The Jack of Souls (31 page)

Harric let his breath out, and paused halfway to the willow to collect himself. The sight of Willard had added a layer of guilt to the complex stew of emotions boiling in his chest. If his mother led Bannus to Harric, then Harric endangered Willard and Brolli and everyone else. But how could he tell them? They’d think he was mad as she was. His heart beat high and loud in his ears. He closed his eyes tightly, fighting down an expanding bubble of despair.

At least I have this,
he thought, bringing the witch-stone out in his fist.
She’s afraid of this.
In the light of the Bright Mother, the stone was a glossy egg of blackness.
A witch’s link to the Unseen Moon—forbidden—death if I’m caught with it. And my only hope to keep my mother away.
If she returned, he’d take it out, and she’d flee. That was all that really mattered. Maybe it could somehow keep Bannus away, too. That was an idea. Maybe it was the stone that made Bannus less…what had she said?
Less tractable
than she’d thought?
Slower to rouse?
Another good reason to keep it.

The bubble of despair shrank a little. It was the very reason he’d grabbed the stone to begin with. If she’d been so afraid of the magic of his Proof, how much more would she fear a witch’s stone? Even if he never learned how to use it properly, the stone was worth its weight in gold if it kept his mother away. Would it keep Bannus away? That might be another story.

Spook meowed, rubbing against his leg.

“Where did you come from, scaredy?” This time Harric stooped and picked him up to hold him before his face and gaze at the strange white eyes. Spook peered back and meowed, showing tiny sharp teeth and a pink tongue.

“What the Black Moon does she have against you?” Too tired to ponder it, he parted the curtain of willow branches and reentered the camp. Sir Willard cast him a complicated look from a fire they’d built to boil up his ragleaf sleeping tea. Harric shrugged another apology, trudged to his blanket, and laid himself gingerly down. Tomorrow, if he had a moment of privacy, he’d study the witch-stone. Tonight, he’d sleep.

There was no comfortable position. No matter how he lay, some part of him objected, and the witch-stone seemed to lie against his flesh like a hammer, but he dared not lay it aside lest his mother return, or someone among their camp accidentally find it. Ultimately, he simply lay on his back, hands folded on his belly like a corpse in a coffin.

Spook climbed onto his chest and settled there, sphinx-like. The tiny nose leaned so close to Harric that the breath of his purr tickled Harric’s chin. Exhaustion pinned Harric’s eyelids and sat upon them so he could barely open them enough to meet the gaze of those milk-white eyes. Spook planted a soft paw on his forehead, between his eyes, and left it there as if Harric were a mouse it had pinned to the ground. Harric closed his eyes. “Catch some other mouse, Spook,” he murmured. “I’m too big for you.”

Voices whispered again at the edge of his awareness, dreams calling across the border of sleep and waking life.

And he sank into darkness.

*

Harric woke to
Spook yowling and spitting and clawing at his chest. His hand went to swipe the cat away, only to find a set of cold hands there already, grabbing at his shirt and grasping at the cat. Red moonlight illumined a cloaking fog and glimpses of pale bodies striving around him.

“Fog!” he cried out, beating the hands back, but they persisted with fiendish strength. The cat staged a yowling frenzy in his arms. Caris cried out, her voice uncannily loud and near in the fog, and the body groping him suddenly crashed sideways and tumbled over him, its bony knees sending daggers of pain through his ribs.

Caris was cursing like a raftsman. Her sword flashed, deadly silent, and the body beside him vanished into mist. Another jolted, her blade transfixing its middle, and vanished before it hit the ground. Harric rolled to his side, the cat still tangled in his shirt, and scanned about, ready to run.

They were alone.

Caris stood over him, sword glinting dully. In the red light of the Mad Moon he caught a glimpse of rage and terror on her face. All around them, the fog sank into the earth with uncanny speed. In the space of a half-dozen breaths, it vanished.

“Hurric?” Willard’s voice slurred from Brolli’s sleeping concoction. “Whad in the Black Moon’re you playin’ at?”

The old knight tottered in a patch of red light, gigantic whiskers askew, sword in his hand, still in its sheath. He’d somehow waked and clambered to his feet, despite the sleeping draft Brolli had given him. The act had called forth new blood from his hip, which already filled the bandage.

Harric saw no sign of Brolli; apparently the Kwendi watched their trail for pursuers.

“Just the cat, sir,” Harric said. “Must have rolled over on him. Won’t happen again.”

Willard stared, face slack and groggy. “The cat. Gods leave us. Sounded like the Battle of Arkam.”

Caris turned so her body partly concealed the sword in her hand.

“Sorry, sir,” said Harric, trying to keep the knight’s attention from her. “You can go back to sleep. No problem.”

Willard stared at Caris. “Awfully big sword for a cat,” he said. “You two aren’t fighting, are you?” A wry smile twisted his mouth beneath the crooked mustachios. “If he tried to kiss you, girl, a good slap would do the trick. In your case, it might knock him out. No need for a sword.”

Caris didn’t seem able to meet his eyes. Her brow furrowed, and Harric sensed she was about to curl up in crisis.

“You’re bleeding pretty bad, sir,” Harric said, trying to divert Willard’s attention.

“Eh? Damned bandages.” Willard scowled at the mess of linen.

“We’ll have to change those wads out before you go back to sleep,” Harric said.

