The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  After the wight’s startling reappearance, when Arran had regained his composure he asked, “What about your ailing mother in the pine forests of Grïmnørsland? Does she not require you?”

  “She’s ailing no more. Besides, she’s got me siblings to look after the bottomless tankard. They dwell with her, in the green mound. Besides, she’s only feeling poorly when mortalkind with casks of beer come into the vicinity—which has happened only once or twice these past one hundred years. Trappers, woodcutters, fishers—they carry with them ale and stronger drink, and we test ’em, we do, to see if they keep their word. Besides, ’tis a good way to get some brew. None of ’em has ever kept his word, until you.”

  “Is that why you chose to come with me?”

  “That and other reasons,” the thing said loftily. “I’d a yen to travel.”

  “I have no objections to your making your home with me, if you are well intentioned toward mortalkind.”

  “That I am!”

  Arran had been unable to work out whether this small impet-thing was male or female. It had appeared to be a boy, when the glamour was on it in the pine wood, but now that the illusion had passed, the creature’s sex was indeterminate. “What’s your name?” he had asked, unwilling to risk offending the entity and hoping for some clue.

  “That I’m not a-telling you,” the wight said smugly, twirling its tail.

  The tail-twirling struck an echo in Arran’s thoughts, causing him to recall a nursery tale. “Ah, you are one of those creatures, a spinner of straw into gold, a child stealer!”

  “What?” squawked the impet.

  “If you are one of that species, I shall drive you from my door!”

  “I’m not!”

  “What is your name?” the young weathermage demanded sternly. “Is it Tom-Tit-Tot? Is it Trwtyn-Tratyn? Terrytop? Habetrot?”

  “No, no!” squealed the wight, scooting beneath the nearest piece of furniture. “Don’t be calling me rude names!” Only the tip of its tail showed from beneath a three-legged stool. “Our mither tell’d us all,” it said in muffled tones, “ ‘never say your name to mortalkind. Otherwise the big folk will get power over you.’ ”

  Once Arran had ascertained the thing was no sly child stealer, he made peace with it and allowed it to stay, even though it bluntly refused to divulge its true name. He dubbed it “Nimmy Nimmy Not,” in token of the nursery tales, and it didn’t object to the sobriquet. It took to living underneath various items of furniture, but was sometimes to be found in the kitchen or the cellars, in the shape of a small boy, drinking beer with the butler. The resident brownie ignored the newcomer.

  Rarely, the impet volunteered data. Occasionally this data was unwelcome.

  “The immortal animals did not breed,” it said once.

  “What do you mean?” they asked.

  “The ones that got to be immortal by drinking the waters of life. They never had offspring.”

  “Go away,” Arran said fiercely.

  The wight’s words weighed on Jewel, who aired the topic afterward, in consultation with the carlin of High Darioneth.

  “I know ’tis not impossible for immortal beings to produce children,” Jewel began. “Trows produce babies, and I daresay other wights do as well. But admittedly it is rare to hear stories of eldritch infants.”

  “As you say, ’tis unusual yet not impossible,” said her advisor. “You yourself have told me the tale of how your uncle was repaid with good fortune for giving some wights a wrapping for their newborn child. Moreover, wights can be slain. It is only if they are not slain that they live forever. Those that die must be replaced, else all eldritch wights would vanish from the world. I would judge that immortal beings can reproduce well enough, but their fertility is low.”

  “I have a question to test your wisdom,” said Jewel. “Three mortal creatures that were not of the human race drank of the waters of life: a hare, a deer, a bird. Their case is different, because they were born mortal, not eldritch. They were the last of their line. Without death, shall there be birth?”

  “If the immortal beasts produced no progeny,” Luned said, “it was no doubt because others of their kind scented their strangeness, and would not mate with them.”

  “What of mortal men who have become immortal?”

  “That we cannot know for certain.”

  Jewel and Arran had not embarked on a honeymoon after the wedding, for there was much work to be done. Tir’s atmosphere had not yet regained its original stability in the aftermath of the freezing of Lake Stryksjø. Across the Four Kingdoms the weather had been capricious and violent, and the services of weathermages were greatly in demand.

