Exiles at the Well of Souls

The Tuliga-Galidon-Olborn Triangle, Dusk

Their crossing, while uneventful, took three precious days. They flew over choppy seas in Tuliga, and the wind was against them most of the way. On the few daylight hours of relative calm they were able to spot coral reefs teeming with great numbers of multicolored fish, and, here and there, shadowy black bulks of great size.

They kept at a safe altitude, not wanting to risk any chance that one of those dark shapes might somehow rise out of the water and bring them down. It was more peaceful when they reached the Galidon border, but the atmosphere looked a little strange over there, and they headed in toward the point of land that marked one of Olborn’s six points on the Tuligan side.

Olborn itself seemed a welcome relief—solid-looking, mostly coastal plain, a little chilly, but they had brought protective clothing with them. Nothing in the place looked grim, foreboding, or threatening.

They waited until darkness fell before making a landfall on the beach. They had decided to camp there, within easy reach of a quick getaway and with the great Doma as concealed as she could be.

No roads had led down to the coast, they’d been certain of that. With watery neighbors like the Galidon, they didn’t find this the least bit unusual.

It was a clear night; above, the spectacular sky of the Well World was displayed in all its glory, and, off to the north, a silvery disk covered part of the horizon.

It was the first time they had been in the right position with the right weather at the right moment to see New Pompeii. They stared at it in silence, thinking.

“So close, so damned close,” Mavra Chang whispered under her breath. It looked like you could reach out and touch it. She thought of the poor people who had almost certainly died there by now, and of the kindly, near-human computer, Obie, who had helped her escape. She wanted to get back to that place, and she swore to herself that she would, someday.

They turned in. Although the Lata were nocturnal, the trip had been a long and tiring one, the daytime travel taking more out of them, and they, too, slept. A watch was established, of course.

Mavra had second watch; the Lata would take the later ones, when they’d be at their peak. She sat there, looking out at the slightly rough sea, hearing the roar of the surf, and watching the skies.

They were glorious skies, she thought. Her element, the place to which she’d been born, the place for which she’s done everything, even sold herself, to attain. She looked at the others sleeping. The Lata were perfect here. Flying on those tiny wings would be fun, and there were no political or sexual pressures in their land to shape what happened. Even being short didn’t matter; they all looked alike. But their world was 355 kilometers on each of its six sides. Such a minute place, a stiflingly small area when you looked at those skies.

Renard, too, was better off here. The Well World was certainly bigger than New Pompeii, and more stimulating than new Muscovy. He was a walking dead man in the old life; here he had some power, a future, and, if things worked out, could possibly rise high in Agitar if they lost the war. From what he’d said of the people’s sentiments, a defeat would bring down the government, and one who helped end the war rather than press it would be more hero than, as he was now, traitor.

But not Mavra Chang. The Well World was an adventure, a challenge, but it was not her element. To go through the Well someday and come out something else—it wouldn’t matter. The Well didn’t change you inside, only physiologically. She would still want the stars.

Her reflections were broken by subtle sounds not far off. She wasn’t sure she heard anything for a short time, and she listened intently as her ears strained for them. She had just decided that she was imagining things, when she heard the noise again, off to the northwest, there, not very far—and closer.

She considered waking the others, but then thought better of it. The sounds had stopped. Still, she decided, a little investigation might be in order. A yell from her would rouse the others in a hurry anyway, and there was no use waking them for nothing.

Silently, softly, she crept toward where she’d last heard the sounds. There was a thin clump of trees near a marshland river mouth just up from the sounds; she decided that whatever made them had to be there. Slowly, carefully, she moved into the thin line of trees.

She heard a sound again to her right, and headed for it. Crouching behind a bush, she peered out.

There was a strange, large bird there. Its body was something like a peacock’s, its head a round ball, out of which came a beak that looked almost like a tiny air horn. Its eyes were round and yellow, reflecting the starlight. It was nocturnal, then. She breathed a sigh of relief, and the bird must have heard her. It turned and said, rather loudly and a little rudely, “Bwock wok!”

“Bwock wok, yourself,” Mavra whispered, and turned to go back to the nearby camp.

The trees exploded. Large bodies dropped all around her, one on top of her. “Renard!” she screamed. “Vistaru!” But that was all she had time for. Something seemed to cover her head, blotting out all consciousness.

Doma started, and all three of the others snapped awake at the two cut-short screams.

Renard saw them as the Lata took off; large shapes rushing them from the nearby trees. He almost made it to Doma, when one of them, much taller and furrier than he and with glowing yellow-black eyes, got a hand on him.

That was a mistake.

There was a crackle, the Olbornian screamed, and there was the odor of burning hair and flesh. Another one was trying for Doma’s reins, but the horse backed away as Renard leaped aboard. The Olbornian snarled and turned to reach out for Renard.

