Well of the Damned

by K. C. May

  “I knew it,” Daia muttered. “Murderous traitor.”

  Kinshield ignored her. “Tell me about Brawna Beliril. How did she end up with Sithral Tyr?”

  Cirang had to tread lightly here. She was innocent in this, but Tyr was not. “Brawna was given explicit instructions to bring the rune solver back with her from the rune cave, but instead she returned with her fellow Sister’s dead body draped over her saddle. Ravenkind questioned her about the rune solver — you as it turns out — and later gave her to Sithral Tyr for safekeeping.”

  “And the stab wounds in her leg and abdomen? Were you responsible for those?”

  Cirang shook her head vehemently. “I may have spat on her and encouraged the other Sisters to do the same because we thought her a traitor, but I didn’t hurt her, nor did Ravenkind. If she was stabbed, then that was Sithral Tyr’s doing.”

  “What was your relationship with Sithral Tyr?”

  “I had none,” Cirang said. “I met him for the first time that day and only spent an hour or so in his presence.”

  “Was Toren Meobryn with him then?”

  “If you mean the stony-faced blond battler, yes. The two of them took Brawna away in Tyr’s carriage.”

  “What do you know about the green cat figurine Daia mentioned?”

  “It belonged to Sithral Tyr. Ravenkind was keeping it as a tool of influence, and when Tyr gave him that sword you’re wearing, Ravenkind returned the figurine. It was very dear to Tyr.”

  “Let’s talk about the kidnappings,” Kinshield said.

  Cirang held up her hands, palms out. “As I told the lordover, Ravenkind’s magic gave me no choice. He commanded me to bring those women and children. I had no power to resist.”

  The king studied her for a moment. “Are you saying you regret your actions?”

  She sighed and let her hands drop into her lap. “I just told you I didn’t do it freely.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  He was trying to get her to admit to weakness. To express remorse. She felt none, but she knew what words he wanted to hear. “Yes,” she said, making no effort to hide her contempt. “I regret it. I’m sorry for my actions. I wish I could have saved your brother, but I couldn’t. Seeing him beheaded made me puke, and for that display of weakness, Ravenkind fed me to his pet monster.”

  Kinshield raised his eyebrows. “How did you survive, when Ravenkind didn’t?”

  “I— I don’t know. Maybe some ’ranter-mage showed up just in time and healed me.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Think back,” he said, “to the first time me and you met.”

  Her first memory of Gavin Kinshield the warrant knight was in a tavern in Saliria. He was big and sweaty with an old, battered sword on his back, not the gemmed one he wore now. But that had been Tyr’s experience, not Cirang’s.

  “You had a necklace,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Ravenkind gave it to me. He gave one to Lila and two dozen of the most loyal Sisters. He used it to control us. You know that.”

  “What about the other necklace?” Adro asked.

  “No,” Cirang snapped. “There was only one.” She realized she’d made a serious mistake by telling Adro that story. He needed to shut the hell up.

  “What other necklace?” Kinshield asked.

  “On the way here,” Adro explained, “she told me you extorted a priceless necklace from her. Those were the words she used.”

  Kinshield smiled, showing the gap between his teeth and looking more like the peasant he was than a king. “Now I understand,” he said. “She’s not Cirang anymore.”

  “She must be,” Daia said. “No one else would know about JiNese.”

  “And nobody but Sithral Tyr would know about the necklace stolen from Queen Calewyn’s tomb.”

  Chapter 16

  “I’ve heard enough,” Kinshield said. He beckoned Edan to join him at the window at the far end of the room while Daia and Adro guarded Cirang. They whispered for a minute, seeming to debate some point until Kinshield cut short the discussion with a sharp hand gesture. They returned to their previous places, though now Kinshield stood erect, hands clasped together.

  Edan bent over the desk and scribbled on the papers for a moment, and then set his quill down. He held the paper before him and began to read. “On the matter of Rogan Kinshield’s death, you’ve satisfied His Majesty of your innocence.”

