19. A Priest in the Well

When I awoke, the first thing that struck me was the suffocating heat, as if I had been put in an oven. I heard breathing, murmuring, and a coughing fit. Finally, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. It felt as if it had been broken. I opened my eyes. And for a long time I just stared at the stalactites hanging from the rocky ceiling. A strange energy floated in the air and enveloped me in a dizzying mantle.

At last, I sat up and blinked, half-fainting, feeling as if I had rolled down a flight of stairs. I was sore all over. Someone had taken my shirt off, and I could clearly see the marks of the blows. I had little doubt as to who had done this barbarism: it could only have been Warok. Well, at least he had left me alive… hadn’t he?

My eyes wandered around. I was in a cave. There were turrets of rock going up and others going down. I was standing on a sort of wooden platform, and near me there were people. They were all children, older or younger. There were about twenty of them and most of them were asleep. Strangely enough, in the cave there was a faint light which seemed to come from… I turned my head. From another cave?

A shadow blocked my view, and I slowly looked up at a smiling human face. It was missing a tooth.

“Welcome to the Well, shyur,” he said. And, as I looked at him, dazed, he added, “Ayo.”

I nodded slightly, dazed.

“Ayo.”

The boy smiled wider at me.

“You look more awake than most. What’s your name?”

I rubbed my face. Why did I feel so tired? I said:

“Draen.”

“Just Draen?”

“Draen the Sharpy.”

“Ah,” the boy smiled. “I’m Rogan. Rogan the Priest. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep your shirt. It’s a little tight on me, but the one I had on was about to go back to the spirit world.”

I saw that he was pointing to some tattered clothes—a simple rag would have been more substantial than those. I shrugged. My shirt was the least of my concerns. It was deadly hot in that cave anyway.

“They beat the shit out of you,” Rogan added.

I huffed and puffed and confessed:

“I’m aching all over.”

“No wonder. These guys are crazy as hell.” He gestured eloquently with his index finger to his temple. “The more you mess with them, the more they beat you up. Fortunately, no one here dares to stay long, because of the white foam. They get the beads, give us food, and then get out of here.”

I followed the direction of his gaze and came to see a large gate with strong bars. Beyond it, all was dark. Rogan crouched beside me.

“How old are you, shyur?”

“Almost eleven,” I replied.

Rogan arched an eyebrow.

“Really? I would’ve sworn you were around nine.”

I rolled my eyes and curled up, resting my forehead on my knees. I felt terrible. A hand patted my shoulder, and I winced in pain.

“Oops. Sorry, shyur,” Rogan said. “I wanted to tell you not to worry. It’s normal for you to feel drained: it happens to all of us at first. Like I said, it’s this cave that’s enchanted because of the foam. With time, you get used to it. It goes like this: the first two days, you just watch, then the next two days you pick up one pearl, then two for five days, and after that, like any spirit, you have to bring back three a day before the bong rings!”

I lifted my head, looked at him, and suddenly thinking of Yerris, I turned to the others, looking for him.

“Where is Yerris?” I asked.

Rogan gave me a surprised look.

“Yerris? Who’s Yerris?”

I rose awkwardly to my feet, and under the exhausted eyes of the awakened gwaks, I walked barefoot on the platform. I examined them all. And finally, a terrible disappointment came over me. Yerris was not there.

“They killed him,” I stammered.

Rogan had approached cautiously, looking worried.

“Did they capture you with a friend?” he inquired.

I shook my head.

“No. They caught the Black Cat a long time ago.”

Rogan suddenly seemed to understand.

“Ah! You mean the Black Cat, the Mysterious Vagrant. But are you really a friend of his? That’s news. This Cat is always looking for who knows what in the white foam. He spends hours wandering around this hellhole like it doesn’t affect him. You always think he’s dead, and he always comes back. Dart!” He exclaimed when he saw me staggering. He caught me and helped me to lie down. “There, there, you don’t want to faint on your feet, do you? Come on, don’t think about anything else and go to sleep. The meal will come soon.”

I shook my head and muttered with deep relief:

“Yerris is alive.”

I let out a long sigh. Yerris, the Black Cat, the harmonica player, my street mentor, he was alive! I smiled, and for a moment, I turned my attention to the energy that was vibrating around me. I had an epiphany, and suddenly I knew where this feeling of exhaustion was coming from, as if a leech was sucking the life out of me. It was the energy of this cave that was gradually absorbing my jaypu. Without much difficulty, I transformed a strand of morjas into inner energy, and I felt myself come back to life.

