The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  They passed Mudruffle before they reached the lake.

  “Do not delay for my sake!” he called as they galloped past. “I shall catch up, and if you must flee into the wild, I will guide you with my maps.”

  By the time he disappeared in the distance behind them, the Mad Moon had cleared the eastern ridge and painted the landscape in blood.

  In the hour before sunrise, the three reached the river at the foot of the lake and followed it down through the canyon above the fortress. The growing murmur of the falls drifted to them up the canyon, signaling they neared its end. They slowed their approach. Soon Harric recognized the pile of rocks from which he and Brolli had peered down on the back of the fortress on the first night Bannus roared at the gates. “This is it,” he said to Caris, pointing out the pile. Almost at the same time, Brolli stepped from the shadows at the base of the rocks. They halted beside him.

  Brolli’s face was grim. “You could not come more near to the trouble. They wait only for dawn.”

  Harric expected Willard to explode in fury for Brolli’s sending Mudruffle, instead of himself, away from danger, but Willard merely gave a curt nod. “What’s the size and comportment of their host?”

  Brolli stared at him, brow furrowed. Rather than ask for a translation, he beckoned. “Come see.” He preceded them up the rocks to his viewpoint, but turned halfway up to grab Willard’s hands to pull while Caris helped from behind.

  The view of the scene below was much as Harric had seen it in his vision: huge fires blazed beyond the walls of the fortress, illumining the completed siege tower that stood back from the walls, awaiting dawn. Torches burned on the tower’s upper levels. Crossbowmen manned the top, watching the narrow ledge that ran across the cliff and into the fissure behind the leaning tower of rock above the turnabout.

  Harric noticed the bodies of two defenders now lay on the ledge. The one he and Brolli had seen on their first night in the pass had made it two-thirds of the way to the fissure; the other, who had apparently tried the feat since then, had made it only halfway. Feathered quarrels jutted from his corpse like the quillions of a porcupine.

  On the fortification wall below, there was very little movement. A few heads moved behind the battlements, but by Harric’s count there would only be ten men left to defend it. Enough, perhaps, if Sir Bannus were not among the attackers.

  “At dawn they’ll overrun the place,” Willard said. “I suppose you think we can stop them if we reach that leaning column of rock, but at that range those crossbows on the tower would pierce our armor and their spitfires would cook us before we got halfway across that ledge. I don’t see how this could be done.”

  “With magic,” Brolli said. His owlish eyes flashed. “Maybe I destroy the tower.”

  Willard ground his teeth as if biting back his anger. The muscles of his jaw bulged. When he spoke, it was in low, measured tones. “You put yourself in danger—you put us all in danger—to prove a point about magic?”

  Brolli did not rise to the bait. “I am tired of running. Better we fight them. And my magic is certain.”

  “It is not certain! You said yourself maybe you destroy the tower.”

  “You misunderstand me. My magic may not destroy the tower, but it will knock down the bowmen. While they are down, we run to the rockfall.” With his hands before his wolfish grin, Brolli pantomimed the rock tower toppling. “You see? If my magic destroys tower, good. But even if it does not, it knocks bowmen down and we run to the rockfall. You see?”

  “None of this takes into account what Bannus might do, or how you employ your magic in front of a dozen magic-fearing Arkendian guardsmen on the wall. They might tear you to pieces before you got off your spell. Far too risky—not at all certain—”

  Harric did not hear the rest. While they argued, he’d slipped back down the rocks and away down the dark road beside the river. Hugging shadows at the base of the rock pile, he slipped past his friends and ran, counting on their argument and the burning fires to distract them until he came to the stairs that climbed to the foot of the ledge. He found the first stair in the shadow of the fortification, cut into the cliff, and rose steeply under the cover of shadow for half its ascent. As he’d noted the first time he and Brolli came through, the builders had erected a low stone wall to hide the stairs from eyes below, providing plenty of cover for a crouching climber. Harric crouched and climbed.

