The Jack of Ruin
~ Book Two of the Unseen Moon Series ~
by Stephen Merlino
The Jack of Ruin
ISBN: 978-0-9862674-4-4
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2017 by Tortoise Rampant Books
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, uploaded, distributed or transmitted in any form or means, including scanning, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations for reviews, and noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. To obtain permission, please contact Stephen Merlino at [email protected].
Cover art by Yo Shimizu at [email protected]
Cover layout and design by Luke P. Shea
at lukeshea.com
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
For Kathryn
artist, traveler, giver, and infallible compass
of what matters.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Map
One – A Voice In The Dark
Two – On The Brink
Three – Unbound
Four – Black Moon Interlude
Five – Blood & Fire
Six – Bastard Blame
Seven – The Hunted & The Abandoned
Eight – Tainted Blood & Magic
Nine – Curses & Promises
Ten – On Broken Oaths
Eleven – On Treachery & Heroes
Twelve – Spitfires & Magic
Thirteen – Old Friends & New Peril
Fourteen – White Moon Servants
Fifteen – Black Moon Interlude
Sixteen – Questions In The Dark
Seventeen – Trust Among Tricksters
Eighteen – On Broken Hope
Nineteen – Divine Blood & Mortal Oaths
Twenty – Of Sense & Stratagems
Twenty-One – On Bad Endings
Twenty-Two – Steel & Fire
Twenty-Three – Smoke & Sacrifice
Twenty-Four – Loot & Loyalty
Twenty-Five – Yoab Run
Twenty-Six – The Price Of Immortality
Twenty-Seven – Blood & Consequence
Twenty-Eight – Fear & Folly
Twenty-Nine – Phyros Blood
Thirty – Fire Draught
Thirty-One – False Trail
Thirty-Two – Seeds Of Sorrow
Thirty-Three – Fractured
Thirty-Four – Of Nudity & Round Bellies
Thirty-Five – The Unseen Seen
Thirty-Six – Truth & Illusion
Thirty-Seven – Open Eyes
Thirty-Eight – Blood Rite
Thirty-Nine – Dream Cache
Forty – Blood Marked
Forty-One – Worsic
Forty-Two – Yoab Maze
Forty-Three – Web Strands & Moon Spirits
Forty-Four – Fever Fires
Forty-Five – Midsummer Night’s Curse
Forty-Six – Of Death & Revelation
Forty-Seven – Revelation
Forty-Eight – Fear And Trembling
Forty-Nine – A Failed Tryst
Fifty – Curiosity & The Cat
Fifty-One – Flight
Fifty-Two – Alone
Fifty-Three – Fireflies
Fifty-Four – Preparations
Fifty-Five – Witch-Silver Depths
Fifty-Six – Witches
Fifty-Seven – Stranded
Fifty-Eight – Locked & Barred
Fifty-Nine – Hooves In The Night
Sixty – Trapped
Sixty-One – Lies
Sixty-Two – Unholy Fire
Sixty-Three – Heart Sacrifice
Sixty-Four – Knight Of Krato
Sixty-Five – Priest Of Arkus
Sixty-Six – A Cure For Fleas
Sixty-Seven – Separations
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Backers
About the Author
Acknowledgements
I have many to thank for their support and input during the creation of this book.
First and foremost, to Kathryn, Maia, and Roman, partners in adventure and inspiration.
Next, thanks to my beta readers, beginning with my first reader, Jane Merlino, whose encouragement from a young age made me believe in myself and kept me foolish enough to keep writing; Michael Neeley, fellow Tolkien geek, for his hexatious through-line reading; and to sci-fi writers Tim (Tim, I tell you!) Daniels (humorous sci-fi), and Heidi Farmer (sci-fi); RMFW fantasy writers Corinne “Conference Diva” O’Flynn, Karen “Unforgettable” Duvall; lone wolf of the demon West, Stefan Marmion; wayward wolves of the alt-rainforest Carol Otte and Joanne Rixon, for their brilliance and insight as readers and writers; and friends Tracy “Ace” Forsythe, his son Ryder, Glenn Rotton, Nick Markham, Andy Reckles; and to Kai “make my day” Hiar, who is likely my most dangerous fan.
Special thanks to Amber Boker, Horse Whisperer & Rehabilitator, my consultant on matters equine, and to Magic Tom Boland, fellow teacher, unintentional publicist, and friend.
Also to my beta reader closers: Mark Hauge, whose deep learning in film and comics lore and consequent insights into plot and character continually blow my mind; and Craig Holt, traveler, philosopher, and professional crank, whose jungle noir novel, Hard Dog to Kill, released this year.
Finally, thanks to the Seattle Writer’s Cramp gang, esp. Mike Croteau, Steve Gurr, Kim Runciman, Amy Stewart, Thom Marrion, and Barbara Stoner, who were there through the bitter end(s); the same for Ian Chisholm, Larry Jones, and Dan Solum and Diana of the Wayward group, who endured innumerable drafts. I could ask for no better writing instruction.
Ruin (n):
1 – disintegration, loss, an end of good things.
2 – in Arkendian tarot-poker, the suit of the Mad Moon.
