The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

What a lie that now seemed. She was never the vessel for this mission. It was Mudruffle all along. But it wasn’t his fault. She could not feel anger toward him. Mudruffle had never left her. It was her moon that abandoned her. “You will go with them to the north,” she said, trying to be strong. “To the land of the Kwendi.”

  The tryst servant nodded. “The tower is stocked with food. I have seen to it.”

  She looked up. “You knew I would not go?”

  “I began preparing after Vella’s visitation. To be safe.”

  It surprised her how much this little secret hurt her. Mudruffle had known all along she would not be asked to go. That there would be no healing. How naïve and foolish she must seem to him. How weak and petty. Had she not grown at all since she first took oath?

  If Mudruffle noticed, he said nothing of it. “I will return when it is finished,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Until then, mistress, farewell.”

  She nodded, and he left. But she felt then the certainty that Mudruffle would not return from this venture, and that she would spend her last years alone in that empty tower.

  She was too old to travel, and she had only her research into Arkendian witch-silver, which the Kwendi emergence had made meaningless. She might as well let herself fall ill and summon an Arkendian healer to speed her death.

  Mudruffle descended the stair, leaving her alone in a tower cell, empty as a long-drained cask.

  *

  Harric stood in the doorway of the stable, gazing up at the tower. He had been grabbing his sword to join Willard and Caris in the meadow when he’d seen a light on the dark side of the tower. Once again, something bright as day dazzled around the edges of the first-floor shutter, and his shoulders stiffened as if in memory of a blow. He recalled the sense of something divine and eternal on the other side…and the feeling of despair that impaled him when it left.

  Cursing himself for a fool, he climbed the stairs, unsure why he did. Willard was in a hurry, Bannus’s men were working on flanking them from the north, and he was poking around after half-remembered dreams in the tower. Even thinking of it summoned an echo of the desolation it had left him with.

  He found the door to the main living floor open; a single candle lit the room from the table under the window. There he found Abellia slumped over the table, her white head resting on her frail hands.

  Something was wrong. He felt he was intruding, and turned to go, but she lifted her head and turned dull eyes on him. Some of her wispy hair had escaped a bun and floated before her eyes, giving her a wild look. The eyes were puffy, her gaze hollow, and it reminded him of the look in his mother’s eyes after one of her visions.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” he said.

  “Young Harric.” Her voice came out like a croak. She gestured vaguely at the covered crockery on the table. “Sit. Eat. You came for bread and beans.”

  “Well, I thought—”

  “Sit.”

  Harric sat across the table from her. She stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. Not sure what else to do, he served himself a bowl of beans and ate. She said nothing, her gaze vacant again. For many heartbeats he ate, gazing out at the fog outside the open window. It hadn’t thinned much since he’d awakened.

  “Look at me.” Her voice was no more than a whispered breath. She held a gnarled hand before her, and turned it to and fro, as if to examine it. “So old. So used. All for nothing. Such a dear oath…no worth at all.” She chuckled, hoarse and hollow.

  Harric felt a flutter of sadness for the old woman. Was she talking of her oath to her moon?

  Her eyes glistened, black and beautiful in her grief. She dropped her head to her hands again and shook with silent weeping.

  Harric swallowed the beans. He wiped his mouth. He knew the despair the light being left behind. But he did not know how to comfort her. He certainly couldn’t admit he knew what she was going through, or she’d wonder how he knew.

  He laid a hand on her tiny, warm wrist. “I’m sorry.”

  After a while, she ceased her weeping. She did not lift her head, and he judged she would like him to leave. He gave her wrist a gentle squeeze, and rose.

  “The ring on my Caris. You gave it to her.” She raised her head and leaned back in her chair, eyes dim but focused upon him.

  It was not a question. It seemed an accusation.

  “Yes. It was an accident. I didn’t know what they were.”

  She nodded. “The ring is wicked. Wicked magic from a wicked moon.”

  A pulse of anger shot through Harric’s veins. He suppressed it. “Can you take it off?”

  “I cannot. It is not my moon.”

