Well of the Damned

Chapter 41





With the journal in hand and a magical disguise for them both, Gavin and Daia sneaked out the rear door and threaded their way behind and between buildings away from the crowd waiting for the king to exit the museum. They’d sent Surraent out with a message to the armsmen requesting he take their horses back to the lordover’s manor. When they were at a safe distance, they shuffled along the street with Daia disguised as a stoop-shouldered old woman and Gavin her lame and lanky son. Aldras Gar looked like a wooden staff, hung on his back with a simple leather thong. He flagged down a buck in a wagon as it rumbled down the street.

“Can you spare a ride for me an’ my boy?” she asked. Gavin nearly laughed. She sounded like a noblewoman pretending to be a peasant. Maybe he should do the talking.

The man, a hawk-nosed fellow with stringy brown hair, looked them over. “Where’re you goin’?”

“The lordover’s,” Gavin said. “If it ain’t too much trouble.”

“Awright,” the buck said. “Climb in.”

Gavin helped Daia onto the back of the wagon, and then sat on it’s back edge with his feet dangling. It groaned under his weight, which made the man turn around in his seat to look at him with disbelief. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“I got a tumor,” Gavin said, and faked a cough.

Daia cocked an eyebrow at him and fought to suppress a smile. She patted his arm. “My dear, dear boy.”

When at last the wagon stopped across the street from the lordover’s front gate, they thanked the driver with a silver coin, and he continued on his way. The armsmen standing guard were very much fooled by the magical disguises and wouldn’t let them pass.

“Don’t salute,” Gavin told them. “I don’t look like anyone you’d salute to, but watch carefully.” He let his illusion fall for a moment to reveal his true appearance, and then put it back. The guards gasped, and then snapped to attention. “It’s how I’ll be moving about the city uncognito.”

“Incognito,” Daia said.

“That’s what I said.” He glanced at her disapprovingly, and she tucked her lips between her teeth. She’d grown so used to correcting him, he supposed she was bound to forget herself and do it in front of someone.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the captain, Rikard, replied. “Trip brought your horses a bit ago. They’re waiting for you in the stable. Shall I fetch them for you, sire?”

“No, we’ll go get them ourselves. We’ll be using different disguises when we come out, so don’t be alarmed. Is my wife still here?”

“No, sire. She left perhaps an hour ago.”

Damn it. He would have liked to provide her with a disguise as well, at least until she was safely inside the orphanage. He motioned Daia to follow him, and headed to the stable, letting their disguises disappear once they were on the manor grounds.

The thick-waisted stable master greeted him with several excited bows and showed them to the stalls where Golam and Calie were snacking on hay. “Didn’t take their saddles off,” he said, “‘cause Trip said you’d be comin’ for ’em soon. Hope that’s awright.”

“That’s fine,” Gavin said, stroking Golam’s thick neck.

“Gave ’em both a brushing and checked their hooves, though,” the stable master said.

“Good. My thanks.”

The stable master lingered with a silly smile and dancing eyes, like a dog waiting for his master to toss him a bit of meat.

“That’s all for now,” Gavin said. “Leave us.”

The portly man bowed as he backed away. “Yes, sire. O’course. Just holler if you need me.”

Without a mirror, Gavin had to focus more on altering his appearance by referring back to the memory of his reflection. Until now, he’d had little use for mirrors. He gave himself bushy red hair and a thick, scraggly beard. He used his finger to guide the placement of a scar through his right eyebrow and another beside his mouth, and hid his own bear-given scar.

“Try green eyes,” Daia said, assessing him. He did, and she nodded approvingly.

To Daia he gave blond hair to go with her natural pale-blue eyes, a crooked nose and a missing tooth in front. Though she couldn’t see her disguise, she would have approved.

Golam swung his head around to regard them, still chewing a mouthful of hay, and reached for Daia’s ear with outstretched lips. She pushed his big head away with a laugh. “You never give up, do you?”

Gavin wondered whether his horse could see the disguise and didn’t care, or if the illusion worked only on people. Maybe one day he’d visit the stable disguised as a woman to see if Golam tried his flirtatious trick. The horse had no preference for a particular kind of woman — blonde, brunette, heavy, slim, comely or homely — none of it mattered to Golam. Every woman had ears that begged to be nibbled.

“Hey, why don’t you look for Cirang again before we leave.” As much as Daia tried to reassure Gavin that the former Sister wouldn’t try to hurt his wife, he could see she merely masked her concern for his sake.

