Tales of the Exile

  The fount of water that spurts from the Wellspring is different from the actual well from which the magic comes. It is hidden deep below Ti’Vaeth. Unless the depths of the Wellspring are uncovered once more and the Archlord allows scholars to see inside of it, to see what is actually in that ancient placed whence magic bloomed . . . we may never know its true secrets.

  — From Secrets of Mani, by Sor the Lark

  (Norvaen 15, 997—Sunset)

  “Hellsbreath!” Rhidea cursed. “The Well is canceling my Authority.”

  Mydia, Kath and the soldiers ducked inside, and I jumped through the doorway right after Kaen (who was the only one with an actual torch aside from Ruel), as the door began to shut upon itself. The soldiers who had caught up first desperately chased us inside, until the door shut too far for any more to get in. I tried to force them off, kicking the first guard and knocking him back into his friends. There was at least a half dozen of them, each armored and outfitted with swords, spears and crossbows.

  As I retreated down the stairs, however, I began to feel my strength leaving me. Not my innate bodily strength, but that surging energy that enabled me to perform superhuman feats and enhanced my reflexes and speed. I felt . . . tired. Is this how normal people feel all the time? Gritting my teeth, I turned and hurried after the others. “Kaen,” I gasped as I caught up to him. “My abilities are vanishing in here, just like my magic.”

  “Well, then we’ll just have to fight our way out somehow. ‘Bout time we got to save you magi the old-fashioned way.”

  We took the stairs as fast as possible. Rhidea and the torch-bearers led the way, a whole floor below us, the torchlight flickering on the walls around us. Behind me, I heard mumbles of uncertainty, followed by the sound of shouting and soldiers’ boots on stone as they charged in after us. “After the desecrators!” bellowed one of them.

  Desecrators. Perhaps that was what we were. But we had to know what was down here. We had to find the secret of the magic of our world, lest it vanish out of our hands forever. Turning my head as I went, I said, “We need to be here! Just leave us in peace.”

  “Not if the Archlord has anything to say about it.” The lead soldier stopped and aimed his crossbow at us.

  “Kaen, get down!” I yanked him down as I ducked, and the bolt scraped the wall above and behind my head.

  The man cursed and pointed toward the door at the top of the stairs. “You, guard the door! Remember your orders!”

  I glanced up as the rear guard stood his place by the door. It closed completely, sending a heavy thump reverberating through the tall chamber and echoing downward. Now we were trapped, with no magic to open up the door again.

  “You’ll die in here one way or the other,” said the captain. “We all will. We are trained to follow our orders to the letter, whether it costs us or not.”

  “He’s lying,” Kaen muttered.

  “Forget about it, Lyn!” came Rhidea’s voice from below. “Just hurry.”

  I followed Kaen down the steps toward the others below, dodging a couple more crossbow bolts from those guards who had a clear shot. I looked back angrily. “Give up, why don’t you! What do you all gain from hunting us further?”

  “That is not for us to know,” answered the leader. “But none are allowed to intrude upon the Well except for the Archlord himself and his personal retinue.”

  “And that makes you all special?”

  “No,” the man called back after a short pause. “That is why we will die here as well.”

  At this point, Kaen growled in front of me, stopped, and pushed me along in front of him. “I’ll teach him a lesson.”

  “Kaen!” After a brief hesitation, I turned around, backing down only a couple of steps as I watched what would happen. What worried me was that another guard farther up had a crossbow as well . . . I hesitated, still backing down the stairs.

  Kaen rushed the lead guardsman, torch in left hand and sword in right, swiping the crossbow from his hands with his sword blade—it tumbled down to clang against the stairs below, and seemed to never stop falling—even as the man went to draw his own shortsword. “Defend yourself!”

  The man kicked at Kaen, forcing him to hop back two stairs to avoid his foot, and snapped his fingers, signaling the rearguard to shoot a bolt at him.

  “No!” I saw it coming and rushed up to grab my friend, yanking him back just in time to avoid fire.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  I let him go. Then I reached down to pull out one of two belt knives—I kept two, with a dagger in each boot and a fifth strapped to my thigh—and flicked it at the man with the crossbow still in hand. I missed both the crossbow and his hand, as I had never been a terribly good knife shot, but it did the trick. He cursed and dropped the weapon, grabbing at the new puncture wound in his chest. I grimaced, realizing it had been a hair’s breadth from a fatal shot.

