The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  “All right. When do we follow?”

  “I come back for you when all is ready. In one hour, saddle the horses and pack. Snuff the fire. I come back for you when all is ready.”

  *

  Harric followed Brolli out of camp as Caris scrambled to saddle the horses and Willard stared into the fire, the dull eye of his ragleaf pulsing red.

  The trail traversed the ridge, rising steadily on a ledge blasted across its rugged face. Much of the pathway was lit by the Mad Moon, but in dark patches Harric followed Brolli by holding to a lead line they’d borrowed from Idgit’s bridle. Brolli steered the line around the worst obstacles, and warned him with a whispered “rock” or “root” when needed. As the Mad Moon climbed the sky, more and more of its crimson light illumined the contours of the rock. In one particularly long stretch of illumined path, Brolli slowed to walk near him, and flashed his toothy grin. “This is a hard few days for you,” he said ambiguously. “I am glad you come with me.”

  Harric gave a non-committal nod.

  When he offered nothing else, Brolli spoke again. “This Caris, she sleeps so far from you. Why is it so? She wears the love ring, yes? You give it to her, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I must ask why you sleep so far apart. Is it custom with your people? Perhaps you wait until Willard sleeps and I am away for secret tryst?”

  Harric tried to read the alien features of the Kwendi’s face, but found it difficult. He judged from his tone, however, it was a serious question, not mocking. “Well, the first reason is simple,” Harric said. “She’s angry with me.”

  “Ah!” The Kwendi laughed. “She cannot stay angry long.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’ve seen her when she sets her mind on something. She’s not like ordinary people that way.”

  “She is different. I see that.”

  “The second reason is that even if she wanted me, it’s only because she’s got that ring on. One day they’ll come off, right? She might think I’ve been taking advantage of her then, and kill me.”

  The Kwendi’s brow furrowed in earnest perplexity. “Because of the rings? Why?”

  “Because she’s being forced by that ring,” Harric said, more vigorously than he intended, “or altered, or whatever you want to call it. It’d be like taking advantage of her when she was drunk for the first time. It isn’t right.”

  The Kwendi stopped and faced Harric in a patch of red moonlight. A mountain breeze sighed across the rock face around them; far below, tumbling water rushed through the darkness. “I thought I watch carefully your mating customs in your queen’s court, but I never notice this ‘right’ you speak of. You have to win a ‘right’ before you mate? Or is it before you marry? Or is marriage itself this ‘right’?” Brolli fetched a traveler’s journal and stylus from his shirt, and jotted some notes.

  Harric stared for several heartbeats. When the Kwendi put the book away, Harric laughed. “Are you serious?”

  Brolli looked at him. “There is no marriage among my people, so I do not understand why you hesitate to mate.”

  “Marriage isn’t about mating, Brolli. It’s bigger than that. It’s for life.”

  Brolli’s brows pinched. “Marriage is not about mating?”

  “Well, no. It’s more.” Harric smiled, bemused. It occurred to him that since he’d never had a father, and since the two women who raised him were unmarried or widowed before he was born, he didn’t know the first thing about permanent male-female partnership. His entire understanding of marriage therefore consisted of nothing more than the vague longing of all bastards for something sacred and unattainable.

  “More than mating,” Brolli repeated. He plucked the journal again from his pocket, and scribbled a note. “Yet her looks at you are about mating. Even I see that. Such complicated mating rituals!”

  Harric laughed. “Hold on. Are you telling me you have no idea what marriage is, but you decided to make a magical wedding ring for our queen?”

  The Kwendi’s face crumpled in something resembling embarrassment. He put the journal away and started walking again. “The ring was meant as a gift,” he explained. “She has no husband, yes? We thought, since your people mate for life, that she, all alone and without a mate…well, think she maybe was not so…how you say…attracting? With the ring we think she could capture a mate.”

  Harric laughed heartily. It hurt his ribs and head, but the ragleaf muted the pain. “I’m sorry. But I can’t believe you survived that gift. A wedding ring for the Lone Queen of Arkendia? Ambassador, our queen is famous in ten kingdoms for shunning marriage and abusing courting princes. She built a career on it. She built modern Arkendia on it.”

