The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  The sounds of his snarls faded behind them, replaced by the steady plod of Rag’s hooves in the duff and the chirp of early-rising birds in the undergrowth. The mare had opened to Caris considerably since waking, the result of steady communing on the trail and careful avoidance of Molly. Just like we used to be. She kept sending that idea to Rag, and Rag kept tossing her head and flicking her ears back in a coltish way that made Caris laugh. Just like before Molly.

  At the edge of the forest, Caris took a deep breath of the open air and looked out over the twilight-gray valley. Some stars still shone in the sky: the Sailor’s Eye and the Witch’s Thumb.

  Abellia’s tower still stood against the sky to the south—alone, like a blackened tooth on barren gums—and the sight tore at Caris’s heart. All around it lay a wasteland of smoking ash. Not even a stick remained of the fire-cone grove under which it once sheltered. Nothing remained of the thunder spire or the barn and stables. The lightless upper windows, barely visible in the distance, stared like empty eyes, and the only movement was a forlorn ghost of ash stirred up by the wind.

  She closed her eyes and sent out an aching wish that Abellia had survived and escaped somehow. That she had eluded Sir Bannus.

  Across the valley, the wildfire raged on the ridge, red and orange like a second sunset in the west. Smoke filled the northwest sky in expanding plumes like autumn storm clouds, their underbellies reflecting the angry light. And it’s getting ahead of us, Caris thought, chewing a fingernail. The same south wind that kept the yoab from catching her scent blew the fire ahead of them, and if it found a way into the river valley before they got ahead of it, they’d be trapped with the fire before and Bannus behind.

  She glanced back toward where she’d left Willard, and chewed at her lip.

  It would be an hour before his Blood rage passed and she could share her concerns. The speed of the fire was just as important as the direction, maybe more important. But there were no such fires on Moss Isle, or anywhere in the west, so she had no familiarity with them. Harric would know, having grown to manhood in the north.

  At the thought of him, a flutter awoke in her chest and bloomed quickly into a throb of longing for him.

  No… She groaned. The ring had reawakened.

  Old doubts rose in her, feeble fears suddenly given voice, like a clamoring rabble reinvigorated by the speeches of a charlatan:

  Harric was only doing what he thought right.

  He did it to protect his friends.

  He’s like Willard taking the Blood and breaking his vow—doing something dishonorable to help them all survive.

  If you accept Willard and his Blood magic, why can’t you accept Harric’s?

  She clapped her hands over her ears and crumpled over the cantle of her saddle. Somewhere in the back of the clamor she heard the newer, wiser voice—her voice—insisting, Harric lied, and deserves no mercy—

  Then a wave of nausea racked her and she leaned out in time to throw up on the yoab run.

  She couldn’t think clearly now. She couldn’t feel clearly. So she escaped it as she always had, by burying her senses in Rag’s steady temperament, and letting the rest slide away.

  *

  By the time she reached Willard, the disorientation of the ring’s enchantment had passed, but she still felt the steady ache of missing Harric. To numb it, she kept half her attention in Rag.

  She found Willard slumped forward and hanging against his chains. The blindfold lay in the dirt with the chewed ends of gag, punctuating Krato’s latest message, BLUD TRATR. This time, she felt no amusement rising inside her. Instead, the words conjured the memory of her father, glaring at her in wrathful judgment. Blood Traitor. These were the very words he’d use if he could see her now: a noble lady of their Cobalt House aiding the Abominator, aiding the Queen against the return of the Old Ones.

  “What’s it say?” said Willard. The old knight’s head rose, gray eyes streaked with violet.

  Her lip curled as she told him and smudged the words out with her boot soles.

  He grunted and let himself hang against the chains, as if he were exhausted. “They don’t call him the Mad God for nothing.”

  Caris unbolted the manacles, bundled them together, and lugged them to Molly. As Caris struggled to open the flap to the saddlebags with one hand and keep the chains together in the other, Molly struck. The Phyros’s head moved so quickly, and her jaw bit so fiercely at Caris’s neck and shoulder, that Caris had no chance to dodge or escape once caught.

