The Jack of Souls (42 page)

Caris stopped at the foot of a log bridge where a painted sign stood pegged to a post.

Royal Fire-Cone Range

Open Flame Forbidden Beyond This Point!

NO SPITFIRES

NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT

ROYAL WARRANT

Turn Back

ON PAIN OF DEATH

By Order of

Her Majesty’s Fire-Cone Prelate

Sir Tilate Patche

“Let’s see how well you read, boy,” Willard mumbled. “What’s it say?” When Harric finished reading it aloud, Willard nodded. “We’re getting close, then.”

Caris pointed to the green-mantled ridge toward which they climbed. “When we reach the crest of that ridge, we’ll get our first view of the fire-cones.”

Similar signs dotted the mule track all the way to the ridge, each freshly painted and free of obstructing foliage, as if maintained by industrious sprites.

Though green from a distance, the ridge was bare and rocky, which allowed a brief but expansive view east over another forested valley to a yet higher ridge beyond, on whose loftiest spur stood a kingly stand of fire-cones. The golden spires soared into the sky like a many-towered castle in a ballad, and from their midst rose the black spike of the thunder-rod, half again as tall.

“That’s the lightning-stealer I told you about, Brolli,” Caris said. “Abellia’s tower is below it.”

Though the trunks of the fire-cones obscured much of the tower, the thunder-rod appeared to rise from its top like the mast of the ship, its giddy height made fast with a multitude of stays slanting down to the forest. To Harric the stays looked like the ribbons of a gigantic maypole, but he knew they were cables of steel.

“And that shine,” said Willard, pointing vaguely. “That shine in the top branches, that’s the resin cones. Her Majesty’s most valuable crop.”

“Magnificent,” said Brolli, peering through his daylids. “Fire-cone do not grow on our side of the Godswall. Your toolers are clever indeed, to steal the lightning and take the cones.”

Willard gazed dully across the valley, face haggard.

“We’ll get you there by sunset, sir,” said Caris.

Willard swallowed. “I admit, that tower looks mighty welcome.”

“Drink,” Brolli said, handing him a limp water skin.

“I should warn you about Mudruffle, Abellia’s servant,” Caris said as Willard drank.

Willard paused to breathe, as if raising the skin sapped his strength. He looked at Caris. “Who?”

Caris hesitated. “Well, Abellia is a little eccentric, of course…but Mudruffle. He’s actually
strange
.” She watched Willard as if the news might overtax him. “He’s made of clay, I think,” she added. “Abellia made him.”

Harric’s interest piqued. Willard stared, uncomprehending.

“You mean a magical creature?” said the Kwendi. “Like a shadow or trysting servant?”

“No, no, no—I mean, yes, but… You see, I was afraid of him at first, but he’s very sweet and kind, and he would never do magic on you if you didn’t want it. He is very respectful. Abellia made him, I think, out of sticks and clay.” Caris halted and watched their reactions.

Sir Willard raised an eyebrow. Harric expected the old knight to explode, but he merely nodded. “Seen such…in the Iberg capital. Harmless. Servants for cooking.” Willard closed his eyes again and rocked forward in the saddle as if he might faint. Brolli retrieved the water skin before Willard dropped it.

One gray eye opened and found Brolli. “This witch…Abellia. Your…first Iberg?”

“I see some on gallows. We kill one in Gallows Ferry, yes?”

Willard grunted. “Never so many here. Come for your…magic.”

Brolli nodded. “They are a magic-using people, yes?”

“But you…you bottle it. In witch-silver…yes?” Willard’s eyelids closed. He breathed heavily through a slack mouth, as if the effort of speaking might cause him to faint.

Brolli gave Harric a look of concern.

“I can explain,” Harric said. “The Ibergs never figured out how to use witch-silver. They’ve been seeking it for ages, with no luck. So they want to learn it from you.”

Brolli smiled. “I hear so. And she may to ask me for it; is that your meaning, old man?” Willard nodded. “It is not to trouble,” said Brolli. “I never to know how we make it. I only use it. So I cannot to tell her.”

*

Upon reaching the
far side of the valley, the mule track climbed the escarpment beneath the fire-cones, and the trees blazed orange in late evening light. Within a couple bowshots of the trees, the mountainside leveled to form a peaceful meadow with a chattering brook. The trail took them along the brook and above the meadow into a terraced garden.

Harric stopped his horse and stared. Many of the plants around him, which seemed merely healthy from a distance, turned out to be astoundingly huge and lush. Bean stocks grew like trees, grappling each other toward the sky; cabbages squatted like rockfalls of green and purple boulders. And the entire place had been manicured in a kind of weedless precision.

Caris saw the look on his face and laughed.

“Mudruffle has a bit of a green thumb,” Caris said.

“Green thumb?” Willard snorted. “Whole arm must be green.”

Harric glanced at the old knight. Willard seemed to find a second wind as they neared the promised destination—much like the horses, who responded to Rag’s eager whinnies by increasing their paces.

The track wound up the rocky spine of ridge in a series of switchbacks amid the fire-cone trunks and the sweet smell of resin. Like the garden below, the grove was meticulously kept: lower branches had been pruned to reduce fire danger, the tinder-like needles that collected beneath had been swept up to expose rock-grappling roots, and not a cone lay uncollected.

Once they gained the top, Harric spied the warden’s tower, and a pulse of excitement thrilled through him. This near, he could pick out the lanky rod of iron running up the timber mast; he could also see how the timbers of the mast itself had been lashed together with bands and bolts as thick as his wrist. Nearby, several cable stays swooped down to find anchor in the bedrock.

