The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  Strangely, he found that appealed to him deeply. There would be no games with Caris. No hidden agendas. No tests. With her there would never be guessing. No bluffing, no calculating, no manipulating. His mother would despise her. He laughed inwardly. By that measure alone, she was the best girl in Arkendia. If only she’d accept him as he was, what more could he ask? And if only she wasn’t magically forced to love him, he might hearken more to the stirring he felt every time she was near.

  Too many “if onlies.”

  When the armor had been removed, Brolli moved in, waving Harric aside. “Go rest now. I do the bandage.”

  Harric happily bowed out, leaving the others to tend the dressing. As he limped to the edge of camp, seeking a private place to relieve his bladder, Spook trotted up to him, meowing.

  “Hey, catty,” he said. He was too stiff to bend and pick him up, so he let the moon cat follow, and pushed his way through the drape of willow branches on the uphill side. Following a well-trodden path—and the smell—he found the shepherds’ latrine a little way beyond a ferny hummock. As he laced up his pants after relieving himself, Spook hissed at something behind Harric, back arched and bristling, then whirled and bolted into the ferns.

  Harric spun to find his mother in the path before him, white makeup flashing in the moonlight like a ghoulish mummer’s mask. She held herself like an empress in her threadbare gown, and regarded him from heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Oh, this is precious,” she drawled. “Ring-bound to the horse girl, and valet to the Queen’s fool, Willard. How mighty you are grown without me.”

  “Get out of here, Mother,” Harric hissed, trying to keep his voice down so the others wouldn’t hear. “Go back to your pet Bannus.”

  “I’ve been watching the horse girl over there,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “She’s off in horse-land now, rocking back and forth like a bear in a pen.” She snorted her distaste. “Kill her, Harric. She endangers the Queen.”

  “What?” Rage choked his words.

  “I see it in the Web,” she said ominously. “This girl endangers the Queen. If you will learn of me, kill her, Harric, and save your queen much trouble.”

  He stumbled backward and turned to stalk back to the camp before she started shouting.

  “Stay, Harric, and hear! You endanger more than the Queen’s safety—indeed, you endanger your very soul—with that vile stone in your pocket.”

  Harric halted. He turned and glared. His heart was sinking, his hand reaching unconsciously for the stone beneath his shirt. It hadn’t kept her away.

  “Of course I know of that cursed stone,” she snapped. “I came here tonight to warn you: if you have not cast that wretched stone away before Bannus sends you to the spirit world, even I will be unable to help you. Kill the foul cat that follows it, then cast the stone away. Even now the spirit of the stone inhabits the cat—”

  “Kill my friend? Kill my cat?” Harric barely kept his voice in check. “You’re mad! You’re still mad!”

  “I speak of your soul, Harric. Please…” She fell on her knees, her hands clasped in the air between them, beseeching. “This life is temporary—it matters not—but the soul is eternal! Cast it away, before it is too late! Do you understand? Answer me!”

  He stepped back from her. He felt his heart leap with hope. He removed the stone from his shirt, and she recoiled as if he’d produced a rotting head. He smiled. “I think I finally do understand.”

  “Keep that thing away from me!” Clambering to her feet, she backed away from the stone.

  Harric walked toward her, stone extended before him, and she retreated. “You don’t like Caris because she’s different. And you don’t like this stone because…why? It must be because it threatens you somehow, just as my Proof threatened you.”

  She began a sneering reply, but he advanced, thrusting the stone in her face, and she cried out, falling over herself in retreat.

  “Idiot boy! Sir Bannus comes! Do not think I value your soul above the Queen’s survival! I will kill you to save her! You have been warned.”

  “Leave!” he said, pursuing. “Leave me and never come again!” He ran at her with the stone, but before he reached her she vanished, leaving him panting among the ferns.

  Below him on the hillside, the willow branches jerked. Harric could see the old knight struggling to part the curtain of branches. “Boy! What in the Black Moon are you playing at?”

