The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  In the next moment, the vultures were growing, falling, and Harric dove back. As he landed on his back and side, and Fink tumbled across him with his wings spread in a protective fan.

  “Stop!” Fink said. “You idiots! This man is why you’re fat as maggots. He is the one that filled the rocks with dead men. Show respect and there will be more.”

  The vultures froze. Twelve feet tall, they loomed above, three-fingered claws poised to grab. Their empty-eyed heads tilted to study Harric.

  “That?” said the first.

  The head of the second bobbed on a skinny neck. “It fed us well.”

  “I’m sorry!” Harric blurted. “I didn’t know. Now I know. He was teaching me.”

  The three burst into eerie, creaking laughter. “It is bound to the imp,” said the second. “An initiate. Let us go.” The second and third slid up into the Web.

  The first remained bent above them, fat as an autumn goose in its robe of dull feathers. “Not bound.” It shook its empty head. “Not a true bond. A false bond. There is no blood pact here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fink sneered. “You’re as blind as you look. My sisters know it and approved it.”

  The creature let out an eerie laugh. “Your sisters cannot see as I. You tread on tradition, imp. You do not continue the pact, and you allow the unbound man to flout the Web.”

  Fink hissed, and his wings snapped to the side in anger. “You have no idea what is at stake here, you empty-headed gib-crow—things much greater than any pact, things dearer to our mother than any tradition. And you’d be wise to keep your crooked beak out of it or you’ll find Mother herself looking into your dealings.”

  The vulture thing looked at Fink for a long moment then cocked its head to examine Harric. “There is some truth to what you say.”

  Fink jerked his head toward Harric. “You owe him.”

  The vulture spread its ragged wings and slid upward, without flapping, into the Web. A dry chuckle filtered down. “We shall see.”

  Fink watched until it disappeared high above them in the welter of spirit strands. His little arms trembled, and the fat of his new belly quivered. “Souls,” he spat. The black tongue flicked across his teeth. “That could be a problem.”

  “It knew our pact wasn’t right.”

  Fink’s hands twisted around each other. “He won’t do anything. He’s bluffing.”

  “You sure?”

  “He just wants a bigger share of the souls next time.” Fink licked his teeth again and peered up into the Web. “When we’re done here, I’ll track him and make sure that’s his price. Can’t have him talking.”

  Harric lay back for a moment and let his heartbeat settle. “Moons, Fink. Those things scared the bones out of me.”

  Fink nodded, but said nothing, still wringing his talons and staring up in the Web.

  Harric risked a quick scan of the Web. The disturbance he’d caused had settled to an agitated ripple. Before this night, he’d noticed disturbances in the Web and meant to ask Fink about them, but had been preoccupied with bigger things. Now it appeared such things were not details at all, but fundamentals that might spell the difference between life and death.

  “You’re about to do it again,” Fink warned. “Look at your nexus.”

  Harric looked. A bright loop of the Web was dipping slowly, questing blindly toward his nexus. His first impression was of a glowing noose, which was appropriate, but it also reminded him of the slow, probing arm of a river star questing toward a mussel. Either way, his natural reaction was to withdraw.

  Fink motioned for Harric to stay where he was. “It’s all right. Let it touch your nexus. I’ve kept them away till now, because I wanted you to work on stamina without any help from the Web. You’ll know what I mean in a second.”

  As it drew nearer, Harric felt a strange lessening of his burden in the Unseen. He looked at Fink, wondering if the imp had started carrying some of his load, but Fink only shook his head.

  “That’s not me you feel—it’s the strand. We call that a Web Strand. Raw spiritual energy.”

  The instant the strand touched his nexus, Harric gasped. He felt suddenly buoyant, as if his burden had vanished entirely, and it even restored his lost strength. But he didn’t dare move his hand or he might jerk the Web again and draw the vultures, and his heart began to drum in his chest. “Fink—what do I do?” His voice rose with panic. “I’m afraid I’ll jerk the Web again—how do I get it off?”

