The Weaving of Wells (Osric's Wand, Book Four) (45 page)

But pretending that he didn’t exist wouldn’t make him go away. It wouldn’t keep him from slaughtering the irua people because he wanted to use the Well of Strands to raise his people from the dead. It wouldn’t keep Osric from taking extreme measures to stop Dredek either. So, Bridgett put all of her effort into shutting down her gift, into blocking out Osric’s fear in an attempt to shut out her own. She stood against the wall, willing herself not to feel, because she was going to do everything she could to make sure that Osric was successful. Either way, she would be there.

* * *

The ruins were a forest of white stone, crumbling and quiet in the early morning sunlight. They rose up out of the forest like ancient trees, overgrown with moss and vines, covered in leaves and in several places soil. Trees had grown up between the stones, pushing aside large sections of the roads and walls and completely toppling some of the structures. Osric and his companions picked their way carefully through the remains of what were once grand, beautiful buildings. There was still evidence of intricate carvings and graceful arches on most of the walls and entranceways. The ceilings had collapsed on many of the larger structures, but it was clear that most of the smaller enclosures were designed with no roof, or perhaps they were made of a material that had disintegrated over time. The tropical region was subject to an immense amount of sunlight and rain almost year-round, and fibrous materials such as cloth or thatching would not remain long once the city was abandoned.

Osric halted their progress frequently to inspect the area using the Stone-Sight to determine the greatest concentrations of strands in the stone far beneath their feet. Their path seemed sporadic to Aridis, who had roamed these ruins for longer than Osric had been alive, but he trusted that they would end up where they needed to be. He had told Osric that he could show him where the area with the greatest power amplification effects was located, but he had no way of knowing if there were factors other than a well contributing to the strength of his Obcasior ability in various places. When Aridis had heard that Osric was planning to execute the finale of his plan from the well in the old elven ruins, he had finally understood why he had been able to see so much of the future’s potential in these crumbling stones. He had never known why he was drawn to the ruins to practice his gift, but the presence of a smaller version of the Well of Strands would explain it. He suspected they would eventually find their way to the dome where he had read the stones so many times, but he had no idea if a structure like the one Bridgett had described might lie below the stone floor.

Aridis was correct in his assumptions about their destination, and he ran his hand along the familiar curve of the stone wall that was still standing in the structure. Much of the dome had collapsed long before he had first seen the ruins, but enough of the building was intact for him to identify its likely purpose. Openings in the stone were perfectly aligned with certain stars and with the sun and moon on days significant to the elves, and he had always suspected that the structure was originally constructed as a site for rituals and specific spells related to the seasons and celebrations. Knowing that a well was somewhere nearby didn’t change Aridis’s opinion, but it did make him wonder if it also hid the power source somewhere beneath them. In all of the years that he had lived near the ruins, Aridis had never attempted to excavate the ruins and see if the structures continued below ground. It was possible that a network of tunnels or preserved rooms with elven artifacts of magic extended beyond the surface ruins that he had explored.

Osric stood at the center of the domed room, gazing down at the stone at his feet and studying the array of magical strands that were woven into the rock and the mortar. The high concentration of free strands was not obvious near the surface, which explained why no Wand-Maker had even taken notice of the wells around the world. However, if he utilized the Stone-Sight ability to peer deep down into Archana, he could see the dense, swirling pool of strands. The floor of the structure had a significant amount of magic in it as well, although it was not the free strands that a Wand-Maker would be used to working with when creating wands. It was a varied and unfamiliar display of protection spells, like the ones he had seen on the island well they had discovered first with Serha, but Osric was not afraid of the spells now as he was then. He stood there silently, closely studying the spells and how they were woven into the stone. Ideally, Osric wanted to find a way into the well without severing the protection spells. It would be easier to leave them intact to keep others out of the site than to attempt to create new ones strong enough to do the job, but they had never discovered the key to deciphering the majority of the book that Trevar and Bridgett had found. Although they had been able to identify a few of the wells and the symbols Trevar needed to enter them, they had made little progress on the secrets the book contained. It was possible that every well’s location and symbols for entrance were recorded in the book, and Osric had brought it with him in hopes that identifying the locations with Gareth’s maps would aid them in sorting out the book’s contents, but Osric wasn’t confident that this would be fruitful. It was more likely that he would only be able to get inside if he could deconstruct the well’s defenses.