  “Sorry,” Harric whispered. “I just… Sorry. I’m okay. Just talking to the cat.” He tucked the witch-stone back in his shirt, and made a show of limping back toward the willow camp, hoping the old knight would be satisfied to leave him alone.

  Willard’s scowling head emerged from the willow curtain. He studied Harric briefly, muttered something under his breath, and withdrew to the other side.

  Harric let his breath out, and paused halfway to the willow to collect himself. The sight of Willard had added a layer of guilt to the complex stew of emotions boiling in his chest. If his mother led Bannus to Harric, then Harric endangered Willard and Brolli and everyone else. But how could he tell them? They’d think he was mad as she was. His heart beat high and loud in his ears. He closed his eyes tightly, fighting down an expanding bubble of despair.

  At least I have this, he thought, bringing the witch-stone out in his fist. She’s afraid of this. In the light of the Bright Mother, the stone was a glossy egg of blackness. A witch’s link to the Unseen Moon—forbidden—death if I’m caught with it. And my only hope to keep my mother away. If she returned, he’d take it out, and she’d flee. That was all that really mattered. Maybe it could somehow keep Bannus away, too. That was an idea. Maybe it was the stone that made Bannus less…what had she said? Less tractable than she’d thought? Slower to rouse? Another good reason to keep it.

  The bubble of despair shrank a little. It was the very reason he’d grabbed the stone to begin with. If she’d been so afraid of the magic of his Proof, how much more would she fear a witch’s stone? Even if he never learned how to use it properly, the stone was worth its weight in gold if it kept his mother away. Would it keep Bannus away? That might be another story.

  Spook meowed, rubbing against his leg.

  “Where did you come from, scaredy?” This time Harric stooped and picked him up to hold him before his face and gaze at the strange white eyes. Spook peered back and meowed, showing tiny sharp teeth and a pink tongue.

  “What the Black Moon does she have against you?” Too tired to ponder it, he parted the curtain of willow branches and reentered the camp. Sir Willard cast him a complicated look from a fire they’d built to boil up his ragleaf sleeping tea. Harric shrugged another apology, trudged to his blanket, and laid himself gingerly down. Tomorrow, if he had a moment of privacy, he’d study the witch-stone. Tonight, he’d sleep.

  There was no comfortable position. No matter how he lay, some part of him objected, and the witch-stone seemed to lie against his flesh like a hammer, but he dared not lay it aside lest his mother return, or someone among their camp accidentally find it. Ultimately, he simply lay on his back, hands folded on his belly like a corpse in a coffin.

  Spook climbed onto his chest and settled there, sphinx-like. The tiny nose leaned so close to Harric that the breath of his purr tickled Harric’s chin. Exhaustion pinned Harric’s eyelids and sat upon them so he could barely open them enough to meet the gaze of those milk-white eyes. Spook planted a soft paw on his forehead, between his eyes, and left it there as if Harric were a mouse it had pinned to the ground. Harric closed his eyes. “Catch some other mouse, Spook,” he murmured. “I’m too big for you.”

  Voices whispered again at the edge of his awareness, dreams calling across the border of sleep and waking life.

  And he sank into darkness.

  *

  Harric woke to Spook yowling and spitting and clawing at his chest. His hand went to swipe the cat away, only to find a set of cold hands there already, grabbing at his shirt and grasping at the cat. Re
d moonlight illumined a cloaking fog and glimpses of pale bodies striving around him.

  “Fog!” he cried out, beating the hands back, but they persisted with fiendish strength. The cat staged a yowling frenzy in his arms. Caris cried out, her voice uncannily loud and near in the fog, and the body groping him suddenly crashed sideways and tumbled over him, its bony knees sending daggers of pain through his ribs.

