The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “Go,” said Stormbringer to Aonarán. “Wait for us outside this room.” As the terrified fellow began to scuttle toward the door, the young man called out a warning; “ ’Ware—the traps of the Dome are many. Should you try to exit alone, some fell doom may befall you.”

  “I am immortal!” Aonarán shouted shrilly.

  “Much good may it do you, while you bide within my domains!” sneered the sorcerer. A cruel and secretive smile played at the edges of his mouth. “Ah, kinsman,” he said, turning his attention once more to Arran, “succor not the miscreant. Let him go. Let him roam in my holdings and be prey to my devices, as he deserves. He will shortly wish for mortality.”

  As soon as Aonarán had disappeared from the Tope, the old man beckoned to Stormbringer, signaling that he should approach. “You must hasten to bring me another Draught,” he wheezed with urgency.

  “Of all the Wells, which is the closest?” asked Arran.

  “All? Why, kinsman, there were only ever three Wells. Three portions of the Star fell from the sky and reached the ground. The rest were burned up.”

  “Three?” Stormbringer was incredulous. “Your book misled us. . . .”

  “The second Well,” rattled the sorcerer, “which is located in a place of mists and vapors, filled up with condensation and the wights called it the Well of Dew. The creation of the third Well fissured the ground beneath its crater, so that a subterranean spring seeped upward, drop by drop, to fill the bowl of Star-Metal. Being somewhat briny due to the absorption of salts from subterranean rocks, this became known as the Well of Tears. I know not whether these remaining Wells have been sipped and drained again, by beasts, or if they still exist, or have been destroyed by the ravages of weather over the years. Howsoever—you must go with all speed.” Breezes cawed and whistled in his lungs. After a pause to catch his breath, he continued, “On Ragnkull Island in Grïmnørsland lies the Well of Dew. If there is a secret to crossing the waters of Stryksjø, I know it not. It is for you, my kinsman, to discover an answer. You are a weathermaster—aye, I heard the scoundrel say so. That is a fine thing!”

  Again he hesitated, striving to recover from the exertion of speech. The initial burst of vigor that had sustained him when he first left the casket now appeared to be ebbing. During the quietude of that hiatus, a dim scraping could be heard, as of baggage shifting slyly across tiles. It emanated from the direction of the portal. The door stood ajar. As before, Arran and Jewel traded glances. With a slight movement of his head the young man indicated the doorway; she responded with a brief nod. Aonarán lurks nigh. He listens at the crack of the door.

  “Begone, eavesdropper!” Stormbringer cried loudly.

  “What? Has the cur overheard my words?” the mage bellowed.

  Arran sprang to his feet. “I shall conduct him out of earshot,” he said, but the old man forestalled him with a groan. His apoplectic shout was an expenditure of labor that had proved costly. “Stay! There is no time—” His head drooped feebly to his chest and he moaned, “Alas! Alas I fear ’tis all in vain. . . .”

  “Not in vain,” said Stormbringer. By nature the young man was compassionate. Despite his utter amazement at beholding the resurrection of the infamous villain, and his antipathy toward him, he was, for a moment, involuntarily moved to pity. Presently he collected his wits. “Tell us where the third Well is hidden.”

  “No,” growled Jaravhor. “I’ll not speak answers aloud while that accursed scum may be listening. Why did you bring him here?” Abruptly his hand shot out and grabbed Arran’s sleeve. “You must not leave my side, kinsman. I fear I am failing. Despite all—despite all my endeavors, the end is approaching.” He had begun to weep. It was a grotesque effect, the spilling of infantile tears from the tainted eyes, the child-like sobbing issuing from the portrait of death. “That wretch who swallowed the Draught has thwarted me,” he sighed. “It is your task to avenge his deed. You must live on forever, exacting retribution until time’s end.” The tip of his tongue licked at the briny droplets and spittle beading his lips. For a moment his eyes glazed over, and his thoughts seemed to stray. “Ah, see how the tears fall! Were I undying, I would never weep again, for the gift of immortality annuls that weakness.”

  “Say where the third Well is hidden,” insisted Stormbringer.

