It’s unprotected.
Colin growled and picked up his pace.
His room wasn’t far from the Well, but far enough. He sprinted down pathways lined with dirt and needles, past standing stone columns, past a wide-based, cracked fountain in the center of an oval plaza. He dodged through the rounded door of a low building, through its empty inner rooms and out the far side, satchel jouncing against his back, then raced down gentle steps to what had once been a marketplace. Sunlight burst through the layer of fog and lit the main roadway through the city a gleaming, vibrant white as he sped down its length, the buildings on either side growing taller, the spires more intricate and magnificent. Then the buildings fell away, abruptly, the roadway opening out into an oval amphitheater, gentle white steps sloping downward toward the rough stone edges of the Well itself.
He sucked in a sharp breath and drew up short at the edge of the highest step, using his staff to steady himself. He could sense the Well now, a physical force pressing against every layer of his skin, tingling there. It pulsed in his blood, shivered through his gut, tickled his lungs with every breath he took. A cool sensation, smooth and fluid, smelling of dried leaves and dark earth.
His stomach cramped in reaction, in anticipation. The breath he’d drawn hissed out at the pain, but he shoved the ache aside while repressing an ecstatic shudder, surveyed the theater, the trees to either side, the boundaries of the Well beneath. The wide stone steps—ones he’d barely seen so many years before when the Faelehgre had led him here, ones he’d stumbled down, at the edge of asphyxiation—descended gradually, narrowing until they reached the lip of the Well and terminated. There, the waters of the Well stretched outward in a wide, placid circle, the surface perfectly smooth and untroubled, the depths clear. Over a hundred hands across, the Well seized Colin’s attention, and he involuntarily took a step down. The hand holding the lantern spasmed and lifted, reached toward the water, and for a moment he literally felt the grit of the ancient stone that held its waters on his fingers.
But he caught himself, his outstretched hand tightening into a white-knuckled fist. He forced it back to his side. He wasn’t here to drink. He never intended to drink from the Well again. He was here to protect.
He tore his gaze away from the water. To either side of the white steps, where the city ended, the forest took over, encircling the Well with a thick border of tall, ancient trees. The largest trees he’d ever seen before entering the forest, their boles nearly forty hands around at the base, their tops towering over even the highest of the Faelehgre’s spires. The heart of the forest.
And that heart was rustling now, agitated. Colin could feel its anger.
He shifted down the steps, moving slowly, eyes darting back and forth, watching for movements beneath the trees, searching for the Shadows. They’d attack from the forest. They couldn’t move over the white stone of the city, couldn’t move over water, but the stone steps of the theater ended at the Well. There wasn’t even a lip of the white stone around the Well itself. Not even the Faelehgre, at the height of their power, when Terra’nor had been a vibrant, flourishing city and one of the trade hubs of the plains, had been that possessive of the Lifeblood.
When he reached the Well, he set his satchel, the flask, and the lantern aside, then dropped a hand to the stone that contained it and caressed it without thought, his eyes on the forest. With a frisson of shock he remembered crashing into this stone—rough, unworked, and dense. He felt it scraping against his skin through his clothing as he crawled over it, his vision fading, his chest numbed with the Shadow’s touch. Then he’d drunk the water, felt the stone’s coldness against his skin as he collapsed onto his back, as he stared up into the sky and let the darkness take him . . .
Something in the forest moved, and he jerked his hand from the stone and settled it onto the staff.
The trees shuddered.
On the opposite side of the Well, a figure emerged from the forest. The same height as Colin, it stepped from the trees and halted, sheathed in the glistening black of the Shadows, as if clothed in them. They writhed over the figure from head to toe, an occasional section of blackness flaring away from the form, as if the Shadows themselves were flapping in a nonexistent wind.
Colin’s stance altered. His eyes narrowed; his muscles hardened. He took the staff into both hands and balanced it defensively before him without thought.
Osserin, he sent, it’s one of the Wraiths.
He felt the Faelehgre pause. Then, with renewed urgency: We’re coming.
