Parasite Soul

by Jags, Chris

  PARASITE SOUL

  By Chris Jags

  Text Copyright © 2015 Chris Jags

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  “Little princess,” Merequio said softly. “Pass me that rock.”

  “Why not use your knife?” Tiera asked breathlessly, wide-eyed.

  Her brother shrugged. A smile, alternately cruel and playful, danced across his thin lips. “Such a pitiful beast doesn’t deserve the touch of my grandfather’s knife.”

  Tiera’s eyes were drawn to the hare, which lay wheezing in a furrow of its own making. Merequio’s arrow had passed through its hindquarters. Blood spattered the churned snow where it lay. It seemed to understand that its life was over, anticipating the end without struggle. The sight of the wounded creature brought tears to her eyes but she blinked them away furiously. It wouldn’t do for her brother to see her weakness; Merequio’s approval meant everything to Tiera.

  “Why not break its neck, like father would?” she persisted, her small hand trembling as her fingers closed around the snow-dusted stone which he’d indicated.

  Merequio shrugged. “This will be more fun.”

  Swallowing, Tiera held out the rock.

  “You want to do it?” Merequio asked. She shook her head, earning herself a smile of contempt. “Sissy.”

  “I’m not a sissy.”

  Merequio chuckled. “Nah,” he appeared to agree. “You’ll make a wonderful princess one day.”

  Tiera didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not. She struggled not to flinch as the stone came down on the hare’s head, once, twice, an unnecessary third time. The crunching was sickening. Something irreplaceably vital seemed to wither away inside of her as she watched the animal’s undignified death throes. Fidgeting with her dress, she wished she were back at the palace, where it was warm, her bed was soft and comforting, and rabbits only appeared in stews.

  “You’re teasing,” she said uncertainly. “About the princess thing. You think I’m weak.”

  Merequio ruffled her hair. “Nah. You’re a princess through and through, little sis. Which is probably why you feel so out of place here.” He swept his arm out expansively. The snow-smothered pine forest which obscured Tiera’s view of the distant mountains seemed to lean toward her, as though intent upon smothering her. Her brother was right: she hated this forest, and the wilds in general.

  “I don’t,” she said. “I wanted to come hunting.”

  “You didn’t.” Merequio hung the dripping hare from his belt.

  “I did.” Tiera could be an obstinate liar, so much so that she occasionally believed herself.

  “Fine. Tell me what you enjoy about it.”

  “I…” Tiera’s mind went blank. Merequio laughed.

  “Let me tell you, then,” he said, beckoning for her to follow. With relief, Tiera saw that he was retracing their footsteps back toward camp. “You just wanted to watch your magnificent brother, mighty hunter that he is, as he mastered the beasts of the woodland.”

  “Well…” That much was true, Tiera supposed.

  “And you also came to gawp at Aphridion.”

  “I… I most certainly did not!”

  Her brother chuckled again. “It’s okay to wish you were back home, little princess.”

  “I don’t.” Tiera thrust out her lower lip stubbornly. “I just thought… I thought the beasts would be bigger, is all.”

  Merequio patted the hare. “Often they are. Deer. Wild boars. Jaggermunds. We just didn’t get that lucky today.”

  Good, Tiera thought. Watching animals die made her queasy. “I’d hate to meet a Jaggermund,” she said aloud.

  “I’d protect you, little princess,” Merequio said jovially. “I’ll always protect you.”

  Tiera smiled. She liked the sound of that.

  “Even when I grow up and have to marry?” she asked. This thought had been preying on her mind ever since her maid, Old Grentha, had brought it up the previous week. Act like a princess, Grentha had admonished, having caught Tiera playing with the grooms in the palace stableyard. Will your future husband be pleased to know that his bride whiled away her youth hobnobbing with commoners and riff-raff?

  “Especially then,” Merequio told her. She struggled to match his long strides. “If your husband hurts you in any way, then bam!” He jiggled the limp hare violently. “He’ll have much in common with our friend, here.”

