The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  “Only one way to find out,” Harric said, starting up the hill.

  “It will be good to die with you.”

  If the bright sun loves you, why worry about the moons?

  —Arkendian proverb

  33

  Fractured

  Harric scrambled to the top of the hillock, Brolli at his side, and peered through the deepening dusk.

  “It is our friends,” Brolli said. He pointed, and Harric saw them in the deepening shadows, picking their way toward them through the fallen trees. Halfway down this side of the hillock, Father Kogan waved a blanket over his head.

  A glimpse of Caris’s profile sent a rush of mixed emotions through Harric, and chief among them was relief.

  But in the last few days, she’d changed. Unmistakably. And unnaturally. It scared him. It seemed the ring had gone from creating an artificial love that she could fight and resist to making physical impulses she didn’t seem to have as much control over. The sensuous looks, the outright invitations… It was possible she’d given up resisting, but she was too disciplined and tough for that to be likely. Something must have changed in the ring.

  And you haven’t even asked Fink about it yet, you cob. Serves you right for forgetting.

  A little knife of panic pricked his gut as he realized he hadn’t set up his bedroll in the camp, and if he didn’t set it up soon, she’d arrange another private grotto for them. She’d be angry, cob it. But there was nothing else to do. With luck, he could get Willard to say it was his idea.

  Hurrying to his saddlebags, he grabbed his bedroll just as Willard approached the top of the hillock. Harric flopped the roll beneath the canvas tarp he’d already strung for the old knight, and laid out Willard’s blankets as well.

  Willard crested the hill and, with only a stiff nod to Harric, took Molly to the far side of their camp. Father Kogan joined Willard, and the two spoke about the wildfire. Harric trotted to the edge of the hillock to locate Caris, and saw her dismounting below and lifting her saddlebags from Rag, as if to make her camp there.

  Harric joined her, and as she hung Rag’s saddlebags over a log, he removed the saddle for her. As he rounded the mare to lay the saddle beside the bags, he stopped dead in his tracks. There beside her stood Mudruffle—indeed, the little golem walked up to meet Harric and performed a stiff little bow.

  “Greetings, Squire Harric,” Mudruffle honked. “I did not wish to alarm your priest friend in the dark, so I asked that Squire Caris stop short of the camp where he rests. Willard also thought this best.”

  “Mudruffle!” More feeling came out in the exclamation than Harric had thought he held for the creature. He glanced at Caris, who watched with a sad smile.

  “He woke up when we got on the yoab run,” she said. “We thought it would be best if he didn’t make an appearance till daylight. I’ll tell Father Kogan tonight, so he’s prepared for it tomorrow.”

  “Good idea.” Harric set the saddle on a hummock of moss and took the golem’s cold clay hand in his. “I am so glad to see you well. Your map has been very useful.”

  “Thank you, Squire Harric,” Mudruffle said. “I am most pleased to be with you again. I only wish it were under different circumstances.”

  Harric’s gladness evaporated. “Yes, I am so sorry for your loss. We all are.”

  “Mistress Abellia was a true servant.”

  “I’m sure it is a terrible loss for your moon, as well.”

  Mudruffle bowed again. “Indeed, and more, Squire Harric. Her stone was lost in the fire.” His hat tilted backward so the polished black eyes glinted in the shadow of the rim. Behind Mudruffle, Caris looked up and put a hand over her mouth. “As I am the custodian of that stone, I share a bond with it, and I know it is certainly destroyed.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Harric said. “I hope it isn’t indelicate of me to ask, but does this mean you must return to your moon?”

  “I will remain with you,” said Mudruffle. “I will stay with you to complete Abellia’s last wish, to guide you to the Kwendi lands.”

  “Boy! Girl!” Willard called from the top of the hillock.

  “His armor,” Caris said, with the briefest of glances at Harric. She started up the hillside, and Harric followed.

  As they reached the crest and entered the camp, Harric laid a hand on her arm, and she paused. “I’m sorry about Abellia,” he said.

