The Jack of Souls (36 page)

It was just as palpable that Willard had more priceless cargo to protect on this journey than just the ring on her finger.

She was deep in the world of Holly’s emotions when Rag suddenly reared in her hobbles, terrified. Caris gasped in surprise, stepping back from Holly and shifting her attention to Rag.

Willard arrived in a tempest of pounding hooves. “Gods leave us, you’re safe.” His face shone with sweat and a mottle of ash and fever spots. When he saw Holly’s hood, and Caris’s distant focus, he choked on anger. “Get away from her!”

Caris startled. “I—she—”

Willard rode to Holly with obvious pain, and leaned down to fit the torn hood across her face. “Didn’t I tell you to leave her be? What were you doing with her?”

Caris’s mouth moved mutely as she struggled to access the world of language. “Rag—” she managed. Roaring began in her ears, and she raised her hands to shut it out.

Willard shoved her shoulder with his boot, and she let some of her connection to Rag slip away, to keep herself from collapsing with the strain of both worlds. She staggered against Willard’s stirrup and stared up as he searched her face.

“Do not fraternize with her,” he panted, eyes glassy and wild. “Do you understand me?”

Caris followed Willard’s gaze to Holly, as he affixed her lead to Molly’s saddle. “Holly…” She looked quizzically into his face. “She’s Molly’s…but Phyros can’t breed on this island—”

“Moons
blast
your woman’s tongue!
Never
repeat that. Do you hear? Have you any idea what you’ve said? Do you know what would happen if it were known?”

Caris blinked, uncertain.

“Tell me you understand, girl. Never repeat that. You understand?”

“I…I won’t tell Harric.”

“You won’t tell
any
one. Not Brolli. Not your white witch friend. Not ever. This is a more dangerous secret than that wedding ring, girl. No one knows it but you and I.”

Caris stared at the filly, her attentions divided perilously between worlds. She released more hold on Rag, and pointed at Holly. “But she’s a—”

“Phyros. Yes,” he hissed, barely a whisper. “Moons
take
your horse-touched eyes!”

“But they only breed on the Sacred Isle.” She thought about the Chaos Moon eclipse that Mother Ganner predicted, and wondered if this miracle were another sign of its approach.

Willard’s eyes closed as if he were suddenly too weary to keep them open. Only then did she notice his pale skin and the blood caking his leg below the wound.

“Tell me you understand, girl. Are you here, or are you in your horse there?”

“I understand. The Brotherhood. They’d try to start herds in the West Isles.”

“Yes.”

“But she’s different than Molly. Her eyes…”

“Hasn’t been blooded yet, or any fool could see it in her. Molly will blood her in time, gods leave us.”

He closed his eyes and swayed forward in his saddle. The encounter with the yoab had taxed his reserves. “Mount your horse and draw up beside me.”

She complied quickly, worried for his fever, and wanting to be near if he should fall from his saddle. When she stopped Rag beside Molly, however, it took almost all her concentration to keep Rag calm. Vaguely, she sensed Willard removing a gauntlet. Then he thrust his hand before her face, red blood welling from a slice across its back. She looked up in surprise.

His eyes shone, glassy and intense. “Kiss the blood and swear you’ll never reveal this. Swear on your apprenticeship.”

She kissed the blood. “I swear,” she murmured, and he smeared the blood across her lips as if sealing a letter with wax.

He nodded, then spurred Molly back up the slope the way he’d come.

Holly followed on spindly filly’s legs, casting curious glances back at Caris.

*

Harric heard Molly’s
hoofbeats drumming the moss before he saw her. When she appeared on the trail with Willard on her back, the old knight rode slumped over the front cantle of his saddle, a sheet of red blood down his leg. Caris followed close upon Rag, as if she expected him to topple at any moment. When Molly approached, Harric stepped away, unsure Willard had full control of her.

“Water,” Willard croaked, as he reined Molly in.

Harric lifted a newly filled skin, and Willard sucked at it greedily. Brolli and Caris gathered bandages from the packs and hurried them to Willard’s side. Willard glanced down, water streaming from his mustachios. He snorted. “If you think to coax me down off this saddle so you can patch me up, you’d better have a crane to put me up again.”

Brolli frowned. “We stand on a tree, then.” He pointed to one of the fallen torchwoods. “You ride up beside.”

Willard positioned Molly beside the fallen tree as the others scrambled onto its mossy side. With Harric holding supplies beside them on the tree, Brolli and Caris set to work.

“How in the Black Moon did you make the beast run off?” Willard said, as Brolli attempted a blood-crusted buckle.

Brolli smiled grimly. “I get lucky. That hurler was a smoke charge. For decoration only, but I get it right in the mouth, which ruin its smeller for a time. Probably scare it, mostly.”

Willard grunted. “Well done.”

“I must apologize for the—what you called them—party favor?” Brolli said. “When Idgit run, I try to grab my weapons, but I only got these.” He drew an apple-sized globe from his satchel, and held it out for their view. It appeared to be a solid globe of pure witch-silver.

