Jack Chalker - Exiles at the Well of Souls

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.