The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  A flurry of bolts clattered around the mouth of the fissure. One struck wood, and one struck metal with a dull plink as another ricocheted around the stone walls to land beside him on the planks. Caris piled over him and crashed onto the planking. An armored knee stove a plank in two, and her leg disappeared in the hole. A spitfire splashed the entrance of the gap with burning resin. Smoke filled the chimney, but none of the fire reached where they lay.

  Caris was cussing like a raftsman. Tears cleared from Harric’s eyes. He watched as she flung her crumbling shield aside and fought free of the hole in the planking. Staggering to her feet, she doffed her helmet and beat at one of her boots, which was on fire.

  Harric propped himself into a sitting position and grinned around gasps for breath. “Gods leave me, that couldn’t have gone better if we’d planned it.”

  Still cursing, she socked him in the arm, hard. “Yes, it could have.”

  He didn’t even grunt. “Okay, maybe I deserved that.”

  She socked him again, harder, and this time he winced.

  “Ow. Okay, I’m sorry. You made your point.”

  She pulled him up to his feet, fury contorting her pretty face. “Now it’s their turn to panic.” She strode to the edge of the gap and peeked out at the tower. No bolts answered the gesture. The men in the tower were in full flight down the ladders.

  “Someone’s won the gap!” they cried. “Move! Clear out or we all die!”

  Harric looked about the fissure, searching for the resin charges. The space behind the tower of rock was narrow, with a plank floor above a deep wedge of space. At the back end of the chimney stood a tall ladder that reached to a higher, deeper ledge in the cliff above the leaning tower. The escape route, Harric realized. And through the gap left by the broken plank he saw where the resin charges had been laid—deep in vertical drill holes in the rock. Wax-covered fuses ran up from the drill holes to a box upon the plank at his feet. He opened the box, breaking the wax seal. Inside, a simple flint wheel rested in a nest of resin and fuse ends.

  Caris peered over his shoulder. “Do it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You want to blow up with it?” He indicated the ladder. “When you’re up, I’ll light it and follow.”

  She hesitated, as if suspecting it might be another trick to abandon her, then evidently decided there was nowhere for him to go, and climbed the ladder. The rungs creaked under her armored weight, and the top rungs split, but she managed to put enough of her weight on her arms to keep it from breaking. Harric steadied the ladder as she reached the top and crawled over the rim of the bedrock.

  Outside the fissure in the roundabout, men shouted and horses whinnied.

  Bannus roared, “Cowards! Return to your posts!”

  Sir Willard answered him from somewhere on the battlements. “Leave now, Bannus, and we will let you live. Take Gygon and return to the Isle of Phyrosi. This is your last chance. Your time here is done.”

  “He lives!” Caris laughed. “Harric, Willard lives!”

  Harric grinned. “Let’s give his words a little punch.” He dashed to the box and turned the flint wheel with his thumb. The wheel spat orange sparks into the resin, which went up in a brilliant flash that lit up the chimney like lightning and sent spots through Harric’s vision. The fire raced through the wax and disappeared down the drill holes.

  “Shit!” Harric dropped the box and leapt onto the ladder. “Shit, shit, shit!” He climbed as fast as he could, his legs still sluggish from his time in the Unseen.

  The sound of steel on steel from the roundabout. Men cried out in pain. “Back to your posts!” Bannus roared. “Bring me the milk boy! I will slay every coward among you!”

  Two rungs from the top, the one Caris had split gave way. Harric caught himself, but the sudden jerk of his momentum sent the ladder sliding sideways, carrying him out toward the mouth of the crack and over the void.

  “Harric!” Caris lunged for the ladder, but it slid out of reach.

  Harric thrust himself up one more rung as it tipped, which brought him within reach of the ledge, even as the ladder tipped sideways out of the crack. Harric grabbed the rim of the cliff with one hand. Caris seized his sleeve. He had no strength to raise himself, but Caris did not let go. Grunting, she clamped her other hand on his wrist, got her knees beneath her, and hauled him over the rim of the bedrock.

  Before his legs cleared the rim, a deafening concussion shook the cliff. The force of it flung Harric’s legs up and dumped him onto Caris. He scrambled off, and then belly-flopped to the edge of their ledge to see the leaning tower come loose of its moorings and descend upon the siege tower and road with a titanic boom and backwind of dust.