  “Look who suddenly cares about living again.” Fink gave a wry grin. “The Unseen has that effect.”

  “Help me! I don’t know what to do!”

  “Relax. Just don’t move. Feels good, right? All that weight lifted from you?”

  Harric stood motionless, his gaze glued to Fink. “Yeah.”

  “To get one to come to you, all you have to do is stay put for a while. One will come find you. If you want to stay in the Unseen for a while without moving, it’s a great resource: free power. But you have to stay absolutely still, see? If you decide to move without detaching it, you pull it like a harp string, and the whole Web is your instrument, singing your clumsiness.”

  “So how do I detach it?”

  Fink shook his head. “It’s not enough to detach one when you notice it’s glommed on, kid. You have to learn to anticipate it happening and double-check before you move again after you’ve been standing still.”

  Harric ran a hand through his hair. The Unseen was as complex as the Seen, but in the Unseen he was an infant learning to walk, recognize shapes and colors, learning their meanings and to distinguish safety and danger, friend and foe. He blushed when he thought of his pride in learning to walk for a while by himself.

  The Web Strand on the nexus now engulfed his hand, too, and a faint, feathery thrumming filled his arm. A similar flutter of fear filled his heart.

  “How do I detach it?” he repeated, his voice hoarse.

  “You don’t. Not yet, anyway. I’ll do it for you. What I want you to work on now is getting in the habit of noticing what’s going on around you. See how you affect the Web, and how the Nexus affects the strands near it. You have to see these things like you would notice wind and weather in the Seen.” Fink frowned again and twisted his talons together. “I let you go too long without teaching this. A result of the…unusual circumstances of our partnership. But that has to change. You saw why.”

  He passed a hand over his Nexus and the strand released and floated back upward with the Unseen tides. In the same instant, the burden of the spirit walk fell again upon Harric.

  “Let’s head back to your camp,” Fink said. “But keep your eyes open whenever we stop moving.”

  Another Web Strand quested downward, seeking to anchor on the nexus. Harric moved away from it and kept moving. As long as he kept moving at a walking pace, the strand appeared to be too slow to catch him. And the rest of their hike, he never encountered one low enough to accidentally run into it. It seemed they stayed up in the lower edges of the Web until he paused, and then they came questing down.

  A thrill of wonder rippled up his spine. The Web seemed almost alive.

  When he saw the first glimmer of lantern light in the camp, he gathered up his stash of clothing and dressed. Fink left him, and Harric crawled into his bedroll, exhausted.

  He was just drifting into sleep again when Fink whispered near his ear. It had the eerie quality of a voice coming from the Unseen, like someone speaking through a long drain pipe. “Kid. Take a look at your girl.”

  Harric opened his eyes. Fink was not visible, but Harric saw movement on the other side of his oculus, and opened it wider to look at Fink in the Unseen. “She’s not mine or anyone else’s, Fink.”

  “Souls, kid. Can you give the freedom thing a rest? Just take a look.”

  Something ominous in the imp’s tone made Harric climb out of his blankets and follow the imp to the edge of the knoll for a view of Caris lying in her blankets by Rag.

  The cha
nge in her was striking. Where before she had blazed with bright blue strands of spirit like tall, lazy flames, now there were violet and purple strands—whiplike and aggressive strands that lashed among them.

  Phyros Blood. He’d been right. Nothing but Phyros Blood shone violet in the Unseen. A feeble hope kindled in him. Maybe it wasn’t her that tried to kill him after all. Maybe it had been the Blood rage.

  A huge gray cloud lifted from his heart.

  “You getting turned on, kid?”

  “Hush.”

  Almost as strange as the Phyros strands, it looked like Caris’s strands stretched to Rag, but Rag’s strands remained aloof from Caris’s—almost timid, like the tentacles of a snail, easily frightened and retracting when the violet strands lashed too close. Just as evident were changes to the weaves of spirit from the wedding ring. The weaves were now ragged, as if the purple whips had shredded them, and they smoked as if the violet whips burned.

