by K. C. May
“Where’s this leak?” Daia asked.
“There,” Cirang said, pointing to the rock face. “Do you see that dark line?”
Gavin didn’t see it with his normal vision, but with his hidden eye, the source of his mystical vision, he saw a sparkling, vertical line, as if the mountain dripped flecks of glass like tears down its face. They stepped and stumbled over the pile of rubble that used to be the mountainside in order to get closer. Sure enough, a constant flow of water streamed down the rocks and spilled onto the ground. Beneath the leak was a sizable pool expanding outward with each passing moment.
“It’s flowing faster than before,” Cirang said. “When I was last here, it was only a steady drip.”
They stood back, careful not to stand in the puddle. “Don’t let the water touch you,” he said, “Just in case that’s all it takes.”
“Look. It starts way up there,” Daia said.
Gavin followed her pointing finger up the rock face towards the boulders on top that resembled an eagle preparing to take flight. Roughly three-quarters of the way up, perhaps a hundred yards, a line began, slightly darker than the soil around it. Cirang had said it was too high to climb to, but Gavin hadn’t understood how high that actually was.
“I wonder if it’d be easier to get to from the top.” With his magic, he could pull and push objects, which was how he planned to plug the leak, but from the ground, he couldn’t see well enough to know where to put the mortar.
“No,” his champion said sternly. “I can’t let you climb down that mountain. Besides, we haven’t any rope.”
He shot her an impatient look. “I wasn’t planning to climb down it, only to place the putty into the hole. I can’t get a good look at it from here.”
“The angle from above won’t give you a better view of it. It’s a sheer drop.”
“I can do it,” Cirang said. “I can climb down and tell you where to place the mortar. I used to climb the sheer cliffs north of Ivarr Ness as a girl, with waves crashing below.”
“Were you a girl?” he asked. “I thought you grew up a boy in Nilmaria.”
“I have the memories and skills of both Cirang and Tyr. Only the body belonged solely to Cirang, and it’s strong and fit, despite the limp.”
He wondered whether she offered so that when the job was done, she could simply let go and fall to her death. Although her haze was no longer the dark and turbulent one of the kho-bent person she’d been before drinking the water, something in it remained unsettled. It could have been guilt eating away at her, but until they fixed what she’d done to Feanna and the others, he wanted her alive.
“Well, you’re not climbing up there either,” he said. “I’ll just have to do my best.”
He lifted his mystical vision up into the air. Because the hidden eye wasn’t physically attached to his head like normal eyes were, its vision wasn’t limited to the physical scope of his body. Below, he saw Daia’s haze, clear blue with its unique orange tendril snaking out from its middle, and Cirang’s cloudy white one. He pushed the hidden eye towards the mountain and studied the spot where the glimmering water started to flow out from the rocks. On closer inspection, he saw it was an area about two feet in diameter where several trickles converged into a stream. He didn’t have enough putty to cover the entire area, so he would need to be precise about where to put globs of it.
He returned to his normal vision. “This isn’t going to be easy. I wish one o’you could use your hidden eye to guide me.” Everyone had a hidden eye, but few ever learned to use it.
“With my help,” Daia said, “could you do both? Use your hidden eye to help you place the putty?”
He’d never developed the ability to do two magical tasks at once. Even doing something as simple as riding his horse while using his hidden eye had been more trouble than it was worth. “It would be like standing on a shifting board while juggling knives. I don’t think I can.”
“It’s worth a try. You might surprise yourself, Gavin.”
He grinned. “You’re starting to sound like Edan.” He turned towards the tree-line where the horses were waiting, chose a pine cone, and pulled it with his will. It flew through the air, and he caught it one-handed. “Let me try with this afore we mix the mortar.” He felt nervous, unsure whether he could concentrate on both tasks simultaneously. I can do this. I’m a mage now.