  Brolli’s plan had seemed daring to Harric, but there was another way that Harric alone could accomplish, and without so much risk to the ambassador.

  At the top of the stairs, some four fathoms above the top of the battlements, the cover of the wall ended. He stopped behind the last bit of wall to catch his breath, his thighs burning from the climb. Before him, the bare ledge forged ahead, rising slightly as it cut across the face of the cliff. It was just wide enough for a large man to walk without turning sideways, and stretched perhaps sixty paces to where it ended in the fissure. Halfway across lay the body of the first guardsman; beyond that, the second. The siege tower stood even with the second corpse, its top three fathoms below and its crossbowmen watching the ledge.

  Harric drew the witch-stone from his shirt. Its slick surface felt cool in the palm of his hand, but sweat prickled on his neck as he contemplated what he was about to do. He’d only entered the Unseen without help once before, and in the brief time he’d been there it had sapped him like he’d run a mile at full speed up a mountain. Indeed, he’d passed out from it. Without Fink’s help he feared he might pass out and fall off the cliff or suddenly become visible to the crossbowmen.

  Far above him, a few high clouds paled with the approach of dawn.

  It’s now or never. Harric closed his eyes, and peered into the Unseen through the oculus at the top of his mind. The landscape lay before him like a dreamy, underwater reflection of itself. Filaments of spirit rose from everything around him, clouding the air with luminescent strands. So beautiful it now seemed. Had he feared it before? Once more he felt the strange sensation of standing on the bottom of a slow-moving river amidst a forest of wavering strands, like water grasses. Because of these filaments it was difficult to see beyond a hundred paces or so. A slow, gloriously bright river, he amended. In contrast, the fires of the siege tower made dense points of flickering blackness.

  Harric strained his consciousness up at the oculus. He imagined he was climbing out through that high window in his mind. A thrill of danger shot through him as it began to open above him, and then pulled him through. He found himself standing fully in the Unseen, his body alight with pale filaments flickering into the sky.

  The weight of his entrance into the Unseen staggered him. He gasped, felt himself growing faint. He tottered and threw his hands out for balance, but knocked his cheek against the cliff before he steadied himself.

  I can do this. I have to do this.

  He walked out onto the narrow ledge, eyes on the luminescent stone before him, hand on the cliff to his right. In three steps, his head was pounding with the effort. In ten paces he crossed above the battlements, his lungs heaving, burning as if he carried his horse on his back. Panic scattered his thoughts as he realized it was too difficult to maintain. I’m going to pass out and drop into the Seen! He staggered toward the body of the first guardsman, which lay midway between the wall and the siege tower. Too far! I can’t make it!

  Dimly he recognized how ironic it was that he should get no farther with magic than the first defender had without. His vision went black; the roaring became a high, hissing shriek, and he could bear it no more: his knees buckled as he fell into ringing blackness.

  *

  “Harric!” Caris called softly. She scanned around her, painfully aware of the fact that Willard would notice and become irritated. No sign of him around their vantage on the rock pile. Her gaze swept the road behind, where the horses stood hobbled. Still nothing.

  “Where the Black Moon is Harric?” Willard grunted, craning his neck to check by the horses.

&nb
sp; Brolli turned his huge eyes to the road behind, then again to where it approached the fortress. After a moment, he made a noise that might have been a rueful laugh. “There.” He pointed to a distant point on the road below them.

  Shielding her eyes from the light of the enemy’s fires, Caris saw movement behind the fortifications. A dim figure jogged down the road toward the wall. Harric. He slowed, seemed to pause when he was almost to the fortress, then left the road, climbing up to the side and out of sight. Stairs? Yes. A dark line of stairs with a low wall as rail or cover.

  “He grew tired of the old men arguing,” Brolli said.

  “Gods leave him,” Willard muttered. “What the Black Moon does he think he’s doing?”

  “Making a look at that cliff ledge, I think.”