  Harric said nothing. He sat again. He had so many questions she might answer about the magics of the moons, and tryst servants in particular, but he did not know how to open the topic without revealing too much.

  “You do not fear the moons as Sir Willard does.” She dropped her hands into her lap below the surface of the table.

  “I think there must be some good in the moons. Not all of it’s bad. You’ve shown me that.”

  She nodded, missing or ignoring the challenge in his tone. She closed her eyes, and a spray of light played on the fringes of her robe. It wasn’t sunlight. It was before dawn. Then he felt a tingle in the skin of his shoulder, which had been scraped when Willard threw him through the planks. A warmth like a caress traveled up his stiff neck. The dapples of light moved in synchrony with the sensations in his skin—coming from something below the table, in her lap. She raised her hands above the table, cradling a pearl-white stone the size of a goose egg, shining with an inner light. Healing light, he realized. A nexus of the Bright Mother.

  Then the light was gone, and the warmth drained from his shoulder and neck.

  “It was you,” he said. “You healed Idgit while we slept. I couldn’t believe her recovery.”

  “I am sworn to it.” Her voice remained dull, her eyes empty.

  He pulled down his shirt to examine his shoulder, and prodded where ragged scratches had been only hours before. He rolled his neck without pain. He was whole again.

  Realizing his mouth was agape, he closed it. “Thank you.”

  “Your Willard would not thank me.”

  “No, but I am not Willard. I don’t see a witch. I see a healer.” He risked a question he hoped wouldn’t seem out of place. “I—suppose it is something you learned from Mudruffle, isn’t it? The magic of your moon? You’ve been with him since the beginning?” She stared at him, uncomprehending. “To use your nexus. He taught you?”

  As understanding lit in her eyes, they went hollow, as if from some deep inner pain. He instantly regretted asking it, though he didn’t know why it should grieve her.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She turned from him, as if to signal she wished to be alone.

  He excused himself and left the tower, uncertain what he had witnessed. Such a dear oath. For nothing. Used up. Something hardened in him. That would not be his fate with Fink.

  Sir Willard was a banished man,

  His fair deeds lost to foul,

  His many squires a testament,

  His many ladies’ scowls.

  Yet the Champion’s fault was ne’er to love,

  But to love too close to the Queen.

  He should have reserved it for Her that’s above,

  Or hidden it better, I ween.

  —The chorus of the famed Sir Willard ballad “Black Armor Becomes Him”

  19

  Divine Blood & Mortal Oaths

  Harric strapped to Idgit the sign he’d painted on a plank for Captain Gren. It read, HIGH CAUTION – ENEMY IS HERE, and he’d signed it “Sr.W,” for Sir Willard.

  After grabbing a lantern, he mounted and urged Idgit into a walk. They descended the garden switchbacks into a deeper fog made gray in the indirect light of approaching dawn. A breeze blew up from the pass, shredding the fog and pulling it aw
ay like rags of carded wool. Lower, in the forest-rimmed meadow, the fog still pooled, however, forcing him to navigate by memory at first—and then by the sound of voices—toward the willow where Kogan made his camp.

  Halfway across the meadow, a dark shape loomed. Idgit startled, ears perked forward, eyes rolling white. The shape gave a deep snort of greeting.

  “Easy, Idgit. It’s just Geraldine.”

  The musk-auroch gave a shake of her massive head, spraying droplets of moisture in a halo from long ears and wool. Idgit gave her an unnecessarily large berth. The auroch chewed her cud and watched with calm, wise eyes.

  The voices in the camp had gone silent. Harric could see the willow ahead as a darkening of the fog. “Hello?” he called. “Someone sent for a packhorse?”

  “It’s Harric,” said Caris. Her voice came from one side.

  A grunt came from the opposite side, and Kogan’s tall bulk loomed from the fog. “Might have given a shout afore now,” he said. “Fog’s got us jumping like fleas. Could move an army in this and none would know it.”

  Caris and Brolli emerged from the other side. Kogan took Idgit’s reins as Harric dismounted.

  “But so timely!” said Brolli, flashing his feral grin. “What a good valet you are!”

