“The wight was longer absent this time. Back he came, but not so quick.
And, rope-less, spluttered with a hiss, ‘That fickle, wayward stuff won’t stick!
The grains will not cohere, so let me use some joiner’s glue, or tar.’
‘No,’ said the dean. ‘Recall our bet; you claimed you’d prove how skilled you are.’
‘Then, let me mix some honey in!’ ‘No!” cried the teacher. ‘That’s not fair!’
The wight was desperate to win. ‘Then chaff!’ he pleaded in despair.
‘Not even chaff. You foolish hob, some common sense might profit you.
You should have known that such a job was quite impossible to do.
You’ve lost; I’ve won. It’s wager’s end.’ The hapless wight set up a roar
And in a trice he did descend to caverns deep beneath the floor,
Or some place unbeknownst to man, beyond the borders of the world,
Or some grim forest darker than Death’s banners in the night unfurled.
“He ne’er was seen again. They say one fact can prove the story true,
For right up to this very day the hearthstone’s cracked, where he passed through.”
Dropping her horse’s reins, Jewel applauded. “An entertaining ditty!” she said. “And based on fact, I daresay! Ha—ropes of sand! What a clever notion.”
Sitting straight-backed and relaxed in the saddle, Arran turned his head and smiled at her. In that moment her attention was drawn to the shape of him once again: tall and lean, wide-shouldered, tapered at the waist, muscular, and cleanlimbed. There was something unsettling about such masculine vitality.
The party trotted by the decaying and tumbled timbers of the fence overhung by doddering chestnut trees, now gold-foiled in their Autumn splendor; past the sycamore coppice, across windblown hillsides terraced with fading sheep-tracks and between the mossy trunks of the oak-wood.
At last the riders found themselves cantering up the rain-rinsed slope of a grassy ridge. At the summit they drew rein to allow their mounts to catch their breath. Below, on the other side of the valley, rose the gigantic dome, crowned with its matching bell-roofed Tope and surrounded by its multitude of cup-roofed turrets, towers, and lesser halls.
It was a Moon’s Day in early Ninember.
On the afternoon that they rode down the extensive lawns to Castle Strang a light rainshower was falling, while simultaneously the sun shone. Every leaf on every tree glittered and twinkled in the breeze. The sky to the east and south was of a blue as sweet as the taste of sugared violets, low-banded with smoke-gray wisps of thin cloud. In the southwest, the equinoctial sun idled languidly. Opposite the sun, a rainbow shimmered. The central band appeared wider than the others, a flawless, translucent arc of luminous green. To the west and north, gray storm-clouds edged with shining pearl loomed like slowly exploding mountains riven by crevasses.
Under the chill shadow of the outer wall the riders dismounted before the double gates, close enough to discern the miniscule mosses that clung to the interfaces between the wall-stones, and the spotted beetles that crawled thereon.
“Touch neither lock nor latch nor any aperture. Lay no finger on wall nor fence nor any perimeter. Follow only in my footsteps,” instructed Jewel, “else you will perish.”
To the three weathermasters, Tristian, Bliant, and Gahariet, Arran said, “I pray you bide here with Yaadosh and Barakiel, to mind the horses. Wait atop the slope before the gates. It needs only two of us to escort the miscreant to our destination inside the castle—Jewel to clear the way, and myself to guard the prisoner.”
“I’d avow he’ll not take much guarding,” observed Weathermage Solorien. His nod indicated Aonarán, who had dropped to his knees on the grass. Head bowed, the pale-haired man was sniveling and whimpering.
“Do not take me in there,” he entreated.
Arran’s lip curled in distaste, but he knelt beside the quaking man, saying to him, “There is nought to fear. I have entered there and returned alive. If you do exactly as we say, no harm will come to you; this I swear.”
“You will abandon me in that infernal house.”
“We will not. You have my word on it.” As Stormbringer rose to his feet he added, “It is my desire to bring you to justice in the courts of Narngalis, not to leave you wandering free to cause more mischief. Now, stand up, straighten your spine, and come with us.”
