The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 32

The Great Swords slew Phyros in the Cleansing. Willard's Belle. Beldan's Karst. Great axes earned names, but fewer survive to this day. In the hands of Father Bundas, the ax named Jack'a'nape took the head of Vichis. That axe rests high on a wall of the throne room in Kingsport.

— From A Noble Historie of the Cleansing, by Sir Gundon Pond

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REVELATION & LOSS

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Caris woke on her back and stared up at the faint patches of starlight that backlit the lattice of branches high above. All around her, the black trunks of ancient trees towered like the legs of giant sentinels.

Her dreams had been strangely torturous, so she sought back in her memory for the reason before it faded.

Courtiste. Magic. Lies.

Harric.

The memory hit her like a runaway carriage and pushed her heart down in the dirt. As the roar of a horse-touched panic began between her ears, she groaned and fled into Rag. The mare's sleeping senses numbed her, and the roaring subsided. When her heartbeat calmed again, she rose and struck a flame to light the lantern, legs and shoulders complaining from the night's drills.

The aches in her muscles were agreeable ones that her morning stretches could address. After a deep drink from her water skin, she ran through exercises to stretch her shoulders and arms, then moved to her legs and back.

As she finished, she heard Molly's chains rattling in the camp above. It wasn't the sounds of the Phyros shuffling her hooves. This was a continuous clatter, the sound of Willard stowing the hobbles and preparing to ride.

She woke Rag, and saddled her. A few minutes later when Willard and Molly loomed out of the twilight into the circle of her lantern, she was already mounted. Willard gave her a grim nod, and she took up the lantern to light their way out of the camp in search of a secluded place to bleed Molly. Once back on the yoab run, they rode a mile north, and when they found an appropriately sized tree, Caris chained him to it, and he agreed to let her gag him as soon as he drank from the cup.

As soon as Krato began to rage into the gag, she mounted and rode west until she reached the edge of the forest where she could look out at the ridge across the valley.

If she looked far back down the valley, she could still see Abellia's tower against the sky—alone, like a single blackened tooth—and the sight of it tore at her heart. Not even a stick remained of the fire-cone grove under which it once sheltered. The thunder-spire was gone. The barn and stables were gone. And the lightless upper windows—just visible in the distance—seemed like empty eyes. The only movement was a forlorn ghost of ash stirred up by the wind still racing across the ridge.

She closed her eyes and sent out an aching wish that Abellia had survived and escaped somehow, and that she had eluded Sir Bannus.

The fire hadn't followed them down the cliffs to their valley, but beyond the ridge it still raged. How far back would it drive Bannus? All the way to the river? She studied the smoke plumes and tried to imagine its progress in the valleys beyond. It was hard to tell if it was running away from her, west toward the pass and the river, but it was definitely moving north toward the Godswall. Smoke filled the northwestern sky, rising and expanding in plumes as tall and white as the cumulus clouds of the colder months. To her it seemed Winter's cave had flung its gates wide and released its herd of storm clouds to besmudge the summer sky.