Soul Hosts

by Joseph Isaacs

  Chapter 8

  The Nest

 

 

  Now, you are neither man nor lion. You're a rat. –Mavik

  --

  Mavik

  The icy ground crunched beneath Mavik's worn leather shoes.

  Seven years in the cold, gathering wood for the slaver’s fire. Seven years spent as property to the men who burnt his house down and killed his mother. Seven years since Wayden let go of his hand and Goat snatched him. Seven years since Mavik discovered his father was a traitor.

  He craned his neck upwards, staring at the Nest, the circular fortress of hundred-foot high granite walls that snaked around Mount Despos. The bonfire known as the Beacon burned upon its summit, a fiery crown adorning the mountain's head. Gar Skymaster, and his Raider minions basked in its warmth, while Mavik and the other slaves slogged through slush and ice.

  Mavik pulled the wood sled past run-down shacks and privy ditches filled with frozen feces. Four Sky Raiders followed, leading a magic-eater by a chain attached to an iron collar. The white, blotchy creature slithered along beside Isel, the one-eared Sky Raider who had torched Mavik’s home all those years ago.

  Skarak, the Ozac Sky Raider who had killed nanny, dragged the Glower witch, Opel, towards the chopping block. She’d run off in the middle of the night. Mavik had admired her bravery. She’d already lost two fingers from previous attempts. A necklace of dried fingers hung around Skarak’s neck.

  Mavik looked away. He heard, all too well though: the sharpening of the blade upon a whetstone, Opel begging for mercy, the thunk of the cleaver descending against the chopping block, Opel's high-pitched shriek, and Isel’s breathy laughter.

  Mavik shivered from something colder than the biting wind.

  Coldness pierced the camp, even in summer, and now winter’s approach pierced the air, its icy cut almost as feared as the chopping block. Skarak brought the maimed Opel back to the camp, while the other sky raiders escorted Mavik and the others into the pine forest.

  The evergreens were almost as thin as the prisoners. The sled's runners crunched dried needles and scraped tracks into the icy snow. The smell of cedar mixed with the faint scent of blood. Slaves wordlessly gathered firewood.

  Isel gestured at the sled. "Logs in the back, mid-sized in the front, kindling in the middle."

  As if they hadn't heard it a thousand times before.

  Mavik had become an expert stick gatherer. He knew every type of Raslonian wood to gather (cedar, oak, black locust, beech, white ash, hickory, pine, and dragon wood) and the ones to avoid (stink sap, mirror wood, iron bark, poison ash, and tangle thorn). He could write a book on it. A Treatise on Gathering Firewood for a Heartless Dictator, by Mavik, son of Kelsen the Rat.

  Isel turned to Mavik's father and said, "Rat, yer son's slacking. Lash him a hard one. Give him a taste of leather."

  Kelsen had been nick-named after his pet, an albino rodent, and the name was apt. It had come as a shock when Mavik found out that Kelsen was at the slave camp. Mavik had known his father had disappeared chasing after Gar Skymaster, but no one knew what had become of him since. If that was a shock, it was a cloud full of lightning to find out his father was now Kelsen the Rat, a collaborator. For slightly less rancid food, a private tent, half-decent boots, and a pet rat, his father had deteriorated from the noble Lord of Telek Manor into the Sky Raiders’ lap-dog.

  Kelsen's once finely groomed red hair was now a mix of fire and ash. His hair and beard were matted, long and tangled, as were those of all the males in the slave camps, as even collaborators didn't get razors. His once erect posture had bent into one similar to his rat’s.

  Kelsen's thin lips moved liked wriggling worms as he spoke: "Do as he orders, son. Save yourself some grief. We’ve been through this before."

  Mavik rubbed his jaw. "And we'll go through it again, and again. He wants you to whip me, so what are you waiting for?"

  Kelsen hesitated, then winced as he flicked the whip. The leather snake danced off of Mavik lightly. Isel tugged the chain on his magic-eater. "Pfff, ye call that a lash, Rat? Do it right or I be doing it meself and give him a right proper taste of pain."

  Mavik felt part of a play that had been reenacted until the lines were cold and stale. The show should have been entitled: ‘In which Isel exercises his need for power, Mavik his stubbornness, and Kelsen reveals his amazing lack of spine.’ It was a drama Mavik would gladly miss, yet he’d performed it a thousand times and would likely be called back for ten thousand more torturous encores.

  Kelsen and his rat both narrowed their eyes at Mavik. The larger of the two rats brought the whip down. The leather's venom burnt, sending Mavik falling into the snow gasping.

