The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  With the strength of resolve and panic, she clawed beneath each half of the broken nexus and tore away the blisters in a flood of warm fluid.

  Tears in her eyes, she dropped the shards and struggled on her belly aboard the saddle until she could swing a leg around and grasp the mane and reins.

  Movement again from Bannus. This time, there was no mistaking it. A single scarred eyelid fluttered and opened. The deep violet eye fixed upon her as if it had watched her even in sleep. Madness gleamed in that eye, and Abellia lost her breath. It seemed her lungs had collapsed. Though they ached to suck in air, they had shrunk to the size of raisins and she would suffocate from fear.

  The contorted lips grimaced into something like a grin.

  Abellia managed to back her horse. The Phyros woke with a surprised growl and, without perceptible command from the immortal, matched Abellia’s retreat.

  Bannus’s eyes raked over her body. “What a nice surprise. Titus? You must see the offering that the witch has sent us.”

  The Phyros followed lazily, as if still half-asleep, and Abellia’s horse shied, nearly throwing her. Bannus sat in exactly the same posture he had when he slept, eyes fixed upon her. Behind him, the masked one staggered to his feet and remounted.

  Panic gripped her. Without her nexus, she was defenseless. She’d never felt so helpless. Now she would be punished for her sin.

  Her questing fingers found a spitfire in the saddle behind her, and her heart quailed quailed at the touch of it—a tool of chaos, of destruction—the defilement of the Red Moon at her hand. This was her punishment, she realized, as she fumbled to pull it from its nest without using the palms of her hands. This was the natural result of her choice to serve herself, not others—stripped of the healing nexus, she was forced to take up fire.

  The weapon was far too heavy for her newly minted arms, and as she tugged it free, her awkwardness made Sir Bannus laugh. She pointed it vaguely in his direction and screamed for him to stop.

  “You know which end to use?” His voice sounded as scarred as the rest of him, as if gravel filled his throat.

  “Yes! Stay back! I—I know you immortal not liking fire!” In spite of the futility of the gesture, holding the spitfire returned to her a measure of self-control. She had seen the weapons demonstrated. The mechanism on its stock was the same as the clumsy “firewand” Sir Willard used to light his ragleaf—a lever that turned an iron wheel against flint in order to spark resin.

  “You can’t hit me. You’ll miss, and start a…” A shadow of doubt crossed his eyes.

  “There. You see?” she said, angling the pipe toward the fire-cones above. “I cannot hit you, maybe, but I only need to hit the sky.” In that moment, she knew she had a chance. She knew the fire dynamics of the grove, and she knew Mudruffle’s escape route—where the heat and wind would come strongest, and where it would be least, and by pure luck, the Phyros had backed her down the very route Mudruffle himself would have chosen to escape a fire.

  Before the Phyros could leap, she closed her eyes and pulled the lever.

  When the Holy One cut and drink from the Phyros,

  And when the Blood of the God fills them with his wisdom,

  And when the god speaks, through them, divine words,

  Then shalt thou scribe each utterance on finest parchment

  Of brood and bastard and bind it as new scripture

  in the Sacred Book of Krato.

  —First Commandment of the Blood Heralds of Krato

  29

  Phyros Blood

  As Rag climbed a crumbling sandbank in Molly’s wake, Caris looked up to see Willard halted ahead of her on the flood plain, at the edge of the willows and alders that fringed the deeper forest behind. The pungent stink of ragleaf smoke rode a breeze from him and boxed her in the nose. He’d started on a new roll.

  “Hobble the horses here,” he said, “and follow me on foot.”

  Caris looked at the sun’s position in the sky. They couldn’t have left Harric and Brolli more than an hour before. They hadn’t even traveled two miles down the river. Did he have some trick in mind regarding the tracks that they left for Bannus?

  Willard watched her through a cloud of smoke. “I need you to do something for me.” Without further explanation, he urged Molly into the trees and disappeared behind a screen of brush.

