The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  Harric felt something tighten in his chest. Lack of sleep seemed to unmask the ambassador. This was no longer the wry, practical trail companion and co-adventurer Harric thought he’d come to know over the past month; this was the treaty ambassador of the Kwendi, a man assembling important concepts of Arkendia and its queen to take back to the Kwendi people—a man whose information and decisions would determine the future of two peoples. And suddenly that treaty seemed by no means certain—in that moment, Harric could see Brolli advising his people either way.

  Harric swallowed. “I don’t disagree with your assessment. An unpredictable ally indeed. But a strong one, and a much worse enemy. Worse yet is Bannus and the Old Ones. You think Willard’s barely controlled rage is a hazard? If Bannus had been here just now instead of Willard, do you think he’d restrain his anger at an irritating priest?”

  “You’d be covered in my blood,” said Kogan. “Bannus don’t know how to control the rage. Willard studied with the Blue Order to learn how.”

  Brolli stared at them, eyes tired and searching. “Bad, worse, and worst. These are the choices? There are those among my people who wish to push your settlers from the north. Push them back down the Giant’s Gap and seal the Gap so we may live in peace again.”

  Kogan looked as if he would challenge this notion, but Harric caught his attention and gave a warning shake of his head, and to Harric’s relief, the giant looked away and said nothing. Harric did not want Kogan to give Brolli any more reason to criticize Arkendia. Better to let such things lie. But Brolli caught the glowering look on Kogan’s face and grimaced as if suddenly hearing how rude he had been.

  “Forgive me.” Brolli sighed. “Forget this. Please. It is the words of a very tired Kwendi.”

  “Already forgotten,” Harric said.

  Spook went rigid in Harric’s arms, and Harric instinctively pinned him in his basket before he could escape. The moon cat mewed in annoyance, big eyes fixed on Snapper’s head. A leaf or something had flown into the horse’s mane; Harric had seen it from the corner of his eye as he talked with Brolli. Now Snapper shook his head, rattling his bridle, and whatever had landed on him flew to Harric’s forearm and clung there with cool, soft fingers.

  Harric laughed and lifted the arm away from Spook, whose attention remained riveted to the plum-sized green frog on Harric’s arm.

  “A glider!” Harric said, holding his arm out so Brolli and Kogan could see. He was glad for an excuse to change subjects and lighten the mood. “We used to have these in Gallows Ferry.”

  The frog crawled up his arm toward his elbow, seeking higher ground from which to launch toward a tree. Harric watched as it climbed to his shoulder, inches from his eyes, and laughed as its cold little fingers stuck to his neck.

  “Why used to have?” Brolli did not look up from his writing.

  “Emigrants ate them all. Or let their bored kids take them to play with on the road.”

  Brolli looked up. “They are not even a mouthful. Yet you people eat them till they’re gone?”

  Harric felt his hackles rise at this latest criticism of Arkendia. “I don’t. Nor do my people, normally, but the emigrants on the road are in a tough situation. They’re hungry. Some are starving. And hundreds come through each day.”

  Kogan grunted. “Gotta feed my flock. We planned good. Plenty of food. But some flocks don’t have luck. Brother Mahz barely got on the road at all. Expect them to starve to save a damn frog? If a frog feeds a child, it ain’t a question.”

  Brolli looked at the priest. He said nothing.

  Harric ground his teeth, but he couldn’t fault Brolli. The ambassador was right to ask. And he was right to worry. The droves of emigrants invading his people’s land in the north were like locusts. They needed food and they needed shelter, and they’d take both from the land.

  Harric captured the frog as it climbed toward his ear. He held it at arm’s length from Spook, but had to release the cat in order to take up the reins long enough to walk Snapper to a tuft of nearby willows. Spook climbed from the basket onto Harric’s lap, big eyes riveted to the hand with the frog. “Easy, Spook.” As soon as they stopped at the willows, Harric again pinned Spook in his lap, provoking a frustrated growl.

