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

Chapter 47 - Stranded

STRANDED

*

As Harric watched Brolli swing away from him toward the partitioned trellis where they'd taken the injured matrons, a recognition hit him hard enough to pierce his worries.

The injured matrons.

It was a recognition of opportunity. A recognition that he could be saboteur as well as spy.

Climbing down from the table, he beckoned Fink to follow, but Fink merely stared at him. His eyes were no longer wild, but Harric could still see anger in them. The imp shook his head once, eyes narrowed.

Harric held his hand out to Fink. "Then I need the nexus. I'll just be a minute."

Fink's brow bent, but after a moment, he extended his trembling hand and laid the stone in Harric's. "I can't hold you in the Unseen when you leave me here."

"I know, but I have to try."

"Keep away from Web Strands. If one attaches, don't move. I'll find you."

Even as Fink said it, one of the glowing strands quested toward him from the trellis above.

Harric gave Fink a nod and left him, quickly outdistancing the strand. Fink still carried the weight of the Unseen for him, but he steeled himself for the moment he got too far from the imp and the weight fell fully on his shoulders. He'd closed half the distance to the resting area—some forty paces—when a commotion behind him made him turn and look.

A train of Kwendi girls with loaded handcarts had surrounded Fink's table to offload their wares. One of the girls whistled, and a team of the smaller witch-silver servants shaped like Kwendi swung over to the table and dropped all around it to help unload bowls and globes. Harric cringed in sympathy. With luck, the imp could keep his head on straight enough to either move to another table or stay out of the way.

But he'd barely finished the thought when the weight of the Unseen crushed down on him like a bag of sand. He staggered. He might last a minute. Probably less. Forgetting about silence, he stumbled into a run to close the distance to Brolli quickly. Already his head throbbed like someone had beaten him about the temples with a jack.

Diving behind the first wall of heavy cloth partitions, he found himself in what appeared to be a rest area full of elevated platforms enclosed in heavy drapes. Sleeping areas, Harric guessed, by the whispers of women conversing in corners or climbing through the trellises. A few bed-like nests crowded the ground below. They weren't rectangular like Arkendian beds, they were round and slightly bowl-shaped, and covered with fur quilts and blankets tucked into round mattresses. It was among these beds that he found Brolli. The ambassador and a black-haired matron sat upon fur-covered cushions and conversed in hushed tones. A half-dozen of the younger women sat around, listening. Though their strands all bent down into the floor, a single bright strand rose from the matron's breast. A Web Strand. The thing had latched onto the hoop around her neck.

So the loops were like a nexus. Harric stared, his mind spinning. The Kwendi matrons crafted Unseen magic. He knew that because the wedding ring on Caris's finger was of Unseen magic. He hadn't thought about what they used for a nexus until that moment. Could the black marbling in the white stone of the hoops be of black nexus stone—the same material as the nexus stone in his hand?

Harric shook his head in amazement. It must be. Why else would a strand of the Unseen Web seek it out? And if that were so, then the red marbling must be of the Mad Moon, and the white of the Bright Mother. Did that mean the Kwendi had stolen nexi from the moons? And if so, how had they melted and marbled them into the other stone?

Secret number two.

But if this were so, had the Kwendi stolen nexi from the moons? And if they had, how had the nexi been melted and marbled into the other stone?

Creeping closer, Harric saw that Brolli and the others sat vigil beside the injured matron's beds, where both were already fast asleep.

He slipped between the beds. Heavy fur blankets had been drawn up to the matron's armpits. Their long arms rested outside the blankets, a long-fingered hand resting on their strange, marbled hoops.

Jackpot.

As he knelt to examine a hoop more closely, his head gave a vicious throb, and his vision darkened as it had before he'd collapsed on the Kwendi lovers.

Not now!

Dropping to his belly, he pushed past the overhanging blankets and inched under one of the beds, only to find that Kwendi beds did not have legs like Arkendian beds, but stood on a kind of pedestal of bent wood, leaving only a rim around the edges in which to hide.

He curved his body around the pedestal as best he could, and managed to get his legs around the pedestal so they'd be concealed from the direction of Brolli and the others, but his head and shoulders were just inside the rim of overhanging blankets.

It was insane. They would find him easily. He never should have risked this.

But now he had no choice.

As his vision faded, he released himself into the Seen, and everything went dark again.