  In a spasm of paralysis, Caris dropped the chains, and her body jerked uncontrollably. She tried to cry out, tried to make any sound, but the pain was so great that she could only gape and mouth the air, unwilling to move lest the movement make the pain unbearable. The blood tooth had punched below her left collarbone, above her heart. Blood and drool, red and purple, poured from the wound and ran down her front.

  Rag screamed.

  Somewhere, Willard shouted, and Molly gave Caris a tremendous shake. The blood tooth plunged deeper, and an agony of fire coursed through Caris’s every nerve and vessel until it seemed her skull and spine would erupt and her heart explode in flame.

  Trust a day at evening

  A weapon when tried

  Water once crossed

  And a friend when dead.

  —Arkendian proverb

  39

  Dream Cache

  Harric dreamed he stood in his old chambers at the top of the inn in Gallows Ferry. All his things were there, just as he remembered them, but the place was unusually cold. Dead ash lay in the fireplace, and the candleholders hosted no candles. The only light was a sickly blue flame in a clay lamp on the dining table.

  “So that went well,” said his mother from behind him.

  He let out a long sigh and turned around to see her reclining on the threadbare couch she’d brought with her from court twenty years before.

  “I miss this place,” he said. “It’s just as I remember it.”

  “Admit it. You miss me too.”

  “No nightmare is complete without you. And you’re still in the same gown you lived and slept in for the last months of your life. It even has that lovely urine smell. Can’t you even wash it for my dreams?”

  “Darling boy.”

  “Get out of my head, Mother. Go back to your rest.”

  She laughed, and the white makeup on her cheeks cracked like plaster on some horrible jester’s mask. “There is no rest in that pile of rocks. You were cruel to send me there. But now it seems you will join me and you’ll see for yourself. Will you? It would make my eternity.”

  “Will I what?”

  “Will you kill yourself for me? Or die of a broken heart for that oversized nag?” She laughed and clapped her hands in delight. “You know I left instructions with Mother Ganner to bury you with me. We’ll have such times together. I have much to teach you.”

  Harric gave a halfhearted shrug. He turned to the front window, looking for solace in a vista of the river and the scablands, but boiling gray fog buried it all. That irritated him. The river was something eternal, something that would be there when he was gone, and he knew in the dream that a last look at it would ground him in the eternal. Instead, gray fog poured over the windowsills in sluggish falls, and began to fill the room.

  Can one die of a dream? Could I leap from the window into the river, or let the fog smother me?

  “Of course,” said his mother, as though she could read his thoughts. “But it matters not how it is done. You are to join me. I have seen it.”

  The fog rose to his knees, squeezing and chilling like mud and holding him where he stood. He made no effort to resist it, and watched it rise. There seemed no point in resisting. Either it would kill him or it wouldn’t.

  “You told that horse dullard the truth. Thought it would free your soul.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, as if she were enjoying the scent of roses in a garden.

  “Every lack-wit owns the truth,” Harric m
urmured. “Only I control a lie.”

  Her eyes widened. “You did listen to my lessons. How it warms your mother’s heart to hear it. But you ignored my wisdom, and the cow tried to kill you.” She sniffed and turned her head away from him. “Without me, all your foolish dreams have failed.”

  The fog sent tendrils up his chest and wrapped his arms in cold restraint. When they reached his mouth and nose, he knew it would suffocate him. And he knew his mother was right. His dreams had failed. And without Caris, the rest had ceased to matter. Perhaps it had been Caris’s regard he was fighting for all along, not the Queen’s.

  He made no resistance as the fog enveloped his head filled his lungs like wet wool. Darkness swam before his eyes, and his mother’s laughter dimmed.

  *

  But death in sleep eluded him and he woke in the nest of ferns atop the hillock, the ache of his loss returning with crushing force.

