Three Wells of the Sea Series Box Set: Three Wells of the Sea and The Salamander's Smile

by Terry Madden

  “How do you know he’s been searching for her?”

  “It’s just… he always had an emptiness about him, a very sexy tortured look, ya know? Like he’s lost his soul. He’s special. I’ve always known that.”

  “Just because you always wanted to jump him doesn’t make him special, Iris.”

  “Oh?” She grinned. “Doesn’t it make you feel special?”

  “It makes me feel like I need a shower. And hold on, just a second. How can Dish fulfill any ‘destiny’ if he’s lying in a hospital with tubes down his throat?”

  “He’s not there, and you know it. You saw him yourself. On the Other Side,” she said. “You’ve never heard of ‘out of body experiences’?”

  Her hands had crept back to his face.

  “Dish is having the ultimate out of body experience,” she said. “He’s in some other dimension. Maybe another planet. Someone there needed him. She needed him.”

  “You’re crazier than me, Iris.”

  “You’re not crazy and you know it. That’s why you flush your pills down the shitter every day.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You live in a dorm, for chrissake. Everyone knows. What are those pills supposed to do for you, anyway?”

  “Make me normal. You wouldn’t be interested.”

  Like a snake striking, her mouth clamped on his. She tasted like strawberry lip gloss and vodka and as her tongue probed his mouth, her hands worked at unzipping his fly.

  He stood up, and Iris tumbled to the floor with the candy wrappers.

  “Dick!”

  “See ya, Iris.”

  On his way past, he picked up the map.

  “You can make some money on those things, ya know,” she called after him. “What are they? Like Benzos or something?”

  Brother Mike bought Connor’s nausea story. One side effect of the anti-psychotic drug was diarrhea and vomiting, but Dr. Adelman failed to mention that it might cause the user to be groped by the likes of Iris McCreary.

  The dorm was empty. Connor got to the top of the stairs and started down the hall, but stopped in front of room 21. Dish’s room. He wondered if anyone had been in there since the accident. It would be three weeks on Friday.

  His mom’s credit card slid in between the door and the jamb easily and after a few jiggles, he pushed the door open and stepped into a dark cave. Flipping on the light, he closed the door behind him.

  It looked like Dish had just gone for a run.

  A pile of unfolded laundry filled the end of his unmade bed, his laptop was open, and three books lay open next to it. Books were everywhere; stacked on the floor and bed stand, overflowing from the bowed bookshelf.

  Connor felt his face go hot and knew he’d be pissing tears soon. Shit.

  He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, then slumped into Dish’s chair. Moving the mouse on the laptop woke it with a static hum. If only it was that easy to wake Dish. The internet browser was still open and Connor scrolled through Dish’s recent search histories. The first on the list was a Wikipedia listing for the word “kelpie,” which was the Scottish version of something called a water horse. It had lots of other names: pooka in Irish; glashan, nix, ceffyl dwr in Welsh; and a bunch of others. It can appear as a beautiful woman, combing her hair by a pool, a dragon or “worm,” or a little horse with its hooves put on backwards, or a horse with a fish tail.

  In Irish legend, children might find a horse wandering around, jump on its back and stick like glue. The water horse invariably took them for a wild ride before diving into a stream or pool to drown the kid.

  But on the Celtic Twilight website, a water horse was described as: “A shapeshifter that could carry a man to his watery death beneath river, sea or well. Thought of in a less sinister way, the water horse could carry a man across to the other side, to the land of the dead, the Fair Lands.”

  So, why was the water horse on Dish’s arm? Was he marked for transport to the other side?

  Connor poked through the open books. One was in a language he’d never seen before, but the subtitle was in English, Early Welsh Poetry. It was open to a page of writing that had too many consonants, but stuck to the page was a hot pink sticky note.

  “Ancient Bindings,” Connor read. There was a phone number underneath it, so he punched it into his cell phone. It rang forever, then finally, voice mail: “Ancient Bindings Rare Books is closed at this time. Our hours are ten to seven, Monday through Saturday. Thank you for calling.”

