The Jack of Souls (5 page)

Willard read her signals and let her run free, adjusting his balance to her motions as Molly forced the stallion’s head down and dug her hooves in for a precipitous stop. The stallion squealed in pain, twisting and juddering to a stop that launched its rider swimming through the air. Molly forced the stallion to the ground, twisting until he rolled belly up like a yielding dog. With a hoof the size of a stumper’s wedge, she pressed its skull to the stones, and
leaned.

A violet eye glared back at Willard, as if daring him to challenge her divine cruelty.

Willard grunted. “You make immortality so attractive, Molly.”

The fourth bowman staggered to his feet and limped away up the road, but Molly had her toy, and Willard did not dare deprive her of it in her present mood.

They stood now in the belly of a canyon, which rose before them over a low saddle of crumbling granite, over which the road climbed and disappeared again into another nameless channel through the scablands. A glance behind confirmed all three bowmen lay motionless in the dust.

The sound of hoofbeats drew his attention back to the road ahead, where the limping bowman climbed the road toward the rise. As the man reached the crest, a thicket of pennoned lances bobbed into view beyond it, flashing spear tips angled against the winds. The bowman hailed them, waving his arms as if he would fly.

Willard sat as straight as he could manage, visor down, and drew his cloak around his waist to conceal the paunch of his breastplate, and the red blood of his wound.

Eight knights in full armor drew up on the crest. Eight squires drew up behind them, and more men behind that. Willard frowned. They’d been only half that number the day before. To grow by so much they’d have to have the support of a ship or two on the river, which was very bad news. It meant they could replace their horses with fresh ones, while he could not. Molly, of course, was tireless, but the ambassador’s ponies sagged near collapse.

A knight in emerald-green armor advanced from amongst the others and signaled the ranks, from which six fresh bowmen emerged. They walked their mounts off the road among the boulders, maneuvering through the rocks until they drew even with their leader. Once there, they winched up their bowstrings. But the green knight made no further preparations for attack.

Willard grunted his approval. In the three days since Sir Green had picked up Willard’s trail, he had never engaged Willard directly, only followed and sent the occasional band of snipers. Sir Green clearly knew the old rule of fifty to one for mortal-on-immortal combat, and wisely awaited reinforcements before trying anything. His short-term tactics were also sound, since his present elevated position on the crest gave him as defensible a position as he could hope for, and he knew if Willard attacked, some of the bowmen could race past and threaten the ambassador.

A stalemate, then. Well enough.

But something was wrong with their horses. This close to a Phyros, a mortal horse should be terrified—even the best war-trained specimens should prove difficult to manage, and the untrained mounts ought to be blind with fear. Sir Green’s destriers stood on that crest as still as jades in a pasture, and even the untrained bowmen’s mounts seemed nothing more than nervous.

Molly also noticed. Though she kept her hoof against the stallion’s skull, she released the stallion’s jaw to better view their unresponsive audience.

There was only one explanation: their horses had been conditioned to be near a Phyros, just as his ponies had. And the only way to do that was to stable them with a Phyros.

A chill slid down Willard’s spine. “One of your immortal brothers has returned to Arkendia, Molly. They’ve got an immortal on their side.”

The implications hit him like a boot in the stomach. Did the Queen know? Had she alerted the Blue Order? He would never have sworn his oath to Anna if he’d known an Old One had returned, nor would Anna have let him.
I will never drink the Blood again. I will grow old with you and die.
The oath mocked him. He bit off a curse.

Willard studied the green knight, as if he could divine from the man’s appearance some clue of
which
Old One had returned without his knowing. Sir Bannus? His stomach turned at the thought. Could Sir Bannus be a day’s ride behind? Might he catch them before they crossed at Gallows Ferry?

Molly snorted. She released the quivering stallion, and Willard turned her back the way they’d come.

Sitting straight and calm as any immortal, he walked her away, shifting the cloak to conceal his bloody leg. With luck, the drips on the stones would be indistinguishable from the blood of his enemies, but there was nothing he could do about the bloodied crossbow bolts. His enemies would find them both, one inked with violet divinity, the other with mortal red. And when that happened they’d know the unimagined truth: that for the first time in three hundred years, Sir Willard—their most hated enemy, chief architect of their exile—was mortal again. And they could take him at will.

At a natural bend in the road he risked a glance back, to see his enemies still watching from the rise.
Good. Stick to your strategy, Sir Green. Hold off until your immortal master arrives.

A wave of dizziness swept him. He caught himself leaning, close to tipping from the saddle, and righted himself with a start. The wadding had shifted free and the trickle of drips returned to his ankle.

Brolli was right. I’ll fall before I return to him.

Black spots crowded his vision. A humming began between his ears.

“I will not!” he snarled at the absent ambassador. “Gods leave me, I swore it, I will not!”

Yet his hands trembled as he removed a gauntlet and reached for Molly’s neck to claw away the scab from the crossbow wound that had already hardened to a scar. Shuddering, he thrust the clot beneath the quilting on his leg and into the mouth of the wound.

I swore off
drinking
the Blood. I never swore off plasters.

Yet he understood too well the risk he took in touching it at all. Already the familiar fire raged in the wound, numbing as it burned. The old strength whispered briefly in his veins. But the old hunger
roared
. And the addiction that once ruled him embraced him like a possessing spirit.