  Cirang couldn’t have stopped her lips from curling if she’d had her head in the jaws of a beyonder. Soon she would be walking out of the palace a free woman, ready to carve out a new life as a mercenary. She thought perhaps she would go first to Lavene, where merchant ships brought exotic supplies from other lands.

  “On the matter of the remaining crimes, aiding the escape of the murderer Brodas Ravenkind, kidnapping ten people that resulted in the deaths of two, and murdering the Viragon Sister JiNese, His Majesty finds you guilty. The sentence for those crimes is death.”

  Cirang gaped at Kinshield. “What? No. No, you can’t.”

  “The sentence will be carried out one month from today,” Edan continued, “at which time you’ll choose whether to be executed by hanging or beheading. You will have time to reflect on your crimes and be given the opportunity to compose a letter of apology to the victims and their families. Should you fail to choose a manner of death, one will be chosen for you. Do you have any final words before you’re returned to your gaol cell to await your sentence?”

  “Yes!” Cirang said. She lapsed into Tyr’s Nilmarion accent, trying to distance herself from the battler being judged. “Now that you know who I truly am, you know those crimes weren’t my own. As you yourself have discovered through your adept questioning, I’m not Cirang Deathsblade. She died at the claws of the demon you so expertly defeated. I’m merely a pilgrim of sorts — a traveler, who found himself marooned upon this...” She gestured at her body. “...foreign shore. In a manner of speaking, I’m another unfortunate victim of the crimes she committed before she died. In fact, Your Majesty, her death sentence has already been carried out. To execute me for her crimes simply because I happen to look like her would be the ultimate injustice.” She stood and took a step towards him, intending to use her female charms to sway him, but Daia and Adro both drew swords.

  “Keep your distance,” Daia said.

  “Sit down,” Adro said.

  She sat back down, annoyed. Perhaps it would be better to appeal to his sense of fairness. “You’re a just man. Don’t condemn me to die for someone else’s sins.”

  Kinshield crossed his arms and tipped his chin back to regard her through lowered lids. “Awright,” he said, “if you’d rather face justice for the crimes of Sithral Tyr, let’s list them instead. As Tyr, you assaulted the museum curator Laemyr Surraent, tried to kill Daia, kidnapped the blacksmith Risan Stronghammer, stole my sword, and tortured Brawna Beliril for information about me. Are those the crimes you’d rather be judged for?”

  Cirang swallowed. They weren’t trivial crimes, but at least Kinshield didn’t know about the murders Tyr had committed.

  “Let’s see,” he went on, “the kidnapping would’ve got you a brand on one arm, the attempted murder another, and the assault would’ve been the third. Those three crimes alone would have been grounds for execution, and that doesn’t even count the theft or the torture of the Viragon Sister. A warrant knight friend o’mine’s been hunting you for selling children into slavery. I’m betting he’ll have plenty o’proof o’those offenses, too. So you can die for the crimes o’Cirang Deathsblade, or you can die for the crimes o’Sithral Tyr.”

  Neither choice was especially appealing. She’d heard of Kinshield’s history with Ravenkind. Perhaps he would soften towards someone with a similar experience. “Surely you can find it in your heart to offer leniency. I know I’ve done some unpleasant things, but you knew Brodas Ravenkind as I did. You know the kind of powerful influence he had on a man. Not only with his magic – he was a power
ful wizard as you know – but with his threats. The things he would hold over you – the safety and well-being of the people you most care about. I have a son, my liege. A son who needs me.”

  Daia looked at Kinshield. “In all the years I’ve known Cirang, she has never mentioned a son.”

  “He’s not Cirang’s son,” she said. “He’s the last of four sons I fathered with my wife in Nilmaria. The others have all died.” Sithral Brae would have been eleven years old then, if her recollection was true. Until that moment, she hadn’t given the boy or his mother much thought. They belonged to another life, one in which Sithral Tyr had been a different man. A weaker man.

  “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard,” Edan said.