Colin regarded the Wraith across the smooth surface of the Well in silence. He could feel the figure’s presence, could taste the Shadows that cloaked it. A sour taste, tainting the air with a visceral enmity, with a hatred that made Colin’s nostrils flare.
He’d been battling the Wraiths since he first arrived; he knew there were at least six of them. The Faelehgre said the first one had appeared nearly twenty years before the wagons carrying Colin and the others had arrived on the outskirts of the forest. They didn’t know what they were, but they knew that they’d been created somehow by the Shadows. They carried the sukrael’s taint.
The Wraith reached forward and dipped a hand into the Well, ripples spreading outward as it disturbed the surface and drew the water toward its mouth to drink.
Colin barked out a wordless denial, a sound of pure rage, and leaped off the lip of the Well to the ground and into the edge of the forest. Weaving around the tangled roots of the huge trees, he sped along the curve of the Well, the rage inside growing into a growl. An old rage. Not directed at the sacrilege of the Shadows touching the water, of their taint on the Lifeblood, or their creation of the Wraiths, but at what they had done so many years before to the wagon train, at the death and destruction they had wrought. He could hear the men and women and children of the wagon train screaming in the depths of his growl, could hear their cries of pain and outrage.
The Wraith didn’t react, reaching again toward the water with both hands, liquid spilling from its arm in rivulets as it cupped it to its face, the Shadows around it writhing in a frenzy, as if the wind they felt had increased to a gale. It reached a third time to the water as Colin raced around the last leg, and then it turned, the motion slow and measured, unconcerned—
It was the only warning Colin got.
Its total disregard for his approach registered a moment before the Shadows that had been lying in wait struck.
Colin’s roar of outrage broke off with a shocked gasp as he brought up the forest staff a moment before the Shadow’s tendril would have passed through his neck. The tendril struck the wood, struck the essence it had been imbued with, and drove Colin off his feet and into the edge of the Well. Stone bit into his side, and a frigid numbness passed down through his arm, tingling with fear and the Shadow’s power. But the Shadow hadn’t touched him, its blow deflected by the staff, a gift of the forest, and there was no time to collect himself. He rolled away from the stone wall, out of the Shadow’s path as it came after him, and he brought his staff up hard into the Shadow’s middle. The staff snagged in the seething blackness, and with a quick motion Colin flicked it up and back, flinging the Shadow out over the water of the Well. It shrieked as Colin spun. He didn’t need to see the Shadow trying to coalesce over the water, didn’t need to see its struggle as it tried to hold its form and failed, sinking into the surface. He’d seen it all before, and not just over the water of the Well. Any water with some depth to it would work. He’d discovered that during the years he’d spent actively searching out and killing as many of the Shadows as he could.
Which is how he knew that there were at least two more of them behind him. They hissed as their counterpart’s grating shriek died and drew up short when Colin brandished the staff.
“Ha!” he barked, his gaze flicking over the two no more than three paces away, just out of reach, then toward the three others he could see back in the depths of the forest. The feral grin that had started forming on his lips, die
d.
Two he could handle easily, three with some effort. But five . . .
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The Wraith had shifted. Finished at the Well, it regarded Colin, silent as a statue, only the Shadows that cloaked it moving in the warmth of the sunlight.
Colin jerked his attention back toward the forest as two of the three moved forward to join the two closest to him. He swore, hands gripping the staff tighter as the fifth shifted forward as well, his gaze flicking back and forth between the Wraith and the Shadows.
And realization struck.
An ambush. The Wraith had been the lure.
This was why he’d ceased hunting the Shadows before, why he’d finally allowed the Faelehgre to convince him to set the rage that drove him all of those years aside. Because they were intelligent. They learned from their mistakes, had gotten smarter, harder to find, harder to catch.
Now they’d changed tactics as well. They were actively hunting him in return. But why now? He’d stopped stalking them at least twenty years ago.
The uneasiness he’d felt when he had woken that morning returned. Something had changed. Something significant.
Before he could ponder it further, the Wraith turned away and within three steps vanished into the darkness beneath the forest.