There was certainly a hollow space beneath the floor of the domed chamber, but the area couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Osric couldn’t tell if the space was filled with water or air, or even some other substance, but his Stone-Sight told him it was not solid stone or the rocky soil that surrounded and covered much of the ruins. He suspected that the spells on the stone, which were designed to hide the well, were interfering with his ability to use the Stone-Sight gift with accuracy. Yet, he still had enough control over it to combine with the Wand-Maker ability and view the strands on the far side of the thick stone. Directly below them was the well where the strands were most concentrated but somehow contained by the bowl-shaped structure that Bridgett had described to him in vivid detail. He must find a way inside, and he was not willing to begin by trying to harm the ruins or by damaging the intricate web of protection spells that had been cast at the time of its construction. He couldn’t just use the traveling spell, because he had no idea what the inside of the well looked like.

Luckily, the wizards posted at the other well locations didn’t actually need to get inside in order to alter the stone and thus the flow of the strands. Osric, on the other hand, would not be able to utilize the amplification power of the wells for his spells unless he could get inside of the protection spells.

Osric paced back and forth on the stone floor of the half-crumbled building. He thought back to everything they had learned about the wells: their origins, their construction, and the means of entering one of them. Nothing seemed to point him in the direction of how to enter this one. They had the book that contained the symbols for all of the wells, but he had no way of identifying which section in the book correlated to a specific well. Chanda’s visions had been triggered by some of the pages, leading them to several of the wells, but this one was not one of them. If he could identify which page in the book belonged to the Braya well, he would be able to use the symbols to open the portal.

Osric stopped pacing and sat with the book in his lap. He ran his fingers over each page, hoping to trigger his own Seer ability, but none of the pages caused a vision. Many of them caused his Portentist ability to flare up, but it was impossible to accurately read the ability’s meaning because it was not only triggered by one section of the book. It was clear that there was still a great deal he could learn from the book if he could decipher it, and most of the Portentist signals he was getting were mild warnings or subtle hints of importance that didn’t seem urgent. None of them indicated that what he needed right now was on any page in the book. Still, he knew it had to be.

Osric tried examining the book with his Wand-Maker vision, trying to see if the patterns of strands attached to the book could give him some clue about the contents. All he could see were some basic protection spells, mostly to keep the book from weathering with time and moisture, and a few unfamiliar chains of strands along the binding. Osric assumed the chains were another type of protection spell, but he couldn’t tell what it did just by seeing the pattern of the strands. As far as he could tell, it was merely reinforcing the binding of the book to make it more resilient over years of use. In frustration, Osric looked up at his companions. Bridgett was watching him with a quiet, concerned expression softened with a subtle, loving smile. Aridis was sitting down across the room, leaning back against the cool stone wall with his eyes closed and humming softly to himself. Gus was staring up at the stone ceiling. Osric watched the prairie dog, needing to distract himself from the frustration of the book for a moment, and he noticed something he had never noticed before.

When Gus activated his Wand-Maker ability to look at the strands woven into the structure of the domed ceiling, Osric saw a visible surge of magic course through the green orbs that resided in Gus’s eyes—the root of the Wand-Maker gift. Osric blinked, wondering if he had imagined it, but he could still see the steady stream of magic flowing through the orbs as Gus utilized his ability. Osric wondered why he had never noticed it before, but it was subtle and he hadn’t been looking for it. The realization of the gift’s activity made Osric wonder if the other abilities would do the same thing.

