The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 16a - Whispers & Wounds

...As your nexus stone channels the Life-giving power of the Bright Mother moon, so do the nexi of the Fell Moons channel to the Fell Magi. And as your nexus stone is white and pure in accordance with the Bright Mother's purpose, so is the nexus of the Mad Moon as red as blood and fire, in accordance with His opposite cause. Therefore too is the nexus of the Unseen black and impenetrable as the secrets of that moon and its servants.

 — From The Tutelage Manual of Bright Mother neocolytes

Chapter Sixteen

They stopped before dawn to bed down in a shepherd's camp beneath a wide-spreading weeping willow overhanging the stream. Sheep-pies and insects were ubiquitous, but the encircling curtain of branches was thick enough to screen a camp of twenty from errant eyes in the valley. To Harric's relief the campsite was wide enough that when Caris picketed Rag at one end, he was able to bed down at the other, while she would have to stay near Rag. He was in no condition for wrangling about any aspect of their new condition together. He quickly chose a reasonably soft spot along the opposite perimeter of branches, and laid his bedding out before she laid hers, so it wouldn't be so obvious he avoided her.

Willard grimaced in pain as he dismounted, though he'd smoked enough ragleaf to numb a lance wound. Brolli insisted he remove his armor to examine his wounds, but Willard refused.

"I've had wounds before, ambassador."

"You are immortal then."

"These wounds are nothing."

"Is that why you leak blood like the rain pipes?"

Willard followed Brolli's gaze to the knight's right hip, where the strain of his dismount had conjured bright new red stripes on the black iron skirt.

"We must stop that. I must clean or it grows foul."

"And if I'm ambushed in my bedclothes this whole ballad turns foul."

The two argued so long that Harric did not wait for an outcome.

He rubbed down Brolli's pony — Idgit was his name — fed him a ration of grain, and cleaned his shoes as best he could in the low light. When he tried to do the same for the gangly "unridable" filly in the faded caparison, Willard shooed him away.

"Holly's mine, boy. You can leave her to me."

Harric nodded. "Holly. Like Molly. Cute."

By then, Willard reached a compromise with Brolli to clean and wrap the worst of his injuries at the joint between breastplate and hip. With Brolli watching, Caris helped Harric unbuckle the breastplate and lift some of the quilting. He expected Caris to ignore him in her semi-horse-tied state, but she continually glanced at him across that emotional gulf. Her expression, if distant, seemed open, but clouded with doubt or worry. Such a babe she was in the ways of courtship, Harric realized. Her horse-touched nature left her without even the most basic of skills to mask her feelings, nor perhaps any inkling of why she should.

Strangely, he found that appealed to him deeply. There would be no games with Caris. No hidden agendas. No tests. With her there would never be guessing. No bluffing, no calculating, no manipulating. His mother would despise her. He laughed inwardly. By that measure alone she was the best girl in Arkendia. If only she'd accept him as he was, what more could he ask? And if only she wasn't magically forced to love him, he might hearken more to the stirring he felt every time she was near.

Too many "if onlies."

When the armor had been removed, Brolli moved in, waving Harric aside. "Go rest now. I do the bandage."