  She said nothing. She closed her eyes and turned to join the others, but then her hand found his, and she paused. When her eyes found his, the change in her expression was startling. Lips slightly parted, her nostrils flared, and her heavy-lidded gaze slid down his front.

  He dropped her hand as if oblivious. “Let’s help Willard with that armor,” he said, loud enough to catch the attention of the men.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to her. She looked as if she was going to pull him in for a kiss, but then her brow furrowed as if she were questioning what she was doing. Then she sucked a quick breath and parted her lips, and the heavy eyes found his. “Willard can wait.”

  “Harric,” Brolli said. “Come tell Willard what we see.”

  “Come with me,” Harric said, extricating his hand again. “You’ll want to hear this.”

  Caris was smoldering as they joined the others, but Harric continued to act oblivious. He could think of nothing else to do, except reasoning with her, but the look on her face just then hadn’t seemed terribly reasonable. Brolli said, “It seem Bannus did not follow in the valley. We watched the trail for an hour in the sunlight.”

  “Maybe he didn’t get on our side of the fire,” Harric said. He felt Caris step up beside him, too close. Her hand found the small of his back and massaged the tight bands of muscle there. “He must have misjudged how hot it would be and got stuck on the other side.”

  “May his immortal bones burn to cinders,” Kogan growled. “A more godly beast never poisoned the land.”

  Willard grunted. “This is good news,” he said, but his eyes had found Caris, and a shadow of concern seemed to move behind his eyes. His gaze flicked to Harric, who widened his eyes in a silent plea. If Willard understood his meaning, however, he showed no sign of it.

  “Brolli, can you watch that ridge this evening as we sleep?” Willard said. “If anyone comes down at night, they’ll need torches, and will be plain to see.”

  “I have slept enough. Yes,” Brolli said.

  “Girl, I want you to stay with Holly and the others at the bottom of the hill. I’ll hobble Molly here, and Harric will mind my armor.”

  Willard’s voice seemed to wake something in Caris. She stiffened and glanced at her mentor, her eyes clear. “Yes, sir,” she said, and left them to return to her horse.

  Harric let out a long breath and acknowledged Willard with a look. Willard returned the look with a hard, accusing stare.

  “I wasn’t taking advantage of her,” Harric said. “It should be obvious I’m trying to avoid her. She has me running in circles.”

  The knight’s jaw muscles bulged as he ground his teeth, and a violet light flickered in his eyes. His fists balled tightly, creaking the leather in his armor, then relaxed. Squinting at him in the failing light, Harric realized the Blood was changing Willard rapidly—had changed him. The angles of his face behind the mustachio were hard and lean, the sag of fat below his jaw completely gone.

  “The ring,” Willard said, turning to Brolli. “It’s forcing her on him.” The way he said him seemed to indicate the problem wasn’t the ring forcing her, but that the person it forced her on was Harric. Wonderful. With immortal muscle came immortal attitude.

  Brolli looked at Willard expectantly, as if waiting for a point.

  Willard growled. “What’s that infernal thing up to, ambassador?”

  “I do not know what you mean,” Brolli replied. “The ring is as it has been.”

  “It is not the same,” Harric said. “Its spell is changing. It’s making her…physical.”

  Brolli’s huge teet
h flashed in a feral—yet somehow apologetic—grin. He shrugged. “I do not know this magic. It was my task to deliver it as a gift to your Lone Queen. But such a spell fits the idea for the ring, to hurry a wedding.”

  Harric bit back on snapping at the Kwendi. How could they think the Lone Queen would want a slave ring? Who the Black Moon advised them on this? He forced himself to count to five and take a deep breath. “It’s getting worse.” After glancing at Caris, to be sure she’d moved out of hearing, he turned again to Willard. “I’ve set up a canvas to keep the dew off, and laid my bedroll there. Hopefully Caris won’t try to move it away with hers…”

  Willard nodded, but his eyes remained hard. “I’ll tell her I want to keep an eye on you here tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Harric gave them both a small bow, and turned out of camp in the opposite direction from Caris. “I need to leave camp for a while. Be alone. I won’t go far.”

