The Jack of Souls

by Stephen Merlino

“What are you doing, kid? Don’t you want to be free?”

  “I do. But not like this.”

  Fink stared with blank white eyes. “What do you want to do?”

  Before Harric could reply, Fink’s already horrible mouth distorted into a hideous snarl, and his mother’s laughter erupted behind Harric. He whirled around and found her standing with both feet on the ground, her previous helplessness somehow overcome, or else faked from the outset. With a quick motion she gathered in a broad sheaf of her strands, looped them over his head, and twisted them into the fountain of strands soaring upward from his spirit. When he tried to free himself, his strands evaded his fingers like smoke.

  Her laughter filled the clearing, no longer musical, but strident and cruel. “I knew you couldn’t do it.” With a sneer of disgust, she pulled her strands taut, drawing his along with them, and plunged them into the stone. One by one, the rest of his strands began to follow, whipping past his head into the stone, and the more strands that fell in, the more he felt the insistent draw of the stone in his hand. Very soon the force of the draw became so strong it was difficult to hold the stone away from himself without using both hands.

  “Fink!” he cried.

  “Hold on, kid!”

  One of the plunging strands brushed the edge of Harric’s oculus, sending a weird buzzing through his body, and all at once he exploded into the air. It seemed the strand had hooked his oculus and flung him from his body. Fathoms below, he saw his stunned body standing vacant in the clearing, mouth agape, as Fink pounced upon it like a crow on a carcass.

  His mother’s eyes followed Harric’s progress upward, glittering in triumph. She reached out to the strand that had snagged him, and plucked it like a harp string. The vibration sent him whipping away along the strand like a bead on a string. Whirling, disoriented, he sped through ghostly fire-cones, farther and farther away from his body.

  He tried to scream, but he had no voice.

  Then stillness.

  He found himself standing in the fog amidst the silent trees. Caris stumbled past him, her soul as bright as a signal flare, sword and lantern in her hands.

  “Harric?” she called. She tripped on a root, caught herself, and continued.

  A violet strand from Caris swung past him, and suddenly he whipped along its glowing length, dodging fire-cone limbs, until he stood beside Willard in the tower. The old knight brooded at the west window, as if he’d been unable to sleep, sipping a mug of Abellia’s honey wine. Abellia, too, had risen for a nightcap, and sat near him at the table.

  “They are out making the kisses, I think,” she said, shaking her head.

  Willard grunted. “We hope to remove the ring when we reach the Kwendi. They put the enchantment into it, they can take it out. We hope.”

  Abellia nodded, her wrinkled hands gripping her cup of wine. The intense interest on her face was out of Willard’s view, but it was clear enough in her voice. “Is Brolli showing how they put the magic in the witch-silver? It is a great mystery to my people.”

  Willard cast her an impassive look. She dropped her gaze, as if to hide her expression. “So I hear. I think you’ll recall he said he doesn’t personally have that art.”

  These aren’t visions, Harric realized. They’re real. One of my strands is somehow connected to Willard—or one of his to me—and I see him as he is right now.

  A brilliant strand of gold touched Harric’s head, and he spun off through the forest, over the ridge, and down into the valley, where the fog had thinned to nothing. This time he found himself beside Brolli, who hunched in the rocks above the pass. Below him the gatehouse fortress smoldered from some new fire in the remaining tower, which the defenders appeared to have quenched, for it still stood, with only a few dark points of flame yet flickering in the Unseen. Beyond the walls, several dozen knights and workmen had laid a camp behind a heavy timber siege tower at the far end of the turnabout. The tower had been mounted on crude wooden wheels and covered in rawhide. It appeared to be finished, and the workmen were packing their tools away in an ox-cart as if anxious to leave.

  Bannus rode from the camp to the gatehouse. In the Unseen, he was almost painful to look at—a vision of violet fire, strands teeming to the sky, his Phyros a thing of light itself. He disappeared from view behind the parapet, but his voice boomed over the rock wall and cliff face. “Dogs! At dawn you will die. Do not surrender and make a mock of our labors. The only mercy you will know is to find death in battle.”

