The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  As he crept past an inset guest door, he halted, alerted by the sound of heavy footfalls within, and retreated. The door flung outward, away from Harric, spraying lamplight across the yard. A giant figure stepped out. Harric glimpsed naked blue flesh swarming with muscles and ropelike scars, and then the door slammed behind and submerged all in darkness.

  An immortal. It had to be Sir Bannus. Harric froze against the inn, willing himself invisible.

  Sir Bannus grunted somewhere in the darkness before Harric. Waves of heat emanated from him, bringing with them odors of salt and iron. Then came the rustle and stink of urine in the dust, and a throaty sigh from the immortal.

  Gods leave me, he’s pissing. He’s only pissing.

  In a bar of indirect candlelight from an upper window, Harric could just make out the giant figure looming before him, an arm’s length away. He struggled to silence his panicked breathing, but it felt as if his lungs had shrunk to the size of peach pits, while his heart leapt up in his throat. He dared not move even his eyes, lest they flash and betray him to the immortal.

  A tiny sound drew his attention to the giant’s side. A small figure with her wrist in Bannus’s fist. She sagged in his grip, and with her free arm she hugged her torn dress to herself.

  Lyla! A wave of grief and horror hit Harric. Then Bannus hauled her away, striding back through the door.

  Before Harric could think, he followed into the lamp-lit hallway. The door slammed behind him as he crouched inside the threshold and watched Sir Bannus reel away. Harric saw now that the immortal was indeed gloriously nude, his gargantuan body a map of scars and impossible clefts of muscle. Bannus filled the hall, set it vibrating with his presence, half humming, half growling something that might be a song. When he stopped before a door at the end of the hall, he lifted Lyla by her hand and dangled her before his mouth to kiss her naked arm. Lyla saw Harric over Bannus’s shoulder. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head vigorously, as if to warn Harric away.

  Then Bannus dropped her down to her feet, pushed open the door, and twirled her through as if she were a dancer at a ball. She made no resistance, no sound whatsoever, but the despair in her eyes smote Harric deeply.

  When the door slammed behind them, Harric sped to it. He heard muffled sounds from beyond. A whimper. A rumble, as the giant spoke.

  Gods leave me, I have to help her!

  He laid a hand on the door latch, arguing with himself. Help her how? The sad fact of the matter was that there was nothing anyone could do. He should leave while he still could. Anything else would be suicide. Maybe I could distract him, divert him long enough for her to escape. It might be possible. But even if she made it away, Harric probably wouldn’t. Bannus would have his head off in a second.

  Grief tore a widening gulf in Harric. I have to do something!

  Before he could lean his weight on the latch, a gloved hand snared his wrist from behind and twisted his arm painfully up between his shoulder blades. Someone had been standing in the shadows around the corner of the corridor, and Harric had been so preoccupied he hadn’t even glanced that direction. Harric stifled a cry of pain as his assailant body-pressed him against Sir Bannus’s door.

  “His Holiness wants no visitors,” a rasping voice said at his ear. “Especially no snooping bastards.” Something was muffled about the voice, but Harric could not see his captor, even when he turned his head.

  “I bring a message for His Holiness,” Harric said. “His Majesty, the Sapphire, bids Sir Bannus join him in his chambers. I am to take you both.”

  A wet, snorting laugh, strangely muffled, as if in a helm. “His Majesty would not send a bastard, unless to his death. Perhaps that was precisely what he had in mind?”

  “His Majesty sent me. I am his messenger.”

  “You are his offering.” His captor reached another gloved hand around and removed a lamp from its hook beside the door, and illumined Harric’s features with it.

  Harric’s guts froze as the red-stone mask of Bannus’s shield bearer appeared at his shoulder. A Faceless One! The mask’s features were calm and tranquil, but the eyes studying Harric through the graven eyeholes were red and tortured.

  His mother had told him of the Faceless Ones. Zealous squires, flayed and kept alive with the blood of the Phyros. But unlike their masters, who drank the Blood, the flayed bodies of the Faceless Ones were only allowed to bathe in it, which healed them incompletely, leaving burning scars. These they endured for years until allowed to take new skin.