  Brolli sighed. “Yes. She almost throw us out window. Bad beginning to our talks.”

  “My own troubles with that ring seem suddenly small. How did you calm the Queen?”

  “I give her instead another ring of my own, just as strong.”

  “So, if your people don’t marry, Brolli, may I ask what you do?”

  The Kwendi flashed his feral grin across his shoulder. “We mate.”

  Harric waited for more. None came. He asked, “And then what?”

  Brolli glanced back as if for clarification in Harric’s face. “We mate again? Perhaps I do not see your question.”

  “I mean, do you stay with your mate then, for the baby?”

  “Ah! No. She raise the baby with her family.”

  “You just leave her?”

  Brolli apparently sensed something in his voice, for he paused and turned to examine Harric closely. “This is the way of all my people. When my sisters and cousin have babies, I help raise them with my family.”

  Harric felt a concealing veil lift from his mind to reveal an aspect of life he’d never sensed possible. “You’re a nation of bastards! You have no idea who your fathers are.”

  “Why should that matter? The woman determines the family. It is easy to know who is the mother. Hard to know for sure the father.”

  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all year. You know they used to enslave us bastards in Arkendia? Still do in the West Isle.”

  “I have heard it. Now hush.” Brolli laid a finger across his lips. “We draw near.”

  *

  As they neared the head of the valley, its sides grew steeper and rockier and closer together, until it became a high mountain canyon with steep ridges on either side. The road wound in and out of the outcrops and promontories, sometimes bridging gulfs with crude timber trestles. In the red light of the Mad Moon, the crags of the opposite side of the valley seemed an impassable wilderness of rockfalls and timber. As their road neared the head of the valley, the rush of the river rose louder from the narrow channel below. Harric heard the roar of a sizable waterfall beyond the nearest bend. Its mist rose in the distance, a bloody veil wafting in the moonlight.

  When they reached the last outcrop of rock in the bend, Brolli stopped. He jerked his head in the direction of the falls. “From here you see the pass at the end of the valley. Make a long look at the gatehouse.”

  Harric peered around the outcrop. A half-mile hence, the valley ended in a V-shaped pass between mountains. A stone fort squatted in the notch of the pass. From the base of its wall, a white waterfall emerged from a frowning water gate, like the tongue from the mouth of a hanged man. Through the gap of the pass beyond, Harric saw open sky, suggesting a wide valley.

  The road ended in a wide roundabout before the walls of the fort, on the brink of its boulder-filled moat. The only way across the moat was over a now-closed drawbridge flanked by cone-topped archer towers.

  “Ten to one that waterfall is called Horsetail or Maidenhair Falls,” Harric whispered. “Half the falls in the north have that name. Timbermen have no imagination.”

  “How many guards do you guess in that rock?”

  Harric frowned. “A fortification that strong wouldn’t require many. But half the Queen’s income comes from resin sales, so she’s
pretty careful with the fire-cone ranges.” Harric studied the walls and drawbridge. He could see another roofline behind the wall that might belong to a living quarters or a stable. “I’d expect about ten men there. Looks like they keep black pigeons in that cote above the tower. See the roosts? If there’s trouble, they’ll release a pigeon and lock themselves in.”

  “Ten, then?”

  Harric nodded.

  “What is this pigeon you say? A bird you eat, yes?”

  “Not blackhearts. Blackhearts deliver messages over long distances.”

  “Messages? You train them to speak?” Brolli dug out his journal.

  “No, no. They’re dumb as plugs. But they carry tiny written messages, and they always return to their nest.” Brolli’s wide golden eyes fixed quizzically on Harric. “You raise the birds in one nest,” Harric explained. “Then you take them to some other nest far away. When you want to send a message back to their original home, you tie a note on their leg and release them. They fly home, and someone who takes care of the other nest retrieves the message.”

  Brolli smiled. “Your people so brilliant. No magic, and look what they make.” He scribbled in his diary, and Harric glimpsed the characters, which were unlike any he’d seen. “You think these guards fly messages straight to your queen?”

