Quest for the Well of Souls

Glathriel

It was a small rowboat, with three occupants, though the two straining at the large oars bore a marked resemblance to a cloudy sky and could only made out with difficulty. At the bow, looking into the gloom, was a tiny creature easier to see. A little owl-faced monkey, a Parmiter from the northwest, peered anxiously toward the dark shore.

“You sure we’re far enough up from that compound and those villages so that nobody will see us?” a deep voice behind the Parmiter asked.

“I’m sure, Grune,” the Parmiter replied in its squeaky tones. “The natives around here are pretty scared of the dark, and they light torches and fires to ward it off. As for the others, well, you saw the pictures. We’d almost have to beach on them for them to see us.”

That seemed to satisfy Grune. “Getting near the beach,” it said. “Hear the surf?”

“Let it carry us in now,” cautioned the Parmiter, “but keep at the ready. You too, Doc. It won’t do to crack up on the beach. We have to get back out to the ship with her, you know.”

Doc sighed. “I just don’t understand why we bother. I mean, it’d be simple enough to kill her—and these primitive places are great pickings. They grow tobacco here, you know. Know what that’s worth over near the Overdark?”

The Parmiter got upset. “Keep your mind on the job, Doc! For this job, they’re paying fifty times what we’ve made in the last two years, but it’s got to be a cinch! None of that petty-robbery business with my double-jointed hips! This is the big time!”

When they reached the beach, two large ill-defined shapes jumped into the water and grabbed the boat, pulling it onto the sand, to where the beach met the underbrush. For a very short time the big creatures were fully visible—long lizards with sharp, horny shields around their heads and tough, leathery skins. And then they started to fade again, automatically adjusting their skin coloration to the background. They pulled a camouflage-mottled tarp over the small boat and left it at the edge of the beach. In the dim light one would have to stumble over the thing to notice it, and they didn’t intend to be there by morning.

Carefully, the threesome walked down the beach, the little Parmiter hopping atop Doc’s head just in front of the horny guard plate.

The Parmiter reached into its marsupial pouch and brought out its gas gun, checking it for pressure and load.

“Everybody got their filters in?”

Joshi grabbed a meter-long match from a large compartment with his teeth and struck it with a quick motion of his head, making sure that his long ears were well out of the way. Carefully he touched the burning end to a small pot filled with a foul-smelling liquid, and it burst into flame, lighting up the interior of the compound. He then dipped the match into the sandy soil, extinguishing it, and pulled on a long rope, raising the burning pot until it was high enough to spread its light. Then, rope still in his teeth, he walked around the post supporting the pot a few times and looped the end around a little nail twice. It held.

Mavra never touched fire because her long hair was too vulnerable; but he, born in fire and scarred by it, had no such fears.

They began cleaning up the compound. Their supply ship, the Toorine Trader, was due in sometime the next day—the hour varied, but it always came on the right day, sometime between dawn and dusk.

Mouth-held brooms swept the wood floors and smoothed out the sand in the outer areas of the compound. Looking at Mavra and Joshi in isolation, one would have thought they were helpless, pitiful creatures; but at work they seemed normal, natural, and able to do almost anything.

True, they depended on others to make the matches, the pots, and many other necessities—but so did everyone depend on others to some degree. Once Mavra Chang had worn clothing and used sophisticated gadgetry, but she could never have made those clothes or built those gadgets. She was once a spaceship pilot, but she could never have built the spaceship nor fueled and provisioned it. She had sought those who could and paid for what she’d needed, just as she used the tobacco stores to pay for what was needed in Glathriel.

Suddenly her ears caught some odd sounds. “Listen!” she hissed to Joshi. “Do you hear anything?”

Joshi stopped and cocked a large ear. “Sounds like somebody coming up the beach,” he replied, puzzled and curious. “Somebody big, too. You don’t suppose the Trader got in early?”

She strained, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I know all of them well, their steps and sounds.”

“Not Ambreza, either,” he said. “I don’t think I heard anything like it. They’re sure trying to be quiet about it, too, aren’t they?”

