Soul Hosts

by Joseph Isaacs

  Chapter 22

  The Seventh Rung

  She can already cook a delicious lemon biscuit, and it turns out she is a rebel and a scholar? What else don't we know about her? – Verica

  --

  Verica rapped thrice in brisk succession. She tried the handle on Jazlyn’s door, but it was locked.

  Come on, Jaz. Please be home. What if I’m too late? She’d run all the way across the Red Palace and her heart raced like a jackrabbit pursued by a pack of scagazi. Had she been fast enough?

  She knocked again. Come on. She heard a rattle of metal from behind her, and turned, half expecting to see Flickers approaching. It was just the wiry green Mantu chef, Ec, carrying a towering salver full of pots and dishes into the scullery.

  Verica knocked as loud and hard as she could, bruising her knuckles.

  "Who is it?" Ravenna’s voice called through the door.

  "It’s me. Verica. Hurry, please."

  Ravenna opened the door, her thin red eyebrows knit in concern. Org stood at her side. Jazlyn was stretched on the divan, leafing through a leather bound tome.

  "Hullo, Mouse," Jazlyn said, lowering the book onto her side table. "Any news?"

  Verica rushed over to Jazlyn. "The guards are coming for you. We have to run! Now!"

  "What? Why?"

  “We don’t have time for what-whys-whose-how-do-you-dos.”

  Jazlyn stood, looking a bit dazed. Ravenna seemed to grasp the immediacy of the situation quicker. She thrust Jazlyn's satchel into her hand. "Go mistress. I'll delay them. I'll tell them you went to...the arboretum...that ought to hold them off for a bit."

  Verica grabbed Jazlyn's other hand and dragged her from the room and towards the main stairwell. Org followed after them.

  Jazlyn stared at him for a moment and then said, "No, Org. Mouse and I are going to go alone."

  Org shook his head, his lip curled like a defiant toddler’s. "Org no leave Little Princess."

  "You're sweet, Org,” Jazlyn said, “But Verica and I would be recognized if we were with you. If you want to help us, walk towards....what did Ravenna say... the arboretum. If they ask, we lost you in the glass gardens. That’s an order, Org."

  Org went to one knee and bowed his boulder-sized head. "Org obeys."

  Jazlyn kissed Org’s leathery cheek. There was a hint of salty moistness on it.

  Org placed his hands flat against each other, in the manner of the Sunken Shaman. “Good-bye, Little Princess. May the Source protect you.”

  Jazlyn’s protector lumbered away, down the eastern corridor.

  "Come, every moment we waste might mean our freedom." Verica grabbed Jazlyn’s hand, and dashed towards the main stairwell.

  They reversed course, when the sound of clinking armor echoed up the winding passage. They headed east, but were dismayed when the sound of approaching soldiers came from there as well. Verica could use her shadow magic to escape, but Jazlyn would be caught.

  “The scullery,” Verica whispered.

  "This is no time for a snack," Jazlyn snapped.

  "Does being a Princess make you stupid or is your tiara restricting air flow to your brain?” Verica asked. “We can hide in there till the guards leave."

  Jazlyn followed Verica into the kitchen.

  Verica spoke in the Red Tongue as they entered the kitchen. "Your father is sending people after you and any remaining mages they haven’t yet detained. Even the Draconess and Dade! You're going to be a part of a sacrifice at temple Dark Fist.”

  “You aren’t serious?” Jazlyn said.

  "Yes, and they Dracon saw me spying. We are both probably going to be killed. I'm glad we're hiding in a scullery. I'm famished. Don't shake your head at me. You try keeping shadow form for that long and then running to try to save your ungrateful friend, who won’t even let you eat a teensy little snack."

  Ec stared at them, her bulbous eyes intense swirls of gold and black. Jazlyn pulled aprons and hats off a rack of servant's apparel.

  Jazlyn said to Ec slowly in the common tongue, "Verica and I want to pretend to be your assistants. Some of the Flickers are playing with us, so if they come in, say you haven't seen us."

  Jazlyn and Verica threw on the servant aprons and bonnets over their dresses and flowered hair. Ec stared at them, with a skeptical expression.

  "Okay that was a lie,” Jazlyn said. “The truth is we’re in trouble, Ec. Please, don't tell anyone we’re here. Please promise. It's very important."

  Ec spoke fluently in the Red tongue, "Don't let them see your face."

  Jazlyn's jaw dropped, mirroring the astonished feeling washing over Verica. Ec winked a leathery eyelid. The Mantu picked up a rolling pin and began to work a lump of floury dough. The door squeaked open. Verica and Jazlyn turned around and pretended to be cutting vegetables.

  The voice of Royal Companion Oz Strongfist bellowed, "Mantu, we search for the Dracon's daughter. Have you seen her?"

  Ec slapped the dough down, keeping her back to the Dragonknight. "This one not see, Master."

  Strongfist's footsteps drew closer to Verica. “How about you servant girl, did you see the Dracon’s daughter?"

  Verica smelled his sour breath. Her shoulders tensed tight as a bow string. She shook her head.

  Strongfist stepped even closer. His breath smelled of raw onions. "Look at me when I’m talking to you, wench.”

