The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  Harric embraced the floor in relief.

  Caris piled after him. She staggered to her feet and whirled to face the window, fists balled to face pursuit.

  “It’s all right, Caris—it’s over.”

  She turned. Eyes wild, she grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Her hair had broken free of its binding to stick out at wild angles or cling to the sweat of her face. “What in the black moon was that?” she gasped. Her eyes pleaded for explanation as if sanity depended on it.

  Harric blinked. He took her hands in his to steady himself, and managed a wry smile.

  “That,” he said, between panted breaths, “was my mother.”

  …The blood of the Phyros made great knights immortal, but it also drove them mad. Countless are the tales of those who woke from black rages to find the blood of loved ones on their hands. Yet few could bear abstinence, and only one succeeded long.

  —From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

  2

  Blood on the Stones

  Sir Willard woke from an unintended sleep in the saddle. The sound of Molly’s snort had wakened him—a snort of warning, of enemies nearby—and not the first alarm she’d raised, he realized, only the first to wake him.

  He cursed and peered about through the slots of his helm. At a glance he saw they were still on the road to Gallows Ferry. The two mortal ponies still plodded before them. To his relief, the ambassador remained fastened to the saddle of the smaller pony, his blanket still cloaking him, hiding his inhuman shape.

  Nothing amiss there.

  But it was past dawn, and their cover of fog had disintegrated in a brisk north wind, exposing their position to their pursuers. Worse, their road no longer crept along the bottom of a scabland canyon; it had climbed onto an open ridge above the river to his right, and a dry gulch on the left, where they stood skylined against the glowing mist. The river rushed below, wide and swift and cold. On its far bank, the cliffs of the Godswall erupted from the waters and soared into frosted pinnacles in blue sky.

  “Something is wrong ahead?” Ambassador Brolli stirred, his weirdly fingered foot poking briefly from under the blanket.

  Willard grunted, finally awakening fully to the backward cant of Molly’s ears and glances. “Something behind us.”

  “Perhaps our pursuers did not give up as we thought.”

  Willard turned around in time to see the first crossbowman loose his bolt from two hundred paces on the opposite side of the dry gulch. The bolt whipped past Molly’s nose and over the ambassador’s head to crack against a stone.

  “Willard?”

  “Keep your head down!”

  Willard spurred Molly hard into Brolli’s pony, herding it toward the cover of a massive boulder and shielding the ambassador with Molly’s bulk and his own armored back. A bolt stuck deep in Molly’s neck, below her ear. She tossed her head in rage, and Willard tore the shaft away, painting the stones with immortal violet blood. Another bolt snapped upon the boulder as the ambassador reached safety, followed by a wet thack! and a flash of pain in Willard’s thigh. A glance down confirmed a feathered bolt jutting behind the steel of the cuisse.

  He cursed, and freed the shaft with an unconscious yank. White-hot pain lanced up and down his leg, and he nearly fainted. Perhaps he did faint, for he’d apparently dropped the bolt, and now he couldn’t see it among the stones. Long ago he’d forgotten the crippling pain a mortal felt. How it ruled him now!

  Bile welled in his throat. His vision spun.

  The ambassador threw off the blanket and looked about, his gold, owlish eyes full of fear.

  “You are injured!” The ambassador’s long fingers flew to unfasten the straps that kept his ill-fitting body in the saddle.

  “I said stay on your horse!” Willard drove Molly against Brolli’s pony again, startling both pony and ambassador. “You cannot help me! Keep your head down until I return.”

  “You are bleed! Look!” Brolli’s accent thickened in agitation. “You are fall down before you reach them!”

  As if in confirmation, a line of blood tickled Willard’s ankle and streamed into the dust. A qualm of nausea swept him. His bowels grew watery.

  “Sir Willard, you must drink her blood.”

  “I cannot. My oath to Lady Anna—”

  “Foolish oath! What of your oath to your queen? Your oath to return me safe home?”