She nodded. Old instincts, unused and unneeded these twenty-two years, began to return. There was something wrong here. Something unpleasant was up; she was sure of it.

“Want to fire a distress flare?” Joshi whispered, catching her mood.

She shook her head again. “Takes too long for the Ambreza to get here,” she responded in a tone so soft it was almost a wisp of breath.

“Whoever or whatever it is is just outside the door now,” he pointed out, moving so close to her that he merely had to mouth the words into her long ears.

“If they get in, escape through the stream gate,” she told him. “I don’t think anybody will anticipate that.”

He nodded. They edged as quietly as possible into the shadows.

“I wish we could risk putting that light out,” she hissed. “Wait—see if you can unwrap the rope and hold it,” she suggested. “Anybody coming in will have to pass right under the pot. Drop it and the place would be splashed with burning oil.”

He nodded and carefully undid the rope from the nail.

“Help me!” cried a wailing, plaintive voice just outside, a voice much too small for the creature or creatures they’d sensed. “Please! Somebody help me!”

Joshi couldn’t talk with his mouth full of rope, and he mumbled something.

Mavra caught the idea. “A trick to draw us out,” she whispered. “So its big friend or friends can grab us. Damn! I wish I knew who it was and why they were doing this.”

She looked around, spotted a roof support that had long needed attention. She had intended to have the Trader crew shore it up the next day, but now it might come in handy. She had a mule’s hind legs; mules had a mean kick, and so did she. She considered just where to hit the bottom post so the falling roof wouldn’t also catch her.

“Help me! Please help me!” the voice, so pitiful and sincere, repeated.

Quickly she whispered her plan to Joshi. Head turned, mouth full of rope, he didn’t risk even a nod, but he got the idea. He tapped his right foreleg three times. Younger than Mavra, Joshi had better hearing than she did. Mavra understood. Three of them. Two big, one little by the sounds. They had underestimated the Chang race.

There was a crawling sound. The little one was crawling up to the door flap, and, now, they watched it slowly open inward, top hinge squeaking slightly. A strange little creature crawled in, legs dragging behind as if broken. Mavra knew from her Well World studies that this was a Parmiter—a Parmiter a hell of a long way from home, two or three thousand kilometers, at least.

The legs really did look useless, and the thing was a truly pitiful sight. For a moment the Changs almost doubted their suspicions, and no noises whatsoever marked the larger creatures they’d heard.

The Parmiter looked up at them, genuine surprise in its face. The creatures were very strange-looking indeed, even if it had studied purloined drawings and photographs. They looked so helpless.

It glanced up after noticing that Joshi held a rope in his teeth. Its beady little eyes followed the rope, through pulleys and across the way, until, almost above it, they arrived at the pot of burning oil.

“Holy shit!” The Parmiter screamed. It jumped up, quickly drawing an odd pistol from a natural pouch.

At that, the parmiter’s two companions decided not to waste any more time on subtlety. They hit the log walls of the compound on the run. There was a tremendous shudder, and the logs gave a little, but not much. Mavra screamed “Hold it!” to Joshi and ran straight at the Parmiter, who suddenly felt itself trapped.

It raised the gas gun but she leaped, coming down on top of him, all sixty-six kilos of her landing directly atop the fifteen-kilo Parmiter, stunning it.

“Ulg!” cried the Parmiter, as all the air in its body was suddenly squeezed out. The pistol fell from its grasp.

Doc and Grune hit the wall a second time, then a third. And that did it. Not only did the wall splinter and give way, but it collapsed the unstable half-roof as well.

As they lumbered into the compound yard, Joshi released the rope.

Mavra rolled as no one would have believed possible and got back on her feet. “The stream!” she screamed to Joshi, and he turned.

The boiling pot landed directly on the back of one of the great lizards, which bellowed terrifyingly in its sudden agony and rolled over, tumbling the other lizard, too.

Fed by the dry straw that was all over, the flames ignited the collapsed roof of the compound.

With tremendous speed, Joshi and Mavra jumped into the icy stream and, trying not to slip, walked along its pebble-strewn bottom to the forest outside.

