The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  A flicker of irritation crossed Willard’s eyes. “Ambassador, I’ve saved that man from hunters more times than he can count. And I say it may be Father Kogan they hunt. Just as likely there isn’t a priest at all and they’re using the song to lure me out for some asinine rescue.”

  “What is ass-nine?”

  A third horn, higher than the others, sounded to the northwest.

  “They’re all over the valley,” Harric muttered, as he stuffed his pack on Rag’s back.

  Brolli scrambled up the side of the willow as quick as a squirrel, grappling foot and hand to the highest crook that would take his weight. The southern horn sounded its merry notes again, and Brolli pointed in the direction of the sound. “Down this stream. Maybe a mile away.”

  “Can you see them?” Willard asked.

  Brolli moved another branch. “No. We’re too low.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Saddle up.”

  Brolli descended in a controlled fall. Harric and Caris hurried to saddle the horses.

  “Boy, be sure we leave no sign of being here. Heeled boot prints and hoof prints have to go. Must seem nothing but shepherds camp here. Girl, lift Molly’s saddle for me.”

  As they flew about the camp, the horns sang to each other across the valley. Then a throaty blast answered from the far west.

  Willard froze. He bit off a curse. “That’s Bannus’s horn. Gods take him, I haven’t heard that for a long and blessed time.”

  A pulse of guilt hit Harric. Had his mother put the immortal on their trail?

  “Girl. How far before we leave this stream and climb out of this valley?”

  Caris stared. Her gaze wandered from Rag to Willard, unfocused.

  “Girl! Keep an ear for the rest of us! How far till we leave the stream?”

  Her eyes found Willard. “Soon. I’ll know the path when I see it.”

  “Mount up and lead. Brolli! Dust any tracks the boy missed.”

  Let none of you worship or pray gods for favors,

  Nor bow down to high lords among you.

  Neither rely you on magic,

  And you shall be strong.

  —The Three Laws of Arkus

  20

  Father Kogan’s Hidey-Hole

  Kogan saw the farmer from across a field of oats, and set out for him at a trot down a well-trod path between the furrows, clutching the Phyros ax beneath its massive head. The man saw him and stopped outside the front door of a small log farmhouse, tilting his leather hat back to watch the priest’s approach.

  “I need a place to hide, brother,” Kogan said when he reached him, panting. “Crossing your fields. I seen the collar on your scarecrow, and knowed you was friendly to the cause o’ freedom.” Kogan pulled aside his hedge of beard to expose the forged iron collar of his calling. “Father Kogan’s the name.”

  The farmer doffed his hat and nodded his respect. “Name’s Miles. We owes everything to Father Oren. He run us out three year gone, and helped dig our first cellar, too. Be a right shame if I didn’t help ye now. What’s chasing ye?”

  “Westie knights.” Kogan spat.

  “Don’t surprise me none. Heard the horns all morning. They seen ye?”

  “Not as I think.”

  “They got scent-dogs?”

  “None as I heard.”

  The farmer gave a sly grin. “Not that they’d need ’em. Father Oren weren’t much for bathing neither.” Before Kogan could regain enough breath to object, Miles turned into the house. “Step inside, Father. We’ll hide you in the old root cellar.”

  Kogan followed, ducking low beneath the doorframe, and once inside stood tall amidst log rafters and the scent of new-baked bread. His stomach growled so loud it startled the farmer. “Mighty obliged, brother. But a cellar’s the first place they’ll look.”

  “We got two cellars. Old one went sour last spring, so we dug a new. We’ll let ’em search the fresh one and they’ll never guess we got another.”

  Kogan glanced back through the door and across the hay field, where the lance pennons of his pursuers bobbed beyond a distant rise. “Let’s see it.”

  “Help me move this table, Father. It’s right under.”

  Together they moved a massive log table across the plank floor. The farmer swept aside the rag rug that hid a trap door sealed with tar.

  “Puttied her with tar to keep the stink in.”

  Kogan frowned. “Can a man breathe in that hole?”

  “I reckon you could, Father.” The yeoman grinned.

