The Jack of Souls: A Rogue and Knight Epic Fantasy Series (The Unseen Moon - Epic Fantasy Series Book 1)

by Stephen Merlino

  The source of the mysterious voice hunkered there in crystal clarity, only paces away. “First time?” it rasped. “Not bad.”

  Harric choked and stumbled backward, but his eyes did not leave the figure. Black membranous wings folded untidily behind a horned, hairless black head and a long, bulbous nose. The very image of a trickster sprite from an Arkendian impit tale. Naked legs akimbo, it squatted in the dirt, taloned black hands folded before it, a whiplike tail nestled around its feet. Wide, white, pupilless eyes greeted Harric with a look of cunning and twisted humor above a mouth filled with hundreds of needlelike teeth.

  “Go on, you can tell me: you’ve done this before, right? It runs in your family?”

  “Wha—no! Who are you?” Harric’s face perspired with effort of supporting the weight upon his mind. By concentration he could hold himself in the Unseen, but only with tremendous effort. He was already gasping for breath as if he’d been holding up a tree.

  “Finkoklocos Marn, at your service,” said the creature. It scampered to its taloned feet and stood before him, eyes level with Harric’s navel, and performed a mocking bow. What Harric had taken to be the creature’s smile mutated into a horrible grin. “My friends call me Fink. You and me? We’re gonna be friends, so you call me Fink too.”

  Harric groaned and collapsed to his knees. The gate collapsed around him, and the familiar world of the Seen embraced him. Sweat poured from him. Fragments of the brief vision of the Unseen crushed in upon his soul again; echoes of the revelation of the afterworld that he strove to consign to oblivion as soon as they came. His breath came in painful heaves. He wanted unbearably much to seek forgetfulness in sleep, but didn’t dare close his eyes near the monster he’d summoned.

  Spook mewed somewhere near him.

  In the air before him, the crouching figure of Finkoklocos Marn snapped into leathery clarity. The imp scampered up to Harric. In his exhaustion Harric could only raise his head to watch as it licked the tip of a taloned finger with a long black tongue, and laid it carefully to Harric’s forehead between his eyes. The contact seared like fire, and penetrated inward like a red-hot nail through wax. Harric moaned, but lacked the strength to draw away. He closed his eyes, and in the darkness saw the imp’s talon withdraw from a teardrop-shaped aperture near the top of his consciousness. Through it he saw the world of the Unseen moving silently beyond, as through a high attic window in his mind. Yet his hand felt no such gouge through his skin.

  He opened his eyes in dazed surprise. The imp popped into the Seen before him. Its hideous grin widened in satisfaction.

  Roaring rose in Harric’s ears. Darkness crowded his vision, threatening to overwhelm him. Somewhere, his mother screamed in rage. Then all went black.

  *

  The air beside Fink tore open with a roar of protest as his sisters manifested in the Seen. The three of them loomed above him in the dark beneath the trees, pillars of brooding shadow.

  “Sisters!” Fink said, feigning surprise and delight. “How nice of you to visit. How are things in the Web?”

  The largest of them, Siq, stirred. She glided forward until she looked down on Harric’s prone body. Fink hid his irritation behind a grin. She wouldn’t dare touch Harric, but he could see by the vagueness of her form that it had been long since she feasted. The same appeared true for Missy and Sere. When Siq spoke, her voice was a faded whisper. “Will he trust you?”

  Fink shrugged. “Too soon to tell.” Taunting her, he scooped a few of the cat’s soul-strands, and slurped them through his teeth like noodles. “But this little catty gives me a good shell to hide and watch his dreams, learn about him. He’s an odd bird. I think he’ll trust.”

  The cat rolled to its feet and rubbed against his leg. He reached down to scratch it behind the ear, but on seeing the talon of his forefinger, thought better of it.

  “We question your choice of form.”

  “You don’t like it?” Fink extended all five talons of the hand, admiring his handiwork. “I’m an impit, from his fairy tales, see? They talk this way and everything.”

  “We are not pleased.”

  “Yeah? Well, it pleases me,” he said, emphasizing the vulgarity of speech he’d found in Harric’s memories of impit tales. “And anyway, that’s why I go in the cat. But this kid’s sharp. If I show up like a feathered angel he’ll smell the lie.”

