The Well of Prayers

by Anne Boles Levy

  Finally, I was alone. I could enjoy a few moments of solitude to sort my thoughts. I lay back down on the pile of blankets and stared up at the thatching overhead.

  So somewhere, S’ami and Reyhim weren’t spellcasting. Or maybe they were.

  Was that important to me?

  Or was it more important to see their red sails dipping back over the horizon so life could return to what it was before they came?

  I no longer felt sure of the answer.

  I couldn’t stop all magic. The wellspring of it underground had been immense, and I’d tapped only a portion of it, if what the chieftain said was true. Trying to remember the enormity of that well felt too difficult. I couldn’t restore the Gek’s Great Nest to whatever they thought it should be. If I was the Undoer, it had to be on a local scale only. I had my home and my ways and customs, and the Gek had theirs. Becoming their Undoer would be no different than being their Azwan. The thought made me cringe. I was nobody’s god or numen or high priest and I did not want to be.

  I had come seeking answers, and again I found that more questions sprouted like mushrooms after a dark rain. Valeo fumed over dead friends back in Port Sapphire. I’d also know many families missing their fathers and brothers. I closed my eyes against the lump in my throat, but it didn’t work. I had to return home and sort things out with the Temple of Doubt, with my parents, with my city. Each one of these was its own separate battle, needing its own strategy. Even if I could figure out what to say to my parents, what mess had I made with the Temple?

  If they could still spellcast, I could still undo those spells. If they couldn’t, I didn’t know what to picture. A triumphant scene where I waved the crippled magic users off on their magnificent ships? A humbling scene where I magnanimously forgave them and let them leave peacefully?

  I needed a plan. I knew I wasn’t going to get a procession in my honor; I’d be lucky to avoid a jail cell, let alone the gallows. So whatever I said or did upon my return, it had to include some way to save my hide and convince the Azwans there was nothing more here for them to do.

  Thinking this way made it sound so easy.

  Small, local, doable. I had to focus on one task at a time, or one piece of a giant task, or it would become a massive, tangled ball, one I couldn’t unravel. One foot in front of the other. Focus on what I could do. Breathe. In and out. One thing at a time.

  I sighed, closed my eyes, and went over the day’s events in my head a few more times, trying as hard as I could to be honest with myself. I fought not to gloss over the magic I had clumsily used or to rationalize it. I had had my reasons and excuses, but they were bad ones. There was one other needling thought that prickled me: what was it about that hunk of star or space dust that made Nihil and the Gek both think it still lived and made its home inside me?

  What if it were there, not just as a few leftover powers, but as a thinking creature? Perhaps it was like the volcano, only dormant if seen from a distance, but venting its odd talents through fissures in my consciousness?

  What if I were possessed after all?

  28

  You have asked me to pass judgment on women’s virtue, which I do with great reluctance, as each woman’s circumstances differ. In the desert lands, a woman is worth barely the dirt displaced by her sandals. Among the giants, she is queen. And have I not taken a woman’s form from time to time? I was modest in my dress and conduct then, and so shall you require it of my daughters now.

  —from Oblations 18, The Book of Unease

  We set out with the sun only a little past its zenith, with the Gek again loading us onto their log canoes and paddling us against the tide toward the distant city. That gave me plenty of time to think of a counter-strategy to Valeo’s terrible ideas.

  He wanted to do all the talking, of course. He was sure he could’ve straightened things out with Nihil if I hadn’t cut him off, so he would be in charge of a new plan. He didn’t say what my part was supposed to be, but I imagined it was something along the lines of staring wide-eyed and stupid and hoping everyone pitied me. The fact that I looked exactly like the image of the wild, natural girl of rumor and gossip did not figure into Valeo’s calculations. I would get as much pity as a disease.

  He rambled on about handling this, about how S’ami clearly hadn’t told Nihil everything and he could use that to his advantage, how I didn’t understand the delicate politics between the two Azwans, how I should possibly act wounded or sickly or like it was all the Gek’s fault.

