Well of the Damned (15 page)

She’d
hooked them. Now she only had to pull them to her net. “The
journal in your hands has a few references to the wellspring, but the
one I’ve kept hidden away contains specific details: where it’s
located, and what its true power is — why he thought it was
important enough to murder the king for.”

In
the king’s eyes, Cirang saw a lust for knowledge. “What
wellspring?”

“Why, the Well of the
Enlightened, of course. The journal talks about its magical
properties.”

“Have
you read it?” he asked.

“I
have,” she said, “though my memory improves when my belly
is full. The lordover has let me languish in that cell. Surely you
can spare a bit of—”

“Awright,
I’ve heard enough,” Kinshield said.

Cirang
blinked in surprise at his dismissive tone. “Do we have an
agreement? The journal for my life?”

He
stared at her wordlessly for a moment. “I’ll think on it.
Adro, take her back to the gaol.”

“Wait.
What’s there to think over?” she asked. “Get the
horses ready. I’ll lead you there now.”

Adro
clamped his hand onto her upper arm and started to escort her out of
the room.

“King
Gavin, listen,” she called over her shoulder. “You must
read that journal. You won’t find it without me. If I die
before you get it, two hundred years of Thendylath’s history
dies with me.”

Chapter 17

As
soon as Cirang was gone, Gavin let loose the shudder he’d been
reigning in. The vileness of her presence renewed his memories of
beyonders. His instinct was to run his sword through her then and
there, as though she weren’t human, but he couldn’t. He
was the king, and kings had to do the right thing always.

The
others in the room didn’t seem to be as sensitive to the
khoness of her haze. Perhaps it was because, even when he wasn’t
actively looking at her haze, he felt it. It brought back the memory
of his near death while he was in the beyonders’ realm,
fighting for his life against Ritol.

He
went to the window of his library to gaze out at the water of Lake
Athra in the distance and the walls of the cliff face beyond that. A
hawk swooped down and snatched a fish in its talons, then beat its
wings furiously to carry off its meal. The hawk was like Cirang,
preying on society. Every day he delayed carrying out her sentence
was another day she could escape from gaol or talk someone into
letting her go. Had she been Cirang Deathsblade in spirit, he might
have thought she could be redeemed somehow, or at least put to work
in a limited way to contribute to society rather than feed from it.
But she wasn’t. Her haze was as dark and tumultuous as a
beyonder’s, and just as repulsive. What confused him was why.

He’d
met Sithral Tyr once before, and his haze hadn’t been like
this. Neither had Cirang’s, judging from the glimpse of her
he’d gotten when she rode in to save Ravenkind at the rune
cave. He remembered the vileness that emanated from the green cat
figurine Daia found in Tyr’s satchel after she’d killed
him. It had made him uncomfortable, but she wanted to know what it
was. The mage Jennalia had said it housed the befouled soul of a
Nilmarion, and it must never be broken. Only it was. It was broken at
the cottage where he’d found Cirang, barely alive. The fact
that Cirang knew about his meeting with Sithral Tyr could only mean
one thing: Tyr’s soul had taken over Cirang’s body.

“What
is it about her haze that concerns you?” Daia asked.

“She’s
kho-bent, not evil,” he said. When he’d journeyed to the
mid-realm, the Elyle, Bahn, had explained the nature of khozhi and
why Gavin had disliked Bahn’s complement, Bahnna, so intensely.
Bahn had been completely zhi-bent — soft, warm — and
Bahnna had been like Cirang was now — hard, cold. Like the
beyonders were.

Edan
turned in his chair and hooked his elbow over its back. “So
explain it to me.”

Gavin
paced the length of the library as he talked. Moving helped him
gather his thoughts. “The khozhi is the balance between two
opposites, like order and chaos, hot and cold, soft and hard, love
and hate. Kho is the cold, hard, rigid side. Zhi is the hot, soft,
yielding side.”

“Good
and bad?” Daia asked.

“Good
versus evil,” Edan said at the same time.

“No.
I thought the same, but the Elyle told me good and evil are judgments
based on our morality or preference. Sweet and bitter are zhi and
kho, but whether something sweet is good or bad depends on who’s
tasting it. We all have kho inside us, but our realm tends towards
order, so we mostly act from the zhi side.”

Edan
scrunched his brow as he nodded. “So you’re saying Cirang
is purely kho?”

“Yeh.
That must be why I can see her haze, but I can’t read it the
way I can others.”

“Can
that be undone?” Edan asked. “Can she be redeemed
somehow?”

Gavin
shook his head. “Doubtful. To be honest, I don’t want to
kill her, but she’s dangerous. The people would be safer with
her dead.”

“Ravenkind
believed he had a legitimate claim to the throne,” Edan said.
“Yes, she helped him escape, but did she know of his crimes?
She thought he was the rightful king. That alone is no crime.”

“She
wasn’t an exemplary citizen before then, either,” Daia
said. “Remember, Cirang killed JiNese and framed me for it.”
She paused, tapping her chin. “Gavin, if you can’t read
her haze, how did you know she was lying about how JiNese died?”

“I
didn’t. Before I got King Arek’s magic, I had to judge
people’s truthfulness not only from what they said but from the
way they talked. She looked up as if she was fishing for some stray
story on the ceiling. People telling the truth don’t do that.”

“You have a good eye.
Cirang’s always been known for her agile tongue.”