  The implications dawned on Harric. “Yes! Or to one of her ministers. If we sent a distress message to her from this gatehouse, she’d send pigeons to a northern earl, who’d dispatch a company to investigate. We have to do it!”

  Brolli’s thick canines flashed in the bloody light. “You have to do it. I take care of guards. You send pigeons.”

  “What do you plan to do to the guards?”

  Brolli’s gold eyes sparkled with mischief. “I do not hurt them. They must not know we passed. So I make them sleep deep. I already make the watchman sleep.”

  “You mean you’re going to use magic. I know Sir Willard doesn’t want you to tell me, but it’s pretty clear.”

  Brolli continued to smile, but offered no more information. The Kwendi tore part of a blank page from his book, and handed it to Harric with his stylus. “What do you write for the bird note?”

  “It has to be short, so the note can be small and light.” He tore the page down to a tiny square. “I think we need the Blue Order.”

  “The order of knights Willard belonged to,” Brolli said, as if proud of his knowledge of Arkendian history. “Immortals, yes? That is good. I will like to see them.”

  Harric knelt and placed the paper against the back of Brolli’s book. He scratched nine words with the stylus. Willard, Brolli in danger. Sir Bannus. Send Blue Order.

  He tore another square and paused, thinking and sucking at his split lip. Ideally he’d send two pigeons, in case one became falcon lunch, but sending too many might tip off the pigeon’s caretaker that someone had been fiddling with his birds. On impulse, he prepared a second identical note; if the guards sent regular dispatches of “all’s well,” he could slip a second note in one of their empty message tubes so that backup message might be sent out with their next dispatch.

  “Here is my plan,” said Brolli, when Harric finished and returned him his journal. “We cross to a place where I have a tall log beside the track. You and I carry the log to the wall, and you steady it as I scale the wall and slip into the gatehouse from the other side. When I am up, you retreat and wait for me. Stay clear of the gatehouse then, until you see me open the door beside the big gate. You see it there? The little door? Good. It is important you stay clear until you see me. At least a stone’s throw away—wait, on second thinking, no. I’ve seen you throw. Make that ten stone-throws.” Brolli flashed his feral grin.

  “When I’m healthy I throw much farther.”

  “After I let you in the gatehouse, you prepare that message, and I fetch Willard.”

  “What if they discover me while you’re gone?”

  “They won’t.” Brolli grinned. “They will sleep like drugged.” Harric opened his mouth to ask how, but Brolli cut him off with a wave. “I must not discuss.”

  “By order of Sir Hypocrite?”

  “Hypocrite? What is that word?”

  “It means someone who speaks one thing but does another.”

  Brolli chuckled. “Hypocrite. You are right. My people call that sty-du, twisted mouth. But truly, Sir Willard has lived long and seen much. He is more comfortable with magic than any other Arkendian I have met. Or was, until I met you.” The Kwendi’s head tilted sideways, his wide eyes shining in the moonlight. “Why are you so unafraid of the moons?”

  Harric shrugged. “My mother traveled as a diplomat overseas. She saw a lot, too, and taught me the moons are natural. Arkendians are the only people who fear them.”

  Brolli chuckled. “Perhaps you and Sir Hypocrite are more alike than he admits.”

  Carrying the log strained Harric’s aching body, even with Brolli at the heavier end. But stalking to the edge of the curtain wall was easy because of the roar of the falls. Nothing stirred in the gatehouse. No smoke from the chimney. No candle behind shutters.

  “For carrying the log, you drank the ragleaf tea,” said Brolli.

  “I’m going to need a lot more when we carry it back.”

  They planted the log at the juncture of the wall and the rock of the mountain, and lodged it upright for Brolli to climb. Harric had seen him climb twice before, but it was just as fascinating a third time. It almost looked like he walked up the trunk, his feet pressing against the front of the pole while his long arms reached around and pulled it toward him, keeping pressure on his feet. Hand over hand, step by step, he went up until he reached the top. Once there, he hoisted himself up to stand on the end, from which he transitioned to a much slower rate of climb up the juncture of the cliff and the wall. His strong fingers seemed to find niches and crannies on the cliff face, while his flat feet braced in cracks or against the wall.