  “Now, hold on there! Just cause a man don’t bathe don’t mean he like the smell o’ shit.” Kogan frowned as he dug the hand ring from its recess in the door, and yanked. “Unless it’s his own shit, a’course. But everyone likes that.”

  The door swung up, stretching and tearing the tar seal at the edges. A smell like soured cream and compost wafted out. Below, the hole was deep and wide, and every visible surface—including the underside of the door—hung in thick sheets of downy white fungus.

  Kogan peered in doubtfully. “You don’t got a third cellar?”

  “No, Father. But get in quick. I can hear the hoofs now.”

  A horn sounded brightly in the fields. The tune was “Hang High, Father,” which gave Kogan visions of ramming trumpets up the arses of the squires who played it.

  “Quick, Father, so I can get the table back!”

  “I’ll be found out if my belly growls like that again. Best you give me a loaf or two to quiet her.”

  The yeoman scrambled and fetched a loaf and tossed it down the hatch. “There!”

  “That weren’t but a crumb for a man my size!”

  “Blast it, Father, if ye get us found out—”

  “Just toss another,” Kogan said, dropping his ax into the hole and placing a bare foot on the first step. The step folded like paper beneath his weight, and he fell like a stone through the rest of the treads to the bottom.

  “Sit tight now, Father,” Miles said, an edge of panic in his voice. “Quit your cursing or they’ll hear ye sure.”

  Fear in the man’s voice made Kogan bite his tongue. The trap door slammed, engulfing him in darkness. He wrestled free of the wooden wreckage, and located the loaf flattened beneath him, now slippery with sour-smelling fungus.

  “Coulda done with another loaf!” he shouted.

  *

  Hunting horns sounded again. Bannus’s throaty basso drew steadily closer, to join the others.

  “Help me to my saddle,” Willard growled. “No sense busting all your fancy bandages before we’ve even started.”

  With the help of all three of them, he swung his good leg across Molly’s rump. When he finally sat at up in his saddle, his face was the color of bone. “Just stiff,” he said. “I’ll limber up.”

  “You bleed,” said Brolli. “Any movement and the rags are already full.”

  A line of bright blood scored the black skirt and dripped upon his spurs. “It’ll stop.” Willard urged Molly up the stream, puffing hungrily on the ragleaf.

  Brolli boarded Idgit, his face dark with frustration. As he bound himself to the saddle, Spook clambered onto the warm saddle pack in which he’d stowed the porridge pot, still full of steaming oatmeal, and settled in for the ride.

  “Harric,” Brolli said. He’d pushed his daylids up, revealing the worry in his golden owl eyes. “Watch Willard while I sleep. If he get worse, wake me.”

  In less than a mile, Caris led them east out of the stream, up a trail that climbed the head of the valley. Once they struck the trail, Rag seemed to recognize it; she snorted, her tail twitching eagerly, and picked up the pace as if for a particularly cozy stable at the end of the road.

  After cresting the stony spine of the ridge, the trail plunged down the other side into a wooded valley untamed by farmstead or mill. Another stony ridge bounded the far side of the valley, and beyond that still more ridges running north-south across their path, like rows of jagged teeth.

  “Halt!” Willard said, befor
e they descended the track into the valley. He squinted into the far distance. “Can we see our tower on one of those ridges, girl?”

  Caris shook her head. “Too far away, sir. Two days’ ride.”

  Willard spat a fragment of ragleaf. “We’ll never make it. Not if they find our trail. Brolli! You awake?”

  Brolli had already removed his blanket. “Hard to sleep with the horns.” He grinned. “You wish I go back to cover any tracks on the trail?”

  Willard nodded. He seemed to have paused to catch his breath, as if talking taxed him.

  Harric exchanged glances with Caris and Brolli.

  Willard intercepted their looks, and scowled. “I also worry that once we cross this ridge, we won’t hear their horns, so we won’t know how close they are. While you’re smoothing our tracks, take a good listen. Before you come back, see if you can gauge whether they follow.”

  In all his battles, all his fields,

  Sir Willard proved the best.

  He loved the Queen,

  But then her maid,

  And never more was blessed.

