The Jack of Souls
Author: Stephen C. Merlino
Publisher: Tortoise Rampant Books
Pages: 352
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Paperback/Hardcover/Kindle
Book Description:
Author: Stephen C. Merlino
Publisher: Tortoise Rampant Books
Pages: 352
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Paperback/Hardcover/Kindle
Book Description:
An outcast rogue named Harric must break a curse
laid on his fate or die by his nineteenth birthday.
As his dead-day approaches, nightmares from the
spirit world stalk him and tear at his sanity; sorcery eats at his soul.
To survive, he’ll need more than his usual
tricks. He’ll need help—and a lot of it—but on the kingdom’s lawless frontier,
his only allies are other outcasts. One of these outcasts is Caris, a
mysterious, horse-whispering runaway, intent upon becoming the Queen’s first
female knight. The other is Sir Willard—ex-immortal, ex-champion, now addicted
to pain-killing herbs and banished from the court.
With their help, Harric might keep his curse at
bay. But for how long?
And both companions bring perils and secrets of
their own: Caris bears the scars of a troubled past that still hunts her;
Willard is at war with the Old Ones, an order of insane immortal knights who
once enslaved the kingdom. The Old Ones have returned to murder Willard and
seize the throne from his queen. Willard is both on the run from them, and on
one final, desperate quest to save her.
Together, Harric and his companions must
overcome fanatical armies, murderous sorcerers, and powerful supernatural foes.
Alone, Harric must face the temptation of a
forbidden magic that could break his curse, but cost him the only woman he’s
ever loved.
***
Excerpt
“You written your will yet, lad?”
Someone shouted the words in Harric’s ear over the din of the
crowded barroom. He turned from the group of knights and house-girls he stood
with, and found the brewer, Mags, leaning across the bar behind him. The old
man fixed him with a look, drunk and earnest, and indicated the winch-clock on
the bar. Five minutes to midnight.
Five minutes left of Harric’s nineteenth year, and his last full day of life.
“You’d best write it quick,” Mags said, “or Rudy’ll snatch up your things
before your corpse is cold.”
Harric’s throat tightened. He clenched his jaw against a rising
rage—rage at the unfairness of his fate, at the madness that spawned it, and—
He shook it off. He would not
end like the others, howling or blubbering for mercy.
He tipped his cup back and took a deep drink from his wine. “The
night is still young.”
“Don’t make light of it, son. This is the day.”
“You think I don’t remember?”
“Just trying to help.”
“You’re trying to clear me out before my death spoils the party.”
The old man scratched his stubbled chin. “Well, it would cramp the
mood considerable…”
Harric managed a wry smile. He pointed to the winch-clock that
towered above him, a column of woodwork on the bar, like a coffin on end. “When
the twelfth chime sounds at midnight,
my precious doom has till sunset tomorrow to find me. Plenty of time to write a
will.”
The brewer nodded, and grimaced as if struggling with emotion. He
drew Harric close, old eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You know there isn’t
a one of us here who wouldn’t have stopped your mother if we’d known. I’d have
killed her if I had to. I swear it.”
Unable to speak, Harric downed the last of his wine. “You’re right
about one thing,” he said, pulling away. “It’s time to leave the celebration to
my guests.” Before Mags could object, Harric stepped on a chair and onto the
bar beside the winch-clock. From the back of the clock case he drew out the
crowbar he'd hidden inside, and in two quick moves he wrenched out the
mainspring to the accompaniment of cracking wood and outraged chimes.
“Wha—?” Mags choked. “Who’s gonna pay for that?”
“Keep your hair on.” Harric dropped his purse of coins on the bar,
and steadied himself against the clock, forever stopped at one minute to midnight.
The clamor drew all eyes to the bar. A few present could read clocks
and understood his joke; most simply saw him on the bar and fell silent,
expecting a speech from their host.
Harric looked out into the smoky hall at the sea of upturned faces.
In the gloom at the back of the hall, orange embers of ragleaf pipes pulsed
like fireflies, and the place had fallen so silent he imagined he could hear
the embers crackle with each pulse. Among the expectant faces he saw mostly
locals of Gallows Ferry, familiars with whom he’d grown to manhood. Others were
strangers passing through the outpost on the way to the Free Lands. He’d
invited them all, and not a single enemy stood among them, for he’d drugged
Rudy and his crew and left them sleeping with the hogs. A double pleasure,
that.