  “Listen, Cirang or Tyr or whatever you want to be called,” Kinshield said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but there’s a darkness in you that makes you dangerous to everyone you meet. Normal people have a balance o’light and dark, soft and hard. Normal people can be redeemed. They can change their behavior if they want to. Your nature is purely kho — the dark, hard, cold nature — with no softness, no compassion, no warmth. You’re like a beyonder inside but with the intellect of a human. I can’t let you walk free. Every citizen o’Thendylath is a potential victim to you.”

  Because compassion was a quality Kinshield valued, she tried to appeal to his. “What would you have done to save your daughter?” A pained expression crossed his face, and she knew she’d hit the right spot. “I wouldn’t be before you today if it weren’t for my son, Brae. He’d fallen ill, and I was willing to do anything to save him. Ravenkind made me do things in exchange for the magic to cure Brae’s illness. I had to save the children of my village. They would’ve perished without that cure. Have you never done something you regretted for the greater good?”

  “What we do reflects who we are, but people change. You aren’t that... person anymore. You’re the worst kind of malefactor — the kind that can’t be brought around by reason or magic or the threat of death.”

  Cirang was desperate for an argument that would change his mind. She grasped angrily for his sense of fairness once more. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to judge me fairly. You despise me. It’s obvious your loathing of me has unfairly influenced your judgment. Admit you couldn’t be impartial because you hated me from the moment I walked in. How can you render a fair verdict under those conditions? I demand the Lordover’s judgment be honored.”

  He scowled and turned his eyes to Adro. “How’d she know about that?”

  “One of the lordover’s soldiers told me of it when I went to retrieve her. She must’ve overheard it.”

  Cirang seized the momentum. “In exchange for sparing my life, I can offer something you’ll find very valuable. Something that would be worth thousands of aurum were I to sell it. To you, it would be priceless.”

  Kinshield looked tired. “What is it?”

  “It’s the journal written by none other than Crigoth Sevae, King Arek’s royal mage.”

  She expected to see excitement and disbelief on the king’s face, but there was only impatience or perhaps boredom. He leaned over and picked up the journal from the desk and tapped it with the backs of his fingertips. “You mean this journal?”

  She smiled slightly. “That’s the one you found among Brodas Ravenkind’s belongings in the cottage, is it not? The one describing the use of the summoning rune. I gave him that journal, but there’s another. The one I’m offering you has information about the wellspring that inspired Crigoth Sevae’s disloyalty to King Arek.”

  Judging from the looks on the faces of all three of them, Cirang knew it was the wellspring they were after. Did they know why Sevae had been so passionate to control it? Did they believe the stories about the magical properties of the water?

  She’d hooked them. Now she only had to pull them to her net. “The journal in your hands has a few references to the wellspring, but the one I’ve kept hidden away contains specific details: where it’s located, and what its true power is — why he thought it was important enough to murder the king for.”

  In the king’s eyes, Cirang saw a lust for knowledge. “What wellspring?”

  “Why, the Well of the Enlightened, of course. The journal talks about its magical properties.”

  “Have you read it?” he asked.

  “I have,” she said, “though my memory improves when my belly is full. The lordover has let me languish in that cell. Surely you can spare a bit of—”

  “Awright, I’ve heard enough,” Kinshield said.

  Cirang blinked in surprise at his dismissive tone. “Do we have an agreement? The journal for my life?”

  He stared at her wordlessly for a moment. “I’ll think on it. Adro, take her back to the gaol.”

  “Wait. What’s there to think over?” she asked. “Get the horses ready. I’ll lead you there now.”

  Adro clamped his hand onto her upper arm and started to escort her out of the room.

  “King Gavin, listen,” she called over her shoulder. “You must read that journal. You won’t find it without me. If I die before you get it, two hundred years of Thendylath’s history dies with me.”

  Chapter 17

  As soon as Cirang was gone, Gavin let loose the shudder he’d been reigning in. The vileness of her presence renewed his memories of beyonders. His instinct was to run his sword through her then and there, as though she weren’t human, but he couldn’t. He was the king, and kings had to do the right thing always.

  The others in the room didn’t seem to be as sensitive to the khoness of her haze. Perhaps it was because, even when he wasn’t actively looking at her haze, he felt it. It brought back the memory of his near death while he was in the beyonders’ realm, fighting for his life against Ritol.