“Yeh,
but she’s more than just Cirang or Tyr. She has both o’their
memories and a kho-bent haze, which makes her more dangerous than any
criminal I’ve ever encountered.” He went back to the
window and looked out. The mage Jennalia had told her about that
figurine and urged her to bury it. Gavin admittedly hadn’t seen
the danger in it either, but in hindsight, they should have heeded
her warning.

“How
did the statue get to the cottage in the first place?” Edan
asked. “Cirang said Ravenkind gave it to Tyr.”

“Remember
when we brought Brawna to your house?” Daia asked him.

Edan
chuckled. “Of course. A man doesn’t soon forget being
woken during the night by a beautiful woman, an old friend, and a
girl covered in blood.”

She
reminded him of the sword fight between Gavin and Toren Meobryn, and
Sithral Tyr and Daia. “We were looking for a necklace Gavin was
supposed to recover and found the ugly cat figurine in Tyr’s
satchel. I carried it around for a while. The mage Jennalia in
Ambryce told me what it was. She called it a soulcele token and said
the Nilmarions use them to protect or imprison souls. She said it
contained a blackened soul and warned me not to break it. It was in
my saddle bag when Ravenkind’s henchman caught me. Cirang
must’ve found it.”

“Then
it got broken during Ravenkind’s fight with Ritol,” Gavin
said. “It seems Tyr’s spirit jumped into Cirang’s
body and brought it back to life.”

Edan
shook his head. “Wasn’t his soul in the statue before
Daia killed him? How could a man walk around with his soul imprisoned
in a figurine? The Book of Ancients says the soul lives inside the
body and leaves when the body dies.”

Gavin
wasn’t a believer in the Spirit of Asti-nayas as the one true
god like his wife was, but he remembered the lessons from his
childhood visits to the temple in Lalorian. “A lot o’followers
of Asti-nayas also believe the soul can travel while the body’s
asleep. It’s not such a leap to imagine it could get trapped
somewhere.”

“But
then the body would stay asleep, wouldn’t it?” Edan
asked.

Gavin
shrugged. How the hell would he know? He wasn’t a spiritual
scholar.

“The
Viragon Sisterhood followed the teachings of the ancient Farthan
sage, Yrys,” Daia said. “Farthans believe the body can
function without the soul, but it acts only with thought, and not
with heart. It can talk and work like a normal person, but it can’t
love or feel compassion. We might never understand the thread
connecting the soul and the haze, as Gavin calls it. All he can do is
decide what to do about Cirang based on what she has done.”

Gavin
ran his tongue over the gap where his right eyetooth used to be. He’d
always considered his strengths to be in his shoulders, arms and
legs, not in philosophy. He might never understand why or how she’d
become kho-bent. The question was: what was he going to do about her
proposition. “Well I can’t forgive her crimes and free
her, and she’s too crafty to leave in gaol, so I guess I got to
execute her.”

Edan
picked up the journal they’d identified as Sevae’s. “Are
you saying you don’t want to see the other journal?

“We
don’t know if there is another journal,” Daia said.
“Remember, this is Cirang we’re talking about. She lies.”

Anything
that might explain why Sevae had summoned Ritol made Gavin’s
muscles quiver with excitement. Ravenkind had believed there to be a
second journal, so chances were good Tyr had held onto it, trying to
negotiate a better price. “Whether it still exists, we won’t
know unless we let her take us to it.”

Edan
said, “I remember seeing a reference to the wellspring in this
one, but it didn’t say what it was.”

“Think
you can find it again?” Gavin asked.

Edan
opened the book and flipped its pages. “I believe it had to do
with King Arek’s son. Let me see if I can— ah, here it
is.” He began to read aloud.

Although
King Arek interrogated every member of his staff about the
whereabouts of the rune, he was unable to determine who took it or
who has it now. Had he simply asked the right questions, I would not
have been able to hide the truth. He would have known how I obtained
it. For someone who uses magic as adeptly as he does, it’s
quite comical that he never recovered it. Comical and pathetic.

Then
there was the matter of his poor son, drowning in the rear courtyard
fountain because Arek was too distracted to notice the boy had
slipped outside unattended. He all but forgot about the rune after
that. I acknowledge I had a part in the child’s death, for it
was I who left the door ajar, and I regret that most sincerely. But
the fact of the matter is many more people will die before this is
all said and done. Every one of those deaths could have been avoided
had King Arek followed my counsel on the matter of the wellspring.

The
room fell silent. Crigoth Sevae must have been mad to sacrifice the
king’s child in his dogged pursuit of the wellspring. Gavin had
to know more. He had to know why, in the hopes his progeny would
never repeat this tragedy.

“What
was so important about the wellspring?” Daia asked.

“They
called it the Well of the Enlightened,” Edan said. “Perhaps
it has some spiritual significance.”

Gavin
pointed his finger at him. “There’s one man who can
answer that.”

“You
aren’t going to back-travel to talk to Sevae!” Edan said.

“No,
no,” Gavin said, though the idea had merit. “King Arek.”

Chapter 18

The
clothes Gavin had been wearing the first time he visited King Arek
had since been torn into rags and used to clean the palace, and so he
hoped his new wardrobe wouldn’t be too much of a shock. His
boots, too, had been taken apart and used in the tack room of the
stable, and his new boots were shiny and black, kept that way by his
attendant, Quint.

“Lend
me your gift once more,” he said to Daia. “I want to talk
to King Arek about the wellspring, to see if Sevae’s journal is
even worth pursuing.”