Jarek the Vexed's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The trail from the tower led Jarek to a wider stretch of muck. He drove his iron into the ground and poured his ring of salt around a cluster of deep red pools. Their thick surface caught the torchlight from the tower behind him. He held the spirit's true name in his mouth and spoke the rite. Something tore free of the pools and rose, howling. But this one did not bend. It thrashed against the salt and the iron shook in the mud. Jarek felt the leash slipping. The spirit wanted a body. It clawed at the ring, hunting a weak point. And in his chest, the caged warlord Malgrim stirred at the noise, pressing up his throat, trying to speak. Two furies now, one loose and one buried. If the bound spirit broke the ring, it would find the crack Malgrim had already opened. Jarek needed to ground it fast. A bolt hissed past his shoulder and split a red pool. He turned. The dark elf hunter stood on higher ground, a crossbow in each hand. Syrae had trailed him since the manor, the woman who wanted her stolen relic and held that debt over him. Her mask hid her mouth. Her black eyes did not. "It wants a mouth," she said. "You gave it one. You're talking." Jarek clamped his teeth shut. She was right. Every word of the rite fed the spirit a voice. It heard him and grew. "Bind it to iron," Syrae said. "Not to you. Anchor the name in dead metal." Jarek looked at the iron rods sunk in the mud. He had used them as a fence. Never as a home. He pressed his gauntlet flat against the nearest rod. Then he stopped speaking the rite aloud. He shaped the true name in silence and drove it down through his hand into the iron. The spirit lunged for his chest. It struck the iron instead, pulled by its own name. The rod glowed red, then went cold. The howling stopped. Malgrim sank back down, starved of the noise. The red pools stilled. A horse rose from the muck beside the iron. Its hide hung in strips over bare rib bone. Its eyes burned red. The spirit had a shape now, bound to the metal and through it to the fen. It stood and waited for his command. Two corners of the fen were his. Syrae lowered one crossbow. "You bind them wrong. That one nearly wore your skin." She stepped closer. "I kept it off you. Now you owe me the manor. We go back for the relic. Tonight." Jarek said nothing. He held the silence like a stone in his mouth. He had a second spirit and a bone horse to ride the deep water. He also had a debt with a bolt behind it, and no more room to refuse it.