01. Midnight At the Well of Souls (38 page)

Carefully he searched for a large, uneven rock, and with great difficulty rolled it to within a meter of the hollow area that was the Swarm Queen's throne, at the base of the big tree. He managed to prop the flame gun sideways against the rock, so that it was mostly upright and pointed at the hollow.

Satisfied, he went and got sticks from the forest and built a crude pentagram around the pistol and rock. Next he positioned himself so his forelegs were on either side of the pistol, the left one serving as a backstop for the grip area which also contained the gas, the right one just to the right of the trigger.

He nodded to himself in satisfaction, and briefly checked the sun and the location of his three does, all of whom were idly grazing nearby. About two hours to sundown, he thought. Just about right.

He brought his right foreleg to bear on the trigger. The pistol jiggled but remained in the right general direction. There was a hiss of escaping gas, but no flame. He released it, realizing that the flint igniter mechanism would require a hard and quick jerk on the trigger.

He knew that, if he did that, he might lose control of the gun, even have it suddenly jump up and burn him. He sighed and made up his mind. Tensely, he planted his left foreleg against the gun butt and his right just touching the large, unguarded trigger made for Czillian tentacles.

Suddenly, in one sudden motion, he pulled against the trigger hard with his right leg. It jumped a little, but stayed firm.

And remained unignited.

Steeling himself, he tried again. Once more it failed to ignite, because he had flinched and not pushed the trigger straight back. He wondered idly if he could succeed, given his physical limitations. If not, he would just have to abandon his companions.

He tried one more time, using extra force. The pistol ignited, but the thing almost jerked out of his precarious hold. Carefully, without releasing the trigger, he gingerly managed to point the thing back in the general direction of the tree. Just to the left of the tree the area was smoldering, some of it still afire.

Now the jet of flame focused on the tree hollow, and he could see the bark smolder and catch, the fire almost enveloping the tree like something liquid and living. Smoke billowed up, the scent disturbing to his nostrils. Birds screeched, and forest animals ran for cover in panic.

Suddenly he heard what he had been waiting for: a tiny, weak voice coughing.

The Swarm Queen had more than one exit available, and she crawled dizzily out of the top of the tree trunk, near the point where the four main branches went off. She was blind, sick, and groping feebly, starting to make her way up the side of one of the branches.

"Swarm Queen!" he called, not letting up on the flame. "Shall I burn you or will you meet my conditions under pain of reversal?"

"Who are you that dares do this to me?" she managed, coughing and groaning in fear and misery as she maintained her dignity.

"He who was wronged by you, and he who drove your ancestors off distant planets!" he replied boldly, but idly and somewhat fearfully wondering how much more of a charge the pistol had. "Do you yield under pain of reversal?"

The large bug hadn't made it up the branch, almost overcome by the smoke and feeling the flames. Brazil was suddenly afraid she would fall into the fire before she yielded.

"I—I yield!" she called. "Turn off your cursed fire!"

"Say the whole thing!" he demanded.

"I yield under pain of reversal, dammitall!" she screamed nervously.

At that moment the charge ran out of the gun and it sputtered and died. Brazil let go, and looked at it strangely. A few seconds longer, he thought, and I'd have lost.

"Get me down before I burn!" screamed the Swarm Queen, who was still very much in danger. The flames continued to smolder in the tree and around the trunk, although without the added fire they were slowly turning to glowing red against the charred and blackened side.

"Jump straight ahead and fly to the ground," he told her. "You know the distance."

She could have done so before, of course, but the heat and fire always induced panic in these creatures.

She landed shakily and sat, trembling, for several minutes. Finally she regained her composure and peered up at him with those old and evil semihuman eyes, squinting. She was not totally blind in the light, but her vision was quite poor.

"You're the deer!" she gasped in amazement. "How did you break the spell? How do you talk at all?"

"Your spells cannot hold me for long," he told her. "That which inhabits this simple vessel is your superior. But it
does
bind my companions, and it is for their sake that I charge you."

