The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  Harric left them, a coal of anger burning in his chest. Willard clearly intended to treat him like a misbehaving servant now.

  Halfway down the stairs, a strange sound caught his attention. It came from a door on the landing below the main living floor. He paused on the landing and listened. It was Mudruffle. The golem’s voice grew louder, as if he were moving toward the door. Of course, the only reason Harric could hear the creature at all through the heavy door was because of the extraordinary nature of his voice—that toneless shout, breaking to honking, like a distressed donkey.

  “If this is so, mistress,” said Mudruffle, “then I must go with them.” He spoke in Iberg, and the accent was difficult for Harric to pry through, as his mother’s lessons had been with a decidedly Arkendian pronunciation. Fortunately, the golem paused for long stretches after he spoke, which gave Harric some time to translate what he heard. During the pauses, Mistress Abellia must have replied, only with a voice too weak to penetrate the door.

  “Indeed, your service to our moon has been great, but you could not thrive on such a difficult road…I am certain. And the immortal hunts them…danger. It is most urgent the Bright Mother succeed in this…”

  Harric set the bowl of beans and the bread on a stair below the room, and crouched at the crack beneath the door to listen. Willard’s head would explode if he saw him. But they spoke about him and his friends, and not in terms of Willard’s quest, but in terms of the Bright Mother. What did the White Moon care of their mission, and what “success” did it so urgently seek?

  He heard a murmur beyond the door. Abellia’s small voice, perhaps.

  Then Mudruffle’s voice. “Very few can grant the right to heal yourself. We must inform Vella. She will know.”

  Heal Abellia’s body? As far as Harric could tell, she wasn’t ill. The only thing keeping her from accompanying them on their “hard road” was her advanced age… Harric’s eyes widened. Of course. The Iberg emperors were said to be ageless, and it was the Bright Mother mages who provided that service. Mudruffle was talking about restoring Abellia’s youth!

  Golden light blazed beneath the door. The intensity drove Harric back in surprise. Instantly, he knew—or rather felt with the core of his being—a mighty presence beyond the door. Knowledge of it pushed the air from his lungs and left him bracing himself feebly against the wall, mouthing like a fish in air.

  A new voice rang out, clear and bright as brass in his mind. There were no words—neither Iberg nor Arkendian—only thoughts so golden pure and powerful that they banished the borders of self and became his own thoughts, filling him with profound but fleeting understanding.

  This opportunity is most unexpected and good, it thought—she thought—and her rightness and purity filled him to ecstasy. He was a candle in a bonfire. Gloriously consumed and overwhelmed. He was a creek bed flooded with a mighty river of thoughts.

  Your service is noted, Sister Abellia. But this is a matter too great for a vestir such as I to decide. The Bright Mother alone must possess the Kwendi secret. That we know. Above all, it must be kept from the Unseen, whose trade is secrets. Far better it were destroyed than it fall to that moon. Therefore, I must alert the ronir. They will decide your course of action. Await a Sending from one greater than I. You have done well.

  Then it was gone, and Harric’s mind was small and dark again.

  Abandoned by that golden certainty, he felt cold and empty and utterly without meaning. The Bright Mother was the only meaning, and the Unseen its opposite, a blot of defiling darkness. He staggered a few steps down the stairs and collapsed in a ball, his cheek on a cold stone stair. There he gaped and stared like a calf stunned by a butcher’s mallet.

  *

  Harric had no idea how long he’d been on the stair when he roused. A voice had brought him back, echoing loudly in the narrow stairwell. He lifted his head and peered about.

  A tiny, frail old woman in ghostly white passed through the light of an arrow slit as she climbed the stair, her back to him. She clung with claw-like hands to the arm of someone at her side, who helped her climb.

  She had not seen him as she turned to climb the stairs above, and now, as she disappeared around the curve of the stairwell, another wave of emptiness swept through him. He pressed a hand to his mouth, holding back a sob. Then he rose and staggered down the stairs and out into the yard. In the stable, he curled in a ball and wept.

  Empty. Alone. Damned.

  Eventually, his own thoughts returned to fill the void. The boundaries of identity re-formed, and he knew himself again. He forced himself to stand, to breathe, to look around.