  Fortunately, I sat in front of Valeo in our makeshift craft and faced forward so he couldn’t see my constant eye-rolling or my fuming. The logical part of me realized that Valeo didn’t know he was describing the sort of idiotic and complacent girl who I’d once tried and failed to be. Just as I’d truly come to accept my differences, he was asking me to give that all up and play the baby-faced know-nothing and leave all the thinking to the big, smart, manly man.

  After a while, I tried to shut out the sound of all his important plans and schemes and tried to let the canoe lapping against the waves lull me a bit. His voice droned on.

  “And it might even save my neck, too,” he said at last.

  I picked up my head at this. I remembered the obvious relief in Nihil’s voice after Valeo had announced his presence at the prayer well. I didn’t think Valeo was in any danger. I didn’t even turn to face him in the teeter canoe but shouted over my shoulder:

  “You? You’re the guard of Nihil’s person, aren’t you? Or whatever he calls you.”

  “I thought you cared whether I lived or died.”

  That brought my head around. “Don’t you ever think otherwise. Of course I do.”

  “Well, act like it then.”

  I didn’t like the angry look on his face. What did he mean?

  “What do I have to do? I kissed you. You are the one doubting me. I should just toss you over the side.”

  He snorted. “Try it. Go ahead.”

  I made a growling noise and turned back around. Thanks to Valeo’s robust paddling, we’d gotten far ahead of the other Gek canoes—too far for my liking. I glanced over my shoulder again, meeting Valeo’s still-amused gaze, and then looked further back to see the other craft at least a full rowing length behind. Blast it. There was safety in a crowd, as Babba would say, and one canoe felt too vulnerable to me.

  And then an idea pounded into my brain with the force of stone. I turned all the way around to face Valeo.

  “Did you say there’d be search parties out for us?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “How close do you think they’d be by now?”

  He cocked his head and squinted. “You’re serious? They’re just up ahead.”

  I whipped back around. Sure enough, I could make out the tiny specks of people paddling toward us. I’d been so lost in my fog of anger and annoyance that I’d missed it.

  That didn’t give me much time to perfect my half-formed plan, but I had to try. I needed to time this just right, or at least make it look like it was timed right. The thought struck me that I had to convince three parties of three separate things in order to save both my own life and Valeo’s: Valeo had to believe I was betraying him, the Gek had to think I wanted to go back to my people, but my people had to believe I belonged in the wild. Only in that way could I make sure that Valeo came out of this looking like he’d never harbored a single, heretical doubt in his thick head, and that I wasn’t fully a heretic deserving of a hanging.

  All the sweet, flattering things Valeo had ever said about me could be scattered on the next strong wind for all it mattered. He had to hate me, and it had to be real, or his comrades and commander would think he’d lost his head over some crazy witch. He may not feel he had much to lose, but I suspected otherwise. Sooner or later, I would have to wreck his life.

  And it’d have to be sooner, rather than later, or, I realized with a gulp, I’d never work up the nerve. He was now envisioning his triumphant return with me and all the stories he’d
weave to try and save our hides. It would likely mean whole new layers of lies.

  I waited until the rowboats pulled close enough to see us. I had picked up a paddle in the bottom of the canoe and had joined Valeo’s frantic paddling, as though I were also anxious to return. When the boats were too big on the horizon to ignore, I leaned forward and braced my knees against the sides of the canoe. I gripped the paddle for power rather than steering, adjusting my grip subtly so Valeo wouldn’t notice any strange movement. I turned my torso ever-so-slightly so I could put my whole body into that paddle.

  Then I whirled around and whacked the side of his head.

  Valeo tumbled into the water with a yelp, but I’d already begun paddling toward shore as furiously as I could manage. Behind me, Valeo cursed and shouted. Then silence. A hand clamping on the side of the canoe told me I hadn’t rowed fast enough, but we’d been traveling parallel to shore. As he reached for me, I dove into the water on the other side of the canoe and swam the short distance to the beach. I ran up the beach toward the Gek, visible in the distance in their tiny craft.