The Agitar got the vision of a great black cat’s face, with terribly luminous slit cat’s eyes, and he touched a hairy, clawed hand with three fingers and a thumb.

Which sent the Olbornian to cat heaven.

Doma didn’t need any cuing. Knowing its rider was aboard, the great winged horse thundered down the beach, knocking over black shapes not lucky enough to get out of the way, and it was airborne.

The Lata, whose stingers had helped clear the way, flew to him.

“We have to find Mavra!” Renard screamed. “They have her!”

“Stay in this area!” Hosuru shouted. “We don’t know what they have and we can’t afford to lose Doma! We’ll go after her, and if we can’t free her one of us will stay with her while the other comes back for you!”

It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but he had no choice. Neither Doma nor he had exceptional night vision, and if the Lata lit up they’d all make perfect targets.

The two Lata, however, saw best in the dark. Just beyond the river there was a coach of some sort; a finely wrought piece of woodwork moving on great wooden wagon wheels pulled by a team of eight tiny burrolike animals. Four Olbornians, armed with projectile pistols, stood on running boards around it; two more drove it, one controlling the little mules and the other holding a sleek, effective-looking rifle. The doors and windows to the coach were sealed with hinged wooden panels. From the way the driver cracked the whip on the poor little animals, they knew what the coach’s cargo had to be.

“We can’t do anything but follow the damned thing,” Vistaru swore. “Renard can take care of himself.”

That was more than heartfelt sentiments. In all his time in Lata, he’d not discharged. They knew he carried a lot of static electricity, but until the brief fight they’d not realized how much or how lethal.

The coach beat down the grass until it reached a smooth, tar-paved road, and sped along it to the east. It was not terribly fast, and the Lata had no trouble keeping just behind and above it, out of sight.

“We could sting them to death,” Vistaru said wistfully.

“How much you got left?” Hosuru snapped. “I used mine three times. I’m nearly dry.”

The odds weren’t that good.

They studied the Olbornians and their coach. The Creatures were about 180 centimeters high; they were all completely covered in black fur, but they also wore some sort of clothing, baggy dark trousers of some sort and sleeveless shifts with a light border and woven insignia in the center. They had long, black, apparently functionless tails, and sleek cat’s bodies, but their arms and legs were muscular, and they obviously walked upright on two legs naturally.

The little mules were something else. They looked somehow sad, pathetic, and wrong. Their hind legs were taller by perhaps twenty percent than their forelegs; they were a little over a meter high, and they had long necks curving upward so they looked ahead instead of down. Their long ears were large in proportion to their heads, and they had no tails. They were covered in a soft, uniform gray fur.

They were being badly pushed and mercilessly whipped; they were certainly too small and too few for the weight they were being asked to pull, but they managed it, their short, trotting-horse gait getting the wagon there, helped somewhat by the smoothness of the road.

Finally, they turned in at a magnificent estate—a truly grand-looking palace whose horseshoe-shaped driveway was lit by torches; more torches flanked the doors, and there were rifle-armed guards dressed in the same way as those on the coach. The coach pulled to a halt and the Olbornians jumped off efficiently. A door facing the estate was opened, and two more of the creatures emerged, then turned and carefully removed a large black object from the coach.

It was Mavra Chang, and she looked stiff as a board.

“Is she dead?” Hosuru worried.

Vistaru shook her head. “No, they’re being too careful for that. Drugged, probably.”

“Now what?” the other Lata asked.

Vistaru thought a moment. “First, go back, tell Renard what happened, where we are—describe the place. Then help him find some place to sit down for a while. I’ll keep watch here, try to find where in this palace they’ve put her. Tomorrow, when Renard’s at his peak, we’ll come get her no matter what.”

Mavra Chang regained consciousness slowly, and it took some time for her to get her bearings. She looked around, finding she couldn’t move her head, only her eyes. She couldn’t move anything.

She was standing up, propped slightly against a wall. She thought that her hands and feet were securely tied, but she couldn’t be sure.

The place was a stable. It stank of animal excrement and rotted straw, and on the walls were odd-shaped harnesses.

She strained to look around, but whatever they had drugged her with held her securely. She did see one of the animals, though, briefly. A queer-looking thing. No, that wasn’t right, everything on this cockeyed world was queer-looking, she told herself. But because the creature looked so much like draft animals that she’d known back in the human worlds, “queer-looking” was the only way to describe it.

They looked for all the world like miniature mules. Black nose, big, squared-off snout, but with jackass-type ears that seemed too large for that head. A very long neck, almost too long, attached to a small body supported at an angle, the slender front legs shorter than the rear ones, which had the characteristic large upper calf and almost incredibly thin lower.

And sad, large brown eyes.

They also bore scars; some from whips, some from other unknown sources.