  His voice threatened violence. If she turned, the Royal Companion would recognize her. If she didn’t he would grab her and turn her forcibly. Should she run for it? She could throw a hot pot of boiling oil in his face and race off. So all she needed to do was find a pot of boiling oil and then ask Strongfist to help pour it on herself. She was about to turn into wraith form when Crow's voice called from across the hall. "They're in the arboretum! Strongfist, come."

  Strongfist’s footsteps moved away from her. The door closed with a clang and breath returned to her lungs.

  Thank you, Source.

  "Ec,” Jazlyn squeezed the Mantu’s webbed hands. “You know the Red Tongue.”

  "What I know might surprise you, Child. There is a trap door that leads to a storage room. You must exit that way." Ec pulled open a wooden trapdoor in the corner, hidden behind a barrel. "The ladder is missing the seventh rung. Be careful. Go straight when you get to the bottom and tell the fat baker with the shaven head, Cyreves, that I sent you. Ask him to hide you in the Cubby. I'll meet you down there with Ravenna. We'll find a way to get you out of here."

  "Cyreves?" Verica asked.

  Ec shooed them. "He’s part of the resistance. Go."

  "I can't believe she speaks the Red Tongue," Verica thought.

  "Why did you assume she wouldn't be capable?" Lukor said.

  "Well, usually people in the lower caste aren't learned. I mean she can already cook a delicious lemon biscuit, and it turns out she is a rebel and a scholar? What else don't we know about her?"

  Verica shook her head. Her whole universe had already been turned upside down a few times today. She hoped the day didn’t hold any more surprises. She climbed through the trapdoor, feeling her way past the missing rung.

  --

  Wayden stepped clear as Isel’s skywolf descended. There he was, yet another ghost from his nightmares. The one-eared sky raider who had torched his mansion on back of a wolf with long black and silver wings. He had yet to see the Ozac who killed Nanny or the Tulkarian that shot the arrow into his mother. An elderly witch had told him they and his own father had been amongst the ones hunting Mavik. Wayden prayed they wouldn’t find him. Wayden had asked about his father, but the more he found out, the more it seemed Alaina had told the truth about it. His father was a traitor.

  It was Wayden’s second day in the slave camp, though it felt more like he'd been there two millennia. How had Mavik stood it for so long? And after eight years, why had he chosen now to run? It couldn’t be just coincidence. Mavik must have found out about the Dracon's plans for Three Moons' Night. Wayden wou
ld run too, if they hadn’t doubled the guards. Now Wayden would be taking Mavik's place for the sacrifice.

  “I can’t believe I just missed him,” Wayden thought to himself, over and over.

  Wayden had not been able to restrain his tears when he’d learned he missed Mavik by a mere half-a-notch.

  The elderly witch, a woman named Laeko, had told him, "Your brother has escaped with a young blonde-haired girl, a Guardian mage."

  "A Guardian... Solita!” Kolram sobbed.

  If he’d been captured a day earlier, perhaps he could have escaped with Mavik and Solita's host. Or if Wayden hadn't been captured at all, perhaps Mavik would have found his way to him. Instead fate had simply switched their places, but they were just as separated as ever.

  “Let us be glad our loved ones escaped our fate,” Kolram said. Beneath the Grandmaster's words, Wayden sensed Kolram’s disappointment was as deep as his own.

  Wayden had asked Laeko if he could follow after Mavik, but the Strand Prophet shook her head. "Only a Guardian can use Centuron's door. And there are too many guards now. Do not worry, the Source has a plan for you. My prophecies show you entering Dark Fist from above, not below.”

  “The Weaver worries me the most of all,” Kolram said, “What scheme is she plotting?”

  Isel forced Wayden onto his skywolf. “Get on the skywolf, boy. The Skymaster wants to talk to you.”

  Two burly Sky Raiders pulled Wayden off the wolf and forced him onto his knees before Gar’s Eagle Throne. The Skymaster turned his shaven head towards Wayden and glared at him with his tiny eyes.

  A scar ran from Gar’s necklace to the base of his ear. Wayden knew the story behind that wound. A Flicker’s blade cut Gar’s throat, as Gar fled the Red Palace after murdering Baltoo. Blood poured from the wound, yet still Gar lived. How he’d survived had been the subject of speculation. Belza thought he must be a descendant of an Immortal to have withstood such a blow. Gar had never boasted of such a heritage, that Kolram had ever heard. However Gar had survived, survive he did. He flew off on a winged wolf, laughing as the blood fell from him like a hot rain.

  The bonfire danced and shifted in the wind. Wayden was thrown to his knees before the triad of golden thrones. Wayden had met Gar and Nadra’s host, but the sky wife was unfamiliar. She looked as muscular and lean as Gar himself. Her long blue hair was lifted by the wind revealing an ugly swollen bruised eye.

  Next to them, stood a dozen leather-clad Sky Raiders, black cloaks flapping like flags of darkness. Goat stood with them. Wayden just needed the Ozac and the Tulkarian and he would have them all. He just needed someone to untie his bonds. Vengeance was his. Sort of. Not really.