  Raising the frog beside the tangle of willow branches, he uncurled his fingers so the frog could stand in his flattened palm. Without hesitation, the frog oriented to the nearest branches and leapt. It couldn’t close the full distance to the branches. Harric had made sure of that. But at the apex of its leap—still a foot short of its target—the magnificent yellow tongue flashed across the gap. Quick as it appeared, the tongue retracted and drew the little creature into the foliage. The tongue flashed again and drew the tiny yellow body even higher.

  He smiled. “I’ve seen one climb to the top of a willow that way, then leap and glide after bait-moths. You see, Brolli? I’m no frog killer.”

  “Your people never starve?” Kogan’s tone bordered on accusation. “Never had a long peace and too many people for your land?”

  Brolli turned to Kogan. He flipped his daylids down, so his expression was even more opaque. “These are not problems for my people. Perhaps when you are there you will see.”

  Harric shifted in his saddle. Kogan had come a long way since his first encounter with Brolli. He wasn’t throwing an anti-magic tantrum. But he was definitely operating outside his bounds again, and, judging by his tone, was not headed for making nice with the ambassador. “Yes, the Queen’s family has brought us a long peace,” Harric said, trying to bring the focus back to the positive. “Before her family came to the throne, the islands warred almost constantly. Since her grandfather pacified the West Isle, her wise rule extended the peace and our population has naturally grown.”

  “You Kwendi make war?” Kogan said. “That how come your population don’t overflow? How many Kwendi kingdoms are there?”

  Harric noticed the ambassador grew very still as the priest talked, as if Kogan had hit close to something Brolli didn’t wish to reveal. “My people have no kings.” Brolli reached under his daylids to rub his eyes. “I must sleep. My brain makes the unclear thoughts.” With a small bow to both of them, he drew his sleeping blanket over his head. His voice emerged, slightly muffled. “We go now. I must sleep.”

  Harric traded a glance with Kogan. The priest’s brown eyes narrowed. He shook his shaggy head. “Don’t feel right,” he muttered.

  “That they have no kings?” said Harric.

  “None of it.”

  Harric frowned. As he leaned down from his saddle and grabbed up Idgit’s lead, it occurred to him that though Brolli had been studying Arkendian culture very closely, Harric knew very little of the Kwendi. It felt a little like his relationship with Fink had felt before the geas. But that wasn’t the core of his unease. What bothered him most was the sense that in the last few days, something fundamental changed in the ambassador’s attitude. He used to be curious about Arkendia. Now he seemed critical.

  Soft snores already emerged from under Brolli’s blanket.

  “Ready, father?” Harric said, urging Snapper to the river.

  “To toss the smug little chimpey in the stream? Aye.”

  Harric ignored the priest, but Geraldine shook her wooly head so her ears slapped like the flaps of some ridiculous winter hat.

  Snapper only hesitated a moment before splashing into the water and walking up the stony bed toward the bend upriver. Pausing where the water was just above his ankles, he beckoned to the priest, who drew up beside him on the lumbering musk-auroch.

  “Think about what Brolli’s just seen,” Harric said. “Willard’s changed. It’s scared all of us.”

  “Don’t scare me.”

  “Because you’ve seen it before. Caris and I had never seen it before, but at least we knew the stories and ballads about the Phyros-riders and knew what to expect.” He indicated Brolli with a nod over his shoulder. “He has none of that. Think what that must be like. One day it’s Sir Willard, you
r trail companion, next day it’s a purple madman slaughtering squires and almost murdering a friend.”

  Kogan’s brow rumpled. He stared upstream, chewing on his beard.

  Harric squeezed Snapper with his heels, and the gelding splashed forward again.

  The Queen desperately needed the treaty with the Kwendi, especially now that the Old Ones had returned to challenge her throne. If the Kwendi refused peace, she’d have another enemy on her shores, and this one armed with an unfamiliar magic. It would weaken her armies, and the Old Ones would use that to their advantage.

  But if roles were reversed, would he recommend a peace treaty with a nation of locusts and madmen? Would any sane man? These thoughts left Harric feeling hollow and gray.

