Well of the Damned

Chapter 2





Some hours later, after the sun had set and the gaol was lighted only by a few lamps on the walls in the corridor, roaches and centipedes crawled boldly across the floor and up the walls. Several pairs of footsteps approached, but the bugs didn’t bother to hide. Tyr stood against his cell door, looking out through the square opening. The black-beard returned with two guards and a squat, well-dressed man, who wore his long, white hair braided and tied back into a single tail, and another braid in his gray beard. The old man’s eyebrows were so bushy, he ought to have braided them as well. The guards each held an oil lamp. This new visitor put on a pair of spectacles.

“Who’re you?” Tyr asked.

The black-beard struck the iron door with the underside of his fist hard enough to make it clang. He was dressed in the red and black livery of the Lordover Tern. “Shut your mouth, wench, or I’ll shut it for you. Continue, Chancellor.”

The white-hair unrolled a scroll, and began to read aloud. “I, Feelic Durras, Chancellor to the Lordover Tern, hereby proclaim, by the power granted to me by His Lordship, that the following charges are brought against Cirang Deathsblade...”

Cirang Deathsblade. The name was unfamiliar to him yet fit comfortably in his mind like well worn boots. Yes, he thought as a memory surfaced. That had been her name, the woman whose body he now owned.

“... formerly of the Viragon Sisterhood, in the name of the King of Thendylath. Charge one: murder of the man Rogan Kinshield, a husband, father and brother.”

“Wait,” Tyr said. “I’m innocent of this charge.”

“Quiet, wench,” the black-beard barked.

“You’ll have your chance to address these charges during your hearing before the lordover,” the chancellor said. He looked back down at his paper. “Charges two through eleven: kidnapping of the woman Liera Kinshield and her three sons, kidnapping of the woman Feanna Vetrin and her three daughters, and kidnapping of two Viragon Sisters, Nasharla and Dona. Charge twelve: treason against the King and the Kingdom of Thendylath.”

“Is that all?” Tyr asked. He yawned.

The chancellor huffed and blustered, rolling up the scroll hastily. “I suggest, young lady, that you more carefully consider the attitude you display in the face of such serious charges. Cockiness is unflattering in a woman. Perhaps you require extra time to consider your manner before the lordover hears your response.”

Tyr listened to the men’s footsteps fade down the hall. He had no memory of kidnapping anyone or doing anything treasonous, and had only learned there was a king earlier that day. These allegations were false, though proving his innocence might be challenging.

As soon as the door shut at the end of the corridor, his fellow prisoners broke their silence.

“Who’s the new king, Cirang?” his neighbor asked. “Tell us his name.”

If the knowledge was uncommon, then that must have meant Gavin Kinshield had only recently claimed his place on the throne. There Tyr was, in gaol, and already he had something to bargain with. “What’s that information worth to you?” he asked.

“Even if I had coins to pay for it, you’ll never be able to spend it.”

“You’ll be lucky if you don’t lose your head,” someone else said. “Tell us who the king is.”

“If I tell you, then you will each owe me a favor, payable at my request.”

“Yeh, sure.”

Other prisoners agreed to the terms, probably thinking that Tyr would never be able to collect. “All right, we owe you one favor each,” the first fellow said. “Who is he?”

“The new king of Thendylath,” Tyr said, “is the warrant knight Gavin Kinshield.”

Some of the prisoners cursed or groaned in despair. Others expressed outrage that a ’ranter could rule a country. Tyr lay back down on the bed with his hands clasped behind his head, smiling into the darkness.





Of all the predicaments Sithral Tyr had ever found himself in, the most annoying was being a woman. The first time he squatted over the piss bucket, he messed his trousers. The menses came after a few days, and it embarrassed him to have to constantly ask the guards for rags to wear between his legs. They made him rinse the bloody ones himself and drape them over the posts of his bed to dry. The cramp in his lower belly was terribly uncomfortable, and his request for pain tea went ignored. He found no relief aside from the passage of time when the menses ended their course.

Eventually, Tyr learned to remember bits of Cirang’s life as a girl, a woman and a sword fighter, yet he also remembered his own life as a Nilmarion man, husband and father. He remembered traveling to Thendylath aboard a ship pulled through the water by two huge sea snakes, committing his first murder, and feeling his soul darken with the foulness of evil. Over the following few years, he’d stolen things and murdered people and sold orphans to slavers, whose ships docked in Lavene — things he’d never have done before his descent. He had no use for remorse or sorrow. Even in this body he was unburdened by female sensibilities. Thinking back on the crimes he’d committed as the man Sithral Tyr, he regretted nothing except the clues he’d left behind that had gotten one pesky ’ranter closer to arresting him than he’d have liked.

Cirang Deathsblade was not without her own dark past. Though he felt no shame or remorse for her murder of a Viragon Sister and the framing of Daia Saberheart for it, he was clever enough not to boast. It was a crime for which he’d never face justice as long as he kept it to himself.

Days stretched into weeks while he waited for the new king to judge him for Cirang’s crimes. He went hungry at times because some of the guards claimed to have run out of food by the time they reached his cell with the slop bucket. In truth, they were afraid of him. He was certain of it, for he’d heard them arguing in whispers outside his door over whose turn it was to enter her cell to feed her or take her waste pail or fill her water bucket. His memory of Cirang’s life shed no light on the reason for their wariness, but he saw it in their eyes when they approached and in their haste in performing their tasks before locking the door and scurrying back up the corridor.

