Quest for the Well of Souls

Hookl

The skies had cleared, the weather was warming, and all was right with the world for the crew of the Toorine Trader. Seas were under two meters, and she was under a full head of steam heading north-northwest, great clouds of gray-white steam leaving a kilometer-long double line from her twin stacks. They had lost some time in Nocha’s storms; now they were making it up.

On the back hatch, two pinkish Twosh were relaxing, enjoying the feel of sun on their bowling-pin shapes. With ten cigars in little holsters on its belt, one Twosh was balancing itself well on one broad hand while its other hand removed a cigar and stuck it in a tiny, almost circular mouth. It never lit one; it just kept sucking and nibbling on the cigar until it had ingested the whole thing.

“Big thing, in flight twenty degrees off the starboard bow!” the lookout suddenly shouted from the radar console.

The Twosh with the cigar looked up and located a faint, faraway shape, then turned big lemon eyes to its twin. “Not another one!” it groaned.

The other Twosh strained. “I’ll be damned if it don’t look like a horse this time. That’s all we need. A stampede on the high seas!”

“And you know who’ll have to clean up the deck,” the first one added ominously.

The great deep-purple horse, swan’s wings spread wide to take advantage of the updrafts, circled the ship several times as if making certain that it was the one sought and, if so, allowing its rider to figure out how to land. It was a tricky problem. An Agitar pegasus didn’t just land like a bird; it had to have a little room to run on the ground, to break its momentum. It could land in water, of course, but while the sea was calm enough for the Trader, it was pretty rough for anything smaller.

The captain and crew stared at the newcomer, wondering what he was going to do.

“Be damned if I’ll slow for him,” the ghostly captain growled in his fog-whistle voice. “If I’d known we were gonna get all this company in the middle of the ocean, I’d have taken up something more peaceful, like the Army.”

Tbisi nodded his long, thin furry neck. “Maybe we’re missing a bet here, Cap,” he said half-seriously. “I mean, charge ’em landing fees, heavy fees for each question asked, fifty times the fee for each answer given, and five hundred times for the truth.”

Renard decided that the starboard deck was clear enough and long enough for a try at least, and he brought Domaru, grandson of Doma, in.

Domaru refused the first pass; unlike his distant cousin the horse, the pegasus was neither a stupid nor foolish animal. There was not only the narrow and possibly too-short lane, probably filled with obstacles, ropes and stuff, to contend with, but also the yaw and pitch of the ship with the rolling seas. A second pass was refused by Renard, who cursed that no one below seemed to have the slightest inclination to help him or even move, but on the third try both horse and rider committed, and it was a narrow success. Once down, the pegasus, on a trot, had to fold its wings to clear the area between rail and superstructure. If Domaru couldn’t stop at the bow, it would probably break his neck.

The sight of the fast-approaching bow chain seemed to help. The horse put on the brakes with barely fifty centimeters to spare and managed a turn.

Taking a little time to recover his breath and his nerve, Renard looked around at the crew, who were watching him curiously. For the first time he wondered whether or not he should have asked permission or something to come aboard. Two nasty-looking Ecundans were sunning themselves atop the bridge, stalked eyes staring at him; the two Twosh eyed him with expressions more bored than hostile.

He got down and nervously approached the Twosh with the cigar. “Uh, excuse me, but is this the Toorine Trader?”

The Twosh took a bite of its cigar, chewed, and swallowed. “Since you took so much trouble to drop in, I’ll have to say yes to that.”

This reply embarrassed him a little. He wasn’t sure how one greeted a little pink brown-eyed bowling pin. Shake hands? No, then what would it stand on? Oh, well…

“My name is Renard,” he tried. “I’m from Agitar.”

“That’s interesting,” the Twosh responded helpfully.

Renard cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m, ah, representing Ambassador Ortega of Ulik.”

The Twosh surveyed him critically. “My, my! Where’s your other four arms?”