  Puzzled, she did as he bade her and followed. Hiking in full armor let her stretch her legs and got her wind up, but she scarcely enjoyed it as she normally would. It was strange for Willard to make her leave Rag, and a stiffness in his manner made her chew at the inside of her lip. What did he need? Why not tell her before she left her horse?

  She found him more than a quarter of a mile from the river, beneath a fir tree. He’d dismounted and now stood waiting under the fir’s spreading branches, Molly’s reins in hand. As Caris joined him and began to catch her breath, she noticed two additional things: on the ground before him lay a coil of chains that she recognized as Molly’s four-point iron hobbles, and in one hand he held a polished wooden box the size of a fancy dagger case.

  She glanced to Willard’s face, looking for clues.

  His gaze hardened. “I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” he said, voice low and measured. “I’ll explain as we go. You understand?”

  Caris shifted her feet. She nodded.

  His lip curled slightly as he tied Molly off on one of the fir’s lower branches. Then he returned to the scaly trunk and sat with his back to it. He set the box beside him and stuck the ragleaf between his teeth. Hands free, he reached his arms back as if he’d embrace the tree behind him and met Caris’s gaze. “Chain me to the tree.”

  Caris felt the blood leave her face.

  “Just do it,” he said. “And make it good, because I must not slip free.”

  A dull roar began in Caris’s ears. What was this about? Should she know what this meant? She felt her vision narrowing to a closed tunnel before her as the roar grew louder—both signs heralding a collapse. She closed her eyes tightly. No. I cannot curl up on the ground now! She reached out for Rag and managed to sense her even at this distance. The mare was calm and content, and Caris dove into the connection to draw the mare’s senses around her like a shield against the confusion.

  Sweet grass. Unworried, swishing tails. Soothing sun on her haunches.

  “You with me, girl?”

  Caris nodded. The roar receded. When she opened her eyes, her vision had returned to normal. Splitting her attention between Rag and Willard, she picked up the chains and held up one of the thick manacles to his arm. It’s the Blood rage, she realized. He needs to be restrained. The manacle was made for Molly’s ankles, so it was too big for his wrist, but it fit tightly above his bicep. She clamped it in place and screwed in the bolt. Stretching the opposing manacle around the other side of the tree, she found it a few inches short of his other arm.

  “You’ll have to stand,” she said. “It doesn’t reach.”

  When he stood, the chain rose to the higher and narrower part of the trunk, so if he strained his arms back, she was able to clamp it in place and screw it tight. When she finished, she stepped away, and he sagged against the chains. Hanging like a man sentenced to lashes, he sucked furiously at the ragleaf, unleashing clouds of smoke.

  “You know I must face Sir Bannus,” he said, gray eyes boring into her. “It is inevitable.”

  She clenched her jaw. This was the reason he’d broken his oath to Anna. She knew it was necessary. She knew he was right. But that did not change the fact that he’d broken his vow. She felt the roar begin as a low hum between her ears, and closed her eyes to bathe again in Rag’s calm.

  After a moment, she said, “That’s why you’re taking the Blood.”

  “Yes. But even so, I fear I won’t have enough of it in me before he finds us.”

  Caris pursed her brow. She hadn’t thought about this, but now it seemed obvious. Willard was a long way from the huge size, outrageous musculature, and
deep blue of Sir Bannus. “How…much does it take?”

  “Not how much. How long.” Willard sucked at the tiny stub of ragleaf between his teeth and spat the butt away into the rocks. As he spoke, rank smoke gusted with his words. “Normally, when a mortal begins to take the Blood, it is a slow process. To keep control of the rage, one drinks no more than twice a month—to take it more often would be to invite madness and blind fury. At that rate, within the year, the transformation is complete. I, however, do not have a year. So I must drink again today.”

  “You want to take it twice in a day?”

  “Thrice. I’ve already drunk twice.” She glanced at his face, uncertain what he wanted her to understand. “But I am not any man, Caris. Nor am I new to the Blood. I lived many lifetimes with it running through my veins, and I know its ways. So I hope I can push the process, compress the year into days. I must try. I must achieve at least partial transformation, or we are lost.”