  Kaen fought with the captain, dancing up and down the stairs, their swords flinging sparks in the darkness as they rang steel on steel. The other four guardsmen had no access to the fight, and were stuck uselessly in the middle. Kaen seemed to have the advantage in skill and weaponry, but his opponent had the high ground, a distinct advantage in itself. “Not going to just give up, huh?” Kaen taunted.

  “Not this easily,” the man grunted. He kicked again, causing Kaen to fall back, and then swung horizontally at his head.

  Kaen blocked the attack. “Then I guess it’s the hard way.”

  I made sure to stay back, so as not to trip Kaen or get in his way. His duel with the guardsman seemed surprisingly even-matched, and I was nervous over who would win. I glanced downward, seeing Mydia and the others two floors below (if one called a full circle of stairs a floor).

  “Come on, Kaen.” I retreated down the steps, and he backed up after me, still crossing swords with his opponent. Eventually, he turned and ran after me, and we made for the rest of the crew, dashing as fast as our legs would take us.

  “Hey!” yelled the guard captain. “We weren’t finished! Come back here!” And they gave chase.

  “Why must they insist on trying to kill us?” Kaen half-growled, half-sighed. “Such idiotic loyalty.”

  “Well, they’re worth their pay, I suppose,” I replied. “At least we got their crossbows away from them.”

  I said this no sooner than a dagger came out of the darkness above and grazed my leathern leggings. “Ugh, would you stop that?” I shouted. I turned and rushed back up the stairs toward the guards.

  “It’s that kicking girl again,” muttered one of the guardsmen, presumably the one I had previously kicked.

  Drawing my dagger with my left hand, sword in right, I squared off against the same captain Kaen had fought. “Tell your men to back down,” I said, “or else.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Oh yeah? That all you’ve got, ‘or else?’”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s getting old.”

  “Well, I ordinarily don’t like to fight women, but seeing as how I have orders to kill you all anyway, I suppose I’m obliged to.” He swung his sword at me.

  I evaded and swiped my long blade at him. “What’s your name, Captain?”

  “Corporal.” He parried and jabbed at my chest.

  “Captain Corporal.” I deflected with my sword and jabbed with my knife.

  Annoyance flashed across his face. “Corporal Harold.” He caught my dagger with his sword hilt and swept a boot at my legs.

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  “Well, Harold, you’re quite good with a blade.”

  He snorted. “You’re a chatty one. I don’t take swordsmanship compliments from women. That’d be like—” He took another swipe at my defenses “—taking handwriting tips from a milkmaid.”

  I paused briefly, almost allowing myself to be caught off-guard. “What a ridiculous thing to say.”

  “She’s a bit better with a sword than a milkmaid,” Kaen called from below. “I taught her myself.” There was a note of pride in his voice.

  Harold snorted once more. “I see that, boy. I, for one, don’t know many milkmaids. Now, shut up. I’m trying to focus.”

  I managed to keep up with Corporal Harold just barely, thanks to my natural agility, but I really missed my extra physical enhancements. One never knew what one had until it was gone, and right now was that moment. “Look,” I grunted, my arms aching, “Can’t we just resolve this peacefully?”

  “Afraid not.” He took advantage of a stumble that I made and rammed my sword with his as my arm was held over the edge. My sword flew out of my hand to clang against the opposite side of the shaft, eliciting a cry from below, and I staggered on the edge before falling after my sword.

  “Agh! Kaen, help!” I cried, but there was no time. I tumbled from the stairs head-first. I couldn’t reach the other side. I heard Kaen yell my name as I fell, amidst the rushing of air past my ears, and then a shriek from Mydia. Flights of stairs whished past me, one after another. I saw them rushing by as I looked upwards, my back toward the pit below.

  At the bottom, I hit a pool of water with a painful crack, squeezing my eyes shut as I plunged toward the bottom. Dazed but still awake, I blew bubbles out of my mouth as I struggled to make my way up to the surface, but it was no use. I continued to sink despite my efforts, my momentum and weight dragging me down, until my feet touched the gooey bottom of the pool. Frantically, I kicked off the bottom with all the strength I had left, propelling myself upward until my hands grasped the knobby stone of the side and I was able to claw my way to the surface.