  Willard’s head swam. He turned his eyes to the wound, and jammed a fistful of his cloak behind the cuisse to keep pressure on the wound and stanch the flow. With each fold of cloak he jammed in, the dripping slowed, but hot wires of pain shot up his legs. “You don’t understand,” he panted. “If I start again, I won’t stop. And the madness, Brolli. The addiction. The Blood offers no simple healing, Brolli. It changes everything. Forever. You don’t know what I suffered to be rid of it.”

  “You wish to be rid of life, too?” The ambassador’s flat face scowled, huge gold eyes burning scorn into Willard’s. “You free of being Queen’s Champion? You wish be free of worry her safety so long, all lost in the end? Here is the madness, if you not drink the Blood!”

  Willard clenched his teeth against the pain. “I’ll put the suggestion of cowardice down to a mistake of language, Ambassador,” he growled. “But only once.”

  Brolli held his gaze, unflinching.

  Willard sighed. “We have no time for this, Brolli.” From the height of Molly’s back, he laid a reassuring hand on Brolli’s thick shoulder. “Trust me in this. This is my land. My people. I know how to fight them. And you must stay in that saddle, or we will not make Gallows Ferry before our enemies.”

  “That is not my tactics—”

  “You have no tactics, Ambassador! Not here! You know only forest fighting. And you do not know my people. You must trust me in this, and stay as you are.”

  Brolli gave a curt nod of agreement, just as a bolt whizzed past his ear. He flinched and ducked as another hissed through the air where his head had been, and a third skipped off the sheltering boulder.

  “Keep that head down!” Willard bellowed. Whirling, Molly launched back down the road.

  The crossbowmen had made no attempt to hide themselves. Four men, four horses. They had drawn up on the opposite side of the treacherous-looking ravine around which Molly had taken him when the road bent around the head of the ravine in the shape of an elongated U. The bowmen worked the cranks of their crossbows to load another volley, watching Willard intently as he halted Molly at the edge of the ravine and assessed their position. The shortest way to the bowmen would be straight across the gully, but once Molly plunged in, the way might prove uncrossable, wasting precious time and allowing more shots at Brolli. The surest way would be the long way around the head of the ravine, on the road.

  Shifting his weight, Willard turned Molly, and she exploded into the road-devouring gallop only possible for a Phyros.

  As the bowmen cranked furiously at their crossbows, their horses shifted uneasily beside them, eyes on Molly. Hot-blooded stallions, Willard noted, unburdened with gear or armor. The four were scouts, sent from the main body of knights who pursued him, expressly to take potshots at the ambassador if they could catch Willard unaware.

  Or sleeping. Willard ground his teeth. Sleeping! When immortal, he’d gone days without sleep—weeks at a time during the campaigns of the Cleansing. Now he couldn’t stay awake an hour without nodding off when his mortal carcass took the notion. It made no difference that the fate of the kingdom rested upon this mad quest for the Queen or that a single bolt to the ambassador could start a war that would end it.

  He roared a string of curses that left his great-helm ringing. Let them think that was his battle cry and not an anthem of frustration.

  “Lady Anna, your paramour is not adapting well to mortality,” he muttered to his absent love. “But I shall stay true to my oath. I will not take the Blood. I will grow old with you, I swear.”

  As Molly reached the head of the ra
vine, she cornered and accelerated, hoofbeats shattering the morning stillness. The bowmen abandoned their bow-cranks and scrambled for their horses.

  Willard made no special flourish as he drew the greatsword from its sheath at his waist. It was Molly he needed them to watch: a horse so big she made their stallions seem ponies; the Mad God’s own mare; a thundering, violet-black divinity with more scars than the keel of a longboat. One look at her and they’d assume that he, too, was still immortal. How could they not? In twenty generations no Phyros-rider had ever successfully abandoned the Blood and immortality.

  And he still wore the impressive oversized armor. Filled as it was with pads and air around his shrunken mortal muscles, it maintained the appearance of immortal stature. The only thing that hinted at his secret was the paunch he’d hammered into his breastplate to accommodate his new belly.

  And his red blood.