  "Do not despair," Kolram said. "The Source has led us here for a reason."

  Wayden strained against the ropes, but his old enemy, the hempen rope, stayed tight around his wrists, preventing any suicidal attempts at vengeance.

  “Kolram’s host,” Goat said, his voice thick with contempt. His mask was a clumsy representation of a goat that had often featured in Wayden’s nightmares. Wayden had thought it was truly a goat man who had abducted Mavik all those years ago. Instead, it was just a man wearing a gray, lacquered wooden mask, with a long black beard and curved ram horns attached.

  Goat had hands, not hooves, and they glowed yellow, an image of a white dragon dancing on his palms.

  Gar asked Wayden, voice as cold as the winter wind, "Where is your brother? How did you help him escape?"

  Whatever Wayden had been expecting, it hadn't been this. "You think I know how Mavik escaped? That I helped him?"

  Gar dug his blue knife into the gilded arm of his Eagle Throne. The chair was almost as scarred as its owner.

  "Don't play dumb with me."

  "Fine, just as long as you don’t play paranoid with me."

  Gar leapt from his throne and brandished his knife in front of Wayden's face. “Talk, Kolram! The truth!”

  “He’s raging at Kolram through me,” Wayden realized.

  “He has grown even more unstable then when I knew him last,” Kolram said.

  "All right, the truth...yes, this was our plan,” Wayden said. “I’d let you kill a Royal Companion, tie me to a tree, and take me prisoner so my brother could escape. I also planned for you to burn my house down, and I tricked you into killing my mother. If all goes well soon I'll trick you into stabbing me with that knife."

  "It worked," Gar said, pressing the knife against the side of Wayden's cheek. "Don't be smart with me, boy. Kolram was always so sanctimonious. He was the good boy. Our Grandmaster made him his protégé, snubbing me, even though I was a thousand times the Beast Tongue Kolram could ever hope to be. That’s why I killed our beloved teacher, Baltoo. You should have seen the look on the old fool’s face when I ordered his own skywolf to eat him. Your brother won't get far. Your father, and some of my other men, are hunting down him down right now."

  Wayden strained against the ropes again. "Face me like a man, coward. Untie me and let's fight this out once and for all, Beast Tongue against Beast Tongue."

  "He’ll kill you.” Kolram said.

  "I have a plan."

  "Does it involve getting killed? If so, it's working brilliantly."

  Gar slid his knife into its sheath. The leaf in Gar's gold armband seemed familiar to Wayden. "I have nothing to prove. I bested Kolram time and again."

  Wayden sat up. "So you say, but have we seen it? I think you’re a lying heap of scagazi dung. You weren't Grandmaster. Kolram was, but you were too-"

  Gar slapped Wayden's face hard enough that the world spun. The dizziness of the spinning sky changed, as the Glimpse took hold. Wayden was Gar now. The Skymaster was inside a stone chamber adorned with tapestries. He sat upon a divan, guards on either side of him. Crow and a quartet of Flickers stood before Gar. The Flickers were pouring out a large sack of coins into a cedar chest. Gar fiddled with his necklace. He never tired of the power he could feel vibrating inside of it.

  Crow's voice was a whisper. "Please forgive me if this is an affront, but I must ask you this..."

  "Spit it out, man."

  "How do you feel about your daughter? Would you consider adding her to the harvest for an extra three thousand gold-bones?"

  Gar stared at the chest of coins. "No."

  "I apologize for even bringing it up," Crow said, holding up a black gloved hand. "She isn't necessary to our plans. I heard false rumors that you weren't happy with her."

  "Five thousand," Gar said. He was going to have more coins than he knew what to do with.

  "Four is the highest I'm authorized to go."

  Can’t be too greedy, Gar thought.

  "Sold."

  The memory faded. Wayden found himself back on top of the Nest, wind whipping at the Beacon which seemed to be aiming its smoke directly at Wayden.

  "Alaina will be sold by her own father. I guessed as much."

  "And Gar's power does indeed come from his necklace," Kolram mused. “Did you feel the power emanating from it?”

  Gar turned to Isel and Goat. "Enough, our time is running out. We need to head to Dark Fist without the two escapees. Isel, take Alaina and the boy to Dark Fist. Goat, head down to the camp and make sure that everything is going alright with the shipping of the rest of the slaves."

  Goat nodded and boarded his winged wolf.

  "Tie the slave to Red Paw," Alaina ordered a Sky Raider.

  Isel shook his head. “We’ll take my wolf.”

  Two large Sky Raiders grabbed Wayden and bound him to the wolf's back. Alaina clambered on behind Wayden. Isel talked to Gar for a moment in hushed tones, before heading towards Wayden and Alaina.

  Wayden whispered. "You're a prisoner as much as I am. I saw the Glimpse. Your father sold you to someone called Crow for four thousand gold bones."

  Alaina said nothing. Did she believe him?

  Isel climbed onto the wolf’s haunches.

  “Hee-yah!” he cried, and the wolf launched itself,
spreading its long silver and black wings, catching a current of cold air.

  Dark Fist awaited.

 

  Chapter 23

  A Leap of Faith

  When the monsters bother me, I tell them to go away –Laurana

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