  Willard grasped Harric’s arm as he passed, halting him in his tracks. A hood of shadow cloaked the old knight’s face, but his breath came hot and stinking of ragleaf. “What I do is for the girl, boy. This changes nothing between us. To me, you are nothing more than a faithless, sneaking jack, and the second that ring is off, I will jettison you like useless luggage. Then you may serve your own vanity until you hang.”

  Harric’s anger still smoldered in his breast; now it flared as if fanned with a bellows.

  He looked down at Willard’s hand, still gripping his arm, then met the old knight’s glare. After a moment, Willard released him, and Harric stepped away. “I too am only here as long as Caris wears the ring. I do not stay to serve you. And you of all people should be careful to speak of vanity, Sir Willard. While you struggle to discern yours from duty to our queen, I’ll serve with clear and even conscience.”

  Harric did not wait for the reply, and turned on his heel and left.

  As he descended the hillock, boot heels sinking deep in the moss with each long downhill stride, his heart fluttered with excitement. What have I done? He pushed a hand through his hair and found himself smiling uncontrollably. I stopped worrying about Willard’s approval, that’s what I’ve done. And his heart felt larger and freer.

  In spite of all the death and grimness around them, the smile spread into a grin. Here was something to celebrate. Something a long time coming.

  Funny how childhood heroes must be abandoned before one could fly on one’s own.

  Let none judge the Unseen foul who never saw its glory.

  Its light lays bare all follies, reveals all secrets, exposes the Seen and its vanity.

  —Verse credited to Unseen apologist, Lupistano Uscelana

  34

  Of Nudity & Round Bellies

  Harric headed north, keeping his back to the hillock, until the profusion of trees concealed him from view from the camp. Then he bent his path west toward the river for a look at the burning ridge. The wildfire drew him the way campfires draw eyes. And it seemed somehow appropriate to keep vigil on the blaze that had likely taken Abellia’s life.

  Without star or moonlight beneath the canopy, darkness descended more quickly than he’d expected, and though he could see shards of moonlit valley between the trees ahead, he could barely see the logs and shrubs in between. He was still a good bowshot from the forest edge when he stepped in a moss-covered hole and twisted his ankle. Hopping to a stop, he sat in the moss and let the pain in his ankle subside.

  “Stupid,” he scolded himself; he hadn’t brought a candle, but he had a built-in window to an illuminated world of spirit in his moon-blasted forehead.

  Closing his eyes, he concentrated on his oculus. The aperture appeared: a teardrop-shaped window at the top of his mind, backlit with the glow of the spirit world beyond. He pushed his consciousness toward it until it widened enough for him to peer out into the Unseen.

  The air glowed with thousands upon thousands of luminous spirit strands arising from the luxuriant forest life around him. It was so dense with spirit filaments large and small that he could only see the lay of the forest floor for perhaps thirty paces before it was obscured in the general glow.

  “Wondering when you’d think of that,” came a raspy voice beside him.

  Harric jumped and snapped his head to the side to see Fink grinning like a graven grotesque. “Moons, Fink. You have to scare the piss out of me?”

  “Have to? No.” Fink’s grin widened. “Did you really piss yourself?”

  Harric let out a short puff of exasperation. “It’s an expression.” He peered closer at Fink. “Is something different about you?” It seemed the glowing curtains of strands in the air made it like Fink was looking at Harric through the bent glass of a bottle. But on closer inspection, it wasn’t the strands. It looked like Fink had actually…swelled?

  “Fink, did you get stung by a bee?”

  Fink raised his bald eyebrows. “You don’t like the new cherubic me?” He held his arms to the side as if to better display himself. Bony Fink was definitely gone. The ribs that used to jut out like pickets had submerged behind a thick pad of flesh—the same with his knobby knees and elbows—and his concave belly was now the swollen gut of a drowned corpse.

  “Moons, Fink, you have two chins! Can you even fly anymore?”

  “Sure, in the Unseen I can. In the Seen?” He shrugged round shoulders and waved it off. “I could probably glide, in a pinch. But isn’t it great?”

  “If you say so. What happened?”

