The Well of Wyrding (Revenant Wyrd Book 3) (17 page)

The substance inside the well was heavy, dense, and supported one as though it was a force more stable than air. There Grace floated, and she thought that if this greenness was air, then she was now able to fly. But there was also a clinging quality to it that reminded her of water, only water she was able to breathe.

She thought then of why she had been dragged into the well, and cast around looking for whatever might have pulled her in, though she was not able to see anything. The others, having not seen the gray-webbed hand that pulled her in, knelt at the rim of the well and yelled down to her.

It was then that she heard the booming that surrounded her, as if the Evyndelle, whose very roots were all about her in the green wyrd, had a heartbeat. So intense was the reverberation that Grace felt as though she were in a giant drum, and someone was beating relentlessly on the outside. It was not at all a steady beat like a healthy heart, but instead the rapid beating of a heart that was close to expiration.

She couldn’t remember hearing the thrumming heartbeat of the tree when she first fell in. No, it was like the thundering started when Dalah and Rosalee called to her.

It was the heartbeat of wyrd. She had felt it all her life when she used her wyrd; it would pulse through her, and all with wyrd would describe the same sensation when they tapped into their abilities. Wyrd was a living entity, and much like the spirits a necromancer channeled, the wyrd would flow through the caster, a cognizant force that lived in its own rhythms.

She looked up and saw that her friends were yelling to her in a near-panicked state. Grace urged herself upward.

When she emerged little beads of what appeared to be moisture clung to her, shimmering in the ebbing light of the surrounding garden as if little green stars flickered from within her silver hair and the wrinkles of her face.

“It’s all clear in here,” she said, though she knew that it wasn’t, for there was most definitely something within the well corrupting the tree.

“What happened to you?” Rosalee asked.

“I must have slipped,” she said, a little confused for Grace was sure that she had felt something on her ankle, pulling her into the depths of the Well of Wyrding.

“Well at least that settles whether it’s safe to go in or not,” Rosalee joked. “If nothing has eaten you maybe there is nothing in there.”

“Come, on, if you were a monster, even a starving one, would you want to eat her?” Dalah asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure that she is pretty sour to taste,” Rosalee made a funny face to emphasis how bad she thought Grace must taste. “I’m sure it has something to do with her brain pumping malcontent to each and every fiber of her being.”

“I’m a lot yummier than either of you,” Grace said scornfully. “Besides, monsters or no, I doubt that this place is safe.” She looked around. “You might want to get in here so that we can finish this.”

That sobered both of them, and Rosalee slipped into the Well of Wyrding by holding onto the rim and easing herself in as she used to Lake Mirror in younger days. Dalah stepped smoothly off the rim and stood on the water for a moment before slowly sinking into the well.

“What?” she asked as they both stared at her. “I remembered from last time we were here about moving through the wyrd with your thoughts and not movements.”

“That’s how you guys did it?” Rosalee asked. “Here poor Grace and I were swimming through it looking daft.”

“So we just think of where we want to go and the wyrd takes us there?” Grace asked.

“Yes,” Dalah said. “Now we all remember where the place is that Pharoh took us too when we first cleansed the well?”

“Yes,” Grace said. “But while we are here can’t we take a glimpse at some of the roots to find out what is happening in the Great Realms?”

“That wouldn’t hurt,” Rosalee said.

“Yes, it would. I think it is a great idea, Grace, but just think what this polluted wyrd is doing to us!” Dalah sounded very concerned. “We need you on board. Each and every one of us will have to think of the same destination, or we will get separated. That is highly dangerous. Not to mention, just think what touching your wyrd does to you and your surroundings, can you imagine being
submerged
in that malevolence for a long time?”

“You’re right,” Grace said shaking her head. “I’m not sure what I was thinking.”

“Okay, our journey is going to take us to the bottom of the well,” Dalah said, and as she mentioned that particular destination she slipped under the surface of the wyrd, and whatever she was about to say was lost in the silence that her submersion brought.

Grace shrugged and thought of the end of the roots of the Evyndelle and the opalescent bottom of the Well of Wyrding, and she too was lost to the shimmering depths of the Well of Wyrding.

Rosalee followed suit.

When first observing the wyrd Grace didn’t think that it glowed or had a source of light unto itself. She was surprised, however, that the deeper they went the wyrd around them didn’t grow much darker. For some reason she had imagined last time that going further into the deep brought to them darkness like night. Then they had only been able to see by the way of the shimmering words on roots that passed them by as new fates and destinies were written on the great roots of the Evyndelle.

This time the corruption was not as bad, and so the depths of the well were not as dark. Presently they had caught the flux of wyrd before it had caused too much devastation.

The light of new destinies alighted on the roots they passed as new branches were added to long-standing roots. It was like looking at a giant family tree, and each new offspring of root and each new flashing of light as fate was written in differing languages on those new roots represented a new life being brought into the world.

Occasionally Grace would fall behind as she scanned what was being said about different people. Occasionally she would read something humorous like:
Bobby will find the love of his life when a Salamander lights the seat of his pants on fire. Sara Reed will douse the flames, and in the good humor they will find love.
Occasionally Grace would laugh, while other times she would look puzzled at the roots, for they were written in a different language.

“Dalah?” Grace asked. “How many beliefs and continents does the Evyndelle cover? I don’t think I recognize some of these languages.”

“It covers all continents on the planet, as well as all times. They are written in the language of the region and time, so ancient languages you wouldn’t understand, as well as foreign languages. There are even parts of the tree where the roots display the story of one’s life in the form of pictures.”

