The Jack of Souls (20 page)

Mother’s.

Her laughter echoed in his brain as his lungs squeezed shut, and spots swam before his eyes. She’d won. Even after the sunset. She’d known it all along.

The Faceless One appeared with a cup beside the giant. “Surely it is dust by now, Master?”

“Dust? No. It is the blood of the god, Titus. Like quicksilver. It cannot spoil.” Bannus held the bauble above the cup, and snapped it in two between his fingers. Dark fluid drained from the broken halves. Bannus held the cup before him. His breathing grew deep and resonant, as if he were steeling himself for a great task, or aroused by visions of glory. “This is a gift, Titus. The god sends his blessing. When I drink this, Blood will be united with Blood, and I shall dream.”

Bannus downed the contents of the cup and sighed, head tilted backward.

“Leave me, Titus. Return to your post.”

“Yes, Master,” said Titus, but he did not leave them. Harric could still hear the man’s little gasps, as if he waited for Sir Bannus to return his prize.

“Do you not hear, Titus?”

“Master,” said Titus, his voice shaking between gasps. “The bastard’s crime is great. He must be punished. But his measurements…they seem to match. If I am right, and if his blood also matches, perhaps I might be allowed—”

“You are not ready, Titus. Return to your post, and this time make certain I am not disturbed.”

“Yes, Master.”

The Faceless One’s gasps faded, and the door opened and closed behind him, leaving Harric hanging in the darkness before the immortal, who had gone still, as if sleeping on his feet. “Gristhi,” Bannus murmured. “I see Gristhi. O, beautiful Phyros of old! It was Gristhi’s blood in the stone. Visions throng my eyes…” He swayed on his feet, head thrown back in ecstasy, still holding Harric above the floor.

Somewhere in the room, Lyla gasped.

Run, now!
Harric wanted to say.
He falls asleep! Go!
But he had almost no breath.

Movement in the darkness at Bannus’s side. Lyla! He motioned frantically for her to flee, but when he turned his head to locate her in the gloom, he stopped and gaped in shock at what he saw: standing at the immortal’s hip, fingers tracing the scars of his thigh, stood his mother.

“Sir Bannus is remarkably easy to manipulate from the spirit world.” She smiled, cocking her head to the side to peer up at the colossus. “He scarcely has a will of his own any longer, just a mass of urges and unfiltered impulses. So easy to tug at his desires. I pull one string and he notices that little slut who told you about your Proof. Another string, and he has the urge to piss and drag her with him as you pass outside his hall.”

Harric choked on fear and rage, and she laughed.

“Did you really think if you broke my hold on you I’d abandon you, Harric? I’d let you go down the path that will destroy our queen?” She stepped up to where Harric dangled. “Sir Bannus will do for me what my curse could not. And if I cannot urge him now to kill you, I’ll make him follow till he does.
I
am your curse now, and I am not so easily broken.” She stepped back and gazed at him fondly. “I love you, Harric. Soon you’ll join me in the spirit world, and we’ll have all the time we need to make up. I’ll finally be the mother that in life I never could.”

New horror filled Harric. He shook his head, tried to scream, “No!”—tried to pry the fingers holding him, but he was a mouse in the talons of a hawk.

She glided back to Bannus and around to his back, and disappeared from sight.

Bannus’s head jerked up. The mad eyes found Harric. Bannus’s grip tightened until Harric had no breath at all and his head began to ring. White flashes raced before his eyes. His body wrenched. His head whipped to the side and his face grew heavy with blood.

Distantly, he experienced the sensation of flying.

*

Caris stalked the
unfinished servant passage between the inn’s largest bunkrooms, armor clanking dully. The passages were narrow, made for smaller maids than she, and certainly not for a big one in armor. She turned sideways to get through some places, and even so bumped the panels of bare wattle, knocking out chunks of rough plaster.

She had found no sign of Harric in these passages, however, and none of the servants had seen him in the public spaces, though they said the place was crawling with squires on the hunt for him. Dreading the worst, she’d finally asked a potboy which room had been taken by Sir Bannus, and ended up here. Bannus was on the other side of the wall to her right. Was Harric?

The immortal spoke on the other side of the wall, a low rumble that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Another voice followed, but too faint to identify.

Where are you, Harric?

A familiar roar of confusion rose behind her eyes. It had been growing since she left Harric, and now it began to reach a dangerous pitch. Her heart pounded in her chest; her breathing felt choked and crowded.

Not now. Not here…

She sank to her knees and leaned against the left wall of the passage. Squeezing her eyes shut, she slipped her fingers under her helm, into her ears. The sound of her own breath grew loud in her private darkness. She let the rhythmic rush of it calm her, like the crash of waves on the beach below her father’s castle, which had hushed her to sleep as a child.
Breathe. Breathe.
The roaring receded. When her heart slowed to a manageable rate, she opened her eyes and dropped her hands. She felt a small twinge of hope at the knowledge she was getting better at stilling the roar this way.
Two months ago, when I first came here, I would have balled up and moaned on the floor.

She climbed to her feet, careful not to bump the right-hand wall. The immortal’s voice rumbled again, laughing this time. It sent more needles up her spine. She ground her teeth in frustration.
Even if Harric was in there, what in the Black Moon would you do about it? Anything?
She snorted.
Why are you even looking for him? You should be on the road by now, on your own, and gone. You should walk out of here right now, mount up, and ride.