“Why do you have party favors?” Harric said.

“For the Queen’s parties.” Brolli grimaced. “Has not been much to celebrate. Here,” he said, laying the globe in Harric’s hand. “You threw well today. Toss and see what it do.”

“Don’t you toss it, boy!” Willard stared at Harric, eyes bright with fever.

“I wasn’t going to toss it—”

“The moons you weren’t. Brolli says you tossed one already. That true?”

“But the yoab was charging you—”

“Are you an Arkendian, or an Iberg?”

“I did not mean to tempt him.” Brolli retrieved the hurler from Harric’s hand.

Willard panted, the red mouth of his wound lolling grotesquely. “It seems I must remind you, Ambassador, that Arkendians are bound by the Third Law to use no magic. Nor do we trust it in any way.” Though Willard addressed the Kwendi, his gaze bored into Harric. “Magic consumes and maddens the user. You need only look to what is left of the creator gods to know that.”

“What if you’re already mad to begin with?” Harric said. “Would it cure you?”

“Shut your trap, boy!” Willard grimaced, as if the effort of shouting caused him pain. “
Ibergs
use magic,” he continued, his voice lower, but hoarse with strain. “
Kwendi
use magic. West Isle lords employ it. But no true Arkendian. And no man of mine. That clear?”

Harric nodded. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but he also wished the old knight had become more worldly in five lifetimes of travel. Harric’s mother had encountered numerous cultures when serving the Queen abroad, each with different ideas about the moons and their magic, and she’d always preached openness to magic, if it served the Queen’s safety.

“Take no offense, please, Brolli,” said Willard, “but to Arkendians, magic brings weakness. Harric, like any other Arkendian, relies upon himself. I don’t like how comfortable he is with that globe in his hand.”

—Anecdote widely circulated early in the reign of Chasia

Of Herbs & Hauntings

H
arric tried to
stand, but his body had grown so stiff and sore from his recent exertion that he failed miserably, doubling back over in pain. Willard plucked his ragleaf from his mouth and extended it to him.

“Here. You’ve been roughed up pretty good.”

Harric smoked till his mouth stung, and it quelled enough pain to get him back on his feet. When he glanced at Caris he saw softness in her eyes, but when he met her eyes she clenched her jaw and turned away.

Willard said, “How far to the mountain pass you spoke of, girl?”

“It’s at the head of this valley.”

Willard grunted. “We could reach it tonight, if we pushed.”

“There’s a fortification and gate in the pass,” Caris said.

Harric found that funny. Even if he and Chacks or Remo had packed enough food for their expedition to their grove, they may well have faced a fort wall, too. He must have made an unseemly giggle, because the next thing he knew Willard plucked the ragleaf from his mouth and replaced it between his own teeth.

“You didn’t mention a guarded fort, girl,” said Willard. “How’d you get past when you came through?”

“It was unmanned in winter, but I suppose it’s occupied in summer, to protect the harvest.”

Willard frowned. “We might find the guards sympathetic to our cause, and we might not. Is there no other pass?”

“I don’t think so. The mountains are awfully rough up there.”

“Maybe we worry for nothing,” said Brolli. “Night comes, and you camp near the pass while I scout it. Who know? Perhaps the gate is abandon and we worry for nothing.”

“Unlikely,” Willard said. “The fire-cone represents a lot of revenue for the Queen.”

The Kwendi grinned his feral grin. “Then I have a way we slip by.” The mischievous twinkle in his eye was unmistakable. Harric guessed he planned to use magic to do it, and delivered the proposal like dropping a gauntlet before Willard.

Willard grunted and looked away, but Harric believed the old man knew exactly what the Kwendi implied, and tacitly—hypocritically—approved.
So, magic is okay if it benefits Willard, and he doesn’t have to acknowledge it.
Harric kept that thought to himself, but it might have leaked out in his look, for Willard avoided his glance.

“Very well,” Willard said. “Stop us a mile from the place, girl.”

*

Harric fell into
a rhythmic trudge behind Idgit, staring at the trail and seeing only the next spot he’d place his feet. As the sun sank behind them, and his shadow lengthened before him, Harric slowly emerged from his trance, aware of a strange sound around him. At first he thought Caris might be humming or singing. Or perhaps Brolli spoke in some pet voice to Spook beneath his blanket. It didn’t seem to have a direction, or it seemed to come from near him, accompanied by a hollow kind of echo.

It was a voice. Female. Hysterical. It seemed beside him, a presence at his ear. He flinched, looking about, but saw nothing.

Little fool! You’ll ruin everything!

He startled. The court accent and intonation were unmistakable. It was Mother. Warped and strange, but Mother.

Your destiny is nigh!
The familiar, horrible wail that accompanied her worst visions seemed to erupt from the air beside him, setting him staggering to one side, eyes bolting from his head.

“Stop it…” he gasped. “Leave me alone…”

Another sound, a hissing and snarling, and she cried,
Get away from me! I am last kin! It is my right! I have right of last kin!