As if it were a signal, the five Shadows sprang forward.
Colin caught the first two Shadows in a sweep and flung them aside, pivoting on one foot as the other three closed in. He blocked out their shrieks, tried to block out the memories of the wagon train under attack, then darted away from them. He had no chance of holding them off with the staff alone, not all five of them. His only chance was to reach the white stone of the city, where they couldn’t travel.
Breath already burning in his lungs from the sprint to reach the Wraith, he jumped over a tangle of roots, skidded on the soft soil on the far side, and swore as he caught his balance. He felt his body shift into a younger form, one more suited to an all-out sprint, and he adjusted his grip on the staff as it grew longer and more unwieldy in comparison. He vaulted over a fallen trunk covered in moss, risked a glance behind, and felt fear grip his heart. Three were behind him, closing fast. The two others—
He cried out as one of them appeared ahead, waiting. He caught a flicker of black motion to his left, the direction they expected him to dodge, but instead he used the staff to vault onto the lip of the Well to the right. He swung the staff hard into the one lying in wait, felt its dark folds get caught, felt its weight as he grunted and dragged it in a wide arc behind him, hoping to toss it into the Well; but the end of the staff struck the bole of a tree, the force of the blow shuddering up the length of wood into Colin’s arms. He bit off another curse and sprinted down the arc of the Well, not pausing to shake the Shadow free. The staff jerked as he ran, the Shadow fighting to disentangle itself, and then suddenly it tore free. Colin let loose a bark of laughter as the white stone of the amphitheater appeared ahead.
Something bitterly cold swept through his leg, numbing it instantly.
He cried out, stumbled. For a terrifying moment, he thought he’d tip into the water of the Well. He didn’t know what would happen if he fell in—whether it would behave like normal water or if he’d simply sink into its bottomless depths—but he didn’t want to find out. Twisting as he fell, he threw his weight to the right.
His shoulder slammed into the stone, and his other arm flailed, catching at the surface of the Well, the splash soaking into his robes. Then he tucked and rolled off the edge, landing hard in the pine-scented dirt. His legs tangled in the staff, but he held on tight, back slamming to a stop in the dirt, his head rebounding off an exposed root. His teeth bit down hard on his tongue, and he tasted blood.
Dazed, he stared up into the too bright sunlight overhead, up through the branches of the huge conifers of the forest. The numbness in his leg became a fiery tingle, as if the blood were returning to it, slowly, only a thousand times worse. A throbbing ache awoke in his bruised shoulder.
And then a Shadow loomed up over him, blocking out the sunlight.
He reacted without thought, shoving the end of his staff upward in a warding motion. Not a sweep, not a move at all, just an attempt to thrust the Shadow away. He felt the Shadow’s frigid presence mere inches from his fingers, the chill he’d felt years before at the wagons biting deep into his hands—
And Osserin blazed into sight, his white light flaring as bright as Colin had ever seen it. The Shadow hissed and flickered away, Osserin charging after, the Faelehgre’s rage palpable, throbbing in the air. More of the Faelehgre appeared, and with their fiery light they drove the Shadows away.
Colin rested his head against the root and listened to the Shadows shriek as they retreated. The burning tingle in his leg increased, and he grimaced as he tried to move it. When it became unbearable, he halted and stared up into the sunlight. He knew the tingling would fade and his leg would return to normal, but it would take days.
He didn’t have days. If he didn’t leave today, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to leave at all. Ever.
Osserin returned, drifting to a halt above Colin, his light still pulsing with anger, though none of it touched his voice.
The Shadows touched you?
“I’ll be fine.” He sighed and lifted himself up into a seated position, his head spinning. After feeling the lump and trace of blood where he’d hit his head, he began massaging his bruised shoulder. “It was a trap. They used the Wraith to lure me off the white stone of the city into the woods, where the Shadows were waiting for me.”
Osserin had stilled. A trap? Are you certain?
Colin shot the Faelehgre a glare. “Yes. I’m certain.”
