Well of the Damned

by K. C. May

  She went to her knees beside the wooden chest. On its lid sat a medium brown wooden gargoyle about five inches tall. Though she knew it was made from a different piece of wood placed there long after the chest was built, there was no line separating it from the chest’s lid. They appeared to be made from the same log.

  Doubt stilled her hand as she reached for it, her hands still bound. If it didn’t recognize her and Tyr as being the same person — possessing the same spirit — she would receive a painful shock, as Daia had. She tapped it with one finger. Nothing happened. More confidently, she took hold of it and pulled. It came away as easily as though it had merely been resting on top.

  “Give me the gargoyle,” Kinshield said. “You won’t be coming back here.”

  “I agreed to give you the book. The rest of these things are mine by rights.”

  Daia snatched the gargoyle from her hand and gave it to Kinshield.

  “I’ll lock it,” he said.

  Vandra reached into the chest and picked up a wooden box. “These carvings are spectacular,” she said. “Did you make them?”

  As a carver, Tyr’d had a fondness for wooden sculptures, ornate utensils and knife handles, decorative onlays, puzzles and toys, and often spent time carving something whimsical during his travels across Thendylath. Sometimes he sold them, other times he gave them to the children of his unsuspecting dupes. His specialty, though, was a type of box that had a hidden compartment only he knew how to open. He wondered whether his skill with a chisel was lost forever in these untrained hands.

  “Don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you,” Cirang snapped as she took the box from Vandra. Inside the hidden compartment of this particular box was a small, silk bag of serragan powder Tyr had brought from Nilmaria. The serragan weed didn’t grow in Thendylath, and so the powder was practically unknown.

  “None o’this belongs to you either,” Kinshield said, “Cirang.”

  Cirang narrowed her eyes at him and lifted one side of her lip. “Shall we quit the pretense? We all know I’m not truly Cirang. Yes, I created these items. I was apprenticed to a carver very young and had earned my indicia.”

  “What’s indicia?” Vandra asked.

  “The designs sewn into a Nilmarion’s skin are mostly ward lines, though some around the eyes are indicia, which indicate his profession, birth clan, and sometimes station.” Cirang retrieved the journal, handed it to Gavin, and rose to her feet. “Be careful with it,” she said. “It’s the original copy.”

  He opened it gingerly, taking care with its old pages and binding. Daia and Vandra, standing beside him, looked on.

  “Oh, look. There’s a map,” Vandra said.

  “So Sevae actually found it?” Gavin asked.

  “Let’s see what it says.” Daia began to read some of the passages aloud.

  It was quite by accident that I overheard old King Dantrek on his deathbed confide to Prince Arek there exists a wellspring high in the mountains that his father, King Ivam, had some interest in for its secret, magical properties. According to legend — a legend King Ivam had worked hard to discredit — drinking of the Well of the Enlightened had the potential to permanently raise a person’s spirit to the purest form. Not only would this effect eliminate crime, it would also inspire a sense of community such as the world has never seen, eliminating hunger and poverty. I have never heard of this wellspring, but the notion of it intrigues me. I will endeavor to learn more about it.

  With their attention diverted, Cirang turned her body slightly away and opened the box’s hidden compartment to confirm the bag was still there. She removed it and hid it in her closed hand, feeling the powdery substance within. Nobody noticed. With a smirk, she nonchalantly bent to scratch an itch and tucked the bag into the top of her boot.

  They wouldn’t have a chance.

  “What are you doing?” Vandra asked.

  “I had an itch. Is that a crime?”

  “Watch yourself.”

  I waited a month after King Dantrek’s funeral before asking King Arek about the wellspring. His reaction was not only surprising but alarming in its intensity. The mere mention of the wellspring made him fly into such a rage, I feared he would burst a vein. He instructed me in no uncertain terms not to bring the matter up again, and would not answer my questions about it. I’d never seen such anger in him before or since, for I fear to broach the subject until the emotion of having lost his father fades with time. If I want to know more about the wellspring, I’ll need to research it myself clandestinely.

  “Is this the only other journal Sevae had?” Kinshield asked.