  *

  Caris rode after Willard, her mind immersed in the world of the horses she led. Rag still needed a steady touch to keep her calm around Molly. Fortunately, the captured horses had all been Phyros-trained, and the packhorses knew each other and fell in naturally behind Rag’s lead-mare governance. The gelding charger, however, did not like forming a string with the others without first establishing dominance, and required considerable gentling lest he kick the teeth out of the next horse in line.

  Still, she was grateful for the distraction, and as much as she calmed them in the face of their trials, they also calmed her when the human world stopped making sense. Or when the Blood raged in Willard.

  Thought of it sent a thrill up her spine, but it wasn’t fear.

  Her eyes strayed to the old knight, riding ahead around a thicket of brush and dry boulders. What scared her about the Blood rage wasn’t the danger it posed. It wasn’t the violence in the Blood, or the mindless fury. But…she felt it, somehow, in her horse-touched senses. That was it: when the Blood racked Willard, she sensed his distress like she would the frustrations of a furious stallion.

  Her mouth dropped open. She could sense the horse part of the Blood in Willard—not the part that was the Blood of the God, which made him immortal and violent, but Molly’s own blood, which she took from her great ancestor, Imblis, the first horse to be made immortal.

  How had Caris missed this possibility before?

  Extending her senses carefully to him, she felt it. She hadn’t imagined it! But…had she ever actually touched it? Gods leave her…yes. Without even thinking, while Willard raged at Kogan, she’d reached out to calm him like she would any furious stallion. A spear of fear ran through her middle. Had Willard felt the contact? And if he did, would he have known it was her? Her eyes found the knight, still riding before her. There had been no sign of it in the old man.

  She let out a relieved breath.

  Behind her, the captured charger whinnied and jerked against its lead. She turned in time to see a rear hoof flash back at the next horse in line, who stopped and pulled against its own lead. It avoided the kick, but its eyes showed its fear.

  Cursing herself, Caris turned Rag to bring the mare’s influence to bear and reestablished concentration on the gelding. Its mind rippled with frustrations she attempted to smooth, even while calming the other. The gelding kicked again before she managed to bring it back in line. Then she moved through the others, reassuring and restoring their sense of herd and security.

  Willard was barking at her. She was so deep in her concentration, she missed what he’d said. She sent a part of her mind out to make sense of his words. “What the Black Moon are you doing? Keep them in line, and pick up the pace.”

  She sighed. He’d already moved past the willows to trot Molly away along a long sandbar. As soon as she made a quick check on Mudruffle to be sure he hadn’t jostled loose, she brought them all up to a canter until they caught up.

  And there it was again, Willard’s presence, as clearly as if another horse had joined their train. It wasn’t as strong as Molly’s or even as strong as any mortal horse, for he was still mostly human. But the equine blood of Imblis was in him. Caris could feel it. And if she could feel it, she could touch it.

  Of the three moons, only the Bright Mother—the White Moon—denies its greatest gifts to its servants. Of all three moons, no doubt the White Moon is most wise.

  —Attributed to Black King Silas of the Iberg Compact

  28

  Fear & Folly

  Abellia woke in agony. Her hands and head and belly burned with pain that ripped her mind like a blinding fire. She had no recollection of where she was, or why she was in such misery. She tried to move, and received more pain as payment. Her body was not responding well. She opened her eyes and cried out as the shuttered windows sent lances of searing light into her brain, and once again she plunged into unconsciousness.

  When next she woke, her belly and hands still blazed, but the pain behind her eyes had lessened to a dull ache. She was cramped and shivering. She recognized the room and the empty milk jars. Then, in a rush of urgent memories, she remembered the crone and the sleeping knights.

  I must stand. I must get to her. Her eyes searched in vain for the hourglass she had intended to use, to measure the length of her unconsciousness, but even as she did, she realized she had forgotten it in her rush to begin.

  Slowly, holding her breath, she peered down the length of body to see new, youthful limbs, supple flesh and skin as smooth as rose milk.

