Exiles at the Well of Souls

Along the Intermountain Trail

“Ifrit! My field glasses!” Ben Yulin commanded. The cow reached into the pack of her cowife and quickly extracted them.

“Here, Master,” she said eagerly, handing them to him. He took them without a word and put them to his eyes.

They were not merely binoculars; they had additional special lenses that helped his nearsightedness. With the already ground prescription snow goggles, they brought anything within their range into sharp, clear focus.

“Trouble?” growled a low voice next to him.

He looked away and over at the thing. It looked like a walking hairy bush, about as tall as he, with no apparent eyes, ears, or other organs. In actuality, it was not a single creature, but a colony of thirty-six Lamotien, adapted to the cold weather and the snow.

“That shack up there,” he pointed suspiciously ahead. “Doesn’t look right, somehow. I don’t want any more tricks like that fake trail. We lost two good cows there.” Neither his, he failed to add.

“We lost thirty brothers, don’t forget!” snapped the Lamotien. “We agree it looks strange. What should be done about it?”

Yulin thought a minute, trying to find a good solution without risking his noble neck or his possessions. “Why don’t a couple of you go on up? Turn white or something and take a look around.”

The Lamotien considered it. “Two each, we think. Arctic hares.” The creature seemed to come apart all of a sudden; breaking into small, equal-sized fuzzy masses. Two of the things came off one side and jumped to the snow; two others from the left. Yulin watched, fascinated as always, as the rest of the shaggy creature reformed and readjusted. It looked slightly thinner, but otherwise the same.

Now the two Lamotien in the snow ran together, seemed to blend into one big shaggy lump. The other pair did the same. Slowly, as if there were unseen puppeteer’s hands under the shaggy mops, there was a poking here, a wrinkle there, a bend here, a growth there.

Two arctic hares were there in less than two minutes. They scampered off naturally in the direction of the cabin. The rest waited; only the colony leader had a translator, so they’d have to reform before he knew the story. They didn’t have vocal communication, that was for sure. He wondered if they talked when they melded, became one being with common mind, or what. He’d asked, but the Lamotien told him not to worry about it, the concept was beyond him anyway.

The hares returned in a little more than ten minutes, disconnected, jumped back into the hairy lump, and melded again. The shape was silent for a minute, talking to the scouts or maybe absorbing the scouts’ brief memories.

Finally, it said, “The place is deserted. You’re right about it being funny, though. Lots of packs and supplies still there. Somebody was there not long ago, and left—not of their own will, we’ll wager. Too much stuff left.”

That had him worried. “Think they were the centaurs we’ve been following?”

“Probably,” the Lamotien agreed. “But whoever they are, they’re gone now.”

“Tracks?”

The Lamotien paused. “That’s the funny part. There aren’t any. We see their tracks, lots of snow disturbances where they unpacked, and all that. But no other tracks for hundreds of meters in any direction. None.”

“Well, they didn’t come back this way,” Yulin said, worried now. “So where did they go?”

They all looked around at the silent mountains.

“And with whom?” responded the Lamotien.