  Tiera felt a sudden wave of anxiety. “My husband wouldn’t hurt me, though, would he?” she asked.

  Merequio wound his way listlessly through the trees, his eyes distracted. “The world is a difficult place to understand at time, little princess,” he said at length.

  “What do you mean?” Tiera was hardly comforted by the non-answer. Fairy tales promised wonderful husbands: princess-rescuing, dragonslaying champions and so, she imagined, hers must be.

  “What do you remember of our mother’s death?”

  Tiera blinked. Her brother knew she didn’t like to think of that, and frankly it was mean of him to bring it up. “I… was only nine,” she began hesitantly.

  “Don’t take on airs like it was the distant past. You’re only twelve now.”

  “I’m not taking on airs.”

  “Tell me what you remember,” Merequio repeated, and there was an edge to his voice now that she didn’t like. She said nothing.

  “I’ll tell you what you saw,” her brother began in clipped, hard tones, and she began to tremble. Just then, a horn blew, and to her relief it distracted Merequio.

  “Camp’s closer than I thought,” he said, surprised. “That little fellow must have led us a merry little zig-zagging roundabout. Well, come on, won’t you?” he shot over his shoulder as Tiera stood shivering in her too-big, fur-lined overcoat. “Beat me to camp and I’ll let you skin the hare.”

  Tiera didn’t want that, but Merequio seemed to think it was a reward, so she hurried along gamely after him, kicking up snow in her wake. How she longed for her comfortable palace slippers: all this endless walking and running in oversized boots was giving her blisters. She had no chance of overtaking her brother. His feet seemed to dance across the snow, while hers bogged down. His effeminately long, golden locks streamed out behind him as he ran. If it wasn’t for his silly little crooked beard, Tiera thought, he might have more closely resembled a woman than a man.

  As she ran, she imagined the poor hare, huddled out here in the cold harshness of the winter forest, no warm palace to return to, always on alert and barely scraping by. Perhaps it had been done a favor, she thought hopefully, although the image of the creature’s brains leaking into the snow was sure to haunt her sleep for nights to come. Somehow, if hares had spirits – did they? – she couldn’t imagine it was thankful.

  Her father’s small hunting camp nestled in a clearing next to a terrifyingly cold stream. Drinking directly from its waters would flash-freeze your innards, or at least that’s what Tiera imagined had happened when she’d dared to dip her cup in it and sip a mouthful. Both her father and Merequio had chuckled at her discomfort.

  Five tents housed the hunters and servants who’d accompanied the party, while a miniature lodge had been constructed for King Minus and his family. Huntsmaster Aphridion sat laughing and drinking with his men around a small campfire, exchanging the usual lewd jokes
which Tiera rarely, if ever, understood. A deer carcass had been strung up nearby; the creature had died recently, its dripping blood steaming in the freezing air. One man was fishing in the stream, without luck if the empty basket beside him told the story.

  Tiera felt her cheeks warming as she studied Huntsmaster Aphridion, grateful that they were already red from the cold. With a tousled nest of golden hair framing a merry, chiseled face, Aphridion was a source of fascination for Tiera. As her brother had guessed, the jovial young Huntsmaster was one of her strongest reasons for braving the cold inconvenience of the forest to join her family on this trip. Rarely though she laid eyes on the man, his infrequent appearances in court were always exciting. Aphridion paid the princess scant attention, and had never addressed her directly, yet his dancing blue gaze seemed to warm the air as it swept past her.

  I will marry a man like Aphridion, Tiera decided. Tall and strong, like a woodland prince, with curly blond hair and blue eyes. He will provide for me and protect me. He and Merequio will be the best of friends. Our palace will be just outside Vingate, so that I can enjoy the comforts of the city, but fringing on the forest so that my husband and my brother can hunt.

  Lost in this fantasy, Tiera scarcely registered the appearance of her father as he ducked out of the makeshift lodge and swept imperiously toward them, flanked by two manservants. Folding enormous arms across an armor-padded chest, he glared at Tiera and her brother from beneath hawklike brows which had suffered at the hands of many an anonymous underground caricaturist.