  Caris was cursing like a raftsman. Her sword flashed, deadly silent, and the body beside him vanished into mist. Another jolted, her blade transfixing its middle, and vanished before it hit the ground. Harric rolled to his side, the cat still tangled in his shirt, and scanned about, ready to run.

  They were alone.

  Caris stood over him, sword glinting dully. In the red light of the Mad Moon he caught a glimpse of rage and terror on her face. All around them, the fog sank into the earth with uncanny speed. In the space of a half-dozen breaths, it vanished.

  “Hurric?” Willard’s voice slurred from Brolli’s sleeping concoction. “Whad in the Black Moon’re you playin’ at?”

  The old knight tottered in a patch of red light, gigantic whiskers askew, sword in his hand, still in its sheath. He’d somehow waked and clambered to his feet, despite the sleeping draft Brolli had given him. The act had called forth new blood from his hip, which already filled the bandage.

  Harric saw no sign of Brolli; apparently the Kwendi watched their trail for pursuers.

  “Just the cat, sir,” Harric said. “Must have rolled over on him. Won’t happen again.”

  Willard stared, face slack and groggy. “The cat. Gods leave us. Sounded like the Battle of Arkam.”

  Caris turned so her body partly concealed the sword in her hand.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Harric, trying to keep the knight’s attention from her. “You can go back to sleep. No problem.”

  Willard stared at Caris. “Awfully big sword for a cat,” he said. “You two aren’t fighting, are you?” A wry smile twisted his mouth beneath the crooked mustachios. “If he tried to kiss you, girl, a good slap would do the trick. In your case, it might knock him out. No need for a sword.”

  Caris didn’t seem able to meet his eyes. Her brow furrowed, and Harric sensed she was about to curl up in crisis.

  “You’re bleeding pretty bad, sir,” Harric said, trying to divert Willard’s attention.

  “Eh? Damned bandages.” Willard scowled at the mess of linen.

  “We’ll have to change those wads out before you go back to sleep,” Harric said.

  Caris had begun to crouch, hands to ears, but these comments drew her out. She looked up, and Harric followed her gaze to the ruined bandages. The panic drained from her expression, replaced with outward determination rivaling her intensity during combat. Her hands dropped; she stood erect and strode to Willard.

  “Lie down, sir,” she said, “I’ll fix your bandage.”

  Willard scowled. “What, you haven’t kept me awake long enough?” He limped back to his bed as Caris went for the linen. “Here’s a hint, boy,” he said, crouching into his bed. “Don’t go feeling her up when a sword’s near at hand.”

  “You think I’d need to steal a feel when she’s got that ring on?”

  Willard grunted as he sank heavily into a seating position. “Probably not. Here’s your only warning, then: if that cat wakes me again, I’ll boil it for breakfast.”

  Harric watched as Caris moved through the camp, all signs of panic gone, hands moving rapidly through her saddle pack for linens. External crisis, it seemed, focused her and held her together; when it left she might clap her hands to her ears and curl up in a ball, but until then she was as cool as any field captain—maybe more so. He recalled the first night his mother’s spirits had attacked, how she’d fought and triumphed with him, then after the fight fled to the stables.

  Caris changed Willard’s linens as best she could. The old knight slept before she’d finished. Without a word, she fetched her blankets from her sleeping spot near Rag, and dropped them beside Harric. She sat and faced him, seething with emotion. “I’m sleeping here.”

  He nodded, a queer mixture of guilt and dread and anger brewing in his chest. “I’m sorry, Caris. I thought it was over. I thought we’d beaten her.”

  “She attacked me, Harric. Why’d she send her—creatures?—after me?”

  “You?” he said, stunned. “I thought they grabbed Spook.”

  She displayed a bandage she’d wrapped around her arm, slightly red with blood. “The only reason I survived is because you had woken me with your moaning.”

  “I was moaning?”