  Kelsen moved to help Mavik up, whispering, "It doesn't have to be like this. Why do you have to be so stubborn?"

  Mavik yanked his arm free from Kelsen's grasp. "They murdered my mother. Your wife. How does that not bother you?"

  Kelsen shook Mavik. "The lion eats the deer. The strong rule the weak."

  "Then don’t be weak." Mavik found his feet. "You're a man, not a beast. Or were, at least. Now, you are neither man nor lion.” Mavik spat. “You're a rat."

  Kelsen brought down the whip in a bout of cold fury, then a second time, and even harder with the third.

  "All right, Rat!” Isel shouted. “That be enough! I said whip him, not kill him."

  Mavik fought back a sob. It wasn't the lash itself that stung so badly. Though the physical pain was agonizing, what hurt more was that his father was gone and only a flesh puppet remained.

  When Mavik had asked his father why he had become a collaborator, his father replied, ‘We're stuck here anyway, son. Let's make the best of this place.’ Tired of cold and pain, which stretched on like the endless icy plains, there were moments when he was tempted to join his father.

  Jijari, the Splasher witch inside Mavik's mind, whispered to him, “Hold on to your heart, Child. Driftwood finds its way home. We've seen it in the water that your future is not here. The Source will guide.”

  She’d showed him junctures with the possibility of a future beyond the slave camp. Visions painted in melting snow of a door in the earth, shadows flying from a woman’s mouth, woven cloth entwining walking statues, corpses on a stone floor, and a beating Heart Stone with metal tendrils. In all of these visions, he ran with the same companion, a girl with dirty blonde hair and a green vine tattooed on her cheek.

  “Well, if those visions come true, I have a lot to look forward to,” thought Mavik. “The girl is pretty, but the corpses are a bit on the pale side.”

  “These visions are sent by the Source, Child. Do not dishonor them with your mockery,” Jijari replied.

  A shadow fell on Mavik. Looking up, he saw the underside of a gray skywolf spiraling towards him. The vast wings spread like a tent, and beneath its feathered canopy, the skywolf’s matted gray fur covered sinewy muscle. The wolf landed. Two figures straddled the beast's back, Goat and another, obscured behind him.

  Seeing Goat always brought back the painful day Mavik’s home burned. They had been running from Skarak and Isel, wading through a sea of smoke, when the ceiling collapsed. His brother screamed and released Mavik’s hand. Wayden shouldn’t have let go of my hand, Mavik thought for the thousandth time. His brother betrayed him, left him.

  “The Source wanted it this way,” Jijari said. “There is a plan.”

  “A plan. Some plan this has been.”

  If Wayden hadn’t let go, his life would have played out differently. He wouldn’t have mistaken Goat’s smoky silhouette for his brother's, wouldn’t have called to him, and ran to him. Mavik had fallen at the feet of Goat, staring up in horror at his lacquered mask and glowing yellow hands.

  A powerful sensation yanked Mavik from his reveries. It was as if an invisible cord around his heart was being tugged. Goat moved and Mavik caught sight of the prisoner behind him. His breath caught in his throat at the sight
of the blonde-haired girl from his Splasher visions. The tattoo, the filthy blonde hair, the emerald eyes, the cat-like face with the high cheek bones — there was no mistaking her.

  Jijari had memories of Mavik being bonded to the other Grandmasters due to Zaburn casting a Connection Spell. Jijari had told Zaburn of a vision that all the Grandmasters would be separated after their visit to Dark Fist. She’d foreseen them blown apart, separated like dandelion seeds. At her urging, Zaburn had cast a Connection Spell upon the Grandmasters, as they were being blindfolded on the inner ring.

  “This is the same Connection spell,” Jijari said. “The Source is leading us back together. There is no doubt about it. She hosts a Grandmaster.”

  Goat unbound the thick hemp rope, revealing a red ring of flesh where the rope had bitten into the girl's bony wrists. Kelsen took her arm and led her forward. The girl's eyes locked on to Mavik. She scrunched her forehead as she studied him. Was she feeling the Connection spell as well?

  What could he possibly say? 'Do you feel an invisible rope tugging at your heart?' or 'Do you have a memory of a Magic-finder casting a Connection Spell on you?' He might as well strip naked and dance with a chicken on his head.

  A notch later, Isel, the other Sky Raiders, and Kelsen, stood studying a crinkled news parchment brought by a Mantu Sky Raider. Kelsen, the only literate one, read aloud the detailed results from the latest Tulkarian Blood Games.