  Then a blue strand touched Harric’s oculus and he flung across the world to Gallows Ferry. He stood again in his own garret apartment beside Mother Ganner as she stooped over his bed. A bowl of herbed water and used compresses stood on the bedside table. Worried and grim, Mother Ganner tucked a very pale and thin Lyla under the sheets.

  “Sleep now, la,” she whispered. “Time heals all. Every day a little better than the last. Harric’d be proud of you, la.”

  Another jerk sailed him over the forests to the foot of a lake, where a giant bearded man leaned against a towering stone and gazed at a V-shaped gap in a line of mountain ridges above him. He recognized the giant as the priest who had saved his life in the market. As he watched, the priest pushed away from the stone and hiked along the lake toward the mountains, and Harric recognized the road below the fortified pass.

  His mother’s laughter pierced the vision. Pain exploded across his head like a stave across the skull. The world spun. He felt a tremendous wrenching snap that knocked his senses reeling.

  When he regained awareness, he found himself back in his body, in a tortured embrace with Fink.

  “Cut her!” Fink cried, his horrible face only a hand’s breadth from Harric’s. “Cut her!”

  Harric gasped, tried to orient himself, and gradually pieced together his situation. By tangling their strands, his mother had somehow caused his strands to follow after hers, cascading them into the stone until it had swallowed almost all of them, pulling him toward its vortex. The only thing keeping Harric from flying down the black hole of the stone was Fink, who interceded, spread-eagled with one hand on Harric’s chest, the other holding the stone as far from Harric as possible. Harric was helpless against the monstrous force, just as his mother was, but Fink seemed to be immune. It brought to Harric’s mind a time when, swimming in the river, its current pinned him against a logjam and he’d been unable to lift a limb against its immense power, until Chacks and Remo had hauled him from its grasp.

  Still stretched between the stone and her tether, his mother no longer struggled, but lay still, letting its current wash over her into the stone. “What will you do now, my lovely son? You must release me, or suffer the same fate.”

  “Cut her tether!” Fink cried.

  “I can’t!” Harric said, stretching the blade out and falling well short of the tether.

  “Cut her, then!”

  His mother laughed. “He couldn’t do it then; he won’t do it now.”

  “Harric?” Caris’s voice echoed eerily nearby. “Harric, where are you?”

  “Caris!” he cried. “Here! I’m here!”

  Caris blundered into the clearing only paces away, sword bright as fire, lantern like a blot of darkness in a cage. She stared about through the fog, head turning all about. “Where are you?”

  Like the grave spirits when they entered the world of the Seen, she couldn’t see him. And she could see nothing of his struggle, or his mother or Fink, or the stone. Only paces away, she swept her sword through the fog, as if she expected to startle grave spirits from the air. Harric had no doubt her sword would cut him, or Fink, or his mother equally well in the Unseen. Iron cuts in both worlds, Fink had said.

  “Now!” Harric cried, taken by an inspiration. “Strike, Caris! Strike! The Claxon!”

  Her eyes widened at the apparent nearness of voice in the absence of source. Then she seemed to understand, and she executed a tentative Claxon.

  “No!” his mother cried, as the blade cleft the air beside her
.

  Had Caris been a pace nearer, it would have severed his mother’s tether to the grave.

  “Again!” Harric cried. This time he grabbed Fink’s arm and leaned to pull him one step to the side, which drew his mother’s tether into Caris’s path. “Claxon!”

  Bewildered, Caris slashed her blade with a more forceful Claxon, and the tip passed cleanly through the tether.

  His mother screamed in terror, and swept toward the stone like a fly in a drain. It swallowed her up to her waist, tearing most of her strands free of Harric’s, and weirdly distorting her torso where she protruded from its surface. The few strands that remained entangled with Harric’s proved enough to halt her descent, so she hung half in, half out, her arms flailing at her strands as if she’d climb them out of the hole.

  The immense pressure drawing Harric into the stone ceased. He staggered back from Fink.

  The thicket of needles flashed in Fink’s wide mouth. “That was genius, kid.”

