Oath of Fealty

36

Once she was down below the rim, the heat was even worse, stifling. The stench was both physical and magical: stagnant, polluted water, blood and death and decay, sour and sickly sweet all at once. The walls seemed to be closing in on her; the thick, stinking air clogged her nose, her lungs. Dorrin reached out with her free hand and stroked the old stone lining. “You want to be clean,” she said to the stone. She had only a few phrases of dwarf-tongue, and wished she’d learned more; a dwarf would know how to comfort this stone. “You are dross,” she said, one of the few words she remembered. Strong, it meant. Healthy. Brave. “Help me,” she said to the stone. She felt something change, just a little; the smell of clean stone touched her nose. “Help that broken stone, if you can; it was once whole, as you are, and clean.”

At the bottom, in the dimness, she made her light again. The stones there seemed locked in a hopeless jumble, each blocked by others, each blocking others. No way at all to put a rope sling around any of them and lift. Dorrin created with magery what she hoped was a secure lining for the entire shaft, in case the stone lining had been undermined. Then she put the tip of her sword on the stone below her foot and poured magery into it … lift slowly, she thought.

The stone rose, and with her standing on it, came slowly, steadily, up out of the well until she could see out, step out, off the stone and onto the ground. The stone followed her sword; when she pushed a little, it sank to the ground an armspan from the well. She withdrew her magery and then her sword, then nodded to her escort and they lowered her again.

One after another, the stones obeyed her magery, and one after another she stacked them ready for rebuilding the well’s coping. She found under one the body of a man, desiccated, shrunken to skin over bones. She touched it, brow, eyes, mouth, and spoke Falk’s prayer of dismissal and Alyanya’s blessing. Lifting it in her arms, she carried it up, standing on the stone on which he had lain, not noticing that this time the stone rose at her command without the sword’s touch. She laid the body on the ground, heart full of sorrow.

She found another body a layer below that and brought that, too, to the surface. The next stones were harder. Here the malice returned; the stench of blood and death intensified. She felt squeezed in a vile embrace, struggling to breathe, to move. Nedross, she remembered. These stones were nedross, evil in essence. Paks had been trapped under nedross stone, tormented.

The thought of Paksenarrion brought hope, an easier breath. Her magery flashed out, beyond her control; she felt the clash of two magicks as the blow of a thunderclap; she staggered and fell as the stones beneath her shattered, crumbled, disintegrated entirely to dust that plastered her face, clogged her nose. The dust vanished even as she choked on it. She was standing on a rough uneven surface of dry rock, not hewn stone. At her feet, a bloated stinking shape—the dead woman and child, magically preserved in gross decay. Pity filled Dorrin’s heart; hot tears ran down her face. Not only such a death, but to be locked into this shape forever—

Not forever. Dorrin fell to her knees. Power and compassion in that unseen voice. Falk? Gird? The High Lord himself? She did not know; it did not matter.

She reached out her hand and touched the stinking corpse. “Be free,” she said, speaking words she knew she must say. “Be free, go home, heal …”

The corpse turned to dust, bright as sparks in the dimness, and the sparks flew upward to the distant light. Now Dorrin saw bones only, the bones of the mother, the bones of the unborn child, fragile as slivers of dry grass, all lying loose, the ligaments that once bound them gone with the rest.

She had nothing to carry them in but her shirt. She took it off, and one by one she picked them up, the mother’s bones, the child’s bones, and laid them on the shirt, then rolled it into a secure bundle she could carry. She looked around the now-empty bottom of the well to be sure none were left, then felt the rough rock itself. Dry. Dry as those bones had been. At one side, a cleft that might once have been a spring to feed the well. She put her fingers into it. Dry.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said, squatting there in the bottom of the well. “If it was blood that cursed the well, my blood will certainly not heal it.”

