Well of the Damned

by K. C. May

  “Who the hell cares?” said one prisoner. “Just shut up and take it.”

  “The lordover’ll hear about this,” said another.

  “Extra meal rations for a week might keep us quiet about it, though,” said a third.

  Such a mixed reaction from his fellow inmates reminded Tyr that he hadn’t made much of an effort to win friends here, but at least the attack was halted. For now. He hated to think he would have to call in his favors to corroborate this assault.

  Black-beard got to his feet and yanked his trousers up. “You gotta go to sleep sometime,” he said with a sneer.

  The guard picked up his candle. In its flickering light, Tyr could see his eyes were bloody. He smirked, certain he could use this proof to get the warden and guard fired for their attack or at least branded.

  He was wrong. He had only the guards to hear his complaint the next morning, and it went unreported, as did his demands to see the lordover. Over the next few weeks, he slept as he could during the day and remained watchful at night.

  One afternoon, he was awakened by the bells in the temple tolling. He counted twenty times, though it may have been twenty-one. The other prisoners speculated and bet each other on the reason for it, but Tyr had no guess as to why they would be ringing. Later that day, a new guard with puppy eyes and a boyish smile arrived with the slop bucket and spilled the news: dignitaries across Thendylath, as well as a few visiting from friendly nations, had come to watch Kinshield receive his crown in a huge ceremony.

  So it was official, Tyr thought. He wasn’t surprised. The warrant knight had taken the gems from the rune tablet — a feat Tyr had attempted many times over the years — and that was proof enough to the people Gavin Kinshield deserved to rule Thendylath.

  It started raining the next day. It rained for one week, then another, then another. Tyr couldn’t help but wonder whether the gods were drowning Thendylath in retribution for putting a ’ranter on the throne. It seemed fitting somehow.

  Late one morning, roughly three weeks after the coronation, the clang of the door being unlocked echoed down the narrow corridor, followed by two pairs of boots clomping rhythmically on the stone floor. With every approaching footstep, keys on an iron ring jingled a tune that made Tyr’s grumbling stomach sing in anticipation. The other prisoners began to complain loudly when the guards didn’t stop at their cell doors. Not feeding time. Perhaps someone would be freed. Or put to death.

  The warden’s ugly bearded face filled the small window of his cell door and Tyr’s heart with apprehension.

  Chapter 3

  Water ran down the slopes of the mountains that embraced the capitol city of Tern, streaming from every direction to converge and rush down the main road. It covered the street, gushing downhill and threatening to carry with it anything or anyone not heavy enough or tied down strongly enough to resist its force. Those whose homes sat at higher elevations used bags of sand and gravel to direct the water around their houses instead of through them. Others weren’t so lucky and had to abandon their homes and seek refuge with relatives or friends whose houses had not yet flooded.

  The River Athra, swollen to the tops of its banks, roared through the city like an angry beast. The river that provided the citizens of Tern its drinking water now threatened their lives with its crumbling banks and overflow.

  Gavin Kinshield called for a halt where the water had started to spill over the eroded bank and form a rivulet that, if left unchecked, would damage the homes and businesses in its path. “Let’s build this bank up here,” he shouted over the roar of the river. He swung down from the back of his warhorse and joined the dozen others with him in unloading sandbags from their wagon. The people working alongside him, men and women who served as battlers and carpenters and cooks and acolytes of the church, formed a line and began passing sandbags from the wagon to where Gavin received and stacked them on the bank. With his great height, every time he bent down to place a bag, the cloak on his back shifted forward and got in the way. It wasn’t keeping him dry anyway, and so he pulled it off and tossed it over Golam’s gray rump, then turned back to the task at hand. He’d lost his hat at the last spot upstream, and now rain dripped into his eyes and mouth and soaked his tunic and trousers, making them cling heavily to his body.

  “My liege,” one of the men said. “We can handle it from here. Why don’t you go inside and dry off? We wouldn’t want you catching your death.”

  Gavin grinned and shook his head. “And let you have all the fun?”

