Darkwell

by Douglas Niles

  And here came his purpose. Gwen walked to the boat with just enough eagerness to excite his hopes and just enough restraint to calm his nerves. For tendays, he had been trying to get her to go off alone together with him.

  Now she smiled at him, her brown eyes sparkling with a secret promise that inflamed his passion. She was not overly pretty, Gwen, but she had a lively manner that had caught Koll’s attention when he had first purchased a shield and jerkin from her father, the leather-worker of Codscove.

  Short and slightly plump, Gwen greeted him with a shy smile. Her red-brown hair was cut short, and Koll liked the way it framed her round, smiling face. Indeed, as he was unusually tall even for a man of the north, they made an oddly matched couple. His soft beard had finally covered his chin the past spring, and now he stroked it self-consciously as she made her way to the dock.

  He helped her into the boat, enjoying the unsteady moment when she lost her balance and leaned on him.

  “Sit here,” he offered, lowering her to the bowseat. The line came easily free from the dock, and he pushed the Starling away, as if worried that someone would come along and stop him. The breeze was sluggish at best, but the little craft caught what little wind blew, and they pulled steadily away from shore.

  For some time they didn’t speak. Koll tried to ignore the lifeless brown of the sea, without complete success. Indeed, fish were dying in whole schools; catches were nonexistent or diseased. Even these placid northmen of Gwynneth were once again talking of raiding as a means of survival.

  Koll tried to banish such thoughts, knowing that Gwen was of a family of native Ffolk, while his ancestors were the plundering northmen who had claimed these lands as their own a century before. Instead, he concentrated on his passenger’s eyes as she demurely looked away. Such pretty eyes they were! Shy, but not afraid. Gwen had always fascinated him with this air of demure courage, so unlike the women of the northlands.

  He finally pulled in the sail and drifted calmly. Codsbay was a distant mark on the shoreline, though Koll could still distinguish individual buildings. With the easy grace of the sailor, he moved to the bowseat and took Gwen’s hand.

  She giggled briefly, but she did not turn away as he bent to kiss her. She was warm and soft, her slight plumpness filling his arms as he embraced her. Suddenly he felt her grow rigid, and he saw her eyes open in shock, staring at something over his shoulder.

  Gwen screamed as Koll spun around, his own eyes widening. The most horrible creature he had ever seen slithered over the transom, flicking a forked tongue toward him. Its pale eyes bulged, and rows of sharp wicked teeth gleamed in its widespread mouth. Its vaguely humanlike body was completely covered with green scales, and it used clawed hands, with webbed fingers, to pull itself into the bottom of the boat.

  In the instant of his turning, the northman froze in panic. What could he do? He gaped in terror as the manlike form slithered forward. Suddenly his fear galvanized into action, and he reached for one of the long oars. He lifted the oar from its lock and brought it crashing down onto the creature’s head as the monster tried to stand. It slumped to its knees, and he crashed the oar down upon it again, snapping the wooden shaft in two but dropping the creature senseless into the hull.

  “What—what is it?” gasped the maid as Koll slumped weakly to the bench.

  For a moment, he could not speak. Bile rose in his throat, and he feared he would lose his breakfast, but finally his tongue freed itself from his terror. “I—I’ve heard tales of the fish-men, dwellers of the deep. Sometimes they struck ships, but only far at sea.” The northman spoke slowly as he regained his breath.

  “Look … Codsbay!” cried Gwen, pointing to shore. They watched in horror as a wave of huge white bodies plodded menacingly from the surf and entered the town, striking down any humans who did not flee before them. And then another wave of invaders rose from the sea, and still more hastened in their wake.

  Koll pulled the sail taut as they watched, and soon the wind pushed them slowly toward the strait.

  “Where are you going?” cried the distraught young woman as she saw his course. “My family’s there. We’ve got to go back!”

  Koll nodded at the town. Flames had already begun to flicker upward from the buildings. “They’ve either fled, and are safe, or they did not flee … In either case, we will not be able to help them.”

  She turned with a sob to watch the shore, seething in chaos behind them.