  Harric’s eyes narrowed. Caris pinched a smile between her lips. To Brolli, Harric said, “I have a demon that wakes me in the form of a beautiful warrior maiden.”

  Brolli barked out a laugh. “That is luck. I have only the sad old knight who stink of ragleaf.”

  “Did you get very far last night?” Harric asked. “See anything before the fog set in?”

  Brolli frowned. “Could not get close enough to the north pass before I am making the turn back, or maybe I am getting lost. I had hoped to see fires. Did I hear wolves? Maybe it was men. I cannot tell.”

  “Will said wait here for him,” said Kogan. “He’s looking for lance trees. Said make sure you packed and saddled the horses.”

  “I did,” Harric replied.

  “Then help yourself to some mash at the fire. Ain’t hot, sad to say, but oughta be warm.”

  Harric blinked. “You made a fire?” He glanced up to where the fire-cone ridge sailed above streaming rags of fog.

  Kogan belched, and only when the beer fumes reached him did Harric realize the priest was roaring drunk, and probably not at his sharpest. Kogan grinned. “Will near took my head off for it.”

  Harric picketed Idgit and followed the others to the charcoal patch of ground that had been Kogan’s campfire. Caris handed Harric a wooden bowl of mash. Harric raised an eyebrow. The bowl appeared to be the only one in camp, which meant it had to be from Kogan’s camp kit. That gave Harric visions of the priest licking it clean and drying it with his beard each morning.

  Harric examined the mash as Kogan sat with a grunt on a log opposite and promptly flopped over onto his back with a surprised “Oop!”

  The mash was simple boiled oats. Some looked like they might be whole oats—hull and all—from the horse’s fodder. There appeared to be a submerged twig. Harric’s stomach threatened to flop over. He glanced at Caris to find her biting back another grin. She’d endured the stuff, and now she was enjoying the show.

  “What?” he said. “Is this tease Harric day?”

  “It’s hit the trail as fast as we can day,” said Willard. His voice preceded him from the foggy margin of the willow.

  The sound of it jolted Kogan into motion from where he’d lain flat on his back. He wallowed in his smothercoat, a swarm of arms and bare legs, and managed to get to his knees before Willard pushed through the curtain of willow branches. Willard seemed taller than usual, probably because of the helmet and oiled cloak he wore over full armor, and he strode with vigor without the aid of his crutch. While Kogan’s eyes were on Willard, Harric flung the mash to Geraldine. The beast eyed the lump placidly, jaw working cud.

  A tiny gasp from Caris called Harric’s attention away from the auroch. Her jaw had dropped open. She stared at Willard, who returned it with violet intensity. His skin had gone blue. There was no hiding it now.

  One by one, Willard met the eyes of the others.

  Brolli’s jaw moved without sound. Then he closed it and bowed.

  Kogan beamed from his bush of beard and let out a joyous whoop. “That’s the Will I remember!”

  Harric had to suppress an irrational urge to kneel before the fledging immortal. Harric’s own blood seemed to shout, A god among us! A hero! A king! in recognition of divine blood so near.

  Willard’s skin was not the outright blue of Bannus, who had taken the Blood without intermission for centuries and looked like an angry blueberry. Where Willard’s cheeks normally flushed red, they now darkened to an icy blue, as did his lips. Just as striking was that everything about him seemed firmer, stronger, straighter.

  Caris’s cheeks had drained of color, but when Willard’s eyes fell on her, they flushed. Her mouth clamped shut, jaw muscles bulging. She glared at Willard in defiance, but then her gaze faltered, and her eyes flicked to the sides as if in advance of a full-blown horse-touched collapse.

  Harric cringed inwardly. How could I not see this coming? To him, Willard could be both hero and hypocrite. Though he didn’t like them, he could understand the contradictions. But Caris had always struggled with the gray areas of human behavior, and to her, Sir Willard was a pillar of honor. For the hero to reveal himself as an oath breaker was to challenge and shatter the constellations of her world.

  Willard’s violet eyes flashed with suppressed rage, as if in her dismay he saw the judgment of the world. Instead of releasing her gaze, so she might collect her herself, the old knight hardened it as if it could break her fragile grasp of the situation and send her horse-touched mind into breakdown.