Three Olbornians entered the room, two in the black-and-gold livery, the third wearing some sort of crown and a long gold chain from which was suspended a hexagonal pendant. His own livery was scarlet, with baggy golden trousers. Somebody important. He was also old—he walked slowly, and there were tinges of gray in his black fur.

He walked into the doorway, almost running into the little minimule. He snarled and swatted it cruelly, claws extended. The thing gave no sound, but there was obvious pain and Mavra could see a set of bleeding scratches. It jumped and moved away.

These were a cruel, callous people.

The old one looked at her. “So, spy! Awake, eh? Good!” He turned to the others. “See to it. We’d best be off. Her companions may try some sort of rescue, so we have to move fast.”

Mavra felt relief at these words; the other three had escaped! And, somehow, they would get her out of there, she felt sure. She was necessary to them.

She felt like a puppet with lead wires in it so it could be bent in any shape and would stay there. They put her on top of one of the little mules, in a basic saddle. The big man led it down a back path from the rear of the house, into a dark grove of trees. The two guards held her firmly on, but she was powerless to do anything anyway.

Overhead, Vistaru almost missed the departure. There was just a glimpse of the woman and her three catlike captors going out the back and heading into the woods. She followed and tried to guess ahead.

About two thousand meters down, the woods parted for a clearing where there was a large stone structure seemingly carved out of the small hillside. Two other guards were there, having just lit torches on either side of a hexagonal entranceway. Not a Zone Gate, she decided. That stuff had been built by somebody here.

She strained to think what the place reminded her of, and, all at once, she had it. An ancient temple. An altar. Sacrifice?

She sped directly back to Renard and Hosuru. There was no time to lose.

They lifted her off when they came to the hexagonal opening and carried her gently inside. There was a chamber there, an enlargement of a natural cave of limestone or something similar. Torches had been lit along the fairly broad passageway, which opened quickly into the main chamber.

It was a temple, no question about it. There was an area for supplicants to stand, a rail, and then tables set on either side of a large yellow stone that seemed to be protruding out of the natural rock in back. It was multifaceted; millions of them, from all evidence, reflecting the torchlight as if it had a strange, eerie life of its own. Mounted on the both walls, in solid gold, were outlines of the hexagon symbol.

The high priest, for by now it was evident what he was, preceded them, lighting small candles in ceremonial holders, six per holder. Then he went behind the rail. Satisfied all was in readiness, he nodded to the guards to bring her forward. They did, placing her facing the strange yellow stone.

“Undress it,” the priest snapped, and the guards removed her black cloth shirt, black pants, and boots. It was suddenly chilly.

She was nude.

The guards tossed the clothing in a heap outside the altar rail. She longed to be able to use some of the things in those boots or the belt, or even to try the nail venom on them. But she was held motionless by something she could not control.

The priest moved toward her, motioning for them to turn her a little bit toward him. His yellow cat’s eyes glowed weirdly in the torchlight.

“Spy,” he said, his voice crisp, businesslike, and without a trace of mercy or compassion in it, “you have been judged guilty by the High Priestly Council of the Blessed Well,” he intoned, bowing his head slightly when pronouncing the last two words. He made a horizontal motion with his right hand, and she felt control return to her head. She moistened her lips, but knew she could talk.

“I didn’t even have a trial and you know it!” she protested hoarsely. “I haven’t had a chance to say anything!”

“I did not say you were tried,” the priest pointed out, “only that you were judged. There are no mitigating factors. Heathen knock on our door to the north, worse heathen wantonly and horribly kill tens of thousands of the Chosen of the Well to the south. Now, you come. You are not of the Olborn, certainly. Nor are you here by invitation or permission of the High Priestly Council of the Blessed Well.” Again the slight nod. “A spy you are, and so I ask you, is there any way for you to conclusively prove your innocence?”

What a loaded question! she thought. Prove you didn’t smile. Prove you didn’t kill your mother whom the court never knew or heard of. “You know no one can prove they aren’t something,” she retorted.

He nodded. “Of course. But there is a final arbiter of justice.”

“You’re going to kill me,” she said more than asked.

The priest looked genuinely shocked. Mavra wondered why she’d always liked cats in the past.

“Of course we do not kill, except in self-defense. All life is from the Blessed Well, and cannot be taken lightly. As you took no other life, unlike your companions, we could not take yours.”

Both parts of that observation cheered her a little. Alive meant hope, and the news that the others had sent some of these religious fanatics to an early grave was just as satisfying.

“The Well, in Its infinite wisdom and mercy,” the priest explained, as if in a liturgy, “established among the Olbornians a more equitable means of final judgment—final, absolute, and conclusive. The stone that is before you is one of six, located near the six corners of Olborn. It is proof of the favored status of the Olbornians with the Blessed Well. Its power comes from the Well Itself. What it does has never been undone.”

