The Wellspring (21 page)

“You see through the glamour! That’s never
happened before! You’ve never done it before!”

“I don’t know who you are, but you need to
let go of me right now.”

He smiled widely and Yule’s breath caught.
“Yule, it’s me, it’s Marc Woodmont, I swear it is.” And she knew he
was telling the truth, because she knew that smile. “I have to wear
a glamour disguise to prevent the Atlanteans from recognizing me,
but you can see through it!”

“You’re one of them?” she accused him.
“You’ve been an Archetypum all this time and pretended to be—” She
broke off and shrugged out of his grasp.

“How has this happened?” he wondered aloud,
looking her over like the answer might magically appear.

“I don’t know and I don’t care!” she cried.
“I’ve never really known who you are! I’ve never had—” She stopped
herself before she blurted out that she never had a chance in hell
at dating him and wouldn’t have wasted time daydreaming about the
possibility if she’d known what he was and how he looked.
“Just—stay away from me!”

“I don’t understand,” he replied, clearly
confused by her attitude. “Now that you know I can tell you how I
feel about you! We don’t have to have any secrets between us.”

“How you
feel
about me?” she echoed.
“What the hell does that mean?”

“You can see through my glamour, but my love
is still hidden from you?” he teased genially.

Cold rage washed through her and she stepped
forward without thinking, delivering a hard slap to the handsome
face it would have occurred to her to dare to caress. She found the
surprise on his sculpted visage satisfying.

“Whoever you are,
whatever
you are,
stay away from me,” she ordered with quiet fury. Then she turned on
one heel and stalked away from him, going to the rooftop door.

“Yule, you can’t mean that!” he called after
her. “I love—” the thick, heavy door snapped shut on his
declaration and Yule burst into tears, hurrying down the seemingly
interminable stairwell to her door—and into Hermes’ waiting
arms.

The days passed more and more rapidly after
that. Yule focused on forgetting Marc and finding a job. Hermes
initially remained doggedly at her side, but he soon realized there
were guardian imps protecting her and slowly resumed his usual
routine.

The only things from which Hermes and the
imps could not protect her were the nightmares that dogged her
sleep.

She stood in Shangrilonn once more. Night
blanketed the surrounding jungle and only the occasional cries of
some night hunting predator echoed up to where she stood at the
feet of the black Goddess.

“Faithless.”

It was like a whisper, but it roared across
the jungle, silencing the animals and even the wind itself. Yule
spun around and looked up, a shard of terror lancing through her
body as she realized two baleful green eyes were open and looking
down at her.

The Goddess was angry.

“You denied me,” the Goddess accused.

“No! Not you!” Yule denied shrilly. “It was a
mistake, that’s all! They thought I was something I'm not!”

“Your lack of faith has capped the well.”

Yule shook her head violently. “No! That
isn’t how it works!”

“You presume to know the way of magic when
you lock it out of your soul?” There was a long, low rumbling
within the mountain and several rocks pelted down the steep slope,
past Yule’s bare feet.

“I didn’t! I just wasn’t born with any!” Yule
tried to explain, backing away from the trembling stone.

“The faithless will perish,” intoned the
Goddess. And now the rumble became a grinding, ripping sound as the
statue shrugged one shoulder and pulled free of the mountain.

Yule gasped, her foot catching on one of the
fallen stones, tripping her so that she fell back upon the grass,
staring up in wide-eyed horror as the black stone behemoth dragged
itself free of the mountain in which it had been enfolded for
uncounted centuries. The Goddess looked around the jungle for a
moment then slowly turned her baleful gaze upon Yule. Yule screamed
and got to her feet, fleeing blindly through the jungle, hands
outstretched before her as she pushed through hanging vines and
drooping branched.

The ground shook under her feet, accompanied
by a thunderous boom and Yule knew the Goddess walked upon the
earth! Each booming footstep behind her was accompanied by the
crash and snap of tree trunks being demolished under massive stone
feet and Yule couldn’t help uttering a shrill scream of
anticipation at being crushed beneath a foot at the next boom.

