The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  The lean fellow, Fionnbar Aonarán, rode ahead once more. The woman’s pallid gaze followed him, then remained fixed on the man who had laughed.

  By now, the day was past noon. At one of the arch-windowed filatures in Spire, Arran and Jewel finished haggling with a silk-merchant. Having reached an agreement, they paid their money and departed, carrying a long bolt of gossamer-light fabric and several skeins of silken cord. Their steps were buoyant as they made their way toward the seamstress’s shop.

  “Borne by a moth’s cradle!” chanted Stormbringer exuberantly. He shook his head in wonderment, at the simplicity of the solution, revealed in the children’s song. “Borne by a moth’s cradle!”

  Jewel laughed, sharing his delight. “A riddle typical of eldritch wights,” she said.

  Upon reaching the shop, they explained their proposed design to the woman in charge. The gold coins displayed in Arran’s outstretched hand impressed upon her the requirement for speed, and she led them straightaway to her pattern-maker. In a remarkably short time the pattern had been designed and cut out of brown paper, whereupon the head seamstress led her customers upstairs to a large chamber. A table of impressive proportions occupied the center of the room.

  “Put away your work,” she instructed several industrious women who had been scissoring swirls of woven materials and stitching at seams. “You will commence a fresh project, this very hour.” She bade her assistants unroll the new bolt of silk and spread it out on the now-cleared table-top. “Leave it to me,” she said to her clients, winking with a confidential air. “I will make sure the work is done swiftly and well.” Even as the two customers left the room, the seamstresses were already beginning to pin some wedge-like paper shapes onto the silk.

  Jewel and Arran made their way to the main thoroughfare of the township, where, at the blacksmith’s, the grocer’s, the chandler’s and the general provisioner’s, they purchased a sturdy canvas sack, ropes, bags of nails, salt, dried hypericum leaves, dried rowanberries and stale breadcrumbs, and two hand-bells.

  Late that afternoon, the five riders entered the township of Spire. They were as dusty and bedraggled as any travelers, and the poor quality of their garments indicated that they were far from wealthy. As in any remote population center, unfamiliar faces attracted interest from the local people; nonetheless, the raiment of the visitors was so dilapidated it seemed evident they were merely a band of rag-tag paupers; therefore the interest was mild and short-lived. The newcomers seemed unlikely to increase Spire’s prosperity by much. Three of them found lodgings at one of the meaner dwellings at the edge of town. The other two visited the taverns, where they made themselves most sociable, exhibiting a keen interest in the inhabitants and their observations.

  Meanwhile, behind closed doors in their lodging-house, Sohrab-Scorpion and Gaspar-Lizard had spread a large goat’s hide across the floor and laid out upon it a row of hardware for review. The former was using a whetstone to sharpen a scimitar, while the latter was squinting down the length of a blowpipe.

  “There’s no warping,” he said, placing the pipe aside and beginning to check a handful of darts. As he worked, he grumbled resentfully, “Weaponmonger ordered me to sharpen his sword and oil the chain on his morningstar. Why should he not do it himself? That pox-riddled maniac treats me like dirt. He has no right to deem himself so high and mighty. He thinks nobody knows, but we know that in truth he’s a walking dead man, with his poisonous little bottles of quicksilver and bismuth and arsenic powder, useless remedies against the hideous malady he claims he does not have.”

  “That one is an apothecarium in man-shape. He also carries phenol and spirit of salts.”

  “Whyfor? Spirit of salts is etching acid, is it not? He’s hardly likely to be decorating knife-blades with anything other than blood and guts, out here in the wilderness.”

  “The phenol is for treating his lues,” replied Sohrab-Scorpion, busy with the whetstone. “ ’Tis his own idea—he puts a droplet onto the chancres and buboes when they pop up, believing it burns out the poison.”

  “By the bones of Ádh, I hope that is as painful as it sounds.” Gaspar shuddered. “If you tell me he uses spirit of salts in the same manner, then I shall deem him to be a man of metal instead of flesh!”

  “What would you deem a man who carries spirit of salts so that he might slyly drop it in the ale of his drunken enemy, or dash it in the face of any man who challenges him?”