  A low murmur from Missy. “You take to the impit form naturally. Almost, it seems, it is your true form.”

  Fink displayed the forest of needles in his jaws. “Maybe I am an Impit, Missy. Now unless you have a token from Mother, expressing her doubts, buzz off. I need some space.”

  The three brooded above him, silent and menacing, then vanished, the air sucking upon itself with a vicious clap.

  Fink scampered to Harric’s side, enjoying the nimbleness of the form, but tipped over when he stopped, as he’d neglected to fold his left wing in. He studied Harric, his bald head cocked to one side, scowling. He’d spent long hours in Harric’s dreams and memories. Siq could question all she wanted. He’d chosen the right form.

  “Harric?”

  Fink’s head snapped in the direction of the woman’s voice. He arranged Harric’s arms to look as though the man slept, and vanished with a pop into the Unseen.

  “Harric!” The big girl strode into the clearing, a lantern in one hand, a huge iron sword on her hip. She stood over Harric, a look of perplexity on her face, then knelt at his shoulder and shook him. “Harric, what are you doing? Wake up.”

  He did not awake.

  The cat padded over to her, mewing. The girl’s brow furrowed.

  Curious, Fink manipulated a few of Harric’s strands so he would not wake even if she burned him with her lantern. When he did not respond to a more vigorous shaking, she let out a broken cry of pain, and half fell upon, half embraced him.

  “Harric!” She laid her cheek to his lips and froze there, feeling for breath, Fink guessed. Panic growing, she shifted her ear to his chest, and froze again. At last, she sighed, tears welling in her eyes, and embraced him, weeping quietly.

  When she recovered, she raised her face to his. “Moons take you, Harric. What are you doing here?” She glanced around the clearing for clues.

  She frowned, and stared at his inert face for so long Fink considered leaving. Then, without warning, she kissed him hard and full on the lips, like a horse sucking water at a stream. When she came up for air she gave a guilty look around, blushing (Blushing! For that!), then laid another on him that might have been twice as long as the first.

  The cat directed a bored look at Fink in the Unseen, and began licking itself.

  Bored, Fink moved to tweak Harric’s strands to see if he could wake him, but she came up for air first, and he decided to see what she’d do next? Climb on top? He grinned.

  “That’s what you get for giving me this cursed ring.”

  She wiped her lips on a sleeve, studied him as if she might lay another, even longer, then she shook herself and stood. Muttering a curse, she lifted him in arms twice the size of his and carried him back toward their tower.

  The Unseen Moon is neither unseen, nor a moon. Any fool can find it if he isn’t scared to look, and since it pulls no tides and takes no predictable path through the stars, it cannot be a moon like the others. At least not of physical dimensions.

  —From Heretical Maunderings, Master Tooler Jobbs

  31

  A New World

  Harric woke to something nudging his shoulder. His hand drifted over to push Spook away, but found instead a boot. He opened his eyes to see Willard standing over him beneath the timber ceiling of the tower.

  “Get up, son. You’ve got work to do.”

  Harric sat up and looked around. He found himself on a fat woolen mattress before the hearth. Outside the window, dawn still slumbered, a mere lightening of the eastern sky.

  He had no memory of how he got there. The last thing he remembered from the night before was the forest in the
bicolor light of the moons, and…

  A lance of fear smote him as images of the creature he’d summoned flooded back to him. He closed his eyes, terrified of what he might find in the dark of his skull, only to have his fears confirmed by the sight of the tear-drop aperture the imp had poked through the veil of his mind; beyond it he saw the ghostly world of the Unseen, with its floating strands and eerie glow.

  Gods leave me, what have I done?

  Harric opened his eyes and watched Willard toss sticks on the fire. He imagined telling the old knight of it, but shame and pride killed the impulse. Brolli might understand; perhaps he could confide in the Kwendi when he returned from the pass. But not Willard. Not Caris. And surely not Abellia.

  Until Brolli returned, he was alone in this.

  Caris rose from an identical mattress nearby, and pulled a heavy tunic over her shirt. She squinted at Willard, who crouched by the hearth with no apparent pain.

