The Jack of Souls
Book One of the Unseen Moon Series
by Stephen Merlino
Copyright © 2014 Stephen Merlino
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental, with the exception of the ghouls, which, of course, exactly resemble dead persons.
For Jane, my mother, who’s nothing like Harric’s mom, and who took me to my first workshop.
For Ed, my father, who taught me long patience.
For my sister Sue and brother Scott for the inspiration they bring by being so different than me.
For Kathryn, the one who didn’t flee.
For Maia and Roman, my biggest fans and partners in adventure.
For my close friends, who endured all the earliest drafts.
There is as much of you in this as there is me.
Eight –
Father Kogan’s Outdoor Stage Play
Nine –
Of Hexes & Wedding Rings
Twelve –
Ill Met in Gallows Ferry
Fourteen –
The High Prince & the Hostess
Fifteen –
On Treating with Gods
Sixteen –
A Triumph of Trickery
Eighteen –
Father Kogan & the Mob
Twenty –
Father Kogan’s Hidey-Hole
Twenty-Three –
Of Herbs & Hauntings
Twenty-Four –
Father Kogan the White
Twenty-Eight –
The Witch’s Creature
Twenty-Nine –
Father Kogan’s Sacrifice
Thirty –
Foul Friends & Good Fortune
Thirty-Two –
Father Kogan Fills His Belly
Thirty-Four –
No Master, No Slave
Thirty-Five –
Desperation & Despair
My first reader is my mother, Jane, whose opinion is always gentle and smart. She is followed by my dearest friends, Craig and Mark, who, with as much snark as my mother had gentleness, endured countless iterations of early drafts while I learned to write.
The members of Seattle Writers Cramp critique group had a huge impact on my learning as a writer. Steve, Amy, Amy, Mark, Tim, Janka, Kim, Mike, Barb, Thom, Kish, Courtland, Andrew, Manny, and Kim shared a lot of laughs with me. Their work is always a pleasure to read, and their critiques among the best writing instruction I’ve ever had. In that league, too, are my friends at North Seattle SFF Writers Fellowship, including Mariann, Mark, Linda, Vivian, Audrey, Kim, Yang-Yang and Sara, who took over the tradition of laughter and excellence when The Jack needed fresh eyes.
I am grateful to the pros at Fairwood Writers workshops, and I owe much to the judges of the Sandy Contest, Colorado Gold Contest, and PNWA Literary Competition, who run high quality competitions that provide new writers with a chance to break out, along with excellent coaching and feedback.
Finally, a big thank you goes to Lucienne Diver, who gave me seminal early advice about the story, and to my beta readers, Karen Duvall, Corinne Oflynn, and Stefan Marmion, who took this to the next level with me.
As I found the world, so do I leave it
With naught but what I’ve done
With but the craft I’ve mastered
With what regard I’ve won.
—Arkendian Funeral Rite
Cursed
“Y
ou written your
will yet, lad?”
Someone shouted the words in Harric’s ear over the din of the crowded barroom. He turned from the group of knights and house-girls he stood with, and found the brewer, Mags, leaning across the bar behind him. The old man fixed him with a look, drunk and earnest, and indicated the winch-clock on the bar. Five minutes to midnight. Five minutes left of Harric’s nineteenth year, and his last full day of life. “You’d best write it quick,” Mags said, “or Rudy’ll snatch up your things before your corpse is cold.”
Harric’s throat tightened. He clenched his jaw against a rising rage—rage at the unfairness of his fate, at the madness that spawned it, and—
He shook it off. He would
not
end like the others, howling or blubbering for mercy.
He tipped his cup back and took a deep drink from his wine. “The night is still young.” “Don’t make light of it, son. This is the day.”
“You think I don’t remember?”
“Just trying to help.”
“You’re trying to clear me out before my death spoils the party.”
The old man scratched his stubbled chin. “Well, it would cramp the mood considerable…”
Harric managed a wry smile. He pointed to the winch-clock that towered above him, a column of woodwork on the bar, like a coffin on end. “When the twelfth chime sounds at midnight, my precious doom has till sunset tomorrow to find me. Plenty of time to write a will.”
The brewer nodded, and grimaced as if struggling with emotion. He drew Harric close, old eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You know there isn’t a one of us here wouldn’t have stopped your mother if we’d known. I’d have killed her if I had to. I swear it.”
Unable to speak, Harric downed the last of his wine. “You’re right about one thing,” he said, pulling away. “It’s time to leave the celebration to my guests.” Before Mags could object, Harric stepped on a chair and onto the bar beside the winch-clock. From the back of the clock case he drew out the crowbar he’d hidden inside, and in two quick moves he wrenched out the mainspring to the accompaniment of cracking wood and outraged chimes.
“Wha—?” Mags choked. “Who’s gonna pay for that?”
“Keep your hair on.” Harric dropped his purse of coins on the bar, and steadied himself against the clock, forever stopped at one minute to midnight.
The clamor drew all eyes to the bar. A few present could read clocks and understood his joke; most simply saw him on the bar and fell silent, expecting a speech from their host.
Harric looked out into the smoky hall at the sea of upturned faces. In the gloom at the back of the hall, orange embers of ragleaf pipes pulsed like fireflies, and the place had fallen so silent he imagined he could hear the embers crackle with each pulse. Among the expectant faces he saw mostly locals of Gallows Ferry, familiars with whom he’d grown to manhood. Others were strangers passing through the outpost on the way to the Free Lands. He’d invited them all, and not a single enemy stood among them, for he’d drugged Rudy and his crew and left them sleeping with the hogs. A double pleasure, that.
“Almost time,” he called, with a room-filling bravado he did not feel. “And it’s going to stay that way for the rest of the night!” He raised the mainspring in mock triumph, to a roar of applause.
“I have no gloomy speech for you,” he assured them. “We’ve said our farewells, and this night is for celebration. I leave you now to finish the wine and continue as if this night would never end. For you I bought up all the wine in Gallows Ferry, so it will be a great affront to my memory if a drop remains at daybreak.”
Applause shook the timbered walls. Gentlemen and free men saluted with swords or raised cups. House-girls and maids threw flowers and other favors on the bar. In their faces he saw affection and curiosity and pity.
For that moment, Harric was a hero. He bowed, savoring the feeling for a single, aching heartbeat, then flung the mainspring to the crowd and departed for his chambers through the service door behind the bar.
Caris waited for him in the passage, illumined by a single candle near the door. Like all horse-touched, she was even bigger than the average man, so she filled the narrow servant’s corridor, hair touching the ceiling and elbows brushing walls. If Harric hadn’t expected her, he might have stepped back to give way, mistaking her in the dim light for one of the knights rooming at the inn, who sometimes got lost in its passages.
As the roar of the bar washed through the open door and past Harric, Caris flinched and clapped her hands to her ears.
He shut the door quickly and flashed a reassuring smile. “Ready? I expect they’ll be on my heels.”
She lowered her hands, but kept her stare on the floor between them, rocking from foot to foot. Even with the door closed, the bar’s clamor distressed her horse-touched senses, so it wouldn’t have surprised him if she turned and fled or—worse—curled in a ball with her hands to her ears. He’d seen it before, but he could never predict when she’d collapse and when she’d stand firm.