  A sob of emotion escaped her lips.

  It had worked. She was young again.

  A throb of burning pain in her hands reminded her of the cost. Holding her breath, she raised them from under the milk and cried out at what she saw. Both palms had cooked and fused to her nexus stone in spite of the cooling milk. Huge blisters formed under the skin, and she could not separate her hands from the stone without tearing the blisters. Clenching her teeth tightly, she tried to tear the skin free of the nexus by twisting her palms in opposite directions around it. Pain bloomed anew, and her hands parted with a nasty crackling sound. Darkness crowded her vision from the sides, threatening to take her again, but when the pain subsided, the darkness retreated. Sucking a deep breath, she sat up in the tub and raised her hands again from the water.

  She stared in mute horror. The skin had not torn away from the nexus at all. Instead, the nexus stone had split down the middle so each half remained fused to the blister of a palm. The two shards of the nexus, once white and pearly bright, were now dark and brittle, and unmistakably dead.

  A low wail died in her as shame closed around her throat like a fist.

  The magnitude of her sin had no precedent. She had spent a precious nexus of the Bright Mother—a stone capable of healing thousands—on her own selfish resurrection. She pressed the back of one hand to her lips to hold back another wail and rocked back and forth in growing horror. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.

  What have I done?

  The snort of a horse jarred her back to the present.

  How long had she been unconscious? She studied the shadow and light against the eastern shutters, and judged it was still morning, but much later than she had hoped.

  With tremendous effort, she hauled herself into sitting position and clambered from the trough. Her body was weak and unfamiliar, her head faint and spinning. How thin she was, and hungry! She managed to pick up a cup of sweet carrot juice with the sides of her hands, and drank it down before she donned the robe. Reeling on new limbs like a newborn calf, she made her way down the stairs. Dimly she noted her robe was much too short now. With each step, her body seemed to remember itself, and her stride became more confident.

  When she reached the outer door, she fumbled with the latch on the window grate. The nerves of her hands still dazzled with pain, and the split halves of her nexus still stuck to her palms. She peered into the yard, daring to hope the men still slept. A rider-less horse had waked, and now cropped grass near the crumpled grandmother. No other sound could she hear in the yard.

  She lifted the bar and eased the heavy door open with silent thanks to Mudruffle for keeping the hinges well oiled. Heart pounding, she peered out. All
asleep. She’d given them a mighty urge when she opened that channel. Bright Mother willing, they’d sleep the day through.

  Picking her way among the sleeping men-at-arms on the steps, she wobbled toward the crone. Abellia’s legs were dangerously feeble, and her head dangerously light, but by half crawling, using one hand on the steps above her, she managed to avoid a stumble.

  In the massive channeling, her body had used all its own resources to rebuild. The juice she had drunk provided scant fuel, and every fiber in her being screamed for platters of beans and fruit and meat. Meat! She had not eaten flesh since childhood, but she knew with a certainty that she would devour an entire pig if one lay cooked before her.

  She shuffled to the horse and led it to the side of the stairs, where she could better mount. Without ceremony, she grasped the crone beneath the arms and struggled to lift her to the horse. The pitiful creature moaned, but did not resist. Nevertheless, Abellia tried several times and failed to get her on the horse.

  As she paused between attempts, movement caught her eye. A bolt of panic tore through her.

  The god-knight. Sir Bannus.

  Had there been movement among the scars of his face? Petrified, she stared up like a bird before a serpent. His face was a nest of thick and purple scars, like the faces of burned men she’d once healed in the Hospice of Tronte. Amputated ears, mutilated nose. Yet it seemed at peace now. Had she imagined movement? Was he but feigning sleep?

  Fear mastered her, and she abandoned the crone where she lay. Unable to look away from the horrible face of Bannus, she groped for the horse’s saddle and reins. The shards of nexus in her hands snagged painfully on the leather, preventing her from closing her fingers properly and grasping the reins. How appropriate it would be if these reminders of her sin prevented her from escaping!