Well of the Damned (36 page)

“You
can’t!” Surraent cried. “This is a part of history.
I deserve— the people deserve to know about the wellspring.”

“The
wellspring is gone,” Gavin said. “Do you hear me? It’s
gone.”

He
blinked his magnified eyes. “Wh—what do you mean ‘gone?’”

“It’s
just a mud pit,” Daia said, tearing out two of the pages from
the encyclopaedia. She crushed them into a ball. “The centuries
haven’t been kind to it.”

Surraent’s
face fell. “Then why do you care whether I write down the
history?”

“He
only copied the part about the wellspring. The rest isn’t in
here.”

“Rest
of what?” Surraent asked. “What is it you don’t
want me to write?”

Gavin
picked up the journal and tucked it under his arm. “Nothing.
Not a damned thing. Nice to see you again, Surraent.” He
started to leave and stopped short. “One more thing,” he
said. “I need a disguise to move around the city without the
people gathering around and calling attention to me. Do you have
anything I can use?”

Surraent
smiled crookedly. “What can you offer in return?”

“He’s
the bloody king,” Daia shouted, her fists clenched tightly.
“When your king asks for aid, you give it without hesitation,
without bartering for trinkets.”

Gavin’s surprise was echoed
in Surraent’s shocked expression. He was usually quick to tire
of the curator’s evasiveness, but apparently Daia was even less
patient.

“I
beg forgiveness,” Surraent said, looking like a frightened
rabbit. “Habit, you know.” He turned his wary eyes to
Gavin. “Why don’t you do it the way King Arek did?”

The
question tickled an old memory from Gavin’s distant past. From
his years as Arek’s champion, Ronor Kinshield. “Explain.”

“Yes.
King Arek was known to have used a magical disguise to enable him to
walk around the city incognito.”

“In-what?”

Surraent
gave him a superior smile. “Incognito. It means with your
identity concealed. I wrote about it in my encyclopaedia.”

“I
haven’t read the whole thing yet,” Gavin said. With
Daia’s help, he could have explored his ancient memory and
remembered what Ronor Kinshield knew, but it was easier to hear what
Surraent had to say. “Go on.”

And
he did. King Arek had found he could change most elements of his
appearance, such as hair and eye color, skin tone, facial features
and weight. He could even make himself look like a woman. The changes
were only illusions, however, and so he couldn’t rely on
anything but his own physical traits.

“Do
you want to try it?” Daia asked. “If it works, it’ll
solve our problem.”

“Can
I make myself shorter?” Gavin asked.

Surraent
flipped a page, shaking his head. “I don’t believe so.
Height seems to be one characteristic he had no success with, though
you could make yourself look frail or portly.”

“What
about my scar? How many giant men with a long scar on his face are
there in Thendylath?”

“Oh,
now that you should be able to hide. You can give yourself different
scars, in fact, or none at all.” Surraent picked up his
encyclopaedia and beckoned Gavin to the room next door and the large
mirror stand inside.

With
a couple lamps lit to brighten the room, Gavin assessed himself from
the knees up. At the moment, with his unshaven face, uncombed hair
and dirty clothes, he looked anything but majestic. It was a wonder
people recognized him at all, unless they expected their king to look
like a warrant knight. Possible, he supposed. The mail shirt and
gemmed sword might also have given him away.

“All
right,” Surraent said, looking down at his book, “it says
here you can change your hair color. Perhaps you’d like to
start with that?”

He
studied the reflection of his dark brown hair, thinking it should be
easy to darken.
Black,
he thought. Nothing happened.
Make
my hair black.
He flicked his gaze to the gems in the hilt of
Aldras Gar, peeking up over his left shoulder, and then concentrated
on pushing his will through them.
Black hair.

“I
see it,” Daia said. “That looks good.” He met her
eyes in the mirror. “Try making it blond.”

He
imagined hair like Edan’s, and the mustache, too, but thicker
like the one he’d worn in his younger days.
Blond hair and
blond mustache. Shaven face.

“Ho!”
Daia said. “That’s amazing. I wouldn’t recognize
you at first. The scar does give your identity away though.”

Gavin
couldn’t help but smile at his reflection. Seeing himself as a
blond was amusing.
No scar.
The skin on his face smoothed to
perfection, erasing evidence of the most traumatic day of his life.
He touched his face, but his fingers felt the whiskers and bumpy
skin, confirming the scar was still there. It just looked gone.
Replace the tooth.
His eyetooth was no longer absent from his
smile. He actually looked like a fairly handsome buck now. “I
could amuse myself for hours with this skill.”

“Can
you disguise me?” Daia asked. “Or is it limited to you?”

He
shrugged, facing her. “Let’s try.” He looked her
over, imagined a more feminine version of Daia, and then pushed that
image towards her with his will. Her enormous new breasts bulged over
the low neckline of her blouse.

She
first scowled at her reflection then shot him an annoyed glare. “I
should’ve known.”

Gavin
doubled over with laughter. The image of her like that was amusing as
hell, but her reaction was doubly so. Even Surraent stifled a laugh
behind his fist, pretending to cough. Reaching towards the illusory
breasts with both hands, Gavin wanted to squeeze them to see how they
felt.

She slapped him away. “Touch
me and you’ll lose your hands, king or not!”

“But
they aren’t real,” he said through his laughter.

“Well,
the breasts underneath the illusion are. Give yourself tits if you
want to feel them.”

And
so he did. Now all three of them guffawed at the sight of Gavin with
his blond hair and mustache and gigantic, hairy tits bulging beneath
a billowy pink blouse. To his disappointment, his hands passed
through the false bosoms as he squeezed nothing but air.

They
created such a rumpus, Tolia opened the door and leaned partway into
the room. She gasped in horror and pressed one hand to her heart.
“Gavin? Oh, my heavens. I don’t think I want to know
what’s going on in here.” With that, she shut the door
again, prompting renewed laughter from the three inside.

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.”