First, he pushed the pine cone from his palm into the air. It shot forward about a dozen feet before landing on the rocks with a soft crunch. “Oops. Too strong.” He’d pushed and pulled objects, but never had he tried balancing a push and a pull at the same time. This was harder than he expected. After a half hour of trial and error, he learned to hold it steady in the air. He practiced moving it up and down by gently pushing or pulling from below.
His head pounded from the exertion, but once he let the pine cone drop, his healing magic started lessening the pain. “That gave me a headache. Guess I’m not used to concentrating that hard.”
“Ravenkind used to get terrible headaches when he did certain kinds of magic,” Cirang said. “If he had good-quality gems, it wasn’t as bad, but if he didn’t, the headaches would send him to his bed for hours afterwards. You took that book from my secret cellar, remember? The one about spiritual consequences of practicing the dark magics? Have you read any of it?”
“No,” Daia said, “we were too busy trying to keep you from murdering people.”
Cirang’s face fell. “It’s a worthy treatise. I haven’t read the entire book, but what I’ve read suggests that magic is divided into two kinds: hard and soft. Soft magic is fueled by light life force, whereas hard magic is fueled by dark life force.”
Gavin raised his eyebrows. “Magic has khozhi?”
“Is that the same property as in people’s hazes?” Daia asked.
Gavin nodded. The Elyle hadn’t mentioned that the first time he’d visited the midrealm and learned about the khozhi. They’d only said sentient beings had it. No, that wasn’t quite true. They’d also said that emotions were kho or zhi. He wondered what else was governed by this balance of hard and soft.
After a moment’s rest, he started again. He had an idea. By envisioning his haze having two long arms to brace it, he found he could move it about more easily. Confidently, he shut his eyes and opened his hidden eye. The cone stayed right where it was.
“Got it,” he said. “Found a much easier way to handle it.”
“How’s the headache?” Daia asked.
“Not bad. The healing magic is making it bearable.” He swiped a finger under his nose. When his finger came away bloody, he wiped it surreptitiously on the pine cone before tossing it aside. “Awright, let’s mix up the mortar.”
Daia emptied the sand mixture from a bag into a stitched leather bowl and poured enough water from their water skins into it to mix it with a wooden spoon into a putty. Gavin used his hands to form it into five equal-sized balls.
More confident now, Gavin tossed one large ball of putty up and held it steady with his magic. Being heavier than the pine cone, it took more concentration. He needed to hurry—the putty would harden quickly. He pushed the putty ball up, slowly enough to control but quickly enough that within seconds it was about even with the source of the leak. Moving the putty into position was like trying to make a marionette juggle with his eyes closed. When it was hovering inches from the first leak, he slammed it into place. Rocks around it shifted, and a few fell, bouncing down the mountainside.
“Look out,” Cirang cried.
Daia grabbed him by the arm and pulled him backwards. He stumbled over the rocky slope and flailed to regain his balance. When he reopened his hidden eye, he saw that the leak had opened up, and the water flow was at least double what it had been. “Damn it to hell. I made it worse.”
“How did that happen?” Daia asked.
“I shoved the putty in too hard,” Gavin said. This wasn’t going to work. He needed a giant bucket of mortar to pour down the mountain from abo
ve, but unless he sprouted wings, that wasn’t a viable solution. To return with the mason and a wagon of mortar mixture would give the pooling water another three days to find its way to the Flint River.
“Next time,” Daia started, “just—”
“No, I can’t risk it again. We don’t have enough mortar to keep fixing bigger holes.”
“We can’t let it flow into the Flint or form a river of its own,” Cirang said, fear raising the pitch of her voice. “If it makes its way to Ambryce, the city will be lost.”
“Let me ask the Guardians for advice,” Gavin said.
Daia nodded, but Cirang’s mouth dropped open. “You’re going to pray for guidance? My liege, I respect your desire to worship in your own way, but this is a real-world crisis. We need a solution now, and gods aren’t exactly known to answer prayers swiftly.”