I sat up again.

“You’re a stubborn one,” Rogan snorted.

I scratched my head and realized that my cap had been taken off as well. Bah. It was of no use to me where I was, anyway. I turned to Rogan, who was watching me with a half-serious, half-distracted pout.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

Rogan huffed.

“Spirits, what a question… Well, I think twenty-eight bongs. That is, twenty-eight days, probably. Most of the ones sleeping are newbies,” he added, gesturing vaguely to the gwaks lying on the boards. “You know? Right now, I think you’re the only one I’ve seen getting up and staying up with his eyes open this long after his first awakening. Don’t tell me you have dragon blood in your veins?”

I smiled slightly.

“Ah, who knows. What was that about pearls?”

Rogan looked at me thoughtfully, and then he stood up.

“Follow me and see.”

I followed him to the end of the cave, to another about the same size, from which all the light which illuminated the first came. It was a blinding light, white and unearthly. I sneezed, and after blinking for a moment, I could see the foam of which Rogan had spoken. A few feet away from me was a tunnel flooded with light. And to my left there was another, and a third a bit further…

“Looks like milk, doesn’t it?” Rogan said. “It’s like being in the Tunnels of Light. The only difference is that, instead of Spirits of Light, we’re gwaks doomed to be exploited by our hunters to death. We mine pearls from these tunnels and give them to our captors. May they rot and their spirits remain trapped in nothingness forever,” he declared.

The absorbing energy was even denser there, and I was overcome with fear as I realized that it was dragging my jaypu with its claws. I backed up to the entrance of the other cavern and then croaked:

“It’s horrible.”

Rogan shrugged.

“You’ll get used to it, shyur. You even get used to the heat. I can’t help but think: if only they could have captured me at the beginning of winter!” he joked. He shook his head, became more serious again, and led me back to the platform, saying, “It’s warmer here than when you’ve got the fire in the fireplace burning beneath you. And I say that from experience. Do you know I once nearly burst into flames in a fireplace?”

I looked at him in disbelief.

“For real?”

“For real and in Drionsan.” He stopped midway to tell me, “I was a Charity kid in the temple. And I was a chimney sweep. I almost died of suffocation more than once, I swear. Then my master died. The new one was a real scrooge, he was starving me to death!” With a face that could not be more serious, he added: “One night, I received a visit from my ancestors. They said to me, ‘So, Rogan! You, who are so learned and intelligent, are going to let this glutton gorge himself while you starve?’ You can imagine how frightened I was when I saw them appear before me, because I don’t even know my ancestors, but they found me. Unbeliever the one who doesn’t believe me! And I saw them very clearly, I swear,” he assured me. I looked at him, smiling, both amused and fascinated by his story. The Priest held up both hands and concluded, “I took the advice, of course: how could I stand against my ancestors? So I turned in my brush, fled to the Cats, and changed profession.”

He didn’t specify which one, but I guessed it anyway. The daily life of the gwak was a “beg-or-bite, satiate your hunger, do not get caught”. A hectic profession to which children of all styles and characters aspired, but it had to be said that this Priest seemed to be a singular gwak.

I noticed the silence and understood that he was waiting for me to speak and perhaps to show my trust too by telling him about myself. I hesitated and finally said:

“I come from the valley. From the valley of Evon-Sil. But I’ve been in Estergat for a year.”

The chimney sweep got a dreamy look on his face.

“Dart. I’ve always wanted to get out of this dunghill and go on an adventure in the mountains. They say that the anchorites go into the valley to communicate with the Spirits of the Sun. That’s what a priest told me, but he wasn’t even close to being an anchorite,” he laughed, pretending to prop up a huge belly. He sighed. “Blessed are those who worship the spirits and feed the body as well as the soul. No matter how much I worship them day and night, they won’t even give me a bite. There must be a reason! A jailer at Carnation once told me: you wretched bastard, gwaks like you, disinherited people with no ancestors and no name, are better off spirited than alive; when you are spirits, at least you help the unfortunate; on the other hand, when you are alive, you are a scourge to society, worse than bedbugs and fleas!” he proclaimed, waving an accusing index finger. And he sighed again. “Boo. That jailer would be quite happy, now, if he saw me in this hell.” He paused meditatively and said, changing his tone, “I’m going to get a drink of water. Are you thirsty?”