  “What happened? You and Sir Ragleaf left a banquet so big that I had to leave some to the vultures, that’s what happened. When was the last time I ate like that? I can’t even remember. Never.” Fink sat back in the moss and let the globose belly sag between his knees. “Be sure to thank him for me. I could get used to this.”

  Harric felt his stomach turning over. He swallowed and tried to think of something to say, but his mind was a blank.

  “Do we have to talk about this again?” Fink scowled. “Those men came to kill you. Most of them would have tortured you. They were not good people. Good eating? Sure. Bound for what you’d call the Good Place in the afterlife? No. This is one of the tasks of a moon spirit, kid: we clean up the unworthy souls. You magicless cobs might call it part of ‘nature’ if your heads weren’t so far up your magicless—”

  “Okay, I get it, Fink.”

  “I don’t think you do. For instance, you think Caris has a good soul?”

  “Of course.”

  “Me too. Grade A. And what’s going to happen to her soul when her body dies?”

  Harric shifted his feet. “Well, our souls go to the Hall of the Ancestors in the Bright Mother—”

  “Excuse me, but how many of Caris’s strands do you see going to the Bright Mother?”

  Harric’s brows pinched together. “Well, none, but—”

  “But nothing. What does that mean?”

  “The fact her strands don’t go to the Bright Mother? Well, I guess I can conclude that the Bright Mother…doesn’t draw spirit.”

  Fink steepled his talons before him. “Good,” he said, as if encouraging an especially dim student. “The Bright Mother doesn’t draw souls. And which moon does?”

  Harric shook his head. “But if good souls don’t go to the Bright Mother when they die…” Fink leaned forward in exaggerated anticipation. Harric looked up through his oculus at his own strands rising up to the Unseen Moon, then looked back to Fink. “You’re saying—”

  “I’m not saying anything. I can neither confirm nor deny any of this in the presence of a mortal. I simply point out what should be obvious to one granted an oculus.”

  Harric took a deep breath. “You seem to imply that, after death, the good souls go to the Unseen Moon.”

  “And the vile souls?”

  “Well, you eat them?” Harric shook his head again, as if trying to dislodge confusion from his skull. “But it sounds like you’re saying—”

  “Not saying—”

  “—that for the good soul
s there is no Bright Hall of Ancestors, only the Black Moon’s hell, while the vile souls are simply eaten.”

  Fink’s expression did not change, but he froze, so the grin seemed suddenly forced. “Who said anything about a hell?”

  Harric ran a hand through his hair. He could not imagine a Bright Hall of Ancestors in the Black Moon. “Um, everyone, I guess.”

  “This the same everyone who says there’s a Hall of Happy Grammas in the Bright Moon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so.” Fink stared at Harric for several heartbeats, then abruptly slapped his soul-stuffed belly and waved it all off. “The good news is that these black-hearted bastards won’t bother anyone anymore.”

  “Oh? Sure they were all bastards?”

  Fink slyly cocked of his head and looked at Harric through narrowed eyes. “Tell you what,” he said softly. “You don’t call my moon ‘hell,’ and I won’t use ‘bastard’ to mean black-hearted knave.”

  Harric laughed in spite of himself. “Sorry about that. I just… You just collapsed my view of the afterlife. It’s a little disturbing.”

  “You’ll get over it. New initiates generally do, unless they go insane. But you don’t seem like the type to go mad. Oh, wait,” Fink said, eyes wide with feigned surprise. “Your mom was mad as a resin fire.”

  “Funny.”

  Fink coughed out a raspy laugh. “So what happened back in that valley? You have a murder party? Didn’t see any of your friends among the dishes.”

  Harric’s smile faded. “We were lucky.” Harric told Fink about the day’s events: the battle, the departure into the valley. Finally, he told the imp about the changes in Caris. When he finished, he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “It’s getting worse, Fink.”

  “What was your first clue? The resin-fire crater on top of the mountain, or the angry blue giant riding down the other side?”

  “I’m talking about Caris, Fink. But wait—you mean Bannus? Down the other side? Are you sure?”