She suddenly broke through the heavy curtain
of jungle into a small clearing and staggered, throwing herself on
the ground to keep from running headlong off a high cliff into the
foaming sea far below! Yule jumped to her feet and cast about
wildly in search of some other route of escape, but there was only
the cliff, the sea and—she looked up and screamed. The Goddess
loomed over the treetops, bending towards her, a blacker outline
against the star-speckled sky, eyes glowing like green fire.

“Die, unbeliever!” intoned the Goddess,
reaching toward her.

Yule screamed, stepping back, and found
herself in Prosser Teomond’s arms! He wasn’t looking at her, he was
glaring at the Goddess.

“No! I won’t allow this to happen!” he
shouted, raising a hand and firing a magical blast of power at the
Goddess.

The gargantuan statue roared in pain and
rage, the jungle shattering and the night sky peeling away like
melting wallpaper in a fire. Yule screamed too and woke, but not to
her bedroom. She woke to the jungle, and the cliff, and Prosser’s
arms! This wasn’t Shangrilonn, the stars were wrong for that.
Instinctively she knew this was Atlantis, but how had she gotten
there?

“You take the side of the faithless?” the
cold, enraged voice drew her eyes back to the jungle and Yule drew
in a sharp breath of fear when she saw Sheirienu, robed in
darkness, standing there.

“She isn’t faithless, Sheiri, she’s just a
girl. You have to let her live her life in peace now,” Prosser
tried to reason with the First Witch of the Tahain Grotto.

“She denied her heritage, her destiny, and
the Goddess!” Sheiri shouted.

“We were wrong, that’s all!” he contradicted
her, guiding Yule to stand behind him. Yule looked over her
shoulder and saw the sea lashing itself into white foam against
jagged rocks. She wrapped her arms around Prosser’s waist and
closed her eyes, pressing her face against his back.

“And now you’ll let her destroy you? When the
Council calls her to swear you kidnapped her, what will happen to
your career?” Sheiri demanded.

“It was a mad impulse,” he told her. “The
thought of all of that power—was too much for me to resist. I
suppose that means I wasn’t meant to have it.”

“You’ll lose the Throne!”

“Then I’ll lose it,” he said simply.

“And what about my position?”

“Sheiri, we made a mistake, we should be
willing to pay the price for it,” he said reasonably.

Yule heard the woman scream something
unintelligible and wondered if it was a word, a simple outcry of
rage, or an incantation, but she braced for impact because it
sounded like something physical would come on the heels of all
three.

Crimson light burst all around them and Yule
gasped at the force of the killing spell just unleashed at them as
well as the power it took to shield them from it. She felt
Prosser’s muscles bunch under her arms as he strained both
physically and magically then he relaxed, the crimson faded, and he
tensed again as he retaliated with a spell.

“Sheiri, please stop this!” he pleaded.

“Not until she’s dead,” the sayer vowed, and
Yule thought her voice sounded like ice being chipped from a larger
block.

“All of the power in the world isn’t worth
that,” he extolled.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve done to bring
the two of you together?” Sheiri snarled and Yule felt the ground
beneath their feet tremble as power slammed against the cliff wall.
“I ensnared her mind and made her hide in the back of your car—or
did you think that was just some amazing coincidence of fate?”

“Sheiri did that?” Yule whispered.

“You were the one who did that?” Prosser
echoed Yule’s thought. “Why?”

“I hoped the two of you would find each other
interesting enough for at least one round of hot, sweaty sex,
especially after I primed her with a couple of erotic dreams, but
neither of you would make a move.” She sighed heavily. “Just as
well, since she’s not the Wellspring. Too bad for her parents,
though.” The cliff shuddered again and Yule looked out from behind
Prosser.

“My parents?”

“If I’d known you weren’t the Wellspring I
wouldn’t have ripped away the wind when they were leaving the
Shelf,” Sheiri said casually and Yule felt her blood run cold.

“You killed them?” Yule asked with a voice
suddenly hoarse.

“Just like I’m killing you,” the sayer
replied. She raised a hand and another blast smashed into the
cliff, the edge finally crumbling from the assault and pitching
Yule and Prosser toward the sea.