  “You’re well?” she asked, voice rough with sleep.

  Willard turned from the fire. “Surprised?” The old knight’s eyes blazed as if with suppressed fury. His cheeks looked pink and healthy, his gaze clear and bright, and no bandage wound about his waist. “Hardly a mark where that wound was, today.” He slapped his hip to illustrate. “Seems it closed on its own last night. I’d give the credit to good old Arkendian avoidance of magic, but I’m no fool. Our hostess healed me.” His gaze drilled into Caris, who dropped her eyes and busied herself with her boots.

  Willard grunted, as if confirmed in his suspicions she’d been involved.

  “Guess sleeping’s considered unconscious,” Harric observed.

  “So it seems,” said Willard. “They get you too?”

  Harric ran a hand over his own injured ribs, expecting tenderness, but found no pain at all. The lumps on his head were absent, and the swelling below his eye. Healed! Had Abellia found him in the forest and brought him back? And if so, had she learned his secret? Ridiculous, he realized. She can barely walk alone, much less carry me out of the forest. He must’ve returned under his own power before she came down to tend their wounds.

  “Darn,” Harric said. “I was really looking forward to a month of healing the Arkendian way.”

  Willard lit a rag-roll with a burning stick from the hearth. His eyes flashed to Harric, unamused. When the roll burned hotly, he climbed to his feet and made his way to the door, a simple crutch under one arm. He still limped, Harric realized. The old witch apparently hadn’t healed everything; something still nagged him—perhaps an old wound, or he was finally feeling the effects of his long-delayed age.

  “We’ll be staying here long enough to rest the horses,” Willard said. “If Bannus follows us, we’ll hole up in this tower, so we need it ready for the horses. Enough hay for at least a week. Fill the troughs with water. Bring over the saddles and tack. Is there much to clear out, girl?”

  Caris stood. “No, sir. A small armory only.”

  “Show me.”

  Caris threw on her boots and trotted out the door, followed by Willard.

  Harric climbed to his knees and cradled his head in his hands. The breach in the top of his consciousness shone bright in his mind, and larger than he remembered it. Was it widening? Would he eventually see nothing but the spirit world when he closed his eyes, like the second sight his mother could never control? The thought breathed new life into his old fears of madness. Heart pounding, he peered through the aperture, searching for clues and catching the tail ends of the brilliant blue spirit strands rising up from Caris and Willard. The flames in the hearth, on the other hand, appeared as greedy black tongues casting no light at all. He tried closing the aperture by concentrating on it, but if anything it grew wider the more attention he paid it. Ignoring it was impossible, for it flashed before him with every blink.

  Dazed, he stumbled from the room and down the curving stairs, afraid to be alone. Outside, he found Caris and Willard talking in the yard. Caris had removed a pile of gear from the armory, which she now held before her in both arms: quilting, practice swords, and pot helms so old they might have been fashioned when Willard was a boy. On her face she wore an expression of determination and controlled excitement that gave Harric a twinge of panic.

  “A little sparring?” Willard asked Harric, amusement in his eyes. “Your paramour here wants a lesson in bladework. Put on that quilting. You can help.”

  The look of determination Harric had glimpsed in Caris’s face now bloomed into exultation. She tossed him a musty quilt.

  Harric held it out before him. “She’s not the one who’s going to need help.”

  Caris donned her quilting and examined the practice sword she drew from its sheath. Though its edge had been blunted, its polish was immaculate. Indeed, all the gear, though old, was spotless. Mudruffle’s work, he guessed.

  Harric donned the quilting and pot helm and stood across from Caris with a shield on one arm and a practice sword in the other, determined to at least hold his own.

  Willard leaned heavily on the crutch beneath one arm, and studied them, clouds of ragleaf gusting from his lips. “The most important thing you must learn about swordsmanship is not so much the how to, as the why to. We aren’t mercenaries, we’re knights. Queen’s Knights. A mercenary draws his sword whenever he’s paid to, but a Queen’s Knight draws only under the Code of Protection, which means in three situations: in the defense of your queen, in the defense of her people, and in self-defense. That’s it. A few of the popular orders these days forget this code, thinking it weak, and go out seeking honor and renown with the Order of the Dragon, or the Order of the Bear, or the Order of the Flame. Troublemakers. And if you want to learn to blast a spitfire, you’ll have to go elsewhere for it. I’m going to teach you my way,” he said, fingering his earring. “The Order of the Flea. I built my reputation on it. You don’t hear ballads about spitfire knights.