Jewel and Arran, leading the terrified Aonarán, entered as before and made their way through the labyrinth of chambers and stairs. High in the Tope of the Dome, nothing seemed to have changed. In fact, the place was imbued with a timeless quality so intense it was as if all things enclosed within had died; even the very firelight seemed but the echo of a living flame. The high-backed throne of vanilla marble stood empty beneath the still-burning torch in its sconce, from which strange flames flickered purple and mauve, telling secrets at the edge of audibility.
Arran kept watch on Aonarán while Jewel crossed the floor to the great book, which lay open on the lectern, unaltered but for the fact that the writing was clearly visible once more.
She read again:
The Flame that must be lighted is thus: you must pour oil into the narrow Gutter that circumscribes the lowest portion of the Platform central to this Chamber, then take up one of the waxen Tapers you see nearby, light it from the weird-fire, and hold the Flame to the oil.
As inquisitive as ever, Jewel reexamined the two remaining miniature drinking horns, before turning and addressing the chamber at large: “We have returned,” she said aloud. “We have fulfilled the Vow.”
Her words seemed somehow fragile, breaking against the adamantine walls and shattering into eggshell fragments. The visitors watched warily, waiting for some sign or disturbance. A piteous whimper jumped from the lips of Aonarán and scurried away across the floor like a centipede.
“Husssh,” said the lavender flames.
The silence of the Tope grew thicker and heavier, pressing in until the occupants seemed to have difficulty breathing.
Yet there came no reply.
Oppressed to the point of panic by the stultifying closeness of the chamber, Jewel felt her pulse accelerate. She yearned to lash out, to counteract the gelatinous weight of passivity with a swift stroke of activity. She darted to the alcove with the jar containing the sorcerer’s bones, and placing both her own hands upon it, cried recklessly, “I swear that I have found the Draught of Immortality, and I have brought it with me to this place!” Next, she snatched up one of the clay jugs standing in a wall-niche, thrust it beneath the spigot of the oil jar, and wrenched at the tap’s wooden handle.
Nothing happened.
Jewel gave vent to her frustration. “Curse this place!”
Arran reached across and twisted the cork that stoppered the slender neck of the oil jar. Air entered the vessel making a sucking noise, and with a glug as of a drain unblocking, the spigot excreted a cloudy ooze.
“This stuff is rancid!” said Jewel, as a barley-sugar twist of oil poured from the tap, filling the jug.
“It is old,” said Arran. “Whale oil, perhaps, judging by the stench. It appears the sorcerer’s magicks did not extend to the preservation of organic matter.”
Jewel tipped the jug into the gutter girding the barren plinth. A syrupy arc leaned from the spout; the oil surged forth until it flowed all the way around. Having seized a waxen taper from a shelf, the damsel held it in the magnolia-hued pyre of the sconce until it transformed into a dahlia of fire; then she dashed this spitting flower against the gutter. Flames lapped. The oil began to smoke, then caught alight. Fire ran rapidly around the stone channel in both directions, meeting at the other side. Now the entire circumference of the narrow trough was burning furiously. The pedestal was skirted on all sides by leaping flamelets crowned with plumes of smoke.
Cowering against a milky pilaster, Aonarán squirmed. “What have you set in motion?” he shrieked.
But neither Jewel nor Arran could find an answe
r.
The heat from the blaze was extreme, so intense, it drove the watchers back against the walls, and they were forced to shield their faces with their upraised arms. A thin, sharp sound whipped across the air.
“The heat is cracking the stone!” Jewel shouted.
Aonarán gasped uncontrollably, crouching in his corner.
Impatiently she snapped at him, “Be silent!”
“Have no fear,” Stormbringer advised the cringing man. “Fire can be mastered, if it becomes necessary.”
Through the up-rushing curtains of radiant energy, they could see that the pedestal was, in fact, altering. The fire was transforming it. No crevices could be perceived, but the galactic mist and bubble-swarms locked in the rock-crystal were melting away. The material was unclouding, clearing to translucency.