He sighed. “No, I’m just working with him. I’m searching for a woman, a person named Mavra Chang, who disappeared from Glathriel.”

“Does she do other tricks?” the second Twosh put in.

Renard felt frustrated, and the sniggers from the rest of the crew didn’t help any.

“Look,” he said earnestly, “I’m an old friend of hers. I heard she was in trouble, and I’ve come to help. We’ve traced her to this ship, and I’d appreciate some help in locating her. It’s extremely important.”

The Twosh with the cigar eyed him suspiciously. “Important to whom?” it asked.

“To me, mostly,” the Agitar replied. “And to her.”

“I’ll bet,” the other Twosh said under its breath. “Well, if you’ve traced her to this ship, she must be on it someplace, eh? You’re welcome to search away, although I’m afraid that on a ship at sea the crew is a bit too busy to assist you.” Its black, straight eyebrows suddenly dipped until they touched the upper part of its eyes. “But I’ll tell you right now it won’t do any good,” it whispered. Its small head gestured to the two Ecundans perched atop the bridge housing. “They ate her, you see.”

For an uncomfortable moment Renard thought the little creature was telling the truth. But he dismissed it with a queasy feeling and was certain now that she was not aboard. They were trying too hard.

“You’ve only made landfall once since Glathriel,” he told them, “and that was in Ecundo. Did you drop her there?”

The Twosh looked shocked. “Of course not! When we disembark someone, we lower him gently over the side!” it huffed.

Renard threw up his hands. “How you people can be so flippant about all this is beyond me!” he fumed. “That’s a dangerous hex for someone like her!”

The Ecundans on top of the bridge suddenly got up on their six legs. “Say, goat-man! Are you insulting us?” one sneered. Two stingers rose.

He felt total defeat. “I give up!” he said, disgusted.

“If you think she’s in Ecundo, then you’d better go there,” one Twosh suggested. “The way everybody’s looking for this person or whatever it is, you will have us covered in Domien. Watch it in Ecundo, though. Those two up there were thrown out for being such nice guys.”

“Wait a minute. The way everybody is looking? Have others been here?”

The answer to that question the Twosh saw no reason to disguise. “Sure. Big bastard with pretty orange wings and a little bitch about as big as your knee flew in this morning. We weren’t as helpful to them as we were to you, you bein’ such a nice guy.”

He was learning to ignore the sarcasm. “A Yaxa and a Lata? Did they run into each other?” He was concerned for Vistaru, from whom there’d been no word for several days.

“Considering one was perched on top of the other, I’d say they would have a hard time running into each other,” the Twosh observed.

That bothered him even more, and he took great pains to describe a Lata to them to make certain they weren’t putting him on some more. A Yaxa and a pink Lata—almost certainly Vistaru—together? It seemed almost impossible.

“Did either one seem in command?” he asked them. “I mean, did it look like one was, say, a prisoner of the other?”

The Twosh thought about it. “Nope. I wouldn’t say they were buddies—but, then again, I don’t think anybody could be buddies with that orange iceberg. But they sure seemed to be working together.”

That bothered him. Had the Lata, for some reason, deserted Ortega after all this time and joined their old enemies? That was unthinkable—and yet, it had been so many years. People change, he told himself. Governments change, individuals change.

It didn’t sound good.

“Hey, mate!” one of the Ecundans called.

He was startled. “Huh?”

“How you gonna take off?” it asked in an amused tone.

The question brought him up short for a moment. He just hadn’t thought about it. The sea was too rough, and Domaru definitely needed as long a runway to take off as he did to land—and with wings spread.

He was stuck until landfall at Domien, another day in the direction opposite to where he wanted to go.

They were all snickering now. Finally it was left to Tbisi to administer the coup de grace. “Passage is twelve gold pieces a day,” he said, approaching Renard.

The Agitar sighed and mentally kicked himself. “I’ll get it out of Domaru’s bags,” he said resignedly.

“That’s another thing,” Tbisi added. “The horse is freight. One piece per kilo.”