  On occasion, the young weathermaster felt that perhaps his father had not been entirely wise to invest such faith in his son’s judgment. In his heart he was aware that he desired to give a Draught of Immortality to Jewel for selfish reasons. First, it was a way of demonstrating the vehemence of his love for her, so that she could have no doubt of it. Second, he could not endure the idea of losing her to death, and would do everything within his scope to allow her the choice of being forever safe from that fate.

  “Hearken.” The voice of the ancient mage was growing fainter. He was sinking swiftly. “There is a riddle,” he breathed, “It is written on a paper—”

  His lids closed, his shoulders drooped, and his head collapsed to his forearm.

  “A formidable fellow,” the weathermage said to Jewel, awed in spite of his repulsion. “It is a marvel he survived for half a century in his enchanted sleep. He is antiquated and unwell, yet he has persevered. His powers must have been mighty indeed, to preserve him, so many years, from perishing. Yet I suspect he judges aright—he has not much longer to live.”

  “He has fallen into a faint,” observed Jewel, keeping her distance.

  But even as she uttered those words, the sorcerer rallied. He unlidded the sallow globes of his eyes and directed his scrutiny at Stormbringer, who drew back.

  “I fear it is too late, after all. My time is nigh. Ah, kinsman—is it doubt I read in your aspect? I speak the truth about these Wells. Why should I not? As I lose my hold on life, you become of utmost importance to me. My sole hope of immortality lies with you, my heir. Some part of me must remain in this world! I cannot abide that I should go, and there be no mark of my existence save for songs and legends and a pile of masonry! Perform a task for me,” he demanded. “It is my final request. Take the accursed one down to the tower in the lower courtyard. Stand him inside the hollow walls, and brick him up. Slather the mortar thickly. Thus shall the immortal knave be damned to eternal punishment.”

  “In the walls?” repeated Jewel. Her countenance twisted with repugnance. “Is that what you inflict on those who cross you? Whom else have you forced into that tower, to be walled alive?”

  “Countless nonentities. She abides there,” the sorcerer replied coldly, “my bride, who believed she could defy Janus Jaravhor.” His laugh was flaccid, the chirruping of a cricket. “Those who wrong the Lord of Strang are, without exception, condemned to penalty.”

  “Your own wife?”

  And Jewel thought, in horror: His wife must have been my own great-grandmother! How could anyone guess what notions had ultimately passed through the minds of Jaravhor’s pitiable captives as the stone-masons bricked them in, as the walls rose higher around them? They might have strained to catch a final glimpse of some object, perhaps a fleck of color, some bird, or flower, even some weed, milkwort or the purple petals of crowthistle, a thing to gaze upon and commit to memory, to hold like an icon in the mind’s eye, long after everything familiar had vanished forever from sight and the world had shrunk to a cold and airless chimney.

  She recalled the skeleton behind the stones in the courtyard tower, with its beautiful hair, glossy and dark as a river reflecting moonlight, and the pathetic claw-like remnants of hands upraised, as if she had been tearing at the stones with her nails even until the moment of death. To stand bound in chains, witnessing the workmen with their shirtsleeves rolled up their thick brown arms as they labored to build the wall, stone by stone, to hear the slap of wet mortar and see it ooze like swamp mud as the next block was laid atop, and in the background, mallets pounding against chisels, and chips of rock flying as rough masonry was hewn into regular shapes, all the while aware that the sweet breath of the breeze
on your face was the last kiss you would ever know, and the cold iron of the fetters was the last touch you would ever experience, and the clay beneath your feet was the floor of your very grave; how unspeakable, that punishment! To stand and watch as the terminal stone was fitted into place, shutting out the last gleam; perchance utter one final cry for mercy in the lightless pinch, and the tears coursing down your cheeks, the last warmth you would ever feel; and the silence after the builders went away, and the cold of the terrible cell, the mortar hardening only inches from your face, while knowing the silence and the cold would be the last companions you would ever have—that would be a fate cruel beyond comprehension.

  Another bout of coughing racked the restored mage, but he persisted. “Some believe they have escaped my vengeance; however, they are mistaken. My malediction hunts them to this day, to this very hour, beyond the courtyards, beyond the borders of Strang, beyond the walls of the world. It will continue to pursue them and their issue until the last of their line perishes in madness.”

  The torment and injustice dispensed by this arrogant personage was more than Jewel could endure. Her outrage reached boiling point.