  I gasped air into my lungs, blinking water and dirt out of my eyes and clutching the stone floor that surrounded the pool for dear life. Pain arced through my back, the sting of hitting a surface of water at such a speed. I knew I was lucky to be alive. I peered into the darkness around me, but I couldn’t see much of anything. Shakily, I pulled myself out of the water, cringing at my stinging skin and bruised muscles.

  “Never want to do that again . . .” I breathed. Realizing that the others were calling out in desperation, I craned my neck upwards and shouted, “I’m—I’m all right! Rhidea? Mydia?”

  “Lyn!” Mydia’s voice came from not too far up the stairs. I could see the torchlight where they were. “We’ll be there in a minute! Kaen’s still holding the guards back. Well, I think they’re . . .” Whatever she said after that was lost to me.

  I sat down and put my back against a large pillar, exhaling in relief. Leaning my head back, I took a few breaths and tried to will away the pain. My stomach was all messed up as well, abdominal muscles clenched tightly. I wasn’t sure how far I’d fallen, but it must have been at least thirty paces. I knew that if I weren’t in this strange well, my inherent physical boons would have helped to guard me, but everything came now just as it did for anyone else. . . .

  It hurt to be human.

  Mydia, Kath, and the others arrived shortly after, their torches illuminating my surroundings. Looking up, I forced a smile and called, “It was a long fall, but this pool saved me. I’ll . . . be fine.”

  Rhidea looked at the black pool, which measured about ten paces across. Now that I could see the room clearly, I realized that this bottom section was, contradictorily, much larger than the limited diameter of the stairway shaft. In fact, the whole well must fan out as it went down. . . . Such a curious place. “That water . . .” Rhidea said. “This must be it. The Well.”

  “This?” Mydia mumbled. “This little puddle? What’s . . . wrong with it?”

  It was only once she mentioned it that I saw the black goop splattered about on the floor, oozing from cracks in the stones, dripping into the pool . . . dark slime covered the ornate pillars and seemed to coat the far circular wall of the room as well. It was hard to tell in the dim light. The air smelled dank and foul.

  “It’s Domon,” Rhidea said. “I know it. He has been tampering with the Well off and on, and I believe that it is how he has created his own Dark Magic.”

  “Dark Magic . . .” I muttered. I had heard her speak of it before, and I was pretty sure that Lord Kalceron had used the very same type of magic back in the Nytaean Palace, while fighting Rhidea.

  Just then, Kaen came down the stairs, leading Harold and the other soldiers. “I think I convinced them to come peacefully,” he said.

  Kaen actually used . . . diplomacy?

  “You!” I shouted, starting toward the corporal. But my bruises screamed in agony, and Rhidea grabbed my arm. “Sorry,” I mumbled in embarrassment.

  “I didn’t exactly mean to . . .” Harold began.

  “Oh, save it. Kaen, bring your torches over here.”

  With the extra light, we began to inspect the nearest pillars and then the wall behind them. There were eight pillars in all, each about double the thickness of my waist and reaching twelve feet to the sloped ceiling above. The stairs landed between two of the pillars, the stone merging with the floor and wall, cutting off the full circle of the bottom chamber. The pillars were ornately carved with strange creatures, fruits and flowers, delicate yet exuding a sense of power—but covered in dried rivulets of black goop and marred by stains. The perimeter of the wall seemed to be all one large, tiled mosaic, also half covered in the same goopy stains.

  “We’ll clean it off,” Rhidea said, less a suggestion and more a command. “Those not bearing torches, use your swords to clean all this mess off. We need to see this mural.”

  We hacked and peeled the goop off of the mural. Then we used spare pieces of our own clothing for rags, dipping them in water and scrubbing the mural as the Wandering Mage said. I was reminded as I cleaned of my time spent in Lord Kalceron’s employ as a maid . . . An almost dreamlike time in my life, looking back on it now, and one that I would never forget. Within a quarter of an hour we had cleared, if not completely cleaned, the entire span of the mosaic.