“Almost time,” he called, with a room-filling bravado he did not
feel. “And it’s going to stay that way for the rest of the night!” He raised
the mainspring in mock triumph, to a roar of applause.
“I have no gloomy speech for
you,” he assured them. “We’ve said our farewells, and this night is for
celebration. I leave you now to finish the wine and continue as if this night
would never end. For you I bought up all the wine in Gallows Ferry, so it will
be a great affront to my memory if a drop remains at daybreak.”
Applause shook the timbered walls. Gentlemen and free men saluted
with swords or raised cups. House-girls and maids threw flowers and other
favors on the bar. In their faces he saw affection and curiosity and pity.
For that moment, Harric was a hero. He bowed, savoring the feeling
for a single, aching heartbeat, then flung the mainspring to the crowd and
departed for his chambers through the service door behind the bar.
Caris waited for him in the passage, illumined by a single candle
near the door. Like all horse-touched, she was even bigger than the average
man, so she filled the narrow servant’s corridor, hair touching the ceiling and
elbows brushing walls. If Harric hadn’t expected her, he might have stepped
back to give way, mistaking her in the dim light for one of the knights rooming
at the inn, who sometimes got lost in its passages.
As the roar of the bar washed through the open door and past Harric,
Caris flinched and clapped her hands to her ears.
He shut the door quickly and flashed a reassuring smile. “Ready? I
expect they’ll be on my heels.”
She lowered her hands, but kept her stare on the floor between them,
rocking from foot to foot. Even with the door closed, the bar’s clamor
distressed her horse-touched senses, so it wouldn’t have surprised him if she
turned and fled or—worse—curled in a ball with her hands to her ears. He’d seen
it before, but he could never predict when she’d collapse and when she’d stand
firm.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she murmured.
“Good.”
Shrill voices rose in the bar, and her eyes jumped to the door
behind him.
“This here’s private, folks,” said Mags, on the other side.
“Harric’s done said his farewells.”
“Aw, we can’t leave him alone tonight,” said a voice Harric
recognized as Ana. “You know he’s
writing his will.”
“Yes, and you aim to kiss your way into it,” said Mags, “but I ain’t
letting you. So get!”
“He ain’t slept alone all summer,” Ana said. “Who’s he got up there?
Ain’t that simple Lady Horse-touched, is it?”
“I said get! I got drink to pour!”
Caris’s jaw clenched. She turned sideways and gestured for Harric to
pass, pressing her back to the side of the passage. It made little space for
him to slip by, and since she was almost two heads taller, her breasts stood
level with his nose. She blushed, for though she tried to hide her feminine
parts in loose-fitting men’s gear, there was no denying their presence.
His skin tingled at the thought of brushing front to front, and the
notion summoned the void back to his chest and a sting to his eyes. He bit the
inside of his lip and turned sideways to sidle past. Before he took a step, she
grasped his arms below the shoulders and lifted until his feet left the ground
and his head bumped the ceiling.
“Or you could just lift me,” he said.
Face dark with embarrassment, she rotated him past, set him at the
foot of the stairs, and turned back to the door.
“Let me through, Magsy,” said a male voice beyond it. “I’ll be sure
you get a share.”
“Magsy?” The brewer
snorted. “I said get!”
Caris glanced over her shoulder and frowned when she saw Harric
still standing at the bottom of the stairs. “If they get by Mags, they won’t
get by me. You can thank me in the morning.”
“You’re the only one I haven’t bid farewell.”
“I won’t let you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Harric gave a weak smile. “You still think I’m crazy. You think all
this fuss about my curse is for nothing?”
“I never said crazy. Just mistaken. We make our own fate.”
“Ah. And all the people I grew up with here—all the people who knew
my mother and her curses—they’re mistaken too?”
She shrugged. “I’ve only been here two months. I can’t say I know
you or your mother like they do. But maybe that makes me see more clearly.”
Harric rubbed his eyes. He knew he should go. He’d kept the boil of
grief and rage well bottled all night, and he mustn’t let them leak now. Of all
people, Caris would know least how to receive a torrent of emotion. But she
surprised him, turning toward him and lifting her gaze from the floor to meet
his, a task surely harder for her horse-touched sensibilities than lifting a
donkey.
“No mother would kill her child,” she said, voice low, eyes bright
with tears. “Not even my mother, the mother of a—” Her gaze faltered, then
rose, defiant. “I’m proof. No mother could hate her child like that.”
“In the two months I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you mention your
mother.”
