The Women's War

by Jenna Glass

  She turned to look at him more fully. “What?” Surely he couldn’t mean to lead them all out into the depths of the Wasteland! Not only were there no living things in the Wasteland, there were no elements at all. Explorers of yore had often journeyed into the Wasteland, hoping to find its end, but they’d all either turned back or never returned.

  “Open your Mindseye,” Tynthanal said, releasing her waist briefly to point, “and look over there.”

  Even as an abigail, Chanlix was unaccustomed to opening her Mindseye in the presence of men. She hesitated a moment, so Tynthanal opened his own, his warm, friendly eyes filming over with white. Whatever he saw put a smile on his lips, and she was curious enough that she had to take a look herself.

  Opening her Mindseye, she looked out on the horizon and was astonished to see a thick cloud of swirling colors in the distance. All around them, the elements were as scarce as the plant life, with thin patches of Rho here and there around the growths, and scattered motes of Aal with the occasional mote of something else. Barely enough of anything to fuel even the most basic of spells.

  But there was no mistaking that cloud in the distance for anything but a concentration of elements.

  She closed her Mindseye and stared out into the distance. Now that she knew where to look, it seemed that one strip of land on the horizon was considerably darker than anything around it, right about where she’d seen that cloud of elements.

  “What is it?” she whispered. “And did you know it was there?”

  “It’s a Well,” he responded. “And I know for a fact that it was not there as recently as five years ago, when I led a training march in this area.”

  Chanlix shook her head in wonder. Wells didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. “I’ve never heard of such a thing happening.” She twisted so she could see his face better. “Have you?”

  “No. And I’ve studied a lot of history.”

  She had never been this close to him before, had never noticed the lines that gathered around the corners of his eyes, made more prominent by his squint against the blinding sun. Because in this barren land water was too precious to waste on shaving, a short fuzz of black beard peppered his cheeks and chin, and his skin and shirt and jacket were streaked with dirt, but Chanlix was not so old that she couldn’t appreciate the artistic perfection of his features.

  “You want to know something else interesting?” he asked, showing no sign that he’d noticed her staring at his face like a smitten teenager.

  “More interesting than finding a Well where no Well is meant to be?”

  He lowered his voice, though their party was straggling so much there was no one close enough to hear—or with enough energy to notice much of what was happening around them.

  “As far as I can tell, my men see nothing but a slight, unexpected concentration of elements. Barely enough to raise an eyebrow.”

  “How is that possible?” she asked, opening her Mindseye once more. As a magic user, she was above average—she’d probably have ranked as Prime had she been a man—but there was no mistaking that she was looking at a Well, not just an anomalous concentration of elements. Even if most of Tynthanal’s men were of lesser magical ability, they should be able to recognize it for what it was.

  “If I tell you something in strictest confidence, can I count on you to keep it to yourself?” he asked.

  She closed her Mindseye once more and stared into his eyes. “Why would you put your confidence in me? You barely know me.”

  He shook his head and sighed. “Because I need to put my confidence in someone. And I believe I’ve already proved to you that you can put confidence in me.” His eyes went filmy, and though she could not see his pupils through the film, she could tell by the angle of his head that he was looking directly at the mote of Kai that rode always by her left shoulder.

  She shivered even in the blazing heat. She had hoped that because none of Tynthanal’s men had seemed to notice the Kai that somehow it was not visible to them, that it was perhaps some kind of women’s variation of Kai that men could not see. Apparently, that was not the case.

  Tynthanal’s eyes cleared, the warm hazel hue returning. “I am an Adept, and while I have never been in a true battle, I have seen Kai during skirmishes. What I see on you is recognizably Kai, but it does not look like the motes I have seen before. Yours and those of your abigails all look the same, whereas men’s Kai motes share only their general crystalline form. It’s Kai…but not Kai.”

  Something inside her shifted, as if her understanding of how the world worked took a step to the side. “It’s women’s Kai.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And it’s a feminine element. That’s why no one but us seems to notice it.”

  He nodded.

  “But you can see it.”

  He nodded once more. “I can see a fair number of feminine elements,” he said. “Now that I know what my mother was capable of, I think my abilities are rooted in her blood.”

  Chanlix chewed over that thought for a few moments. Mother Brynna and Sister Nadeen had been the most powerful female magic users Chanlix had ever seen, able to see so many elements there was never any question that they would have been ranked as Adept had they been men. Perhaps poor, doomed Vondeen would have been the same. If they possessed that amount of power, it should be no great surprise that Brynna’s son was also extraordinary.

  She stared out at the horizon again. The dark patch she’d noticed in the distance was getting noticeably larger and seemed to have a faint green tinge to it. It looked for all the world like a patch of forest, rising from the dead lands around it.

  “So you can see feminine elements,” she mused, “and your men cannot see the Well we’re approaching and that I can see quite clearly. You think the Well is giving off either primarily or even exclusively feminine elements.”