She stalked forward to find the first exit and leave. As she balled her hands into fists, Harric’s ring bit into her finger, and her guts flipped with unfamiliar emotions. She stopped in her tracks. The roaring returned behind her eyes.

Gods leave me! Where in the Black Moon is he?

The wall before her exploded, and Harric flew through it in a shower of shattered wood and plaster. He slammed the opposite wall, rebounded, and crumpled at her feet, limp as a dishrag. If she’d been two paces farther along the passage, she’d have been clobbered. Harric too had been lucky, in a way, for if he’d hit one of the posts between panels of wattle, he’d have been crushed by the impact; instead, he’d hit square in the center of a panel that tore free from the posts and flew with him into the passage.

In the darkness beyond the new hole, a shadowy colossus loomed alone.

A chill confusion rose and swallowed her. Part of her knew that as a woman in armor she was an abomination to Sir Bannus and the Old Ways. She knew Bannus was probably mad with bloodlust. She knew he was probably drunk and unpredictable. But all of that was lost in blind panic for Harric. While dust still swirled in the passage, she scooped him in her arms and ran.

Deep laughter followed. “Sir Cobalt! Well met. Take the bastard and hang him. I will sleep and dream.”

Then the sound of scuttling as a small figure darted from the gapping hole in the wall and sped past her up the servant’s corridor. One of the servant girls had been inside. Lyla?

Caris turned from the scene and blundered away through the passage until she found an exit and burst into the stable yard. She staggered to one side in sudden darkness, caromed off the stone wall of the inn, then stopped and laid Harric in the dust. She tore off her helmet and laid her ear to his chest, terrified at what she might find.

His heart beat loud and strong. Tears of relief welled in her eyes, yet even as she wept she cursed the unfamiliar emotions.

What’s wrong with you? Get hold of yourself!

A guest door from the inn opened, not ten paces away. For a terrifying moment Caris feared it was Sir Bannus, but it was only a trio of squires. They swaggered into the yard, wearing silk evening clothes and light swords, and the expressions of eager hunters. When they saw Caris stooped over Harric, they halted, then came to her.

“You found him!” one said.

“If you thtand him up, thir,” said another, “and I’ll bash him a new thmile.” The speaker grinned, displaying toothless gums as he polished a rock the size of an apple on his tunic.

“I have the right to cut his balls off,” said the third. This one Caris recognized as the Sapphire’s squire, whose lance she’d broken. She stood, and he halted short, confusion on his brow as the torchlight illumined her face. Before he could draw his sword, her mailed fist crashed into the side of his head and he fell like a stone. More blows followed, but Caris barely remembered them.

She woke from a blur of fury to find herself on her knees, straddling a motionless body. She’d been balled over it, rocking back and forth. She had no idea how long she’d been there, only that her arms were tired from blows, and the face of the squire beneath her was so crushed and disfigured it nearly made her vomit. Three others lay senseless beside her. One was Harric.

What in the Black Moon is wrong with me?

Trembling, she stood and surveyed the bodies around her. She had to get Harric to Mother Ganner. He always called her his “true mother.” Mother Ganner would hide him and get him on his feet and out the door in the darkness.
The kitchens
, she thought.
It isn’t far. I can leave him with Mother Ganner, and depart without any more delay.

She dragged the squires to the deepest shadows against the inn, then hoisted Harric to her shoulder. He was surprisingly light, even with a pack on, so she bore him quickly along the back of the lodge to the kitchens.

The yard was empty. It seemed there had been no witnesses, and darkness was deepening, which would completely cloak her escape, once she left Harric in good hands.

The door to the kitchen was open. She looked up and down the yard to be sure she wasn’t spotted, then mounted the stone step and entered.

Red like a witch’s evil eye.

Black eats White,

And leaves the Red.

Kratos’ Moon, we’ll all be dead!

—Children’s rhyme describing “Kratos’ Moon,” a mythical event in which the Unseen Moon eclipses the Bright Mother, heralding tides of war and plague as the Mad Moon reigns unopposed in the sky.

Ill Met in Gallows Ferry

C
aris laid Harric
on a bench in the kitchens. Mother Ganner stood at the bread table with her round, fat back to Caris, working flour into one of many mounds of dough on the boards. Caris removed her helmet, and looked about warily. Even in her present state of excitement, she noticed the uncharacteristic silence in the kitchen. The serving girls stood together in the pantry, as if afraid to be noticed. More ominously, the great room adjacent to the kitchens, which usually roared with revels till midnight, lay hushed as the pale hours before dawn.

“Mother Ganner?” Caris said.

The widow turned her plump face toward Caris, without interrupting her kneading. A baby hung in a sling across her bosom—one of her cooks’ daughters—sleeping peacefully to the rhythmic swaying of her work. When Mother Ganner saw Caris, she stopped kneading and curtsied with a muttered “Lordship…”

Her face seemed odd to Caris in the uneven firelight, but what first seemed a trick of the shadows snapped into clarity as Caris stepped closer: the left side of Mother Ganner’s face was as swollen and purple as a wine melon.

Caris sucked her breath. “Mother Ganner! What happened?”

For several heartbeats the widow stared at Caris, trying to reconcile the familiar voice and face with the hard and polished armor.