This tack started unnerving her again. She thought of Renard, changed into a different creature. What the hell did this thing do?

“The Well, in Its infinite wisdom,” continued the priest, “saw that Its Chosen People were in a harsh land, rich but without beasts of burden to help Its Chosen People till the good soil, pull its burdens, turn its water wheels. Thus we have the Sacred Stones. When a transgressor, whether alien or Olbornian, is accused, he is brought before one of the High Priests of the Blessed Well, and thence in his company to the Sacred Stone. Should you be innocent, then nothing will happen to you. You will be free to go on your way, unmolested, protected by the Seal of the Blessed Well. But, should you be guilty, it will mete out the most wonderful of justices.” He paused. “You saw the detik upon which you were carried here?”

She thought a moment. The little mules with the big ears and sad eyes. “Yes,” she replied, curious and apprehensive. Where the hell were the Lata and Renard?

“They are sexless, joyless. Totally placid, they are incapable of harming anything, and are forced to obey our commands. Should you be guilty, you will turn to a detik, a beast of the fields, condemned to serve the Olbornians in silent labor the rest of your life.”

She was appalled, unbelieving. “You mean the mules—all of them—were once people?”

The priest nodded. “It is so.” He turned to the guards. “Hold her arms tight,” he cautioned. Then he turned back to Mavra. She felt strong hands holding her arms just behind the wrist. The priest waved his arms again, and she felt movement return to her whole body.

“Touch her hands to the Sacred Stone!” the priest commanded, his voice echoing through the damp cavern. The two powerful arms ignored her twisting and pushed her unwilling hands to the faceted yellow orb.

Something like a strong, burning electric shock went through her arms to her shoulders. The effect was so strong and so painful that she screamed and actually pulled away from the wretched thing despite the strength of her two captors.

“That was Mavra!” Vistaru yelled. “Come on! Hurry!” she called to Hosuru and Renard, who rushed ahead. Neither cared any more if there was a whole army ahead; they were going in now.

Inside the chamber, the priest seemed to smile and intoned, “Again!” This time the terrible shock and pain went from her hips to her toes, and, strangely, wound up in her ears. Again she screamed and fought to pull away.

“Again!” the priest commanded, but at that moment the onrushing Lata and Agitar charged, Renard yelling bloodcurdling screams that echoed terrifyingly off the cavern walls.

The priest turned, looking stunned and surprised. Like most fanatics, the concept that anybody would invade his holiest of places had simply never occurred to him, and he couldn’t handle it. He stood there petrified. Not the two guards. They dropped Mavra and whirled. They had no pistols, which was fortunate, but they bore ceremonial steel swords, which they drew.

Keeping all their attention on the guards and priest, Renard and Vistaru both yelled, “Run, Mavra! Get out of here! We’ll handle this!”

The first guard took advantage of this distraction to advance on Renard, sword poised, saberlike, in front of him.

Renard smiled grimly, and moved his tast out in a similar manner, as if preparing to duel. The guard looked at the thin, snaky copper-clad whip and chuckled. He moved with his sword, and Renard brought the tast up, touching the sword.

Sparks flew, and the guard screamed and dropped to the floor of the cavern, the point where his hand gripped the hilt actually smoking slightly.

Vistaru, who still had some venom left, swooped at the other one, suddenly turning on her internal light to catch the foe off-guard. He was too good for that, and he stabbed in with his sword.

And missed.

She did an aerial backflip and plunged her stinger into his stomach, then pushed off him. The guard yowled, then seemed to stiffen, as he dropped to the floor, limp, lying eyes wide-open and unseeing.

Mavra felt the guards release their grip on her and felt the cold stone as they dropped her. Her whole body was tingling and her mind wouldn’t clear, but she had enough sense to hear Renard’s shout to run, and take that advice. A naked, stunned Mavra Chang wasn’t going to be much good in a fight.

She was dizzy, and couldn’t seem to get up, so she took off on all fours. Her head seemed heavy; she couldn’t lift it, but she could see enough to head for the exit and did so, almost knocking over the guard just now meeting his end from Renard’s tast. She wanted to crawl fast, but she couldn’t lift her head up far enough; a nerve in the back of it was killing her, and her hair was hanging down in front, further obscuring her vision. But she made the steps and scampered out, passing the now-dead guards slumped under their still burning torches. Out ahead, she could see, was blackness, and that was where she wanted to be.

She crawled into the bushes before she stopped, chest heaving, and tried to clear her head. She looked back at the entrance, but she couldn’t get her head up quite far enough, or hold it even far enough to see out of the tops of her eyes without that nerve pinching and hurting.

With the return of her wind came a clearer head. She was still on all fours. Why, she began to wonder. It was dark, but Obie had given her night vision, and she put her head chin against chest, essentially upside down, and looked back at herself. Her hair fell straight down.