  Caris looked at Molly, who returned the look with steady eyes. She dared not extend her senses to the Phyros, but sensed eagerness and triumph in Molly’s glance and in the high lift of her head. Caris turned back to Willard. “So, how…?”

  “You will cut her and bleed her, Caris, and hold the cup to my mouth.”

  Caris felt her mouth drop open. The roar began between her ears, and she stepped back.

  Heads low, cropping grass. Contented chewing. Herd. Safety.

  “I will instruct you.” Willard nodded to the box. “Open it.”

  Caris swallowed. She picked it up and opened it. Inside, nested in purple velvet, lay a fine straight razor and a golden cup.

  “Bleeding a Phyros is simple. Find the vein, lance it, catch the Blood in the cup, and then hold it to my lips.”

  She blinked in surprise.

  “You’ve heard of ceremonies and sacred rites at every bleeding.” He gave her a wry smile. “That’s the way of the Old Ones and their ridiculous Heralds. We cut and drink.”

  Her heart felt like it would pound its way through her breastplate. She managed to give him a nod, but she could not meet his eye or she would fall into the roaring confusion that was human discourse. She did what she could, which was listen, and she nodded again to show she heard him.

  “Good,” he said. “Once you bring the cup to my lips and I drink, you must leave me. No matter what I say, no matter what order I give. You must ignore me and get out of sight.”

  “I will retreat to the river with the horses.”

  “Don’t tell me where you’ll be, you fool. If I break loose, the Blood rage will seek you. Understand?”

  She nodded.

  “And if you should hear things, if I should say things…unkind things…vile things to you, pay no heed, for it isn’t me. It is Krato in me.” She glanced up to note a grim smile. “I expect the Mad God will have a thing or two to say about a young woman in armor.”

  A plume of fear brushed inside her stomach, but she couldn’t suppress a curl of her lip.

  “Aye,” he said. His voice dropped so low that she almost didn’t hear. “Imagine how it feels when he inhabits me.”

  “How do you stand it?”

  He shook his head. “Mercifully, I remember little after I swallow. But enough on him. Go to Molly. She presents her shoulder to you.”

  Caris hesitated. With her hobbles on Willard, nothing restrained the Phyros but her lead on a branch the side of Caris’s wrist. “Will she fall into one of her moods once she’s bled?”

  “She will. But as long as you hold the cup of Blood, she won’t molest you. Get clear of her, let me drink, and go. She’ll be raging with hunger, but she won’t leave me to follow you.”

  Caris walked slowly toward the gigantic Phyros, carefully avoiding her gaze. Molly did appear to thrust her right shoulder out for a cut. Round muscles slid beneath the wine-black coat, making the livid scars jump and sink like squirming snakes. The sheer mass of scars was impressive: the legacy of Willard’s ten lifetimes of cuts. Bright violet, thick as fingers, they splayed across Molly’s coat like jags of lightning, following the paths of veins. The old scars were so numerous that Caris saw few places she could lay a hand on Molly’s coat without touching one. The idea that even a single vein might remain untapped in that landscape of slashes seemed absurd.

  But Molly knew: at the back of the shoulder was a soft weal of raised skin between two scars—a curve of untapped vein.

  “She’ll let me do this?” Caris glanced up at one steady violet eye.

  “She knows what the cup and blade mean. Hold the cup beneath the vein,” Willard said. “Press it close into the coat, so none spills.”

  It was the closest Caris had ever been to Molly. As she pressed the cup against the coat, she felt the extreme heat of the beast against the back of her fingers. Molly’s coat felt as if she’d been soaking the noon sun for an hour, or like she had an extreme fever. Was this the normal resting temperature for a Phyros? Natural awe rose in Caris, and she had to push aside a powerful urge to reach out to Molly with horse-senses, lest the Mad God roar through the connection and scour her mind.

  Caris looked up at the canopy. Her best guess told her the sun had begun its descent down the far side of noon. “If we wait to drive the horses south until after you recover, it will be too late to catch up to the others before sunset. As soon as I’ve given you the Blood, I’ll ride them south and send them on.”