—From the first Kwendi Dictionary of Arkendian
1
A Voice In The Dark
Harric scanned the darkness of the bedchamber, straining for any sign of the intruder.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
A rasping voice answered from much too close in the dark, “We had an agreement.”
Harric lurched to the back of his bed and struck his shoulder against the stone wall, knocking grains of mortar down his neck.
“Your debt is due,” said the imp. “Did you think to hide from me?”
“No.” Harric struggled to sound calm, but it seemed like his heart was slamming against the bars of his ribcage. “I knew you’d come. I expected you.”
A finger of moonlight slanted through an arrow slit and etched a glowing triangle on the stone floor. It was the room’s only light, but now that Harric knew where to look, it was enough to reveal the creature as a clot of deeper darkness at the head of his bed.
The imp—Fink, it called itself—stepped closer, talons clicking on the stone, and Harric flinched against the wall. The private chamber the garrison had awarded Harric for destroying Sir Bannus’s army felt less of a privilege and more of a trap.
Stay calm, he chided himself. The thing could probably sense fear through the Unseen.
Steeling himself, Harric closed his eyes. At once he saw the teardrop-shaped hole at the top of his mind, the “third eye” or “oculus” the imp had cut with its talon in Harric’s forehead. It hung like a luminous attic window, its edges outlined by the glow of the spirit world beyond. Pushing his consciousness up to i
t, he peered out. In the Unseen world of spirits, the chamber’s stone walls and floor glowed faintly with the low spiritual essence of moisture and dust upon them, but his own limbs blazed with spiritual flames, and the wooden doors at either end shone with the residue of life, bright as promises.
The Unseen also revealed the imp. It hunched like a grounded bat, black and lightless against the ambient glow. Its gaunt body—no larger than that of a seven-year-old child—looked starved, with jutting ribs and a bald, overlarge head. The peaks of membranous wings reached almost as high as a man, and hooked talons adorned crooked fingers and feet. Beneath a long, bulbous nose, a hedge of needlelike teeth stretched in a permanent grin. White, pupilless eyes gleamed like boils tight with fluid.
Harric resisted the urge to glance at the two exits: one door opened onto the main corridor of the barracks; the other was the postern door opening onto the cliff at the foot of the outpost’s wall. He could make a dash for one, but what would be the point? The imp would find him eventually. He took a breath and spoke forcefully, so his voice wouldn’t crack. “I’m glad you found me, Fink.”
“I kept my end of the bargain.”
“You did. What…what did you do with her?”
“Your mother is in her grave.”
Harric’s heart leapt against his ribs again. “So. Will she stay there this time?”
The hedge of needle teeth widened in what might have been a humorless grin. “That’s one deranged spirit that won’t be back to torment you. She’s gone.”
Harric stared, scarcely daring to believe what he’d heard. He repeated it to be sure.
“Gone.”
“No more haunting,” said Fink. “No more attacks.”
Harric nodded, and hope became belief. No more madness. No more terror. The curse was broken. A weight lifted from his spirit—a weight that had become so familiar over the years that he’d forgotten it was there.
“Now for your end of the bargain.” The imp stood, knobbled limbs crackling. He extended a hooked talon toward Harric’s forehead.
“Wait!” Harric jumped and stood on the bed.
Hissing, Fink extended his wings to the sides as if to catch Harric if he ran.
“I just mean…” Harric said. “I want to talk first.” His mind galloped as his gut seemed to push the air from his lungs. “But we can’t talk here. If the others hear us and come in, the game will be up. You might get away, but I won’t. They’ll search me and destroy your witch-stone and then hang me from the battlements.” He rushed a hand through his hair. “Let’s meet outside. Up on the cliff, where the dark will hide us and we’ll have a clear view of anyone who approaches.”
After a moment, Fink furled his wings. “On the cliff, you settle your debt.”
Harric nodded.
“Leave the sword,” said the imp.
And he vanished.
Trickery is noble wit,
But lies are merely lies.
To those who say I wronged them,
Let them look again and sigh.
—Last words of the infamous Jack Pilgrim before his escape from the gallows.
2
On The Brink
Sweat chilled Harric’s spine as he crept out a back door of the walled outpost. High above, the Bright Mother Moon hung mid-leap between the crags on either side of the pass. Pure and white, she painted the stone faces with silver and shadow.
Harric stole along the moon-shadowed west walls of the stable yard and managed to avoid the eyes of the watchmen, while the chatter of the river running down the east side masked the sound of his footfalls.
Scents of sun-toasted pine and wildflowers greeted him as he crept up the road behind the fortification, but the charms of late summer lacked the power to banish the dread in his stomach. There would be no tricking his way out of this situation. He couldn’t swindle the imp like he could some West Isle slaver, and the imp was too shrewd to be maneuvered into a Rash Promise like Sir Willard. He couldn’t con this foe or hide from him.
But he had to try something. The mere thought of Fink’s “master-slave contract” curdled his innards.
As he started to climb the stairway at the foot of the cliff, he tried to imagine he and the imp were at a card table. He imagined he had only one card, and the imp was about to call the flop. Sliding his hand into his sleeve, he groped for his lucky Jack of Souls, but found its pocket empty. Cobs. A cold finger of doubt touched him right at the base of his ribcage. He’d left the card in the room.
