The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 10a - Of Gods and Monsters

Yet even as Krato knew victory, the mortal horse Imblis stumbled, gravely wounded. Krato's power was not in healing, nor could he persuade the goddess Selese to aid him. So the Lord of Dominion opened his veins and joined them with the mare's. Thus by his blood was she made immortal and cruel, like her master, and he named her Phyrosi, mother of the immortal herds.

 

— From Lore of Ancient Arkendia, by Sir Benfist of Sudlin

                                                              

Chapter Ten

Harric stepped out of the servant stairwell into the darkness of the stable yard. He closed the door silently behind him and leaned against the rough stonework of the inn to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Above, the stars sparked cold and distant in their high stations. The two light-giving moons straddled the sky, each of them just beyond sight: the Bright Mother had set, and the red eye of the Mad Moon had not yet cleared the high bulwark of the Godswall. Between the setting of the one and the rising of the other was a span of darkness long enough to fit a meal and a song, or a careful escape. Jacks' Hour: the time of action for thieves and rogues.

Harric took it as a good omen.

He searched for the Unseen Moon, which had no predictable path through the sky. He found it directly overhead, blotting three stars in the Wanderer. This too he took as a good omen—for what was he now if not a wanderer?—and though his jaw and ribs ached from his recent beatings, a quiet joy lifted him.

When he could see the outline of the stables across the yard, he stood and crept along the base of the inn, where shadows were deepest, toward the head of the yard. His first stop would be the kitchens. He'd fill his pack, bid Mother Ganner farewell, and find someone to bring out his horse.

As he crept past an inset guest door, he halted, alerted by the sound of heavy footfalls within, and retreated. The door flung outward, away from Harric, spraying lamplight across the yard. A giant figure stepped out. Harric glimpsed naked blue flesh swarming with muscles and rope-like scars, and then the door slammed behind and submerged all in darkness.

An immortal. It had to be Sir Bannus. Harric froze against the inn, willing himself invisible.

There were no sounds of footfalls, but Sir Bannus grunted somewhere in the darkness before Harric. Waves of heat emanated from Bannus, bringing with them the smells of salt and iron. Then came the rustle and stink of urine in the dust, and a throaty sigh from the immortal.

Gods leave me, he's pissing. He's only pissing.

In a bar of indirect candlelight from an upper window, Harric could just make out the giant figure looming before him, an arm's length away. He struggled to silence his panicked breathing, but it felt as if his lungs had shrunk to the size of peach pits, while his heart leapt up in his throat. He dared not move even his eyes, lest they flash and betray him to the immortal.

A tiny sound drew his attention to the giant's side. A small figure with her wrist in Bannus's fist. She sagged there, broken, yet living, and with her free arm she hugged what remained of her dress to herself.

Lyla! A wave of grief and horror hit Harric. Then Bannus hauled her away, striding back through the door.

Before Harric could think, he followed into the lamp-lit hallway. The door slammed behind him as he crouched inside the threshold and watched Sir Bannus reel away. Harric saw now that the immortal was indeed gloriously nude, his gargantuan body a map of scars and impossible clefts of muscle. Bannus filled the hall, set it vibrating with his presence, half humming, half growling something that might be a song. When he stopped before a door at the end of the hall, he lifted Lyla by her hand and dangled her before his mouth to kiss her naked arm. Lyla saw Harric over Bannus's shoulder. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head vigorously, as if to warn Harric away.