  Gods leave me, the damned red blood on the stones. If they find the bloody bolt, the game’s up. A wash of shame poured over him. To be exposed a fraud and japed at in a ballad! He could see it now: Sir Willard Feeble Paunch. Sir Willard the Shriveled.

  Molly’s blood called to him. Within easy reach, hot streams of immortality pulsed through rippling veins beneath the wine-black hide. He shut his eyes tight against temptation. How he longed to cut and drink from her! Molly cast a glance back, longing to be cut, pinning him with a violet eye and urging him with a low groan.

  Willard’s stomach rolled. No. He forced his eyes away, and she bucked in anger, but he would not look back to her. Never more, girl. Never again.

  Roaring in frustration, Molly channeled her rage into the pursuit, iron-shod hooves hammering sparks from the stones.

  The bowmen had whipped their horses to an all-out run. Ahead of them, the road plunged over the edge of the ridge and into another scabland canyon, and they plunged down it, leaving a cloud of dust on the rim.

  Only fifty strides behind, Molly sailed over the rim, and the thunder of her massive hooves compounded between the walls.

  The bowmen had just reached the flat of the canyon floor when Molly flew among them. With a four-hand height advantage, and nearly two times their weight, it only took a sideways check of Molly’s shoulder to shove the rearmost stallion into a stony outcrop, where he crashed from full gallop to full stop against the stone. Without breaking stride, she drove between the second and third horses, seized a rider’s ankle in her jaws, and hoisted him from the saddle. She dropped him under her pounding hooves, and with the upswing of her tusklike blood tooth opened a fountain in the neck of his horse.

  The third rider tried to rein in, hoping perhaps to duck the charge and circle back for the ambassador, but Willard’s blade slashed through his ribcage as they passed.

  Willard sighed. It felt right, the unconscious perfection of their partnership. More right than anything he knew. Ten lifetimes in her saddle—ten lifetimes infusing Molly’s blood in his veins—and how could it be otherwise?

  They were one, and made for battle.

  He knew she could not understand his abstinence—his repudiation of their old fellowship, his refusal of the daily ritual of drinking from her veins—and he knew she hated him for it. But unlike him, she could not release her bond. She served him rebelliously, an old lover rejected but still hopeful. Glancing back at him in challenge, she surged forward, redoubling her stride in pursuit of the remaining stallion, a sleek, crop-eared black with a fearless stride. Drawing alongside it, she seized it between her teeth at the top of its neck, behind the ears.

  Willard read her signals and let her run free, adjusting his balance to her motions as Molly forced the stallion’s head down and dug her hooves in for a precipitous stop. The stallion squealed in pain, twisting and juddering to a stop that launched its rider swimming through the air. Molly forced the stallion to the ground, twisting until he rolled belly up like a yielding dog. With a hoof the size of a stumper’s wedge, she pressed its skull to the stones, and leaned.

  A violet eye glared back at Willard, as if daring him to challenge her divine cruelty.

  Willard grunted. “You make immortality so attractive, Molly.”

  The fourth bowman staggered to his feet and limped away up the road, but Molly had her toy, and Willard did not dare deprive her of it in her present mood.

  They stood now in the belly of a canyon, which rose before them over a low saddle of crumbling granite, over which the road climbed and disappeared again into another nameless channel through the scablands. A glance behind confirmed all three bowmen lay motionless in the dust.

  The sound of hoofbeats drew his attention back to the road ahead, where the limping bowman climbed the road toward the rise. As the man reached the crest, a thicket of pennoned lances bobbed into view beyond it, flashing spear tips angled against the winds. The bowman hailed them, waving his arms as if he would fly.

  Willard sat as straight as he could manage, visor down, and drew his cloak around his waist to conceal the paunch of his breastplate, and the red blood of his wound.

  Eight knights in full armor drew up on the crest. Eight squires drew up behind them, and more men behind that. Willard frowned. They’d been only half that number the day before. To grow by so much they’d have to have the support of a ship or two on the river, which was very bad news. It meant they could replace their horses with fresh ones, while he could not. Molly, of course, was tireless, but the ambassador’s ponies sagged near collapse.