The last wisps of opacity gave way to lucidity, and as the flames dwindled the smooth sides of the plinth were revealed in complete transparency, save for the delicate outlines of the relief carving of twin axes with crossed handles. The block was revealed as no pedestal after all, but a hollow container. Its outer planes of glass or crystal were speckled with the scorch-marks of burnt oil, but there was no mistaking: it was a coffin.
Within this glacial tomb lay a corpse.
Wonderingly, Jewel and Arran approached and looked down upon the prone figure framed by the beveled edge of what now turned out to be the casket’s lid.
“Well,” said Stormbringer at length, “I must revoke my criticism of the sorcerer’s magicks.”
The disclosed corpse seemed perfectly preserved, exhibiting no signs of fleshly decay. It was the body of an elderly man, clad in heavy black robes. The attenuated strands of his hair and beard, as white as rimed twigs on a winter’s morning, flowed from his brow and jaw. His face was indented with the furrows of age. Swollen bags of slack skin sagged beneath his closed lids; his cheeks were sunken pits. His nostrils were wide and his mouth, visible as a slash of livid blue beneath the ashen moustaches, turned down at the outer corners. A scrawny, long-fingered hand rested at his side, resembling an albino crab. Dirt encrusted the fingernails.
“Perhaps it is he,” said Arran in amazement.
“Indubitably,” agreed Jewel. “The sorcerer himself!”
Reason decreed that this fossilized carcass could be none other than the body of Janus Jaravhor. Stories about this man described his arrogance, amorality, and ruthlessness, his cunning and scholarship, his acquired power, his appalling crimes, his terrible intellect, and his eventual demise. So full of his own self-importance was he, he must have had himself mummified after his death, that future generations might behold his worldly remains and remember him with awe. Between fascination and horror, Jewel could not tear her gaze from the sight of the perfectly preserved remains. Stormbringer, however, continually glanced toward Aonarán, who had fallen still and silent, obviously petrified by terror.
The last of the oil in the gutter having been consumed, the flames vanished.
“What now?” muttered Jewel as she and her companion stared at the recumbent form.
And the sorcerer stirred.
A great sigh seemed to pass through the Tope. Jewel’s startled cry smote the masonry, and she stumbled backward. Arran caught his breath. His hand flew to the pommel of his sword. There was no doubt; the white-fringed lids of the old man were fluttering like anemic moths. His lips, the color of bruised plums, parted slightly.
“By thunder!” breathed Stormbringer. “He lives!”
The young man’s first impulse was to restore and preserve life. Without thinking twice, he stepped forward. Gripping the edge of the casket’s cover, he gave one mighty heave of his shoulders, and flung it aside. The pane crashed weightily to the floor, a glinting cobweb of fractures radiating across its surface. A gust of stale air erupted from within, churning the hair and beard of the occupant. Shallowly, his chest rose and fell. His lids unclosed. Two etiolated bulbs stared out. The calcified lobster of his hand came suddenly alive, and clawed at the prism walls of his comfortless bed.
“Is it illusion?” whispered Jewel, aghast.
“I think not.”
“Oh, pitiful spectre!” she cried compassionately. “I do believe it is trying to sit up. It needs help—”
Leaning into the casket, Arran passed his arm beneath the spine of the macabre creature, hoisted it into a sitting position, then lifted it bodily out of its tomb and deposited it on the throne of marble. The apparition sprawled weakly against the arm-rests, panting and wild-eyed.
Then, “Water!” he grunted, raising a feeble finger in a gesture of command.
Jewel rummaged at her belt. She unhooked a small water flask, squirted some of the liquid into an earthenware cup, and, somewhat squeamishly, held the vessel to the man’s mouth. His lips wriggled like bluish worms, sipping and spluttering. He fumbled to grasp the cup. Instead of his right hand, the stump of a wrist came up.
Jewel recoiled in disgust.
“Is that the water of life?” the ancient creature rasped.
“No,” she replied, averting her eyes from the severed limb, “but—”
“Give me the water of life!”