Yule felt no fear as they fell. She distantly
heard Prosser shout a spell to call the wind, heard Sheiri laughing
and shouting that a dampening field ensnared them which Yule knew
meant no magic could work—but it all seemed to be happening very
far away. All she could think was that the woman who’d killed her
parents was laughing, and that had to stop.

The wind was suddenly around them, truly
around them, rushing and roaring, holding them aloft even as the
cliff continued to crumble toward Sheiri. Yule clung to Prosser and
watched as the cliff fell away to the sea and Sheiri, ensnared by
her own dampening field, fell helplessly with it, screaming, to the
jagged rocks and crushing waves.

This scene faded and was replaced by Yule’s
living room. She was still clutching him tightly and slowly
released her grip, stepping back from him.

“I don’t know what happened,” his voice was
low and shaken. “We were in a snare, I felt it. My power was gone,
but somehow—”

“You saved both of us, Magus Teomond. It
was—awful, but she would have killed us.”

“I know,” he agreed. “I’ll have to notify the
Council—explain what happened.”

“I’ll tell them as well,” she supported him.
He nodded at this and looked surprised when she hugged him. “Fair
winds, Magus,” she bade him good fortune—and goodbye.

Yule was closing the lid on her picnic basket
when Hermes entered the kitchen with his Viking (whose name she’d
eventually learned was Haraldr), laughing at something they’d been
discussing in the next room.

“A picnic basket, Dorothy?” Hermes
teased.

“I’m having lunch in the Grove,” she told
him. “I’m showing a house in the area so I thought I’d visit.”

“You’re still guarding it?” asked Harry. “But
I thought it was safe now?”

“It is,” Yule assured him. “The planned
community is including it in the courtyard design, they’re even
adding a fountain. I just like to spend time there.”

“So you’ll be gone all day?” Hermes asked
with a familiar twinkle in his dark eyes, throwing Haraldr a
wink.

“Yes, the two of you may move as much
furniture as you like.” Yule smiled and shook her head. “You know,
I was thinking that I might like to take one of the new condos by
the Grove—once they’re built,” she told Hermes.

“Leave the nest?” Hermes exclaimed.

“The nest is getting crowded,” she genially
observed. “I think I need to find another branch.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t feel like we’re
crowding you out?” Hermes was concerned and she hugged him.

“No, it’s just getting to be that time, you
know? I need to be on my own, maybe move some of my own furniture.”
She winked at Haraldr and he grinned.

“Has Marc started calling again?” Hermes
asked.

Yule picked up her basket. “No, and I don’t
expect he will anymore.”

“Good, he was always calling at the wrong
time,” Haraldr complained. “Maybe if you’d taken his calls you
could have set a schedule.”

“I didn’t want to encourage him,” she said,
walking to the front door. “He was only interested because he
thought I might be—someone I’m not,” she finished, she and Hermes
having agreed not to mention what they now called “the Wellspring
business” to any of their friends.

“Too bad, but that happens more often than
you might think,” Harry consoled. “You will find someone else to
help with your furniture.”

“Thanks, Harry. See the two of you tonight.”
She gave them a wave as she left the condo.

Hours later she made her way along the path
leading into the now deserted Grove, spreading her picnic out on
the stone altar. “I sold the house,” she announced to the Grove.
“And I told Hermes I wanted to move out. I think it’s the right
choice, he and Harry need the privacy. I really think they’re going
to last.”

“It sounds like you’re doing well,” the quiet
voice startled Yule and she turned toward the stone arch of the
ancient doorway, losing her balance and tumbling from the altar
with a small, surprised cry. “Are you all right?” Yule blinked and
looked up into the rich emerald depths of Marc Woodmont’s eyes as
he bent anxiously over her, his long black hair falling
forward.

“I’m fine,” she told him, getting to her
feet, ignoring the hand he held out to offer assistance. “What are
you doing here?”

“I’m visiting all of the Groves formerly part
of the Reclamation Project,” he told her. “It’s part of the
follow-up plan, to observe changes whether positive or negative.”
He offered his patented smile that she recognized even on this
exquisite face. “It all seems pretty positive around here.”