  “Willard’s been feeding her the Blood,” Harric whispered.

  “Fed her the Blood,” Fink said. “It’s fading.”

  A chill rippled up Harric’s spine. Did Willard know the Blood would erode the weaves of the ring? Was that why he had her take the Blood? And did she know? It might work, since Harric had seen how weak the wing got when Caris was angry and her strands worked up in their own kind of frenzy. But it was a dangerous game to play, and with a high cost that he almost paid himself in the form of a sword to the head. A new anger kindled in his chest against Willard: if he really had fed her the stuff, the old goat had better have been honest with her about it.

  “Fink, do you think if she had another draught of Blood, the weaves would crumble?”

  “Hard to say. But that’s not all I wanted you to see. Look at her head.”

  Harric peered at her head, and what he saw made his heart sink. Some of the strands emerging had been bent and diverted and twisted into what looked like a crudely shaped crown. The bright purple strands had distracted him, but now it was plain as day.

  The ring’s third weave. It had awakened.

  “It’s a Mind Compulsion,” Fink said.

  Harric’s throat grew tight. He nodded. “But a compulsion to do what?”

  Fink’s tongue flicked across his teeth. He shook his head. “Only way to know is to watch and wait.”

  Harric studied the ugly band, the last of his hope draining away. Unlike the Opening and the Body Compulsion, the Mind Compulsion hadn’t been burned and scored by the whips of Phyros strands when they had been strong; it became active when the Phyros Blood had faded and its strands were weak, so the weave shone bright and robust in the Unseen.

  Harric shook his head. “That’s it, Fink. The deal with Missy is off. We’re leaving before she wakes and it pushes her at me.”

  “Hey, hey, slow down, kid.” Fink held his hands out. “No need to be hasty. Give it a day. You don’t know what it does.”

  “We don’t have to know what it does. It’s a Compulsion.”

  “But Missy might be able to mute it. Two nights more, that’s all, and Missy will be here.”

  “That’s not our agreement, Fink. I said three nights unless something changes.”

  “I’m begging you for your own sake, kid, wait and see.”

  Harric frowned and shook his head. “It won’t matter what Missy offers, Fink. Caris won’t even talk to me, and there’s no way she’ll agree to have Missy mess with her soul.”

  “Are you kidding me? You think the girl would say no to that? She was ready to chop her finger off a few days ago.”

  Harric grimaced. Fink might be right. Her hatred of the ring was at least as strong as her fear of magic and her rejection of dishonor. And she didn’t have to accept Harric to accept the help.

  He turned his gaze again to the crown of strands encircling Caris’s head. The thing pulsed as if feeding. His stomach rolled over.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll wait and see what it is.” Fink’s bald head bobbed up and down. “But I make no promises, Fink. If it goes bad tomorrow, don’t ask me to stay another day while she suffers.”

  Fink’s black tongue darted across his teeth. “How bad would it have to be, kid? Some people live with Compulsions all their life and no one knows it. It might be subtle.”

  Harric ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Fink. I won’t know till I see it.”

  It is not enough to learn how to ride; you must learn how to fall.

  —Arkendian saying

  44

  Fever Fires

  Abellia’s mind slid in and out of consciousness. Fever dreams, warped and frenetic, tossed her mind like paper in wind. In one, she held tight to a horse’s mane, its unfamiliar bulk beneath and between her legs as she spurred it for Mudruffle’s fire road.

  A wind rose above her with the sound of some giant’s furnace. Color bleached from the landscape, pure white, as if the sun had come down to look at her tower, and a hammer of heat fell on her head. Horses screamed. Men screamed. Then the furnace roar drowned all other sound.

  Her horse galloped with the speed of panic, and its mane burst into flame in her hands.

  Her own hair, wet from a bath, hissed like it had turned into snakes and bit at her scalp before bursting in flames. Hot teeth tore at her neck and scalp. Red-hot claws tore at her back and shoulders.

  She knew then it wasn’t a dream at all, but real things remembered in dream, and sobs racked her in her sleep. She wept for the grandmother she couldn’t save from Sir Bannus. She wept for the horses who were not responsible for the horrors of their riders.