Her thin, lithe body was unchanged, her two small breasts hanging down and tugging slightly as a result of being dead weight.

My arms!she suddenly thought in panic. What did they do?

She also felt two long bending sensations with her head that way.

She no longer had arms. She now had forelegs—thin and with a knee joint that bent only one way, locking the other way. It led down to a perfectly formed, fairly thick hoof of some whitish-gray substance like fingernails. There was no hair; the legs were still the same flesh color as the rest of her, the skin still looked human. But they were the legs of the little mule.

Looking farther back, she saw what she expected to see, and sighed. Now she understood why she couldn’t get off all fours, and why she couldn’t seem to get her head up properly. The forelegs were a good twenty percent shorter than the hind legs. In the mule, the long neck compensated; a human head and neck wasn’t designed to go that far.

Renard and the two Lata came out of the cave. She heard them more than saw them, and, after a moment’s hesitation, called to them. They were there in a flash.

“Mavra, you ought to have seen that old boy’s face when—” Renard started cheerfully, when she walked out of the brush into the torchlight. They all three gasped, mouths agape. For the first time they could see and know what the Olbornians had done to Mavra Chang.

First, take the arms and legs off a woman’s torso. Then turn it face down, the hips about a meter high, the shoulders about eighty centimeters. Now put a perfectly proportioned pair of mule’s hind legs on the hips, so that the base of the body kind of melds into it. Now put two mule’s legs on the shoulders, long enough to reach the ground but shorter because of the angle of the body. But don’t add an animal’s hair or skin—keep it all human, perfectly matched to the torso, except for hard, naillike hooves on all four feet, and, as a final touch, remove the human ears from her head and replace them with large, almost meter-long jackass ears, still out of the same human skin material. Then continue the woman’s hair down across the back a bit into a thicker mane of the same color hair, extending along the spine to about where the breasts hung down on the underside. And, since the torso hasn’t been otherwise altered, remember to put Mavra’s horse’s tail growing out of the waist at the base of the spinal column, above the hips, actually starting slightly in front of the hind legs, and drape it crudely over the rectum.

The others felt tears of pity rise within them. “Oh, my god!” was all Renard could say, and he felt bad about it as soon as it was out.

She shifted slightly, then turned her head to one side, almost far enough to look directly at him. Her hair hung down well below her face, crazily. Her voice was the same; even, level, and rich, but her eyes, when she turned her head to one side to look at them, said something else was inside her.

“I know,” she told them. “I figured it out. Those little mules they have—they make them with that stone in there, from people. I touched it twice, then got away when you arrived. Tell me—is anything else changed?”

Choking back tears, Renard sat beside her and gently described her to herself, including the ears and misplaced tail.

The odd thing was, they all thought, she looked strange and exotic, to Renard almost erotic, a curious and not unattractive little creature that engendered affection with the pity. But it was still an impractical, misdesigned creature, a one-of-a-kind on a world with 1560 races.

“Maybe I should go back in and complete the process,” she suggested, hoping the hoarseness and thickness in her speech would not betray how she really felt.

“I wouldn’t,” Vistaru said softly, sympathetically. Mavra was already beginning to hate that tone. “You saw how they treated those mules? The thing does something to the mind, too. You’d be an animal, as good as dead.”

Renard had a sudden thought. “Look!” he said excitedly. “It isn’t forever!”

“The priest said it was irreversible,” Mavra responded. “He said it so joyfully I believed him.”

“No! No!” the Agitar protested. “You haven’t been through the Well Gate yet!”

“The priest said the stone’s power was from the Well,” she retorted.

“That’s true,” Vistaru put in, “but so is everything else on the Well World. Why that stone is there and why it does what it does we’ll probably never know—it’s a substitute for something they would have to handle on their own planet, that’s all. Like the magic hexes here, which really mean they can tap a limited part of the Well to compensate for something in their designed homes. You still haven’t been classified and added to the Well’s input, so whatever changes the stone made won’t affect that.”

Mavra felt renewed hope. “Not forever,” she almost breathed, and seemed to relax. Suddenly she was upset that she’d let something show through the armor, and she took a deep breath.

“Not forever,” Renard agreed. “Look, want to head for a Zone Gate now? Not Olborn’s certainly, but we can get in somewhere, I’m sure. We can run you through like you ran me through.”

Mavra shook her head violently. “No, no, not yet. Later, yes. As soon as possible. But the surrounding hexes are in the war. This hex is in the war. That’s for normal times. We have to get to Gedemondas.”

“I can do that!” Vistaru protested.

Mavra shook her head again. “No, you can’t. You won’t know what the engine module looks like, nor how it’s destroyed. Besides, I have never ever backed out on a commission yet once I’ve accepted it. They wanted me along and I said yes. After—a Zone Gate—maybe in Gedemondas, if they’ll talk to us at all, or in Dillia next door.”