  The girl, shivering in her thin robe, approached Mavik, with a crinkled brow and searching eyes.

  "You alright?" Mavik asked.

  "’Sides being enslaved and frozen? Aye, I be dandy."

  Mavik removed his top cloak and handed it to the girl.

  She threw it back at him with a smirk. "Keep yer clothes on, boy."

  "Take it. I took this one off a man who died from the cold. Unless you care to join him?” It was against the Source to filch from corpses, but the dead never felt cold, and the living always did.

  The girl rolled her eyes and sighed. Don't be thinkin' I owe you,” she said, voice muffled, as she pulled the cloaked over her head. “I'll be payin’ you back, just as soon as I find me a corpse.”

  Mavik started to laugh, but a pang of hunger, coupled with his bruised ribs, doubled him over.

  She put a hand on his back. “You be alright?"

  "I got my back scratched with a whip. And I'm hungry."

  One of the Sky Raiders had thrown his breakfast in the fire because he hadn't liked the way he’d looked at him.

  "I be Emerelda. I be feelin’ you about the hunger. I grew up in a tribe that lived in the woods. There were some winters when I almost ate me own shoes.”

  "I'd kill for a good shoe right now."

  Emerelda laughed, half-turning away from him and wiping something from her face. When she turned back, Mavik noticed traces of moistness upon her pink cheeks. "Sorry. It be a day from the nether world. The raiders caught me out huntin’. I likely never be seein’ my Da and tribe again, I reckon."

  "I'm sorry," Mavik said. It was tragic that she was torn from her home, but a selfish part of Mavik was glad she was here. He’d dreamt of this girl, and here she was, in the flesh. Were the prophecies coming true? Would he run off with this girl and face statues in woven cloth and the milk-white woman? And on top of it all he felt Zaburn's Connection Spell to her. Could all this just be coincidence?

  "The weavings of the Source are beyond coincidence," Jijari said.

  "Don’t give me that,” Mavik thought, “The weavings of the Source brought me to this slave camp."

  "The Source only warned you would wind up here. It was man that brought you here, not the divine."

  “Then there is no guarantee it will save me. That I'll succeed.”

  "The Source does not live our lives for us, but inspires us, pushes us onwards. Grants us the gift of hope."

  "Hope, she’s the most cold hearted of them all. She’s let me down, time and time again."

  Isel shouted at Kelsen, "Rat, get that girl and Mavik working before they taste me leather."

  "He needs a new line. And I'm so hungry the leather is tempting,” Mavik thought, “Perhaps I'll eat his whip. It can't be worse than the food they give us. In fact, I'd hazard they make the food and the whips from the same leather."

  Kelsen approached, whip in hand. His white rat crawled from his pocket and settled on his shoulder.

  Mavik glowered at his father. "We'll get back to work. Now leave us before I tear that whip out of your hand and choke you with it."

  Kelsen's face reddened. "I'm still your father."

  "You're a rat."

  Kelsen backhanded Mavik into the snow and stormed off.

  Emerelda eyed him.

  “That’s my father."

  "I be gatherin'."

  "He's a traitor. A wraithing collaborator."

  “Hmmm.”

  "What does 'hmmm' mean?"

  "Hmmm, means I be thinkin'. Don’t they be teaching ya nuthin down in yer land of fire?" Emerelda helped him to his feet. "I were just thinkin' that everybody be different. Hard to judge."

  Mavik shook his head stubbornly. “I haven't given in.”

  Emerelda shrugged. “Maybe not, but we all be different.”

  “Would you become a collaborator?”

  “I be hopin’ not. I hope I be strong like you, but I ain't none too sure.”

  I don’t feel strong.

  Isel separated them after that: Emerelda filled the baskets, while Mavik gathered another sled-load of wood. They kept at it until sunset. Even the skywolves were drooping by the time the last ray of sun disappeared behind the smooth granite walls of the Nest.

  Emerelda and Mavik sat at their own small fire, while Opel and the other slaves huddled around a second one. Three Sky Raiders sat at a distance around another, sharing a flask, and playing bone dice.

  Countless stars sprinkled the heavens. A log burnt through its core, the last thread dissolving like a bridge collapsing into a lake of coals. Sparks flew heavenwards, adding golden embers to the silver and indigo sky.

  A slave witch shuffled by, handing Emerelda a pot of balm. "Would you be a dear, and put this on Mavik’s whip wounds? I've got to check on Opel’s hand."