  Two sisters of her order paid a visit to her dream bed. They stood above her with fury in their eyes. Sister Magda and Sister Jine, who had taken their oaths on the same day with her.

  “Your selfishness consumed a moon stone,” said Jine.

  “How could you do it?” said Magda.

  “Say, rather, that the Bright Mother consumed me!” Abellia said. “Is a life worth less than a stone? I took back what was mine.” The strength of her conviction in the face of her sisters surprised her. But even as she spoke, she heard the hollowness of her argument, for her nexus, had it survived, could yet save hundreds more lives.

  The sisters’ faces wrinkled in disgust. A disgust mirrored in Abellia’s heart.

  As they turned their backs, she grieved. “I did not mean to break it. I didn’t know. I only wished to have my life.”

  She woke to find herself lying upon a cot, on her stomach and naked to the waist. Her scalp and neck and back screamed as if still on fire. Before her, a semicircle of sun-browned faces looked down at her with brows wrinkled in concern. These were peasant faces. They were not unlike those of Iberg country folk, good and industrious. But unlike Iberg folk, they knew nothing of Bright Mother healing. These faces bore scars of diseases and injuries no Iberg farmer ever bore, for a sister would have mended them easily. These were the faces of those who suffered disease without hope. Who put their hope in hokum and quackeries worse than the disease itself.

  “Leave me!” she screamed. She tried to rise and push them away, but her limbs were bound to the legs of the cot.

  One said, “Butter’s best for burns.”

  “Not butter,” said another. “Red-clay mud.”

  “Where you going to find red clay?”

  “Let me go!” Abellia said. “Leave me to die!”

  The Arkendians made a stretcher of the cot. Someone touched her back, and her flesh erupted in fire. She screamed, and looked to see a crone hunched beside her, dressed in rags and stinking of urine, her old hands covered in butter.

  “No!” Abellia cried. “You will kill me!”

  But the old woman persisted, smearing butter over every raw surface, and it felt like she scoured with wire brushes.

  Abellia fell into darkness again, and fever warped her dreams. The old peasant woman became a bear. Other peasant bears bound Abellia to a stake and rubbed butter on her. They chewed her at leisure, sometimes ro
asting her over a fire and nibbling ears or fingertips, other times raking long strips from her back and scalp, until a father bear with wise eyes said, “Too skinny.”

  The father bear had a horse and a boy cub called Farley, and the cub called the father bear Captain.

  Captain and Farley took her from the peasant bears and put her on a horse.

  “I take her to the gallows,” Captain told the peasant bears, and they looked sad, as if hanging were a waste of good food.

  “Slay me, please, end this,” was all it could croak,

  So slay it he did, with a merciful stroke,

  Sad for the thing that once was a man

  And bound to avenge it with Belle in his hand.

  —Verse from the ballad “Sir Willard & the Halls of Sir Bannus”

  45

  Midsummer Night’s Curse

  Caris woke from dreams of weddings. Of her own wedding. Of wedding Harric.

  These visions made her stomach hurt. It made her head ache. But she could not get them out of her mind. Nor did she want to. Whatever her stomach felt about them, her head and heart embraced them.

  When Caris was little, her mother had talked of weddings. She’d gushed about flowers and gowns and cakes and dancing, gods leave her. She talked about it so often—trying to draw her little horse-touched daughter into a shared vision of her future—that Caris had asked if she could marry her horse. “That way we’d always be together,” she’d said, “and run in the same fields and drink from the same streams.”

  Her mother had fainted, and all her maids had to revive her with draughts.

  Caris sat up in her blankets and put on her boots. There was no reason to delay: today, if she had her way, she would wed Harric. She rolled up her blankets, and as she stowed them, she reconsidered the date. Maybe not today. To be done properly, it must be held in a Noble House, not a wilderness. She remembered that much from her mother’s sermons. In any case, they’d marry at the first appropriate place they found. It was time.