The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 3a - What Dreams May Come

 

Red for the Peasant with dirt in his nails,

Red for the Freeman at work in the vales,

The blood of the Yeoman is red as his flock’s,

And red is the Merchant’s, a-counting his stocks.

Orange is for Gentlemen new to their farms,

Yellow their betters, in glittering arms,

Green for the highest a Gentle can wend,

Blues for the Nobles whose cattle we tend,

Purple the stain of the God in our Kings,

Cut deep in the veins where the Phyros blood sings.

-- Didactic rhyme of the Arkendian “blood ranks," social castes based in the ancient Blood Religion. Translated into Iberg, by Sandro Botini.

Chapter Three

Harric staggered back from Caris until he collided with the wall. Morning light flooded the room. Wind banged the shutters as if to frighten the fog it drove before it. A rush of relief escaped his lungs. Caris reeled and stared about, face pale with panic. Now that the crisis was past, shock appeared to squeeze in on her. The hands she’d balled for a fight now flew to her ears as if to shut out echoes of what she’d witnessed.

“Hey, it’s all right, Caris,” he said, her distress summoning a strength he didn’t otherwise feel. He took her wrists and gently coaxed her hands from her ears. “She’s gone. You saved me, Caris. She had me bewitched, and I was thinking I should just jump and end it when you woke me—or, broke the spell, I guess.”

Saying it aloud made it real for him as well, dispelling the last shreds of nightmare from his head, but Caris pulled away. Her hands returned to her ears and she squeezed her eyes shut as if the horrors still swirled around her. “The fog — there were voices —! ” She crouched like she would curl up in one of her fits, but as Harric laid a hand on her shoulder, she sprang up and punched a hole through the plaster. With a strangled growl, she wrenched the door open and thundered down the treads, taking them three or four at a time until the sounds of her passage faded in the lower flights.

…To the stables, Harric guessed, and the peculiar solace she found among horses.

He exhaled in relief. It was difficult to help her once she collapsed, and half the time when she did, his efforts at soothing were rewarded with kicks in the shins. Nevertheless, he debated whether to follow. Alone, the room seemed suddenly hollow and exposed.

His guts chilled. He imagined his mother’s ghost in the shadow beside the window.

Shake it off. It’s just your nerves.

A stealthy rustle drifted behind him, and he spun about, heart in his throat. 

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