  Willard’s young packhorse, Holly, tossed her head, looking at him from under the tournament caparison Willard insisted she wear constantly. Her stable mates still waited outside, impatient to be rubbed and watered and fed. One whinnied, and Holly whinnied back.

  “Hold on,” Harric muttered. “I’ll be out to get you in a moment.”

  He massaged his temples, trying to piece together the events outside the glowing door. His memory of the event seemed in shreds, and even as he struggled, they faded. The more he returned to himself, the more the transcendent glory of those moments retreated. He grasped for the words he’d overheard, but they slipped away. He grasped for that ineffable feeling of rightness and joy, but it eluded him. It was as if a great swath of his memory were bleached white by a blaze of unearthly light, the stuff of his mind too frail to retain it.

  He remembered Willard’s order to take care of the horses before supper. Hadn’t he taken a bowl of beans for himself? He must have left it on the landing. He remembered hearing Mudruffle speak. He’d spoken in Iberg, and a few of the words had made Harric dig deep into his mother’s Iberg lessons. Yes. He remembered those. Accompany. Secret. Success. And he remembered feeling that Mudruffle wanted something from Harric’s companions.

  After that…the memory faded. Too close to the burn.

  Rising, he shoved the hair back from his face and tended to the horses, all the while mulling the matter over. Regardless of the specifics, the experience on the stairs left him with the distinct feeling that Mudruffle and Abellia had an agenda they weren’t sharing with the rest of them. Something to do with their moon and its desires, and not with helping Willard.

  Obviously, he ought to tell Willard, but he knew exactly what the old knight would think: You are a fool and an eavesdropping sneak. A pulse of shame heated his face. He’d probably think I was sniffing about for magic, too. No. He couldn’t tell Willard or Caris.

  He’d see what he could learn from Fink.

  Since the Unseen Moon can in fact be seen by the stars it occults, we should learn to call it not “Unseen” but simply “Black.” And since it takes no predictable path through the sky and has no effect on the tides, I stipulate it is no moon at all. What it is I cannot say, but to call it moon is mere foolishness. “The Black Spot,” let us call it, for that is all we can truly say.

  —From The Sayings of Master Tooler Jobbs, by Prentice Vincen

  15

  Black Moon Interlude

  Fink bounced on a wire in the fire-cone trees. The massive cable descended from the soaring structure Harric had called a “thunder spire” and anchored in the bedrock. He wasn’t sure of its purpose. Something about stealing thunder and lightning? That didn’t seem right. How could one steal such things? He’d ask Harric about it when he came.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the wire. This sort of contraption was all over Arkendia. “Toolery,” Harric called it. Instead of magic, they resorted to this clumsy mechanical flimflam. He picked absently at the strands of the cable under his feet. Above him, a breeze rocked the spire, and the cable slacked, so he dipped slightly, then rose as the spire rocked back again.

  Such effort, such labor and energy. And all to avoid magic!

  He shivered. Arkendian refusal of magic made his guts crawl. And it was an aspect of Harric’s background that put him on guard. The kid thought differently than any mag
us Fink had known, and in surprising ways that he couldn’t anticipate. And if Fink couldn’t anticipate him, how could he control him?

  The air before him pushed with a loud rush and pop as Fink’s sisters materialized around him. With a small cry of surprise, he slipped from the wire, only avoiding a stinging fall to the roots with an awkward grab with one hand, which won him time to spread and flap his wings before he dropped.

  Zire loomed above him, a pillar of black smoke. Sic and Missy flanked her, tall, cloaked figures of bone and hooded skulls.

  “Greetings, sisters three,” he said, as he found footing on the fire-cone roots and folded his wings in a peak behind him. He performed a mocking bow, his grin wide and strained. “To what do I owe this enormous—if utterly uncalled-for—pleasure?”

  A squirm of worry wriggled through him as his gaze flicked from one to the other and the other, looking for clues to their purpose. They had no reason to be there. His reports had been on time. He hadn’t summoned them. In fact, he didn’t want them there, for if Harric saw them, it would damage his already tenuous trust. The one time the kid had seen them, he nearly fainted.

  Sic spoke, her voice the fluting hiss of wind through dry bones. “We come to relieve you. We choose to secure the Arkendian ourselves.”