  “Cruel and corrupt,” muttered Gaspar, examining another dart.

  “Don’t bother any more with that,” said Sohrab, throwing him a glance. “Get on with putting an edge on Weaponmonger’s sword and tending to his morningstar. You know what he can be like, especially when he’s at the drink.”

  “What can he be like?” a cool voice inquired. The woman, now without her scarf, was standing in the doorway. Her face was framed by wisps of hair, pale as bleached straw. Hollow were her cheeks, and starved was her frame beneath the draperies of her desert robe. Her eyes were sunken into their sockets, as if retreating in horror from sights they had once been forced to behold. There was about her demeanor an unyielding quality, a ruthlessness that might have been rooted in a gruelling and hard-fought history.

  “I told you to lock that door,” Sohrab muttered to Gaspar.

  “How could I do so, when there’s no key?” the other snapped.

  “You were speaking of Cathal Weaponmonger,” the woman said.

  “We did not speak him ill, madam,” said Sohrab. “We never would.”

  “That is well. I would not love you if you did, and neither would my brother.”

  A resentful silence ensued. Apparently intent on their work, Sohrab continued to scrape at the scimitar’s blade, while Gaspar busied himself with a small oil can.

  At length, Sohrab said respectfully, “Madam, do you wish for us to inspect your bow and darts?”

  “Do not trouble yourself. I have already done so.”

  Next time they looked up she was no longer standing there. The door swung gently, its hinges creaking.

  Presently Sohrab elbowed Gaspar in the ribs and winked craftily. The other responded with a nod and a knowing look, after which Sohrab turned his head aside to spit on the floor.

  “Lover girl,” he whispered.

  Into the long Autumn afternoon and all through the night the seamstresses of Spire stitched industriously, until by the afternoon of the following day they had fashioned a large hemisphere of silk. In places about the reinforced hem of this artefact they attached several long cords. By the time Arran and Jewel returned, all was complete.

  “Thickness for thickness,” said the head seamstress, displaying the finished product, “silk is stronger than steel.”

  “And very beautiful as well,” said Jewel, gathering a handful of the gauzy stuff into her hands and letting it slip like water through her fingers.

  “And virtually weightless!” added Stormbringer.

  “You won’t find better craftsmanship in the Four Kingdoms,” boasted the seamstress.

  Assuming a critical air, the weathermaster regarded the handiwork. “It is good enough,” he pronounced, unwilling to eulogize in case the woman used his good opinion as an excuse to raise her price. After he paid the agreed fee, he and Jewel hastened away.

  Watching them leave, the seamstress shook her head, nonplussed, as if the strange ways of the world continually astounded her. “ ’Twill be a strange kind of boat, to be needing a sail like that,” she said to her assistant. “I doubt whether such a design will discharge the function. Still, gold is gold, and customers get what they ask for.”

  The children tagged along after Jewel and Arran as they made their way back to the bowl of the pinnacles. There they stood watching the pair inquisitively.

  It was close to sunset, and the sky had taken on the brilliant sheen of blue satin. Cloud-formations swam across the western quarter like shoals of mackerel, tinged gray along their streamlined backs and peach-colored along their underbel
lies. A light breeze came soughing from the east.

  At the foot of the Comet’s Tower, Arran turned his jade-green eyes upon Jewel. As she met his gaze, each of them recognized the tension and sense of awe in the other.

  “Do you have the vessel at hand?” he asked quietly.

  The damsel brought forth the tiny horn of ivory, the size of an eggcup or large thimble. He reached out to take it, but she drew back, saying, “No, I wish to be the one to fly up there!”

  “It is possible some peril awaits. Recall, the pinnacles are said to be wight-guarded.”

  “You forget the gift with which I am shielded!”

  “It cannot shield you from eldritch imprisonment.”

  “There is hardly likely to be a dungeon at the top of the pinnacle,” she scoffed. “I want to see the Well!”

  “Jewel, I cannot risk any harm coming to you.”

  “I am determined to set eyes on this thing. It is part of my heritage.”

  Clearly troubled, the young man looked searchingly at her, but perceived only a wall of stubbornness.

