Exiles at the Well of Souls

Gedemondas—a Back Trail

Antor Trelig cursed for the thousandth time. One mishap after another on this damned journey, he thought sourly. Avalanches in front of them, the trail undercut—almost as if someone was trying to stop them or slow them down, although no one had been sighted of any kind.

The trail was a lot more obvious on the map than it was in reality; it wasn’t well maintained, some of the shelters were in disrepair and obviously had been so for years, and the trail often vanished without visible landmarks, causing the Agitar to have to probe gingerly ahead with their tasts. Their party of fourteen—twelve Agitar, he, and his not-so-loyal wife, Burodir—was now nine, still including Burodir, unfortunately.

But the landmarks were reasonably clear; the terrain was not bad, most of the climbing having been at the beginning, and as many times as the trail had vanished it had also been crystal clear, as if tramped down by the soles of many feet.

This had worried him at first, until he was reminded by the Agitar that this was, after all, somebody’s hex, and somebody had to live in it.

In a way, that thought was the most disturbing. They had neither seen nor heard a native in all this time, in all this way. It made no sense at all that there shouldn’t be some creatures somewhere along the way, except the occasional panic-inducing arctic hare, or whatever it was, and a few small weasellike creatures.

And yet—somehow, they’d made it. Somehow they’d kept to this trail. Somehow they were going all the way. He was, anyway. What the others did was up to them.

He studied the maps and aerial photos from the Cebu scouts. He knew pretty much where he was, although without the prescouting he would have been lost and dead now, he had to admit. The inner ring of mountains, slightly taller than the outer but hidden before now, was clearly ahead. And, just on the other side of that big, glacier-carved peak over there, and over a bit, was a U-shaped valley with a very important large object lying askew on a ledge.

They would not make it today, that was for sure. But sometime tomorrow afternoon, certainly, if nothing else happened.