  He preferred any sort of physical labor to sitting on his arse listening to people bicker over whose idea had the most merit or whose fault this or that problem was. Becoming king hadn’t been his choice. Not truly. He’d gotten trapped into the job when his ancestor Ronor Kinshield made a promise to King Arek two hundred years earlier, but that wasn’t where the story started. It hadn’t even started when the king’s trusted mage, Crigoth Sevae, summoned the beyonder champion Ritol to kill King Arek. It had begun when Sevae decided to take the throne for himself, begging the question that tapped Gavin’s shoulder: why? He didn’t have the answers, not yet, though he awoke every morning with the question on his mind. Hauling and stacking sandbags in the pouring rain was a pleasant diversion.

  After he’d closed the rift between the realms to stop the constant invasion of beyonders upon Thendylath, clearing the palace of debris had provided Gavin a means to keep his body strong, but that task was finished. Now, his most pressing concern — more urgent than satisfying his curiosity about the country’s history — was keeping his people safe.

  He took another bag from the woman beside him and stacked it on the ground to build up the eroded riverbank. If the residents of Tern were in danger of losing their homes or livelihood from the flooding, the people living in towns downstream could be worse off. If the levees held, they might escape disaster, but many of those levees were old and in need of repair. His mind continued to churn as he arranged bags until the rivulet disappeared. How was the rest of Thendylath faring in this torrential rain? Crops would be under water, livestock would be going hungry. A hard winter was in store for his people.

  Gavin paused with a bag in his hands, uncertain whether the sound he heard was a rumble of thunder or something else. There was no lightning flashing among the dark clouds.

  “Anyone hear thunder?” he asked.

  “No, my liege,” came several replies.

  Aldras Gar, his sword whispered in his mind. He didn’t think he would ever hear the enchantment’s warning again, after the beyonders had been vanquished.

  Gavin dropped the bag of sand and looked around for an enemy while he reached over his left shoulder for the hilt of his sword.

  Small rocks tumbled down the face of the mountain slope on the opposite bank, and then what looked like a sheet of earth started to slide. “Get back!” he yelled, waving his arms to the people working beside him. “Everyone, get back.” He gathered them up with arms spread wide and pushed them towards the street. From behind him came a deep rumble. Rocks and bits of dirt began to rain down on the river from bank to bank and beyond. A few large rocks fell with a hard thud and spit debris and water in all directions, spattering the wary onlookers. A boulder came loose and first slid, then bounced down the slope, its leaps getting bigger as it picked up speed.

  Aldras Gar.

  It took an angled bounce and veered towards Gavin and his team. People screamed and turned to run. One hand grabbed Gavin’s arm and another his shirt to try to pull him out of the boulder’s path.

  And then everything slowed. A couple men yelled, “Save the king!” as they leaped towards him to shield him from the brunt of the force. Gavin’s mind went immediately to the hilt of his sword. With his will, he focused through its gems as if they were spectacles for his magic. He swung the sword and at the same time pushed from his gut. The hands pulled him off balance, and he started to fall. In a brilliant flash of light, Aldras Gar sliced the boulder in two. The force of the blow se
nt the boulder halves hurtling through the air. One landed in the raging river, and the other slammed into the mountain, burying half of its mass in the wet dirt. The impact sent a spray of water, pebbles and mud outward. The onlookers shielded their faces with their arms just as the gush of water drenched them. The onslaught ended as quickly as it had started. Mud and rocks settled, and all was still again on the mountain slope.

  Everyone cheered. Hands patted Gavin’s shoulder and back, and grasped his arm to help him stand.

  “By the gods, did you see that?” someone exclaimed.

  “You saved our lives,” said another.

  “That was the most excitement I’ve had in three months,” Gavin said. He grinned broadly, standing there wet from head to toe and speckled with bits of earth. In his hand, Aldras Gar vibrated like the fading gong of a bell. He missed times like this — working hard, saving people, and showing off for the ladies.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing!” one woman said.

  “My first glimpse at your magic. It was a marvel!” another exclaimed.