  Whenever weatherworking did not demand Arran’s attention, he and Jewel would take advantage of the opportunity to depart on some jaunt, or attend various forms of organized amusement at locations throughout the kingdom. High Darioneth was situated in the heart of Narngalis, and the weathermasters were in close alliance with the palace at King’s Winterbourne. Sundry, manifold, and diverting were the annual events that signposted the seasons of that northern realm. On 4th Sevember they and their friends were amongst the spectators at the lavishly antlered King’s Winterbourne Horn Dance. By Lantern Eve, on 31st Otember, they had returned to High Darioneth for the equinoctial celebrations. Come Tenember, Midwinter’s Eve and Midwinter’s Day festivities rolled around again—too swiftly, it seemed. Yet the season brought welcome news, for Jewel discovered she was with child, and the couple’s happiness knew no bounds. The old year fled, on slippers of snow diamonded with frost. The young year, 3472, tiptoed in, presenting Wassailing the Apple Trees on 6th Jenever, Averil Fool’s Day on 1st Averil, and Mai Day on the first of that month. On 19th Juyn the King’s Winterbourne Silver Arrow Contest was held. Hard on its heels came Midsummer’s Day.

  Jewel had been carrying the child for some seven months, but she refused to allow her gravidity to be an obstacle to traveling. Everywhere they visited, they asked knowledgeable folk whose discretion could be trusted—carlins, some druids, a few wanderers—if they knew the whereabouts of a mountain with a waterfall at its very heart.

  The two Aonaráns were still in hiding, whether in some lonely charcoal burner’s hut or deep in the labyrinthine alleys of some city nobody could tell. Their disappearance was of concern to Avalloc, Arran, Jewel, and their friends; nevertheless, seek as they might, the weathermasters and their agents could find no trace of the pale-haired siblings, or if clues turned up, the trail was always cold. Therefore they asked judiciously when trying to discover the mountain that housed the Well of Tears, for they had no wish to give their enemies any clue as to the trail they followed.

  Arran’s immortality was not made public knowledge. Amongst the weathermasters only the councillors of Ellenhall were aware of it; similarly, only a few knew about Jewel’s invulnerability. These two matters were meticulously defended secrets, and if King Uabhar guessed the sorcerer’s scion owned any singular qualities other than her rare beauty, he gave no evidence of his suspicions. The weathermasters had assured him that Jewel possessed no extraordinary powers, and now that she had become a weathermage’s wife she enjoyed their utmost protection.

  Arran requested that his weathermaster colleagues be vigilant, during their travels, in gleaning tidings of the elusive mountain. The conundrum was this: many thousands of mountains, mighty and minor, crowded the great ranges of Tir. What lay at their roots was usually a mystery; not only were they too numerous to have all been explored, but frequently their interiors were inaccessible. Arran hoped that local knowledge or traditional tales might provide some guiding information.

  From time to time sky-balloon crews would bring news of a place that fitted the description. If Arran’s missions took him near the location of the candidate he would make a detour and try to find a way of entering under the mountain. So far he had achieved no success in locating the Well of Tears.

  Despite its remote location, there was a sparse but constant cycle of visi
tors at High Darioneth. One was an acquaintance of Avalloc Maelstronnar: Almus Agnellus, erstwhile assistant to the Storm Lord’s old friend the ex-druid Adiuvo Constanto Clementer. Agnellus had become a wandering scholar, traveling in the company of his loyal squire.

  Toward the end of Ninember in the previous year, Secundus Clementer had taken a courageous and unprecedented step, formally renouncing his belief in the existence of the Fates and cutting all ties with the Sanctorum. At great risk of the severe penalties for such heresy, he publicly broadcast his views, “declaring the truth,” so that other druids and philosophers might learn his theories.

  The Druid Imperius had reacted swiftly and ruthlessly. In the dead of night, burly thugs had burst into Clementer’s bedchamber as he lay sleeping. They seized the Secundus and dragged him away. His possessions, too, had been confiscated, including many scrolls of his essays and other writings.