"You have three charges only!" she spat, looking at the still smoking, blackened tree. "Consider them carefully, lest I kill you for what you have done to my home and my honor!"

"Honor be damned," Brazil replied disgustedly. "If you had any, there would have been no need to invoke a reversal. Remember
that
well. Should you default on the charges, it is I who will be Swarm Queen and you who will be a deer!"

"State the charges, alien," she responded in a bitter tone. "They will be honored."

Brazil thought carefully.

"One," he said. "My three companions and I shall cross the border into Ghlmon, traversing the distance from here to there without spell or any form of interference that would cause danger or delay."

The Swarm Queen's eyebrows rose, and she said, "Done."

"Two: the spells shall be removed from my three companions, and they shall regain all mental faculties, all memory, and shall be restored to their original forms."

"Done," the Swarm Queen agreed. "And the third?"

"You shall cast a spell to be effective when we cross the Ghlmon border that will erase all memories, effects, and signs of us four having been here, including those from your own mind."

"A pleasure," she said. "So shall it be when darkness falls."

"Until midnight at the Well of Souls," he responded.

And she was stuck. Should any of the conditions cease to function or be unfulfilled, the original spell would bounce back at her.

* * *

Nightfall came in about two hours. There were still some wisps of smoke from the tree, but little else to show the struggle. When the swarm emerged from its thousands of holes in the surrounding trees, it found the queen disturbed, but they sensed that a battle had been fought and that she had lost. Since their power could only be focused through her, they had to go along.

The three does had scattered during the fire, but all had timidly returned by dusk and were herded into the toadstool circle without much difficulty.

The Swarm Queen's eyes burned with hatred, but she followed orders. As the swarm gathered in the circle and hummed its strange music, she pronounced the first charge, for their safe conduct, then turned to the second.

"The three within the circle shall be restored in mind and body to their original selves!" she pronounced, and as she said it, it was so.

Brazil gasped, cursing himself for a fool in remembering the literalness of charges.

In the circle stood Vardia, not as a Czillian, but as she had looked those first days on his ship—human, about twelve years old, thirty or so kilos, with shaven head.

Next to her, looking even more confused, was not the Dillian Wuju but Wu Julee, obviously a healthy and unaddicted one, but about forty-five kilos, long black hair, and decent-sized but saggy breasts.

And there was a stranger there. He was a boy, about Vardia's apparent physical age, with short hair and prepubescent genitals, about 150 centimeters tall, muscled, and fairly well proportioned.

"Well, Master Varnett," Brazil said, bemused. "Out of the woodwork early, I guess."

EKH'L

The Diviner and The Rel and the Slelcronian in Vardia's body surveyed the towering, snow-capped mountains ahead of them.

The mountains, majestic and all-encompassing, ran right to the sea. A small beach was visible, composed of blackish sand. Out into the water they could see sea stacks, the remnants of long-extinct volcanic activity. The sky was a leaden gray, and the air was terribly cold off the ocean.

"Clouds will be moving in soon," Hain remarked behind them. "Rain or snow likely all along the beach. We'd better get started."

"Can we make it without going into the mountains?" the Slelcronian asked apprehensively. "What if we run out of beach?"

"Friend Hain, here, can cling to the sheer walls if necessary," The Rel replied confidently, "and she can ferry us around that way. No, this looks like rough, slow going but it's one of the easiest steps. The border with Yrankhs is just a few meters beyond the waterline, so we're not likely to meet the denizens of Ekh'l—a kind of flying ape, I believe. The Yrankhs are not ones we'd like to meet—flesh-eaters all—but they are water-breathers and not likely to bother us unless we decide to swim."

"The fog's coming in," Skander noted. "We'd better get going."

"Agreed," responded The Rel, and they started down to the beach.

It was easy going, relatively speaking. The beach did disappear for several miles at one point or another, but although it ate up a lot of time, there was no problem in Hain ferrying them across one by one.