  “If you wish,” he said at last, “but I shall go up there first. I shall cast down the lifter, so that you may come after me.”

  In her turn, she studied his solemn aspect and discovered an equivalent resolution.

  “Even so,” she said presently, by way of compromise. He gave a single nod of acknowledgment, and set about his task.

  To begin with, he attached several well-filled bags to his belt. Next, holding out both hands, palms upward, he waved them from right to left in a long arc in front of his middle, then beckoned toward the northeast. “.” It was a vector command he chanted, each syllable redolent with raw power. Holding both hands still fully open, his fingers pointing to the right, he placed his right palm toward his chest and his left palm forward. Then he repeatedly passed his hands across in front of him, reversing hand positions on opposite sides of his body.

  “!”

  “ ‘Caiquass’—the wind from the northeast,” Jewel said, recalling some of the information she had picked up at the Seat of the Weathermasters.

  “Coming in at fifty-two degrees, force four—a moderate breeze,” explained Arran. He had tied the ends of the silken cords together to form a kind of supporting framework or harness. This web he passed under his arms so that it crossed his back at the level of his shoulder blades. With one swift, strong motion, he lifted an edge of the gossamer bubble and held it aloft.

  The watching children fell silent, save for the smallest, who whimpered.

  On the eastern edge of the natural bowl, the leaves stirred. A sound crescendoed through the thickets of mulberry trees, as if some dream-like, murmurous concourse robed in chain mail and silk poured in haste through the groves. Jewel felt a peppery breath scorch her cheek.

  The desert airs were visiting.

  Across miles of scalding sand the wind had swiftly passed. Over that distance, beneath the white-hot eye of the sun, it had gathered to itself a feverish energy. Into the bowl it flowed, only to encounter the imperatives of the brí, wielded by the young weathermaster. Thus directed, it streamed up into the seemingly flimsy envelope he held high. The envelope swelled. He let the hot breeze snatch it from his grasp. It bulged like a sail, continuing to rise, until the cords snapped taut. Beneath the flowering chute, Arran wound the cords about his wrists, gripped a bunch in each hand, and called out another vector command. The audience of children gawped, round-eyed with astonishment, and Jewel laughed aloud with sheer joy as the young man’s sandal-shod feet slowly left the ground. Gracefully, almost leisurely, he rose, drawn by the gossamer wing, suspended on its spidery webs. The wide sleeves of his shirt billowed.

  Higher he flew, until his altitude was greater than that of the tallest pinnacle, and then, with perfect control, he drifted sideways like an airborne leaf, and touched down elegantly on top of the Comet’s Tower. The watching youngsters whooped and stamped with glee, their brass bangles jingling.

  Gradually, the dollop of foamy silk deflated and vanished from sight.

  Arran reappeared and began to lower a rope. Tied to the end was a canvas bag wrapped with cords. The silken sail was folded within. There was still no sign of any guardian wights, and Jewel had begun to think that the conquering of the Comet’s Tower was, after all, much easier than she had expected when all at once there came a noise of stone grating swiftly on stone, and small rocky mouths unclosed up and down the entire length of the column. Swarthy, wrinkled little faces peered out from each of these crevices, and the owners of those heads began shouting, gesticulating, and throwing stones. The children retreated out of range, and Jewel ducked behind a myrtle bush.

  The wights remained in their tiny caverns and did not jump down to attack the onlookers, so they waited and observed warily while Arran tried to let down the bundle. The korred snatched at the rope, and snagged it with their cats’ claws, and hooked it with sticks, in an endeavor to reel in the parcel tied to the end. Looking down, with his feet braced against the rock, Arran perceived that something must quickly be done to drive off the wights, or they would soon steal the parachute. A number of options flitted through his mind. He could summon a weather-force, perhaps a storm of hailstones . . . but evoking hail would take too long . . . unless he could detect it already close by, high in the atmosphere . . . or perhaps he could make the wind gust hard at the wights, to flatten their pointy ears and make them squeeze shut their deep-set eyes—a dusty, gravely, abrasive wind.