During the days, he spent his time staring at his pale, unwarded hands. Sewn into the skin of every newborn Nilmarion by the village shaman, the natal ward kept him safe from the evils through childhood. Its purpose was to protect him until he was old enough for the ward of readiness. While Tyr had become accustomed to seeing the unwarded faces and hands of the people of Thendylath, the lines on his own hands, and the reflection of those on his face, had always provided a comfort that resonated with the deepest, oldest part of himself. Although the ward lines hadn’t ultimately protected him from the evils as he’d been raised to believe, seeing his hands without them disturbed him greatly.

Nights were the worst. Time and again, he dreamed of bloody claws sinking into his skin, twisting his body and breaking his back with a snap. He awoke gasping for air and clutching at the muscle spasms in his back. He relived the demon’s brutal attack so many times over those weeks that he feared falling asleep. The injury that had caused Cirang’s death had only hurt for an instant, while the memory of it would be eternal. One night after another, he lay on the bed late into the mirknight, too tired to stay awake but too fearful of that awful pain to let his mind relax without jerking awake in anticipation every few minutes.

Some nights weren’t as bad. Those were the ones in which the horror of the demon, reaching for him with its black-clawed hands, made him scream aloud, waking with a start before the worst part came. Those nights, his fellow prisoners cursed him unsympathetically and promised to punish him in the most unpleasant of ways once they were freed.

One night, he dreamed the demon had him by the throat in its vice-like grip, just as it had done to Ravenkind. Tyr awoke gasping, unable to breathe. Something covered his mouth and pinched his nose shut. He tried slapping it away and felt what seemed like dozens of arms and hands pushing him down, wrestling his arms to his sides and spreading his legs apart. A candle cast shadows of his multi-armed attacker onto the wall above his bed. Trying to climb on top of him was the dreaded black-beard — the new gaol warden, appointed after the old warden was promoted to lordover’s captain. Tyr fought harder, realizing the warden had brought a friend.

Then Tyr realized he’d been stripped of his trousers. He managed to shake off the hand over his mouth. “No! Get off me, you ugly bas—” he said before he was muzzled once again.

“What’s happenin’ over there?” asked the prisoner in the adjacent cell.

“Shut up and mind your own business,” black-beard snapped.

Tyr got his right leg free and tried to slam his knee into black-beard’s groin, but the man was already on top of him. The blow did little to deter his attacker.

“Hold her legs, damn it.”

The guard got a hold of Tyr’s ankle and pushed it down onto the bed. Tyr bucked as hard as he could under the warden’s weight. He slammed his forehead into black-beard’s face. Black-beard reeled, freeing Tyr’s right hand. He drove his thumb into black-beard’s left eye. The warden rolled off him, screaming, and fell onto the floor. Now, with his hands free, Tyr sat up, grabbed the guard’s head, and jammed both thumbs into his eyes too. The guard screamed and let go, flailing with his arms and stumbling backwards. Other prisoners demanded to know what was happening.

Now free, Tyr leaped to his feet and into a fighting stance. “The warden and his guard are trying to ravish me,” he said.

“Who the hell cares?” said one prisoner. “Just shut up and take it.”

“The lordover’ll hear about this,” said another.

“Extra meal rations for a week might keep us quiet about it, though,” said a third.

Such a mixed reaction from his fellow inmates reminded Tyr that he hadn’t made much of an effort to win friends here, but at least the attack was halted. For now. He hated to think he would have to call in his favors to corroborate this assault.

Black-beard got to his feet and yanked his trousers up. “You gotta go to sleep sometime,” he said with a sneer.

The guard picked up his candle. In its flickering light, Tyr could see his eyes were bloody. He smirked, certain he could use this proof to get the warden and guard fired for their attack or at least branded.

He was wrong. He had only the guards to hear his complaint the next morning, and it went unreported, as did his demands to see the lordover. Over the next few weeks, he slept as he could during the day and remained watchful at night.

One afternoon, he was awakened by the bells in the temple tolling. He counted twenty times, though it may have been twenty-one. The other prisoners speculated and bet each other on the reason for it, but Tyr had no guess as to why they would be ringing. Later that day, a new guard with puppy eyes and a boyish smile arrived with the slop bucket and spilled the news: dignitaries across Thendylath, as well as a few visiting from friendly nations, had come to watch Kinshield receive his crown in a huge ceremony.

So it was official, Tyr thought. He wasn’t surprised. The warrant knight had taken the gems from the rune tablet — a feat Tyr had attempted many times over the years — and that was proof enough to the people Gavin Kinshield deserved to rule Thendylath.

It started raining the next day. It rained for one week, then another, then another. Tyr couldn’t help but wonder whether the gods were drowning Thendylath in retribution for putting a ’ranter on the throne. It seemed fitting somehow.

Late one morning, roughly three weeks after the coronation, the clang of the door being unlocked echoed down the narrow corridor, followed by two pairs of boots clomping rhythmically on the stone floor. With every approaching footstep, keys on an iron ring jingled a tune that made Tyr’s grumbling stomach sing in anticipation. The other prisoners began to complain loudly when the guards didn’t stop at their cell doors. Not feeding time. Perhaps someone would be freed. Or put to death.

The warden’s ugly bearded face filled the small window of his cell door and Tyr’s heart with apprehension.