Well of the Damned

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.”

“Remember when we brought Brawna to your house?” Daia asked him.

Edan chuckled. “Of course. A man doesn’t soon forget being woken during the night by a beautiful woman, an old friend, and a girl covered in blood.”

She reminded him of the sword fight between Gavin and Toren Meobryn, and Sithral Tyr and Daia. “We were looking for a necklace Gavin was supposed to recover and found the ugly cat figurine in Tyr’s satchel. I carried it around for a while. The mage Jennalia in Ambryce told me what it was. She called it a soulcele token and said the Nilmarions use them to protect or imprison souls. She said it contained a blackened soul and warned me not to break it. It was in my saddle bag when Ravenkind’s henchman caught me. Cirang must’ve found it.”

“Then it got broken during Ravenkind’s fight with Ritol,” Gavin said. “It seems Tyr’s spirit jumped into Cirang’s body and brought it back to life.”

Edan shook his head. “Wasn’t his soul in the statue before Daia killed him? How could a man walk around with his soul imprisoned in a figurine? The Book of Ancients says the soul lives inside the body and leaves when the body dies.”

Gavin wasn’t a believer in the Spirit of Asti-nayas as the one true god like his wife was, but he remembered the lessons from his childhood visits to the temple in Lalorian. “A lot o’followers of Asti-nayas also believe the soul can travel while the body’s asleep. It’s not such a leap to imagine it could get trapped somewhere.”

“But then the body would stay asleep, wouldn’t it?” Edan asked.

Gavin shrugged. How the hell would he know? He wasn’t a spiritual scholar.

“The Viragon Sisterhood followed the teachings of the ancient Farthan sage, Yrys,” Daia said. “Farthans believe the body can function without the soul, but it acts only with thought, and not with heart. It can talk and work like a normal person, but it can’t love or feel compassion. We might never understand the thread connecting the soul and the haze, as Gavin calls it. All he can do is decide what to do about Cirang based on what she has done.”

Gavin ran his tongue over the gap where his right eyetooth used to be. He’d always considered his strengths to be in his shoulders, arms and legs, not in philosophy. He might never understand why or how she’d become kho-bent. The question was: what was he going to do about her proposition. “Well I can’t forgive her crimes and free her, and she’s too crafty to leave in gaol, so I guess I got to execute her.”

Edan picked up the journal they’d identified as Sevae’s. “Are you saying you don’t want to see the other journal?

“We don’t know if there is another journal,” Daia said. “Remember, this is Cirang we’re talking about. She lies.”

Anything that might explain why Sevae had summoned Ritol made Gavin’s muscles quiver with excitement. Ravenkind had believed there to be a second journal, so chances were good Tyr had held onto it, trying to negotiate a better price. “Whether it still exists, we won’t know unless we let her take us to it.”

Edan said, “I remember seeing a reference to the wellspring in this one, but it didn’t say what it was.”

“Think you can find it again?” Gavin asked.

Edan opened the book and flipped its pages. “I believe it had to do with King Arek’s son. Let me see if I can— ah, here it is.” He began to read aloud.



Although King Arek interrogated every member of his staff about the whereabouts of the rune, he was unable to determine who took it or who has it now. Had he simply asked the right questions, I would not have been able to hide the truth. He would have known how I obtained it. For someone who uses magic as adeptly as he does, it’s quite comical that he never recovered it. Comical and pathetic.

Then there was the matter of his poor son, drowning in the rear courtyard fountain because Arek was too distracted to notice the boy had slipped outside unattended. He all but forgot about the rune after that. I acknowledge I had a part in the child’s death, for it was I who left the door ajar, and I regret that most sincerely. But the fact of the matter is many more people will die before this is all said and done. Every one of those deaths could have been avoided had King Arek followed my counsel on the matter of the wellspring.



The room fell silent. Crigoth Sevae must have been mad to sacrifice the king’s child in his dogged pursuit of the wellspring. Gavin had to know more. He had to know why, in the hopes his progeny would never repeat this tragedy.

“What was so important about the wellspring?” Daia asked.

“They called it the Well of the Enlightened,” Edan said. “Perhaps it has some spiritual significance.”

Gavin pointed his finger at him. “There’s one man who can answer that.”

“You aren’t going to back-travel to talk to Sevae!” Edan said.

“No, no,” Gavin said, though the idea had merit. “King Arek.”