  Once he reached the top, he swung onto the crenellations and motioned for Harric to retreat. He pantomimed throwing a stone, reminding Harric of the appropriate distance, then disappeared behind the parapet.

  Curiosity tempted Harric to stay near to see what would happen, but he decided to retreat and wait it out. He’d barely caught his breath before the small door beside the main gate opened, and the distinctive figure of the Kwendi emerged, trotting in that peculiar knuckle-lope toward Harric.

  “The log,” Brolli said when he reached him. They returned to the log and lugged it back to where they’d found it, Harric’s ribs grumbling.

  “Now I get Willard, and you send bird.” Brolli waved and loped back down the road until he disappeared behind the bend. As Harric watched the Kwendi recede in the distance, he felt a powerful sense of gratitude that Brolli had entrusted him with this service. After Caris’s scathing rebuke that day, it felt a bit like redemption.

  Hiking back up the narrow track to the gatehouse, he studied the wall and the turnabout more closely. The builders had left only enough room for a wagon between the foot of the wall and the edge of the cliff above the falls; for fifty paces on either side of the gate, any attackers would be exposed to defenders above and the long fall below. A dry moat had been carved from the rock at the foot of the wall and filled with jagged boulders, and the postern could be approached only by a narrow ledge above the falls, so there could be no space for a ram.

  The familiar thrill of entering a forbidden place shivered Harric’s senses as he clambered across the dry moat and sidled across the ledge to the open door. A candle would have been nice, he reflected as he peered into the darkness within, but the Kwendi wouldn’t have thought of it. He groped along a straight, plastered wall, and found a corner and a stairway, where he barked his shins on the bottom stairs.

  Beyond the opening to the stairwell, the wall continued toward a doorway outlined by a very low light as from the embers of a fire. Crossing to stand in the doorway, he heard snoring within what he discovered to be a small kitchen. A big, worn ta
ble stood in its midst, with a kettle and pot beside the fire, and bunches of herb hanging from the ceiling. Three cots lay with their feet to the fire, each with a sleeping man as old as Willard. Another ten slept in the room adjacent.

  What the Black Moon did Brolli do to them? Nothing, apparently. They looked unscathed.

  He rummaged around the hearth and found a tallow candle, which he lit in the fire. Then he left the kitchen and made a quick ascent of the stairs, which took him to a door at the level of the parapet. Above that he found the pigeon cote, its door unlocked. He slipped inside to the familiar scent of pigeons, and the low cooing of one that seemed wide awake and hungry, as if newly arrived. As he’d expected, they were blackhearts. Big, sleek long-distance flyers.

  The circular room was divided in three-by-two walls of wattle reaching from the floor to the peaked ceiling high above. It was the same basic design they used in Gallows Ferry, though on a larger scale, to separate the birds into three groups: outgoing birds that could be released to deliver a message, incoming birds that needed to be transported back to their original nests to be useful again, and newly arrived birds whose messages hadn’t yet been read. The door from the stairwell opened into the side for newly arrived birds. Only one bird occupied the room, and when it saw Harric, it flapped to the seed jars and pecked at the lids. Harric took a handful from one and held it for the bird while he removed its message with the other hand.

  The note read: Next supply with harvest team at full moons.

  Harric put it in the pocket with his witch-stone and slipped his own note into the empty tube. As the new arrival perched on his thumb and devoured seed in his palm, Harric opened the wattle door to the outgoing birds, and put the new arrival inside, closing the wattle behind him. He poured the seed on a ledge for the hungry pigeon, who abandoned his hand for the seed. This newcomer would take the place of the one he would release, so the caretaker would count the same number as before, and assume the incoming pigeon with the message about harvest had fallen to a falcon en route.

  Harric gathered up a sleeping pigeon in a low nest before it could wake and fly to a higher perch. With soft noises and strokes, he calmed it until he could coax one leg out and attach his message. He watered and fed it as much as it would eat, remembering that a hungry bird was more likely to be taken by a predator when it stopped to forage. When it showed impatience with the food, he carried it out through the tower door onto the parapet above the falls, and released it.