  Almost reflexively, he opened his oculus and looked up at the canopy. Brilliant blues exploded in the leaves and limbs, but that sight—once beautiful to him, a miracle—struck him as joyless as the fog in his dream. On some level, it offended his heart that the Unseen should continue on, so bright and boisterous, in the face of his emptiness and loss.

  The sound of Brolli’s voice broke the stillness. The Kwendi had said something in the harsh tongue of his people. A curse, perhaps. It sounded like he was down in the bowl of the yoab wallow.

  Harric froze against the log. He did not want company. If he didn’t move, the Kwendi wouldn’t see him, and would pass on by. Brolli was probably hunting for an elk or something for Willard to feed Molly, and would be no more interested in speaking with Harric than Harric was with him. Looking through a gap in the ferns, he saw the Kwendi standing before a low rectangular door in the middle of the mossy bowl below.

  Just leave. Harric closed his oculus and tried to sleep, but could not.

  Brolli barked his peculiar laugh, and Harric opened his eyes to see him stooping before the door. The hard lines of the door’s edges stuck out, harsh and foreign, against the soft curves of the mossy floor as Brolli hauled something from inside the opening—a pack or large bag. Then the door was gone, and only Brolli and the pack remained. Brolli shouldered the pack—which included a bandolier of hurling globes—and headed back toward camp.

  Harric stared after him. A day before, such a sight would have set his heart jumping with excitement. Now it seemed he had no heart to excite. Just an aching hole.

  So he has a magic closet. Who cobbing cares?

  Harric stood and started plodding back toward camp. If he couldn’t sleep now, he might as well walk back and see if by the time he got back, he could sleep. As his blood began moving, it woke his sluggish body and mind. He knew what he’d seen was a display of incredible magic. He knew it implied the Kwendi were capable of feats much greater than simply exploding hurling globes. He knew there must be many secrets like this the Brolli kept from them.

  He knew he should care.

  But he didn’t.

  Walking, too, seemed pointless, so he stopped. All he wanted was to curl in a ball and never get up. He hadn’t felt so empty and lost in…ever. And he did not want to go back to camp.

  “Fink?” he said. “You there?”

  Nothing.

  He had no idea if he could “call” the imp across the Web of Souls just by speaking normally, but it was worth a try. “Come on, Fink. I…” He swallowed. He had to pull himself together. Digging deep in his memory, he dredged up the words Fink had put in his dreams before Harric had even known Fink existed—the words of his summoning.

  “Nebecci, Bellana, Tryst.”

  Strands of spirit dashed sideways in a brilliant blue flash before Harric’s oculus. Then a sound like that of a heavy pillow swatting the moss erupted behind Harric.

  “Souls, kid!” Fink squeaked. “A little warning? You have to yank me from the Web?”

  Harric turned to see him sprawled on his face like a netted bat. “Have to? No.”

  Fink spat moss. “Ah. Funny. Turnabout’s fair play. We’re even.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Not like I had a choice. That summoning isn’t exactly a request, kid. More like a siege hook.”

  “Is there a different one I should know?”

  “Nebecci, Tasta, Tryst. I can answer that at my leisure.” Fink stood, dusting his leathery skin. “So what’s the emergency? No, let me guess. Your little truth picnic wasn’t all honey and roses.” As he finished dusting himself, he finally looked up at Harric and froze. “Shit, kid. You all right?”

  “Wasn’t the best conversation I’ve ever had.”

  “Serves you right, telling the truth like that.” Fink flashed a needled grin. “Kidding. Truth is always the best policy. I think you may recall me saying that from the start.”

  The image of Caris’s instant of judgment flashed before Harric’s mind, and he found himself staring, reliving the iron certainty in her eyes.

  Fink snapped his fingers in front of his face.

  Harric barely flinched. “Feels like I carved my own heart out and kicked it down a hole.” Unconsciously, he raised a hand to his blood-crusted hair, and Fink’s eyes widened. “Yeah, she cut me, Fink. Think she would’ve killed me if I hadn’t stumbled.”

  “Kid.”

