Quest for the Well of Souls

Nocha

The Torrine Trader had been patched well; only the fresh wood on parts of the bow, midsection, and superstructure hinted that something had been amiss.

A week later, the Trader was several hundred kilometers out, steaming across the Sea of Turagin to the northwest, on its way to deliver to Wygon huge crates of things whose function they couldn’t fathom and couldn’t have cared less about.

It was cold in Nocha, slightly above freezing. The crew stayed belowdecks as much as possible; the sea was extremely rough, and one could easily fall overboard into the chilly waters. Nobody wanted that—not in Nocha, where, only a few meters below the raging surface, thousand-toothed insects waited for just such a bonanza.

They were definitely not company customers, anyway, and no crewman wanted to give them anything for free.

The storm and cold had driven a tiny airborne figure farther west. She was almost exhausted, and had begun to doubt her ability to continue. No land had been in sight since she’d flown out over the sea to intercept the Trader before its landfall in Wygon three days hence—according to the schedule obtained from the company office in Damien.

She had no broad, great wings to maintain herself on comfortable updrafts above the storm. Her powers of flight were tremendous and included the ability to zig and zag almost at right angles with no efiort as well as to stand still. But doing so meant that her wings had to work constantly to keep her aloft.

And right now all four pairs were sore as hell. In desperation, she climbed as high as she dared, letting the gusts carry her tiny, frail body along like a leaf in the wind, allowing her some rest and forcing her to use her own powers only when she lost altitude. The system was working, yes, but it was a stopgap measure and not one that could be maintained for long periods. It was also taking her westward, although southwest, northwest, or due west she had no way of knowing.

The westward drift almost did her in. Hardly able to see, desperately fighting the elements, she was not prepared when the storm suddenly ceased and a wave of warmth washed over her. The atmosphere was also quite calm and at very low pressure, and she began dropping like a rock before she knew it.

Straining painfully to pull out of the fall, she realized she’d been blown across a sea-hex border. She pulled out just before hitting the waves and managed to maintain a low altitude. That was not enough; a gleaming silver fish that looked to be half teeth leaped from the water to grab at her. In panic, she managed to gain a little more.

Too exhausted to think straight she began to allow sensations of impending doom to penetrate her consciousness. She realized that, if she didn’t find some place to land soon, she would drop into the suddenly placid sea. And wet wings would incapacitate her, leaving her easy and tempting prey for those silvery appetites below.

She had no idea where she was, or how far it might be from one place to another. Hookl, probably, since it was so warm—certainly not Jol, where icebergs abounded.

She’d settle for an iceberg right now, she thought longingly.

She drifted as best she could, certain that any moment now her wings would fall off from sheer overuse, berating herself for being such a fool. There’d be islands, she’d told herself, or other boats to use—but Jol was in no condition for shipping right now, and Nocha had been cold and rough and barren of land and traffic.

And then she saw it. Yes, there it was—a speck near the horizon. In hopeful desperation, she flew toward it with her last available energy.

It was an island, she saw. Not much of one—a crooked, twisted spire of rock jutting from the water, its glassy sheen partially obscured by low vegetation.

For a moment those growths worried her; she had no idea what sort of creature might live there, nor what it ate—those hungry fish weren’t its prey, that was certain; but anything that could coexist with them had to be a little nastier than they. It didn’t matter, though, she told herself. Her alternative to landing was to become a sure snack for the toothy beasties in the waters.

The island was a bit larger than it had seemed at first, and she could see bird nests tucked among the mossy growths, so she decided to take a chance on it. Not much larger than some of the seabirds herself, she chose a big nest on the cliffside that definitely looked deserted, and settled down into it thankfully.

It was hard and brittle and had a lot of sharp places, but she felt none of them. Within seconds, she was asleep.

It had been a dreamless sleep, hard and overly long. She stirred with difficulty; her head pounded, and her eyes felt as if they had weights on them. She sat up and groaned and opened her eyes that burned like fire, and gave a gasp.

She was not alone on the island.

A creature three times her size stood watching her. The thing clung to the sheer and slippery face of the rock effortlessly, as if it were level.

She uttered a short cry of panic, then rose immediately to her feet.

She had never seen a Yaxa close up before.

The giant creature’s shiny death’s head turned toward her. “Don’t try flying out,” it advised. “I took the precaution of temporarily disabling your wings.”

Immediately she tried to flex them, and they felt like lead. She looked over her shoulder, and saw that small clips had been placed on them, linking them together at their tips. The wings were too fragile to try and work the clips off, and the clips were out of reach of her hands.

The Yaxa was satisfied with her demonstration, and for good reason. Lata were tiny, delicate-looking creatures, but they were also very dangerous to most warm-blooded life forms.

The prisoner looked like a small girl of ten or eleven; it was impossible to judge a Lata’s age, for they looked almost the same from a few years after hatching until they died. Aging was an exclusively internal affair.

But the little-girl image was enhanced by the fact that Lata were less than a meter tall and incredibly slender. Externally humanoid, internally they were more like insects, able to eat and digest literally anything organic. Even their soft, creamy skin was illusion, for it covered a flexible chitinous inner skin. Lata were almost impervious to temperature changes because their metabolism was flexible enough to keep them comfortable under all conditions except extreme cold and extreme heat.