  “It is you who are mistaken,” she shouted. “I am descended from Álainna Macnamh, whose bloodline you blighted. My mother married your grandson. Yes, it is I who am your heir, despicable tyrant. And at my birth, your curse was extinguished. You beg us to take revenge on your behalf? Pah! There will be vengeance indeed—fittingly enough, against you! You cursed my mother’s family—now wither to dust, Jaravhor, and let justice be done.”

  The dying mage gaped at Jewel as if a brilliant ray had struck her. His raddled visage contorted, becoming a caricature of wrath and dismay. A groan like the deflating bellows of a pipe organ escaped his vocal cords, but the shock of her revelation proved too great for his overtaxed systems. Hitting his chest with the stump of his arm, as if he tried to clutch his own heart, he toppled forward for the final time. Arran reached out to prevent his fall, but the mage slipped through his arms, crumpled to the floor, and lay still.

  As the folds of his black robes settled, a scrap of paper rolled from the unclenching digits of his left hand. Jewel picked it up and began to decipher the script inked thereon. Meanwhile, Stormbringer placed two fingers on the side of the old man’s neck. “There is no pulse,” he said presently. “He’s truly gone.” The young man’s expression was strained and taut. “So ends Janus Jaravhor, Lord of Strang, scholar of the sorcerous arts.”

  “The world is well rid of such despots,” declared Jewel, her ire simmering, mingled with revulsion. “Henceforth I renounce the vile name ‘Jaravhor’ and adopt my father’s patronymic of Jovansson. But see—at the very end the old villain has gifted us, for this is the riddle of which he spoke. I am certain of it. ’Tis a clue to the whereabouts of the third Well.” After examining the writing, she tucked away the paper inside her garments.

  Arran scanned the Tope’s interior: the two tiny drinking horns in their alcove, the oil jar, the throne, the book on the lectern, the melancholy fire. “Let us leave this house of horrors, and all that is in it,” he muttered.

  A disturbance at the portal attracted their attention.

  In one lissom movement, Stormbringer crossed the room and thrust open the door. Aonarán sprawled there, his hands still bound behind his back. “Come!” Arran hauled him to his feet. “It is time to depart. We did not need your presence after all, and I regret having brought you, for I daresay you learned more than was good for any of us.”

  “I heard nothing.”

  “Wait!” called Jewel. She remained in the Tope, taking care, as she stepped around the unbreathing heap of black fabric and ancient flesh, not to brush against it.

  Her outrage still burned. “Too many wrongs have you wrought,” she said to the lifeless form. “Because of your curse, my parents perished. Arrogant fool, to believe men have wrought songs and legends about you, for no one has done anything of the sort! No one will remember. You will become nothing, less than a memory, less than a flake of ash borne away on the wind.” Her eyes, blue as the metallic mail of dragonflies, brimmed with tears. “This, for the poor prisoner in the wall,” she cried. Setting her hand upon the tall oil jar, she pushed it over. It splintered on the floor, emptying its nauseating contents. “And this for my parents!” Having picked up the jar containing the bones of the sorcerer’s hand, she hurled it at the flaming sconce. As the jar smashed against it, the bracket tore away from the wall. The flames blinked out, although the hissing continued, like the sound of escaping gases. Across the darkened chamber Jewel sped, imbued with sudden urgency, and out the door. She and Stormbringer joined hands, and, with Aonarán in tow, they fled down the stairs. The pale-haired man was shrieking with fear. Through the vitrified interior of Castle Strang they hastened, speaking not a word until they emerged at last beyond the outer gate and ran out onto the clean, crisp grass, beneath a wide sky streaked with windswept clouds.

  The sun was sinking, a crimson disc boating on golden surf. High overhead, flocks of noisy starlings were flying to their roosts. A sudden gust whipped at Jewel’s hair. Behind her, the gates of Strang slammed and banged erratically.

  “You have locked neither gate nor door,” said Arran, breathlessly.

  “Let the gates swing!” declared Jewel, panting as they hurried up the incline. “Anyone might enter as they please, for I care not what happens to this place.”

  “No, no! Shut the gates!” screamed Aonarán. “Don’t leave the Dome open for the sorcerer’s wraith to come after me, or for all and sundry to plunder!”