Osserin pulsed, the flashes erratic. They’ve never been so . . . direct before.
“No, they haven’t. I’ve been attacked before, by the Wraiths and the Shadows, but it was always while I was traveling in the forest or when I was hunting them years ago. But typically they were attacks made by one of the Wraiths or a few Shadows. None of those attacks were this coordinated, felt this planned.” Colin began climbing to his feet, using the staff for support, hissing whenever his Shadowtouched leg moved. He tried to keep his weight off it, but he found it nearly impossible, even with the staff. “Something’s changed,” he managed through shortened breaths. “Something’s given them a direction, a purpose. And something is driving them.”
What?
“I don’t know.” He began making his way back to the white stone of the amphitheater, automatically moving closer to the Well as he did so.
They’ve grown restless. Restless with hunger, with their confinement here in the forest, here around Terra’nor. They’re tired of foraging off the lifeforce here within the forest, within the range of the Well. They crave more.
“When did they start becoming restless?”
After the dwarren arrived and intruded into the Well’s influence. They feasted then, as they had not done for centuries. But the dwarren grew wary and eventually learned the edges of the Shadows’ reach. Yet the Shadows can see them on the plains. They want to feast again.
“But you told me that the dwarren have been here for hundreds of years.”
And the sukrael have been searching for a way to break the Well’s hold on them for those hundred years. But they will fail. The Well’s hold cannot be broken.
Colin climbed up onto the lowest steps of white stone and moved to where his satchel lay with the lantern and flask. He sank down onto the stone wall of the Well. “What if that’s what has changed? What if they’ve found a way?”
Osserin stilled in contemplation. What binds the Shadows here binds the Faelehgre as well. If they had found a way to break its hold, we would know. And they would not still be here, near Terra’nor. They would have already set themselves upon the world.
Colin shuddered at the timbre of Osserin’s voice, at the sorrow and horror it held, but he said nothing.
Osserin moved to hover over
the lantern. Colin saw him still.
You’re leaving.
“I have to.” Colin jerked the sleeve of his robe back, exposed the black mark on his skin, presented it to Osserin. “Unless you think I should stay,” he said bitterly. “Perhaps I should. To help you with the Shadows, with the Wraiths.”
The Faelehgre edged forward, then glided back.
It’s grown.
“Yes.”
Then you can’t stay, even to help with the Shadows and Wraiths. We can handle them.
Colin pulled his sleeve back down. “Then I’m leaving. Today.” He reached down and picked up the flask, twisted the top free. He returned to the water’s edge, almost reached down and drew a handful of it out of habit so he could drink, but he halted midmotion. Shaking his head, he dipped the flask into the water.
The Lifeblood tingled against his skin, and he shuddered, felt the pain in his gut, a pain he knew he could slake, but he focused on the flask. Bubbles rose to the surface of the Well as the last of the air escaped, then he withdrew it and held it up to the light.
Clear, like water. No hint that it was anything else. Unless you’d already drunk some of it.
His nostrils flared. He could smell it: fresh loam, dried leaves, snow.
When he turned, he felt Osserin watching him, and he bristled. “I don’t intend to use it,” he said. “It’s . . . a precaution.”
A precaution.
“Yes.” Colin shoved the flask inside his satchel, making certain it was protected by layers of cloth so that it wouldn’t break. “In case the pain becomes too great.”
With the Lifeblood present, the pain will always be too great.
Colin sent the Faelehgre an annoyed glare, adjusting the pack on his shoulder. “Perhaps.” Taking up his staff, he paused.
Now that he was prepared to leave, he found his anger fading. He stared out over the ruins of the city, over the white towers, the amphitheater, the road and buildings. He could imagine what the city had looked like before the Well destroyed the Faelehgre as a people. Osserin had told him enough stories over the years. The white stone had glowed in the moonlight, the streets filled with music, with life. The dark-skinned Faelehgre had danced along those streets in clothes of every hue, had serenaded each other beneath the balustrades and beside the pools and fountains, moonflowers tucked in their hair.
Well of Sorrows Page 26