The Jack of Souls

by Stephen Merlino

  The priest’s camp bristled with nervous glances and whispers. There had never been a greater foe to the free peasants of Arkendia and their priests than the immortal Sir Bannus. They set their camp far from the road, well behind the other camps, which had cursed them bitterly and pulled stakes to move farther upriver, afraid to be near them. A wide berth surrounded them. A killing field, Kogan thought grimly. He instructed his folk to keep the fires small and close. Boys stood watch in the darkness beyond, and along the road. Those in camp kept their backs to the fires, baggage at hand, ready to flee to the forest. Already there’d been strange things moving on the road that night. Herds of horses. A Phyros, sure, judging by the action of the oxen when it passed.

  None in the camp slept.

  “Finally got acrosst the river,” the widow muttered, “and you throw it all away. What’re you gonna do if Bannus come for you?”

  “What we always done. Run and hide.” The priest sighed. “Trouble always follows Will.”

  “Oh, fie on Will! And fie on all his troubles, you great ox!”

  She stabbed the coals with a stick, sending swarms of sparks in the air. “Never thought of the others around you. Had to pay some fool debt from your fool years as a brother.”

  The priest grew abruptly gruff. “You know I done right. I done right and I stand by it.”

  She turned to him, defiant, but said nothing, only searched his face as if for a courage she lacked.

  His tone gentled. “Be brave, sweet. It ain’t always safest to do what’s right, but we do it.”

  “Even if this gets us killed? What’s so right about it then?”

  “Well, then it ain’t about us at all. It’s about Will.”

  The widow struggled to fight back tears. “It’s always the plain folk what pay for them in wars, and in peace, too. Why can’t he pay his own way and leave us be?”

  “Will’s troubles are our troubles. If he falls, we fall.”

  “I just wish it were different, Kogan. We’ve come so far, and now we stand to lose it.”

  A low cheer drifted through the trees from the south road. Kogan frowned, and eased the widow to the ground. He’d heard such noise too many times to mistake it for carousing. He stood to his full height above the fire, the smothercoat unfolding stiffly before and behind. Another cheer, this time closer. A shimmer of torches appeared through the trees where the road emerged from the south slope of the valley. Fifty, maybe one hundred hands, he estimated.

  “It’s a mob, sweet.”

  She stood, eyes hard, hands balled in fists. “Oh, Kogan. What’ll we do?”

  He glanced around their caravan—two-score tents, two hundreds of men, women, and children—and saw there was no need to warn a soul; every one of them sat ready at their fires. With one hand he threw fresh wood on the fire.

  “No, you fool!” the widow hissed, kicking the wood out again. “You call attention to us. We have light enough if it comes to that.”

  Kogan cursed and hefted the ancient Phyros ax.

  “Father Kogan! Father Kogan!” A small voice rang from the darkness, followed by a young boy with nose bloodied and eyes as wide and white as hen’s eggs. “Father, they’re coming. Twenty swords and spitfires and rope. They want to burn you! They say you burned the stables. You have to run.” He sobbed. “They hung Rich and Bailer.”

  “Hung?” the priest roared. “Where’s the justice o’ the peace? The constable—damn them!”

  “There ain’t none this side the river.”

  The widow scrambled to the priest’s side. “Run and save yerself, Kogan. Head ’em away from camp, and find us later when it cools off.”

  “By the laws, I won’t. Stay here, and I’ll meet ’em myself, I will.” He strode toward the road, seething. The widow clung to his arm, dragging her feet ineffectually in the dust.

  “Think what you’re doing, you big ox! What’ll you do? Pound ’em all like nails, one two three? If you do, every boy in the camp’ll join with you, and they’ll have a real reason to hang ’em. Listen to me. You run and lead the mob away—that’s the only way to save the rest of us. Run. And tell them boys to stay low and give the mob no reasons. Say you will.”

  The priest hesitated, grinding his teeth and panting like a chained bull.