  “We’ll go to Oman’s Isle,” he promised. “There we can get help and sail home as soon as possible!”

  Of course, he couldn’t know that Sythissal and the sahuagin already swarmed across the length and breadth of Oman’s Isle, and that the survivors were already fleeing toward the cramped security of the Iron Keep.

  They rode steadily toward the Darkwell, each immersed in private thoughts, but they all shared the common purpose now. Nothing else mattered until they could confront the root of the evils that plagued the land and had slain their friend.

  Tristan wondered what Robyn would do when they reached the well. Some secret with the scrolls, she had indicated. Why had she refused to give him more details? This, he realized, was just another evidence of the depth of the change between them. She no longer confided in him or sought his advice. He realized with sharp clarity just how much he missed her. For the thousandth time, he cursed himself, cursed the red-haired woman, cursed all the circumstances of that fateful night.

  All he could do now was strive for atonement, and so he would. To start, he would see that the companions all reached the grove of the Great Druid, and the goal of their quest, alive.

  For a while, they rode in silence, all of them sharing their grim purpose. Even Newt seemed to sense their resolve. He sat forlornly ahead of Robyn in the saddle, curled against her stomach, silent for once. Behind her, lashed to the saddle, rested Daryth’s silver scimitar. Tristan had offered it to her as they buried their friend and reluctantly, she had accepted the gift.

  All the riders looked nervously this way and that, sharing a grim apprehension yet seeing no visible threat. Tristan took a measure of comfort from the fact that the sharp-eyed halfling rode at the rear of the party. Then a blackness gripped him, and he thought of how much more secure they would have felt with Daryth’s keen senses protecting their flank.

  He shook off the thought and looked again toward Canthus. The moorhound led the party as they advanced carefully into the heart of Myrloch Vale. Yazilliclick sat before the king on Avalon’s broad back. The little sprite held his tiny shortbow ready, with one of his silvery, dartlike arrows nocked in the weapon. His antennae quivered, and the king wondered if they helped him to search the woods for enemies. He hoped that they did.

  Though the season was autumn, the chill in the air and the low, leaden sky bespoke more of winter. No snow had fallen here yet, but the bleak wind blew off the highlands with an icy bite that penetrated their cloaks and clothes and flesh, cutting right to their bones. Shivering, Tristan pulled his woolen cape more tightly around himself, but even that offered little comfort.

  They followed a faintly visible trail through the black trunks. Though fallen leaves, now rotting, covered parts of the path, Canthus seemed to have no doubts as to the trail’s location. Their route took them on a gradual decline into the flat basin of the vale.

  Soon they came to the shore of a bleak and stagnant fen. The vast marsh reeked with an air of death and disease, and Tristan nearly gagged as the trail moved along the fringe of the swamp. This must, very recently, have been a thriving wetland teeming with ducks and otters and other creatures. Now it lay brown and still, a lifeless smear upon the land. A few barren tree trunks jutted from a vast swamp of brown, stagnant water. In other places, patches of thick scum covered the surface.

  He felt relief as the trail again returned to the woods, climbing gradually away from the fen. The return to the forest was only a slight improvement, for still there was no sign of greenery or animal life, but at least the abhorre
nt stink of the swamp grew more faint in the air. Still, the whole vale, forest and fen alike, gave him a chilling sense, as if they were all cloaked in a blanket of death.

  The king watched as Canthus stopped and sniffed nervously at the ground. He saw the hackles rise on the great dog’s neck, and he quickly dismounted.

  “W-Wait for the others! B-Be careful—careful!” squeaked Yazilliclick.

  Tristan looked back, surprised to see how far the rest of the party had fallen behind. “Watch my back,” he ordered. “I want to see what’s bothering Canthus.” He saw Robyn spur her mare into a fast trot as he turned back to his dog.

  Canthus stood at a bare spot in the trail, turning his huge head this way and that. Abruptly he growled and began to back toward the king. The hound’s body, stiff with tension, poised like a coiled spring as he bared his great teeth at a threat that remained, to Tristan, unseen.