  When the smoke cleared, the siege tower was gone, buried in a pile of boulders the size of coaches. The trio of yellow-plumed squires stood staring in disbelief, their equipment and companions—their immortal leader—quite gone. Nor could they cross that stupendous rockfall. Not for a long time. The collapse left a treacherous wall between the road and gatehouse. To pass they would need charges and toolers to rebuild the road, and by then the Blue Order would have come. By then, the Queen would send reinforcements.

  The trio mounted two horses picketed on the road, and galloped away. Absurdly, one blew a silver-throated horn in sound of victory.

  A cry of triumph burst from Harric’s lips. His ears rang from the blast, but he thought he heard faint shouts from the wall. Looking over, he saw Willard on the battlements with several cheering guardsmen. Brolli leapt up and down at the edge of the gatehouse, waving his long arms. Harric waved his arms back, and turned to Caris to embrace her, but she reflected none of his triumph.

  “What’s wrong?” He followed her gaze. “Willard lives. He is on the battlement. Look! We beat them.”

  Caris shook her head. “She’s gone,” she murmured, eyes still searching the rubble. “That woman, the one the boy was supposed to… I think she told him to be brave. I think she tried to encourage him to do what he had to do. In that horrible scene she was the only one with any guts.”

  Harric bowed his head. “We took away her suffering. She’d have asked for that very thing if she’d been rescued.”

  Tears streamed down Caris’s face. She nodded. “Oh, Harric, it’s happening again—the Old Ones. They’re back. The Queen has to fight them. We all have to fight them.”

  “We will. We are.”

  She turned to gaze down at the wall. Willard and Brolli had disappeared. “What if Brolli’s people go to war with us? What if Brolli doesn’t trust the Queen, and recommends his people go to war?”

  “How could he?” He touched the side of her face and locked eyes with her. “He just saw an Old One in action, Caris. An Old One in all his twisted, mad-brained horror. Brolli may not like our queen—she may allow hanging of witches and brutal justice—but that’s nothing to what the Old Ones bring if she falls and they rise again. There’s no way Brolli will recommend war. He needs the Queen to keep the Old Ones at bay.”

  A spark of a smile lit behind her eyes, as well as something else that might have been admiration. She nodded. “That makes it even more important that we get him back to his people, so he can tell them what he’s seen.”

  Harric’s face grew serious. “And we’ll get the ring off.”

  She dropped her eyes, then glanced up again.

  “Not that I don’t want you to love me,” he added. “But you never bargained for a love charm on your finger.”

  Caris’s brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak.

  “Girl! Boy!” Willard’s voice drifted up the cliff to their resting place, startling them both.

  “Lovers! Matings!” Brolli shouted. “You live, yes?”

  “I’m a hairy pizzle if they both survived,” Willard growled.

  Caris blushed. She stood, and Harric rose beside her. They walked to the edge of the cliff to peer down to the ledge below them, where Willard and Brolli and several beaming guardsmen stood gazing up at them. Willard
had not removed his armor to climb the stairs, and his face was flushed with the effort. So were the faces of the guardsmen, who likely had helped him every step of the way in addition to carrying a ladder between them. A fat roll of ragleaf jutted from Willard’s mustachios. When he saw Harric and Caris, a flicker of relief passed behind his eyes.

  Caris waved. “We’re here.”

  “We did it,” said Harric.

  The guardsmen let out a “hurrah!” in unison.

  “Ha-ha!” Brolli echoed. He turned to Willard. “You are a hairy pizzle.”

  Willard glared up at them. “You’re bloody well going to pay for that little stunt,” he growled. “The both of you.”

  “But we’re bloody well glad for that stunt,” Brolli added. He laughed his barking laugh, and Willard smiled in spite of himself.

  “Glad you made it,” Willard admitted. “I’m tired of losing squires.”

  The guardsmen brought the ladder forward and propped it against the cliff so the two could climb down.

  When they stood again on the ledge, Brolli pressed himself against each in turn, with a strange no-armed hug.