  The mural had a long line of ornate letters engraved along the bottom, which Rhidea identified as High Legaleian. She began trying to decipher the writing, and then gave up with a huff. “In a bit. Let us focus on the picture first.” The mosaic was divided at the point where the stairs reached the floor of the chamber, giving an obvious beginning and ending point. Starting at the far left, we gathered around as Rhidea pored over the pictographic story on the wall, musing as she went.

  The artwork looked old, but not ancient as I expected—not prehistoric. It could have been painted by a famous artist of the last century. Well, maybe the last few centuries. It told a sweeping tale starting with a round world—mostly blue, which I found very odd—amidst a bed of stars, with golden rays shining from the sun, and a smaller world . . . orbiting it? This one was yellow. Presumably, the blue world was Gaea, but we couldn’t say for the other. From this yellow world, a silver dragon came, whose meaning we could only guess at, and a war ensued. Men fought with the dragon, and then with fellow men.

  Amidst the confused mutterings and contemplative musings of our group, Kaen gave a snort. “Imagine that: humans fighting each other.”

  Alongside many of the pictograms, some underneath or just above, ran small lines of script completely different from the sweeping, curly High Legaleian script, more jagged with a certain intense geometry to it. Presumably, it was a Gaean language. And . . . the writing felt familiar to me. Almost.

  “Rhidea, you’re sure these two languages aren’t telling the same story?” Mydia asked.

  The High Mage shook her head. “It could be, but I doubt it. They seem to be names, or possibly descriptions, while the Legaleian letters at the bottom spell out a continuous message.”

  I frowned, trying to recall any meaning I could from the otherworldly captions accompanying the pictures. Nothing. If there was any true recognition in my memory, it was locked deep.

  Continuing on in the mural, a group of people, likely magi, seemingly used their powers to . . . create a world? This one was silver, obviously Mani. They were either making a new one, or changing an existing world to support life, which would match up with our stories of the Wellspring being brought to Mani, creating life on our world. There was an indication of a mass exodus of people from the large, blue world to this new silver one, depicting a magical bridge of sorts. A few more images illustrated the pilgrims’ journey across this new world, fighting with monsters and discovering what seemed to be the power of Silver magic.

  Lastly, it seemed to show a sort of religious reverence for the Wellspring. The people had kept it safe, but not hidden. Presumably, that lasted up until or near Domon’s rise to power. Rhidea could not say. As interesting as the mural was, we could do little more than theorize on the meaning of the various parts without being able to read both scripts printed on it.

  “The great . . . exile,” Rhidea read slowly, tracing the bottom words with a slender finger. Her mouth moved silently as she walked the length of the mural over again, translating the High Legaleian at an agonizing rate. Finally, she stopped, looking as though running the entire message through her head to discern its meaning.

  “What does it say, Rhidea?” Mydia asked impatiently.

  “It says . . . ‘The Great Exile. May it never be necessary again.’ The rest appears to be a poem of some sort:

  “‘To take the bait a world away,

  A Wellspring hid amongst the grey.

  We wait, remember, for the day,

  For one millennium we stay.’”

  As she finished, I felt that same prickling sense of familiarity, as though I should recall something within the poem. Or perhaps it was just that feeling of disquiet.

  “That . . . is certainly foreboding,” Mydia said quietly. “A millennium? It’s the year 997.”

  “And, uh, the whole ‘bait’ thing,” Kaen pointed out. “Don’t like that. What would they have been trying to bait, that dragon?”

  “Don’t remember ever seeing any silver dragons here, though,” Inno pointed out.

  Rhidea turned to me with a pensive expression. “Lyn, you don’t happen to . . . recognize anything about this artwork, do you? Or the Gaean writing?”

  My eyes flicked nervously from side to side. “Why are you asking me?”

  She sighed impatiently. “That should be obvious, child.”

  “I . . . no, I don’t.” I didn’t mention the strange feeling I’d had, however. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to figure anything else out right now.”

  A cough came from my left, and I turned to see Corporal Harold. “The, um, the young lady is right,” he said. “There’s nothing more to gain from staring at the mosaic, as fascinating as it may be.”

  “Well,” said Rhidea with a tone of resignation and annoyance, “there is one who can certainly answer our questions: the Archlord. And he has a lot of answering to do. We need to find a way out of here.”

  “Actually,” the Corporal said slowly, “there might be a way.”