  “A fair covering,” the man whispered, more to the face, it seemed, than to Harric, who wore it. The man’s breathing came in clipped little gasps near Harric’s ear. A sweetly foul odor issued from behind the mask, causing Harric to gag. “Yes, fair. It matters not that you are a bastard.” The lamp rose, and the bloody gaze followed to Harric’s hair. “And the hair is fine.”

  Beyond the door, more whimpering and rumbling. Panic strove with helplessness in Harric. He rose on his toes to gain some advantage in freeing his arm, but the man rose with him and twisted it even worse. He pressed Harric into the door, and returned the lamp to its hook. With the free hand he probed Harric’s skull. He spraddled the thumb and forefinger from the nape of the neck to his crown, and again from ear to ear, as if measuring. The gloved thumb snuffed the lamp. In the darkness the man seemed somehow closer, tighter against him.

  “This might do,” he breathed in Harric’s ear. “I must confirm it with my tools.”

  He took Harric’s free hand in his and guided it to the latch. “I could live with this face, this hair.” His voice was strangely faint, remote behind the mask. “I could wear this skin, and you, fair one, could have mine. If the god will have it.”

  Something warm dripped on Harric’s neck, and he struggled to turn away, but the Faceless One twisted his arm, stealing all resistance.

  “Stop… wait… please…” Harric said.

  With his hand on Harric’s, the Faceless One squeezed the latch until it popped and the door sighed inward.

  Bannus’s chambers were dim and humid, the air heavy with earthy odors. In a far corner, a single candle burned low, as if choked by the close air. Its flame was barely enough to illumine the space, but Harric caught suggestions of wrecked beds and bunks piled against walls. The mattresses and bedding appeared to be mounded in the midst, and it was there Harric expected the immortal already lay.

  The Faceless One kicked Harric’s knees from behind, forcing him to kneel, then dropped to his knees beside him. “Master,” he said, his little gasps near Harric’s ear. “I captured a bastard spy.” His voice had become supplicant, eager. He didn’t whine, but his voice nearly cracked with restrained excitement.

  Sir Bannus grunted. The sound was not from the mattresses, but from nearer in the darkness before him. Harric looked up from the bedding to see a dim outline of the giant standing with his back to them, perhaps two paces away. Harric averted his eyes, heart pounding in his ears. He found no sign of Lyla.

  “Did I not say to leave us?” Bannus growled. “I care not. Take him. Test him. If he is a match, keep him, or parts of him.”

  “Oh, Harric!” Lyla cried, from somewhere beyond the giant. Harric’s heart caved.

  Bannus grunted. “What’s this? My little chickie has a nest mate? Was this a rescue?” Laughter boomed in the chamber, loud and harsh as gravel in an iron bucket. “When you are finished with him, Titus, bring him back for her to see.” The floorboards groaned as the immortal turned to face them. Harric kept his eyes down, but felt the immortal’s gaze like a scouring flame upon his cheeks.

  The Faceless One hauled Harric to his feet, and backed him toward the door. “Your Holiness is great and generous.”

  “Wait.” Bannus’s voice lowered to a menacing growl. “What is that behind his shoulder?”

  The gasping at Harric’s ear hitched. “He wears a pack.”

  “No. Do you not see it? To my eyes it blazes like a signal fire.”

  Bannus re
ached for him, and Harric cringed away, but the Faceless One held him steady. He felt a tug and heard a rip as Bannus jerked something from his pack. The immortal’s heavy breathing ceased for a moment as he studied something in his hand. Bannus thrust the massive hand before Harric’s face, thick fingers flattened to display the white alabaster ornament at the end of one of the strings of his mother’s pack. The spindle of stone seemed a bead in the giant’s hand.

  “What is it, Master?”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see a white stone bauble.”

  “It is a blood seed.”

  An intake of breath behind the mask. “Is it intact?”

  Sir Bannus made a sound like the snort of a bull. He closed his fist around the bauble. With his other hand he gathered Harric’s shirt and collar and the straps of his pack in a constricting fist, and lifted him into the air.

  Harric dared not meet the immortal’s gaze. His breath came in tiny gasps as his ribcage contracted in that vise.