  The widow laid a soft hand on the fist clutching the ax. Her voice became tender. “Save your fire for a better time, Kogan.” She lifted her chin, but it quivered a little in spite of her. “I’ll see you again right soon. Sure I will. Listen to me now. I got more in my head than you got in yours, and you knows it. It’s the only way.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. “They won’t let us be,” he growled. “And what o’ the caravan? I can’t leave it now. Who’ll lead?”

  “I will, ye great ox! Ain’t I been a help so far? And ain’t I got more sense than you? I’ll do it, and you find us when the trouble’s past.”

  “You have my store o’ coin?” The widow nodded. “So be it. But don’t you wait for me. I’ll find you.” He kissed her on the forehead, and grinned. “You’re one fine woman, Widow Larkin.”

  “And you’re a great bull of a father,” she said, beaming. “One who best stay quick if he knows what’s best for him.”

  “Untie Geraldine,” Kogan said to the boy with the bloodied nose. “Lead her to the forest where I can find her, and be quick. Go on!”

  The boy untied the huge white cow, whose udders were heavy with milk, and whipped her toward the wood.

  “All of you stay here,” Kogan said to his worried flock. “Widow Larkin is your leader now till I come back.”

  “Father, they come apace!” someone cried. “The torches!”

  A murmuring gang of shadows and firelight filled the road, a long bowshot away. Father Kogan trotted into the darkness to meet them.

  When the mob saw him, it roared and surged forward.

  The priest held his giant ax aloft, like a god, and roared back. “You goat-headed fools! I ain’t done nothing wrong! Go choke yourselfs!”

  Spitfires popped. A pair of white-hot charges sizzled past in wavering arcs to skip harmlessly on the road beyond. Another splattered on the smothercoat and burned there ineffectually.

  The mob rushed, and Kogan fled barefoot toward the forest.

  The Iberg Magus Viero Meritosi once told the Lone Queen: “Toolery is Arkendia’s imitation of Iberg magic.” Our wise queen replied to this silken pillowcase: “On the contrary, friend. Toolery is Arkendian independence of Iberg magic.”

  —Popular anecdote printed by illegal gossip press, Kingsport, late reign of Chasia

  19

  Flushed & Hunted

  Harric woke from a dream-tortured sleep. The moon cat crouched on his chest, purring, watching him through green-slitted eyes. Green. They’d been milk the night before. Some trick of the moonlight, perhaps, had made them so. When he was young his mother had allowed him to keep a moon cat kitten with green eyes. She’d let him keep it long enough to love it, then made him drown it to prove he was beyond sentiment, as a courtiste must be. He’d refused, but she withheld his food for five days, and finally he succumbed. The memory made him sick to his stomach. And it was just such memories that tortured his dreams. It seemed the worst of them had been dragged out of their tombs to terrorize his soul. And unlike ordinary dreams, these had been vivid and true in every forgotten detail.

  …Harric, role-playing seductions with his mother.

  …Harric, on “missions” to seduce other boys and girls.

  All done unquestioningly, with the eagerness of a doting only son.

  The shame of it scoured him anew. It wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid.

  He turned and retched. Nothing came up, but the action provoked lancing pains through his injured ribs, and his headache pounced with a vengeance. Mercilessly, the dry heaves persisted as his body sought to expel a pollution in his soul.

  When it finally stopped, he wiped the perspiration from his brow and lay back again. Above him, the willow bra
nches arched protectively. Clouds moved high and bright beyond gaps in the upper branches, lit by the rising sun, though it had yet to climb high enough over the eastern ridges to warm the valley. The scent of porridge and wood smoke drew his attention to a cook fire, where an orange-haired figure with the arms and chest of a giant and the legs of a dwarf tended a steaming pot.

  Brolli, he recalled, as if it were a memory from another life.

  The Kwendi turned to look at him with huge, bulging black eyes, and flashed his feral grin. Caris joined Brolli at the fire, brow furrowed in curiosity.

  The Kwendi grinned. “You no recognize? It is the eyes.”

  “And your hair,” she said. “It’s orange.”

  “Ah. You are blind for colors at night. I forget.” Brolli gathered the mane of orange hair and tied it in a tail behind his head. The same bronze hair fuzzed his long arms and stubbled his face. “I am just as blind in day without these,” he said, tapping the black coverings over his eyes. It was clear now the bulging “eyes” were cup-shaped lenses held in place with a strap behind his head.