Sucking a deep breath, he tried to imagine another card in his sleeve—some inspiration, some insight into the situation—but came up with nothing.
Well, then. What was the one card he’d imagined in his hand?
The witch-stone. Fink’s stone. He slid his fingers into his shirt and grasped the egg-shaped orb that linked him to the power of the Unseen Moon. The stone was surely his only card. As long as he had it, he had something to bargain with.
But he knew if he didn’t agree to Fink’s terms, the imp would demand the stone back and…then what? He’d either have to find a way to fight the imp off—which was out of the question—or he’d have to give it back, and his dreams of using it to help the Queen would all come crashing down. With the stone in his hand, he had done so much already: he’d defeated Bannus’s army; he’d saved his friends and their quest for the Queen; and—arguably—saved the whole cobbing kingdom. With Fink’s witch-stone, he could be the greatest protector the Queen had ever known—a hero of importance akin to that of Sir Willard and the Blue Order.
And it felt like more than a dream. It felt like destiny. And he’d devote his life to it.
Sighing heavily, he dropped the witch-stone back in the inner pocket of his shirt and quested up his sleeve to the empty card pocket. He imagined tracing three sides of the jack, and rehearsed three of the jack’s cardinal virtues. Wit. Daring. Luck. The fourth, Charm, would not serve him in a tryst with an imp of the Unseen. But he’d need all three of the others more than ever before. He had no choice but to hear Fink out and improvise as more cards appeared.
Wit. Daring Luck. Over and over, his fingers traced the edges as he climbed. I can do this.
His thighs burned when he finally reached the top of the stairs and stepped out onto the edge above the sleeping outpost. Below him, the stone walls and slate rooftops glinted hard and cold in silver moonlight. The ruin of its dove tower still smoldered from the recent siege, and a few embers among the fallen timbers glowed like watching red eyes. As he traversed the ledge, he got a bird’s-eye view of the outer wall and gate that barred the pass. Upon the battlements, two watchmen dozed with bottles by their heads—a sin Harric forgave them, for all the survivors had celebrated their victory with mead and ale in plenty.
No sign of Fink yet. The ledge before him remained empty. As he traversed the face of the cliff, it climbed high above the road, like a moon-silvered plank of bare stone no wider than his shoulders.
As he hugged the cliff to his right and leaned away from the drop to his left, a new dread frosted his veins: he’d chosen to meet Fink there so he could show him the battlefield, show what he’d done, in case it might give him another card to bargain with; but now the location seemed foolish—like it gave the imp a card—for at twenty fathoms above the road, Fink could simply knock him from the ledge and retrieve the witch-stone from his broken body.
Well played, Harric.
He glanced back, worried that Fink might materialize behind, but saw no sign of the imp in the Seen or the Unseen. Below, the river burst from the frowning water gate at the front of the fortification wall and plunged like a silvery tongue for seventy fathoms into the valley.
A shadow appeared, some sixty paces up the ledge, right above the rockfall that buried Bannus’s army. It seemed a blur of darkness, like a cloud of ash from a dead campfire, but from it the imp materialized. When Harric joined him, Fink was staring down at the shattered timbers and house-sized boulders as if he knew Harric had stood in that
very spot only hours before when he brought the cliff down on his enemies.
He followed the imp’s gaze to the wreckage. Seeing the enormity of it anew sent a wave of sickness through him. Dozens of men lay mashed beneath those boulders. Dozens of horses crushed, pinned, blasted from the side of the mountain. It was a mass grave. And all dead by Harric’s hand.
They would have done worse to us, he reminded himself. And now my friends sleep soundly in the stone halls of the outpost instead of wailing in the hands of Sir Bannus. For another day, the Queen and kingdom are safe. No guilt in that.
With luck, it would take more than a day for the immortal Sir Bannus to recover from the blow. As the rocks had descended on his camp, Bannus’s immortal horse had whirled and carried him over the cliff and down into the well of the waterfall. Since Bannus’s horn had resounded defiantly from the depths in the hours after, Harric knew he’d return. And unless his fall had knocked the memory of Harric’s triumphant face from his immortal skull, the knight would return with even more determination and hatred.
*
Another anxiety to gnaw at Harric’s gut.
Fink looked up from the rubble and fixed him with pupilless white eyes.
He must see the spirits of the slain amidst the rubble, Harric thought.
He hadn’t dared look through his oculus at the mass grave below, but it drained the blood from his veins to imagine the spirits of the dead there—maybe as gory as their bodies—as they cursed him and clamored for revenge. If they could reach him, maybe they’d claw through his oculus and rend his soul to shreds.
“You’ve been busy,” Fink rasped.
Harric retreated from the edge of the ledge and sat with his back against the cliff. If the imp shoved him from here, Harric would hit the rubble, and his spirit would join the angry spirits of the slain. He shook his head in dismay. Well played, again.
“Yes, it was a busy night,” Harric said, or rather blurted. “I used the witch-stone and entered the Unseen, and…”
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