Caris had begun to crouch, hands to ears, but these comments drew her out. She looked up, and Harric followed her gaze to the ruined bandages. The panic drained from her expression, replaced with outward determination rivaling her intensity during combat. Her hands dropped; she stood erect and strode to Willard.

“Lie down, sir,” she said, “I’ll fix your bandage.”

Willard scowled. “What, you haven’t kept me awake long enough?” He limped back to his bed as Caris went for the linen. “Here’s a hint, boy,” he said, crouching into his bed. “Don’t go feeling her up when a sword’s near at hand.”

“You think I’d need to steal a feel when she’s got that ring on?”

Willard grunted as he sank heavily into a seating position. “Probably not. Here’s your only warning, then: if that cat wakes me again, I’ll boil it for breakfast.”

Harric watched as Caris moved through the camp, all signs of panic gone, hands moving rapidly through her saddle pack for linens. External crisis, it seemed, focused her and held her together; when it left she might clap her hands to her ears and curl up in a ball, but until then she was as cool as any field captain—maybe more so. He recalled the first night his mother’s spirits had attacked, how she’d fought and triumphed with him, then after the fight fled to the stables.

Caris changed Willard’s linens as best she could. The old knight slept before she’d finished. Without a word, she fetched her blankets from her sleeping spot near Rag, and dropped them beside Harric. She sat and faced him, seething with emotion. “I’m sleeping here.”

He nodded, a queer mixture of guilt and dread and anger brewing in his chest. “I’m sorry, Caris. I thought it was over. I thought we’d beaten her.”

“She attacked
me,
Harric. Why’d she send her—creatures?—after
me
?”

“You?” he said, stunned. “I thought they grabbed
Spook.
”

She displayed a bandage she’d wrapped around her arm, slightly red with blood. “The only reason I survived is because you had woken me with your moaning.”

“I was moaning?”

“You were having a nightmare, I guess, weeping and talking so loud it woke me up all the way across the camp. Only the ragleaf tea kept Willard from waking. And when I woke I saw the fog, and it made me worried, so I came to sit with you.” She glanced away, blushing, as if caught in a confession, but kept talking to hide it. “There were three of those fog men, and only
one
went for the cat. The other two came at me.
Me
, Harric. Not you. If I hadn’t heard them coming, they would have got me.”

A cold pit opened under Harric’s stomach. He clenched his teeth. His hand found the stone beneath his shirt, and he balled his fist around it so hard his knuckles ached. “I’ve got to end this.”

“
We’ve
got to end this.”

“This is my problem—”

“Not anymore it’s not,” she snarled. “Now it’s personal, and if I ever get a chance, I’ll cut that bitch in two.”

Harric grinned, surprised at her vehemence. “Best girl in Arkendia,” he muttered to himself. She gave him a quizzical look, but he shrugged the question off. “Thanks. You’re my guardian spirit. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like you.”

Caris snorted. She relaxed a little, and he could see she was pleased, but her brow remained furrowed. “First thing we have to do is tell Willard. I’m going to tell him.”

“Whoa! Wait.” He laid a hand on her arm as she made to get up. “That’s not a good idea…” His mind whirled to address this unexpected turn. “He needs his sleep, Caris. The fog’s gone; we’re not in danger now.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to lie to him, Harric.”

“Of course not. I’m not asking you to lie to him. But we don’t have to tell him, either. Think about it,” he said, climbing painfully into a sitting position so he could meet her eyes. “Willard has enough to worry about, keeping Brolli safe and getting us through this wilderness, and honestly, Caris, we’re fine. She hasn’t hurt us yet. Just given us a good scare.”

“She’s tried to murder us both!”

“And we handled it both times, thanks to you.” He laid a gentle hand on her arm, and in spite of herself, she gave a small smile. “The fact is,” he said, lowering his voice and glancing at Willard, “If we tell Willard, I’m afraid he might think we endanger his mission and reconsider our apprenticeships.”

Caris’s eyes widened in alarm. She opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then closed it, her brow furrowed in distress. “Do you think he would?”

“He might. But it really doesn’t involve him, and it would only worry him unnecessarily. He really doesn’t need to know.” And
she
didn’t need to know about his mother’s influence on Bannus. Not yet. Not until Harric knew if his mother was bluffing, or if the witch-stone somehow protected them.

She stared at Willard, chewing her lip. “I suppose you’re right. For now.”

Harric nodded. He sighed inwardly, feeling like he’d dodged a disaster. “Good. Right.”

He lay back on his blanket, wincing as his ribs shot daggers through his flesh. “Think we can get any sleep tonight?” In spite of everything, the moment he closed his eyelids, he struggled to lift them again.

A look of concern passed behind Caris’s eyes. “From now until we get to the fire-cone tower, we sleep together.” She drew her sword from her scabbard and laid it naked between them. “We’ll take turns keeping watch for the fog. If it comes back, we’ll both be awake together.”

—From
Divine Blood, Cracked Vessels
, by Tulos of Bury

Father Kogan & the Mob

F
ather Kogan hunched
above the glowing remains of his campfire, one burly arm about the plump waist of the Widow Larkin. For the first time since they left their homes, a full month before, the night camps of caravans along the road lay silent. No blazing bonfires, no bawdy songs with rousing choruses, no ballads recited by squires and grooms. News of Sir Bannus’s return had spread like a plague wind up the road.