  A knight in emerald-green armor advanced from amongst the others and signaled the ranks, from which six fresh bowmen emerged. They walked their mounts off the road among the boulders, maneuvering through the rocks until they drew even with their leader. Once there, they winched up their bowstrings. But the green knight made no further preparations for attack.

  Willard grunted his approval. In the three days since Sir Green had picked up Willard’s trail, he had never engaged Willard directly, only followed and sent the occasional band of snipers. Sir Green clearly knew the old rule of fifty to one for mortal-on-immortal combat, and wisely awaited reinforcements before trying anything. His short-term tactics were also sound, since his present elevated position on the crest gave him as defensible a position as he could hope for, and he knew if Willard attacked, some of the bowmen could race past and threaten the ambassador.

  A stalemate, then. Well enough.

  But something was wrong with their horses. This close to a Phyros, a mortal horse should be terrified—even the best war-trained specimens should prove difficult to manage, and the untrained mounts ought to be blind with fear. Sir Green’s destriers stood on that crest as still as jades in a pasture, and even the untrained bowmen’s mounts seemed nothing more than nervous.

  Molly also noticed. Though she kept her hoof against the stallion’s skull, she released the stallion’s jaw to better view their unresponsive audience.

  There was only one explanation: their horses had been conditioned to be near a Phyros, just as his ponies had. And the only way to do that was to stable them with a Phyros.

  A chill slid down Willard’s spine. “One of your immortal brothers has returned to Arkendia, Molly. They’ve got an immortal on their side.”

  The implications hit him like a boot in the stomach. Did the Queen know? Had she alerted the Blue Order? He would never have sworn his oath to Anna if he’d known an Old One had returned, nor would Anna have let him. I will never drink the Blood again. I will grow old with you and die. The oath mocked him. He bit off a curse.

  Willard studied the green knight, as if he could divine from the man’s appearance some clue of which Old One had returned without his knowing. Sir Bannus? His stomach turned at the thought. Could Sir Bannus be a day’s ride behind? Might he catch them before they crossed at Gallows Ferry?

  Molly snorted. She released the quivering stallion, and Willard turned her back the way they’d come.

  Sitting straight and calm as any immortal, he walked her away, shifting the cloak to conceal his bloody le
g. With luck, the drips on the stones would be indistinguishable from the blood of his enemies, but there was nothing he could do about the bloodied crossbow bolts. His enemies would find them both, one inked with violet divinity, the other with mortal red. And when that happened they’d know the unimagined truth: that for the first time in three hundred years, Sir Willard—their most hated enemy, chief architect of their exile—was mortal again. And they could take him at will.

  At a natural bend in the road he risked a glance back, to see his enemies still watching from the rise. Good. Stick to your strategy, Sir Green. Hold off until your immortal master arrives.

  A wave of dizziness swept him. He caught himself leaning, close to tipping from the saddle, and righted himself with a start. The wadding had shifted free and the trickle of drips returned to his ankle.

  Brolli was right. I’ll fall before I return to him.

  Black spots crowded his vision. A humming began between his ears.

  “I will not!” he snarled at the absent ambassador. “Gods leave me, I swore it, I will not!”

  Yet his hands trembled as he removed a gauntlet and reached for Molly’s neck to claw away the scab from the crossbow wound that had already hardened to a scar. Shuddering, he thrust the clot beneath the quilting on his leg and into the mouth of the wound.

  I swore off drinking the Blood. I never swore off plasters.

  Yet he understood too well the risk he took in touching it at all. Already the familiar fire raged in the wound, numbing as it burned. The old strength whispered briefly in his veins. But the old hunger roared. And the addiction that once ruled him embraced him like a possessing spirit.

  More.

  “No!” he gasped. “My lady!” In his delirium he could see her before him as she had been when last he saw her in court—aging away from him—now watching with pitying eyes. “I will not betray you again, Lady Anna! We will grow old and die together!”

  He repeated the words like a mantra, beating his fist on his new-healed wound until he gained the bluff and cantered back up the U around the head of the ravine to the ambassador’s sheltering place.