  “Bastard,” said Bannus, “do you know the abomination you carry? The god’s blood mocked and stolen?”

  Harric knew of blood seeds. He’d never seen one, and his mother never revealed the nature of the ornament on her pack, but he knew now it was not a solid bauble at all, but a vial, cleverly disguised to keep a dram of blood from one of the Phyros slain in the Cleansing. Blood seeds were potent. They had been a kind of relic, or souvenir taken by the victors from the vanquished Phyros, but to an Old One—to the immortals so bitterly destroyed—they were an unholy abomination.

  “I didn’t know!” Harric gasped, prying in vain at the biting straps of his pack. “My mother’s—”

  Mother’s.

  Her laughter echoed in his brain as his lungs squeezed shut, and spots swam before his eyes. She’d won. Even after the sunset. She’d known it all along.

  The Faceless One appeared with a cup beside the giant. “Surely it is dust by now, Master?”

  “Dust? No. It is the blood of the god, Titus. Like quicksilver. It cannot spoil.” Bannus held the bauble above the cup, and snapped it in two between his fingers. Dark fluid drained from the broken halves. Bannus held the cup before him. His breathing grew deep and resonant, as if he were steeling himself for a great task, or aroused by visions of glory. “This is a gift, Titus. The god sends his blessing. When I drink this, Blood will be united with Blood, and I shall dream.”

  Bannus downed the contents of the cup and sighed, head tilted backward.

  “Leave me, Titus. Return to your post.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Titus, but he did not leave them. Harric could still hear the man’s little gasps, as if he waited for Sir Bannus to return his prize.

  “Do you not hear, Titus?”

  “Master,” said Titus, his voice shaking between gasps. “The bastard’s crime is great. He must be punished. But his measurements…they seem to match. If I am right, and if his blood also matches, perhaps I might be allowed—”

  “You are not ready, Titus. Return to your post, and this time make certain I am not disturbed.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  The Faceless One’s gasps faded, and the door opened and closed behind him, leaving Harric hanging in the darkness before the immortal, who had gone still, as if sleeping on his feet. “Gristhi,” Bannus murmured. “I see Gristhi. O, beautiful Phyros of old! It was Gristhi’s blood in the stone. Visions throng my eyes…” He swayed on his feet, head thrown back in ecstasy, still holding Harric above the floor.

  Somewhere in the room, Lyla gasped.

  Run, now! Harric wanted to say. He falls asleep! Go! But he had almost no breath.

  Movement in the darkness at Bannus’s side. Lyla! He motioned frantically for her to flee, but when he turned his head to locate her in the gloom, he stopped and gaped in shock at what he saw: standing at the immortal’s hip, fingers tracing the scars of his thigh, stood his mother.

  “Sir Bannus is remarkably easy to manipulate from the spirit world.” She smiled, cocking her head to the side to peer up at the colossus. “He scarcely has a will of his own any longer, just a mass of urges and unfiltered impulses. So easy to tug at his desires. I pull one string and he notices that little slut who told you about your Proof. Another string, and he has the urge to piss and drag her with him as you pass outside his hall.”

  Harric choked on fear and rage, and she laughed.

  “Did you really think if you broke my hold on you I’d abandon you, Harric? I’d let you go down the path that will destroy our queen?” She stepped up to where Harric dangled. “Sir Bannus will do for me what my curse could not. And if I cannot urge him now to kill you, I’ll make him follow till he does. I am your curse now, and I am not so easily broken.” She stepped back and gazed at him fondly. “I love you, Harric. Soon you’ll join me in the spirit world, and we’ll have all the time we need to make up. I’ll finally be the mother that in life I never could.”

  New horror filled Harric. He shook his head, tried to scream, “No!”—tried to pry the fingers holding him, but he was a mouse in the talons of a hawk.

  She glided back to Bannus and around to his back, and disappeared from sight.

  Bannus’s head jerked up. The mad eyes found Harric. Bannus’s grip tightened until Harric had no breath at all and his head began to ring. White flashes raced before his eyes. His body wrenched. His head whipped to the side and his face grew heavy with blood.

  Distantly, he experienced the sensation of flying.

