Ashkor Soulbinder's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

By dusk the twelve souls would not hold their ring. They drifted wide between the black trunks, and Ashkor had to pull each one back with a word. The new beast walked at the front, docile under its fresh runes. The other eleven hated him for what they had watched in the pit. He felt it in the way they leaned away from his fire arms. The bone charm at his throat stayed quiet. The danger now walked inside his own circle. He stopped them in a clearing and drove his burning hands into the dirt. Twelve curved ribs tore up out of the ground at his call, lashed together with sinew into a tall archway over his head. Each rib stood for one soul. He spoke their bindings into the bone one by one, and the arch creaked as it took the weight. The ribs bent inward. One on the left split down its length and kept holding. That was the defiant one, the soul that clawed at its leash every day. He marked the crack with his eye and turned to face the twelve. He drew the chain from his belt, blackened iron with a pale skull for a grip, and yanked his own dead self forward by it. The older Ashkor stumbled into the ring on the end of the leash. "Show me," Ashkor said. The bound soul lifted one finger and pointed at the defiant one, then at two others who had been whispering with it. Ashkor walked to the defiant soul. It did not kneel. It swung at his face. He caught the blow on his flame eye and felt nothing. Then he closed his burning hand around its throat and dragged it to the center of the clearing. The fire-house spirit on his shoulder shivered awake. He fed the soul to it while the other eleven watched. The grass under his feet went black. Ash fell in a perfect circle around the place where the soul had stood, and the ferns at the edge bent inward, scorched. He turned to the two the dead self had named. They dropped to their knees before he reached them. He let them live. He looked at the remaining nine and saw the change in their faces. Not love. Not loyalty. The narrow, useful fear he had been working toward. The rib above the dead soul's place cracked clean through and fell. Eleven ribs held. Eleven souls circled him again, tight to his shoulders without being called. The fire-house spirit settled, full. Ashkor wound the chain back onto his belt and walked his procession out of the clearing, leaving the burnt ring behind him in the dirt.