Stephen Lawhead - The Spirit Well

Kit threaded his way among the well-wishers and stood as close to the campfire as he dared until the flames warmed him once more. Strips of venison from the haunch of a deer were sizzling on wooden skewers, filling the air with the aroma of roasting meat; the skewers were passed hand to hand. After all had eaten their fill, River City settled in for the night. Kit sat up for a long time, watching the fire and thinking about what he had experienced in the Bone House and what it meant. Then, tired at last, he squeezed a place in amongst the scattered bodies and slept to the slow tick of smouldering embers.

It snowed throughout the night and was still snowing the next morning when En-Ul rose and stood before the clan as they huddled around the fire. Kit, like the others, noticed at once-it was not a common action-and all looked in hushed expectation of what the Ancient One would do. Standing before his people, En-Ul looked around and then gave a grunt. Into Kit’s mind came the image of a dimly flickering light and a hand. The hand was red and dripping with blood. Then he saw animals-whole herds of deer and antelope and great ruddy-haired, slow-moving mastodons-all in motion on a great plain of tall grass.

The image faded and, to Kit’s surprise, the hunters of the clan all rose as one and began swaying back and forth, grunting their approval. Kit watched, hoping for some other sign, but nothing more was forthcoming. Dardok-the one Kit thought of as Big Hunter, the clan leader-rose and took up his spear; he lofted it and gave a low, rumbling call, like that of a bull elk or buffalo. The other hunters acclaimed this by lofting their own spears and repeating the bull roar. Then they left the rock shelter, descending down the narrow passage leading to the valley floor. Dardok was the last to leave, and as he turned to go, En-Ul made a clicking sound in his throat. Dardok paused, something passed between Old Chieftain and Big Hunter, and Kit found himself the object of scrutiny. Dardok gave a grunt of assent, and En-Ul reached out and rested a hand on Kit’s head.

At the touch, Kit felt a sudden surge of warmth spread through him, and in his mind’s eye he saw himself walking with the hunters. Dardok regarded him expectantly. By this Kit knew he was meant to accompany them on their expedition. Dardok stooped and gathered some embers from the fire, placing them in a vessel made from a hollowed-out bit of wood. He covered the embers with ash to preserve them, then picked up his spear and left the rock ledge.

Kit followed Big Hunter down the path to the frozen river and into a day bleached white as bone.

Wilhelmina came to the conclusion that Kit had made good his escape from Burleigh’s murderous clutches, but that something had gone haywire in the leap. Consequently, he had not ended up at the agreed-upon destination. In short, Kit was now lost somewhere in space and time. Fortunately she had thought to retrieve the Skin Map from him before he fled; otherwise that would be lost too. The scrap of human parchment, almost translucent with age, had been recovered by Kit and Thomas Young from the tomb of Anen, High Priest of the Temple of Amun, during the Eighteenth Dynasty. After examining it-she could make nothing of the obscure squiggly symbols scattered across its surface-Mina had wrapped it in a bit of clean linen and hidden it in the iron strongbox bolted to the inside of the clothes chest at the foot of her bed.

Probably, I should have locked Kit in the strongbox as well, she thought sulkily. His disappearance had caused Wilhelmina no end of concern, and now it was causing her sleepless nights as well. What had happened to Kit? She had given him explicit instructions-where to go, what to do-and the River Ley, as she called it, was tried and true. She knew this because she had personally explored it numerous times and found it wholly reliable, boring even. Never had she experienced the slightest difficulty when traversing it. Added to that, the River Ley led to a very stable part of the world-a place she called simply Mill Valley-for the old grain mill in its deep limestone gorge. It was a peaceable, rustic place that, from all that Mina could tell, was inhabited by gentle souls who tended their flocks of geese and sheep and were scrupulous about minding their own business. What could possibly have gone wrong?

Of course, knowing Kit, almost anything was possible. She could not begin to guess what he might have done. True, he had fled Prague on the run, chased by Burleigh and his gang. No doubt that had complicated matters somewhat, but she had covered for him on her end and taken care to arrange a fail-safe hiding place. Trust Kit Livingstone to bollix things up big time.

Even given the fraught situation surrounding his disappearance, she should still have been able to locate him when the heat died down. The fact that after repeated attempts in numerous time periods she had not been able to locate him-and she did keep trying, faithfully, whenever she had a spare moment-was deeply worrying. If Kit had been wounded or worse, killed, she would doubtless have found his body on the trail when she searched the ley on the other side. Dead or injured, his body might have been dragged off somewhere by a wild animal; but there would have been signs of that, and in numerous searches she had turned up nothing to indicate a mauling or a struggle of any kind. Added to this, she had Giles’ eyewitness testimony that Kit got clean away, which she had no reason to doubt-all the more because her sources indicated that Burleigh, for all his trying, had not been able to find Kit alive or dead either. The current report that Kit, in a frantic attempt to escape capture, had leapt into the river and tried to swim to freedom was merely a ruse concocted to hide the fact that he had escaped via Mina’s ley line. And just supposing Kit had panicked and done something so harebrained as jumping into the river and getting himself drowned, his soggy corpse would have fetched up downstream. Just to be sure, she had made discreet inquiries with the local officials in the towns and villages all along the Moldau. No one had found so much as a washed-up shoe.

So now, weeks later, frustrated and perturbed, Wilhelmina was at the end of her expertise. She had one last recourse. If that did not succeed, there was no hope. In the meantime she applied herself to learning the subtleties of the new and improved ley lamp-the upgraded version of the one she had slipped to Kit to aid his escape. The new model, like the first, had been supplied by her friend and co-conspirator Gustavus Rosenkreuz, a young alchemist in the emperor’s court. Rudolf II maintained a cabal of palace alchemists charged with the duty of lifting the veil on various mysteries of the universe, chief among them immortality and how to achieve it. This august and imposing work was led by Herr Doctor Bazalgette, one of the emperor’s favourites, and Gustavus was his much put-upon personal assistant.

Naturally, such blindingly arcane labour necessitated regular refreshment, which the alchemists took at the Grand Imperial; the weirdly cloaked-and-hatted coterie maintained a ready presence in the Kaffeehaus, and Wilhelmina made certain they always had a good table and the best of Etzel’s sweet pastries. Through Gustavus she supplied the alchemists with the “bitter earth”-spent coffee grounds-that they valued so highly for their obscure experiments. By way of reciprocation, if not revenge for his neglect at the hands of his superiors, young Rosenkreuz supplied her with useful information and, happily, another illicit copy of Burleigh’s latest ley-finding instrument. If his lordship ever found out that Mina had a spy inside the palace-the same person, in fact, seconded to fashion the earl’s special devices for him-the full extent of Wilhelmina’s deception would be revealed and her life would be forfeit. She shuddered to think what the Earl of Sutherland would do if he ever found out she possessed copies of his gizmos. Whatever form it took, she had no doubt his revenge would be complete, and deeply unpleasant.