  He went to the window of his library to gaze out at the water of Lake Athra in the distance and the walls of the cliff face beyond that. A hawk swooped down and snatched a fish in its talons, then beat its wings furiously to carry off its meal. The hawk was like Cirang, preying on society. Every day he delayed carrying out her sentence was another day she could escape from gaol or talk someone into letting her go. Had she been Cirang Deathsblade in spirit, he might have thought she could be redeemed somehow, or at least put to work in a limited way to contribute to society rather than feed from it. But she wasn’t. Her haze was as dark and tumultuous as a beyonder’s, and just as repulsive. What confused him was why.

  He’d met Sithral Tyr once before, and his haze hadn’t been like this. Neither had Cirang’s, judging from the glimpse of her he’d gotten when she rode in to save Ravenkind at the rune cave. He remembered the vileness that emanated from the green cat figurine Daia found in Tyr’s satchel after she’d killed him. It had made him uncomfortable, but she wanted to know what it was. The mage Jennalia had said it housed the befouled soul of a Nilmarion, and it must never be broken. Only it was. It was broken at the cottage where he’d found Cirang, barely alive. The fact that Cirang knew about his meeting with Sithral Tyr could only mean one thing: Tyr’s soul had taken over Cirang’s body.

  “What is it about her haze that concerns you?” Daia asked.

  “She’s kho-bent, not evil,” he said. When he’d journeyed to the mid-realm, the Elyle, Bahn, had explained the nature of khozhi and why Gavin had disliked Bahn’s complement, Bahnna, so intensely. Bahn had been completely zhi-bent — soft, warm — and Bahnna had been like Cirang was now — hard, cold. Like the beyonders were.

  Edan turned in his chair and hooked his elbow over its back. “So explain it to me.”

  Gavin paced the length of the library as he talked. Moving helped him gather his thoughts. “The khozhi is the balance between two opposites, like order and chaos, hot and cold, soft and hard, love and hate. Kho is the cold, hard, rigid side. Zhi is the hot, soft, yielding side.”

  “Good and bad?” Daia asked.

  “Good versus evil,” Edan said at the same time.

  “No. I thought the same, but the
Elyle told me good and evil are judgments based on our morality or preference. Sweet and bitter are zhi and kho, but whether something sweet is good or bad depends on who’s tasting it. We all have kho inside us, but our realm tends towards order, so we mostly act from the zhi side.”

  Edan scrunched his brow as he nodded. “So you’re saying Cirang is purely kho?”

  “Yeh. That must be why I can see her haze, but I can’t read it the way I can others.”

  “Can that be undone?” Edan asked. “Can she be redeemed somehow?”

  Gavin shook his head. “Doubtful. To be honest, I don’t want to kill her, but she’s dangerous. The people would be safer with her dead.”

  “Ravenkind believed he had a legitimate claim to the throne,” Edan said. “Yes, she helped him escape, but did she know of his crimes? She thought he was the rightful king. That alone is no crime.”

  “She wasn’t an exemplary citizen before then, either,” Daia said. “Remember, Cirang killed JiNese and framed me for it.” She paused, tapping her chin. “Gavin, if you can’t read her haze, how did you know she was lying about how JiNese died?”

  “I didn’t. Before I got King Arek’s magic, I had to judge people’s truthfulness not only from what they said but from the way they talked. She looked up as if she was fishing for some stray story on the ceiling. People telling the truth don’t do that.”

  “You have a good eye. Cirang’s always been known for her agile tongue.”

  “Yeh, but she’s more than just Cirang or Tyr. She has both o’their memories and a kho-bent haze, which makes her more dangerous than any criminal I’ve ever encountered.” He went back to the window and looked out. The mage Jennalia had told her about that figurine and urged her to bury it. Gavin admittedly hadn’t seen the danger in it either, but in hindsight, they should have heeded her warning.

  “How did the statue get to the cottage in the first place?” Edan asked. “Cirang said Ravenkind gave it to Tyr.”