  Fink’s jaw dropped like he’d been knocked with a stone. When he finally found his tongue, he quivered with fear and fury. “Even you aren’t that stupid. You’ll ruin everything.”

  Zire’s grating sub-bass sent an itching vibration through the membranes of his wings. “YOUR ATTEMPTS TO WIN THE ARKENDIAN’S TRUST BRING RISK. I WILL TAKE POSSESSION OF HIS WILL AND ELIMINATE RISK.”

  Fink could not keep the panic from his voice. “Possess his body? You’re teasing, right?” He glanced to Sic and Missy, who remained silent. Did he sense discomfort in their stiff postures? Perhaps Zire had overruled them in this, for it wasn’t like them to play this sort of trick; if they wanted to torture him, they’d simply beat him and rob him of his meals. With a jolt, he realized how stupid he’d been. He’d assumed they’d merely wanted him to fail again, so they could consume him or make him their slave forever. To thwart them, he’d simply planned to succeed—to use Harric to get close enough to steal the secret of the Kwendi magic—and thereby win promotion beyond their reach. But all along they’d been plotting to make a play for the Kwendi magic themselves.

  He put on a sneer. “That kid is smart. His Kwendi friend is smart. And the white witch’s tryst is as clever as he is ridiculous. I give you half a day in Harric’s skin before one of them senses you and the white tryst casts you out in full sunlight.” He snorted. “Half an hour, more like. And you can bet your smoking cheeks I’ll be there to watch it.”

  “IT IS OUR JUDGMENT.”

  “Judgment requires understanding,” Fink snapped, “and you no more understand Harric than you understand White Moon doily weaves.” He glanced at Sic and Missy, searching in vain for signs of understanding, then jabbed a hooked talon toward them. “It’ll be your failure, too. Mark my words, this act of idiotic overreach will undo you. Possess his will. Are you kidding? This kid requires finesse, not invasion. He requires a soft touch, and cunning, and only one of us—me!—has any of that, and you know it.”

  “MISSY HAS A SOFTER TOUCH,” said Zire.

  “Softer than what?” Fink laughed. “A hammer?” Panic made his breaths short and rabbitlike. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths and looked again at Sic and Missy. Sic had turned her hooded skull to Missy, who seemed to sense her, and looked away. Hope sparked in him. The younger sisters didn’t want to cross Zire. But they saw the folly in her plan.

  “Look. Girls.” He spread his hands in a placating gesture. “Possession is a last resort. If Harric were uncooperative—which he isn’t, because he needs me—or if he sends me away—which he won’t, because he wants what I can teach him—or if he loses his connection with the Kwendi or the knight—which he can’t, because he’s tied to the knight’s girl by the entanglement of that Kwendi ring—if any of this happens, then I give you leave to possess him as you like. But now, when I have him right where we want him?” His lip curled in a sneer. “I bet you souls to damnation that white tryst casts you out in full sunlight before you’ve enjoyed your first lunch in that body.”

  “Perhaps there is no hurry in this decision, sisters,” said Sic.

  Blue light flickered in Zire’s billowing smoke. Missy’s hood turned toward her.

  “I’ve got him eating from my hand,” Fink continued, “like a baby bird that’s lost its mama. He keeps me secret from his friends. He’ll ask the Kwendi anything I want. But if you take me away or possess his body, you may as well appear as you do now and ask for the secret.”

  Missy nodded her empty hood. Her voice was the sound of distant, mournful owls. “There is no need to act now.”

  “I COULD TAKE POSSESSION OF THE CAT INSTEAD.”

  “You know nothing about human affairs—” Fink said.

  “YOU HAVE USED THE CAT IN THAT WAY.”

  “He knows how the cat works, smoke-for-brains. He’s seen my eyes in it. You don’t think he’ll notice if his pet walks up with smoking holes for eyes?”

  In a motion faster than Fink could follow, one of Zire’s gigantic, smoking hands slammed him flat upon the roots. Fink cried out in pain as his wings and spine racked against the unrelenting surface.

  “I WILL HAVE THE KWENDI MAGIC. I WILL HAVE THIS ARKENDIAN.”

  “He’s yours!” Fink squeaked. “Just not yet! We need him! Be patient!”