  I couldn’t look behind me to see whether the human boats were any closer. I’d dropped my blanket skirt and was running in my underclothes, my legs bare to the world. I didn’t know I could run so fast, as I hadn’t had many opportunities to do so. Civilized girls stroll politely. But I sprinted. Valeo caught up to me with a string of curses, the names he called me so vile and awful, they burned all the way down to my heart. I had wanted this be real, and it was, and I hated it.

  I struggled to free myself from his iron grip. I kneed him in his groin and managed to briefly wriggle free to a new stream of his curses. This time he held me from behind, his massive arms folded across mine.

  How I wish ears had lids, as eyes do, so I could’ve shut myself off from the vile flood of invective he poured into them: I was the worst sort of traitor, I’d taken his trust and smashed it, I was ungrateful and fickle and cruel, and a thousand other evil things besides. I continued to struggle and wriggle and kick in his grip, but I didn’t utter a word. I wasn’t going to fling hurtful retorts at him or engage in a shouting match. It would hurt me too much and, there wasn’t a fiber in my entire body that could bring myself to say a single bad word about the man who’d risked his reputation, his career, and possibly his life to follow me out into the wild.

  The first rowboats pulled up to shore and men dashed toward us. I fully expected them to raise weapons, which they did. I expected them to point those weapons at me, which they didn’t.

  They surrounded us. One of the men I recognized as a port inspector, one of my father’s men. His name was Aleen, and he’d been a ship’s captain before falling in love with a Port Sapphire woman and weighing anchor for the last time here.

  “Let her go,” Aleen said. “Or die, Feroxi bastard.”

  “You fool,” Valeo fumed, gripping me harder. “I could wipe out all of you before you blinked.”

  Aleen raised a sword as the other men pressed in. “You rapist bastard. Now that you’ve finished with the daughter of our esteemed Lord Portreeve, we shall finish you.”

  Rapist? I wanted to laugh, but clamped my mouth shut and wriggled free of an astonished Valeo. The word had its effect on him, too, and he eyed me with an unspoken plea in his gaze. It seemed to ask “How far will your betrayal go?” We hanged rapists in Port Sapphire; I wished that had occurred to me when making my phony escape plan.

  “You’ve come in time, Port Inspector Aleen,” I said with as much gravity as I could muster, despite looking extremely ravaged and unchaste. “There’s no harm done here. My fate brought me out to these woods, and this soldier wishes to bring me back. There’s nothing else to assume by his actions.”

  Both Aleen and Valeo relaxed their stances. Valeo continued to stare at me, probably wondering what game I was playing. I wasn’t sure, myself, since I was making up the rules as I went. Rule number one: keep Valeo safe. He only knew how to wield weapons; I was learning how to wield people. I only hoped I was getting better at it.

  “So he hasn’t tried anything?” Aleen asked. “And you wish to stay here?”

  I shook my head. “I seem to have brought all sorts of terrible violence to our city, Aleen. This is all my doing. Aren’t you safer if I stayed away?”

  Valeo interrupted, “Don’t listen to her—”

  “Shut up, Feroxi thug,” Aleen said. More men had joined him, and Valeo faced a sea of knives, pikes, and swords. He seemed more annoyed than afraid, though, and kept giving me hard, beady-eyed stares that made me shift uneasily and turn away. At some point, I realized something soggy was dangling in my eyes. I pushed up a few locks of hair to rediscover my wilted moonbloom crown, its petals now flaking around my shoulders and embedded in curls of hair. I brushed a few off in a futile gesture, but Valeo’s makeshift wreath had stubbornly nested itself in my unruly mane. I wanted to cry from frustration and heartache and a sudden onslaught of irony.

  Aleen gave me a weighty, solemn look that spoke of important matters.

  “Hadara of Rimonil, there is not one soul in all of Port Sapphire who blames you for what’s happened,” he said. “The Azwans should’ve stayed in their far-away land and the meteorite could’ve stayed with the Gek, and we’d all have gone on just fine.”

  Valeo scoffed. “You couldn’t possibly believe that. Have you any idea—”

  “Once again, you interrupt, you stinking shark,” Aleen said. “To the dark bottom of the sea with your kind. It’s where you belong.”