Silence followed her words. The stench had gone with the corpses; what she smelled now was dry stone and her own sweat. She waited, listening, and finally pushed herself up, tucking the bundle under one arm. “Falk? Alyanya? If you have advice—”

Nothing. Nothing but the feel of a few grains of dust still in her mouth, annoying. She worked up a gob of spit, and spat them out; the spit landed near the dark cleft, sat there glistening a moment, then disappeared. Dorrin found another grain of sand under her tongue and spat again, in the interests of sport trying to hit the same spot. Again it hit, this time spreading a little before it vanished.

It was hopeless. All she had done was give the village back its dead, to bury or burn, whatever they did with bodies. Scant comfort, and what they needed was water, clean water … again tears came to her eyes, a misery so great she could not hold back her sobs. Her family legacy: poisoned traps, a painting that bled in a frame of bones, a ruined well, dry filth where once there had been clean water. The tears ran down her face, dripped onto the rock, formed a runnel that trickled into the cleft … and spread, a thin film that thickened, widened … Dorrin stared, her tears drying, as the water rose, first just wetting the stone, then deeper, deeper. It touched her boots; she put out her hand … it moved, rich with life and health, wetting her palm, rising around her hand.

Drink. She obeyed, cupping a handful of water and sipping cautiously. Clean, cold, teeth-aching cold … she clutched the bundle of bones and stood.

“Thank you,” she said aloud. “Falk’s grace, Alyanya’s bounty—”

The surface of the water rippled and it rose even faster. Dorrin retreated up the uneven rock surface; it was a hand deep now at the cleft, lapping at her boot where she stood. She reached for the rope, but before she touched it, the water surged up, lifting her with it so fast that all she could do was try to hold the bundle of bones out of it. She was halfway up when she realized how this was going to look—the first female duke in generations, rising out of a well sopping wet and half-naked—but had no time to do more than start a chuckle before she was once more at ground level.

The villagers and her escort had come closer with every successful lift of a rock; her escort had the presence of mind to throw her cloak around her. Dorrin handed the bundle to Sennet.

“These are the bones of the woman and child,” she said.

He looked down; none of the villagers was looking at her. “My lord …” he said in a choked voice.

“Your well once more gives water,” Dorrin said. “By the grace of the gods.”

They all fell on their knees, still staring at the ground. A whiff of roasting mutton came from the village clearing. One of her escort had taken off his own shirt and offered it to her. Dorrin shrugged into the sweaty shirt, put her formal armor back on. No one had moved. This was ridiculous …

“There’s a sheep on the fire,” Dorrin said. “Weren’t we supposed to have a feast to celebrate my birthday?”

Sennet looked up cautiously. “Yes, my lord, but—”

“I know I have brought you three of your own to lay to rest, but can the feast still go on? It would be a shame to waste the sheep.”

Dorrin could not read all the emotions that ran across his face; he still held the bundle of bones.

“We … we can … but it’s different …”

Others were rising now; some hurrying off in the direction of the cooking pit, others to their houses.

“I cannot stay much longer,” Dorrin said. “A royal courier arrived just as I was leaving; I must find out what the prince wants. I would share food with you before I go, if that suits you.”

“Oh, my lord Duke—” He was crying now. Another man came and took the bundle of bones from him; a third helped him up.

“’Tis good water,” one of the women said. She had dipped a waterskin into it without Dorrin noticing, and now took a swallow.

“Efla!”

“Well, it is. If the Duke brings water, shouldn’t we use it?”

“You should ask,” Sennet said, with a glance at Dorrin. “It’s the Duke’s water.”

“It’s the land’s water,” Dorrin said. “And it is returned to you by the gods’ grace; all I did was what they told me, to free it from a curse. But Sennet is right: as it is, with the wall broken, it is not safe. You should build the coping wall again, before a child falls in and drowns. It should not take long, I think?” She looked at Sennet.

“It will be done at once,” he said. “Aren—Tamis—” Men nodded and moved to stones Dorrin had piled. “And yes, my lord, we will share food with you. The men can set stones loose for now and mortar them tomorrow, will that do?”

“Quite well,” Dorrin said.