More.

“No!” he gasped. “My lady!” In his delirium he could see her before him as she had been when last he saw her in court—aging away from him—now watching with pitying eyes. “I will not betray you again, Lady Anna! We will grow old and die together!”

He repeated the words like a mantra, beating his fist on his new-healed wound until he gained the bluff and cantered back up the U around the head of the ravine to the ambassador’s sheltering place.

True to his word, Brolli remained fastened to the saddle on his pony. He grinned with relief and admiration. “Well done, old man!”

“Ride!” Willard gasped.

The ambassador’s face fell, gold eyes searching for answers in the anguish of Willard’s face.

“Ride, I say! To Gallows Ferry. And get under that blanket, or we’ll be stoned by the first mob that sees you.”

Red for the Freeman at work in the vales,

The blood of the Yeoman is red as his flock’s,

And red is the Merchant’s, a-counting his stocks.

Orange is for Gentlemen new to their farms,

Yellow their betters, in glittering arms,

Green for the highest a Gentle can wend,

Blues for the Nobles whose cattle we tend,

Purple the stain of the God in our Kings,

Cut deep in the veins where the Phyros blood sings.

—Didactic rhyme of the Arkendian “blood ranks,” social castes based in the ancient Blood Religion, translated into Iberg by Sandro Botini.

Curse & Counterspell

H
arric staggered back
from Caris until he collided with the wall beside his desk. Morning light flooded the room. Wind banged the shutters, as if to frighten the fog it drove before it. A rush of relief escaped his lungs.

Caris reeled and stared, face pale with panic. “Your mother…” she murmured. Now that the crisis was past, shock seemed to squeeze in on her. The hands she’d balled for a fight now flew to her ears as if to shut out echoes of what she’d witnessed.

“Hey, it’s all right, Caris,” he said, her distress summoning a strength he didn’t otherwise feel. He took her wrists and coaxed her hands from her ears. “She’s gone. You saved me, Caris. She had me bewitched, and I was thinking I should just jump and end it when you woke me—or broke the spell, I guess.”

Saying it aloud made it real for him as well, dispelling the last shreds of nightmare from his head, but Caris pulled away. Her hands snapped to her ears and she squeezed her eyes shut as if the horrors still swirled around her. “The fog—there were voices!” She crouched like she would curl up in one of her fits, but as Harric reached to put a hand on her shoulder, she sprang up and punched a hole through the plaster. With a strangled growl, she wrenched the door open and thundered down the treads, taking them three or four at a time until the sounds of her passage faded in the lower flights.

To the stables, Harric guessed, and the solace she found among horses.

He exhaled in relief. It was difficult to help her once she collapsed, and half the time when she did, his efforts at soothing were rewarded with kicks in the shins. Nevertheless, he debated whether to follow. Alone, the room seemed hollow and exposed.

His guts chilled. He imagined his mother’s ghost in the shadow beside the window.

Shake it off. It’s just your nerves.

A stealthy rustle drifted behind him, and he spun about, heart in his throat.

*

Flat against the
wall beside the door stood a girl, one hand clapped to her mouth as if holding in a scream. She might have been thirteen, all willow wands and ribs in a chambermaid’s dress and apron. He didn’t recognize her, however, which was odd because he knew all the maids by name.

“Gods leave me,” she said, in a tiny, breathless voice. “That was the curse everyone’s talking about!” She sidled toward the open door, eyes wide and white.

“Don’t worry. It isn’t contagious.”

“Almost killed that Caris lady—stay away!” she cried, as he started toward her.

He stopped.

She fixed him with eyes determined but full of fear. After several heartbeats, she said, “You don’t recognize me.”

He looked closer. Nothing about her mousy hair or somber mouth triggered his memory, though there was something familiar about her.

“Lyla,” she said.

He exhaled slowly, his eyes searching hers.

“You won me from my master in the card game today. You freed me.”

“Of course! Your face was all covered in slave paint! I see Mother Ganner took you in and got you some new clothes.”

Her eyes dipped to his nakedness and bobbed back up. “You want I should fetch you some, too? The cold don’t do you no favors.”

Harric let out a laugh of surprise. He was bare as an egg to his toes. “I’m—ah—it’s been quite a night.” He grabbed his trousers from the floor and threw them on.

As he cinched up the bastard belt, she edged the rest of the way to the door, stopping only when she stood with a foot on the top step, ready to bolt. But she did not leave. She swallowed hard, as if steeling herself to speak. “I ain’t here to thank you. I’m here to pay my debt.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“My freedom ain’t worth nothing?”

“That’s not what I mean. I gave that to you freely. My payment was watching the expression on the face of that West Isle slaver while you burned the deed to your bondage. Anyway, I’m a dead man, and death cancels all debts.”

“You don’t have to die today. I can tell you how to beat that curse. That’s how I aim to pay my debt.” She took a step forward, determination giving her courage.

Harric suppressed a roll of his eyes. “Another surefire cure for curses? Look, I’ve seen her victims try a few dozen of those, and they don’t even delay their deaths. So, thank you, but if you don’t mind…” He gestured to the door to usher her out, but she stamped her foot, making a surprisingly loud bang. Her eyes blazed, wilting any remaining fear in them.