her horse-tied self: an animal urge, unconscious, and so without the charged meaning it would otherwise have. Even so, it sent a buzz of excitement through Harric, and he wondered if she would remember it when she was back in the human world.

  “It’s not a problem, sir,” he said, retracting his hand to return her gauntlet. “When she’s ready she’ll take them off and return them.”

  “Bolts and shackles!” the old man spat. “You can’t take them off!”

  “Why not?”

  The old man’s gust of cursing prevented further response.

  “The ring is a love charm of my people,” Brolli said. “A wedding ring. It is stuck on her finger, and she is stuck on who gave them to her. You, yes?”

  Harric blinked, and Caris’s mouth hung mute, as if she’d heard what Brolli said but was too horse-tied to respond.

  “Look, you two, I’m sorry,” said the old man. “We’ve rather made a mess of things today—”

  “We?” said Brolli. “You give a love charm to a bachelor, but we make a mess?”

  Caris frowned, eyes still distant. “I’ve felt so…different. This is why?”

  “Now, girl, don’t panic—this magic is good magic,” the knight said, misreading her expression as Arkendian panic over magic. “Kwendi magic isn’t like Iberg magic at all—”

  “You’re saying you gave me a love charm without telling me?” Harric said.

  “It was a mistake, son. I was tired—grabbed the wrong purse, you see, and…” The old knight rubbed his eyes and sighed.

  Caris twisted around in her saddle to meet Harric’s eyes. Her gaze was distant, as if still deep in concentration on the horses, but seemed to focus on him. “You gave me a love charm?”

  “Caris, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Her brow furrowed as the meaning of the words began to reach her.

  “More than a love charm, really,” said Brolli. “It is to make a marriage.”

  “A marriage?” Harric said.

  Pointed canines flashed in Brolli’s grin. “Force a marriage, yes. The magic makes sure it can’t be removed.”

  Rag shied as Caris came fully into focus on Harric, and slugged him in the thigh. “It won’t come off?”

  “Ow! Caris, I didn’t know—”

  “I killed for you tonight!”

  Rag sidestepped the Phyros, and Caris struggled against the reins, seething.

  “That was your choice,” Harric said. His pains made him petty. “You want to see what it’s like to love? Here’s your chance. But don’t blame this on me. Talk to these two about it.”

  She clenched her teeth, eyes brimming. “I didn’t ask for this, Harric.”

  “And I did?” />
  The Phyros shouldered against them, stumbling Rag sideways, and forcing Caris to concentrate on her mount. “Get a hold of yourselves,” said the knight. “We’re not out of danger. Is this the stream you had in mind? Girl! Is this the stream we follow to find your friend?”

  “Yes. This is it.”

  “Right. Brolli, you lead. Both of you follow. Now! And not a word till I say we’re clear.”

  “Come on, you two.” Brolli grinned. “You can court later.”

  …The Blood of the Phyros made men immortal, but it also made them wild… Many immortals slew friends or lovers in rages, later to take their own lives in grief and madness. Others embraced the rage, and when all lovers and friends had fled or perished, lived only for battle and rapine… It was the excesses of these monsters that led ultimately to the Cleansing…

  —From Arkendia’s Iron Age, by Timus of Prand

  14

  The High Prince & the Hostess

  Mother Ganner followed two purple-liveried servants through the north wing of her lodge for an audience with the newly arrived prince. Krato’s Moon must’ve come early for a prince to stay in Gallows Ferry. He’d taken over the north wing with his army of servants. Yet his people were civil, paying twice the fee for his rooms and twice again to the lodgers he expelled. In the few hours since his arrival, his servants had transformed the place under a multitude of carpets and tapestries and scented candelabra so that she hardly recognized it. Even the door at which she waited to be announced had been nailed over with cloth of gold, as if no surface should meet his royal gaze unless it be a comfort to the eye.