“Be reasonable, Mavra!” Renard protested. “Look at you! You can’t see three meters ahead of you. You can’t feed yourself, you’re stark naked with no protection against the elements, in the middle of territory whose natives would take you back to the stone and finish the job in an instant.” He got up, looked down on her, and gently moved the horse’s tail aside. “You’re even going to have bathroom trouble. Your vagina’s where your ass should be, and the ass is farther up. The human anatomy is designed for sitting or squatting. Those legs are not designed for your body. You can’t go on!”

She tried to look at him squarely, failed. It hurt too much. “I’m going,” she maintained stubbornly. “With you if you’ll have me. Without you if not. If you want, you can be my guide and aide when I have to see far or eat, and clean me off when I shit. If not, I’ll go anyway, and I’ll make it. When you were sucking your thumb on sponge, and I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t let you go, and I didn’t quit. This won’t stop me, either.”

“She’s right, you know,” Hosuru said quietly. “At least, about completing the mission first. The whole world is at stake in Gedemondas. She’s needed there. If we can get her there, it’s our duty to try.”

“Okay,” Vistaru said dubiously, trying to see the flaw in the other Lata’s logic. “If you’re going to be stubborn, we’ll all go. But I think a day or two in that new condition may cure you of this bravado. If it does, don’t feel ashamed, weak, or a failure to ask us to get you to a Zone Gate. I wouldn’t.”

Mavra chuckled mirthlessly. “Shame and weakness don’t scare me, but I die when I’m a failure to myself.” She shifted again. “Did anybody get my clothes? I might still manage some of them, with Renard’s soldier’s kit. And we ought to get out of here. Sooner or later somebody’s going to notice the high priest didn’t come back and raise a hue and cry. We’d best be well away.”

Renard threw up his hands. “I have your clothes. We’ll see, later. Now, let’s move! This way!” There was resignation and a total lack of understanding in his voice.

He wouldn’t understand, Mavra thought. None of them would.

Apparently the shock of the slayings was too much for the Olbornians. There was no pursuit that they ever knew about.

Mavra found that she could trot, like the little mules. Left legs out, push, right legs out, push, and again, faster and faster. She had no feeling at all in the hoofs, which helped, but all of the exposed skin area was just like normal exposed skin area. The Lata helped, flying alongside or just in front, telling her what was ahead so she didn’t run into trees or hurt her neck, and could make some speed.

Morning had them some distance away. Renard mounted Doma, whom he’d been leading, and they scouted the terrain. It was clear that things were not going to be as difficult as they feared from the Olbornian score.

For the “Well’s Chosen Ones,” they were quite obviously getting the hell beat out of them. They had run afoul of a coast watch set around the Sacred Stones areas; it had been sheer bad luck to pick that spot to camp. The rest of the country was wide open, with the telltale signs of a war going badly all over: military carts drawn by teams of mules hauling supplies and large cannon and mortars south; a steady stream of aimless refugees north.

They stuck to open country, which was mostly deserted now, everyone down south into the fight or guarding the Sacred Stones and Zone Gate. They were able to relax and straighten out their situation.

Because of the precariousness of the camp, Doma’s packs had never been unloaded, so they still had their supplies. They ate first; to Mavra, it was a humiliating type of experience she would have to get used to. They’d started to spoon-feed her, but she’d resisted that. They opened a tin of meat which Renard warmed, then broke up some small fruit, and put it in a wooden bowl. By standing on her hind legs and kneeling on her forelegs, she could eat, like a dog or cat. It was hard; the thin legs were even thinner at the ankles, and the legs moved forward, not back, and the damned bowl kept moving, but she managed it and the food tasted good. Water she drank by two methods: lapping, like an animal, and sticking her face in the pan and drinking the top half down.

But it worked, and that was enough for her.

Vistaru tied her hair up between and in back of her enormous ears with an elastic band, which kept it out of her face and food. She could even see level in front of her, by standing on her forelegs while kneeling on the hind ones. That position, too, was uncomfortable, but she didn’t mind. It gave her neck some relief, and allowed her to see.

The clothing was more of a problem, though she’d need it. It was slightly chilly in Olborn, and it would be frigid in the upper reaches of Gedemondas.

They cut the sleeves off her shirt and managed to get it on. The pants were a bigger problem, and they didn’t quite reach all the way, but Vistaru buckled the wide belt around her bare midsection and that helped. It looked wrong and stupid, and felt wrong, too, and the pants kept slipping, but it was something and it felt better. The long coat tailored for Gedemondas would possibly do what was needed, covering that impossible tail, they hoped. Some cut-off gloves might help protect the exposed skin in Gedemondas snow. Maybe.