  He spread the map over the desk. There was a bookshop just south of where the accident happened. He’d marked it, but hadn’t put a name to it.

  He typed the bookshop’s name into the search engine and there it was, on Chautauqua Boulevard. “Purveyors of rare and collectible books, esoterica, documents of all kinds.”

  Dish was going to get a book?

  Connor pulled open the top drawer of the desk. A surge of guilt rushed through him. He had no business looking in Dish’s desk, but they had to be here somewhere.

  Packs of gum, red pens, old postcards, receipts, an AC adaptor, earbuds and some British money. Connor pulled out a flashlight, recognizing it as the one Dish had used in the cave that night. He flipped it on and flashed it into the drawer and finally found what he was looking for under some scratched CDs: Dish’s car keys.

  Connor didn’t sleep that night.

  Saturday morning came. At nine a.m., he flushed his pills, and told Brother Mike he was going for a run. He found Dish’s old Fiat parked at the far end of the overflow parking lot. The car might have been cool back in the seventies, but now it was rusted and dented. Connor didn’t remember it looking this bad last spring when Dish took a carload of kids for ice cream.

  Inside, it smelled like old leather and the springs in the bench seat twanged under his weight. He put the key in the ignition, and only then found the gearshift on the floor.

  “Oh, shit.” It was a manual.

  He’d watched people shift in the movies. He stepped on the clutch and pushed the stick around, then turned the key. It barely turned over, groaned and then, nothing. Shit. He had forgotten; the reason he’d been driving that day was Dish said his car battery was dead. So now he had to learn how to shift and jump-start a car. He slapped the steering wheel and took a deep breath.

  Brother Mike parked the school van and Connor jumped out. “Make it quick,” Mike called out the window. “They’re serving egg rolls and teriyaki chicken for lunch.”

  Connor saluted and headed for the bookshop. He had told Mike he’d ordered a rare book for his mom for Christmas and if he didn’t pick it up today, they’d send it back.

  The bookstore sat squeezed between a realtor and a frozen yogurt shop. A little bell rang when he opened the door, and a tall stick of a man appeared from a forest of bookstacks, his half-glasses sitting on the very end of his narrow nose.

  “May I help you, young man?” His teeth made a yellow log jam in his mouth and his bald head had a few wisps of hair that really needed to be shaved.

  “Yes. I believe a friend of mine called here looking for a book. The problem is, I don’t actually have the title of the book.”

  “And where is this friend?”

  “He’s in the hospital, actually. I thought I’d try to get it for him. A surprise, you know.”

  The guy grinned. It was one of those grins that said he really didn’t like people coming into his shop, really didn’t like people at all, just books. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Hugh Cavendish.”

  He snapped shut the book in his hands, saying, “Ah, yes. I almost sent that book back. Thought he’d forgotten altogether.”

  Behind the counter, he rummaged through a stack of books with white slips wrapped around them.

  “You’d be surprised how many people start a search for a book and then never—ah, here it is.”

  He handed Connor a slim paperback wrapped in a Ziploc baggie. Through the plastic, he saw a black-and-white picture on the cov
er. A guy stood with his fist on his hip, wearing those poochy old-style riding pants, high socks and cap. The title read: Ancient Monuments of Wales for the Intrepid Wanderer. The subtitle: One Man’s Discoveries by C. W. Pritchard.

  “Are you sure this is the book Mr. Cavendish ordered?”

  The guy glared over the top of his glasses. “You think I could mistake this? Talk about rare.” He pulled out a receipt pad. “That’ll be one twenty-five.”

  Connor pulled a five out of his wallet, laid it on the counter and picked up the Ziplocked book. The man’s fingers clamped down on it.

  “That’s one hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

  “One hundred? Dollars? For this?”

  They both had a hand on the book.

  “Fewer than five hundred were printed. I doubt more than a dozen still exist. The guy was a legend, apparently. Hope your friend likes it.”

  “Jesus.”

  Connor dug out his mom’s credit card, hoping he hadn’t tweaked it when he carded Dish’s door.