  Caris felt a stab of anxiety. Surely it was as clear to him as it was to Harric that running out on that ledge was suicide. He appeared again at the top of the stairs; the angle of her view had him silhouetted against the illumined cliff rocks beyond. Surely he would turn about soon and come back to report some new reconnaissance. She’d sensed over the last few days a desire in Harric to impress Willard—to somehow appear capable of more than dressing the old knight or buffing his saddle. Did he think this sort of spying was the way to show he was useful? Gods leave him, why’d he leave without telling me?

  “I see him,” Willard muttered. “He’d better not get any ideas of heroics. Girl. Get him back here. Take a shield,” he added. “And I don’t want you taking any risks, so stay behind cover. Keep that shield between you and the tower in case you’re spotted. Understand? No heroics.”

  Caris clambered down the rock pile. She grabbed the tall shield from Harric’s horse and set off at a trot, her armor clacking with every stride. With every boot fall, her anger at Harric compounded. Why didn’t he tell me? Did he think I’d stop him? Betray him to Willard? The notion galled her, but in truth she knew she might well have stopped him, and the fact he was justified in his secrecy galled her even more.

  When she reached the place where Harric had turned aside, she saw the stairs, but their protective wall was much too low to allow her to climb normally; she’d have to crouch almost double. Nor could she see the top of the stairs from the bottom, as the staircase curved around an outcrop. So she climbed. She took the stairs two at a stride, bent double in her armor. When she rounded enough of the bend to see the top of the stairs, she was breathing quite hard and sweating into her quilting. Worse, Harric was not in the stairwell.

  Her eyes pried through the dark of the stairs, looking for where he might have hidden, but found nothing but the uniform lines of stair after stair.

  Another stab of panic. Where the Black Moon are you?

  She reached the top of the stair to find no sign of him there, nor on the ledge of the path across the cliff. She was certain she had not passed him on the stair, but was so baffled that she glanced behind her just to be sure. There was nowhere above her he could have gone, unless he’d fallen off the ledge.

  Her breath hitched, and she swallowed a hard knot in her throat.

  She could not look over the edge without revealing herself to watching crossbowmen, but if she did it quickly she could be back again behind the wall before they could aim and shoot. She looked back up the road above the pass to the pile of boulders where Willard and Brolli still watched. She could see their shapes in the dim light of the moon. Was one of them motioning her to return?

  Gods leave you, Harric. Where are you?

  He had to have fallen. She put her eye to a chink in the wall and took a good look at the siege tower. Three men with crossbows watched the ledge, talking in low tones. One seemed to look right at her, though he gave no sign he saw her.

  Gripping the shield on each side, she held it before her. Then she stood up and stepped out just as Bannus’s horn sounded in the valley.

  She almost jumped from her armor.

  Too startled to look carefully for Harric, she nearly forgot to look at all. She caught a hasty glimpse of fire-lit stone below, then someone cried out on the tower, and she lurched back, missed a step on the stairs, and nearly tumbled, catching herself as she slammed a shoulder against the cliff wall.

  The words that came out of her mouth were not ladylike.

  A crossbow quarrel clattered off the cliff at the top of the stairs and into the stairwell at her feet.

  *

  Pain woke Harric. Searing pain behind his eyes. A bolt must have lodged in my brain. Voices nearby, arguing. Something tickled his cheek. A fly. There’s a fly on my cheek. He opened his eyes, to find something hairy lay directly in his face. It was the back of someone’s head. Maybe a hair was tickling his cheek. The person lay beside him, unmoving. Something smelled like a dead cat.

  A hissing bolt struck his companion with a sharp whap! His companion jerked stiffly.

  Slowly, Harric pieced it all together. He was on the ledge. He’d passed out and fallen between the first guardsman’s body and the cliff; the guardsman’s body screened him from the crossbows of the tower.

  “Dead,” a voice said. “You’re imagining things.”

  “I tell you he stood.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I haven’t had a drop, and I know what I saw.”

  Another quarrel raced in and hit the corpse’s head with a sickening thok, jogging it into Harric’s nose.

  “It won’t stand anymore,” said a third voice. Laughter.