  Zire’s burning hand pressed harder. The pain of the roots nearly made Fink pass out. His chest flattened so much under the weight that he could scarcely draw breath.

  “Besides!” he wheezed. “If I fail—I take the fall—not you. Double safe—”

  “I WILL HAVE HIM.”

  “No one contests that,” murmured Missy.

  A deep rumble from the smoke that was Zire. Flashes of lightning, now red with anger, threaded through it.

  “Is it decided, then?” said Sic, her whispery voice sliding in from the side. “We wait to possess the Arkendian?” She’d framed it as a question so Zire could make the decision, but by asking it, she made clear she supported Fink’s caution. Fink strained his eyes to the side, trying to see her as she spoke, but flashing smoke obscured his view.

  Zire rumbled, a roiling storm compressed in a pillar of darkness. “AT THE END OF EACH NIGHT, YOU WILL REPORT TO ME.” The vibrations of her grating voice rippled through her hand and into Fink in waves of pain. He squirmed, no longer able to gather enough breath to cry out. “YOU WILL ANSWER TO ME. WITHOUT FAIL.

  Fink nodded wildly. I can’t breathe! You’re crushing me!

  “EACH NIGHT, YOU WILL CONVINCE ME WHY I SHOULD NOT TAKE POSSESSION OF THE ARKENDIAN.”

  Stars flashed before his eyes until she released enough pressure for him to suck in a breath and howl in pain. “If that’s what it takes, sure! Yes!”

  Another taloned hand appeared from the smoke. She dragged a single hooked claw down Fink’s belly, parting the black flesh like a fisherman cleaning his catch. Fink howled as she dipped a talon in the slit and drew forth a loop of spirit, one of the souls he’d consumed. In its distended form, he saw eyes wide in terror, mouth wide in silent scream.

  As Zire drew it into her smoke, hatred writhed through Fink. “Let me go,” he said.

  The hand that pinned him evaporated into smoke, and he clambered to his feet. With one hand, he held in his guts. “Mother will hear of this—” he began, but before he could finish, the three vanished and the air clapped behind them with a report like a snapping tree trunk.

  The air at his back gusted forward and slammed him face-first into the roots.

  “Fools!” he sputtered. “Idiots!” Panting with helpless rage, he clambered to his feet and threw handfuls of dirt after them. Some of the stones bounced among the roots. He looked about in the Unseen for their lurking figures, but saw nothing. No la
ughter trailed after. No hand emerged to grab him.

  Far above, the fire-cone trees sighed in a breeze. Spots of red moonlight shifted across the faces of massive trunks around him.

  He was alone again.

  Fink let out a shuddering sigh. Cradling his belly, he sat on a prominent root and pinched the wound together so the spirit flesh could mend. The kid would be there before long. When the wound closed to form an itchy vertical line, he leapt up to flap himself back on the wire to think.

  He’d lost a soul from his belly. That stung, but mostly from humiliation. Other than that, and pride, what had he lost in the skirmish?

  Nothing.

  He still had Harric. He still had charge of this opportunity to claim the Kwendi secret. Had it resulted in anything new? Yes. If he should appear to lose control of Harric, his sisters would intervene. He frowned. Well. He wouldn’t lose control. How could he? He and Harric were partners.

  So, what had he gained?

  A sly smile crept across his face.

  First, he’d exposed a rift between that idiot Zire and her younger, wiser sisters. Most important, he learned Zire wanted the credit for delivering the secret of the Kwendi magic to their moon. He shook his wings with quiet fury. The moment he had it, she’d try to snatch it from him. How she hated him. How she feared the vengeance he would take if he were ever promoted above her. She would rather no one of the Unseen achieved it than let Fink achieve it.

  Almost. But her greed was stronger than her fear.

  She would let Fink get close, and when she thought him on the verge of success, she’d move into Harric and claim the prize herself. So that was when he’d have to be careful—when they were getting close to the Kwendi. That was when he would have to be on his guard. And the kid would have to be on guard, too.

  He allowed himself a sly grin. He was the smart one. She was the strong one. He’d outmaneuver her. Outplay her. Outwit her. And in the end, he would deliver the secret to Mother. He never tired of this fantasy. He’d make Zire his lackey, and when he hungered, he’d hook snacks from her belly and suck them like noodles between his teeth.