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

Chapter 52 - Unending Darkness

If you must trust, then trust your mother, or those who need you. Your mother has no choice but to want the best for you; the same for those who need you. Suspect all others.

—From To Those Bound For Court, humorous advice, by Lady Tickle Mehoney (pseudonym)

*

*

UNENDING DARKNESS

*

Harric clutched Fink's tail as if it were his only hold on sanity. In the immensity of the void around him there were no Web lines, no moons, no stars, no winds, no clouds—not even a mote of dust to lend a glimmer of external existence. In that limitless darkness only three things existed: himself, Fink, and his soul strands, and his strands appeared severed, drifting in messy tangles like broken anchor lines in slack water.

Where are we? he said, but there were no words, only thought.

Fink shook his head, white eyes peering about. He looked everywhere but at Harric, and it sent a lance of panic through Harric's heart. Why wouldn't he look at him? Were they in trouble? What was wrong?

We're nowhere, kid. The imp's voice rasped in his head, terrifyingly intimate. Stop jerking around. You're tangling your strands.

He stared in horror at the little pool of soul strands. He wanted to gather them about himself like a blanket. He floated in infinite sea of nothing. Or, he thought, with a different kind of horror, in a lightless casket, the walls of which were just beyond his reach. The image filled him with a smallness and claustrophobic panic.

How long had he been there?

Fink had instructed him not to move. But he could not tell how long ago. Moments. Days. There was no way to measure time except in the sequence of the memories of thoughts and conversations, creating a history. But in that space, somehow every thought or conversation swung free, out of sequence with other memories. The moment he thought a thing it became unrelated to the thoughts before and after. Memories floated loose in his mind like bubbles in the sea, in no particular order. He struggled to huddle them together into some kind of sense, but his mind had become like a net with a weave too wide to hold anything.

Fink, get us out of here! The thought escaped like a gasp. You can Gate. That's what you do when I Summon you, right?

Fink nodded. His eyes still swept up and around the welter of Harric's strands, looking anywhere but Harric. Gating isn't our problem, kid. A Gate's just a weave, like spirit walking. Problem is, you can't just Gate anywhere you want, only someplace you know like it's part of you, like your home.

So?

Fink's white eyes finally rested on Harric. So, my home's the Unseen Moon.

Harric stared. He felt his throat contracting.

Yeah. Full of black fumes you can't breathe and spirits like my sisters. Fink's needled jaws stretched downward. So our choice is this: I could try to Gate you to one of the places I've seen in Arkendia, and risk sending you to the bottom of some lake or a mile above a mountain, or we stay here and hope we see another Kwendi gate open near us. Not great choices.

Harric sucked in a convulsive breath, and somehow he could not exhale. His lungs kept drawing even after they could draw no more. Struggling against it, he managed a few small puffs.