The Wellspring (17 page)

“That’s quite an imagination you’ve got,”
Alan finally observed. “I don’t suppose it had matching
earrings?”

“That isn’t amusing,” Hermes remarked, gazing
after the direction the big cat had taken.

“Yule’s never seemed overly imaginative,”
Brenna inserted helpfully, her backhanded pretense at defending
Yule further illustrated by the slight smirk on her inviting
lips.

“Maybe not, but it wouldn’t take too much
imagination to see a unicorn around the corner,” Jory put in. “This
whole place seems—unnatural.”

“Artificial is more like it,” Alex supported
Jory’s observation. “Things are just too—exactly as they should be.
Everything in its place, like a kid’s room that’s been cleaned. All
of the toys are put away and the floor is swept clean. Not like it
was in the lower jungle at all.”

“As if someone cleaned for company,” Yule
mused under her breath. Marc Woodmont looked unconvinced by the
exchanges and motioned toward the path as he took the lead, the
others following behind him in a loose line, Yule then Hermes
coming along at the end. They hiked on for another ninety minutes,
avoiding several branches of streams. Although they were now
walking far to the left of the main creek, they always maintained
it within hearing distance and so kept their course with assurance.
Sunlight started to present itself between the upright roots and
trunks in their path and soon they reached the edge of wide,
roughly circular clearing where blasted trunks failed to sprout new
growth and nearly uniform grass held sway over any other foliage.
After a thorough spell-search, the Falmont brothers announced that
although the clearing reeked of residual magic, doubtless the magic
that had ripped up this part of the jungle, the area was safe and
there were no traps laying in wait for them. They had no idea how
much farther they had to go, but they were relatively certain they
were making good time to wherever it was based on the position of
the sun. Winding through the jungle would be faster, but using the
wind on the Shelf was a dangerous proposition, particularly in
unexplored places like this one.

Other than for the blasted gray trunks
thrusting their jagged teeth through the green copper sward, the
area was generally agreeable, softened by grass where the irregular
cluster of bright flowers broke through to attract even more
brilliant butterflies to sample their nectar. Catching sight of the
creek again, its embankment much lower here, dancing along the
right edge of the blast area, they deigned to walk the perimeter of
the clearing to avoid being potentially spotted from above, and
halted on the bank of the creek just inside the tree line. They all
concurred that a brief respite and light meal would refresh them so
they settled on the grass, passed around packs of dried fruits,
meats, and dipped water from the unpolluted creek.

They were lounging in relatively
companionable silence when a hummingbird seemingly composed of
emeralds, rubies, and sapphires, danced around Yule as if she were
a flower upon which it wanted to sup. No matter where she ducked it
followed her movements, giving everyone a laugh until Hermes told
her to sit still. When she did, the tiny, iridescent bird alighted
atop her head causing gales of renewed laughter that surprised it
enough that it sped away to find less noisy flowers.

They continued their journey inland, keeping
company with the creek again, and were soon deeply embraced by the
sylvan arms of the jungle again. The terrain grew steeper and it
became a struggle to walk, and while the path rose, the land around
them rose higher until they realized they were in an ancient
canyon, possibly cut by the very creek they followed in untold
millennia past when it had been a powerful river. A distant rushing
sound grew steadily louder as they advance and they were finally
confronted by a water rising straight up a fern festooned cliff.
Here they had to part company with the creek and follow a course
that didn’t require climbing gear or magic to raise them up, and
the trail they forged gradually evened out. Now the trees were
firmly rooted under the earth and they possessed wide, spreading
branches draped sumptuously with bright green vines and thick, hair
like, gray-green moss. So densely did both things grow that it was
like passing through an outdoor bazaar where each parted tent flap
simply revealed another tent. It was impossible to see more than a
few feet in any direction and Yule found the experience
irritatingly claustrophobic.

Marc finally stopped and waited for everyone
to cluster around him. “This is becoming, well, sinister,” he
voiced the opinion they all felt. “It’s like being caught in a maze
of clotheslines where you never know what might be waiting on the
other side of the day’s clean bed sheets.”

“That sounds more like the kind of
observation Yule would make,” Alan pretended to be ignorant of the
creepy atmosphere.

