Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

“Let us proceed,” she told them, keeping that flow in one corner of her mind.

The way was barred by a tall electrically operated gate. Beyond it was a tunnel of sorts, with fencing five meters high going down the suddenly primitive dirt road on both sides and even across a roof. A second gate was at the far end, thirty meters farther on, operated, it seemed, by the same set of controls.

The silver and black officer looked just like all the others, but more nervous. Still, he didn’t appear threatening, and Jaysu felt no direct danger to any of them from him. He did seem almost surprised to see them, though, as if he never would have thought they would try a legitimate exit.

“Papers?”

They handed them over, wondering just what his instructions were.

He looked at them, then at the papers, then back at them. “You are taking nothing with you that you did not bring into Alkazar?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Har Shamish answered. “Our sole purpose was to reach Quislon.”

“Very well. You understand that these papers are not valid for reentry?”

“Mine most certainly is!” Shamish protested. “However, as it happens, I have decided to proceed home after this and so won’t be using them. Still, I am accredited as a diplomat to Alkazar.”

“To Kolznar Colony, not to the country proper,” the official responded. “However, as you say, it is moot.” He wrote something on his electric pad, then proceeded to remove several of the sheets from their papers that had been added when they’d entered, and handed the papers back. There was a buzzing sound, and the nearest gate slid back, revealing that last thirty meter gauntlet.

“Proceed,” the little bearlike creature said, and they walked through. The buzzing sound came again, and the gate closed behind them.

It was claustrophobic in the cagelike tunnel, walking in the reflected light.

“I was right,” Shamish commented. “One high fence, passive, then a killer fence in the middle. One more passive will be over here at the other gate.”

They reached the second gate, and waited for it to open. And waited. And waited…

“I have a bad feeling about this,” O’Leary muttered.

Jaysu did not know where the danger was coming from, but she felt it, and knew it was time to act. She took hold of that current of living energy she’d identified and kept track of and mentally pushed against it.

There was a tremendous crackling sound, and sizzling, as if things were frying, and then all the lights went out and they were totally in the dark, including her. In fact, she was now completely blind in the conventional sense, but she could still “see” her companions in other ways, and the sudden panicking little creatures in the building behind them.

The two Pyron weren’t blind at all. “Quick! Can you force the gate?” Shamish called to O’Leary.

“I—I think so,” the agent grunted, pushing hard against it and rattling it.

Shamish came up and added his considerable weight and strength to it, and they started pounding against it.

The gate began to buckle, and then, with one mighty coordinated push, they got it partly bent outward.

“There’s enough room to squeeze through!” O’Leary cried. “Come on, ma’am! Try and get through!”

“I cannot see!” she protested. “I can only see the living!”

She felt around, using their tentacles for guidance, and managed to find the hole, but squeezing through it with her wings proved difficult. Finally, she felt herself being pushed to the ground, and while one of the Pyrons pushed against the gate, the other pushed against her feet.

There were a lot of feathers left around, but now O’Leary managed to squeeze through the bent corner of the gate and was able to help Shamish through. Getting up, they helped the Amboran to her feet and made for the border, just a meter or two away.

She felt a pain, like burning, on one wing, but only wanted out of that horrible place and she went forward.

The temperature immediately changed. It was warmer, yet the air was much dryer, a desertlike feeling to it, and overhead, quite suddenly, the sky was clear and well-lit.

“You can fly all you want to now, if you can,” Shamish told her. “You’re in Quislon.”

She looked back, shaken, at the blackness she’d caused beyond the border. “That is an evil place, if you wish to define evil, Citizen O’Leary,” she commented.

“I think it is, but it still can’t hold a candle to some. I wonder what the devil they were going to do with us once they had us trapped?”

“The energy—the power in the wires? Citizen Shamish called it a killer fence, the one in the middle? That same energy was also all around the cage. They were going to connect it so it would run through the cage as well. I could see them doing it.”

O’Leary burned with anger. “Those bastards were going to electrocute us?”

She sighed. “I could not, of course, permit that to happen. When the one inside threw the switch, and the power started toward us, I simply, well, threw it back…”

“Thus shorting out the security fencing, the station, and maybe if we’re lucky, the town and the train yard as well.” O’Leary sighed. “Well, at least that’s that. None of us will have to go back there again, and if you, Shamish, want to go back to Kolznar by ship, you can make them most uncomfortable.”

“I think my vice-consular days there are past,” the diplomat commented sourly. “I think I’ll pick a different assignment next. But come! This is a desert, and we have a very long way yet to go.”

Jaysu shook her head. “No, I must rest, and nearby,” she told them. “I cannot see properly to do much in this place, and I need to meditate and sleep and allow my body to repair itself.”

“It’s two hundred kilometers to Quislon Center,” O’Leary reminded her. “And the desert sun here is very, very hot.”

“Then why don’t you go on?” she suggested. “You can make your best time now, even this late. In the morning I shall catch up to you. It is basically south, then I will feel the tug of the Gate and head for it. They have a Gate in the middle of the hex, do they not?”

“Yes, that’s the system for all of them,” Shamish agreed. “But see here, it’s our job to accompany you!”

O’Leary sighed. “She’s got a point, you know. She can fly now, maybe even make the whole distance in a day, two at most. We’ll be six days reaching Quislon Center.”

“But we’re bodyguards as well!”

O’Leary chuckled. “Yeah? And who’s been saving who tonight? I think the little lady can take care of herself. Besides, I’d like to know just what the heck is in those crates, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

O’Leary looked out on the desolate landscape and pointed with a tentacle to marks in the hard ground. “Well, whatever it was went that way.”

There was no way around it. They had gotten her this far, but now their own purposes were different, even if both were in the interest of fulfilling the mission.

“But we’re going to make that ceremony,” Har Shamish said in resignation.

“If we can’t catch up to them or figure out what they’re hauling, you bet we are,” O’Leary responded. “I sure want to see how the hell he’s going to pull it off.”

The borders between clans were not something the average outsider could see, but they were apparently as real as hex boundaries to the natives. It might well be a scented marker, or even a planted pattern, and to Ari and Ming, as well as the Chalidang force, there was no difference at all between the last reef that was considered Clan Tusarch’s sacred property and the next, which was Clan Paugoth. Still, the two escorts from the Lord of Tusarch stopped dead at the edge of that last reef and would go no farther.