  —From “Black Armor Becomes Him,” Arkendian ballad

  21

  Attacked

  Harric dismounted, and laid himself out on a rock shelf warmed by the sun. By the time Brolli returned, Harric had managed a ragleaf-induced—and thankfully dreamless—sleep. He woke to a tirade of cursing from the old knight. Brolli’s news was not good. The horns seemed to be converging, and growing louder.

  “Saddle up, Brolli. It’s a race now. Nothing for it but to put our heads down and ride and hope we make the tower before they catch us.”

  *

  Harric led Idgit and Brolli, following Caris as the trail descended steeply into an ancient torchwood forest. Massive trunks soared skyward like columns in a giant’s palace, some as thick as windmills. High above, a canopy of coin-shaped leaves winked green and gold in the sunlight, while underfoot a carpet of deep moss swallowed sound and beckoned Harric to lie down and forget everything in a deep, hushed sleep. Yet as he breathed in the scent of ancient life, the immensity of the silence soothed him.

  How long had it been since he visited the hollows of these ridges? Since his mother died? In the years before her death, when her madness made her vicious, he’d escaped to such places often, to camp alone in the blessed stillness. Why’d he stop?

  Harric glanced back to check on Willard. The knight remained upright in his saddle, smoking steadily. He’d closed the visor on his helm to rebreathe the smoke inside the helmet, so smoke poured from eye and ear slots like the helm of some demon knight in a ballad. Surely the pain of age had driven Willard to the leaf. Could the aches of five lifetimes of wounds have returned now that he was mortal? That would turn anyone addict.

  By mid-morning the herb’s effects on Harric faded. His pain returned with interest, until even the peace of the ancient forest was lost upon him. His brain seemed to swell again as his skull shrank around it. His swollen lip began to throb worse than before, irritated by a newly chipped tooth. Each step sent a stab of fire through his bruised ribs.

  When Willard called for a halt in a mossy grotto, Harric wanted only to eat in silence on a cushion of moss. Careful not to wake Brolli, he retrieved bread and cheese from one of Idgit’s saddle packs and found a spot to eat that was close enough to the others that his isolation wouldn’t look intentional, but far enough away that he wouldn’t have to talk. As he lowered himself onto a hummock of springy red cork-moss, Spook scampered to him and pestered him for food by mewing pathetically. Harric chewed stale bread slowly, his jaw aching, and fed Spook hunks of cheese.

  Caris staked Rag far from the Phyros, and joined Harric. Without the burden of concentrating on Rag, she seemed worried, distracted, and itching to talk. He knew she would sense his mood, and that his sullenness would confuse or anger her, but he found it very hard to feign cheer.

  He acknowledged her with a grunt.

  To fill the silence and take his mind off his pains, he laid his mother’s saddle knife upon the back of his left hand and made it walk from knuckle to knuckle, back and forth across the hand. After a few revolutions he flipped it to stand on its pommel on the back of the hand—almost dropped it—then let it fall sideways to the back of his other hand, where he walked it across the knuckles the same way. It was a hand-limbering exercise his mother taught him, and it helped clear his head when he needed. It was also a form of showing off that might take the place of talking for a while. With it went an Oliitian mantra his mother had chanted until he giggled.

  All he catches, Mad Moon strangles

  All she hatches, Mother keeps

  All unknown the Black Moon tangles

  All in dreams of death and sleep

  Ever one and other warring

  Ever Darkness wedding War

  Ever mated, never pairing

  Every mother, Nature’s whore.

  Caris and Spook both watched as if hypnotized for two or three revolutions, then Caris swatted the knife to the ground, and Spook startled and sped away into the ferns.

  “What in the Black Moon are you doing?” Harric snapped.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Caris hissed. She cast a furtive glance at Willard, and her cheeks flushed with anger, or shame.

  “What do I care if he sees it?” Harric said.

  “Think what you’re doing, Harric! He’s made you his valet. You’ve got a chance to become something honorable. If you had any sense you’d never do another jack trick as long as you live.”

  Harric’s face burned. With an effort, he restrained his fury. Anger is master, never slave, his mother whispered in his mind. Very deliberately he bent and retrieved the knife. “Then go somewhere else. I’m not lifting anything. I’m meditating.”

  “Meditating. It’s a jack’s trick, and any fool can see it. You’ll throw this chance away if Willard learns you’re a trickster. He isn’t bound to train a jack.”