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“Ragingly, very,” I said.

“Then come with me.”

I followed him to what turned out to be a small natural spring filled with hot water. That is where the suffocating mist that hung in the air came from. I drank deeply. I had the impression to be sweating like crazy in this cavern of fire.

“We’re inside the Rock, right?” I asked.

Rogan sat on the ledge and gazed up at the ceiling and its stalactites with an absorbed expression. I heard him inhale and exhale slowly as he nodded.

“That’s what it looks like. Unless we’ve been sent straight to hell and think we’re alive when in reality we’re already dead.”

I winced at his answer, for it was not particularly optimistic. I sat down on the platform as far as I could from the opening of the other cavern and spent a long time studying the walls as if I hoped to find some secret door. At last, I resigned myself to talking with Rogan about things which had nothing to do with our present situation. He went on and on about his incredible adventures, most of which I felt had little truth in them, but I did not care. Like a good ward brought up by the priests, he spouted religious verses galore, turning the most mundane experiences into heroic feats, worthy, almost, of being sanctified and reported by the most respectable minstrels. He went so far as to rebuke me when I blurted out a blasphemy without realizing it. Apparently saying “by the Damned Spirits”, was wrong. Well, shoot.

I don’t know how much time had passed when my energy reserves finally ran out, and I stopped answering Rogan, half passed out, and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke when a hand shook me, and opening my eyelids, I met the blue eyes and black face of Yerris. My mind was completely numb.

“Get up,” he said.

His voice came to me as if from the depths of an abyss. Yerris helped me to my feet and walked with the whole group of children to the gate. A figure was handing out buns. With a trembling hand, I took the one that was being held out to me and stepped back, feeling dizzy. My arm did not hurt so much any more, but anyway, Warok’s blows were not what was affecting me most at the moment.

“Eat,” the Black Cat said. “It will give you strength.”

I looked at him and found him thinner than before. He had grown, but as he was a semi-gnome, I doubted that he would grow much more. His clothes, like everyone else’s, were torn all over, and his expression was so serious… It made me shiver.

I took a bite of bread and saw the Black Cat grow even darker if he could. He sat down on the edge of the platform, and I followed him as he chewed. What he said was true: the more I swallowed, the more I felt like my internal energy was coming alive. It even seemed as if the energy of the cave stopped interfering with me so much. How strange. We were both just finishing our buns when Yerris suddenly said:

“How the hell did they catch you?”

His voice seemed almost accusatory. I finished my last bite before answering:

“Been looking for you.”

Yerris gave me an altered look.

“You were looking for me? Me?”

I nodded.

“A few weeks ago, Sla told me you were missing. I looked for you and…”

“But she didn’t tell you why?” Yerris snorted in a nervous whisper. “Didn’t she tell you that the Black Daggers accused me of being a traitor and disowned me?”

I nodded again and with the tip of my tongue caught a crumb that had stuck to a tooth. I swallowed and replied:

“Yes, yes, she told me. But she also thinks you’re not a traitor.”

Yerris stood still then made a curious face.

“Really?” he murmured. He shook his head. “Well, it’s not true, shyur. I’m a traitor of the worst kind. I betrayed you, Rolg, my mentor, yours, Korther… And even Sla. It was… what I was supposed to do, you understand? I grew up among the Ojisaries. The Black Hawk taught me to spy. He gave me money. I… I sold you all out. And the biggest mistake I made was telling Alvon. I asked him for help. I was stupid. The only thing I got was… everyone disowning me.”

He shrugged his shoulders, his face grim. I looked at him, distressed. His voice had changed, as had his manner of speaking, more composed and mature, as if he had aged fifty years in a few moons. He rubbed his forehead and added:

“I’m sorry, shyur. But you shouldn’t have come looking for me.”

I pouted stubbornly and answered him as Dil the Slacker might have done:

“I don’t care. I came here, and that’s that. The Black Hawk may have taught you how to spy on us, but you taught me how to survive in the city. So I owe you one. And I’m gonna get you all out of here.”

A mocking glint appeared in Yerris’ eyes.

“Impressive, shyur. Now, please, bring your feet down to earth and open your eyes: you’re in a cave, in the heart of the Rock, in an old salbronix mine reactivated and rehabilitated by the Black Hawk. The only way out is this grate. And it is made of black steel. Not even a thousand files could break a bar. This is the real thing. Welcome to the Well, shyur.”