Oddly, Mavra felt better now. Obstacles were to be surmounted; that was part of the joy of it all. They noticed a pickup in her spirits they couldn’t comprehend.

Sleeping was the worst compromise; the animal’s legs were designed for sleeping standing up, but the human torso was not, and sleeping on her stomach was no longer possible. She managed lying on her side.

In the meantime, the war was going from bad to worse for those of Olborn. Occasionally they’d meet some frightened refugees, not looking as fierce or confident as those back in the priest’s lair. Their world was coming apart, and with it their world-view and their notions of their place in it. No longer sure of anything, they were somehow sad and pathetic. People they ran into kept trying to surrender to them.

Roving military patrols caused worse problems; most were composed of deserters with the social restraint imposed on them by their life’s conditioning and faith in their favored status with the Well all gone; they brutalized the refugees, they tried brutalizing the alien party, but renewed Lata venom and Renard’s highly charged personality soon dealt effectively with them.

Mavra also found it interesting that no one gave her a second glance. To these insular people, she was just one more weird alien creature.

But progress was slow, and they turned their attention to trying to find some way to get Mavra and Renard on Doma. The problem was the great wings, which needed to be unimpeded, and which came down most of the length of the great animal’s body.

Finally, experimentation achieved a compromise that Doma and practicality could accept. Nonessential supplies were jettisoned, and the Lata took as much as they could in their pouches. The weight would slow them, but Doma would also be slowed and impeded. With the instruments tossed out—Renard insisted he never used them anyway—she could sit, legs astraddle, on the lower neck of the pegasus, while he sat just behind, body pressed into hers. Straps from some of the excess saddlebags would hold her, and Doma, while uncomfortable with the extra weight on her neck, managed. The only problem was that it took all three of the others and some cooperation and kneeling from Doma to get her up there in the first place.

Finally, though, they could fly, and the distance sped by. They ducked south of the hex corner, avoiding any more priestly fanatics, and crossed barely into Palim.

The inhabitants of the hex eyed them nervously, but did not interfere or challenge them. The Palim resembled nothing so much as giant long-haired elephants. Their form was deceptive, though; they were a high-technology people, with carefully managed groves of food trees and grain, and a criss-cross of a large electric rail system and odd, gumdrop-shaped city buildings in clusters linked by ramps. They stayed clear; the Palim seemed too unconcerned by the nearby violence. It indicated that they had elected to sit out the war, and that meant the Yaxa-Lamotien-Dasheen alliance was probably making good use of that rail system in the east.

Even slowed, they made the border of Gedemondas in under two days. There was no doubt where they were; the great mountains of the frigid hex were visible from the flat plain, like some intrusive wall, a great distance before they reached it. With a few hours to scout around by air, they found the relatively small plains area that was in Gedemondas itself. It was the logical point for the two advancing armies to head for, and it was empty of all but some minor wildlife when they arrived.

They were first, but by how much?

They studied the maps. It was obvious that the Makiem would airlift over Alestol, probably to near the point where they now were. The Yaxa would move from Palim at the rail terminus, then about thirty kilometers overland to the northern edge of the plain. Renard wondered idly if there would be room for both forces.

“There will be quite a battle,” Mavra predicted grimly. “If one gets here first the other will have to dislodge them if it can. If they get here at the same time, the clash will just be more immediate, with this a no man’s land. Either way, this nice little plain is going to be littered with the dead and dying before long.”

“According to the hex map, here, there’s a little shelter over near that cleft in the rocks,” Vistaru noted. “That’s where we’re supposed to meet our guide, if anyone’s still there.”

Mavra tried to look to where the Lata pointed, but her head wouldn’t come up enough. Two or three meters, that was the limit. She swore in frustration, but there was determination on her face as well.

It was about fifteen degrees centigrade on the plain, which was comfortable, but that wouldn’t last long, either. The air cooled almost two degrees for every three hundred meters in altitude, and some of those passes were over three thousand meters high.

They walked leisurely to the shelter, and almost missed it. It was a low cabin of old stone and wood set back against the rocks, so old and weatherbeaten that it almost looked a part of the natural formations. It looked deserted, and they approached cautiously, uncertain of what surprises might be around for them.

Suddenly the big door, almost as high as the shack itself, creaked open, and a creature came out.

It looked like a human woman, almost. Long hair tied back in a sort of ponytail, an attractive, oval face and long slender arms. But she had little pointed ears, and from the waist down, below her light jacket, she had the body of a white-and-black spotted horse.

A centaur,the classicist Renard thought, no longer surprised. Meeting such a creature was no longer strange; in fact, it was almost to be expected.

The woman smiled when she saw them, and waved. “Hello!” she called, in a pleasant soprano. “Come on up! I’d almost given you up!”

Vistaru approached. “You are the Dillian guide?” she said, almost unbelievingly. The Dillian was no more than a girl, perhaps in her mid-teens.