Inside the compound, the Parmiter gasped. It was sure a couple of bones were really broken now. Blood trickled from a corner of its mouth. It looked around, stunned.

“Let’s get out of here!” it screamed to its companions, one of whom was still groaning in agony from its burns. “If the natives get here with their spears and bows, we’ve had it!”

They had not survived so long following so crooked a path to let injury or failure trap them. The Parmiter, with difficulty, jumped on the unburned lizard and the two dashed out of there, fast—followed, almost immediately by the injured lizard.

Breathing hard, Mavra and Joshi stopped and turned toward the compound. They could see the fire’s glow, but it seemed to be localized. They watched as the two great shapes dashed out onto the beach, and they saw that while one seemed almost to blend into the beach, hard to see, the other had big dark spots on it that made it easy to trace.

“What the hell is going on here?” Joshi gasped.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it’s the end of our world, that’s for sure.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “They won’t be back.”

“Oh, yes they will,” she retorted. “Them or somebody worse. They weren’t just pirates, Joshi. They landed here just to get us—kill, kidnap, I don’t know what. But they were pros. They wouldn’t go after us with a village full of cured tobacco just a little ways off. Somebody’s put a price on my head.”

He shook his head unbelieving. “But—why?”

“The only reason I can think of is that somebody’s finally figured out the way to that Northern spaceship, and they’re eliminating the competition,” she replied in a strange, coldly professional tone he’d never heard in her voice. He was experiencing the true Mavra Chang for the first time, and she bewildered him.

But her eyes were shining. After all these years—the great game was on again, the game she was born to play.

“Fire’s already down, probably almost out,” he noted, uncomfortable. “Want to see what we can salvage?”

“We’ll keep away, spend tonight here in the bushes,” she responded, tone still businesslike but with that same excited undertone.

“The natives—” he began, but she cut him short.

“Won’t come close on Ship’s Day, no matter what. You know that.” If they did, they would risk the wrath of the Ambreza.

“What about the Ambreza?” he pressed, trying to find some way to return to the comfort of his old situation. It was all he’d known since the fire that scarred him.

“No flares were fired, so they’re not alerted,” she pointed out. “If they don’t have a random patrol in this area they might not find out about what happened until it’s too late.”

He looked at her strangely. “Too late for what?”

“I haven’t tried to escape in so many years they take it for granted now,” she pointed out. “No tight watches any more. But even though I long ago gave up on the idea, I always kept a trove, just in case. You know that. The dried tobacco in the back shed and the little gold bars I’ve collected over the years by bartering the stuff through the Trader.”

He nodded. “I always thought that was all it was for—petty bribes. I never thought—”

“Stay alive, think of everything,” she said evenly. “Now, if we’re lucky, our little bank account there will buy us a smuggle on the Toorine Trader.”

The Trader arrived in early morning. Mavra and Joshi could see its sails as it rose from the clear horizon, great masts holding weathered white clouds.

It was hardly the only ship on the Sea of Turagin, but it was one of only six packet-boats to make a complete circuit, servicing all the hexes who cared to, or needed to, get trade and transportation. It was a grand ship, almost a hundred meters long, made of the finest copper-clad hardwood. The crew would have preferred steel, but that proved too heavy for fast movement under sail.

It was a three-master, with odd bowsprit and gunwales through which a wicked-looking cannon could peer if needed. But its central housing also bore twin black smokestacks over an engine, which, in all but nontech hexes, could power huge twin screws in the rear. Everod, the sea hex adjoining the coast of Glathriel, was nontech; its denizens, huge clamlike beings with masses of tendrils piercing their shells, were deep-water types, and there was never any real contact between them and the land-dwellers, nor did they seem to mind the surface commerce that the Trader represented. In fact, they, too, used the Trader, placing orders with its Zone broker and having what they needed weighted and dropped to them.

The Trader’s crew of thirty-four was an amalgam of Turagin races. Batlike Drika stood the night watches and occasionally scouted ahead for storms. The scorpions of Ecundo climbed her rigging deftly and managed the sails with claws of amazing versatility. The captain resembled a great tangled ball of nylon twine, out of which spindly limbs appeared as needed.