  The guy slid it through the credit card thingy and the machine started printing. Connor signed and walked out with a worn paperback that was more of a pamphlet than a book. He took it out of the plastic and opened to the title page. Printed in England in 1935. The Pritchard dude looked like he’d just escaped from the nuthouse. He had a crazy grin on his face and his walking stick branched out like antlers at the top with little bells, or maybe acorns, hung from it.

  When he climbed back into the van, Brother Mike took one look at the crispy old book, and said, “Your mother collects books?”

  “Yeah. Old books on… hiking.”

  Back at the dorm, Connor locked himself in his room. He turned pages of grainy old black-and-white photos of stones of all sizes, some with designs carved on them, and the crazy guy standing beside them, his hands on his hips in typical British swagger.

  In the preface, Pritchard said his goal was to document monuments in peril of being lost due to lack of preservation in the more remote regions of Wales. He gave short descriptions of the stones and any local legends he’d found that applied.

  It was on page 73 that Connor found it. The stone was part of a shepherd’s cottage, and Pritchard said it must have been moved there hundreds of years before when the cottage was built. It was common practice, he said, to use standing stones as foundations for new buildings.

  This stone formed an oversized cornerstone, carved on both visible faces. According to Pritchard, there was no way of knowing where it was originally located.

  Around the edge of the stone in a long ribbon was a bunch of scribbled symbols that Pritchard called “Pictish runes.” In the very center of the ribbon was a water horse, its tail knotted and twisted, its mouth open and its front hooves striking out.

  The image of the water horse on Dish’s arm was a perfect match for the one on that rock. But what did that mean? What did this rock have to do with Dish?

  Pritchard’s description of the stone read: “A classic well stone, once used to mark a spring that possessed healing or magical properties. This stone has clearly been moved, as it is now incorporated into a cottage wall. A highly unusual example of such a well stone, as the runic inscription was at first, unobserved.”

  What did that mean? “Unobserved?”

  Connor turned another crisp page. There, on the lower right of page 82 was a blurry image of a woman. She looked like she was turning away to avoid the camera, her dark hair braided into a thick rope. She was glancing over her shoulder and looking right into the camera. He had seen those eyes before. She was looking straight into Connor’s soul just as she had in the cave. It wasn’t the same woman exactly, but whoever looked out at the camera was the woman Connor had seen with Dish on the other side.

  The caption under the photo read “Lyla Bendbow.”

  Chapter 20

  The stairwell spiraled wildly and when Ava reached the bottom she had to pause, bracing herself with a hand on the wall. It was taking far longer than expected for her head to clear of Irjan’s tinctures. Jeven appeared, silver bells chiming, and took up beside her like a dog to heel.

  “They await you,” he said.

  “As they should.”

  She touched the fox stole at her neck. Jeven mustn’t see the marks left by yesterday’s flight. But by his look, the stole hid nothing. Jeven read her like the entrails of a goat.

  Weaker than she expected after such a flight, her legs threatened to fail her, so she took his arm to steady herself.

  “Irjan is placing you in danger,” he said. “A tethered soul can take possession of you as easily as you possess it—”

  “The danger is running free in the Vale of Elfael. Is the order away?”

  “The bird flew with your message before dusk last night, as you commanded.”

  “Lyleth is not alone,” she said.

  Jeven stopped walking and faced her. “She called him?”

  “Nechtan lives. He and Lyleth travel with two children toward the Lost Hammer River.”

  Jeven lifted the latch of the council chamber, whispering, “You must march without delay, before your chieftains know of it.”

  “Everyone will know soon enough.”

  The new footstool made her feel taller. She touched the stole again to be sure her throat was hidden.

  Smoldering fear emanated from Fiach and Lloyd. Perhaps they thought they would be next on the pyre. Nechtan had failed to inspire such fear in his underlings. He drank with them, diced with them, laughed with them, whored with them. Without fear, there is no allegiance.

  She let her gaze rest on Fiach. “Has your second detachment of scouts sent any word?”

  “Not yet, lady. They should have reached Elfael yesterday.”

