The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 18 - Smoked Out & Hunted

The Iberg Magus Viero Meritosi once told the Lone Queen: "Toolery is Arkendia's imitation of Iberg magic." Our wise queen replied to this silken pillowcase: "On the contrary, friend. Toolery is Arkendian independence of Iberg magic."

 — Popular anecdote recorded by an illegal gossip press, Kingsport, late in reign of Chasia I

Chapter Eighteen

Harric woke from a dream-tortured sleep. The moon cat crouched on his chest, purring, watching him through green-slitted eyes. Green. They'd been milk the night before. Some trick of the moonlight, perhaps, had made them so. When he was young his mother had allowed him to keep a moon cat kitten with green eyes. She'd let him keep it long enough to love it, then made him drown it to prove he was beyond sentiment, as a courtiste must be. He'd refused, but she withheld his food for five days, and finally he succumbed. The memory made him sick to his stomach. And it was just such memories that had tortured his dreams. It seemed the worst of them had been dragged out of the tombs in which he'd sunk them, just to terrorize his soul. And unlike ordinary dreams, these had been vivid and true in every suppressed and forgotten detail.

...Harric, role-playing seductions with his mother.

...Harric, on "missions" to seduce other boys and girls.

All done unquestioningly, and with the eagerness and wonder of a doting only son.

And the shame of it scoured him anew. It wasn't my fault. I was just a kid.

He turned and retched. Nothing came up, but the action provoked lancing pains through his injured ribs, and his headache pounced with a vengeance. Mercilessly, the dry heaves persisted as his body sought to expel a pollution in his soul. 

When it finally stopped, he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and laid back again. High above, willow branches arched protectively over his nest. Clouds moved high and bright beyond gaps in the upper branches, lit by the rising sun, though it had yet to climb high enough over the eastern ridges to warm the valley. The scent of porridge and wood smoke drew his attention to a cook fire, where an orange-haired figure with the arms and chest of a giant and the legs of a dwarf tended a steaming pot.

Brolli, he recalled, as if it were a memory from another life.

 The Kwendi turned his head to look at him with huge, bulging black eyes, and flashed his feral grin. Caris joined Brolli at the fire, brow furrowed in curiosity.

The Kwendi grinned. "You no recognize?  It is the eyes."

"And your hair," she said. "It's orange."

"Ah. You are blind for colors at night," Brolli said. "I forget." He gathered the mane of orange hair and tied it in a tail behind his head. The same bronze hair fuzzed his long arms and stubbled his face. "I am just as blind in day, without these," he said, tapping the black coverings over his eyes. It was clear now that the bulging "eyes" were cup-shaped lenses held in place with a strap behind his head.

Harric rolled gingerly to his stomach, careful not to alarm his injured body more than necessary. He crawled to his knees, then climbed to his feet and limped out of camp to relieve himself. Spook followed, mewing hungrily. When he returned to the fire, Brolli had removed the black eye covers and held them up against the light so they could see it shine through like the glass of a bottle.

"We wear them to make day less bright," said Brolli, returning them to his eyes. "The lenses are like your brewer glass, but much stronger, and lighter."

"Stronger than glass?" The tooler in every Arkendian awoke in Harric. "Are they a gemstone of some kind?"

The ambassador grinned. "Can you believe they are dragon eyes?"