“Don’t change the subject. Your mother didn’t hate you.”
Harric sighed. “Who said anything about hate?”
“You’re saying she loved you?”
The ache in his chest deepened. Memories of his earliest years with
his mother returned unbidden. Golden scenes of her lucid days, sitting in the
sunny window above the river as she read to him, or sang. He swallowed the tightness in his throat.
“She’s mad. Her visions showed her that the Queen will fall because of
something I do, and only my death can prevent it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He nodded. “But her curses are real. I have less than a day.”
The bar door flew open and banged against the wall. With a
triumphant squeal, a wave of petitioners swept in, and Caris whirled to face
it. Harric retreated up the lowest steps and watched as she grabbed the leader
by the arms—it was Gina, the eldest barmaid—and spun her about to face the
flood that followed. Pinioning Gina’s arms, Caris used her as a breakwater
against the rush.
Second in line was Donnal Bigs, who caught Harric’s eye and waved a
debt slip from the card tables. “There you are, Harric! Since you got no use
for your coin anymore, be a good lad and float me—”
Donal’s eagerness turned to confusion as Caris put her shoulder to
Gina’s back and drove her forward, mashing her into his chest as Ana collided
behind. “Hey!” he cried.
“Horse-brained bitch!” Gina spat. “Brute!”
Deaf to their outrage—or perhaps fueled by it—Caris propelled them
backwards, picking up speed until she ejected them into the bar, where they
fell in a welter of boots and petticoats.
Their expressions as she slammed the door made Harric laugh.
Caris set her back to the door as curses rained against it. She
glanced Harric’s direction to be sure he’d seen the action. A rare smile parted
her lips, making her quite pretty in spite of her size.
Another throb of loss in his gut. He hadn’t had enough time with
her. “Thanks, Caris. You’ve been a good friend—”
“See you in the morning.” She slid down the door till she sat, knees
to chest. Refusing to meet his gaze, she clapped her hands to her ears.
“Gods leave me, you can be stubborn,” he said. She gave no sign of
hearing, and he wondered for the
hundredth time how she came to be horse-touched. Whether a careless maid had
used mare’s milk for her mother’s tea, whether she’d been conceived in a
saddle, or a dozen other explanations he’d heard, of which none might be right.
The only thing anyone knew for certain about it was what could be seen: the
massive body, the uncanny sympathy with horses, and the crippling
incomprehension of people.
“Farewell, Caris.”
No acknowledgement.
He turned up the stairs before his grief boiled over.
Stephen C. Merlino lives in Seattle, WA, where he writes, plays, and teaches high school English. He lives with the world's most talented and desirable woman, two fabulous children, and three attack chickens.
Growing up in Seattle drove Stephen indoors for eight months of the year. Before the age of video games, that meant he read a lot. At the age of eleven he discovered the stories of J.R.R. Tolkein and fell in love with fantasy.
Summers and rare sunny days he spent with friends in wooded ravines or on the beaches of Puget Sound, building worlds in the sand, and fighting orcs and wizards with driftwood swords.
About the time a fifth reading of The Lord of the Rings failed to deliver the old magic, Stephen attended the University of Washington and fell in love with Chaucer and Shakespeare and all things English. Sadly, the closest he got to England back then was The Unicorn Pub on University Way, which wasn't even run by an Englishman: it was run by a Scot named Angus. Still, he studied there, and as he sampled Angus's weird ales, and devoured the Unicorn's steak & kidney pie (with real offal!), he developed a passion for Scotland, too.
In college, he fell in love with writing, and when a kindly professor said of a story he'd written, "You should get that published!" Stephen took the encouragement literally, and spent the next years trying. The story remains unpublished, but the quest to develop it introduced Stephen to the world of agents (the story ultimately had two), and taught him much of craft and the value of what Jay Lake would call, "psychotic persistence."
Add to that his abiding love of nerds--those who, as Sarah Vowel defines it, "go too far and care too much about a subject"--and you have Stephen Merlino in a nutshell.
Stephen is the 2014 PNWA winner for Fantasy.
He is also the 2014 SWW winner for Fantasy.
His novel, The Jack of Souls is in its fourth month in the top ten on Amazon’s Children’s Fantasy Sword & Sorcery Best Seller list, and among the top three in Coming-of-Age.
For More Information
- Visit Stephen C. Merlino’s website.
- Connect with Stephen on Facebook and Twitter.
- Find out more about Stephen at Goodreads.
- Contact Stephen.
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