  “You were having a nightmare, I guess, weeping and talking so loud it woke me up all the way across the camp. Only the ragleaf tea kept Willard from waking. And when I woke I saw the fog, and it made me worried, so I came to sit with you.” She glanced away, blushing, as if caught in a confession, but kept talking to hide it. “There were three of those fog men, and only one went for the cat. The other two came at me. Me, Harric. Not you. If I hadn’t heard them coming, they would have got me.”

  A cold pit opened under Harric’s stomach. He clenched his teeth. His hand found the stone beneath his shirt, and he balled his fist around it so hard his knuckles ached. “I’ve got to end this.”

  “We’ve got to end this.”

  “This is my problem—”

  “Not anymore it’s not,” she snarled. “Now it’s personal, and if I ever get a chance, I’ll cut that bitch in two.”

  Harric grinned, surprised at her vehemence. “Best girl in Arkendia,” he muttered to himself. She gave him a quizzical look, but he shrugged the question off. “Thanks. You’re my guardian spirit. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like you.”

  Caris snorted. She relaxed a little, and he could see she was pleased, but her brow remained furrowed. “First thing we have to do is tell Willard. I’m going to tell him.”

  “Whoa! Wait.” He laid a hand on her arm as she made to get up. “That’s not a good idea…” His mind whirled to address this unexpected turn. “He needs his sleep, Caris. The fog’s gone; we’re not in danger now.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to lie to him, Harric.”

  “Of course not. I’m not asking you to lie to him. But we don’t have to tell him, either. Think about it,” he said, climbing painfully into a sitting position so he could meet her eyes. “Willard has enough to worry about, keeping Brolli safe and getting us through this wilderness, and honestly, Caris, we’re fine. She hasn’t hurt us yet. Just given us a good scare.”

  “She’s tried to murder us both!”

  “And we handled it both times, thanks to you.” He laid a gentle hand on her arm, and in spite of herself, she gave a small smile. “The fact is,” he said, lowering his voice and glancing at Willard, “If we tell Willard, I’m afraid he might think we endanger his mission and reconsider our apprenticeships.”

  Caris’s eyes widened in alarm. She opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then closed it, her brow furrowed in distress. “Do you think he would?”

  “He might. But it really doesn’t involve him, and it would only worry him unnecessarily. He really doesn’t need to know.” And she didn’t need to know about his mother’s influence on Bannus. Not yet. Not until Harric knew if his mother was bluffing, or if the witch-stone somehow protected them.

  She stared at Willard, chewing her lip. “I suppose you’re right. For now.”

  Harric nodded. He sighed inwardly, feeling like he’d dodged a disaster. “Good. Right.”

  He lay back on his blanket, wincing as his ribs shot daggers through his flesh. “Think we can get any sleep tonight?” In spite of everything, the moment he closed his eyelids, he struggled to lift them again.

  A look of concern passed behind Caris’s eyes. “From now until we get to the fire-cone tower, we sleep together.” She drew her sword from her scabbard and laid it naked between them. “We’ll take turns keeping watch for the fog. If it comes back, we’ll both be a
wake together.”

  In the second century, the Phyros-rider Sir Anatos wearied of his blood rage and sought freedom from its grip… Though unable to wean himself from the Blood of the god in his Phyros, he succeeded in some measure with a discipline of fasting, physical austerity, and near constant meditation and training. Living by the Rule of Anatos, an immortal could control the rage, but it was a difficult life… When others joined him, they formed The Peaceable Order of The Blue—commonly known as the Blue Order—whose number is twelve.

  —From Divine Blood, Cracked Vessels, by Tulos of Bury

  18

  Father Kogan & the Mob

  Father Kogan hunched above the glowing remains of his campfire, one burly arm about the plump waist of the Widow Larkin. For the first time since they left their homes, a full month before, the night camps of caravans along the road lay silent. No blazing bonfires, no bawdy songs with rousing choruses, no ballads recited by squires and grooms. News of Sir Bannus’s return had spread like a plague wind up the road.

  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.”