“Hardly,” Marc disagreed. “Brenna said Yule
isn’t known for being imaginative.” His observation extracted low,
nervous laughter from the others.

“Aside from eeriness and jokes, there’s the
very real potential to become separated from each other in this
mess,” Hermes pointed out, silencing the laughter.

“You’re right, of course,” Marc agreed.
“We’ll need everyone to focus their magic on keeping the foliage
pushed back until the last person has passed through in order to
maintain constant sight of each other.”

“What I’m worried about is if this stuff can
hide us from each other doesn’t that mean it can be hiding someone
else from us?” Jory ventured, eyeing the moss and vines
suspiciously.

“It could,” Marc allowed.

“So keep your guards up,” Hermes put in.

“At least it smells wonderful,” Yule opined
with a smile. “Like my grandmother’s spice rack.”

“I thought it smelled of lilacs,” Alan
countered.

“No, it’s a little like Be O.C.,” Brenna
compared it to a relatively expensive fragrance identified with a
fashionable clothing store of the same name.

“Which means it’s probably not natural
growth,” Marc alerted them to the probability that the moss and
vines were magically enhanced. “Like Hermes said, stay on guard for
anything.”

They pressed on for nearly two more hours and
Yule was beginning to fear they’d have to make night camp amidst
the jungle draperies when Marc suddenly shouted, “I’m at the end of
it!” A tunnel of light opened upon the string of walkers through
which they followed Marc Woodmont into a breathtaking scene they
did not imagine encountering, as each hurried into the open light
and stopped, stock still, openly gaping.

The view with which they were faced would
have impacted them like a visual blow under any circumstances;
having struggled with claustrophobia and the weird sense of
isolation for the last two hours, it towered ahead and over them
their tiny expedition party with the compelling impact of a true
believer’s encounter with the source of his faith.

Yule’s initial response was awe at the
colossal chiseled forest of paired pillars, each crowned by massive
cats, like the one they’d seen in the jungle, leaping in graceful
arcs toward each other, forming lofty archways. These feline
monuments flanked and outlined a grassy concourse onto which they
hesitantly stepped, the spell-casters searching for traps and
blockades with their power. Beyond the avenue of big cats an
edifice loomed, carved from the black volcanic cliff face and
polished to a matte finish. The boulevard led directly to the open
maw of a snarling panther like cat, also hewn from the black stone,
but cleverly (and unsettlingly), its tremendous fangs were white
marble set into the jaws of the totem—

“Door,” Yule whispered incredulously. “It’s a
door!”

“You’re right,” Marc agreed, also seeing the
empty black inside the big cat’s mouth. Darkness that wasn’t stone,
but an aperture. “Wait here, I’ll go in first.”

“Is that wise?” asked Hermes. “What if we’re
being watched?”

“Then whatever or whoever is watching us
knows we’re here and hasn’t tried to stop our approach or attack
us.”

“Yet,” Jory added then shrugged when they all
looked at him. “Just saying.”

"We’ll go,” Alex suddenly spoke up and Alan
nodded. “Marc, you’re crucial to the expedition and ultimately,
we’re expendable.” He held up a hand when someone might have
protested. “If anything happens, get out of here.” They turned from
the group and walked resolutely to the angry feline face,
hesitated, then stepped into its maw.

“How long do we wait?” Yule finally asked
Hermes when she guessed nearly twenty minutes had passed.

“I think we’ve already waited too long,” Jory
replied impulsively.

But as he said this a figure emerged from the
dark mouth and Alan Falmont stared at them with a strange, distant
amazement on his freckled face. He motioned them all closer, then
his knees seemed to buckle under him and he sat down hard on the
grass which elicited an almost childlike smile from the usually
humorless young man. The group dashed forward to render whatever
assistance he might need.

“Alan, are you all right?” Marc inquired
anxiously. “Where’s Alex?”

“He’s on the other side,” Alan told them.
“It’s all right, you can go through. He just didn’t want to leave
her right away. You’ll see.”

Marc looked from Alan to the open doorway
then to the other members of the expedition. “He shouldn’t be left
alone,” he told them.

“I’ll stay with him,” Brenna immediately
volunteered. “I’m not going through there until somebody brings me
back a no-spiders report.”

“I’ll stay with them,” Jory also volunteered.
“It’s probably safer if we don’t split our groups too small.”