Caris halted their approach when only a bowshot from the tower. “We should leave the horses here.”

Brolli stirred from his blankets. He lifted the daylids to his forehead, and gazed about with sleepy golden eyes. “Ah.” He yawned. “We’re here. Scat, cat.”

Spook hopped from his lap onto the fire-cone roots, eyes narrowed in annoyance. He sneezed once, sniffed about, then padded ahead toward the tower. Harric now noticed a pair of barns beside the tower, and a grassy yard and garden surrounding.

“That is the lightning-stealer, yes?” said Brolli, pointing.

Willard grunted. “No magic required.”

“Your hex strike here, old man? You say women make it come, too. This Abellia, she to make it come?”

Willard’s cheeks flushed an unhealthy red, but he seemed imbued now with a desperate, brittle spark. “She’s a woman. But old. So she won’t wake it. Otherwise it strikes when I’m in danger; if Caris is right, this Abellia will offer help.”

“Caris is woman. Why does she not to make the hex come?”

Willard studied Caris. “She’s…different. Horse-touched. I don’t know the logic of the thing, Brolli, but maybe that’s why.” Willard was beginning to sweat and pant again with the effort of speaking, but this time Brolli seemed to want the old man to pass out, and kept talking.

“And Caris wears a wedding ring,” said Brolli. “That might to be the difference.”

Willard nodded, as if in acknowledgement of some previous conversation on the topic. “That’s so. No
romantic
threat.”

“Still, we should warn this Abellia.”

“I’ll tell her in private.”

Without explanation, Willard positioned Molly beside a boulder that reached to the Phyros’s belly. “Help an old man down?”

Even from paces away, Harric could smell the rot on Willard. His breath stank like pond scum, and his quilting reeked of sweat and blood on ripe flesh. Harric was relieved, therefore, to picket the other horses while Caris and Brolli scrambled up the rock to help the old knight down. It was a messy process, but by the time Harric tethered Idgit and Rag, they got Willard free of the saddle without dropping him. Willard grimaced as he clambered down from the boulder. New stripes of blood leached into the bandage on his hip.

Caris and Brolli each took a shoulder and steered the old man across the swept yard to halt before a fan of ten stone steps at the foot of the tower.

Willard studied the tower with a military eye. “Standard drum. Bottom floor can take a half-dozen horses and hay for a fortnight.” He frowned at the upper floors. “Not near enough arrow loops, and the windows are too big. Still, if we stock the place with hay and water and a few sacks of beans, we might hold against Bannus long enough for the Blue Order to catch us up.”

He peered into Caris’s face beside him. “You think this Abellia would shy from a bit of a siege?”

She tried to hide her alarm. “I—I’ll ask her, sir.”

“Good.”

When they stood before the ironbound door, Caris lifted a knocker shaped like a female hand clasping an agate the size of an egg, and clapped it three times on the strike plate.

Willard peered at an engraved plaque beneath the knocker. “Read it, boy.” Harric glanced at Willard. The old man wasn’t even trying to pretend it was a test. Was it possible Willard
couldn’t
read? The notion surprised Harric. Many knights lacked letters, but he’d always assumed it was because of their full-time martial training that kept them from it. Willard had no such excuse, as he’d had seven lives in which to learn them.

Harric read aloud:

Here abides Mistress Abellia Pergrossi

by express proclamation of Her Royal Majesty, Chasia,

in the 27th year of her reign:

licensed fire-cone warden

with all powers appertaining.

A second plaque, just below, was much more ornate, and of obvious Iberg style. It featured fat farm animals and children, encircled by rivers and grain fields; outside this was another ring decorated with crescents and half-circles and circles, the phases of the Bright Mother. “The words along the top are Iberg. This one says,
Poverty
. Then
Chastity
and
Service.
”

A faint smile ghosted over Willard’s mouth. “You’re too clever by half, boy. Where’d you learn Iberg?”

“My mother. She worked abroad for the Queen.”

Willard snorted. “Explains your looseness toward magic.”

The door opened a crack, then swung outward, and the pale ghost of a drowned girl peered up at them from within. A thrill of fear swept Harric before he realized it was not a girl or a ghost, but a tiny old woman in cloud-white robes, a figure so frail she seemed nothing more than crisp papers in danger of blowing away.

Yet there was kindness in the lines of the ancient face, and her eyes, like wet black pebbles, shone clear and alive, as if the spirit behind them were indeed a child’s, and an observant one.

“
Mama,
” Caris murmured, lowering her eyes and touching one knee to the stone.

The watery eyes squinted at the blue-armored knight, who was Caris, in confusion. Then her wrinkled mouth made an O of surprise, and her attention flitted from Harric to Willard and back to Caris with astonishment. Brolli, Harric noticed, had donned a hood and kept his head down.

“My Caris!” Abellia cried, in a voice thin to cracking and an accent as thick as any Harric had heard. “My Caris!
Mio doso!”

Caris laughed and carefully embraced the tiny woman as if her steel limbs might crack her to pieces. The sunken eyes went wide, and she drew away, staring in surprise. “You wearing the hard britches! All is well? These steel panty not so comforting, no? Haha! You have the mentor! Yes? O! You must to tell! You must to eat. All your friends. We having plenty spaces. Plenty foods. You must coming in!”

“Mama, my mentor, Sir Willard, is hurt.”

The old woman blinked nearsightedly at Willard, laying her hands on Caris’s arm for balance. She scanned his face and bloodied armor with gentle eyes.