  The argument against using the brí was what bothered him most. Ellenhall’s code forbade meddling with the forces of nature for personal advantage, except at extreme need in defense of life. He had already contravened the law yet again, by summoning the wind to lift the parachute, and he would soon repeat that offense. By their own law, weathermasters must wield the brí only for the greater good. Breaking that law was a reprehensible act that no responsible weatherlord should even consider, and he was surprised, anew, to find himself entertaining the notion of augmenting his misdemeanors, even for an instant.

  In the end, he resorted to his original plan. He gripped the rope in one hand, while with the other he tore open the bags at his belt and proceeded to sprinkle handfuls of the contents down the side of the pinnacle. Iron nails showered, along with salt-crystals, breadcrumbs, hypericum leaves, and rowanberries. All the while, the young man was whistling tunelessly, piercingly. On the ground below, Jewel was swinging the hand-bells with as much energy as she could muster, and chanting wight-repelling rhymes.

  Squealing and squeaking, the korred on Arran’s side of the pinnacle whisked back inside their little hollows and angrily slammed the sliding rock-doors. They were only minor wights, which was why such ordinary wards were relatively efficacious against them. From the other faces of the column, the creatures continued to shriek and hurl missiles inaccurately at the conqueror of their tower. Yet if any mortal men had been so bold as to scale the rocky towers using rope and spike and ladder, the korred would have dislodged every foothold with their tricks and overwhelmed the men by sheer numbers, no matter how many charms the climbers carried.

  Jewel paced impatiently. Presently, the canvas bag dropped within range. She ran and caught it, letting her broad-brimmed straw hat fall from her head. Looking up, she saw Stormbringer seated on the edge of the pinnacle’s overhang, dangling his long legs and waving down at her. Now and then he tossed down a handful of wight-repellent debris, and instantly any korred that had experimentally poked out its head shot out of sight. Some of the nails struck Jewel, but bounced off without causing harm.

  In eager haste she untied the parcel and laid out the folds of fabric on the ground, then passed the web of cords beneath her arms and around her back as Arran had done. She lifted an edge of the silken panes, but, lacking Arran’s stature, she was unable to haul many of the folds off the ground. Then the children came running, and they gripped the material and stood on their toes, holding it as high above their heads as they were able. The far-
off voice of Arran fell like the leaves of Autumn upon their ears, and they felt the lion’s breath of Caiquass once more as the heated current swept in and under the fabric, making it billow like some marshmallow confection.

  The children released their grasp.

  Cords pressed into the flesh beneath Jewel’s shoulder blades and arms, and she was lifted up, lightly, delicately, as if she were a puff of mist. Her feet brushed the top of the myrtle bush. The linen draperies of her burnous glided around her as if they floated on water, and the ground sank away. She saw the walls of the Comet’s Tower descend past her eyes. As she rose, a small door would snap open here and there, and a pair of carbuncle-red eyes would glare at her. A wrathful korred would begin to jabber in cracked tones, and furiously fling pebbles at the invulnerable passer-by, before a hard rain fell about its shaggy head and forced it to withdraw into sanctuary.

  With voice and gesture, Arran was guiding the breeze driving the parachute, but he was hard-pressed to continue dropping the charms of tree and salt and iron while maintaining control of his summoned wind. It was necessary for him to use one hand to dole out the fragments, which meant he was unable to accurately complete the vector commands. The wind gusted erratically, blowing Jewel’s chute off course, and the weathermaster was compelled to exert his powers to bring her back.

  On reaching the top at last she leaned forward, hovering briefly over the pinnacle’s flat roof. Arran lightly held her elbow to help her to balance; then she stepped easily onto the surface and he pulled on a cord to deflate the silken wing. The squeaking and jabbering noises from below ceased, and when Jewel looked down, she perceived that the wights had all disappeared into the rock.

  The overhang was only about twelve feet in diameter. Serrated slopes on either side made it easy to climb down into the sheltered, bittenout niche below. Here, weltered in shade, a small hollow bored into the stony floor. It was lined with silvery metal, clean, shining, and free of growths. Fragile ferns nodded over it, like green fish-skeletons diamonded with dew.