Well of the Damned

Chapter 29





Something heavy pressed on her, crushing her chest so tightly she could hardly take a breath. In the darkness, she saw small knife-points of light. Rocks and dirt ground her down from above as if they could make her one of them. She tried to move her hand, but it was trapped too. She found she could tilt her face just enough to put her mouth closer to the slit of daylight and suck in air. Everything hurt. Even if the horse was still alive, which was doubtful, she didn’t think she’d be able to get into the saddle.

The fingers on her left hand were free, and she wiggled them and pushed against the rocks above her hand. Soon she found she could turn her hand palm up, and she strained against the weight keeping her arm immobile. She heard the rocks shift and tumble away, and then her arm was free. The first thing she did was grope for the rocks over her head and face to push them away. The weight rolled off and the light and air and rain came flooding into her face and mouth, though her chest was being held so tightly she couldn’t take the breath she needed.

Crushing her torso was a huge rock, much too big to grasp and fling aside. It was smooth, without hand holds to grab. Her only chance to get it off was to use its own weight to do the work. She reached underneath her left side to grab smaller rocks and push them away. Little by little, the weight of the boulder on top of her began to shift towards her left side, the downhill side. Its movement hurt like hell as it shifted across her tender rib cage. And then it rolled over her free arm and went bouncing down the hill.

Air rushed into her lungs, filling her body with pain like she’d never felt before. She groaned, afraid to take in more air but desperate to fill her lungs. She breathed in short bursts like a dog panting until the pain subsided enough to move. It became easier to push the rest of the rocks off her body, and after a few minutes, she could sit up and assess the damage.

She ached all over, and she was utterly soaked, but no bones seemed to be broken. A sharp pain in her side was the worst. Her clothes were bloodied in spots where she’d suffered scrapes and cuts, and on her right side, a larger patch of blood darkened her tunic to mark the area of the most intense pain. She lifted the hem.

A shard of rock had sliced through the fabric of her shirt and corset and embedded itself into her skin between two ribs. No doubt some of her ribs were cracked, but this shard explained why breathing hurt so much. She touched it gingerly and winced from the pain. Removing it was going to hurt like mad. Better get some water to wash the wound.

With great effort and gritting of teeth, she managed to stand on shaking legs. One of her boots, her cloak, and her pack were missing. She wasn’t sure how she could find them in the pile of rubble, but at the very least, she needed that pack. Without the journal, she had no chance of distracting Kinshield away from his pursuit of her. She swept her gaze across the mess the landslide had made. A hoofed brown foot jutted up from beneath the rocks and dirt. Stupid horse. This was all its fault. She was glad it was dead, but its death was also terribly inconvenient. She’d have to walk the rest of the way to Ambryce, despite her injuries.

After taking a few tender steps on the shifting rocks, she pushed aside the rocks nearest the area where her feet had been when she first regained consciousness. Maybe the boot had come off not long before she’d stopped her fall. Something brown showed through, and she reached down and tugged it. It came free, pushing rocks aside. The knapsack — what luck. She checked inside and found the empty waterskin and Crigoth Sevae’s journal, damp but intact. Excellent.

She looked for her boot but gave up after a while, though she did find her cloak, and shook it as hard as she could manage to fling away the water from the underside. She ripped what was left of Vandra’s spare tunic, noting the make-shift bandages were gone, and wrapped up her foot, padding the bottom with leaves she stripped from a tree that had been uprooted in the landslide. The cuts on her hand had bled a little but not enough to trouble her.

With a hand cupping the shard in her side to keep it from shifting, she returned to the knapsack and dug out the waterskin. She didn’t know where the other was, but there wasn’t much of a chance to find it now. She uncorked its top and shook the last two drops of water into her open mouth. Perhaps she ought not try to remove the shard until she could get to the river to rinse the wound and quench her thirst. She studied the cork in one hand and the skin in the other, realizing the shard was a cork for her blood. She’d better wait and let a healer do it.

Then she noticed the sound of trickling water. A quick look around confirmed there was no stream nearby. The stones on the mountainside were dark where water was streaming down from above. She traced its origin up to the top — to where the eagle-shaped boulder overlooked the valley below.

The gods favor me.

She limped over to where the water trickled from a jutting rock to drip onto the stone below it. She let it pool into her cupped hand — cool, clear water. Could this be water from the famed Well of the Enlightened? She hadn’t seen any clean water up there. Could the mud pit have been an illusion created by whatever magical force was protecting the wellspring? The landslide must have caused the wellspring to leak. Now here was the water for the taking.

She uncorked the skin once again and held its open mouth under the trickle of water. Although it took a while, it eventually filled the skin. She lifted it to her lips for a drink.

An uneasy feeling stopped her. If this water was from the wellspring, perhaps the safer play would be to test it on someone else before drinking it herself. She corked the skin tightly and tucked it into her knapsack. She wasn’t far from the Flint River. She would drink her fill then.

Something dark near the dead horse caught her eye, and she made her way across the rocks towards it. She used her foot to push the rocks away. It was the second waterskin. The gods favored her indeed. Gingerly, she reached down and picked it up. It had been battered, but it still held a few drops. She drained what was left of it, and filled it from the trickle of water on the mountainside. Two skins of the magical water would surely weigh her down with coins and lift her up with admiration and praise from those who would drink it.

Without wasting another moment, Cirang slung the strap of the pack over her shoulder and limped as quickly as she could to the south and west, towards Ambryce.