  Daia knelt and examined the other books.

  Cirang nodded. “I know of only two. You already have the other.”

  “You might be interested in these, Gavin,” Daia said. “Here’s one called ‘A Treatise on the Influence of Gems in Magic Casting’ and this one — ‘Spiritual Consequences of Practicing the Dark Magics.’”

  “Awright, grab those and let’s go. We can read more on the way. Wait. What’s that you have?” Kinshield took the small box from her hands.

  “Only something I— Sithral Tyr once carved. I would like to keep it, if you don’t mind, for sentimental reasons.”

  He opened the main compartment and, seeing it was empty, shut it again and handed it back. “Suit yourself.” Kinshield closed the chest and put the gargoyle on top.

  After everyone climbed back up, Brawna closed the hatch, and Vandra covered it with the rug and pallet before leaving.

  They mounted up to begin the long ride back to Tern. “I fulfilled my part of our bargain,” she told Kinshield. “Now it’s your turn. Set me free, and then we will be upscores.”

  Kinshield cocked one eyebrow at her. “I never said I’d set you free. I said I’d be lenient, and that means you get to live another five years in gaol before your execution.”

  At first, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Five– you can’t be serious. That’s what you call leniency?” Anger hardened every muscle in her body. “You’re an honorless cur, no more suited to being a king than I am. Even Ravenkind had more integrity than you have, you wretched, toothless, dim-witted—”

  Something hard hit her in the head from behind, slamming her face into the mule’s rump. Black spots filled her vision and then all light and sound faded, replaced by whispers in the darkness and black claws, agonizing twists of her spine and sharp breaths, until the pain in her hip yanked her mercifully to consciousness. Something rocked her forward and back, grinding the pain through every fiber in her body. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on her right side in the wet dirt with a boot on her hip.

  “Get up,” Daia snapped.

  “Sorry, King Gavin,” Brawna said, sheathing her sword. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  A dark rancor passed over Cirang like a portentous storm cloud. Brawna. That worthless trull would be the first to die.

  “It’s awright. You owe her that and more. Shackle her hands behind her again.”

  “Please, no.” Cirang pushed herself up slowly, the muscles in her arms trembling. She would make them pay, perhaps slit their throats after she incapacitated them. “I beg forgiveness, Your Majesty,” she said quietly, feigning remorse. “I was angry and stepped out of line. You’ll have no more trouble from me.”

  Kinshield snorted. “You’re kho-bent. It’s in your nature to cause chaos. Mount up and let’s go.”

  Daia and Vandra helped her mount and secured her feet into the stirrups. Cirang watched Vandra expectantly, afraid she might glimpse the bag of dust in the top of her boot, but as luck would have it, she didn’t appear to notice. Soon, they were back on the road, and Cirang apologized several more times over the next few hours. In fact, she was nothing but polite and agreeable, asking for nothing during their stops aside from a swallow of water, bit of bread if they could spare it, and help standing back up when she needed to piss.

  They were still a few hours’ ride from the nearest town when nigh
t fell. The travelers found a site close to a creek to make camp.

  “If you loosen the rope at my waist, I’ll help look for firewood,” she said.

  Vandra laughed. “You don’t think we trust you enough to unleash you, do you, dog?”

  “I won’t run off,” she said. “You have my word.”

  “The word of a traitor is like no word at all,” Brawna said.

  “Any wood we find,” Daia said, “will be too wet to burn.”

  “Not too wet for me,” Kinshield said. He held up his fingers and blew on them as if to extinguish burning candles. “Any wood will do. Brawna and Vandra, see to it, will you?”

  Vandra handed the leash to Daia. “Of course, my liege.”

  While they were gone, Kinshield put his hand out, angled towards the ground, and steam began to rise from the earth. Little by little the ground dried enough to sit beneath his magical rain canopy. He was a more powerful mage than she’d realized — definitely something she would keep in mind later.

