The Jack of Souls (19 page)

Any meaning it would have had from Harric was sullied by his dishonesty. Even thinking of it made her angry, and sad. He’d been the only man beside her brother who didn’t think her simple and wasn’t put off by her hugeness. Ultimately, however, the circlets of the ring hadn’t come from Harric, but the Phyros-rider, and as such they were a symbol of hope, not betrayal.

She studied them in the palm of her glove, where they fell naturally into a common center, as if a single ring. Tugging her glove off with her teeth, she slipped the rings on her smallest finger. Warmth and regret filled her, and she realized she would miss Harric in spite of herself. The realization surprised her, but, unaccountably, it pleased her as well. It also seemed not only possible but probable she would find the Phyros-rider and, against all odds, find a mentor in him.

As she replaced the gauntlet over the trinket, her mind turned toward the stables and escape. Her rank would protect her, if it came to a confrontation, but the Sapphire would almost surely know her father, and she did not want word of her whereabouts to reach her family. If she could saddle her horse unmolested, she was as good as free. With any luck, her armor would in fact be an effective disguise; she did not want trouble or bloodshed to complicate things further.

As she made for the stairwell, her wrist brushed an unfamiliar lump on her belt. Her brow furrowed as she uncovered a sock of coins tucked carefully behind a buckle. After a moment’s puzzlement, she recognized it, and muttered a curse that included Harric’s name.

It was her share of the squire’s coin.

—From
Lore of Ancient Arkendia
, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

Of Gods and Monsters

H
arric stepped out
of the servant stairwell into the darkness of the stable yard. He closed the door silently behind him and leaned against the rough stonework of the inn to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Above, the stars sparked cold and distant in their high stations. The two light-giving moons straddled the sky, each of them just beyond sight: the Bright Mother had set, and the red eye of the Mad Moon had not yet cleared the high bulwark of the Godswall. Between the setting of the one and the rising of the other was a span of darkness long enough to fit a meal and a song, or a careful escape.
Jacks’ Hour:
the time of action for thieves and rogues.

Harric took it as a good omen.

He searched for the Unseen Moon, which had no predictable path through the sky. He found it directly overhead, blotting three stars in the Wanderer. This too he took as a good omen—for what was he now if not a wanderer?—and though his jaw and ribs ached from his recent beatings, a quiet joy lifted him.

When he could see the outline of the stables across the yard, he stood and crept along the base of the inn, where shadows deepened, toward the head of the yard. His first stop would be the kitchens. He’d fill his pack, bid Mother Ganner farewell, and find someone to bring out his horse.

As he crept past an inset guest door, he halted, alerted by the sound of heavy footfalls within, and retreated. The door flung outward, away from Harric, spraying lamplight across the yard. A giant figure stepped out. Harric glimpsed naked blue flesh swarming with muscles and ropelike scars, and then the door slammed behind and submerged all in darkness.

An immortal. It had to be Sir Bannus. Harric froze against the inn, willing himself invisible.

Sir Bannus grunted somewhere in the darkness before Harric. Waves of heat emanated from him, bringing with them odors of salt and iron. Then came the rustle and stink of urine in the dust, and a throaty sigh from the immortal.

Gods leave me, he’s pissing. He’s only pissing.

In a bar of indirect candlelight from an upper window, Harric could just make out the giant figure looming before him, an arm’s length away. He struggled to silence his panicked breathing, but it felt as if his lungs had shrunk to the size of peach pits, while his heart leapt up in his throat. He dared not move even his eyes, lest they flash and betray him to the immortal.

A tiny sound drew his attention to the giant’s side. A small figure with her wrist in Bannus’s fist. She sagged in his grip, and with her free arm she hugged her torn dress to herself.

Lyla!
A wave of grief and horror hit Harric. Then Bannus hauled her away, striding back through the door.

Before Harric could think, he followed into the lamp-lit hallway. The door slammed behind him as he crouched inside the threshold and watched Sir Bannus reel away. Harric saw now that the immortal was indeed gloriously nude, his gargantuan body a map of scars and impossible clefts of muscle. Bannus filled the hall, set it vibrating with his presence, half humming, half growling something that might be a song. When he stopped before a door at the end of the hall, he lifted Lyla by her hand and dangled her before his mouth to kiss her naked arm. Lyla saw Harric over Bannus’s shoulder. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head vigorously, as if to warn Harric away.

Then Bannus dropped her down to her feet, pushed open the door, and twirled her through as if she were a dancer at a ball. She made no resistance, no sound whatsoever, but the despair in her eyes smote Harric deeply.

When the door slammed behind them, Harric sped to it. He heard muffled sounds from beyond. A whimper. A rumble, as the giant spoke.

Gods leave me, I have to help her!

He laid a hand on the door latch, arguing with himself. Help her
how
? The sad fact of the matter was that there was nothing anyone could do. He should leave while he still could. Anything else would be suicide.
Maybe I could distract him, divert him long enough for her to escape.
It might be possible. But even if she made it away, Harric probably wouldn’t. Bannus would have his head off in a second.

Grief tore a widening gulf in Harric.
I have to do something!

Before he could lean his weight on the latch, a gloved hand snared his wrist from behind and twisted his arm painfully up between his shoulder blades. Someone had been standing in the shadows around the corner of the corridor, and Harric had been so preoccupied he hadn’t even glanced that direction. Harric stifled a cry of pain as his assailant body-pressed him against Sir Bannus’s door.

“His Holiness wants no visitors,” a rasping voice said at his ear. “Especially no snooping bastards.” Something was muffled about the voice, but Harric could not see his captor, even when he turned his head.

