The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 30 - Old SKills, New Skills

The Unseen Moon is neither unseen, nor a moon. Any fool can find it if he isn't scared to look, and since it pulls no tides and takes no predictable path through the stars, it cannot be a moon like the others. At least not of physical dimensions.              

                                          — From Heretical Maunderings, Master Tooler Jobbs

 

 

Chapter Thirty

Harric woke to something nudging his shoulder. His hand drifted over to push Spook away, but found instead a boot. He opened his eyes to see Willard standing over him beneath the timber ceiling of the tower.

"Get up, son. You've got work to do."

Harric sat up and looked around. He found himself on a fat woolen mattress before the hearth. Outside the window, dawn still slumbered, a mere lightening of the eastern sky.

He had no memory of how he got there. The last thing he remembered from the night before was the forest in the bicolor light of the moons, and... A lance of fear smote him as images of the creature he'd summoned flooded back to him. He closed his eyes, terrified of what he might find in the dark of his skull, only to have his fears confirmed by the sight of the tear-drop aperture the imp had poked through the veil of his mind; beyond it he saw the ghostly world of the Unseen, with its floating strands and eerie glow.

Gods leave me, what have I done?

Harric opened his eyes and watched Willard toss sticks on the fire. He imagined telling the old knight of it, but shame and pride killed the impulse. Brolli might understand; perhaps he could confide in the Kwendi when he returned from the pass. But not Willard. Not Caris. And surely not Abellia.

Until Brolli returned, he was alone in this.

Caris rose from an identical mattress nearby, and pulled a heavy tunic over her shirt. She squinted at Willard, who crouched by the hearth with no apparent pain.

"You're well?" she asked, voice rough with sleep.

Willard turned from the fire. "Surprised?" The old knight's eyes blazed as if with suppressed fury, but his cheeks were pink and healthy, his gaze clear and bright, and no bandage wound about his waist. "Hardly a mark where that wound was, today," he said, slapping his hip to illustrate. "Seems it closed on its own last night. I'd give the credit to good old Arkendian avoidance of magic, but I'm no fool. Our hostess healed me." His gaze drilled into Caris, who dropped her eyes guiltily and busied herself with her boots.

Willard grunted, as if confirmed in his suspicions that she'd been involved.

"Guess sleeping's considered unconscious," Harric observed.

"So it seems," said Willard. "They get you, too?"

Harric ran a hand over his own injured ribs, expecting tenderness, but found no pain at all. The lumps on his head were absent, and the swelling below his eye. Healed! Had Abellia found him in the forest and brought him back? And if so, had she learned his secret? Ridiculous, he realized. She can barely walk alone, much less carry me out of the forest. He must've returned under his own power before she came down to tend their wounds.

"Darn," Harric said. "I was really looking forward to a month of healing the Arkendian way."

Willard lit a ragroll with a burning stick from the hearth. His eyes flashed to Harric, unamused. When the roll burned hotly, he climbed to his feet and made his way to the door, a simple crutch under one arm. He still limped, Harric realized. The old witch apparently hadn't healed everything; something still nagged him — perhaps an old wound, or he was finally feeling the effects of his long-delayed age.