  Willard considered that. “Be careful. You needn’t go far.”

  She paused, staring at the ground between them. “Is this the real reason we came south? So you could take the Blood. So the others wouldn’t see it?” She frowned inwardly. She could hear the bluntness of her own words, but she didn’t know how to smooth them. If Harric were there, he wouldn’t even have to ask this question; it would flow from his tongue in the regular course of conversation, and the old knight wouldn’t even know he’d asked it. Her tongue had no such grace. It spoke plainly and—apparently—struck flat. As often as not, people heard her questions as accusation.

  Willard’s gaze hardened and his chest puffed as if he’d bark at her. Then he frowned and slumped back against the chains.

  “The false trail is vital.” He closed his eyes. “But yes… The worst of this ugliness I wish to keep private. The fact is, I worry about the ambassador’s view of me. Until I reestablish control over the Blood, I am not myself. I am rash. Violent. I speak in anger without thinking. It makes me vile, and I fear it could change his heart.”

  Caris studied the old knight. Not so old any longer, actually. The wrinkles and bags around his eyes had smoothed as the flesh tightened. The fat of his neck and face had melted almost entirely away. Ridges of bone and cords of muscle had emerged like reefs and shoals at low tide. She blinked to clear her eyes and looked at him again with growing awe. Now that she’d seen it, it was impossible to un-see it, and he was hard to recognize: if it weren’t for the gray mustachio and ragleaf-yellow teeth, she’d have assumed him some other Phyros-rider.

  His gray eyes caught and held her gaze. “It changed your heart this morning. I saw it.”

  She felt a pulse of guilt and stared at the ground. “I am sorry I judged you. It wasn’t fair. You did…” She couldn’t say he’d done the right thing. “You did what you had to do. What was needed. Harric tells me I see only black and white and that people are generally gray. I don’t know if that’s true.” She risked a glance and found him watching her with a look she didn’t recognize. Perhaps his eyes smiled.

  “He may have something there,” said Willard.

  “I try to see it, but I am sure Brolli sees it. He wanted you to take the Blood because he wants to live.”

  Willard grunted. “Everyone wants their own monster to fight off the monsters, and Brolli’s no different. But he isn’t stupid, either. He knows the trouble with that is that no matter which monster wins, in the end you’re still left with a monster on your hands.”

  “Compared to Bannus, you are no monster. Brolli must see that.
”

  “For our queen’s sake, let’s hope so.” He jerked his chin toward Molly. “Now cut her and bring me a swallow of her cursed blood.”

  Where there are old forests, there are yoab. In these later years, the great blind beasts survive only in the mountains of the north and east. House Pelion’s trophy hall boasts a skeleton said to be from the largest recorded yoab at a length of thirty paces and crest height of three fathoms.

  —From Natural History of Arkendia, Sir Alhimbror Green

  30

  Fire Draught

  Caris’s mouth had gone dry. As she approached within reach of Molly, she watched the beast’s eyes carefully.

  “Look closely at the vein she’s presenting to you,” Willard said. “You’ll see the short scar I started along the top. That’s where I took the last two draughts today. You will continue that scar along the vein.”

  The new scar was so small that Caris hadn’t noticed it among the livid ropes around it. It was a tiny stub—no longer than the width of her thumb—branching off another scar. “If this is two cuts, then the cuts must be very small.”

  “They are. More like punctures, really. A larger cut would gush all over the place, and it is vexingly hard to get off your armor, so I don’t recommend it.” He let out a grim chuckle. “The Old Ones hold it to be a grave sin to spill a drop, but you’ll just want to be sure it doesn’t soil your armor.”

  “Soiled by the god.” A little laugh bubbled out of Caris, surprising her. Of course she’d known Willard carried no love for the Mad God, but until this moment she hadn’t realized he loathed him as much as she.

  She positioned herself to one side. Pressing the cup beneath the vein, she steadied her razor hand against Molly’s hot skin.