He stood up abruptly and walked away before my stunned eyes. Damn, how he had changed! Well, that he was not in a good mood was understandable, but still… He looked almost as tragic as Miroki Fal.

“You don’t remember him being like that, do you?”

I turned and saw Rogan approaching, chewing energetically on his last bite of bread.

“How do you feel?” he added.

“Better,” I assured him. “Much better. What do they put in the bread?”

Rogan grimaced.

“Ask the Black Cat. He knows everything. He says it’s an elixir of strength. But, just between us, from the look on his face every time the meal arrives, I’d say it can’t be that good.” He shrugged and announced: “Well, time to go fishing.”

I got up to follow him and the others to the second cavern and asked him curiously:

“What are those pearls you’re fishing for?”

“Black pearls. The Black Cat says they’re salbronix pearls. Something very precious. But for us, they are as useful as river pebbles. The problem is that they’re harder to catch: they’re buried in holes, and you can’t imagine what holes! Narrow as gutters and dangerous as claws.” He showed me his right hand. It was full of scars and scratches. “The rock is sharp as a dagger. Scary, huh? And there are things on the ground, but you can’t see them, because everything in there is so bright you can’t see anything. There are even things that look like they’re moving and they go… boo!”

I was startled to see that several of the gwaks were chuckling to themselves. Now they all seemed more awake than a few hours before. I heard them talking to each other as they entered the white foam. If some were new, the energy did not seem to affect them as much as it did me. They moved away. Soon I could only make out darker spots, and eventually I lost sight of them in the light and the curves of the tunnels.

Alone in the cave, I crouched near the entrance of one of the tunnels. The foam covered all the walls, even the ceiling, and it was hard to tell where the light ended and the rock began: basically, only the light could be seen. I could clearly feel its energy groping at me, as if it were looking for a gap to bleed me. It was not very reassuring to know that, even if I got as far away from the white stuff as possible, I could not escape its effects entirely. After some hesitation, I reached out with my right hand and touched the foam. It was hot, but not burning; a pure, wild energy, as natural as the morjas of a bone, but dangerous… My skeletal hand clearly felt the danger.

I stepped back and returned to the platform. Strangely enough, the energy was attacking less there, maybe it was because of the wood, I didn’t know. In any case, I lay there for a while, examining the energy and thinking about various things, before I got up and decided to approach the gate. It was on the opposite side of the white foam cave, wedged between columns of rock along which small streams of water trickled. It was less than two metres wide.

With my right hand, I touched the black steel and found that there was no alarm. The bars were so strong that the Ojisaries probably hadn’t even considered the possibility of our breaking them or the lock. As a matter of routine, I examined the lock with a perceptive spell, then my attention turned to the chain and padlock that held the gate double shut. I also noticed the marks on the rock, on the side of a column, as if someone had struck it repeatedly with some object until they realized that the effort was useless. I squinted to see something in the tunnel and saw nothing. I had a sudden idea, so I cast a harmonic light and tried to throw it, but my spell came undone a few feet away. I sighed, and my exploration completed, I returned to the platform.

When my new companions returned with the salbronix pearls, it was with shuffling feet and a pitiful appearance. One by one they placed the beads in a bowl. Some came in sucking their wounds; others just climbed onto the platform and fell asleep heavy as bags of nuts. To think that in two bongs I would join them for the fishing…

Salbronix pearls, I thought suddenly as I approached the bowl to observe them. Hadn’t Korther said that the black beads I stole that night the Cold One struck me were salbronix pearls? Curious, I reached for the cup and… suddenly an older gwak slapped me.

“Don’t touch it, shyur.”

I stepped back a little and saw the gwak lie down and watch me, his eyes squinting, before his eyelids closed completely.

Rogan was one of the last to appear, and I saw him a little more energetic than the others. He’d been here for a moon already, and as he said, he’d gotten used to it. He gave me an absent-minded smile, stopped in front of the platform, and counted the heads aloud: one, two, three, he counted to twenty-two. He seemed satisfied. Then he went to pick up the cup, and after counting the pearls, he carried it to the gate. Then he returned to the platform with a yawn, passed over the bodies lying there, and came and sat down beside me.

“And a new day is coming to an end, shyur,” he pronounced.