  Harric had no idea how long he’d been out, but judging by the fact that the bowmen still shot at the corpse, it hadn’t been long. Above him the high clouds turned pink with approaching sunrise. He couldn’t afford to rest, or sunrise would catch him and he’d be thrust from the Unseen as he had been that morning, only this time with fatal results.

  Careful not to raise his head, he craned his neck to peer up the ledge toward the fissure at the end of the ledge. He’d made it almost halfway. From here the crack looked as big as a smelter’s chimney, wide enough even for Caris to enter. He could not see the resin charge, but it had to be there, he reasoned, since he’d seen no evidence of either of the slain guards bringing charges with them.

  The second dead guard lay halfway between himself and the safety of the fissure. He knew he could not hold himself in the Unseen long enough to make it all the way to the fissure, but if he could get to the next corpse he could lie down and rest beside it before attempting the final leg.

  He closed his eyes and peered out of his oculus into the Unseen, then opened them in panic as he realized he no longer held the witch-stone in his hand. Moons! He felt around between himself and the body, but found nothing. He searched with the other hand between himself and the cliff face, but again found nothing. Cursing, he spread his legs until they encountered the cliff on one side and the corpse on the other. No witch-stone. Then it rolled free from between his thighs, and he clapped his legs together just in time to catch it between his ankles.

  Biting back more curses, he reached one hand down as far as he could reach, then curled his legs up and bent at the waist until he felt its glossy surface in his fingers. But as he grasped the stone, he budged the corpse, and another cry went up from the tower.

  “There! See? His arm moved! Get that spitfire over here.”

  Harric closed his eyes and rose into the oculus. It was no easier this time, and when he entered into the Unseen the headache thundered behind his eyes, doubling as he climbed to his feet and staggered up the ledge. From the corner of his eye he saw the spitfire erupt from the siege tower. In the Unseen, it appeared as a black line of darkness, and as it streaked from the weapon it painted the landscape in weird shadows. He heard the resin wad splatter against the stone behind him, hissing as it burned.

  Harric kept his eyes on the path and staggered forward to the second corpse, which lay even with the siege tower on his left. Gasping, he collapsed beside the body and let himself fall through the oculus into the Seen. Flat on his stomach, his head swam with roaring pain.
Sweat soaked his shirt. It clung to his skin like he’d just emerged from a pool.

  “Mother of moons, now that one’s moving,” said a voice just below him. “See his leg there? It just edged over.”

  A crossbow thrummed, and the corpse beside Harric jerked. “It’s rats, then. He ain’t breathing.”

  “Reload that spitfire. Time to roast another rat.”

  Get up! Harric cursed himself. Now! Or it will be too late!

  He entered the Unseen one last time, but this time he could barely get his head through the oculus before his ears roared and his vision grew dark. He choked in pain, and let it go. I can’t do it! he realized. I have nothing left!

  *

  The corpse nearest Caris burned and stank of singed hair and worse. The crossbowmen on the tower now took potshots at the second corpse. Boredom? she wondered.

  Then she saw the boots. Four boot soles faced her on the ledge. Harric! She stared in disbelief, a combination of wonder and anger rising in her throat. He lay wedged between the second corpse and the cliff face. He must have crept out when the tower men had been distracted, but what could possibly have distracted them? There had been nothing she could recall. Had he crawled there on his belly, hugging the cliff and relying on the edge of the ledge to shield him from view from below? She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but there he was, clear as day! She’d been too preoccupied with the tower and everything else to notice before.

  A strange mix of admiration and fury warred in her brain.

  A bolt hissed in front of her face and cracked against the wall beside her, startling her from her reverie. She jerked the shield up and crouched for cover.

  On the ledge, one of Harric’s boots twitched. His chest rose and fell as if he were breathing rapidly. Was he wounded? Panicking? A breath of fear tickled her heart. He hadn’t moved since she’d been there. Why? A little voice in her head whispered a chilling possibility she took as truth: because you called their attention back to the ledge.