  Harric stood abruptly, drawing a sharp glance from Willard. Poor Willard, he wanted to say. Is this supposed to be a glorious entrance? And is Caris spoiling it? How the Blood must warp one’s thinking. Instead, he said, “Caris. Let’s check on Idgit,” and took her hand in his.

  The contact allowed her to tear her eyes from Willard, and the panic and pain Harric saw in them tore at his heart. She sucked in a deep breath, as if in her shock she’d forgotten to breathe.

  “Idgit needs you,” Harric said, guiding her toward the pony, and pointedly ignoring Willard.

  As Caris’s eyes found the little horse at the edge of the camp, the mare’s head rose, ears pricked toward her. Caris shook off Harric’s hand—along with her last shreds of human decorum—and ran to her, falling on Idgit’s neck like a long-lost friend. As she buried her face in the pony’s shaggy mane, she let out a muffled sob.

  Harric’s jaw clenched, and he looked away, fury burning in his gut. He didn’t dare look at the knight, but felt Willard’s god-touched gaze like a pressure on his skull. Joining Caris at Idgit’s side, he let Idgit lick the remnants of the mush from his bowl, and then busied himself removing Captain Gren’s sign from the saddlebags.

  “Let Bannus find us now.” Kogan chuckled, apparently oblivious to the whole exchange. “You got him matched, Will.”

  “It is good,” said the ambassador. “I almost wish to see it!”

  Harric couldn’t tell if Brolli made conversation to distract Willard from his apprentices, or if he was as oblivious as Kogan seemed, but he chattered on about an imagined meeting between the two immortals, and Kogan interjected enthusiastically. Harric imagined the old knight’s hands balled into fists as he wrestled with the Blood rage.

  When Willard finally spoke, his voice was low and measured, exactly as it had been when he’d thrown Harric through the planks in the stable. “I won’t be his match for weeks,” he said. “Maybe a month. Today was only my third draught in two days.”

  A silence followed in which Harric risked a glance at the men around the dead campfire. Willard’s attention was on Brolli, and he’d rested his hands on his armored hips, which Harric took for a sign he’d reestablished control over the Blood rage.<
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  “But the Blood heals my body,” said Willard. “Already, it’s taken my aches, and my armor grows loose about the waist and tight about the arms.”

  “I see it,” said Brolli. His awe was clear. “You change.”

  Indeed, Harric found it hard not to stare. Though the old knight was still the pot-bellied, skinny-legged Willard they all knew, it was easy to see he now stood straight and moved without sign of pain. His chins had melted by half. The bones of his face emerged sharply.

  “Yes. I change,” he growled. “And it is a change you may live to regret urging, ambassador. So let’s get one thing clear. I am no god. I’m no king. I’m a man, an unfit vessel for this stolen Blood. Therefore, I’m mad as a rabid dog. Mad with the heat of the Blood in my flesh. Mad with thirst. Mad with battle lust. And mad with hunger, though to eat will madden me more, so I must fast.” Willard’s hands flexed and squeezed into fists, as if by speaking of it, he talked himself into a rage.

  Clenching his jaw, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A long moment later, he exhaled and opened his eyes. “My flesh burns with the transformation. I sweat to death. Hot as a kiln in here.”

  “What can we do to help?” said Brolli.

  “Cobbing little you can do. I will thank you to bring me water when you have it. But I beg you steer clear of me when I am alone and silent or with Molly, for then I will be as an injured bear and likely to strike before I know you.”

  “Water right by your foot, Will,” Kogan said.

  Willard picked up the water bucket and drank deeply, snorting into it like an ox at a trough.

  “So he’ll be a danger to us, but not so much to Bannus,” Harric muttered to Brolli. “What could go wrong?” The Kwendi did not appear to hear him. Brolli had taken out his travel journal and was already scribbling intently in his foreign alphabet.

  Willard dropped the empty bucket and wiped his mouth with the palm of his gauntlet. Striding away through the willow branches, he called over his shoulder, “If you’re done with your little tantrum, girl, you can pick up an axe and follow me to the ash grove.”