Read The Jack of Souls for Free Online

Iberg by Sandro Botini.
    3
    Curse & Counterspell

    H arric staggered back from Caris until he collided with the wall beside his desk. 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, face pale with panic. “Your mother…” she murmured. Now that the crisis was past, shock seemed 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 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 snapped 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 reached to put 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 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 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.
    *
    Flat against the wall beside the door stood a girl, one hand clapped to her mouth as if holding in a scream. She might have been thirteen, all willow wands and ribs in a chambermaid’s dress and apron. He didn’t recognize her, however, which was odd because he knew all the maids by name.
    “Gods leave me,” she said, in a tiny, breathless voice. “That was the curse everyone’s talking about!” She sidled toward the open door, eyes wide and white.
    “Don’t worry. It isn’t contagious.”
    “Almost killed that Caris lady—stay away!” she cried, as he started toward her.
    He stopped.
    She fixed him with eyes determined but full of fear. After several heartbeats, she said, “You don’t recognize me.”
    He looked closer. Nothing about her mousy hair or somber mouth triggered his memory, though there was something familiar about her.
    “Lyla,” she said.
    He exhaled slowly, his eyes searching hers.
    “You won me from my master in the card game today. You freed me.”
    “Of course! Your face was all covered in slave paint! I see Mother Ganner took you in and got you some new clothes.”
    Her eyes dipped to his nakedness and bobbed back up. “You want I should fetch you some, too? The cold don’t do you no favors.”
    Harric let out a laugh of surprise. He was bare as an egg to his toes. “I’m—ah—it’s been quite a night.” He grabbed his trousers from the floor and threw them on.
    As he cinched up the bastard belt, she edged the rest of the way to the door, stopping only when she stood with a foot on the top step, ready to bolt. But she did not leave. She swallowed hard, as if steeling herself to speak. “I ain’t here to thank you. I’m here to pay my debt.”
    “You don’t owe me anything.”
    “My freedom ain’t worth nothing?”
    “That’s not what I mean. I gave that to you freely. My payment was watching the expression on the face of that West Isle slaver while you burned the deed to your bondage. Anyway, I’m a dead man, and