The centaur nodded. “I’m Tael. Come on in and I’ll start a small fire.”

They entered; Tael gave the strange-looking Mavra an odd look, but said nothing. Doma waited outside, placidly munching grass.

The place was built for Dillians, certainly—there were stall-like compartments for four of them, a lot of straw on the floor, and, up on brick blocks a small wood-burning stove and scuttle filled with chopped wood. Tael threw a couple of pieces in the stove and lit a small piece of paper with a very long safety match, throwing it into the cast-iron belly of the stove.

Dillians never sat; their bodies couldn’t stand the weight. So everybody else sat on the straw, Mavra reclining on her side. There was plenty of room.

After some small talk, Renard voiced what they all were thinking.

“Ah, excuse me, Tael, but—aren’t you a little young for all this?” he tried, as diplomatically as possible.

The woman didn’t take it badly. “Well, I admit I’m only fifteen, but I was born in the uplake mountain country of Dillia; my family has hunted and trapped on both sides of the border for a long time. I know every trail and pathway between here and Dillia, and that’s a pretty good ways.”

“And the Gedemondas?” Mavra prompted.

The Dillian shrugged. “They’ve never bothered me. You see them every once in a while—big white shapes against the snow. Never close—they’re always gone when you get there. You hear them, too, sometimes, growling and roaring and making all sorts of weird sounds that echo between the mountains.”

“Is it their speech?” Vistaru asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tael replied. “I used to, but when they asked me to do this guide job for you they fitted me with a translator, and I didn’t hear any difference. I’ve wondered sometimes whether they have any speech as we know it at all.”

“That could be bad,” Renard put in. “How can you talk to somebody who can’t talk back?”

She nodded. “I’m still excited about all this. We’ve tried off and on to communicate with them for the longest time; I’d like to be there when it’s done.”

“Ifit’s done,” Hosuru added pessimistically.

“I’m worried about the smoke from that thing,” Mavra said, cocking her head a little bit toward the stove. “Not the Gedemondas. The war parties. They have to be close by.”

The girl looked uncomfortable. “I’ve seen them already, but they just took a close look at me and went on. A few flying horses like yours, and some really strange, beautiful things that must have had orange and brown butterflylike wings three or more meters across. None of them landed.”

Vistaru looked concerned. “Yaxa and Agitar both. Advance scouts. We can’t stay here long.”

“We won’t,” Tael told them. “We’ll leave at first light up the Intermountain Trail in back of the base here. With any luck we’ll make Camp 43 shortly after noon, and from there we start getting into snow country—and the air thins.”

“How high is this camp?” Renard asked.

“Fifteen hundred sixty-two meters,” Tael responded. “But you’re already almost four hundred meters up. You wouldn’t know it, but the plain’s a slope.”

“We could fly up that far,” Vistaru noted. “We’re good to about eighteen hundred meters, and I think you said, Renard, that Doma’s good to about that.”

He nodded. “But that doesn’t help our guide, here. No wings for her.”

Tael laughed. “That’s all right. I told you I was mountain-born. Even better if we have a head start, but beyond Camp 43, flying will be difficult. I can start up this evening, and be there to meet you in the morning. That way we move even faster.” Her face darkened, and she looked at Mavra. “But you will have to be dressed far better than that. All of you, in fact. Frostbite will be a big problem.”

“We have some winter things,” Hosuru told her. “And I understood you were supposed to bring some stuff.”

She nodded, went over to a stall, and hauled out some tough fabric knapsacks. They were heavy, but she managed them without strain. Maybe she couldn’t fly, but she did add the muscle power that was their most conspicuous lack.

She sorted things out. Special form-fitting thermal wear to suit Latan contours, including transparent but tough and rigid shielding for the wings, appeared, and a heavy coat and gloves that sealed with an elastic of some kind fitted Renard. “You’ll also find these useful,” she said, tossing him some small objects which proved to be wrappings for his hooves, with a flat, spiked, disklike sole that would give him not only protection but better footing. She brought out some more clothes, also of the Latan model but larger and without the wing flaps. She looked a little puzzled. They were obviously for a biped with hands and feet.

Hastily, Mavra explained what had happened. The girl nodded sympathetically, but was plainly concerned.

“I don’t see how these can be cut down,” she said. “Your feet should do all right in the snow, like mine, but you should have some kind of wrapping. You haven’t got my protective skin layers and hair,” she pointed out.

“We’ll do whatever we can,” Mavra responded. “Renard will have to lead Doma once we get up there; I’ll ride her as long as possible. That should help.”

Tael was doubtful, but she was the guide, not the mission leader.

Renard went over to the door, peering out at the sky. No sign of strange or hostile creatures now; a few lazy birds, no more. But soon—who knew?

He wondered just how far off the driving forces were.