  “My liege,” a man said, “are you injured?”

  Gavin snorted. Falling on his arse in the mud wasn’t quite enough to hurt him, though he understood their concern. He was the first king in more than two hundred years, and nobody wanted to bury him before he sired an heir. “I’m fine. Anyone get hurt?”

  Assured that all had returned to normal, Gavin resheathed his sword and went to inspect their work. A few of the sandbags had taken a beating and spilled their guts into the river, but for the most part, the bank was holding. “Let’s patch this up and move on to the next spot.”

  “Your Grace,” someone called.

  Gavin flinched, realizing that meant him. It was going to take him a while to get used to answering to the various titles people gave him, though he supposed he preferred majesty and grace to ’ranter. If he heard that denigration ever again, he would be wearing someone’s teeth around his wrist.

  A rider, hunched under his cloak, trotted towards him, splashing through the mud and puddles and waving an arm. “Your Grace, Lord Dawnpiper asked me to find you. He requests you return to the palace straight away.”

  Chapter 4

  “Cirang Deathsblade. Get up. The lordover wants to see you,” the warden said. He unlocked and opened the cell door. Over his red and black uniform, he wore a dripping wet, leather cloak. Behind him stood a guard, similarly dressed, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade as if Tyr had the strength to attack and flee.

  “So soon? And I was just getting comfortable.” Tyr’d been in this gaol cell for nearly three months without being questioned as the chancellor’d promised, but the warden just stared at him blankly. There was no sport in taunting a man too stupid to know he was being taunted.

  Though the rain’s incessant drumming on the roof irritated the ears and made him long for a single moment of silence, the worst part was when it had started soaking into the rear wall of his cell. A puddle had appeared at the junction of the floor and wall and had grown to cover almost a third of the cell.

  Tyr avoided stepping in it when he stood. Though he’d be walking in the rain shortly, he took care to keep the dry area dry, in case he had to come back after his hearing. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before the entire gaol was flooded and he’d have no dry spot to stand on.

  The warden had told him he was the king’s prisoner, yet every time Tyr asked for an audience with Kinshield, he was told the king was busy with important matters and couldn’t be bothered with the likes of her. “Is he taking me to the king?”

  “You can ask him yourself.” The warden tossed Tyr a wet cloth, followed by a bundle of white fabric. “Clean yourself up, and then put that on.”

  Tyr dropped the gown to the ground, where it began to soak up water. “I’m not wearing that. Not for the lordover, not for the king, not for anyone.” Despite the body having female parts, Sithral Tyr had always been a man, and he would dress as one. Even she wouldn’t have submitted to it. The last time she’d worn a gown was before she’d joined the Viragon Sisterhood when she was fourteen.

  “The Lordover Tern has more traditional values,” he said. “The meeting’ll go better for you if you do.”

  Cirang had met the man before, and Tyr knew from her memories the warden spoke truly, but he stood defiantly silent. He wouldn’t wear a dress, and they couldn’t force him into one.

  “Suit yourself. At least clean up so you don’t offend him with your stench.”

  Tyr started to unlace his trousers and stopped, mindful of the men’s blatant stares. He’d never been modest before, but in this body, he was vulnerable to the disreputable longings of a man. Could he best the warden a second time? The question wasn’t one Tyr wanted to put to a test, and so he turned around. “Close the door and step away from the window. I won’t have you gawking while I make myself presentable.”

  The warden licked his lips and grinned but stepped back into the corridor and shut the door.

  Tyr used the cloth to wipe his face and hands clean and then let his trousers slide down to his ankles. Three puncture scars puckered the skin on the front of his left hip, a permanent reminder of how Cirang Deathsblade had met her end. If he twisted his torso and craned his neck, he could see the other two in the back, but he didn’t need to. Even the gentlest swipe of the cloth told him the injury hadn’t fully healed. Marring his chest, shoulder and back on the left, a similar wound made him wince when it came time to wash his upper body. He ran the cloth under his arms and between his legs, reminded again the body wasn’t the one he was born in.

