Jack Chalker - Ghost of the Well of Souls

“Yeah? And what good is even that if you can’t get the last piece?” Ari asked him. “And, if I remember, that’s the one nobody could find.”

“Oh, I am pretty certain where it is,” the General responded. “And I think you might be as surprised as everyone else when you find out. And you will. I would love to take you to Chalidang to meet Their Majesties. I’m certain that they would be thrilled to have you for dinner. But now you’re my native guide. What happens from this point is going to depend on who is or is not waiting for me when I reach Zone. And you, both of you, shall accompany me. I and my men will soon be strangers in a very strange land. We appreciate our native guide.”

One of these days, somebody is going to kill that asshole squid, Ari commented. He reminds me of my uncle Jules.

Don’t they all, Ming sighed.

An Imtre who had splashed down into the water approached the General.

“Yes?”

“Sir, beg to report that General Kusdik and Minister Krare are both dead. Assassinated.”

“What! But Kusdik was aboard this very ship! And Krare was supposedly waiting at the Kalindan border!”

“They were, sir, but—well, something got them. Just like they got the others.”

A nervous chill radiated from the General in spite of his triumph. All the deaths he’d seen, all the deaths he’d just caused, and these two were the ones that affected him.

“Kincaid?”

“Yes, sir. At least we assume so in the case of the minister. On the ship, well, er, he left a note.”

“He did what ?”

“Y-Yes, sir. It said that we were all to tell the Empress that she would be the last, and that there were only two to go. And he—he added something. Something for you.”

“For me ? But I’m not from his damned universe! What concern of his am I ?”

“He said, well, he—”

“Come on! Out with it!”

“He said that you should be told that he didn’t like genocide no matter who did it. That he was very busy now but that he expected he would get around to you sooner or later.”

“Figures. Has my great staff and would-be replacements figured out yet what the devil Kincaid is that he could get this close to us? And I mean, the minister would have been in a water-breathing atmosphere, like here, not air like the others. How can he do that?”

“I don’t have word on it, sir, but I’ll have them send queries as soon as we’re in high-tech. If they know anything now, they’ll tell us and I’ll tell you.”

“Very well. Go! Let’s get moving here!”

“Problems, General?” Ming asked, not sounding worried about his health and welfare.

“You know Kincaid. Or knew him anyway. Tell me what you know.”

“Not much, really. Just the usual. Josich was Emperor, and he went to war very much like you do and at one point suffered losses severe enough to set back his plans for months. In fact, it turned out to be such a loss of momentum that it cost him the war. He took it out on the planet that had fought so hard and stalled him for so long, and he blew the entire planet up, along with over four billion sentient creatures. Just like you did this afternoon, only on an imaginably larger scale. Kincaid’s whole family was on that world, but he wasn’t at the time. He’s been out to get Josich and every single high-level individual regardless of rank or position or power ever since, fanatically so, to the exclusion of all else. He won’t even be deterred by hostages. He’s a machine, General, as well as a madman, and if he says he’s going to get you, he’ll get you. He followed Josich and the remnants of the Hadun court here, and from the sound of it, he’s gotten far more than the one in Zone that we knew about.”

“Yes, that’s true. Of the more than twenty people who came in with the Empress, we’re down to just two, including Her Majesty. It will make for an interesting situation if our agent is present in Zone when I come through holding another piece of this jigsaw puzzle. I am convinced that so long as Josich remains in Chalidang and in the palace there, she can not be gotten, even if someone were invisible. The controls and security are just too perfect. But if she comes out, well, then it is a different story. So far nobody has been able to protect anyone outside of that level of security. And Josich will have to come out if we have the Quislon piece.”

“Have to?”

“Yes. Again, you will see, when it is time.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be counting too much on him stopping with your Empress,” Ari noted. “He’s added you to his list now.”

“And that should worry you,” the General responded ominously.

“Oh?”

“You see, I have given orders to every single one of my people. If I should die, for any reason, they are to kill you immediately.”

Jaysu was free to fly at dawn, but it did not excite her as much as it should have. The landscape she’d awakened to was among the most barren she’d ever seen, and she wondered how she would even get food and drink for the long journey ahead.

To the north there was a mountainous landscape with noticeable green all about and even a waterfall in view, but it was distorted by the gauzelike effect of the hex barrier. She could see the Customs station and the triple fencing that went as far as the eye could see, and she knew that she didn’t dare go back that way. Even if she could have flown over before, she surely would face a trap now.

That left Quislon, the object of her long journey but also a place definitely not made for Amborans. She wondered, in fact, how the two Pyrons were going to make it, considering how barren it seemed.

She launched herself into the air, suddenly conscious of where she’d lost some feathers and had perhaps gotten a scrape coming through that fencing, but finding, too, that it was an endurable nuisance and not a debilitating injury.

Before her was a cold, hard desert, with hard-packed rock and ancient windblown canyons and tablelands. It was clear that nothing had ever lived in this region, and she couldn’t imagine how such a place could support a large population of anything, not unless they got moisture from somewhere belowground and ate rocks.

She climbed, hoping to spot some hidden pool, some oasis, some sign of green, but there was nothing at all. Here and there were curious clusters of what at first seemed to be natural shapes, but after realizing how organized and perfectly shaped they were, she realized they were pyramid-shaped buildings. Still, there was nothing to indicate fires coming from any of them, nor could she see any sign of creatures moving about, nor even roads that would connect the structures and other clusters. She flew directly over one and got the oddest series of empathic impressions. It wasn’t that there was nothing recognizable there, but there was so much it overwhelmed her senses. About the only use she could get for this was the limits of the habitation, which stretched solidly through all the structures and some distance beyond. She realized that they were underground, and the structures were not houses or buildings, but some kind of entranceways to different parts of the world below.

Now, at least, she understood why even the most evil saw their only chance at grabbing this sacred object to be the one time it was brought out for ceremonies.

She hadn’t seen the two Pyrons, either, and suspected they were keeping out of sight somewhere, possibly resting. They were more comfortable in the dark.

For a while she followed the curious tracks, and eventually caught up with Wally’s group, which included a dozen or so of those horrid Jerminins. They seemed to be taking turns hauling huge cubes on giant sleds, illustrating their strength, but what was in those cubes was a mystery.