The Wellspring Read online

  Palm and tulip trees surrendered to the spider trees (as Yule thought of them, having no idea what they were actually called), and with them went the aquamarine light. The spider trees were bare of lower branches, slippery smooth and sleek like a well groomed model’s leg, all the way up until the very top where they seemed to explode with massive sea green afros. While enough olive drab light trickled through to grant the occasional fern or flowering shrub existence, the jungle floor was startlingly bare and open now and it was impossible to ignore the cathedral like atmosphere pervasive in the gloom among the thick columns of towering trees. Living things moved above the canopy, they could hear the birdcalls and monkey screeches, but they seemed to experience these things at an impenetrable distance.

  Now and then they came across a fallen giant resting against its family members, draped with heavy moss, creating lofty overpasses under which they cautiously passed, silently wondering if today was the day they continued their journey to the jungle floor. But they remained aloft and seemed sturdy enough, especially when they rounded one particularly massive spider tree trunk and surprised a large spotted cat taking a stroll down one of these overpasses. Yule immediately imagined a leopard leaping onto them, but the cat was the wrong size, too big, and the spots were the wrong shape and size. Not a leopard or a jaguar, she decided, peering around Hermes who’d immediately taken a protective stance between her and the cat. The big cat ignored them for the most part, barely glancing their way as it finished its course to the ground then vanished around the long roots of a spider tree, but not before Yule spotted a thin gold chain around its neck from which was suspended a medallion or charm, she couldn’t tell. There was the brief glint of gold then cat and mysterious necklace were gone. She described what she’d seen to the others with an attitude that changed from excited to defensive as the others appraised her with tolerance.

  “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.

  Chapter Six

  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.

/>   “Do you think it’s a good sign or a bad one that we haven’t heard a single war drum or stumbled into any ancient traps?” asked Alan as he used a stick to poke at the outer embers of their campfire.

  “Personally, a little activity of some kind would be better than this—anticipation,” Brenna complained with a little shiver.

  “You want someone to attack us?” scoffed Yule.

  “Not attack,” Brenna clarified. “Contact, maybe a warning imp, just something apart from this—nothing.”

  “There might be nothing because there’s no one here to do any of those other things,” Jory ventured.

  “That helped,” Brenna enthused with blatantly false cheer.

  “Settle down,” Marc scolded gently. “I understand that it’s unnerving to find these monuments to a civilization, but no civilization. This area may be untraveled in present day, abandoned and forgotten since the Old War. Tomorrow we’ll continue inland and maybe we’ll find answers to our questions. Let’s get some sleep.”

  “I’ll take first watch,” Hermes volunteered. “Even if there aren’t any Archetypum hanging around, we know there are big cats, and there could be other predators to worry about.”

  Marc nodded. “Wake me in two hours and I’ll take second watch.”

  “I’ll take third,” Alex volunteered.

  “We will,” Alan corrected.

  “Good, it’ll be dawn by then so next night, Jory and Brenna can take first watch,” Marc volunteered them.

  “What about Yule?” the redhead complained.

  “Do you think she can hold off one of those big cats with a stick?” asked Jory.

  “She’s right, I should help,” Yule acknowledged. “I’ll stand watch with Hermes."