  Willard pointed imperiously back to the stairs. Harric examined the narrow ledge and the knight’s protruding belly, which left no room for slipping past him. Willard, seeing his error, frowned. “I’ll be waiting at the foot of the stairs.”

  “This is the thanks we get for destroying Sir Bannus?” said Harric, arms crossed.

  Willard’s brows shot up. A cloud of ragleaf gusted from his nostrils and set his mustachios to fuming. “You didn’t destroy Sir Bannus,” he said, not unkindly. “He and Gygon leapt from the cliff to avoid the rock.” He grinned, square teeth flashing. “I thank you for that memory. But it takes more than a bad fall onto a boulder field to kill an immortal. You may rest assured that neither is terribly comfortable at this moment, but they yet live. And if it were not for the rubble now blocking the pass, we might expect them again this night.”

  As if on cue, a harsh horn rang from the depths of the canyon. Bannus’s horn. It sounded again and again, the deep note reverberating from the ridges in chorus with the thunder of the falls. The guardsmen’s faces fell. Willard sucked grimly on his ragleaf. “Time to move out. Best not be on this ledge if he returns.”

  As the guardsmen hoisted the ladder and turned to go, Harric noticed they’d both been staring. Harric caught the glance of the nearest, and the man ducked his head and muttered an acknowledgement. Harric blinked in surprise. It was awe and respect he saw there. Respect—for him.

  The horn sounded again from the bowels of the gorge, and then, as if in reply, a shrill horn answered from the darkness of the road beyond the rubble.

  Te-woot-woot! Te-woot-woot!

  Their procession stopped. Six pairs of eyes pried into the darkness of the road beyond.

  “What in the Black Moon was that?” said Willard.

  “The same horn of your trio,” said Brolli.

  It was. Harric recognized it, and felt a jolt of panic at the thought of crossbows aimed from the darkness.

  “But that is not a warring tune, yes?” He bent his owlish gaze into the darkness below and grinned.

  Harric swallowed his panic. “He’s right. It’s ‘Radish, Radish.’” Relief flooded him and he laughed. “It’s a priest song.”

  Willard’s mouth went slack. “Not…”

  “The one about Father Muggin and the eating contest with the Old One—”

  “I know the bloody song, boy, but—”

  “It’s him!” Brolli pointed to a shape now scrambling on all fours up the dark side of the rubble below them. It looked like a huge garl bear at first, or possibly a yoab, but as it approached the summit of the tumbled rock, three yellow-plumed helmets rose above it upon a spear into the light from the tower fires. The helms had been impaled through the eyeholes, and now swayed in the light like a grisly totem of battle.

  Bannus’s horn sounded from the deep, but before the note ended, Father Kogan belly-flopped over the summit of the rubble, planted the spear in a crack, and blew a mighty TE-WOOT-WOOT! TE-WOOT-WOOT! on the silver horn.

  The men on the battlements cheered. Harric found himself cheering, “Radish! Radish!”

  TE-WOOT-WOOT! TE-WOOT-WOOT! TE-WOOT-WOOT!

  “All right, Father,” Willard growled. “I think even Bannus gets the point.”

  Kogan kept up his victory song until it seemed he might collapse, and then he did, as the rubble beneath him slid and cast him down in a cascade of stones. He jarred to a halt against a slab of stone, and remained there, shaking as if panting or laughing. “Oh, Will! You couldn’t have writ a better ballad than this was.”

  “I shall write it myself,” said Brolli. “‘Sir Willard and the Tooting Priest.’”

  To Harric’s surprise, Willard smiled. “More apt a title than you know.” To Kogan he called, “You are most welcome here, Father. I see you met Bannus’s rearguard.”

  “Sped them on their way, Will. Good West Isle lads, they were. Let me borrow their hats.”

  “So I see.”

  Kogan flashed a crack-toothed grin. “Best of all, Will, now it’s you that owes me one. And that’s as it should be.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. So it is.”

  A clatter of chain and drawbridge erupted from the gatehouse as the bridge descended. A half-dozen guards on the battlement began a chant: “Ra-dish, Ra-dish!” A huge-bellied guard with a beard to rival Kogan’s hoisted a keg to his shoulder and tapped it into his mouth in the traditional challenge.