“So it is almost like the tree learned language as humans did?” Rosalee asked.

“Precisely.”

Felicia will not make it past birth,
Grace read on one specific root that didn’t grow any longer than was necessary to write the message. Her heart went out to the parents that had lost the life so dear to them in the instant that light slashed words across the stunted root.

Darcy will plant a large garden that millions will adore.

Trent will invent a new way of breathing water.
Grace would like to see that, but she couldn’t imagine even one way to breathe water let alone more than one way.

Sheldon will defy gravity.

Grant will kill his family and destroy the world if he lives past ten,
Grace gasped and hoped that someone killed that kid before his tenth birthday rolled around.

Then as the time carried them deeper into the Well of Wyrding the new fates began to fade from sight, to be replaced by blue glowing fates.

“These are the older fates, the ones that have been sealed. Most of them will be ancient, older than even Grace, so you likely won’t be able to read them.” And it was true, Grace couldn’t read many of the blue glimmering fates, even though some of the characters seemed to be somehow familiar to her.

So it went on for a time in which Grace lost herself in thought. No longer could she read the fates on the roots which glowed blue. She went into a near-trance state as the lights flashed by her, and she was carried by her thoughts through the wyrd.

“What’s happening?” Rosalee asked, and Grace came back to herself, shaking her head to clear it of her previous thoughts.

“I’m not sure,” Dalah answered. Grace could feel it also, now that she was rooted back in reality. It was like a tugging behind her navel, as if there were an invisible cord attached to something inside her between her spine and her belly button that tugged her away from the course they currently traveled, and instead into a grove of roots. All of these new roots glowed blue with so many fates that it appeared the roots were nothing more than blue pulsing light.

They clung together, not sure what was happening or where they were going. Grace had a moment of dismay as she thought again that she had been pulled into the Well of Wyrding. She was so fast to dismiss the possibility that she had been plunged into the depths of corrupt wyrd that she had nearly placed it from her mind. Now she found that there was a force other than their own pulling them into a makeshift cave of roots.

Now that Grace thought about it, where they were going truly did look like a cave made of roots. It was so deep that they could not see the back despite the glowing, and Grace wondered if maybe Porillon had not made a trap for them.

When they finally reached the back of the cave they saw three floating figures. One of the figures looked off to their left, and her right arm was extended. With the pointer finger she traced invisible lines in the wyrd as if she were transcribing something there. The lines she cut through the malaise created a slight golden phosphorescence, an evanescence of fate. Grace was not sure where this particular fate was being transcribed, but it was clear to her that they had found the Norns.

The other two were copying the movements of the figure on the left, all of them writing with one hand while the free one hung at their sides, constantly squeezing and releasing as if they were pumping the fate of the one they wrote about with that one hand. There was one in the center, looking at them; or at least she would have been looking at them if her eyes were open. The other Norn faced to their right.

They looked nothing as Grace had expected and she shuddered at their appearance. Still the thundering heartbeat continued as they studied the Norns who were lit by the soft blue glowing of the roots of the Evyndelle.

Dalah didn’t seem to be surprised in the least by the oddity of the three sisters, who were rumored to have been some of the most powerful sorceresses of their time. Grace, however, could not help but stare at them in shock. In fact she believed her mouth was hanging open at the sight of them.

Though they looked human enough, there was a lot about them that made Grace think of amphibians. Their hands and feet were webbed, and kept opening and closing on nothing specific. They floated before the three women in a triangle formation, the two flanking the middle one bobbing up and down as if on a current. Their skin was a gray that matched the light gray of their dresses and the gauzy fabric that made up the veils covering their faces, which were without mouths. Instead of a nose they had slits, like one would expect a snake to have.

Nothing about the way they looked made Grace comfortable or confident in their abilities of watching over the course of wyrd.

Their hair was long and lank. At first Grace thought the white locks were hair, but on closer inspection she realized that it was not hair at all but instead hundreds of tentacles that drifted in the green wyrd around them.

“Hi,” Rosalee said in a singsong voice, smiling widely at the three women. “How are you?” The thumping they had heard for some time grew more concentrated as the Norns opened their dead white eyes. The middle one looked at Rosalee. Grace scowled at Rose and turned back to the Norns. What were they to say? They had not been expecting to find the Norns at all. This was not how she had remembered things going before.

“Why are you here?” The middle Norn asked, looking to Dalah, as she was the sorceress. Grace thought that was a very good question. After all, they didn’t know how they had come to be here, and if the Norns hadn’t summoned them into this root cave she didn’t know what had.

“One might ask the same question of you,” Dalah said, folding her arms before her.

“Very well,” the middle one said again as the other two went back to staring off in opposite directions. “We are here because the corruption of the Well of Wyrding is growing quickly out of hand.”

“That was not the case last time the well was penetrated,” Grace observed.

“I know this,” the middle Norn responded, gesturing slightly with her lax hand. Even though they were in deep conversation with the Norns, none of them stopped writing their phosphorescent fates in the air. “It is a strange thing really, the events which found us here, my sisters and I. A woman came, one of the most powerful women alive now, and we found ourselves interchanged, plunged into your dreadful world for a time. When we came back here there had been a change. Obviously we have felt this change many times since our appointment to the Well of Wyrding, but this time it was different. This woman who came had brought with her one of the sacred bloodline, and through her we felt something that should not be.