  The imp pressed the witch-stone back into Harric’s hand, with Harric’s mother eerily protruding from its surface, her ghostly arms grasping at his shoulders ineffectually.

  More of her strands slipped from Harric’s, falling back into the stone, and with each she sank deeper, until only her head and supplicating arms remained above. The rest of her distorted and collapsed into the surface of the stone.

  “Harric! You cannot do this!” she cried.

  “Is that your mother?” Caris said, eyes darting around the clearing for the source of the voice. She executed another vicious Claxon on the word mother, and then another, drawing perilously close to Harric.

  “Yes! Stop swinging; you did it. I’m all right.”

  Caris jumped at the sound of his voice. She stopped swinging, but her eyes shone white with fear. “Why can’t I see you?” she cried, backing away. “What’s happening?” She raised her fists to her head, as if she’d cover her ears while still holding sword and lantern. She crouched, panting, teeth clenched.

  “It’s all right, Caris! You did it.”

  Fink crow-hopped to Caris’s side. He stayed out of range of the sword, should she decide to use it, but she seemed near total collapse, kneeling and balling up, moaning.

  “She needs her horse,” Harric said, half to himself, half to Fink.

  Fink quirked his head to one side, and did something with his claws in her strands. She went limp as a de-stringed marionette, and slumped to her knees, then to her side. Fink snatched the lantern from her hand, stood it on the ground, and met Harric’s gaze with an inscrutable grin. “Asleep,” Fink croaked.

  Harric nodded.

  “Look at me, Harric,” his mother said. “There isn’t much time.” He met her gaze. Only her head and one hand remained above the rim of the stone. Her eyes peered into his face, soft and pleading, but Harric turned his attention to his few remaining strands that remained entangled with hers. He was dimly aware of her talking, as he wondered at the luminous ribbons that emanated from his spirit. He ran his fingers through them, and found they had a faint, soft physical feel, like the finest silk might feel in water. When she said something about “only testing him,” and how he’d “passed again,” he snared the last of her strands in his hand, disentangled them from his own, and held her out above the void.

  Very quietly he said, “I wonder if I’ll pass this test.”

  Her eyes flashed, and her face darkened. Was it doubt he saw amidst the rage? “You cannot do this.” She pressed her lips and lifted her chin. “You won’t.”

  “What are you waiting for, kid? Prove her wrong.”

  Harric shook his head. “You say you can’t touch her. Because she’s my last kin, or something. I take it that’s some kind of spirit law. Okay. But what if I ask you to do it? Then could you?”

  “Harric, don’t be a fool,” his mother hissed. “You mustn’t waive your only protection. This is the very thing they crave!”

  “If I pledge to negotiate the contract with you,” said Harric, still ignoring her, “could you get rid of her?”

  Fink had frozen. His milk-white eyes narrowed to shrewd slits. Very slowly, he nodded. “You’ve got authority to send her off. Give me the word and she’ll never bother you again.”

  “He’ll deceive you, Harric! He will steal your soul at the first opportunity!”

  “I don’t want her killed or destroyed,” Harric said. “Can you just…put her back in her grave? Put her to rest, or something?” He was thinking of an impit tale of a peasant priest who returned lost spirits to their graves with a silver net and lantern. “I don’t want her hurt.”

  Fink’s grin diminished, but he shrugged his bony shoulders. “Up to her if she’ll rest. But I can stick her in her grave. Nothing simpler. Just don’t get in any trouble while I’m gone. I won’t be back till tomorrow night.”

  Harric nodded. “Then I’m in.” He turned to his mother, whose eyes remained wide with terror. “Remember what you used to teach me? Show mercy to an enemy, and she becomes your tool?”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t? Huh. I guess you’re right; I must have said it. Goodbye, Mother. Try to find your rest. I’ll visit when I have a use for you.”

  “Harric!”

  Fink brandished a particularly bright strand of spirit he’d gathered from the web, and advanced on her with a wicked glint in his pus-boil eyes. The grave spirits, which had watched the whole affair in horrified fascination, saw the look in Fink’s face, and retreated as one along their tethers into the dissipating fog.