  A jack? Was that what she thought of him? He was an artist, to borrow his mother’s words, and though he hated his mother for his mad childhood, he had a kind of pride in what he’d made of it. He clenched his jaw and cradled his head in his hands. “I can’t talk about this right now. All right?”

  Caris seemed at a loss. She wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging herself, something he’d seen her do when she was upset enough to curl in a ball with her hands on her ears. She rocked forward and back a little, but her hands did not rise to her head.

  Her words came with effort. “Can you listen?” she asked.

  He nodded. He could see it took everything she had to resist balling up and retreating from whatever she had to say. Her voice quaked, and she spoke quickly, without meeting his eyes. “I talked to Brolli last night about the wedding ring. He agreed it hasn’t taken my wits. He said I’ll be the same person. And I have my will, too.” She looked up to meet his eyes, something she rarely did in tense conversations, and he knew it required immense effort from her. “I could leave you if I had to, Harric. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I could. If you did something I couldn’t accept, like—like…” She halted, her nostrils flaring as they did when she was angry. “Like the squire’s purse.”

  Harric chuckled. “The purse. You found it.”

  “Harric, I swear if you ever—”

  “You know that Iberg witched us, Caris. You can’t hold that against me.”

  She clamped her jaw, eyes hard. “Just the fact that you could do it. And that you planted it in my belt without my knowing, like—”

  “Caris, we were witched—”

  “Let me say it, Harric! I have to say it.”

  “All right. Say it.”

  “There is nothing more important to me than being a knight. This wedding ring doesn’t change that. And I swear if you play another purse, or deception, or any other jack trick, I will leave you. I don’t care how much it hurts me, I will.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, but he
r face was hard as flint.

  Harric’s heart ached, even as it burned with anger. “It was my ‘tricks’ that won your mentorship in the first place. Have you forgotten that? I know I seem a kind of useless fop to you, and probably to Willard. Manservant material. But my training is as deep as yours. In my way. I plan to serve the Queen as well as you or any knight.”

  Caris’s hands went to her ears. She stood, then staggered away to Rag, where she buried her face in her mane.

  The old knight eyed her with distaste. “What in the Black Moon’s she doing?”

  Harric laid his head on his knees, unsure he’d accomplished anything—unable, in his pain, to care if he had.

  *

  Harric volunteered to lead Idgit while Brolli slept, thereby escaping an awkward ride with Caris. If it bothered her that he’d abandoned her company in that way, she never showed it; as he trudged behind in a haze of absorbing pain, she never once looked back to see if she moved too fast for him. At about the point at which he became vaguely aware of the low angle of the sunlight slanting gold beneath the canopy, Rag stopped and Harric nearly plodded into her hindquarters. He had to raise a hand to Idgit’s bridle and stumble sideways to keep her from pinning him under Rag’s swishing tail.

  The Phyros drew up behind Idgit. “What is it?” Willard asked.

  “I don’t know.” Caris’s voice was distant, horse-tied.

  Willard rode around for a look, trailing Holly behind.

  Harric followed, leading Idgit.

  They’d halted at the edge of a wide clearing where two giant torchwoods had toppled in a storm, creating a giant hole in the canopy. The clearing glowed with golden sunlight, and buzzed with a ruckus of sparrows and jays feeding like flocks in the fields at threshing time. But the strangest thing—and that which attracted the birds—was the bareness of the forest floor. Where there should have been an explosion of fresh young undergrowth in the newly sunlit space, there were no plants at all, only a tumult of rich black soil. It looked as though it had been cleared and turned and trampled by the work of a madman’s plow.

  “What is it?” said Caris, scanning the new scene.

  “A yoab site.” Willard glanced around the riven landscape, brow furrowed. “Don’t see a yoab, though.” He raised a water skin to his lips and drank greedily. Once he’d sucked it dry, he tossed it to Harric. “Give me your skin, boy. I’m burning up.” The old knight’s cheeks shone rosy with fever, but no new blood scored his armor, so Harric let the Kwendi sleep. Harric swapped skins with Willard, who guzzled more, and dribbled some down his back, under the quilting.