  He paused, unsure whether he’d imagined the hot breath on his neck or it was real. He turned to find the warden standing only inches away with one hand down the front of his trousers. He grabbed Tyr by the hair and yanked him up close. “Don’t fight and it won’t hurt as bad.”

  Something poked his belly. Something Tyr didn’t want to think about. “Don’t. I’ll tell the lordover,” he said.

  “I’ll tell the lordover,” the warden said in a mocking voice. “You think Celónd cares about a dirty wench like you?” His breath was hot in Tyr’s ear. He shoved Tyr away with a laugh. “Soon, bitch, but not today.”

  With the trousers bunched around his ankles, Tyr stumbled and barely caught himself. He yanked his trousers up and laced them, then smoothed the tunic’s hem into place. “Not any day, if you value your life.”

  The guard snapped iron shackles onto Tyr’s wrists, tossed a cloak over his shoulders, and gripped his upper arm as they walked past the other cells filled with hooting, lustful men and outside into the rain. The injury to his hip made his step uneven, though the pain wasn’t as bad now as it had been at first. Tyr squeezed his eyes shut against the rain and trusted his escort to lead him.

  They entered a building in which the foyer was clean and stylish, decorated by a statue of a breaching whale. A handsome man in a trim, red and black suit met them at the door. “Wipe your boots,” he said. “I won’t have you tracking mud across the lordover’s floor.” Satisfied Tyr and his guards had wiped their feet sufficiently on the small rug, he led them down the hallway, knocked twice on a closed dark oak door and opened it. Inside, Dashel Celónd, the wiry, redheaded Lordover Tern, sat at a wide desk, writing.

  From his pinched expression and stiff shoulders, the lordover struck Tyr as a churlish and resentful man who made snap judgments. This wasn’t the kind of person Tyr could easily manipulate, nor was he in the position of doing favors for Celónd to win his loyalty, as had been his favored business strategy when he’d been a man. Without his resources, reputation, and exotic look, he needed a new approach, and he had what men wanted.

  It was time for Sithral Tyr to abandon his identity as a Nilmarion man and start thinking of himself as the swordswoman, Cirang Deathsblade. He didn’t need to adopt her weaknesses, but he was stranded in her body, perhaps forever. It was time to explore her strengths.

  “The king’s prisoner, my lord,” the
guard said.

  Cirang smiled seductively and stepped in.

  Chapter 5

  “They’re already assembled in the council chamber, my liege,” the boy said.

  “Aw, hell,” Gavin muttered. The meeting. He was expected to name a new Supreme Councilor of the Militia, with three people hoping to be appointed. Someone was going to be unhappy but hopefully not disgruntled enough to leave his service. He rode back to the rear door of the palace, where a stable hand took Golam to be wiped down, and serving staff awaited with towels and dry slippers. Two women followed him, wiping the trail of water from the polished marble floor as he walked to the residence wing, where he continued to dry off and dress for the day.

  The clothes made for him were styled like the loose-fitting tunic and trousers he’d preferred as a warrant knight, though they were adorned with elaborate stitching that seemed to him a waste of thread. His adviser and longtime friend, Edan Dawnpiper, had insisted he dress more like a king than a battler, and so Gavin offered the compromise. The high-collared jacket with narrow cuffs he couldn’t abide for anything but formal occasions, not only because during the late summer it was too hot, but because it was too snugly tailored. Despite having a contingent of ever-present guards, his years as a battler had developed and reinforced certain habits, and dressing in clothing that didn’t hinder his movement was one of the strongest — and one he wasn’t willing to change. This occasion, however, warranted the jacket, and so he let Quint hold it while he shoved his arms into the sleeves.

  Dressed in clean, dry clothes and with his hair toweled and combed, he slid his sword into its ceremonial scabbard, the only dry one he had left, and went downstairs to the meeting room where the new councilors gathered, argued, and occasionally agreed on the topic of the day. He apologized for his tardiness and then took his seat at the head of the table.