  When they returned with an armload each, Kinshield used his magic to turn the water in the wood to steam. His adulators cooed their approval and awe. Cirang wanted to make retching sounds but decided tricking them with her false praise would work better in her favor, and so she joined them. They prepared a meal of reconstituted dried meat and potatoes. They untied her for supper, and to her surprise, Kinshield offered to share his bedroll with her so she didn’t have to sit on the dirt. She crossed her feet and lowered herself into a cross-legged posture, mindful of the bag hidden in her boot. She laid her shackled wrists over it and surreptitiously tucked it deeper with two fingers.

  Sitting around the fire, chewing on the tough meat and sharing a skin of wine, the travelers listened while Daia read from the journal. Cirang grew more fascinated, not only with Sevae’s persistence, but with Kinshield’s fascination with the well.

  The servants’ passageways that run through the palace have been of great use to me in my pursuit of knowledge. I’ve spent many hours in King Arek’s library — not the downstairs room where he often receives visitors, whose benign books of literature and scientific treatises provide a comfortable backdrop for conversation, but the upstairs library where his father and his father’s father and his father before him stored and studied the more esoteric books and articles on all things mystical and arcane. Information about the Well of the Enlightened has been kept closely guarded for many years, much like our past kings’ interest in this wondrous source of magic. I do not understand why Arek refuses to hear my arguments on the matter. Surely he has read these books and knows the power of those ancient waters! Yet he keeps sullenly and most stubbornly quiet about matters even remotely related to the Well of the Enlightened, as if his mind on the matter were a door bolted firmly shut. In fact, his refusal to speak of it is in itself curious. I must understand why.

  “What did King Arek know that made him so wary of it, Gavin?” Daia asked.

  Kinshield shrugged. “He was close-mouthed about it, only warned me not to pursue it. Said it destroyed an entire city but wouldn’t say how. Just asking about it got him red.”

  The hunger for knowledge is a fever coursing through my mind but one I can heal with neither herbs nor magic. My every waking thought is consumed by this hunger to the point where I’m unable to contain my curiosity to the nighttime hours. I slip into the king’s forbidden library when the king and queen are otherwise occupied and devour the words with my eyes. I know it is wrong, but I cannot stop myself. King Arek is the only one who can cure this sickness, yet he refuses to acknowledge the reason for it. I believe a time may come when I must take matters into my own hands and leave the palace to pursue the wellspring alone, though I realize to pursue it is not enough. To look upon it, to confirm its existence for myself, will not quench this undeniable thirst for its waters. In my dreams, I taste its sweetness upon my lips like a lover’s kiss, and I find I must have more.

  “Sounds like Sevae became obsessed with it,” Vandra said.

  “‘In the absence of facts, faith is born,’” Daia said.

  “Huh?” Vandra asked.

  “From the novel Threnode by Gauthiess Ransae. I read it in the months before I left home.”

  “Further proof nobles are better than everyone else, Daia?” Cirang asked.

  “Shut up, Cirang,” everyone said in unison.

  I have been gently persistent in speaking to King Arek about the wellspring, believing if I could coax him to listen to my proposal, we could find some common ground in terms of an approach to its acquisition. He puffed up like a bloated fish and turned a shade of red the likes of which I’ve never seen before or ever will again, and he forbade me to speak of the matter again. Forbade me, in front of the queen and their toddler son, as if I were an insolent child! Never in my life have I been subject to such humiliation. I loathe even the thought of speaking ill of my king, for I swore complete obedience and lifelong loyalty, but the man is an irascible fop. His ignorance and short-sightedness absolutely astounds me. The Savior forgive me; I contemplated regicide today, not to satisfy my lust for power or anything of that hideous nature, but for the good of the people of Thendylath, for King Arek would deny them the spiritual enlightenment obtainable by merely drinking the pure waters of the wellspring. A man with such a high degree of contempt for the people he governs should not be king.

  “He was bold to write such things,” Daia said. “If his journal had been discovered...”

  Kinshield nodded. “Then I wouldn’t be here today.”

  Cirang studied him, wondering whether he meant he wouldn’t be king or wouldn’t be alive at all. No matter. She knew now why the Well of the Enlightened had captured his attention. If a mere sip of the water had the power to cure diseases of the soul, a skinful could put both coin in her pocket and gratitude under her hat.