  Before his arrest Clementer had visited the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu for the purpose of gathering research for his book A Treatise on the Iron Tree: A Narrative Concerning the Tree, the Precious Stone Trapped Therein, and the Consequences of the Stone’s Removal. He had interviewed both Earnán Kingfisher Mosswell and Cuiva Featherfern Stillwater. Afterward he had investigated further, to fill in the missing segments of the tale—even going to the lengths of questioning such personages as a street beggar, an innkeeper in Cathair Rua, and one of King Uabhar’s footmen—before writing down his discoveries in narrative form.

  Clementer was fond of discussing his evolving doctrines and illuminations with close associates, but his field research was a different matter. He had never shown the text of On the Iron Tree to anyone, preferring—like many authors—to keep it to himself until the final word had been written. The book had grown into a formidable tome, which, since his detainment, was lost or destroyed.

  Of what had happened to Clementer after this forcible abduction Agnellus could discover nothing. He became gripped by terror, lest in the stew of backbiting, social climbing, and undermining that was the political milieu of the Sanctorum, his master’s offenses should somehow come to be laid at his own door. Moreover, the usually placid druid was incensed by the treatment meted out to his venerable mentor. The injustice and violence of these events hardened his resolve; he refused to allow the Secondus’s thought-provoking ideas to be quashed, and determined that if Clementer could no longer keep them alive, he, Agnellus, would preserve, augment, and disseminate them on his behalf.

  Agnellus and one of the novices who supported him had fled in secret. Now they passed their days traveling the Four Kingdoms, discussing Clementer’s philosophical revelations with people from all walks of life, collecting knowledge, studying, sometimes even conversing with eldritch wights. Because of the edicts of the Sanctorum, which demanded death or life-imprisonment as the punishment for perfidy, they were forced to travel in disguise, never remaining for long in one place. Agnellus’s once-plump frame had become gaunt, and his appearance wild and weather-beaten due to his earnest pursuit of knowledge in remote locations.

  Avalloc and Agnellus spent long afternoons in discussion.

  “I have no hesitation in confessing to you, my friend,” the scholar said to the Storm Lord during one of their lengthy discourses, “that I feel demoralized. My career with the Sanctorum seems to have been without purpose. Adiuvo used to share all his speculations with me, and his reasoning cannot be faulted. Consequently it now appears to me that the way of the druids is merely superstition, a spurious method of comprehending the incomprehensible. In an effort to find some species of meaning, Adiuvo devoted much of his time to scientific research. At last he discovered the truth. The Fates are an invention of mortalkind, conjured to fulfill two functions: the myth is a wondrous source of income for the druids, and it gives false hope to the populace.”

  “There are some, my dear fellow,” replied Avalloc, “who would hold that even false hope is better than none. Besides, who is to say that real hope might not ultimately be within reach, against all odds, perhaps in some previously inconceivable form?”

  Yet Agnellus would not be convinced, and with his squire at his side, determinedly continued on his peregrinations, seeking wider knowledge.

  While the days winged past at incredible speeds, the nameless tassel-tailed wight rarely appeared at the apartments of Jewel and Arran. Evidently it dwelled contentedly down in the furniture, now and then allowing itself to be spied reclining on the arm of a chair while biting an enormous apple, or sunning itself on a windowsill.

  It seldom showed itself, even when Jewel and Arran spent hours in the Maelstronnar’s library looking through the books in their endeavors to map the locations of hollow mountains, whose deepest interiors resounded to the music of falling waters.

  Time passed, and none could solve the riddle. The members of the Council puzzled over it, discussed it, and consulted books and scrolls in the libraries of High Darioneth and the archives of the Sanctorums. Always they were careful to avoid broadcasting the riddle in their search for the answer, in case the sorcerer’s rhyme should come to the attention of Aonarán, or any other adventurer who might seek to possess the final marvelous Draught.

  Time and again, as they passed pleasant evenings in the Maelstronnar’s library, Jewel and Arran mulled over the phrase “What is darkness?”

  “ ‘She skirts a wand,’ ” hazarded Jewel one night, returning to the anagram theory.

  “ ‘Sands swear kith,’ ” guessed Arran.

  “ ‘We risk sand hats.’ ”

  “ ‘Sand hews its ark.’ ”

  “Surely it is impossible for this to be any anagram. . . .”

