Well of Sorrows (33 page)

12

IX WEEKS LATER, HE STOOD AT THE EDGE of the main road leading down to Portstown, shocked into immobility.

“How could I have missed all this?” He drew in a deep breath, tears burning at the corners of his eyes, and let it out in a heavy sigh. What lay before him had no resemblance whatsoever to the town that he’d left behind so many years before.

Where the port used to be—the docks where the riot broke out, the gallows where Sartori had threatened to hang him in order to gain his father’s cooperation for the expedition to the east—he could see building after building, smoke rising from the chimneys of most, black and sooty, the stone used in their construction old and gray, leeched of life. Warehouses and stockyards, he guessed, where most of the dirty, hard work got done. The buildings blocked the shoreline, but he could see the masts and rigging of ships lined up and down the waterfront, ships larger than any he’d seen before, judging by the number of masts and the complexity of the rigging.

The buildings farther south, near where the river drained into the bay, were newer. The road led down through estates and residential buildings to this section, and even from this distance Colin could tell that he’d find the marketplace there. He could see gaps between the buildings for fountains and plazas, and piercing through the rooftops here and there were the spires of churches, some topped by Diermani’s tilted cross, others by winged statues or simple poles, banners flapping in the breeze from the ocean. Across the inlet, he could see the swath of sand that protected the town from storm surges, what they’d called the Strand.

But the thick wall of stone and the buildings to the north of the town drew Colin’s attention most. Behind the defensive wall, he could see the square towers of a large building, a manse of some sort, although twice the size of anything he’d seen before, and the angled rooftops of a few smaller buildings, including another church. The manse stood where Lean-to would have been, on the hill overlooking the town.

As Colin watched, the gates of the outer wall opened, and a large force of men on horseback emerged, standards flying. Guardsmen, what Colin would have called the Armory in the Portstown of his time, but what he’d heard others refer to as the Legion since he’d reached the first human outpost of Farpoint at the top of the Escarpment, where he’d traded for coin and information. His eyes narrowed as the group descended from the walled manse down into the city proper, heading toward the ships. The banners catching the wind were half red, half yellow, the field cut diagonally. He couldn’t make out the symbol in the center, but he’d be willing to wager it was a shield.

The same banner he’d seen on the battlefield outside the forest.

The guardsmen vanished among the buildings, and Colin turned back to his study of the city. His hand massaged the grip on his staff with nervous tension, and he could feel a tightness at the base of his back, in the center of his shoulders.

“What am I doing here?” he whispered to himself.

He didn’t know. He’d expected Portstown to be similar to what he remembered, not . . .
this
.

He glanced around at the people passing on the road, a cart loaded down with late autumn squash, a man on horseback with an escort of uniformed guardsmen. No one had noticed him. No one had even looked in his direction, not even the few men and boys traveling on foot.

Loneliness settled on his shoulders, the weight of over sixty years of isolation suddenly too great a burden. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t belong here. Portstown had changed too much. But if not here, and not within the forest, then where?

As if in answer, his stomach seized. Fear lanced through him as he clamped his hand to his side, the heat already building. Before he’d left, he’d thought the pain of withdrawal from the Well and the influence of the Lifeblood had been bad but tolerable. He’d discovered otherwise on the plains when the first seizure hit. It had begun like this, a cramp, followed by the searing heat. He’d stumbled to the grass, lips pressed tight, as the pain increased, the heat seeping outward through his side into his chest, into his left arm and his legs, until it had become too much to bear, and he’d collapsed to the ground, seizures wracking his body.

When the seizure had finally faded, he’d lain in the grass, staring up at the sky, muscles trembling, too weak to move. Not even when a brown plains snake slid over his body, split tongue tasting his sweat in the air a moment before moving on. He’d lain there for nearly a day, unable to move, wondering if the dwarren would find him and what they would do to him if they did. But finally the weakness had passed, and he’d struggled to his feet.

He’d almost drunk from his stash of Lifeblood then. The vial had been in his shaking hands, open and halfway to his mouth, before the unclaimed vow slipped from beneath the neck of his robe and glinted in the sunlight. As tremors coursed through his body, he’d forced himself to put the vial away, the smell of the Lifeblood—earth and leaves and snow—so sharp and tempting that he actually moaned.

He’d had two more seizures before reaching Farpoint and human lands, then another on the trek from the Escarpment here. He’d been able to stumble off the road and out of sight for the last one.

But now, as the heat intensified enough to drive him to one knee, leaning on his staff for support, he could hear the people around him. The creak of the farmer’s cart and the clop of the horses’ hooves sharpened as he fought back the pain. He gasped as it threatened to escalate and break into another seizure, but before it crested, he felt the heat beginning to ebb. He brought his hand away from his side and held onto the staff, resting his forehead against it. Sweat made his grip slick, but as the pain receded, he used the staff to pull himself back onto his feet.

One of the uniformed guardsmen watched him with concern, but Colin motioned that he was fine. He massaged his side, wondering if the lack of a seizure meant he was getting better, if the pull of the Well was lessening.

Then his stomach growled.