  Valeo’s jaw dropped. “You dare?”

  “You dare. Our women are not for your plundering; this woman especially. You have dragged her from us, and we are bringing her back.”

  “Dragged? You think I dragged—”

  The mightiest struggle that day turned out to be the one I had with myself to keep from bursting into peals of laughter. The two men argued over whose fault it was that the Lord Portreeve’s eldest daughter was found on a deserted stretch of beach without half her clothes and in the clutches of an angry soldier. Valeo glowered and glared like fish could’ve wielded weapons more skillfully against him than this group of clerks and peddlers. But I hoped he also picked up on what Aleen wasn’t saying: the city had no more use for the Temple of Doubt and had come around to my own sense of disgust. Perhaps they’d even felt some difference in the magic there—maybe there was no magic, if the prayer well had been sealed as well as I thought.

  I would head home to a very different city.

  But any mirth gave way to dread when Aleen spoke up again: “Your father needs you urgently, Hadara. It may already be too late.”

  “Too late for what?” My pulse raced. What could be wrong? I remembered he’d been wounded, but certainly Leba Mara and the other healers would’ve helped him, right?

  “We don’t know, Hadara. Healer Mistress Leba Mara has said it’s no longer in her hands, and you’re rumored to have some strange power that could help him. We have nothing but that rumor to go on.”

  I didn’t even take the time to reply. I ran toward the nearest boat and clambered in, men pushing off after me and climbing on board to help me row. I glanced back to see Valeo had taken over a boat and was rowing himself behind us. Every time his boat caught up to mine, however, the other men shoved at his boat with their oars. Some spat in his direction, others cursed in the local tongue. Valeo’s face hardened but he kept on course, never letting his boat get more than a body length behind.

  Further back, the Gek kept up their own rowing, making their steady way back to the city they’d left smoldering.

  But I was no longer thinking about that, or anything. An image of Babba’s bleeding body crept into my head and stuck there, and it was all I could do to keep breathing, keep breathing, as if just by inhaling I could speed the little rowboat along or pull it by an unseen cord. I had no idea what could be wrong, or if it was too late—if everything that mattered in my life would evaporate in smoke and dust.

  I closed my ey
es, but the tears came anyway. The shoreline crept past more slowly than ever as the flotilla of boats made their steady way back to the ruined city.

  29

  Nature is malleable. There’s nothing in nature I cannot change, if I desire. This power I call magic, and it comes from me. You may not wield magic except by my permission.

  —Oblations 10, The Book of Unease

  A landing party greeted us by the boat launch, but Aleen and the other men wouldn’t let me out of the rowboat until someone had fetched fresh clothes to borrow and a comb for my hair. I changed behind a tree while they stood guard nearby, hustling into a too-short dress and a frayed head wrap. My clothes were mismatched, but I looked presentable, at least. I thanked the men for taking the time to help me where many simply would’ve stood around and gawked.

  “It is time to go,” was all Aleen would say. He took my arm and led me along the wharf, past the blackened skeletons of ships sunk low, the corpses of a mighty merchant fleet still moored to the place they’d burned. I hadn’t seen Valeo go, but he must’ve sped on ahead to Ward Sapphire, as I didn’t catch sight of him anywhere. There were no soldiers at all, for that matter, and I wondered what might’ve happened here after I’d left: had I really succeeded in capping Nihil’s source of magic? Was there no more magic, and the Temple Guards had holed up with the perplexed and suddenly powerless Azwans?

  But S’ami didn’t look powerless when he greeted me at the Ward’s mighty gates. He looked as proud and haughty as ever, with that way he had of looking down at everyone, even the giant guards around him. He wordlessly dismissed Aleen and the other men, who bowed and did the vomit-hands greeting as they always did, but with scowls instead of subservient looks. S’ami extended his hand to take mine, keeping it aloft like something precious he was holding up to the light. We strode like this through the compound, a row of soldiers to either side of us, while S’ami muttered softly in Tengali.