  “Yes. Which is why we may be able to get away with putting the new Abbey there. If it were a more usual Well…”

  Chanlix grimaced and nodded. There was no war in the history of Seven Wells that couldn’t be traced, directly or indirectly, to the desire to control a Well. Even the last great war between Aaltah and Rhozinolm—supposedly begun over a perceived miscarriage of justice—had been motivated by King Linolm’s desire to lay claim to the Well in the Midlands, the principality that lay between the two kingdoms and that had at the time been a part of Aaltah. If this new Well on the edge of the Wasteland was deemed useful to men, there would be armies marching toward it the moment its existence was made public.

  For the first time since the king had banished them from Aalwell, Chanlix felt a surge of hope. Instead of their new Abbey being a desolate, hopeless place where the abigails would have no access either to men or to magic, it was looking like they might have a burgeoning supply of the elements they used most commonly. And under Tynthanal’s leadership, the men who’d been sent to trap and guard them had remained on their best behavior at all times.

  * * *

  —

  “So what is it you wanted to show me?” Ellin inquired when she and Star were finally alone in her bedroom. There was a mischievous—even excited—twinkle in the maid’s eyes, but Ellin was baffled by it and had been unable to wrest a single hint from her.

  “Well,” Star said, looking very pleased with herself, “you know your grandfather—and many a king before him, I might add—considered his marriage vows as more of an ideal than an actual commitment.”

  Ellin rolled her eyes, for extramarital affairs were hardly the exclusive territory of kings. Although she had no proof of the matter, she felt fairly certain her own father had had women on the side, though he had been thankfully discreet, and as far as she knew, she had no half-siblings running around. “Kailindar did not come into being because of the king’s dutiful devotion to his queen,” she said with a heavy dose of irony. “What does that have
to do with anything?”

  Her impatience did nothing to quell Star’s amusement. “Of course everyone knows about the king’s dalliance with Chantah.”

  “If you can call a decades-long affair a dalliance.” Kailindar was not the only fruit of the king’s illicit union, although the first child, a daughter, had died long ago—at the hands of a duke of Aaltah, which had sparked the last war between their two kingdoms.

  Star ignored the aside. “But just because everyone knew didn’t mean the king felt comfortable flaunting his mistress in the queen’s face.” She moved to a large tapestry that adorned one wall of the bedroom, smoothing her hand over the intricately woven design. “So he took advantage of a convenience that has been part of this palace for as long as its walls have stood.”

  With a flourish—and not a little bit of effort, for the tapestry was heavy—Star swept the hanging aside to reveal a heavily bolted door set into the wall behind it. As Ellin gaped in surprise, Star lifted the bolts and pushed the door open to reveal a pitch-dark hallway.

  Ellin shook her head. “How did you know this was here? And why didn’t I know?” It was not a little disconcerting to discover there was a secret door into her bedroom, though she supposed that with the bolts keeping it securely shut, there had never been any threat of anyone sneaking in.

  “I didn’t know until earlier today,” Star said. “Servants like to talk, and I overheard someone mention the passage. I took the liberty of bracing your steward for not having told you about it.” She made a sour face. “He seemed to be of the opinion that because you are a woman, you would never have need for the passageway and that therefore there was no reason to mention it to you.”

  Ellin made a low growling sound of frustration. Her steward had served King Linolm before her, and was annoyingly stodgy and prudish. “I think I should have the right to know there’s a secret passageway into my bedroom, whether I intend to use it or not!”

  Star grinned at her. “But your steward was under the impression your innocent ears were not fit to hear the explanation for why the passage exists.” Star pulled a folded piece of parchment from a pocket in her skirts. “There is apparently no official map of the secret passages in this palace, but I bullied the steward into marking the ones he knew about.”

  Ellin debated whether to have a word with her steward about his failure, but decided Star had probably upbraided the man enough on her behalf. While she did not much care for him, the offense seemed too minor to warrant dismissal, and she didn’t relish watching him squirm.

  “Do we know where it goes?” Ellin asked, peering into the darkness of the hallway.

  “I investigated as soon as I found it,” Star affirmed, pulling the door closed once more and securing the bolts. “It leads down to a hidden entrance in the servants’ wing.” She gave Ellin a wry smile. “Apparently, no one worries too much about servants knowing about the love affairs of kings.”

  Since the passageway was more about keeping up appearances than keeping actual secrets, Ellin supposed that wasn’t entirely surprising.

  Returning to her usual nighttime routine, Ellin took her seat at the dressing table, and Star began removing her headdress.

  “How fares your new secretary?” Star asked as she gently extracted the headdress from Ellin’s hair and set it aside.

  Ellin gave a little huff of frustration. “Apparently, I have much to learn about the art of flirting and seduction,” she said with some chagrin. “He watches me with the wary eye of a mouse in the presence of a hawk. I might think him completely uninterested, except every once in a while…” She shrugged. “You advised me to be more direct with him, but it is quite clearly not working.”

  Star made a noncommittal sound. “Just how direct have you been?”

  “I’ve all but propositioned him outright!”

  “And his response?”