They had tiny pointed ears, and tough, black hair which grew in a rough pageboy cut. Their four pairs of transparent wings kept their light bodies aloft much in the manner of a bee and gave them their exceptional maneuverability.

This particular Lata was a pastel pink. Her stinger—a wicked point of striped red and black descending from the spine down to the floor of the nest, was set on a hinged joint—it could be stiff and straight, its normal position, or bend back, allowing the Lata to sit. Her venom could paralyze or kill organisms many times her size. It was the poison that the Yaxa feared and respected.

“How are you called, Lata?” the Yaxa asked.

“I am Vistaru of the Deer Grove,” she replied, trying not to show her nervousness. Never had she felt so helpless in the face of an enemy.

Yaxa never displayed emotion; they had no way to, and their voices translated hard and icy-brittle. And yet, there seemed to be a note of genuine surprise in the creature’s voice when it responded. “Vistaru? The one who aided Mavra Chang in the wars long past?” She nodded slowly, amazed that her name would even be known after all this time.

The Yaxa seemed hesitant, somehow, as if trying to decide what to do. It was uncharacteristic of the great insects. Its enigmatic eyes studied her closely.

“I should have thought you’d be in the male mode by now,” the Yaxa said.

“I would have,” she told the Yaxa, “but I’ve kept putting that off. To be a male is to have the responsibility for raising a child, and I have not yet been in a position to do that properly.”

The Yaxa remained motionless, impassive, still thinking unknown thoughts. Finally, it said, “Ortega sent you here to help find Mavra Chang.” It was not a question, it was a statement.

Vistaru nodded, but volunteered no additional information: their races were old enemies. As odd as this Yaxa was acting, she still did not expect to survive the encounter.

“Then I was right,” the huge butterfly murmured aloud to itself. “She is missing, not dead.”

“What is that to you?” Vistaru challenged. “If you didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance, it was only because Trelig or someone beat you to it.”

“Brave talk,” the Yaxa noted coldly, but almost approvingly. “Still, I’ll strike a bargain with you. Answer truthfully my questions, which will only make us equal in knowledge, and I shall make certain that you have the opportunity to experience the male mode.”

Vistaru stared hard at the creature in wonder, but could not fathom what he was talking about. Although they were biochemically closer to each other than either was to the humans, mentally the Lata were much closer to humans.

“We’ll see,” Vistaru said cautiously. “Ask your questions.”

“Do you know who smashed the Chang compound?” the Yaxa asked.

That was an easy one. “No. But we think it was a gang hired by Antor Trelig.”

That answer seemed to satisfy the Yaxa. “I can assume that the Ambreza have activated all their antiescape plans and followed every conceivable procedure?” the Yaxa asked.

Vistaru nodded. “She is almost certainly not in Glathriel or Ambreza, nor does she seem to have crossed the border into Ginzin.”

“Then she went by ship, as I suspected,” the Yaxa said. “The question is, willingly or unwillingly.”

“Trelig would have no use for her male companion, Joshi,” Vistaru pointed out. “With hypnos available, one doesn’t need any other pressure on a source of information. But he’s gone, too. We assume that they got away.” The Lata stopped, suddenly not sure that she hadn’t given away too much.

“You needn’t concern yourself,” the Yaxa told her, as if reading her mind. “I had already come to similar conclusions. I assume that you are out here, in the middle of nowhere, for the same reason I am—you are hoping to intersect the Toorine Trader.”

The Lata didn’t reply, but her expression told it all. The Yaxa continued to think hard to itself, its overall intent still a mystery. But its next statement stunned Vistaru.

“Lata, I could kill you, but I will not. Yet if I release you, you might try to sting me, or we will continue to parallel each other’s movements in hunting the Trader, which should not be far off to the north now—and eventually we will come into conflict some other way. I could just leave you here with your wings tethered, but while you could eat the moss, eventually you would die. This bleak rock is off the shipping lanes, and only the Trader brought us together here by chance. So I propose an honorable truce. You will agree not to sting me, and I will agree to do nothing to you and remove the clips. We shall seek out the Trader together, and remain together until we ascertain the whereabouts of Mavra Chang. Do you agree?”

She considered it. She had no hope of removing the clips on her own, and without her wings she was trapped. On the other hand, could she trust the Yaxa? What was its motive? Why was it here? Still, she had no choice.

“All right, I agree. A truce. At least until we find out what is happening here. You have my word I will not harm you.”

“Your word is good enough.” A long sticky tongue emerged from the Yaxa’s curved proboscis and gently lifted the clip from one pair of wings and “handed” it to a front tentacle, which replaced it in a small pack glued to the creature’s underside. The same procedure was followed three more times, freeing Vistaru. She flexed her wings gratefully, and stretched.

The Yaxa remained frozen, motionless on the cliff wall, watching her. Vistaru knew that, if she suddenly took off or tried to sting the creature, it was ready for her.

She wouldn’t. Her word was good, at least until they found where Mavra Chang was. After that—well, There was venom, and it would keep.

“You know where the ship is?” she asked the Yaxa.

“Follow me,” it replied, and took off from the cliff, great orange-and-brown wings spread wide to catch the breeze. Vistaru followed, having to work hard just to keep up with the great creature.

“Slow a bit!” she pleaded, and the Yaxa complied. She moved up, just a little under and to the right of that black, shiny death’s head. “What are you called?” she asked it.

“My name is Wooly,” the other replied.