  Harric rolled gingerly to his stomach, careful not to alarm his injured body. He crawled to his knees, then climbed to his feet and limped out of camp to relieve himself. Spook followed, mewing hungrily. When Harric returned to the fire, Brolli had removed the black eye covers and held them up against the light so they could see it shine through like the glass of a bottle.

  “We wear them to make day less bright,” said Brolli, returning them to his eyes. “The lenses are like your brewer glass, but much stronger, and lighter.”

  “Stronger than glass?” The tooler in every Arkendian awoke in Harric. “Are they a gemstone of some kind?”

  The ambassador grinned. “Can you believe they are dragon eyes?”

  “Dragon eyes?”

  “Well, not eyes so much as the lid of the eyes of a terroc—what you call spear dragons.”

  “Spear dragons!” Caris said. “So they really exist.”

  “Do you have to slay a spear dragon to make those…eyes?” Harric said.

  Brolli grinned as if this were a very good joke. “That would be very difficult. Lucky for us, they drop eye covers every year like the deer drop antlers. If you find one from young male, it is too scratched from fighting. We collect lids from yearling females and dye them dark, so we can wear them when we stay up late.”

  Harric raised an eyebrow. “So, this is late?”

  “It is dinnertime.” Brolli lifted the lid off the pot, and peered in with a curl of displeasure to his lip. “This is oats, for Willard, when he finally rise. I eat real food already.” He illustrated by producing a charred stick from beside him on which an impaled and roasted eel glared up with dulled eyes. “You call it ‘smoking eel,’ I think. Would you like?”

  Harric swallowed. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Wake up, slumber-guts,” said Brolli. “You can eat oats while I report of my scouting.”

  “No need to wake me, you great chimpey,” said Willard, behind Harric.

  The Kwendi barked his peculiar laugh.

  Willard had sat up in his blankets. “Used to eat whatever the Black Moon I wanted. Now it’s oats, or look out.” The old knight climbed from his blankets to his feet, grunting and grimacing. When he finally gained them, his face was gray and perspiring.

  “I see you recover from your wounds quite nice,” Brolli said ominously.

  “I see your mouth’s still wagging.” Willard limped to the fire. He studied Harric with something like concern in his sleep-bleared eyes. “You look worse than I feel, boy.” He held a fat roll of ragleaf to Harric. “Get this going for me. You need it as much as I.”

  Harric received it gratefully, and lowered himself gingerly to the fire, where he puffed it alight against a brand.

  Brolli looked at Willard’s blood-crusted armor. “Let’s have a look, then.” He motioned for Willard to let him unbuckle the breastplate.

  Willard scowled, but held his arms to the sides as the Kwendi attempted the buckles under one arm. Caris unfastened the others. Brolli’s eyes grew no less grim when he pulled away the armor and quilting. Blood had soaked through the bandage and thoroughly blackened the wrap.

  “What did you see in your scouting?” Willard asked.

  Brolli paused as if considering whether he’d allow the old knight to change the subject so easily. Then he sighed. “You want good news first, or bad?”

  “Bad.”

  Brolli unwound the wrapping around Willard’s waist, while Caris held aside the blood-stiff quilting. Harric watched, inhaling as much ragleaf as he could before the knight demanded it back.

  “Bad news is that knights ride and waking up homesteads in this valley,” said Brolli, not looking up from his work. “Good news is that they do not have our trail. Not once do they follow our stream.”

  “Gods leave us if they pick up our trail. Boy, is that roll ready?”

  Harric handed the ragleaf to Willard, who sucked it so hungrily its crackling coal seemed loud beneath the willow.

  Brolli set aside the wrap and teased the clotted linen from the wound, exposing a swollen, red-smeared wound like a harlot’s mouth, complete with yellow teeth in the form of fat beneath the skin.

  Harric’s stomach rose in his throat.

  Brolli lifted his eyes to Willard. “It is hot and weeping. And you still lose blood. You need big rest and healing.”