  Ellin crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “He says we aren’t ever truly in private, even when we are behind a closed door.” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw that her expression was uncomfortably close to a pout, and she tried to smooth it out. Star, however, smiled.

  “He might just be good enough for you,” Star said approvingly.

  Ellin frowned at her. “Which does me no good whatsoever when he’s determined to reject me.”

  Star made a tsking sound. “He is being appropriately careful of your reputation. You do not want a man who thinks only of his own desires and ignores the dangers.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  Star turned her head pointedly toward the tapestry behind which the secret door lay hidden. And for the first time, Ellin realized why her maid had been so excited to find it. Her jaw dropped open, and she hastily turned in her chair to stare up into Star’s face.

  Star looked astonishingly proud of herself. “I may not have just stumbled on that secret accidentally. I may have made some discreet inquiries as to how King Linolm had managed to maintain a mistress without undue scandal for all those years.”

  Ellin bit her lip and looked toward the tapestry once more. When she was alone with Graesan during the day, she was always “on duty” as it were, susceptible to interruptions and on a strict timetable. But once she retired to her room at night, the only person who would dare disturb her was Star.

  “If you’re sure what you want,” Star said, “we can arrange for your young man to have truly private access to you. Without the fear of interruption and discovery, you might find him less apt to resist his own desires.”

  Ellin shivered suddenly in a combination of excitement and nerves. If she removed Graesan’s practical objections and he rejected her advances anyway, she wasn’t sure how her heart could survive the blow.

  Shaking off her own fears, she stiffened her spine. If she made no advances, she would never know if he would have rejected them or not. While that might be far safer for her heart, she would question her own cowardice for the rest of her life.

  “How would we go about getting him here?” she asked.

  Star beamed at her. “You just leave that to me, Your Majesty.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Tynthanal knocked on the doorframe of her quickly constructed cabin, Chanlix reluctantly closed her Mindseye. The elements that spilled from the Well they had built their encampment around were so abundant she couldn’t even make out the faint shadow of his form when her Mindseye was open. When her vision cleared, he smiled at her, showing no sign that the sight of a woman with her Mindseye open bothered him in the slightest.

  “Please come in,” she beckoned.

  The sun was low in the sky behind him, and as he stepped into the hut so that he was no longer backlighted, she could see from his sweat-dampened hair that rather than being a typical commanding officer, he’d been actively participating in the day’s building effort. Not that she was surprised. He was hardly the kind of man to sit by idly while others worked.

  It was only a couple of weeks into what was sure to be a lengthy building process—especially considering that the king had not seen fit to send any professional builders with their expedition—but the bones of the new Abbey were beginning to take shape already. Everyone in the encampment now had rudimentary shelter for the nights, and a space had been cleared where they could erect more permanent structures.

  They had not yet progressed to such luxuries as furniture. Chanlix’s seat consisted of a folded blanket against a log, but the blanket was big enough to allow Tynthanal to sit beside her without being uncomfortably close.

  “Have you ever seen a place like this near the Wasteland before?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Never.” He reached up and wiped away a drop of sweat that trickled down the side of his face. “I’ve checked and rechecked our coordinates and our map, and it seems our camp is just past where the Wasteland border used to be. There us
ed to be nothing out here, not even Rho. I rode out deeper into the Wasteland this afternoon, and it’s clear the Well’s influence stretches for miles. I’m not sure where the Wasteland’s borders are anymore.”

  Chanlix had been imagining a miserable existence in the scorching sun of the desert with no easy access to food or water or elements. But the elements that spilled from the Well had given the land back its life. Their encampment was near a crystal clear spring that seemed to be fed from somewhere deep beneath the earth, and while there were no full-grown trees yet, the spring was surrounded by grasses and shrubs and saplings. Birds and small mammals had found the oasis, and if they could avoid overhunting in these early days, it seemed possible that there would be sustainable populations come spring.

  “Will the king let us stay?” Chanlix asked anxiously. While he hadn’t said so explicitly, she knew Tynthanal had no choice but to report what they had found to the king. Tynthanal insisted the malice that had sent them all to live in desolate exile was Delnamal’s, not the king’s, but the king was clearly complicit. Would he order them to move their camp to somewhere less comfortable?

  “I can’t say for sure,” Tynthanal said, “but my guess is that he will.” He turned and gave her a crooked smile. “I might have forgotten to mention in my report that the Well produces a few rare masculine elements.”

  Chanlix laughed. The elements that came from this Well were overwhelmingly feminine. Every feminine element she was capable of seeing was available here, and having polled the rest of the abigails, she knew that was true of them, as well. The Well also produced a few of the most common neuter elements. Those were the only elements most of Tynthanal’s men could see, and they were common enough that Chanlix couldn’t imagine the king would feel any great need to exploit this Well.

  Only Tynthanal could see any masculine elements coming from this Well, but then his magical abilities ranked at least two levels higher than those of any of his men. If the king were to learn some of these rare and precious masculine elements were abundant near this Well, there was no question that the abigails would be evicted and a new city would rise in the place of their settlement.