Shocked at the sight of this gruesome thing shrieking commands at her from its putrefying mouth, the damsel stood for a moment, speechless. Jaravhor had died—or so it had been believed. His death, however, like much of his life, had been a trickery. Somehow this artful scholar had wrought a means to sustain and prolong his longevity, in a state of timeless stasis—perhaps indefinitely—waiting until the right person found a way into his stronghold, read the words in the book, and brought back the draught he needed for survival. Jewel recoiled from the idea of such long-simmering subterfuge. As all the other reasons she despised this man came to the forefront of her mind, her anger began to build.
Stormbringer, clearly as outraged as she, briefly endeavored to ease the tension with a quip. He murmured aside, “For a dead man, his strength is surprising.”
Undeniably, the revived sage seemed to be gaining vitality by the minute. Rheumy eyes focused on his surroundings. He fixed a disconcerting stare on his rescuers.
“I am Janus Jaravhor, Lord of Strang,” he said. His voice, though hoarse, was compelling. “Now that I wake, the sands begin again to tumble. It is you who woke me. You would not have done so, had you not obtained the elixir. Give it to me, now, before my time runs out. Give, and in return I shall reveal the location of the other Wells.”
Jewel inhaled deeply, to fortify her resolve and calm her agitation. This thing, her ancestor, had faked his own death with the intention of tricking his benefactors into keeping him alive forever! He planned to drink the water of life—but what then? Would the water-bearer be rewarded, as the book had promised? Or would the Lord of Strang cast aside the implement of his salvation and proceed to rule the world? No matter—such conjectures were irrelevant now.
“That we cannot do,” the damsel said boldly. With a flourish, she indicated Aonarán, curled up in the corner. “We found the Draught, it is true. But that fellow has taken it by force and cunning, and he has drunk it down, every drop.”
Jewel was aware that she and her companion had failed the test. She understood they had lost the chance to discover the location of the other Wells, but it would be pointless to attempt deception.
The enthroned sage turned to Arran. “Does she speak truth?” he croaked.
“She does.”
In the sconce above the mage’s head, the fire fluctuated sibilantly. Violet reflections shimmered, lacing themselves through the rain of his silver locks. In the sockets beneath his brows, shadows accumulated, punctured by the wrathful gleam of his eyes.
Now, there was an added wrongness to his slumped posture in the chair. A series of subtle shudders rippled through his frame. His left hand gripped the arm of the chair like a grappling iron knotted with veins, and in his temple a cable throbbed. He seemed to be suffering from a fit of apoplexy, brought on by Jewel’s news. The feroc
ity of his spasms threatened to cast him upon the floor. Stormbringer moved to support him, but from between clenched teeth the sorcerer growled, “Stay back!” Bloody foam spattered from his lips.
Gradually the convulsions of rage subsided. Jaravhor appeared to be forcing himself to regain composure, probably so that he could take steps to remedy his unexpected and desperate situation. He turned his grizzled head and pinned the shrinking Aonarán with a penetrating stare. It was clear this ruin of a human being still retained some of his original power. “You,” he pronounced venomously, and every angle of his withered body projected incomprehensible depths of hatred.
The fair-haired man gibbered. “Weathermaster, do not let it near me!” he entreated Arran. “It will drink my blood!”
“You,” the sage repeated savagely, ignoring the outburst. “You have the look of another. One who was my servant. Curse you for your offense against me! Yet, I shall be avenged. Be assured of it; I shall be avenged, you ill-gotten cur!” Returning his attention to Stormbringer, he said, with as much insistence as his weak constitution could evidently muster, “What year is it? Are you the son of Jovan? No matter—kinsman, there is little time. Now that the Pendur Sleep is no longer on me, a limited span of my natural life remains. I must speak with you privately. Kick this whining dog out the door, out of hearing range, but do not allow him to escape. And tell your wench she is dismissed, for the nonce.” His lip curled, as his phlegmy regard flicked indifferently over Jewel.
She and Arran exchanged glances. They said nothing, but each knew the other was thinking: The Lord of Strang is mistaken as to which of us is his heir.
“Aonarán shall leave,” Arran said levelly, disguising his abhorrence, “but not the damsel.”
“Have your way. But make haste!” Ignoring Jewel, Jaravhor heaved himself upright until he sat straighter on the stone chair, resting his elbows on arms, half-reclining. The effort provoked a bout of coughing.
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 40