  “I have information that says Lyleth makes for the Lost Hammer River,” she said, her eyes never leaving Fiach’s, measuring his response. His breathing quickened.

  “I sent a bird to your men last night,” she said. “They will overtake Lyleth before she crosses into Cedewain. You and Lloyd will make for Elfael today with all haste.”

  She leaned on the table and said evenly, “You will take her, Fiach.”

  His jaw tightened as he tipped his chin in agreement. He certainly understood her jest. She found herself grinning. What would he do when he found Nechtan with Lyleth? Would he kill them both?

  She stood and Fiach and Lloyd did the same as the door flew open and Gwylym spilled in.

  Ava’s captain of the guard showed his palms, his cloak and leathers dripping on the flagstones. “I have news,” he said, glancing at the two chieftains.

  “Leave us,” she told Fiach and Lloyd.

  When the door had closed behind them, she said to Gwylym, “You’ve seen Lyleth?”

  Gwylym cast about the room and found Jeven waiting by the door. “What I have to say should not be heard by the walls, my lady.”

  “Come. We’ll talk in my chamber. Jeven, see to the preparations to march north.”

  Ava led Gwylym through the revel hall to the stairs leading to her chamber. She could tell by his face, he’d seen Nechtan. And if Ava lost the allegiance of the clan guard, there would be bloodshed long before they reached Cedewain. Without them, she was fodder for an assassin’s blade.

  Gwylym opened the chamber door. Ava glanced at the prize waiting in the corner, covered with a sheet of oilcloth.

  “Tell me what you saw, Gwylym.”

  “Lady. Please don’t think me addled.” He wasn’t a young man, but the years had sculpted him with the chisel of war into a man she found intriguing. There was something rough and violent about him. She could own this man.

  “Tell me she’s dead, Gwylym.”

  “She lives. As does my lord king, Nechtan.” He needed to say nothing else; anguish and confusion were written in his eyes. The story spilled from him like a confession. He needn’t tell her that he was torn in two, a man bred for duty and service now serving two masters.

  “Your men saw him as well?�
�

  “Saw him, heard his voice, knew it was him.”

  Tales of the risen king would be spilled over cups in every alehouse in Ys.

  She went to Gwylym, ran her fingers up his arms to his shoulders. He smelled of horse sweat and wet wool, still muddy from the road. “How are you certain it was him?”

  “I’ve known him since he was a lad.” He took her hands and gently gave them back to her.

  “I thought you said he closed the entrance with a fall of stones, how could you see him?”

  “There was a space big enough to look through. I could’ve spat on him, so close was he.”

  “Lyleth is nothing more than a conjurer. She deceived you with a demon, cloaked in the gossamer of the druada.”

  “It was him, Lady—”

  “His flesh? His blood?”

  “Aye. ‘Twas.”

  “And if I can show you that it wasn’t?”

  She ran her hands up his chest to his shoulders, kneaded them, but they were like stone. He didn’t remove her hands this time, so, gently, she pulled his face down to hers and opened her mouth to meet his, but he resisted.

  “Lady, I—”

  “You what? You would never dishonor your lord? Your lord is dead, Gwylym. And his queen is lonely.”

  He softened just perceptibly, leaning ever so slightly toward her mouth as she whispered in his ear, “I must show you the truth. Light the candle.”

  He did as bidden.

  Taking his hand, she led him to the corner. The candlelight warmed the stained creases of the shroud, and she detected the faint stink of cedar oil and death.

  She pulled the sheet away.

  The candlelight wavered, but Gwylym didn’t drop it.

  The golden light made Nechtan’s corpse appear to be sleeping. Yet, when Ava moved closer, she saw the pallor of death, the severed warrior’s braid, the shriveled lips that were once hungry for hers.

  “My guards found him sleeping peacefully in his barrow,” she said. “Fiach will bear him northward, so that every man who pledges his blood to me will see the truth before they meet Lyleth’s conjuring. Nechtan’s body will be my battle standard, and my men will know the northern clans are led to battle by a wraith.”