Dorrin shivered. Most potent sacrifice, she had been taught, for this kind of magery. “I must go down,” she said.

“No, my lord! No, we don’t want to lose you! We can do without the well.”

“You cannot,” Dorrin said. “It cannot be left unclean; it is why your gardens bear so little. Not just the lack of water, but the presence of so much malice. I know this is not what you intended, Sennet, but it is my judgment—and you invited me here to give judgment—that this well must be cleansed, and to do that I must go down.”

He looked horrified; she left him there and went back to her escort. “Find me stout ropes,” she said. “And I need you all to lift and lower on my command.”

“My lord?”

“It is urgent.”

The only ropes in the village were gray with age and frayed—no time to ride back to the house for better. Dorrin loosed her magery enough to mend them, and led the escort back to the well. Everyone who had not gone for more food now stood around it, a careful distance away.

“Back more,” Dorrin said. “I do not know how good my control is, and you all know it takes magery to heal mage-dealt wounds.”

They backed until most were behind their pitiful hovels. Dorrin took off her cloak, her armor, all but her shirt and trousers and boots, her sword, and her ducal chain of office. “I’m going down that well,” she said to her escort.

“You’re not!” More shock than refusal. “Let one of us—”

“None of you have magery,” Dorrin said. Her heart pounded; her skin felt tight. “My uncle cursed this well, and with it, the village; I am going to heal it or die in the attempt, but I need people I can trust on the ropes. I may be able to move the stones by magery—or not. I’ve never done this before. Make me a sling and some loops for climbing.”

They had used ropes like this in the Company, tying in fixed loops for hand- and footholds, making slings for lifting and lowering burdens and people. Dorrin checked the knots and again touched the ropes with magery. They should be sound … she went to the well and sent some of her light into it. The well had been made long ago, lined with hand-cut stone. That stone was still sound, tightly knit in place, in part by its revulsion at what had been done to the water. No water showed, only the jumble of stones thrown down from above. She sensed below them the evil intent that had killed a woman and her unborn child to spoil the well.

Dorrin touched Falk’s ruby. “Lord Falk, help me,” she murmured. She would try to move that one, there at the top—she sent her power down. The rock screeched, twisting, and jammed deeper. The one next to it broke in two, and the broken piece landed on top of it. A gout of malice surged out of the well; Dorrin staggered, but threw her power at it, imagining a net, and then a scythe, to cut it loose from what was left below. A writhing half-visible shape outlined by whirling dust rolled about her, knee-high. Dorrin drew her sword and touched its glowing blade to the mass … and the mass vanished.