  On an evening early in Aoust, the tiny wight popped out of Arran’s pocket, twirled its tail, and said, “Indeed, ’tis an anagram.”

  “Ach, Nimmy Not!” snapped Jewel. “You made me jump, you mischief!”

  The creature shaped its wide mouth into a grin like a canoe.

  “Hello, Thing,” said Arran. “Can you unravel it?”

  “I can do anagrams in me noddle!”

  “What’s the solution?”

  “Ah,” the wight said sagely, “you cannot demand solutions from me, man. You have no power over me because you do not know my name.”

  “Well, what is your name?”

  “ ’Tis . . .” The impet hesitated, then seemed to pull itself together. Crossly it declared, “You must not just aks me like that! Me mither tell’d us not to say our names to mortalkind!” Brightening, it added, “Then again, if you guess me name I’d be obliged to help you with the anagram.” After bouncing down the length of Arran’s arm it skittered across the floor and took up one of its favorite perches on the window seat.

  “We all know how the name of your cousin the straw-spinner came to be guessed,” said Arran. “It is the matter of legend.”

  “Yes, yes,” scoffed the wight. “I have never claimed that as a cousin. That was foolish.”

  “I am not familiar with the story,” said Jewel.

  “Good.” The wight clambered up some shelves laden with books.

  Arran said, “Shall I tell it to you?”

  “Pray do,” said Jewel, seating herself beside him on the library settle.

  “There once was a woman,” said Arran, “who was so proud of her daughter’s skills that she boasted to all and sundry, ‘My daughter spins so well, she could spin straw into gold.’

  “The boast came to the attention of a nobleman—a viscount, no less—who was seeking a bride for his son. ‘Go and see this damsel,’ he told the youth. ‘If she pleases you, and if the rumors of her extraordinary abilities are true, you shall take her to wife.’

  “The son, being obedient, did as his father had instructed. It was a fine Summer’s day when he and his squire rode by the cottage where the damsel dwelled with her mother. The window shutters had been flung wide, and from within the house came the sound of melodious singing. The son of the viscount looked through the window and what he saw entranced him. T
he loveliest girl he had ever seen was sitting at her wheel, singing as she worked. Instantly he fell in love with her, as usually happens in these old tales.”

  “Love at the first encounter is not merely a fable,” said Jewel.

  Arran smiled, and kissed her on the mouth before resuming: “He knocked at the door, was granted entrance to the house, and spoke with the two occupants. When the woman learned that her daughter had the chance of marrying an aristocrat she was overjoyed. ‘However,’ said the young man, ‘my father has imposed a condition. She must be able to spin gold from straw.’ The damsel drew breath to deny the rumor, but the mother was too quick for her. ‘Oh she can do that, of course!’ she cried, eager for the grand wedding.

  “The young man was greatly relieved. Although,” Arran digressed, “he must have been dull-witted if he believed anyone who could turn straw into gold would be spending her days at a spinning wheel in a lowly cottage!”

  “Perhaps he was made dull-witted by love,” Jewel suggested.

  “I believe he was thick-headed to begin with,” Arran asserted. “Anyway, the daughter liked the son of the viscount well enough, for he was a well-favored fellow, so she asked if she would have to prove the claim before they were wed. At this juncture, I daresay the young chap commenced to see a glimmer of reason. If this lovely girl could not prove the claim he could not wed her, so he told them this: After the wedding, the daughter would be allowed to spend twelve months in idleness. At the end of this honeymoon period she would have to spin half a bale of straw into gold every day for a month. In his heart the son hoped his father would not insist on the test when he beheld the girl’s comely face and heard her sweetly singing.

  “ ‘All right, she’ll marry you,’ said the mother. She was thinking: As for the straw, when it comes to the time for spinning it there will be plenty of ways of getting out of it. Besides—most likely the whole idea will be forgotten by then.

  “The outcome was that the daughter married the son of the viscount, and the couple lived happily together in their stately mansion for eleven and a half months. At that time the old viscount started talking about the gold-spinning test, and the bride began to dread what might happen. He was a spiteful old gentleman, this peer of the realm, and he told her that if she did not pass the test she would have all her hair shorn off, and her two index fingers severed, and she would be cast out into the world to live or die, because the pact she had made would be broken.”