“Hey, Gus,” Osric yelled out with feigned urgency. Gus turned quickly, losing his focus on his ability causing the Wand-Maker sight to deactivate. When he noted the stream of strands cease flowing through the green orbs of Gus’s gift, Osric smiled. Osric picked up a small stone and threw it at the prairie dog, causing Gus to shriek in surprise and scuttle to his left. Osric smiled even wider, as he had seen exactly what he had hoped to. At the back of Gus’s skull, the small purple orb of the Portentist gift had flared up to warn Gus of the danger, and Osric had detected the nearly imperceptible flow of magic through that gift as well.

“Hey! What did you do that for?” Gus yelled, his gruff voice echoing off the partial domed ceiling.

“Sorry, but I think you will forgive me when you see what I just saw. How come you never taught me this before?” Osric was only teasing somewhat, as he genuinely couldn’t believe that Gus had never pointed out how magic was channeled through natural abilities just as it was channeled through a wand. “Come over here.”

Gus shuffled his feet, watching Osric to be sure he wasn’t armed with more rocks. When he was close, Osric knelt down on the ground.

“Use your Wand-Maker sight, and watch the orbs for my sight very closely. Are you looking at them?” Gus merely harrumphed in response, but Osric took it as an affirmative. Osric activated his ability, looking at the strands in the stone just as Gus had been. “Do you see it? Did you know that’s how they worked?”

Gus’s ear was twitching rhythmically as he stared at Osric’s eyes, and it took him a moment to form words.

“I must give you more credit than you deserve, you idiot. You think if I had ever seen that before, I would have failed to mention it to you? I taught you everything about your Wand-Maker gift that I could while we were trying to solve the ultimate wand mystery! This is not something I would have left out.”

“It’s the same with the Portentist ability. That’s why I threw the rock at you, to check it out. Uh, sorry.”

“You are obviously forgiven, although you could have chosen a more gentle means of triggering it, don’t you think?”

“It was the first thing that came to mind.” Osric deactivated his Wand-Maker sight, and Gus gasped with glee.

“It turned off! How is it that I’ve never seen this before? Surely I have been examining you while you used one of your abilities.”

“Maybe the exponential growth of power that accompanies the new acquisition of gifts has strengthened our sight to the point where we can see it now, and before you just couldn’t have noticed it?” Osric couldn’t see any other explanation. It seemed obvious that the gifts must have always worked this way, but he had never noticed it before either. However, Osric wasn’t sure if he had ever studied the orbs of the innate gifts closely enough in someone while they were active that he would have noticed it.

“Yeah, that might explain it. It’s phenomenal, although I’m not sure if it was worth throwing a rock at my head. What good does it do us right now? We gotta get you inside this well, not sit around ogling each other’s gifts.”

“Well, that depends,” said Osric. “I think it might help a great deal, but I will need to conduct an experiment first. Are you up to letting me manipulate one of your abilities?”

“You are out of your gift-riddled mind, boy. I’m not gonna let you experiment with the magic that makes me up. What if you break something? I might never be able to use my gifts again!” Gus began backing slowly away from Osric, back toward the other side of the structure. Osric laughed, although he wasn’t confident enough that Gus was wrong to attempt the experiment against the old Wand-Maker’s will.

From across the room, Aridis’s voice drifted softly under the oppressive heat of the mid’day sun. Storm clouds were gathering overhead, and the distant rumble of thunder nearly drowned out his words.

“You can do your experiment on me.”

“Aridis, are you sure?” Bridgett had been following the conversation closely. “Osric, do you think it’s safe? Is Gus right to worry that it might interfere with the ability’s function?”

“I don’t believe so, although there is always a risk when we attempt new uses for or new methods of doing magic. Aridis knows that.” Osric hesitated to make any guarantees, but he really wanted to try what he had in mind. He was fairly confident that there would be no adverse effects.

“It’s all right, Bridgett. I trust Osric to know when my mind cannot take what he intends, and if it will aid our mission then it is a necessary risk.” Aridis rose from his seat against the wall and walked over to Osric. “Go ahead.”