  “I hope it shall be despoiled,” Jewel shot back. “No treasure is hidden within. If there were, I’d not want it. May the sorcerer’s enchantments fail, and may his precincts be invaded!”

  On the slope above the Dome their five companions were waiting with the horses, their hair ruffled by the breeze, and their cloaks flapping. The men’s faces lit up when they beheld Jewel and Stormbringer climbing toward them. “Did you get what you came for?” they shouted, stepping forward eagerly.

  “Yes and no,” answered Arran. “We shall tell more, as we ride. For now, let us put as much distance as possible between ourselves and this pit of nightmares before the onset of night. Onward, to High Darioneth!”

  Aonarán stumbled. Yaadosh and Bliant seized him by the elbows and propeled him to his steed. They thrust him into the saddle and, as before, tied him there with ropes. Without further ado they all mounted, turned their horses toward the sinking sun, and rode away.

  At their backs the Dome’s swellings and ornate protuberances gleamed in the dying light, as if soaked with colored washes, flesh-pink glowing on the western flanks, the east shaded with wrathful purple.

  As they traveled into the lengthening shadows, Stormbringer and Jewel told their companions all that had happened inside the Dome—all the while ensuring that Aonarán remained guarded at a safe distance, unable to learn any more than he had already overheard.

  “I perceive what will happen now,” said Bliant, after hearing the tale. “The spells that guarded this fortress remained strong only because Jaravhor was still living. He is truly dead at last, or so it seems. Now his devices shall be rendered impotent and his enchantments shall crumble.”

  “Not necessarily,” Gahariet said. “He was a man, not an eldritch wight. His devices, if any exist, are probably mechanical and may well remain potent until time erodes their substance, or their energy source fails.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Tristian Solorien.

  The sun dipped at last below the horizon and darkness stretched across the wide solitude of Orielthir. A first hint of frost was borne on the night air. Beneath the eaves of a dim and ancient oak wood they halted to make camp, light a fire, and partake of a meal. The flames blazed welcomingly, beating like wings of tangerine glass. Jewel appreciated their friendly glow, after the cold, veinblue radiance of the flames in the Tope. She was gradually moving closer to its warmth when Aonar�
�n seated himself beside her.

  He smiled ingratiatingly. “Sweet lady, do not go being too hasty to be leaving the Dome behind,” he said in low tones. “Why not return there and stay awhile? Revisit it. ’Tis your heritage. There is no danger there for you.”

  “No danger in the Dome, perhaps, but danger here by my side,” scoffed Jewel.

  “Dear damsel, I am but a lamb. See, my hands are tied! But even were they not, I should be remaining innocuous. Never have I worked harm, in all my life.”

  She edged away from him. “You took me captive. You stole the Draught from me. You threatened me with a switchblade.”

  “Ah, but you see, sweet lady, I was by way of being forced to do all those things. It was against my will. Cathal Weaponmonger, he was the motivator of those ill deeds, he and my half-kin Fionnuala, working together, using me as their puppet. All the rumors about me are lies. I have never dealt in weapons. An honest man am I, and here’s proof: I know you are the scion of the sorcerer, and I could be reaping a large reward for telling King Uabhar of your existence. But I have not done so. The king would like to broach the famous Dome and lay hands on its treasures—although I was seeing no treasures when I was inside. You have been in there once before—perhaps you are knowing where the treasure is hid, eh? If the king was about getting hold of you, no doubt he’d be making a sorry prisoner of you, and forcing you to open the Dome so that he could pillage your rightful inheritance. Why not be giving a little of the gold and jewels to your friend Aonarán, who has never betrayed you? Alas, I have scant income to be living on. I might be a rich man if I had exposed your identity, yet I remain poor. You might so easily relieve my poverty and reward my faithfulness by getting a coffer or two of gold and jewels for me, just as a token, some acknowledgment of my fidelity, you know.”

  Suddenly becoming aware of this discourse, Stormbringer stepped between them. “Never trouble this lady, perfidious contriver!” he cried. “I hear your wheedling, Aonarán, your incipient threats, your attempts at blackmail. Should you or any of your cohorts ever try to name this lady to the king, I swear, the wrath of all High Darioneth shall fall upon you. You would regret it for eternity. Moreover, weathermasters have ways of protecting our own. It would distill to this: your word against ours. To which of us would the king be more likely to attend?”