  Suddenly the ground began to convulse under Tristan’s feet, and he crashed to his back, the wind knocked from his lungs. Gasping, he saw Canthus leap backward with a prodigious bound that took the dog clear over his master’s body. Then came an awful ripping sound, as of a body being torn asunder, and he felt the ground quiver beneath him again.

  Suddenly the firmament beneath him fell away! For a sickening split second, he felt himself hang in the air. In that same instant, a stinging wave of gas exploded from the yawning space below him, sending fiery fingers into his chest as he gasped for air. Great roots dangled from the broken ground, hanging into the hole, and Tristan felt poised, for a moment, at the brink of doom. And then he started to fall.

  A great fissure had opened in the ground along the trail, and now the stunned king lay at its lip, sliding into bottomless darkness. Noxious fumes rushed upward from the chasm, again biting into his lungs, and then blackness claimed him.

  The moorhound rebounded instantly from his leap and sprang forward to seize his master’s arm in his jaws. As Tristan’s body dropped into the pit, the dog tightened his grip and held the king back from certain death. Canthus’s paws began to slip along the ground, and he growled savagely as he felt himself pulled toward the chasm. Suddenly he tumbled forward, unable to hold the king’s weight, but even then he would not let go. The dog still clawed desperately for footing as both of them dropped over the edge.

  Randolph stepped wearily down the long staircase at the heart of Caer Corwell. Once again, another day drew to a close as he left unfinished the great majority of the tasks he had set for himself that day.

  True, his duties as captain of the guard occupied him for many hours each day. But more significant was the burden of governing the kingdom in the absence of King Kendrick. He would not have believed the petty bickering causing strife among the populace were he not forced to hear the complaints himself!

  Pontswain, of course, was no help whatever. The lord enjoyed the bounty of Tristan’s cellar and pantry and the hospitality of his keep, but he did little to aid Randolph with the daily chores of office. Instead, Pontswain was more likely to sit brooding in the Great Hall, alone or with one of his favorite kitchen maids. The lord would glower at the Crown of the Isles, gleaming where Tristan had left it upon the great mantle, and declare to all and sundry that the real honors belonged to him.

  Randolph passed beneath the wooden arch into the Great Hall and saw Pontswain sitting in his usual position. The lord sprang to his feet as the captain entered.

  “What’s the meaning of spying on me like this?” demanded Pontswain.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, my lord. I’m simply going to the kitchen on my way to check the stables—and by what right do you challenge me?” Randolph had grown tired of Pontswain’s constant suspicions and accusations.

  “By the words of our liege, who left responsibility for his kingdom entrusted to both you and me!”

  Angrily the captain stomped through the hall, his appetite gone. He disliked Lord Pontswain heartily, and the man’s every word seemed designed to irritate him further. He hated to place personal prejudice above his professional caution, but a conclusion was inescapable.

  Lord Pontswain would bear watching.

  Robyn absently stroked the back of the faerie dragon. Her mind dwelled on thoughts of Daryth, despite her attempts to remain alert to the possibility of danger around them. The devastation of the forest weighed heavily on her spirit, and she found it difficult to look at the bleak terrain. Thus, she strayed easily into reminiscence.

  She thought of her first meeting with Daryth, when he had just stolen her prince’s coin purse and Tristan had caught the thief after a long chase. She remembered the flashing humor in his black eyes, and the even match between the Calishite’s skills and Tristan’s, though even then, as the two men had formed their friendship, the prince had stood out clearly as the leader.

  Tristan! How her anger flared whenever she thought of him. She did not blame him for Daryth’s death, though it occurred to her that she could. But whenever the picture of Tristan’s infidelity came again into her mind, the bitter ache of anger flared brightly within her. Coupled with the rage, and there was no other word for it, came a bleak sense of utter confusion. It seemed that all the things upon which the foundations of her life rested had begun to fall apart around her.

  Desperately she sought an explanation for the absence of the goddess, for her deity’s silence when the druid prayed. All the possible answers loomed as too frightful for contemplation. Had the goddess perished forever from the earth? Had Robyn unknowingly enraged her spiritual mother and thus cut herself off from her comfort and power?