  “You heard him, witch,” said Fink, hauling her by her strands from the stone. “Show me how fast you can fly.”

  Without another look at Harric, she fled west through the spectral forest toward Gallows Ferry, with Fink close on her trail. In that eerie landscape she appeared as a flashing spirit, brighter than the stuff around her, and Fink a blot of darkness without strands. As his mother’s cries of despair diminished in the distance, a wave of power and freedom thrilled through Harric’s body. He found himself laughing, wishing Caris were awake to join him, wishing he could tell her all that happened.

  The weight of the Unseen fell upon Harric like a fall of rocks. Fink, he realized, had carried the burden of the spell that had kept him in the spirit world during the entire exchange. Harric didn’t try to keep the portal open, but let it close and expel him to the Seen, where he fell back to his hands and knees, gasping until his heart and breathing slowed.

  When he’d recovered enough to look around, he shivered. Caris lay only paces away, so he crawled to her, and backed himself into the warm crook of her hips, where he could sit and watch her peaceful face in the gold light of her lantern.

  Caris stirred. Her eyes opened, distant and dreamy, as if she were drugged.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Her gaze drifted his direction. “Did we get her?”

  “Got her. She won’t be back.”

  She closed her eyes and smiled. “Hooray for us.”

  “You were incredible,” he said, twining a hand in hers. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Mmm,” she said, and sank again into whatever oblivion Fink had devised for her.

  The fog had fled, the Bright Mother had set, and the womb of darkness around them was complete. Once again, it was the hour between the setting of the Bright Mother and the rising of the Mad Moon—Jack’s Hour—just as the hour he left Gallows Ferry (how long ago it seemed!).

  Spook appeared beside him, green eyes wide and bright, a limp mouse in his jaws. Harric swept him into his arms, and Spook dropped the mouse on Harric’s chest.

  “Thanks, Spooky. This night just gets better and better.”

  Harric scratched the cat’s ears.

  The constellation of the Jack winked down through the branches. Most wonderfully, the seven stars that formed his head were missing. The Unseen Moon had covered them with a perfect halo of darkness.

  Harric laughed and took it as an omen of destiny.

 
; *

  Father Kogan trudged through the dissipating fog, one hand on the cliff wall to keep from stepping off the edge of the gorge. “Another ghost come near me and I’ll cut it in two like the last one. Hear that, ghosts? Reckon you learned your lesson. Such a fog as I never seen, full of whispers and shapes. But I ain’t no fool afraid of no magic. I’m a priest of Arkus and my heart and steel are sound, and it’s a fool ghost that tempts me.”

  Almost like stepping through a door, he stepped from the fog and found himself on the road again, still angling up one side of a steep-cut granite valley.

  The sound of a horse’s snort drifted up from the valley behind him. He peered back into the receding fog, where the moonlight illumined shadows approaching up the road.

  “Blood and brains,” he muttered. The outcrop where he stood was exposed to the moonlight and free of cracks or boulders for hiding, and any moment the figures in the fog would emerge and see him. He dodged around the bend and sprinted fifty paces past to where a wrinkle in the cliff provided a crease of shadow that proved to be a deep crack in the cliff, and big enough for him to squeeze himself and hunker down with a view of the bend. Only heartbeats later, Sir Bannus himself rounded the bend, torch in one hand and an iron-bound horn at his lips. The immortal let go with a bone-rattling blast from the horn that nearly emptied Kogan’s bowels. Phyros ax forgotten, the magnificent Gygon galloped past, followed by Bannus’s shield bearer and pack horses in tow. The blast echoed again from the valley.

  “That wasn’t no ghost,” he muttered.

  When they were well past, he stood and watched the immortal’s approach to the fort, where cheers from his army echoed in the canyon.

  “Gods leave me, Will. I brought the monster right to ye.”

  Kogan started to run after them. “But I’ll be there to finish my role, whatever may come. I owe ye that.”

  We succeed not because we are strong, but because we are not alone.

  —Attributed to Sir Willard after the defeat of the Old Ones.

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