After almost three days, including delays from both terrain and a cold, bitter rain that stopped them for several hours, they were about three-quarters of the way to the Ghlmon border. The only living things they had encountered were seabirds in the millions, crying out in rage at the intruders. Once or twice they thought they caught sight of something huge flying about the mountaintops on great white wings, but the creatures never came close and no one was sure.

At a particularly long break in the beach, which took Hain over an hour to negotiate each way, the only incident of the slow passage occurred.

Hain set off first with the Slelcronian and the supplies, leaving The Diviner and The Rel alone with Skander on the beach.

Skander sat munching some dried fish, apparently unconcerned about the pace or the rough portage ahead. Then, satisfied that Hain was out of sight and hearing along the rocky cliff, the Umiau looked up at The Rel. It was hard to tell the front from the back of the creature even if
she knew the Northerner
had
a front or back.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she started edging down toward the nearby ocean breakers.

Less than five meters from the water, The Rel noticed, and started coming toward Skander at a surprisingly fast speed. "Stop!" the creature called. "Or we shall stop you!"

Skander hesitated a fateful moment, then made a break for the beckoning waves.

The Diviner's glowing, winking lights became extremely intense, and something shot out from the globe, striking with a loud crash just in front of the mermaid. Skander rolled but did not stop.

Another bolt shot out, striking Skander in the back, and she gave a cry then went limp, the water actually touching her outstretched arm. The body was motionless, eyes staring, but the sharp rise and fall of the chest showed that she lived.

The Rel glided up to the creature and halted next to the body.

"I wondered just how long that mind of yours would be controlled by that silly hypnotism," it said in its even, toneless voice. "But you forgot the Slelcronian lesson. Don't worry—you will be able to move soon. A fraction more voltage and your heart would have stopped, though. The only reason that you live is that we need you. The same for the others—Hain for transportation, the Slelcronian because its powers might be useful in a pinch. Now, you'll be coming around shortly. But remember this! If you escape you are of no use to me. If we must choose between losing you and killing you, you are most surely dead. Now, you may move—the
correct
way. And shall we say nothing of this to our companions, eh?"

Skander surrendered, as movement returned. She still felt numb, but not merely of body. The Rel continued in control, and she had no doubt that she was trapped.

Hain returned in a little over two hours, and, after a short rest, was able to handle the two of them.

"We're almost there," the great insect told them. "You can see the damned place from the last stretch of beach. It looks like a piece of hell itself."

Hain was tight. Ghlmon looked like a place one would run
from,
not to. The shoreline curved off to the northwest, and the land of Ghlmon started abruptly, the last of the Ekh'l mountains just slightly inching into the new hex. It was a land of blowing sand, dunes ranging in all directions right down to the sea. Outside of the ocean, there was no sign of water, vegetation, or any break in the oranges and purples of the swirling sand.

"You really would have to be crazy to go there willingly, wouldn't you?" Hain said slowly, more to herself than to the others.

"No water at all," Skander sighed.

"No soil, nothing but sand," the Slelcronian added unhappily.

"The first truly pleasant place we've seen in the South," said The Rel.

Skander turned to The Rel. "Well, O leader, how do we proceed?" she asked sarcastically.

"We keep to the coast," the Northerner responded casually. "Hain can continue to catch fish. The Slelcronian will have to go without vitamins for a day or two, but it will get plenty of sun. Better water in that stream back there," The Rel told the plant creature.

While the Slelcronian did so, Skander asked, "What about you, Rel? Or don't you eat?"

"Of course we eat," The Rel replied. "Silicon. What else?"

In a few minutes, they crossed the border.

The wind was close to forty kilometers per hour, the temperature around forty degrees Celsius. It was like going from midwinter into the worst day of summer, and the swirling sand bit deeply into all of them.

They were still within sight of the Ekh'l mountains when they had to stop for the day. Skander collapsed on the hot sand and shook her head exhaustedly. "What kind of creatures could possibly live in this hell?" she mused.