  And Tristan. Had the woman in Caer Corwell bewitched him? Or was his love so frail that he could be drawn from Robyn by a simple flirtation? She desperately hoped that the former explanation represented the truth, but even if it did, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him.

  She whispered a soft prayer, but the words seemed to echo hollowly through the dead woods. Never had she felt so alone, so separated from her goddess. It was as if a great void had opened up, and neither her faith nor the mother’s might was great enough to bridge it.

  With a start, she came back to her surroundings, surprised as Newt jumped to his feet before her. The faerie dragon arched his back like an angry cat and stared around the mare’s neck, straight at Tristan.

  “Something woke me up!” he complained. “Hey, what’s the matter with Canthus?”

  Robyn saw the dog leap, felt the ground shake as the fissure exploded below the king, and instantly kicked her mare into a gallop. She saw Tristan fall to the ground. Yellow and red clouds of gas burst from the hole, seething through the woods. Her heart rose into her throat as she saw the king, apparently unconscious, slip into the crevasse.

  Newt buzzed into the air, his gossamer wings invisible with the speed of their flapping. Like an arrow, he darted toward the fissure.

  A fear like none she had known gripped her as she saw Tristan disappear from sight. The struggling Canthus slipped closer to the edge, and then his forefeet dropped away. She was too far away to reach them, and she could see that even Newt would not get there until they had plummeted to whatever fate awaited them.

  “Glorus, vih-tali essatha!”

  Robyn cried the words to a desperate spell, an enchantment that offered minimal hope of arresting their fall, but it was the only action she could think of that might help. She cast her spell of plant growth.

  The casting of a druid spell summons the power of the Earthmother directly, using that might for the working of the magic, but the power for this spell came from Robyn’s heart, and for a moment, she felt dizzy and weakened.

  Even as her vision blurred and she swayed in the saddle, she saw the roots and brush at the fringe of the fissure begin to spurt upward. Canthus disappeared from her view as the growing tangle of vegetation sprouted around him. The thicket continuing to grow, writhing constantly, along the edge of the fissure. She could not see whether its tendrils extended down the inside of the pit.

 
In another moment, she had reached the gap. Quickly she leaped to the ground, though she staggered unsteadily and had to grip the reins of the mare for support. The awful terror she felt held her back, and she could not bring herself to look into the fissure.

  Newt, appearing and disappearing rapidly in his agitation, buzzed around the fissure. “They’re here! You saved ’em! Come on, you guys. Get out of there! Hey, Tristan, wake up!”

  Weakly she stumbled to the lip of the gaping pit, gagging on the stench of the gas that rose from the wound in the earth. Though the tangle created a weblike mass of branches, she slipped among them with the druid’s natural ease. Then she saw the king, clutched firmly in the grip of the young branches, held motionless against the dirt wall. Canthus was caught in the bushes as well, but the moorhound squirmed his way upward as Robyn reached down for the king.

  Newt continued to buzz overhead until a whiff of gas swirled around him. The dragon turned instantly from green to orange, sneezing loudly. With a sudden bolt, he darted to the side of the pit and landed, coughing and gasping.

  Tristan’s face was blue. Though the gas had thinned out somewhat, Robyn suspected that he had breathed it heavily. Had it already killed him? She banished the thought, somewhere finding the energy to heave upward on his limp body. It wouldn’t budge.

  “I’ve got you, honey. Let’s pull!” She heard Tavish’s voice as she felt the bard grab her waist, but even pulling together, the two could not free the king. Horrified, Robyn watched Tristan’s lips grow black.

  “Glorus, desitor ehahy!” cried the druid, once again summoning a spell. She felt herself grow dizzy, but she forced herself to retain her grip on the king. All around her, she could feel the plant growth recoiling, twisting free and pulling away from her.

  And from Tristan. The king fell free from the plants, with Robyn barely managing to keep a grip on his arms. Then Tavish heaved mightily and they pulled Tristan’s limp form onto the lip of the fissure. Weakly she pressed her mouth to his, forcing air from her lungs into the king’s. She pressed downward against his chest to force out the bad air, then blew inward again. Over and over she repeated the process, with Tavish taking over when the druid collapsed from exhaustion.