  Harric swallowed a rising lump in his throat and nodded. A foolish heat was rising in his eyes. “Yeah. But it’s all right. I’m okay. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Fink let out a whistling hiss through his teeth. “You wish you hadn’t told her?”

  Harric sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you did tell her,” Fink said, in a reasonable tone that irritated more than mockery, “so that’s what you have to work with. And just because it didn’t go the way you hoped, doesn’t mean it still wasn’t the best way to play it. You both got a lot of years ahead of you, and when news gets out of all the great deeds you’re going to do, she’ll reconsider her hasty judgment. She’ll realize she was just scared, and young, and wasn’t ready, see? You have to look at it in terms of the long game.”

  Harric closed his eyes for a couple heartbeats and willed the imp to shut up.

  “Plus, kid, now you’re free. Free to focus on what matters: the Unseen. Right? Right?”

  “I don’t… Not now, Fink.”

  Fink’s face hardened and his entire body grew still. “Oh, gee, I’m sorry, kid. Did I interrupt your display of moaning and sighing? You’re probably wondering how I could be so insensitive. Well, let me remind you that it was you who called me, and now that I’m here, I’m not leaving.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “Then why the White Moon did you call me? So I could stroke your head and tell you it’ll be all right?” He snorted. “You probably didn’t notice, but I tried the soft touch, and a lot of good that did. So now I’ll talk straight. The soul goes on, kid, and you better snap out of your pity vortex or you aren’t going to last another day.”

  “Fink…”

  “Don’t Fink me, kid. You don’t get to give up. You don’t get to give up because you’re part of a partnership now, and we have a deal. You have a responsibility to me. And don’t think I don’t know how this love-broke drill goes, because I had a master, Filia, that was either in love or broken by love all the time, and you know what she was worth when she was broken? Nothing. Worse than nothing, because she still took up space and food that someone with a spine could have eaten.” He shook his head several times. “I was a slave then, kid, and had to listen to her moan, but I’m a partner now. Equals, remember? So I’m telling you to get up off your lonely ass and abide by our pact. It’s survival time.”

  Harric closed his eyes and shook his head. “I… Fink. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, you know. You just stopped caring—that there’s an immortal blue giant burning forests to find you. And he’s going to fi
nd you. He has more dogs than his dogs have fleas, and enough metal-skinned men on ill-tempered horses to find ten of you.”

  Something like worry for Caris stirred in Harric. “You think he’s going to catch us? We have a map and he doesn’t.”

  “He has dogs. Once he has your trail, who needs a map?”

  “Then Willard will face him.”

  Fink snorted. “I’ve seen Sir Mustache. He looks like Bannus’s little brother.”

  “He’s drinking the Blood, now, Fink.” Harric said it like the fact should shock, though Fink knew nothing of Willard’s oaths or history. “Willard is growing. Every day he’s bigger.”

  “All little brothers grow, but never fast enough,” Fink said with a bitter sneer, shaking his head. “Our only hope is that he finds you after the sun’s gone down, so you can hide in the Unseen. So I have one night and one night exactly to teach you how to last longer than a minute in the Unseen, or I’m going to lose my partner.”

  Fink’s arm snaked out to rap a knuckle on Harric’s forehead.

  “Hey. Stop.”

  Fink rapped him harder, his eyes angry. “I’m not joking. Get up. All this girlfriend distraction is going to get you killed.”

  Harric extended both arms to ward off another rap. “Stop, and I’ll get up.”

  “All right.” Fink’s expression didn’t soften.

  With what seemed like the effort required to climb a mountain, Harric got to his feet.

  “Tonight, lover boy, you’re going to practice three things that might keep you alive a couple more days. And if you’re lucky, this’ll take your mind off things.”

  Harric let out a long breath. When Caris was upset, she always buried herself in her training and her horse; maybe he could bury himself in the Unseen. He nodded.

  “That’s the partner I’ve come to love. Now take off your clothes.”

  Something like a laugh bubbled from Harric’s gut and died on its way up. He started unbuttoning his shirt.