  *

  Caris stalked the unfinished servant passage between the inn’s largest bunkrooms, armor clanking dully. The passages were narrow, made for smaller maids than she, and certainly not for a big one in armor. She turned sideways to get through some places, and even so bumped the panels of bare wattle, knocking out chunks of rough plaster.

  She had found no sign of Harric in these passages, however, and none of the servants had seen him in the public spaces, though they said the place was crawling with squires on the hunt for him. Dreading the worst, she’d finally asked a potboy which room had been taken by Sir Bannus, and ended up here. Bannus was on the other side of the wall to her right. Was Harric?

  The immortal spoke on the other side of the wall, a low rumble that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Another voice followed, but too faint to identify.

  Where are you, Harric?

  A familiar roar of confusion rose behind her eyes. It had been growing since she left Harric, and now it began to reach a dangerous pitch. Her heart pounded in her chest; her breathing felt choked and crowded.

  Not now. Not here…

  She sank to her knees and leaned against the left wall of the passage. Squeezing her eyes shut, she slipped her fingers under her helm, into her ears. The sound of her own breath grew loud in her private darkness. She let the rhythmic rush of it calm her, like the crash of waves on the beach below her father’s castle, which had hushed her to sleep as a child. Breathe. Breathe. The roaring receded. When her heart slowed to a manageable rate, she opened her eyes and dropped her hands. She felt a small twinge of hope at the knowledge she was getting better at stilling the roar this way. Two months ago, when I first came here, I would have balled up and moaned on the floor.

  She climbed to her feet, careful not to bump the right-hand wall. The immortal’s voice rumbled again, laughing this time. It sent more needles up her spine. She ground her teeth in frustration. Even if Harric was in there, what in the Black Moon would you do about it? Anything? She snorted. Why are you even looking for him? You should be on the road by now, on your own, and gone. You should walk out of here right now, mount up, and ride.

  She stalked forward to find the first exit and leave. As she balled her hands into fists, Harric’s ring bit into her finger, and her guts flipped with unfamiliar emotions. She stopped in her tracks. The roaring returned behind her eyes.

  Gods leave me! Where in the Black Moon is he?

  The wall before her exploded, and Harric flew through it in a show
er of shattered wood and plaster. He slammed the opposite wall, rebounded, and crumpled at her feet, limp as a dishrag. If she’d been two paces farther along the passage, she’d have been clobbered. Harric too had been lucky, in a way, for if he’d hit one of the posts between panels of wattle, he’d have been crushed by the impact; instead, he’d hit square in the center of a panel that tore free from the posts and flew with him into the passage.

  In the darkness beyond the new hole, a shadowy colossus loomed alone.

  A chill confusion rose and swallowed her. Part of her knew that as a woman in armor she was an abomination to Sir Bannus and the Old Ways. She knew Bannus was probably mad with bloodlust. She knew he was probably drunk and unpredictable. But all of that was lost in blind panic for Harric. While dust still swirled in the passage, she scooped him in her arms and ran.

  Deep laughter followed. “Sir Cobalt! Well met. Take the bastard and hang him. I will sleep and dream.”

  Then the sound of scuttling as a small figure darted from the gapping hole in the wall and sped past her up the servant’s corridor. One of the servant girls had been inside. Lyla?

  Caris turned from the scene and blundered away through the passage until she found an exit and burst into the stable yard. She staggered to one side in sudden darkness, caromed off the stone wall of the inn, then stopped and laid Harric in the dust. She tore off her helmet and laid her ear to his chest, terrified at what she might find.

  His heart beat loud and strong. Tears of relief welled in her eyes, yet even as she wept she cursed the unfamiliar emotions.

  What’s wrong with you? Get hold of yourself!

  A guest door from the inn opened, not ten paces away. For a terrifying moment Caris feared it was Sir Bannus, but it was only a trio of squires. They swaggered into the yard, wearing silk evening clothes and light swords, and the expressions of eager hunters. When they saw Caris stooped over Harric, they halted, then came to her.

  “You found him!” one said.

  “If you thtand him up, thir,” said another, “and I’ll bash him a new thmile.” The speaker grinned, displaying toothless gums as he polished a rock the size of an apple on his tunic.