The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 1c - Fog & Fire

Harric woke in pain, bony hands around his throat. He twisted against their hold until he tore away and shot upright as his enemy dissolved into fog.

Staring about in confusion, he gulped the air. His candle had dwindled to a guttering stub, but it was enough to illuminate the stream of fog sieving through the shutters and burying the floor. Already it stood as high as the top of his mattress.

He bolted from bed, sending his forgotten sword skittering to the floor where it disappeared beneath the fog. Something cold entwined his knees. Something hard seized an ankle. He cried out and wrenched free, tripping to the door and throwing it wide to plunge down the stairs, only to find the stairwell overflowing with fog. White hands like the hands of drowned men reached from its surface to grasp at his arms.

He cried out, stumbling backward and thrashing to the window. Throwing the shutters wide, he saw the Mad Moon full on the horizon, its red skin blazing like fire. A sea of blood buried the valley to the height of his window — the fog, stained red in the crimson light of the moon.

The fog filled the valley in all directions. Only the peak of the inn and a few distant hilltops stood above the tide, tiny islands of safety.

Harric clambered through the window to stand on its sill and grab a rung of the roof ladder beside it. Fire-red tendrils of fog slid up his knees as he stepped onto the lowest rung. He swung his other foot to the next rung, but something seized it and nearly jerked him into the void. Kicking wildly, he tore his foot free and pulled himself up with his arms.

Fear pulsed in his temples. His feet flew up the rungs. Only six more rungs to the edge of the gable above his chambers, and then he could grab the rope knot that dangled over the lip of the roof, swing a leg over, and crawl up the shingles to the roof peak above the fog.

As he clambered the last rungs and grabbed the knot securely in his fists, bony hands seized his left leg. He kicked free long enough to fling the leg over the lip of the roof, but they descended upon his right foot on the rung and wrenched it free.

Without solid purchase on the edge of the roof, his free leg slipped back, and he swung out above the void.

Harric roared. Dangling above the fog, something in him broke. The rage he’d bottled burst free and filled his limbs with fury. Stomping downward with his free foot, he broke his captor’s grip. He pulled himself up, swung a leg over the lip of the roof, and hauled his body onto the shingles.

On all fours, he scrabbled up the slope. When he reached the peak above the fog, he collapsed across it and lay panting and trembling. Only then did he realize he’d screamed his voice raw, and his feet and fingers bled from the sharp slate shingles.

When he caught his breath, he stood on the pinnacle of the roof, a tiny island in a flaming sea. His naked body shivered. To the west, the crimson moon set fire to the fog. To the east, immediately behind the inn, the fog lapped against the cliff of the Godswall. Even with a leap from the rooftop, the cliff stood too far away to reach, and too sheer to climb if he could.

He was trapped. And naked. And as the fog rose, his island dwindled.

Harric shivered again and rubbed his bruised throat. So it was the fog itself that executed her curses. Or something in the fog. And this is how Chacks and Remo must have died. He remembered their faces as they begged for mercy at his mother’s grave, the night before they fled.

“Is that what you want of me, Mother? Want me to weep and beg?”         

The fog swallowed his words. Already it submerged the top of his window below, and licked at the edge of the roof. Searching tendrils twined up the slates, questing and retreating like the tongues of serpents.

The Mad Moon glared across the sea, the blistered eye of its angry god. And now beside it, like the crow-plucked socket of its twin, stared the black void of the Unseen Moon. A pulse of fear shot through him. It was rare to notice the black moon’s place in the sky, and bad luck to stare when you did. Yet he found himself transfixed. It seemed not a moon but a burn-hole in the canopy of stars, blacker somehow than the night itself. It seemed to swallow the light of the nearest stars and humble even the fire of the Mad Moon beside it.

Something moved across the face of the Unseen Moon. A shimmer barely glimpsed, like a reflection from the depths of a well.

Whispers teased at the edge of Harric's mind: We see you.

A shiver crawled up his spine.

Fly to us. Be free.

The black moon kissed the horizon. It was setting, which meant dawn was near, for it always set before dawn. As it touched the fog, an oily stain seeped onto the surface of the sea, spilled ink on red linen. The stain meandered across its surface until it touched the shores of Harric’s island. A path. In the distance he imagined huddled figures on the path, shapes as dark as the moon itself, beckoning.

Fly to us. Fly and be free.

Harric shuddered. He imagined himself stepping from the roof onto the path and plunging thirty fathoms to the river. Even if he survived the icy shock, he’d never rise from the whirlpools. No one ever did. The figures called him to his death.

Death…and then what? The black moon’s belly? Oblivion? A new mother's womb and another run at happiness? Depends on who I ask. Surely one must be right.

A tingle of horrible hope ran through him. Might this path to the Unseen be an offer of freedom in the afterlife — of protection from his mother's ghost, which surely waited on the other side as she waited in his nightmares? Or should he wait for the fog to reach him and then fight — weaponless and naked — against a sea of clawing hands?

The fog boiled above the eaves, near enough to touch. In it Harric glimpsed faces desperate and hollow. Its hands and tendrils grew bolder, scrabbling toward his toes. A bold arm flung from the fog and scraped his heel.

Jump. Fly.

Heart pounding, Harric crouched to spring. 

*************************************

Thanks for reading!

-- If you enjoyed this chapter, you can “like” it by clicking the "vote" star.

--You can also leave a comment or question.

-- Even if you didn't like it, let me know why! That's how I improve! :)

* For JACK OF SOULS news sign up for the newsletter at stephenmerlino.com. *