Marc nodded. “Good idea.” He, Hermes, and
Yule rose from their crouch and turned toward the doorway. Brenna
and Jory took up watchful positions on either side of the still
bemused Alan and looked on as the other three stepped into the
blackness and were swallowed up by the enormous cat.

“Who do you think this her is?” Yule
whispered, wincing at the echo on the cave walls.

A halo of light appeared in Marc’s hand
illuminating the three of them and the well-worn path through the
cave. “I don’t know. Maybe a native?”

“Maybe a member of the Tahain Grotto,” Hermes
offered grimly.

“Can we go with Marc’s answer?” Yule
suggested. The cave floor dipped very slightly then rose back into
light and they emerged on a grassy ledge where Alex awaited them on
his knees, alone, so far as they could tell.

“Alex, are you okay?” Marc asked as he
crouched by the young man. Hermes looked left and right, but the
slopes of volcanic rock afforded no hiding places for bushwhackers
and a prodigious waterfall cascaded down the slope to the immediate
right of the cave. Beyond Alex, the grassy ledge dropped onto a
staircase of the same volcanic rock and those stairs mounted the
next low hill. Trees and flowering shrubs prevented them from
seeing what lay beyond that, but from where she stood beside
Hermes, Yule could see no overt threat, or any sign of the her Alan
mentioned.

“Marc, who do you think—” Yule began, turning
as she asked the question and struck mute as the question was
answered, but not by Marc. The titanic figure gazed down at them
from a staggering height. The strength and compassion in the face
reminiscent of renderings of Jesus or even Buddha, except that this
was not a he, this was a her. Not just a her, this was Her, She,
the first of all feminine kind in glorious representation of
health, fertility and creation. There was no obesity to her
generous curves, rounded belly, and full breasts, merely an homage
to the life she’d given and the promise of more life to come. The
parting between her lush thighs was the portal through which they’d
passed and the waterfall cascading to the right poured from cleft
of an overtly phallic urn which she carried under her right arm,
the left hand supporting the head of it. This was Aphrodite,
Bastet, Ishtar, Nammu, and the nameless Mother Of All whose rounded
feminine sexuality was the first undisputed example of Upper
Paleolithic art.

Yule felt her knees against the grass as she
gazed raptly at the first Goddess and realized that she and the
three men present were kneeling together like children at their
mother’s feet. “She is remembered,” she whispered.

“This means they’re real,” Marc breathed
excitedly. “The Archetypum exist!”

“Not necessarily,” Hermes voiced caution. “It
means they did exist, but there was never any question of that.
This carving is ancient, possibly as old as the first people of
this place, but it doesn’t mean those people are still living here.
As far as anyone knows, only plant and basic animal life still live
on the Shelf. The Old War took everything else.”

“Not everything,” Yule corrected him quietly,
smiling up at the serene stone face.

Hermes laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll fetch the others. It’s nearly sunset and we should make camp
on this side.”

“Why not on the other side?” asked Alex, his
stunned senses finally returning.

“It’s too open,” Hermes explained. “This side
is more sheltered and easier to defend.”

“That seems to suggest you’re expecting
trouble,” Marc observed.

“I always expect trouble,” Hermes told
him.

The fire popped and crackled comfortingly as
the small expedition party engaged in lively debate over their list
of discoveries under the watchful eyes of the great stone Goddess.
During their debate, Yule began to piece together parts of the
subplot of her life to which she was not previously privy.

She wasn’t the sole candidate for the title
of Wellspring, she couldn’t decide if this information consoled or
disappointed her. But it wasn’t until her parents’ trip to
Shangrilonn that Yule’s candidacy leapt to the top of the list,
particularly for the Tahain Grotto. She was surprised to learn that
the Throne sanctioned an ongoing investigation into identifying the
Wellspring, not that the investigation was publicized or even known
beyond an elite circle of Magus, like Prosser Teomond. She felt
angry and saddened about the secrets surrounding her life, but
Hermes assured her nothing was done to harm her, it was all kept
from her so that she could enjoy a normal life. Besides, he pointed
out, she might not be the Wellspring and all the intrigue and
expectations would have ultimately amounted to disappointment. She
countered this by pointing out she’d rather not be a Wellspring,
thank you very much, and her companions laughed.