They took in sail, and stood to, anchoring on a reef that was marked with yellow buoys. Not good for business to anchor in deep water and maybe conk an Everod on the shell.

The longboat was lowered off the stern, and large oars raised and lowered in cadence as it headed toward the compound.

The first mate, a shiny triangular Wygonian, whose six tentacles looked like huge, furry pipe cleaners, scanned the shore through his small stalk-mounted eyes, occasionally muttering instructions to his muscular Twosh oarsmen. When he finally noticed the crushed wall of the compound, he shouted to the oarsmen to slow. A few wisps of smoke still rose from the interior, and he knew something was wrong.

Mavra and Joshi trotted onto the beach just up-shore from the longboat and walked to the landing. The sight of them put the mate more at ease, and the longboat turned and docked easily.

They were old friends by now. Many of the Trader’s crew had been with the ship, off and on, for a decade, and their contract had always called for this supply stop.

“Mavra!” Tbisi, the mate, called to her. “What in the world happened here?”

Quickly she explained the previous night’s visitation and her own fears. The crewmen nodded sympathetically; they knew why she was here and why she was the way she was.

“So, you see, we can’t stay here,” she concluded, “and we can’t go back to the Ambreza. You know what would happen. Ortega would just take us to Zone and lock us up in a nice little cage for the rest of our lives.” Tbisi was pretty low to the ground, and Mavra could almost look into its strange face and eyes. “Imagine what that means, Tibby! Think about if somebody told you that they were going to take you off the Trader and put you in a nice dark hole for the rest of your days!”

Not only the mate but the Twosh as well nodded sympathetically. “But what can we do to help?” the mate asked, feeling his tendrils were tied.

She gestured to the compound with her head. “There’s almost a half-ton of vintage tobacco and about thirty pounds of gold in there. It’s yours if you get us out of here.”

“But where will you go?” Tbisi asked in a tone that was more an objection than a question.

“Gedemondas,” she replied. “Oh, I know it doesn’t have a coast, but you serve Mucrol next door. A little detour?”

He shook his incredibly thin head slowly. “True, we could do it, but not directly. We have our own jobs, our own livelihoods to consider. It’d be at least a month, maybe more. If Ortega or anybody else is looking for you, the Trader’s going to be pretty obvious.”

She considered what he said. “How about this, then. Take us across to the island, to Ecundo. I know you stop there. We’ll make it overland through Ecundo and Wuckl and meet you on the other side, say at the Wuckl port of Hygit. Then it’s only a short hop across.”

The mate was still dubious. “I don’t know. It’s true we have some Ecundans, good people, in the crew; but that’s a nasty bunch generally. The ones we have are mostly wanted men back home. Those Ecundans are a vicious bunch who don’t like outsiders.”

She nodded. “I know that. But they herd bundas, and, if you think about it, bundas look something like us with hair. A lot of it’s open range—we could make it across, I think.”

“But the Ecundans eat bundas,” Tbisi pointed out. “They might just eat you, too. And what will you eat? You’re talking about 350 kilometers across Ecundo, then all the way across Wuckl—almost a thousand kilometers in all, on foot.”

“These Wuckl,” Joshi asked, “what are they like?”

“High-tech hex. Kind of hard to describe. Nice folks, really, and vegetarians. I’m sure you’d have no trouble if you explained your problem, although they might not help much. But—wait a minute! I’m talking like this crazy thing is going to work! Hey, look! If you’re right, Mavra, and somebody is trying to get rid of you as a threat to that ship, won’t Ortega need you then?”

She laughed derisively. “For all I know Ortega’s gotten impatient and decided to kill off all three pilots. Besides, even if not, it might just be that one side or the other has a lead and has decided to act just to foreclose any potential threat. It doesn’t matter—I have to act as though that’s the case. Please! Won’t you help me?”

They would, could, and finally decided to. Any good seaman would chance the unknown rather than sit waiting for death to creep in.

They understood her.