Jack Chalker - Exiles at the Well of Souls

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.”

“If it’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.