He nodded and connected with her conduit gift, and then sent his hidden eye up over the stable and speeding off towards the orphanage. Cirang’s dark haze wasn’t there, nor did he find it in the merchant district where Feanna had planned to go. He found his wife, however, and her haze glowed with joy. He moved on towards the Good Knight Inn, hoping to see Cirang still in the room or hovering between the hazes of Calinor and Brawna as they escorted her to gaol. She wasn’t there either. He moved his hidden eye higher to get a broader look at the city, but he didn’t find her anywhere in the city or outside its boundary. Her haze was gone.

Cirang was dead.

He returned to his normal consciousness, excited. Relieved. “They must’ve found her and executed her. Her haze is gone.”

Daia looked at him with hesitant disbelief. “Gone? Are you sure?”

“There’s no sign of her in the city, in the surrounding fields or on the roads leading away.”

“There’s another possibility. If she drank some of the water from the wellspring—”

“No,” he said. “The guardians said they scared her off afore she got to it.”

Daia smiled. Her disguise was gone. “Then it’s good news. I suppose there’s no need to follow Feanna now, though if you’re concerned about brigands or other malefactors, I won’t mind.”

“Did my disguise fall while I was soaring about?”

She nodded. “I suppose you can’t use your hidden eye and keep up the disguises at the same time.”

“Damn. Maybe with practice I can do both. It’s good we found this out now instead of in the middle of a crowd o’people.”

They left their horses with two of the armsmen and wove their way through the crowd to watch Feanna with a half-dozen orphan children as they went about their shopping. She wore a genuine smile, and Gavin knew she was enjoying the outing as much as the children were. He admired her ability to lose herself in pleasant activities. He hoped for a day when he would have few worries to plague him. Life was supposed to become easier with wealth and power, but so far, he thought that to be a myth.

Around him were normal people, happy to have a glimpse of the new queen while she did her charity. They spoke kindly of her to each other, even spoke well of the king, whom they believed wasn’t present.

“He should’ve come too,” one woman said. She rose on her tiptoes to see the queen while patting the back of the infant in her arms. “What could he possibly have to do in that big palace all by himself?”

Gavin snorted. He supposed he might have wondered the same thing if he’d worn their boots. The lordovers didn’t always appear to do much but dine well and dance, at least from the perspective of a peasant trying to feed his family.

The baby was looking up at him with interest. With one chubby finger pointed at Gavin’s face and then touched her own cheek. Could she see through his disguise? He grabbed Daia’s elbow and moved her away, just in case. “Let’s move that way to get a better look.” The infant was too young to report what she saw, but he didn’t want any attention drawn to him.

The sun was low in the sky when Feanna returned to the orphanage. Gavin and Daia retrieved their horses and followed her. They waited for an hour outside while dusk settled. While they’d made no plans to dine together, Gavin had assumed they would. He needed time alone with his wife, and he hoped she wanted to talk through their differences.

He and Daia returned to the lordover’s guesthouse and waited in the common room, Gavin in brooding silence. When he heard a pair of footsteps approaching, he stood, expecting Feanna. He was disappointed when Calinor and Brawna entered, but he put his feelings aside for the time being. “She’s dead?”

Brawna shook her head, but it was Calinor who explained, “We didn’t find her. When we got to the inn, her room was empty, but she left my horse there. We searched the streets, asked everyone we saw. Brawna talked to someone who seen her.”

All eyes turned to the young blonde battler. She swallowed and straightened her shoulders. “A woman said she saw a dark-haired First Royal carrying a knapsack. She only noticed because the battler was on foot, walking down the street as though she had somewhere to go, not on horseback. From her description, I’m sure it was Cirang.”

“She didn’t say where the battler went?”

Brawna shook her head. “I searched in the direction she said, but nobody else remembered seeing her.”

Gavin pondered the news. “Maybe the lordover’s armsmen killed her for some crime. What else could explain why she’s gone from my sight?”

“Is there a way she could hide from your hidden eye?” Daia asked.

“Underground?” Brawna asked. “There’s an old mining tunnel in the south part of Ambryce. Maybe if she’s in there, you can’t see her?”

Everyone turned to look at her, and a blush flooded her face. “That’s a very good question,” Gavin said. “It’s worth a look. We’ll go at first light.”

“How come we don’t go now?” Brawna asked.

“If she’s hiding in there,” Gavin said, “she’ll come out at night to get food. She might see us afore we see her.”

Daia nodded. “If we go during the day when she’s hiding, we have a better chance to catch her.”

“No,” Gavin said. “There’s no catching her. She dies on sight.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Agreed?”

They all did.