He shook his head as he started towards his horse. It would take only a moment to explain it to her, but this was a woman who’d used people’s own faith against them, including his wife’s. She didn’t deserve an explanation.
On Golam’s back, he started up the trail they’d taken a few days earlier, when he and his companions had been tracking Cirang after her escape. Curiosity had won over prudence then, and he’d wanted to see the supposed Well of the Enlightened. Cirang called it the Well of the Damned, which had a ring of truth to it. It wasn’t long before Gavin started to think of it that way too.
The two women battlers mounted and hurried after him.
Chapter 4
“Lord Edan? Might I have a word with you?”
Edan looked up from the agriculture report on his desk, thankful for the interruption. His eyelids had grown heavy, and his mind had begun to wander. Gavin’s eldest nephew, a tall boy with his father’s dark, wavy hair, stepped into his office, hands clasped behind him. “Of course, Jaesh. Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Is everything all right?”
Like his brothers and mother, Jaesh had taken his father’s murder hard. It didn’t help that Gavin looked so much like his brother, but if there was a benefit to Gavin’s absence, it was in giving Rogan’s family a reprieve from the constant reminder of their loss.
“Oh, yeh. I found this book in the upstairs library. It looks really old, and the ink’s faded on a lot o’the pages.” He took a seat in the plush chair opposite Edan’s desk, laying a dusty, brown tome upon his lap and caressing its cover.
Edan raised his brows, pleased yet surprised that the boy was taking such an interest in learning. By taking the initiative to look for gems in what they came to call the wall of pulp, a bookshelf full of loose papers and books in various states of disrepair, Jaesh was setting a fine example for his brothers and adopted cousins.
“I-I wasn’t snooping. I was looking for information about King Ivam for a report my teacher assigned.”
Edan chuckled. “Certainly, and I’m glad of it. There aren’t many intact books left up there, but I plan to begin sifting through that mess someday to find the ones worthy of restoration. It’s almost like a treasure hunt, isn’t it?”
“Yeh, almost.” Jaesh offered the old book to Edan. Its pages were wrinkled and discolored and its stitching loose within the tattered leather cover. Many pages had torn loose completely and sat between their adjacent sheets like prisoners awaiting their opportunity for escape. “It has names in it. People with the same given name as my papa and grandpa, and my name too. Are any of those people related to me?”
“Hmm,” Edan said, turning the pages carefully. The ink was so faded in the first three-quarters of the book that it was nearly impossible to read without careful scrutiny under a magnifying glass. Towards the back, however, was a list of names and dates, most faded beyond legibility, some quite clear. The names Rogan and Gavin stood out, as well as Cuttor and Jaesh, the names of the Kinshields Edan had known personally—or known of—though their surnames were listed as Beresfard.
“My papa always told me that Jaesh was an old family name, like his name. He made me memorize them, starting with my papa: Rogan Cuttor Landon Rothyr Jaesh Dasurien... all the way back. Every year on my birthday, he gave me another name to memorize. That’s how his papa taught him, but he didn’t learn them all afore his papa died. Could I be related to the Beresfards from a long time ago?”
Given names were commonly reused within a family. His own name, Edan, had also been his grandfather’s middle name, and his father shared his given name with his own father. If Gavin’s family passed down these names... Edan stared at the boy, stunned and excited, his curiosity burning. Beresfard was the name of a family long thought extinct—the ruling family before the Engturys claimed the throne. “I truly don’t know, Jaesh. My history lessons didn’t cover these people in particular, but it’s interesting that your family uses the names. Give me a day or two to research this. Perhaps I can find a historian who can tell us more. Tell me those names again, slowly so I can write them down. I’ll see if any of them are listed in this book as Kinshield.” Edan wrote them on a separate paper as Jaesh recited them. “Good. I’ll see what I can find.”
Jaesh stood. “There’s another thing. Look at this.” He reached across the desk and flipped a few more pages for Edan. He stopped on a page with another list of names, the last of which was Arek Engtury, 1401- Above that was King Dantrek’s name, with the year of his birth and the year his reign began.