A thin smile quirked his lips, but it didn’t linger.

“Food,” he said to himself, then sighed again. “Food first and then . . .”

He stilled, then shrugged and headed down the gravel road into the city proper.

He found himself drawn to the older part of the city. He wanted to see if there was anything left of the Portstown he knew. The imperative had even overridden his stomach.

He went to the shipyards first, but there was no sign of the wide plank docks where the riot had broken out between the Armory and Shay and his men. Instead, he stood on a long cobbled street before a massive stone wall, the street and wall itself built out into the water. He placed his hands against the damp stone, felt its chill in his fingers, then let his hand drop. Glancing up, he could see the spits of ships jutting out over the top of the wall. Based on their height, he guessed that the ocean itself lay directly on the far side of the wall, that if the stone were to break, seawater would pour into the street and flood the lower wharf.

He shuddered, then stepped into shadow as a door in the wall twenty paces away opened suddenly; men and women dressed in vests and coats in a style Colin didn’t recognize stepped out onto the cobbles. Their undershirts were a vibrant white, stark against the dirt that coated the buildings, but no one seemed to notice the grime. Carriages were waiting for some of them, the horses stamping the stone impatiently, heads rattling their traces. Others branched away in various directions. Those with the finer clothes were followed by men and women dressed more conservatively, in clothes Colin found more familiar: shirts and breeches, patched and stained in places. Once the carriages pulled away, their drivers tch-ing the horses into motion, the yard workers in even rougher clothing, most without shirts, began unloading the cargo, wagons arriving to take the carriages’ places, hauling the crates and barrels away into the city.

Colin turned to look down the stretch of the street and saw numerous doorways all along its length; he shook his head. “Far larger than the wharf from my day,” he murmured, then turned his attention inland. He didn’t know how the streets were set up, didn’t even know if he was close to where the wharf he remembered had been, so he chose a street at random.

As soon as he entered the inner reaches of the wharf, he adjusted his pack and hugged the walls of the buildings, wary of the number of people. He made it down to the next street, and then he drew to a halt.

The closeness—of the people, of the buildings—and the sheer volume and activity began to close in on him, crushing him. His chest tightened, and his breath began to quicken. Desperation pulled at his shoulders, until he finally glanced up, into the sky, into its blueness, its openness high above. He drew that openness into his lungs, tasted the odor of the city along with it, and wrinkled his nose.

It reminded him of the rougher part of Lean-to, where Shay and the conscripts had stayed, only the stench was a hundred times worse. But it calmed him.

He turned back to the street and watched the crowd as they bustled here and there, entering taverns and shops. Then he reentered the flow, passing a bakery, the smells of fresh bread making his stomach growl yet again, but he didn’t stop. He turned at the next corner, bumped into someone and apologized without looking up. He caught a few people staring at him strangely, brows creased, and he realized that no one else wore anything remotely close to robes, but he ignored them. He’d brought a shirt and breeches, but he’d never changed; he wasn’t comfortable in them anymore. He caught a few other stares, more predatory, and he tugged his pack closer, shifting his grip on the staff. He had nothing that they’d want, but he knew that didn’t mean anything.

And then the buildings fell away, abruptly, like the Faelehgre buildings that had surrounded the Well. The street emptied out into a small square, of a rectangular area filled with grass and trees protected by a low wrought-iron fence. From the sides of the square streets branched off in every direction between yet more buildings, and to the right—

Colin sighed, an ache in his heart easing.

The church he remembered from Portstown, the church he’d halted in front of before hunting down Walter and his cronies with his sling, stood alone, as if carved out of the facade of the surrounding city. He smiled at the memory and moved across the street and around the park. The wooden fence had been replaced by iron, and the stone of the building had aged, but otherwise it was exactly as he remembered it. He could even see a few headstones in the graveyard behind it.

Without thought, he passed through the open gate and ascended the stone steps. The vestibule was as he remembered it, with the intricate latticework of wood separating the entry from the sanctuary itself, but the smells had changed. Dust hung in the air, scented with old wood and decades of burned tallow and smoke and incense. Pews lined the walkway leading to the altar, the tilted cross still draped with white and red cloth at the far end. Colin moved down the aisle, glancing toward the stained-glass windows now darkened with layers of soot and age. He halted at the railing before the altar, the wood floor creaking beneath his weight, and stared up at the cross.

He thought about his mother and father, about everyone in the wagon expedition who had died outside the forest, and he signed himself. “May Holy Diermani protect you all. You deserved a better burial than I gave you.” And as he stood there, he thought of Patris Brindisi, who’d offered him sanctuary on that day so long ago. He wondered whether, if he’d accepted that offer, everything would have been different. He might never have attacked Walter and been arrested. His father might never have been forced into leading the expedition onto the plains.

Karen might have lived.

His hand rose to clasp the unclaimed vow that hung around his neck.

“Have you come seeking solace?”

Colin spun, half expecting to see Brindisi, but it was another priest, young, the white shawl of a Hand draped around his neck. He thought of Domonic and smiled tightly. “No. I don’t think solace will ever be mine. I came for the . . . memories.”