  “Now, normally in an apprenticeship you’d spend a couple of years polishing my armor and tending my horses before I let you pick up a sword. But considering our circumstances, girl, I’d prefer to know what you can do if we run into trouble. We’ll keep with regular fitness training and practice each day while we’re here, and whenever we can manage on travel days. That goes for you too, Harric.”

  Willard raised a practice sword and beckoned to Caris.

  “Let me see your standard attacks, girl—say, Claxon or Ear Whistle; I’ll parry with the Fiddler or Salute. Watch closely, Harric.”

  Harric watched as Caris leveled a series of crisp attacks on Willard, and the knight parried. After several repetitions, Willard called a halt. “Now it’s your turn, boy. Same attacks, only against the girl.”

  Harric faced Caris, and met her eyes for the first time since she’d promised to leave him if he didn’t give up trickery. Her gaze was steel. All business, true to her promise, even if it hurt her. Yet he could also see in the sleepless rings under her eyes that the struggle against her heart was taking a toll.

  He performed the Claxon with as much vigor as he could summon, and Caris parried with Fiddler.

  Willard frowned.

  “You’re putting all your weight into it, boy. In a real fight the Claxon’s bound to lodge in someone’s shield, and that’s bad. Even if you wedge it in her head, you can’t parry the next man when your sword’s stuck in the first. Understand? Control is the thing. Give it just enough power to get the job done. Forget the glory blow. A quick cut kills as well as beheading.”

  Harric nodded, and labored to heed the advice. Then it was Caris’s turn to attack, and though it was the same move each time, she came on with such ferocity that Harric was instantly in retreat.

  “The same thing goes for the parries, son. Grand motions like that are good for a stage, but not a fight. Sweeping parries overcompensate and leave you open for another attack. See? She got you. Only Gregan’s Lie is meant to be a grand and sweeping parry, and it’s meant for very unusual circumstances. Are you concentrating, boy? You’re about as d
ull as a sheep’s tail this morning.”

  “Sorry,” Harric said. I’m distracted, he wanted to add. I summoned a monster and might have ruined my life and afterlife, and every time I blink the spirit world flashes through a hole in my head.

  Caris raked her gaze over Harric, her chin high, cheeks flushed. There was triumph in her eyes, as if she’d proved a point or won an argument with him.

  “Look, I’m just tired—” he began, but she turned away and spoke to Willard.

  “Spar with me,” she said.

  Willard’s eyes darkened as he studied her eager face. Harric thought he detected a kind of veiled curiosity in his look, but there was also real opposition and distaste. “Think you’re ready for that, do you?” said Willard. Caris nodded. “Very well. You’re out, son. But watch as we spar, and pay attention to my movements. Small. Economical. Just enough to get it done. Understand?”

  Harric nodded—relieved, for he had bigger troubles to worry about. Removing the heavy helm, he sat back against the tower, and as Willard donned his gear, he closed his eyes.

  The teardrop window hung high in his mind like the rosette in the gable of his chambers in Gallows Ferry. The sight of it sent a stab of fear through his middle. Memory of the hideous creature who’d put it there flashed through his mind, and he shuddered, opening his eyes to banish the image.

  Is it any worse than your mother? he asked himself. No. So be strong, Harric. You need this.

  He closed his eyes again, and forced himself to study the tear-shaped window. The thing wasn’t as bright as it had been when he first awoke. The indirect light of approaching dawn appeared to dim it. But he could still see the vague movements of the spirit world beyond—horrifying, but also fascinating. It was, after all, a window into the mysteries of the Unseen. What treasures must wait there! It was the surprise of the thing that made it so bad last night. Once he got used to it, he might not be bothered at all. And perhaps next time if he could avoid staring into the face of the Unseen Moon—into the soul-blinding mystery of existence itself—if he could avoid doing that again, then he might use it to banish his mother forever, and even master the trick of invisibility.