  TE-WOOT-WOOT! Kogan blew. “Arkendia!”

  The men cheered, and the chant continued as Kogan discarded the spear and proceeded to scramble across the rubble on all fours. After a considerable number of falls and bruising slides, he reached a point near enough for the guards to throw him rope ladders that brought him over the rockfall. Dusty, and bleeding from a dozen scrapes, Kogan strode across the waiting drawbridge like a returning hero.

  On the cliff ledge above him, Willard put a hand on the shoulder of the guard beside Harric. “Now that he’s in, you get that gate up and lower the port. Keep a two-man watch for the night. Sober watch. You understand?”

  “But sir—”

  Willard seized his collars and pulled him close. “You think this a ballad? Ballads don’t sing of limbless toys, do they? Of tortured boys? Do you forget what you saw tonight?”

  “No, sir…”

  “Never forget it. Bannus lives, and now he hates you.” He emphasized the word with a hard jab on the sternum. “You are no mere guardsman now. The great Sir Bannus has plans for you and every man in this watch.”

  The guard swallowed. “Yes, sir. Two men.”

  Willard pinned the man with his gaze for several heartbeats, then released him with a nod.

  “We owes you our lives, sir. There aught else we can do?”

  “You can. Give this priest a place to stay.”

  The guardsman beamed. “It’ll be an honor.”

  “It’ll be a liability. Among other things, expect to run out of drink and meat.”

  “We’ll send for more. Sure to get a garrison here when word gets out.”

  A cheer went up as Kogan blew another TE-WOOT-WOOT inside the gatehouse walls.

  The procession on the ledge resumed its careful march across the cliff, but Harric took Caris’s hand to stay her, and let the others go. He leaned his back against the cliff, weary, and drew her down to sit beside him on the ledge. Though the sky lightened in the east, the Jack remained visible above—cape flowing, hand extended to pick the Knight’s pocket. Or was it to take her hand? And though dawn was nearly on them, Harric thought he saw the Unseen Moon remained perfectly aligned in its halo of darkness.

  “Well, gods leave me,” he muttered. “What are the chances of that?”

  “What?” Caris said, following his gaze. “Chances of what?”

  Harric turned to her and smiled. “What are the chances the stars will give us a minute of
peace together tonight?”

  If the growing light had allowed, Harric imagined he’d have seen her blush. To her credit and his great satisfaction, however, she didn’t drop her eyes as she might have only a week before. She held his gaze and laughed.

  “The stars have nothing to do with it. We’re Arkendian. If we want something, we make it happen ourselves. Right?”

  Harric tilted his head to the side to study her from the corners of his eyes. “If Willard had said that, he’d have been preaching. You make it sound like a proposition.”

  Mischief flashed in her eyes. Altering her voice, she made a very bad imitation of Harric: “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Oh?” He laughed. “Remind me to show you when we’re alone.”

  Epilogue

  The Impit’s Gambit

  Fink followed as she fled over hill and through forests to her grave. Her rapid retreat took most of the fun out of it. He’d hoped for more of a fight, but after only a few quick licks, she’d turned tail and made straight for Gallows Ferry and her burial cairn. When he finally caught her in that miserable cliff village, he found her waiting at the stones that covered her bones.

  Crazy laughter tinkled from her lips, as if she’d just challenged him to a race and won.

  The merry twinkle of her eyes sent a tremor of doubt through Fink.

  “I see nothing good in your future, imp,” she said.

  His lips peeled back in a sneer. “How long have you had the Sight, lady?”

  “How long have you had it?” she mocked, as if she knew damned well he didn’t have it. She laughed again, secure in the Right of Last Kin, secure in the limits of power Harric laid upon him, secure in whatever it was she beheld in the web.

  Fink bristled. Where’d she get that? Where’d she come by understanding of the Unseen most imps never had? The Sight alone was not enough to bring the depth of knowledge she displayed. Nor would it impart such moon-blasted confidence. He narrowed his eyes as if to better pick out clues in the wash of strands boiling upward from her spirit. Maybe she was a Spinner’s pet. He could find no Spinner’s mark upon her, but two of the three Spinners could be relied on to mark pets only subtly, and sometimes not at all.