  “Merequio!” he snapped, voice brittle. “I expressly instructed you not to take Tiera into the forest.”

  Tiera hung her head guiltily. She’d been the one who’d pressured her brother to take her hunting, under the pretense that she was eager to learn his art. She hoped her brother would take the blame, though. It wasn’t fun being in her father’s bad books.

  “We didn’t go far, father,” Merequio answered. A touch of resentment colored his voice. “She was never in any danger. I was teaching her to hunt.” He indicated the mutilated hare.

  “You believe your sister’s destiny is to be a hunter?” King Minus was incredulous; his eyebrows soared. “Tiera is a princess, and her future…”

  “It’s a useful skill,” Merequio interrupted stubbornly. Tiera could scarcely believe that he continued to challenge their father, whose heavy hand where it came to punishment was legendary; but then, her brother had always been obstinate, afraid of little. That was why she loved him. “There’s no reason she shouldn’t learn a thing or two.”

  “If Tiera were to learn to hunt,” the King snapped, as though his daughter wasn’t even present, “It would be at my choosing, and her training would be entrusted to a trained huntsman, not some rank amateur.”

  “But father, it was Tiera who killed this hare…”

  No! Tiera squirmed inwardly. No, I didn’t, don’t bring me into it, I know you’re trying to help me, brother, but don’t!

  “Enough!” King Minus barked, sweeping his fur cloak grandly about his person. “This is not a discussion. You know as well as I that Tiera should not be exposed to such things. This trip, as far as you are concerned, is over. You and your sister will temporarily return to Seveston where you can both think over the consequences that your disobedience will bring you when we return to the capital.”

  “Which are what, exactly?” Merequio asked cockily. Tiera tugged at his arm in fear. “I mean, it will be difficult to stew in our terror without knowing what these consequences might be.”

  The king’s face purpled. He drew back a mailed hand to strike his son. Tiera, who had watched him horsewhip Merequio halfway to death some years ago, squealed in terror. Her brother, however, held his ground, his gaze steady. Even their father wavered before that withering challenge.

  “We shall have a long discussion,” he said, his voice ice and gravel.

  “I can’t wait,” Merequio said tautly. “Father. Come, sister. Let us pack for our journey.”

  Tiera clung to her brother as they retreated, taking care to stay out of the King’s reach. She needn’t have worried, as it turned out: their father stared past them as though they were strangers – or worse, peasants. It was going to be a bad punishment indeed.

  Was that a sympathetic glance which Aphridion tossed in her direction? Tiera dared to hope that the handsome young huntsmaster had indeed risked his liege’s wrath to favor her with an understanding smile. The very idea bolstered her courage. Perhaps he would even plead for clemency from whatever punishment the king might concoct. For the umpteenth time, Tiera pictured the handsome youth as he might appear as her spouse, bedecked in a velvet doublet and dress trousers, with fine buckled shoes of the type that noblemen wore. He looked so fine in her imagination. She would be the envy of every girl in Cannevish.

  Hanging her head in an attempt to look sufficiently contrite, Tiera followed her defiant brother to the lodge.

  “Seveston,” Merequio was muttering. “Banishing us to that horrible little backwater! The women in Seveston look like pigs! Smell like them, too.”

  Tiera pictured pigs walking upright in dresses with real pigtails sprouting from behind each ear and nearly giggled.

  “Well of course,” she said. “They’re peasants.”

  Her brother said nothing, but Tiera took his silence for consent. Merequio would never sully his royal hands on a peasant woman. The idea was preposterous.

  “You were very brave, standing up to father,” she ventured.

  “Father is a buffoon,” her brother returned moodily.

  Tiera’s mittens flew to her mouth. “Don’t say that!”

  “If he won’t let you hunt,” Merequio continued, “I’ll teach you in secret.”

  Tiera shook her head, awed by her brother’s recklessness, but she did not speak.