  Emerelda raised Mavik’s robes to his shoulders. The wind gave his wounds a second whipping, blowing ice into his creviced skin. Her fingertips touched him gently, yet Mavik cringed as pain shot through him. Blood had dried the fabric of his robe to his skin. Her hands moved quickly, spreading the ointment into the cracks and crevices that were the violated topography of a slave’s back.

  She pulled his robe down. "I be sorry ‘bout that. Got to keep it from infectin’, or you be havin’ real troubles."

  Mavik turned to her, blinking tears out of his eyes. “Thank you. That was...kind."

  "Kind of painful."

  "Like your jokes."

  "Watch it, boy, or I'll be giving you something new to balm."

  Emerelda's tattooed vines moved with her cheekbones as she spoke. A hazel halo encircled her emerald eyes - firelight sparkling in their reflection.

  Emerelda frowned. "Do you be feelin’ something towards me?"

  "Is she grandmistress of telepathy?" Mavik jested. If she was, he hoped she could not read some of his baser thoughts, those he even kept from Jijari. Aloud, he said, “Wh-what do you mean?”

  Skywolves howled in the distance, two sharp notes followed by a long croon.

  Emerelda ran a hand through her uneven, blonde hair. "I be feelin’ a strange sensation ever since I sawed you, like you me long lost brother or somethin'."

  Brother. His heart sank. I don’t want to be her brother.

  Here was his chance to broach the topic without appearing to be a lunatic. "Yes. I feel it as well." He hesitated for a moment. "Do you... have a second voice inside your mind?"

  Emerelda grabbed Mavik's arm and shook him, her hazel haloes widening in shock. "How ya be knowin'?"

  "Easy, now." Mavik gri
maced, his scars brushing against his cloak. "I have one too. Jijari, a water prophetess."

  "You too!” She slapped him on his whip wound and Mavik let out a cry of pain. One of the Sky Raider guards barked at them to pipe down. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I thought I be going moon-howlin’! Solita be mine."

  Mavik breathed slowly through his nose, trying to keep his heart from splitting. Solita, Kolram's wife. My brother's wife...sort of. Had anyone written any guidelines for these types of situations? There were rules about first cousins, but he’d never heard about rules of etiquette for courting the soul host whose second soul was married to your brother’s wizard.

  “I had a twin-brother. He might be dead now for all I know. He hosted Grandmaster Kolram.”

  Emerelda winced and put her hands over her ears. “Alright, Solita! Ouch, enough, for the blood of Bantos!" Emerelda rolled her eyes. "Sorry, Solita be jabberin’ on: 'her darlin’ Kolram' and all that hysterical lovey-dovey stuff. So yer thinkin’ yer brother be dead?”

  “Wayden and Kolram may very well be alive. I saw nothing about my brother to suggest otherwise. When I look for him in the water, sometimes I see a white dragon, but never him."

  "Maybe he be turning into a dragon. Stranger things have happened. Having a Guardian witch in me head, fer instance."

  "What is Solita like?” Mavik asked.

  "Solita be so annoyin’, always wantin' me to speak more better. What’s wrong with how I be talkin’ anyway?"

  Mavik smiled. "Nothing. The way you talk is lovely."

  "Lovely?" Jijari scoffed. "Men."

  Emerelda scoffed as well. "Lovely? Well, I wouldn't be goin’ that far. But people understand me decent enough. Anyhow, I don't put much stock in lovely."

  "Everything about you is lovely," Mavik thought.

  "Abstain from unholy desires!" Jijari’s thoughts echoed. "The Laws of the Sunken Temple and in your own Red Lands forbid the coveting of your brother's wife."

  "Kolram's wife, not my brother's,” Mavik thought. “And it's Emerelda I'm interested in, not Solita. How did everything get so confused?"

  How would Wayden respond if he and Emerelda were to become a couple? Did it even matter? He'd likely never see Wayden again. The thought crushed him. He was angry at Wayden for letting his hand go, but Wayden was still his brother.

  Mavik glanced at Emerelda. Tears streaked her face.

  "Sorry. Be thinkin' about home again. Wonderin’ how my Da is."

  "Jijari foresaw you and me escaping this place. I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I will get you out of here. I promise."

  "Don't be makin' any promises ya can't be keepin'."

  She leaned against him.

  Mavik was trying to decide what to say to her next, when he noticed the sound of gentle snores, and felt the heaviness of her head. The warmth from her combined with his own helped fight the ever-growing cold around them, but still he shivered.

  "I need another robe,” he decided. “Maybe someone else will die soon."