He laid his head on the wood and, yawning again, closed his eyes. After a few seconds of silence I said,

“Priest. Are you awake?”

“Mm,” he said.

“Where is the Black Cat?” I asked.

Rogan opened one eye and breathed out softly.

“Wandering around in hell, as always,” he replied.

I frowned thoughtfully. I could not believe that Yerris was still fishing for pearls. So what could he be doing in this parasitic foam? I decided to wait for his arrival and ask him. However, as time passed, my strength weakened and Yerris did not return. I fell into an exhausted sleep, and when I awoke to the first sound of the metal bong, hunger drove me straight to the gate with the other children. Behind the bars, a man approached with a large bag. He was wearing a sort of mask, so I could not see his face.

“Good morning, children! How are you?” he said.

The gwaks replied with varying degrees of enthusiasm, some saying that they were fine, others that they were hungry.

“The loaves are coming, my children, hold on a moment,” he answered.

Calmly, under the eyes of all of us, he picked up the pearls, counted them, kept them in a little bag hanging from his belt, and finally, one by one, he distributed the loaves.

“I cut my hand, sir!” one of the children informed.

The Ojisary took his hand, glanced at it, and sighed.

“You need to be more careful, boy. Wait till I finish handing out the loaves, and I’ll bandage your hand, okay?”

At one point, as he saw one gwak push another to come forward, he clicked his tongue.

“Tsk! One at a time, kids, one at a time.”

When everyone had had their share, he proceeded to bandage the injured child’s hand while the rest of us watched and ate our breakfast. Whistling a cheerful tune, he applied a yellow stuff to the wound and wrapped it in a bandage, pausing at times to ask questions and joke. He had just told a silly joke about someone who, trimming a tree, realized that he was sitting on the wrong side of the branch and fell. More than one gwak laughed, and in spite of myself, I smiled.

“And where’s the newbie?” the Ojisary asked. I felt the gwaks turn around and their eyes land on me. “It’s you, isn’t it? Come here, come here. Tell me. Do you know some joke? Here in the well, newcomers must always tell one. Rule number one.”

I gave him a not-complying pout, but as the others waited for me to say something, I rolled my eyes.

“What, you don’t know any?” the Ojisary asked, surprised.

“Natural I do, I know quite a few,” I replied. I even knew jokes about bones and necromancers, but those would not have been very timely. I settled on one told to me by Garmon, the newsboy. I cleared my throat, swallowed the bread I had in my mouth, and after making sure that everyone was listening, I said in a low tone: “A man goes to buy shoes and sees some he likes, so he takes some nails out of his pocket and says to the cobbler: how many? The cobbler looks him up and down and says: well, you decide, sir, but usually people take two.”

The Ojisary burst out laughing with the gwaks and said:

“That’s a good one, very good. Welcome to the pranksters’ club!” He ruffled the hair of the kid with the injured hand. “Done, kiddo, it’s healed. Try using the other hand for fishing, it runs? Okay, enough kidding: back to work! Today it will be sixty-seven pearls, just like yesterday. Don’t fight and behave yourselves. See you tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow, sir!” we said in chorus.

The Ojisary went with his lantern into the tunnel, I saw him go up the stairs, and—bong!—the metal door closed.

I gobbled up what was left of my breakfast, and looking for Yerris, I saw him at last in the cave of light, already departing to go fishing. I rushed towards him with the intention of catching up to him, but when I reached the other cavern, he was already disappearing into one of the three tunnels of light, moving with strange agility. The other gwaks were a little slower to decide to go to work. Some were wandering around the platform, others were squabbling, bickering, and joking, making quite a racket, having recovered all their energy. Rogan, however, had followed me, and after a silence, he said:

“You know what I think, shyur? That the Black Cat is looking for a way out. But he doesn’t realize that, right now, he’s the only one who can get that far down these tunnels.” His dark eyes glowed under the light of the white foam. He concluded in a low voice, “Then, if he makes it out, he’ll make it out alone.” He shrugged and smiled at me, “A good joke, the one you told us earlier. I’m sure the Masked One will ask you for another one tomorrow: that guy loves jokes, even the bad ones.” He ruffled my hair. “Enjoy your last holiday bong, shyur.”

With a shudder, I saw the Priest fearlessly walk away to a different tunnel than the one Yerris had taken. The light engulfed him.