“Oh,” Edan said. “King Arek died in 1431, which means he only lived to be thirty years old. This must’ve been written while he was a teenager. His father was still king.”
“Look at this,” Jaesh said, pointing to a few names higher on the list. “The last Beresfard kings shared Uncle Gavin’s second name, and my papa’s given name as his second name.”
Rothyr Rogan Beresfard 1203-1245 r 1225-1245
Samuar Rothyr Beresfard 1230-1246 r 1245-1246
Nathem Engtury 1221-1301 r 1246-1301
Edan tapped the page with his index finger. “I remember reading that King Samuar was the last Beresfard to rule. Looks like he was king for only a year, perhaps less. One would think... Hmmm.” The dates didn’t make sense. If the First Cyprindian War began in 1246, then there should have been a succession of Beresfard rulers as each king fell to the Cyprindian poison before the Beresfard line died out completely.
“If we’re related to the Beresfards,” Jaesh said, “how come we’re Kinshields?”
“I don’t know if you’re related,” Edan said, studying the text. “It’s possible your given names are coincidental. Perhaps they were made popular by the royal family in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and your family has simply stuck with them through the years.”
“Or we could be related.”
Edan smiled. “Or you could be related.” He turned a few more pages, seeing only a faded account of an argument between Dantrek and his father, King Ivam, before something occurred to him. He flipped back to previous pages and confirmed what he’d first overlooked. This book had been written entirely by a single person. The handwriting was uniform throughout—same slant, same curls on the tails, missing tittle over the letters j and i. King Arek had written this book. Edan was certain of it—his was the last name in the list of kings—but why?
“Do you need this book for your report?” Edan asked. “I’d like to study it for a day or two.”
“No, I don’t need it,” Jaesh said, stepping back. “Will you tell me what you learn about those names?”
“I most certainly will. Thank you for sharing this exquisite find with me, Jaesh. I’m sure I’ll get little sleep in the coming days.” Edan gave him a self-deprecating smile and closed the book. He needed to finish his work before he could spare the time to study the old tome, and the sooner he got back to it, the better.
A messenger knocked twice before entering and handing Edan a rolled paper. “This just arrived for you, my lord.”
Edan pulled a large silver coin from his top drawer and gave it to the young man with his thanks. He carefully broke the seal on t
he paper, removed the string, and unrolled the note. His eyes went automatically to the bottom of the page and saw it was from Gavin.
“It’s another message from your uncle,” he said. They’d already received word that Cirang had escaped and they’d chased her to Ambryce, but Gavin had promised to come home as soon as she was back in his custody.
Jaesh sighed. “Bet I can guess what it says: he’s not coming home yet.”
Edan began to read silently, his brow furrowing as he read about the corruption of the water at the temple in Ambryce. When he read that the queen had drunk the water, his hand began to shake. He set the message on the desk and pressed it down, mostly to calm the tremor. The Well of the Enlightened was rumored to have unknown magical properties. What had it done to her? His answer came in the next sentence:
Her disposition has been altered to such an extent, you wouldn’t know her. I’m afraid my sweet, kind Feanna is forever lost. She’s more like a beyonder now than a human, vicious and devious.
Edan, you must warn the family of her foulness, for when she arrives, only cruelty and deceit will spill from her mouth. She’s not to be trusted, not to be obeyed. You must lock her in our bedchamber emptied of sharp objects, but by all means provide her the comforts and personal attendance a queen deserves. Above all else, don’t permit her to walk about the palace unattended, visit with any of the children, or be left alone with any man—not even you—for she will seduce him by any means necessary.
Edan’s first thought was that Daia must have written this letter. Not only did it not sound at all like Gavin Kinshield, the handwriting was lovely and well-practiced. His second thought was that they’d unraveled the secret of the Well of the Enlightened that King Arek had tried so hard to keep hidden.