  Merequio was bowing his head to enter the lodge when all hell broke loose. Tiera heard a strange, low whistle shivering through the air. One of the hunters cried out a warning. Aphridion sprang to his feet, upsetting a barrel of wine which sloshed across the campfire, extinguishing it. King Minus spun on his heel as though in slow motion. Merequio threw out his arm, frantically signaling Tiera to get inside the lodge, but Tiera simply froze in place.

  An enormous feline creature burst into the camp. She gaped at the sheer size of it. At the shoulder, it stood taller than her father, making it the most horrifyingly huge animal she’d ever laid eyes upon. White as the snow that it churned with claws twice as long as Tiera’s fingers, the monster’s lean torso bore a series of thick vertical stripes: camouflage for the winter forest. A flattened, lizardlike head twitched this way and that as it surveyed the human smorgasbord. Its lashing tail, the width of a grown man’s torso, tapered to a savage bone spike. Tiera had never laid eyes on such a creature before – not even on her father’s private game preserve - but she’d heard enough stories to know what it was: a jaggermund, the most dangerous beast in Cannevish.

  “Protect the king! Protect his family!” Aphridion yelled, scooping up his bow. “Some hunters you lot are, allowing this horror to sneak up on us! Bring it down!”

  Tiera thought he sounded so impressive that it failed to register how little culpability the huntsmaster ascribed to himself. She couldn’t have criticized him though, or any of them, really. For all their power and bulk, jaggermunds were notoriously swift and silent, expert stalkers. This one, however, had thrown subtlety to the winds. Possibly it was starving. It slashed and snapped at the hunters, spitting like a wildcat. Its claws opened throats and stomachs, tearing through tough hide jackets as though they were parchment, and the men fell back before its rampage.

  “Dogs! Stand your ground! It mustn’t reach the royal lodge!” Aphridion yelled, loosing three arrows in quick succession. Two of them found their mark, the first burying itself in the beast’s left flank, the second in its haunch as it swung toward the huntsmaster. The third, regrettably, struck down one of Aphridion’s own men. As far as Tiera
was concerned, this unfortunate instance of friendly fire would never find its way into The Histories.

  The projectiles only incensed the jaggermund, which howled like nothing Tiera had ever heard and barreled straight at Aphridion. Tiera’s tiny cry of “No!” was lost in the chaos as the huntsmaster was borne down by the charging behemoth, dragged beneath it, and emerged as a limp bundle of bleeding limbs which slipped into the stream and disappeared.

  “Kill it!” roared King Minus, wrenching a spear from a makeshift rack. Other men had the same idea, snatching up polearms and warily circling the creature. They jabbed at it so that it danced and roared and whirled in tight circles, uncertain where to launch its next attack. Less bold hunters launched arrows from afar, though furtively, afraid of striking their fellows, or worse, the king.

  Blood began to stream down the jaggermund’s flanks from a dozen wounds, matting its fur. Again, that horrible, shivering howl filled the air, tinged this time with anxiety. The creature clearly hadn’t anticipated that its soft-looking prey would mount much of a resistance. It began to snap wildly at the nearest hunters with its crocodile jaws; the men leapt back, stabbing at it repeatedly like a swarm of fleshy wasps. With grim determination, they harried the beast to the brink of collapse. The snow turned to pink slush beneath its trampling feet. Tiera could tell that only raw animal fury kept the jaggermund upright; disbelief that it had been bested. She released a pent-up breath and dared to relax a little.

  The next few moments imprinted themselves on Tiera’s memory with the force of a battering ram. She later recalled them as though she were some unearthly spectator, surveying the scene from far above. Impossible though it was, she could even recall her own expression of disbelief and desolation. It was as if Vanyon Afterlord himself had provided her a view from a god’s own vantage. Years of relentless nightmares kept the sequence crisp and clear in her mind’s eye.

  Shouting like a berserker, Merequio charged the jaggermund, waving his sword. His golden locks flying in a cloud about his face, he shoved his way past the ring of astonished hunters and plunged his blade between two of the great beast’s ribs.