“I bring a message for His Holiness,” Harric said. “His Majesty, the Sapphire, bids Sir Bannus join him in his chambers. I am to take you both.”

A wet, snorting laugh, strangely muffled, as if in a helm. “His Majesty would not send a bastard, unless to his death. Perhaps that was precisely what he had in mind?”

“His Majesty sent me. I am his messenger.”

“You are his
offering
.” His captor reached another gloved hand around and removed a lamp from its hook beside the door, and illumined Harric’s features with it.

Harric’s guts froze as the red-stone mask of Bannus’s shield bearer appeared at his shoulder.
A Faceless One!
The mask’s features were calm and tranquil, but the eyes studying Harric through the graven eyeholes were red and tortured.

His mother had told him of the Faceless Ones. Zealous squires, flayed and kept alive with the blood of the Phyros. But unlike their masters, who drank the Blood, the flayed bodies of the Faceless Ones were only allowed to bathe in it, which healed them incompletely, leaving burning scars. These they endured for years until allowed to take new skin.

“A fair covering,” the man whispered, more to the face, it seemed, than to Harric, who wore it. The man’s breathing came in clipped little gasps near Harric’s ear. A sweetly foul odor issued from behind the mask, causing Harric to gag. “Yes, fair. It matters not that you are a bastard.” The lamp rose, and the bloody gaze followed to Harric’s hair. “And the hair is fine.”

Beyond the door, more whimpering and rumbling. Panic strove with helplessness in Harric. He rose on his toes to gain some advantage in freeing his arm, but the man rose with him and twisted it even worse. He pressed Harric into the door, and returned the lamp to its hook. With the free hand he probed Harric’s skull. He spraddled the thumb and forefinger from the nape of the neck to his crown, and again from ear to ear, as if measuring. The gloved thumb snuffed the lamp. In the darkness the man seemed somehow closer, tighter against him.

“This might do,” he breathed in Harric’s ear. “I must confirm it with my tools.”

He took Harric’s free hand in his and guided it to the latch. “I could live with this face, this hair.” His voice was strangely faint, remote behind the mask. “I could wear this skin, and you, fair one, could have mine. If the god will have it.”

Something warm dripped on Harric’s neck, and he struggled to turn away, but the Faceless One twisted his arm, stealing all resistance.

“Stop… wait… please…” Harric said.

With his hand on Harric’s, the Faceless One squeezed the latch until it popped and the door sighed inward.

Bannus’s chambers were dim and humid, the air heavy with earthy odors. In a far corner, a single candle burned low, as if choked by the close air. Its flame was barely enough to illumine the space, but Harric caught suggestions of wrecked beds and bunks piled against walls. The mattresses and bedding appeared to be mounded in the midst, and it was there Harric expected the immortal already lay.

The Faceless One kicked Harric’s knees from behind, forcing him to kneel, then dropped to his knees beside him. “Master,” he said, his little gasps near Harric’s ear. “I captured a bastard spy.” His voice had become supplicant, eager. He didn’t whine, but his voice nearly cracked with restrained excitement.

Sir Bannus grunted. The sound was not from the mattresses, but from nearer in the darkness before him. Harric looked up from the bedding to see a dim outline of the giant standing with his back to them, perhaps two paces away. Harric averted his eyes, heart pounding in his ears. He found no sign of Lyla.

“Did I not say to leave us?” Bannus growled. “I care not. Take him. Test him. If he is a match, keep him, or parts of him.”

“Oh, Harric!” Lyla cried, from somewhere beyond the giant. Harric’s heart caved.

Bannus grunted. “What’s this? My little chickie has a nest mate? Was this a rescue?” Laughter boomed in the chamber, loud and harsh as gravel in an iron bucket. “When you are finished with him, Titus, bring him back for her to see.” The floorboards groaned as the immortal turned to face them. Harric kept his eyes down, but felt the immortal’s gaze like a scouring flame upon his cheeks.

The Faceless One hauled Harric to his feet, and backed him toward the door. “Your Holiness is great and generous.”

“Wait.” Bannus’s voice lowered to a menacing growl. “What is that behind his shoulder?”

The gasping at Harric’s ear hitched. “He wears a pack.”

“No. Do you not see it? To my eyes it blazes like a signal fire.”

Bannus reached for him, and Harric cringed away, but the Faceless One held him steady. He felt a tug and heard a rip as Bannus jerked something from his pack. The immortal’s heavy breathing ceased for a moment as he studied something in his hand. Bannus thrust the massive hand before Harric’s face, thick fingers flattened to display the white alabaster ornament at the end of one of the strings of his mother’s pack. The spindle of stone seemed a bead in the giant’s hand.

“What is it, Master?”

“What do you see?”

“I see a white stone bauble.”

“It is a blood seed.”

An intake of breath behind the mask. “Is it intact?”

Sir Bannus made a sound like the snort of a bull. He closed his fist around the bauble. With his other hand he gathered Harric’s shirt and collar and the straps of his pack in a constricting fist, and lifted him into the air.

Harric dared not meet the immortal’s gaze. His breath came in tiny gasps as his ribcage contracted in that vise.

“Bastard,” said Bannus, “do you know the abomination you carry? The god’s blood mocked and stolen?”

Harric knew of blood seeds. He’d never seen one, and his mother never revealed the nature of the ornament on her pack, but he knew now it was not a solid bauble at all, but a vial, cleverly disguised to keep a dram of blood from one of the Phyros slain in the Cleansing. Blood seeds were potent. They had been a kind of relic, or souvenir taken by the victors from the vanquished Phyros, but to an Old One—to the immortals so bitterly destroyed—they were an unholy abomination.

“I didn’t know!” Harric gasped, prying in vain at the biting straps of his pack. “My mother’s—”