The Well of Shades Read Online Free PDF

precocity. She had seen Broichan watching Derelei;seen the watchful love in the druid’s eyes. If what she believed was true, the two of them should know it, Broichan now,her son when he grew older. There were some painful truths, Tuala thought, whose importance was such that they must be exposed to the light.
    She willed herself calm as she made her way to the druid’s private chamber. Even now her heart thumped and her palms grew clammy at theprospect of raising such a matter with her old adversary. What if she was wrong? This was conjecture, after all, based on her own interpretation of a vision in the scrying bowl. One of her very first lessons at Banmerren, the school for wise women, had been how deceptive such images could be and how easily misinterpreted. The gods used them to tease and to test, and the seer walked a narrow pathbetween giving good counsel or ill.
    Tuala used her skill rarely; there were those who would seize any opportunity to point out the strangeness of her origins, seeking thus to weaken the foundations of her husband’s kingship. For a while she had not used her craft at all. She had come to it again after a vision of hers helped save Bridei’s life at the time of the great battle for Dalriada. Shehad known then that the risk was worth it. Today she planned to scry again.
    She knocked. Broichan opened the door, showing no sign of surprise when he saw who it was.
    “I need to speak to you in private,” Tuala said. “If you will.”
    “Of course, Tuala. Come in.”
    She thought perhaps she had interrupted him in prayer, for two candles burned on a shelf and before them a thin mat was laid on thestone floor, a small concession to his illness. The chamber was orderly. Shelves were neatly packed with the accouterments of his calling; an oak table held a jug of water and a single cup. From the rafters hung plaits of garlic and bundles of healing herbs. His scrying mirror was nowhere to be seen.
    “Please sit. You wish to discuss Derelei’s progress? His welfare?”
    “Not today. I see that heis doing well, though he does get very tired. I have a difficult matter to set before you, Broichan. You may have some idea what it is; I’ve heard Fola refer to it once or twice, obliquely.”
    Broichan waited, a tall figure, dark-robed. His hair was more gray than black now and fell in a multitude of small plaits across his shoulders. In the candlelight the moon-disc, a circle of pale bone he woreon a cord around his neck in tribute to the Shining One, gleamed softly. His deep-set eyes gave nothing away.
    “It would be easier for me to show you this in the water of a scrying vessel,” Tuala told him. “I feel a certain reluctance to put it straight into words; I’m afraid it will offend you.”
    “If you wish.” His voice was at its most constrained. Tuala suspected he knew what was coming. “Youare confident you can summon what you need and reveal it in one form to the two of us? That’s a prodigiously difficult task, Tuala.”
    Not for me.
“If the Shining One wishes us to see this, we will see it. Have you a bowl we can use?”
    He fetched a vessel without further comment, uncovered it, and poured water from a ewer. “You prefer this to the mirror,” he said. It was not a question.
    Tualanodded, not speaking. Already the water called her, too powerful to resist. She stood, and Broichan, opposite, reached over to take her hands. They faced each other across the bowl. Tuala felt his hands, strong and bony, relax in hers as he looked down. He was expert in the seer’s art, as in all branches of magic. He knew without the need for telling that, in order to grant Tuala control over thevision, he must submit his formidable will to hers. And indeed, for all his long years of training and discipline, it was she, the child of the Good Folk, who had the greater facility in this branch of the craft. Perhaps it was not so surprising that some folk distrusted her.
    The water rippled, shimmered, and was