Ashkor Soulbinder's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Ashkor walked his eleven out of the burnt clearing and did not stop until the trees thinned at a low rise. He had fear now. He did not have numbers. Eleven souls and one bound beast did not make an army, and the fire-house spirit on his shoulder was already stirring for its next meal. He needed warriors. There were none nearby to fight. He would have to call them in. He set the beast to dig and put the eleven to work hauling stone from a fallen ridge. By the second night they had raised a square tower on the rise, crude but thick, its inner pillars driven through with iron rings and heavy chain. He cut the binding runes into the stone with a burning finger. The walls took the marks and held them. Inside, the chain rang against the pillars whenever a soul brushed too close. This was where he would break what he caught. Outside the door he drove twelve carved stones into the ground in a tight ring, each one stacked with skulls and wrapped at the base with chain. He bound his eleven to those stones. They would stand there and wait for him while he hunted. The lure was harder. He walked an hour out from the tower and cleared a flat patch of dirt under the black trees. He set thirteen tall stones in a circle and laid bone between them in a spiral that closed on itself. He cut runes into each stone with his flame eye fixed on the work. The circle was a trap for wandering spirits. Any soul that drifted through the Demonicwoods within a night's walk would feel the pull and step inside. The bone spiral would hold it until he came. He bled two fingers of fire into the center stone to wake it. The ring of bone lit pale and went quiet. He waited at the tower through the next dusk. The bone charm at his throat ticked twice. Something had entered the circle. He took the beast and ran. Inside the ring of stones, four thin spirits paced the spiral, snarling and unable to step out. They were not warriors. They were woodsmen, lost a long time. He bound them where they stood with the dark incantation and dragged them back to the tower on the chain. He drove them into the iron rings and broke them against the pillars through the night. By morning he had fifteen souls. The fire-house spirit fed on the weakest of the four before the binding finished and left him fourteen. He stood in the tower door and looked at his ring of waiting stones outside. The procession was bigger. It was still not an army. The lure had worked once. He would have to set it again, and again, and the spirit on his shoulder would eat every gain he made.