  She had to get that journal. With the map inside, she would find the wellspring and claim the water for herself. She kept an eye on the journal after Daia set it down and the conversation turned more casual. They told stories and jested with each other, even teasing Kinshield as if he were a peer and not the king. He took it in good stride, seeming to enjoy not being bowed to and “my lieged” at every word. Daia made fun of his horrible eating habits, which Cirang didn’t find as disgusting as the high-born battler did, but the more she complained, the louder his smacking got. Cirang found herself chuckling with the rest of them, almost regretful that they would die in their sleep.

  Almost.

  Chapter 25

  It was the mirknight, when only the owls and deer stirred. Cirang sat on the cold ground with her back against the wet bark of a tree, listening to the steady breathing and soft snoring of her captors. Her arse was numb from all the riding and sitting, but with her mind focused on executing her plan, the discomfort was easily ignored. At least she was dry beneath Kinshield’s magical canopy that fortunately stayed up even while he slept.

  She chanced opening one eye. Vandra was sitting a few feet away with her back against a tree, eyes closed and mouth hanging open. The little trollop had dozed when she should have been watching her prisoner. That meant her mind would be fuzzy and her guard low.

  Cirang would have to use the powder on each of them speedily so no one would have time to call out an alarm. Serragan powder’s dizzying effect made judging relative location and distance of objects next to impossible, and so she wouldn’t have to fight anyone who was affected. It numbed actions, thoughts and speech and worked quickly once inhaled. Who to assail first? Kinshield slept several feet away from Daia, with Brawna to her right. Cirang didn’t truly know whether Brawna was a skilled fighter. She expected not. The trull was young and had only achieved a green sash at the Sisterhood before it was disbanded. The rest of them were equally dangerous, and Kinshield had magic healing abilities. If he could heal himself of the powder’s effects, he’d be able to draw his sword against her. It would be best to incapacitate him first, then Daia. That way, she could dispose of B
rawna.

  With her plan firmly in mind, it was time to begin. “Vandra,” she whispered. “Hey. Psst.”

  Vandra lifted her chin and blinked a few times. “What do you want?”

  “I have to shit.”

  “Wait until morning.” Vandra lowered her head and closed her eyes.

  “I can’t,” Cirang said as quietly as she could. “The meat I ate is tearing up my insides. If I don’t go soon, I’ll make a terrible mess in my clothes.”

  Vandra sighed and got up. “All right, but if you wake King Gavin, I’ll thrash you.”

  “I won’t,” Cirang whispered. Not yet.

  Though Vandra untied the rope binding her to the tree, she held its other end like a leash, with Cirang on the dog’s end. Cirang’s hip and back ached and stiffness had set in, which made standing up slow and painful. Vandra took her by the arm and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. “Get to it.”

  Cirang shuffled into the woods, emphasizing the limp to make Vandra think she was lamer than she really was. She found a spot to lower her trousers and squat. Vandra waited a few feet away, her eyes averted. Her modesty was laughable and would be her undoing.

  From the top of her boot, Cirang withdrew the pouch of serragan powder, tapped a pinch into her palm and closed her fist around it. “Vandra, lend me your arm to help me stand,” she said. “My back hurts so much.”

  The unsuspecting wench actually did it, so naive she was. As soon as Cirang had her trousers laced, she opened her hand and blew. Before Vandra could cry out for help, Cirang yanked the rope out of her hands and wrapped it around her head and into her open mouth to silence her.

  Vandra darted out splayed hands, trying to find something steady to grasp and found Cirang.

  Cirang hooked one foot behind Vandra’s leg, gave her a push and guided her fall quietly to the forest floor, then dragged her several paces farther from the camp. Taking Vandra’s knife from its sheath, she knelt with one knee on the other woman’s neck. Vandra made some muffled choking sounds. The chain mail and the tunic beneath had risen up, revealing Vandra’s torso, rippled with muscle. Cirang plunged the blade into Vandra’s gut and held it there until her squirming stopped, then wiped the blood from the blade with Vandra’s shirt tail and turned, still squatting low, to assess the camp. All was quiet. One down, three left.