  Willard snorted smoke. “If Bannus finds us, it won’t matter how I’m rested.”

  “I am not skilled in my people’s healing magic.”

  “I wouldn’t take it if you were.”

  Brolli made a harsh sound that was surely a curse in the Kwendi language. “Then take the Blood of your Phyros,” he said fiercely. “Your oath must wait! Your life is in danger. Everything is in danger.”

  Willard sucked the ragleaf calmly. “That is not an option, Ambassador. Do your best with the bandage.”

  “In one day you are unconscious.”

  “Then tie me to my saddle. I will not take the Blood.”

  “In two days you are dead.”

  Willard dropped his eyes.

  Brolli stood. “Take the Blood.”

  Willard’s eyes flashed. “I swore an oath to a lady, Ambassador. That may seem trivial to you, but to me—”

  “Your lady would prefer you die than break this oath?”

  “I might as well die if I do!” Willard snapped. The suddenness of his anger made Harric jump. The Kwendi didn’t flinch. Willard sagged again, and sighed. “If I thought I could take the Blood only this once, to save my life, I might find forgiveness in her eyes. Of course. But I fear once I take it I will not stop. I don’t even dare a plaster, as I did yesterday. That plaster alone nearly broke my will, Brolli, made me forget everything. You have no idea how strong the Blood of a god is in your veins. I would sooner accept your magic healing.”

  “Sir, there is healing at the fire-cone tower,” Caris said.

  Willard grunted. “What? Your friend’s an herb-wife?”

  “She’s Iberg,” said Caris. “A sister of the Bright Mother.”

  Willard choked smoke out his nose. “A witch? You’ve been leading us to a witch’s tor?”

  “No, sir…” Caris stammered, face flushing. “One of the Queen’s fire-cone towers. She licensed Abellia to live there.”

  Willard sorted his rag-roll to the other side of his mouth. “The Queen, you say. I’ve heard about that.” To Brolli he explained, “White witches use the Life power of the Bright Mother moon, Brolli. Healing, calming magic. They can use it to snuff out fire to keep the fire-cones safe.” He shot a cutting glance at Caris. “And I guess you weren’t afraid of her magic, being from the West Country. Probably an ordinary thing to you.”

  “It would be hard to be afraid of Sister Abellia,” Caris said. “Once you meet her you’ll see.”

  “You accept her healing there, old man,” said Brolli. “That is good compromise.”

  “Blas
t it, Brolli, I’ve lived five lives and never let the moons touch me. Not starting now.”

  “Stubborn old man! You once take Phyros blood! How is that different?”

  “Phyros blood is the Blood of a god, Ambassador. It is not of the moons.”

  “The moons come from the gods.”

  “Blast your logic, Brolli! Arkus gave us Three Laws, and they distinguish Arkendians from all of our neighbors, including you. The first law states that we worship no gods, including Arkus himself; the second forbids slavery; the third states that we use no magic. Ever. Only Three Laws, Brolli, but they’re what keep Arkendians strong and independent, and I don’t question them.”

  Brolli glowered. Then a grim smile lifted one side of his broad mouth. “None of this matters. You will be unconscious from your wounds by time we arrive at white witch, and unconscious is agreement to heal.”

  Willard laughed in spite of himself. “You crafty little impit. You mean if I pass out you’ll have me healed whether I want it or not? If you were an Arkendian officer I’d have you court-martialed.”

  Brolli bowed. “This quest is not about your conscience. It is about our futures, about the treaty I must propose to my people. And since I cannot survive without you, it is about your healing.”

  Sir Willard’s eyes smiled, but his voice retained an edge. “I’m Arkendian, Ambassador. Refusal of gods and magic has made me strong. I won’t pass out.”

  Brolli snorted. He handed the clotted bandage to Harric. “Rinse it in stream as best you can.”

  Harric kept the gory rags at arm’s length as he hurried to the stream. Under the influence of the ragleaf, his pains diminished. The herb also made his ears ring, however, and his head seem rather heavier than usual.

  By the time Brolli and Caris had packed the wound with new rags and bound it with a tight wrap about Willard’s waist, Harric had scrubbed the gore from the rags.