Jack Chalker - Twilight at the Well of Souls

“He knows us,” said the huge speaker.

“You—you are Gedemondans,” Asam croaked, his voice almost stilled by a combination of shock and shame at discovery.

Brazil looked gravely at the incriminating syringe still in Asam’s hand. “So you were going to sell me out,” he said sadly. “The great Colonel Asam.”

“Sangh… came to me. Here. In the middle of the camp. He can swim right through rock, no place is really safe from him,” the Dillian told them, his tone wooden, like a man in a dream. “He was prepared to eat her alive, Brazil. Eat her alive! ”

“And you were going to trust a bastard like that to deliver her safe and sound,” the little man responded, shaking his head sadly. “I don’t know if we’ll ever learn. Asam, a very long time ago on my own people’s world a man like Gunit Sangh asked us to trust him. We did, and he swallowed nations whole, one after another, then summarily executed and tortured millions. It cost more millions of lives to finally defeat him—and still people turned around and did the same damned thing with other sons of bitches again and again. You of all people should know that Sangh would never keep his word. We discussed it earlier today. Honor is a foreign word to him—as it seems to be elastic to you. For jealousy you would betray all those who have already fought and died in her cause.”

“Jealousy? No, Brazil! Love, yes, but not jealousy!” the Colonel exclaimed heatedly.

“So you know yourself so little,” Brazil sighed. “All right, Asam. It’s done now.”

He nodded. “It’s done. I shall, of course, no longer be a burden to you. She is effectively dead now, and I don’t want to survive her.”

“O foolish man, she lives,” the Gedemondan told him.

“But for how long?” he came back.

“She was totally crippled by cruel surgery,” the white creature told them. “She would have been a helpless cripple forever, save by Dahir magic. You would have won a living corpse.”

The syringe dropped from his hand, and, for the first time in his life, Colonel Asam cried. The Gede-mondans stood there impassively, and Brazil sat quietly and waited, waited for him to cry himself out. Finally, after a couple of minutes, he just stood there, head down in shame, silently waiting for his judgment.

Finally Brazil said to the Gedemondans, “I notice you said she would have been a helpless cripple, not that she is.”

The Gedemondan nodded. “Two brothers and a sister saw the attack and managed to go along,” it told him. “It puzzled the creatures who carried her why she should be so heavy, but they did not see us.” There seemed a private amusement at that. “When they could, they contacted her—but it was too late to help her. Our powers are somewhat diminished outside of Gedemondas; we can not influence events nor see them as clearly, and, large as we are, we would have been no match for their force, particularly not in Dahir. The Dahir magic is strong, and beyond our control.”

He nodded. “I understand. But you did something, huh?”

“They attempted the only thing possible under the circumstances,” the Gedemondan told him. “There is a process called transference, for want of a better word. It is something we are aware of, although this was the first time to our knowledge that Gedemondans actually attempted it. It involves removing the essence of an individual, the soul, the intellect, whatever you wish to call it, and placing it in the body of an animal.”

“Yeah! Sure! I know that process!” Brazil exclaimed, mentally kicking himself for not thinking of it before. “The Murnies once used it on me when my body was destroyed.”

“It is so,” the Gedemondan agreed. “Those of Murithel are the only practitioners in the South, and then only on very rare occasions. Despite their odd and violent way of life and their unusual superstitions, a few of their wisest have come upon many of the same powers and secrets as we. It was, in fact, through accounts of their actions that we stumbled upon it.”

Brazil looked over at Asam. “You see, Colonel? She’s alive, she’s okay, and out of the hands of the enemy. All they’ve got is an empty husk.”

Asam managed a slight smile. “I’m glad for that,” he almost whispered.

“You haven’t lost her yet, Colonel,” Brazil tried to reassure him. “She’s in animal form right now, but inside the Well she can be whatever she wants to be. It’s her choice, Colonel. It’s always been her choice. That much I swear to you.”

“Would you care to see her?” the Gedemondan asked. “We have not brought her near the main camp because a large animal in the vicinity of an army with a large number of carnivores would be tempting fate too much, but we can take you to her.”

“No,” Asam replied. “Not now, anyway. Not after… after all this. If she chooses, if she returns, then, perhaps I can face her again. As for me, I will lead this army in battle and I will win the battle. I will live until I can kill Gunit Sangh myself, no matter what the cost.” He looked first at the Gedemondans, then at Brazil. “Am I free to go?”

Brazil nodded. “Go on back to your tent, Colonel. It’s out of your hands now.”

Asam left hurriedly, his feelings too complex to face, his self-loathing beyond imagining.

Brazil sighed and sat back down on his cot, leaned back, and looked at the Gedemondans.

“So what sort of animal did you use?” he asked them.

“We had very little time,” the Gedemondan explained, sounding a little apologetic. “We were in a barn in an alien hex full of magic and power and surrounded by enemies. We had, in addition to the time problem, a limited number of animals to choose from—and we still had to get her out and past enemy forces without raising suspicion.”

“I understand all that,” he told them impatiently. “Damn it, they made me into a stag.”

“Our choices were two,” the Gedemondan went on. “First were the horned mounts of the Dahir—but that raised a problem. They do not run free, and are used as mounts and draft animals. A wild one would be seen and captured quickly as it has some value. That left the other creature, one that’s put out to pasture and allowed to roam free until it is needed. You would call it, in your language, a sort of a cow.”

Gunit Sangh was quite literally climbing the walls, the ceiling, and oozing in and out through the floor. Others were nervous to even approach his command tent for some time; he had killed the first two messengers who went in there and had issued orders for all sorts of mass executions. None had been carried out, but nobody was willing even to go close enough to tell him this.

Initial rage had come from the first message, which had been from Dahir. It told him that, when the creatures, along with his own agents, had gone to get Mavra Chang and establish the proper spells to get her walking and moving to the Zone Gate, they had met with no success. A cursory examination had been performed and the general diagnosis was that, while autonomic functions still operated, there was, in effect, total brain death insofar as any voluntary motions were concerned. She was, in effect, a vegetable, and even their magic could not work on a body that no longer was able to comprehend an order to send a message over magically relinked nerves.

No one could explain it, but there were tracks outside and around the barn area of no known type. The conclusion: Mavra Chang had been discovered by her friends, somehow, and they, having seen her mutilated state, had done this so that she could give no information or messages.

He had ordered everyone on the ranch immediately executed, but except for the two Dahbi, it was unlikely the order would be carried out. The Dahir were pragmatists, and even the Dahir, not being stupid, would probably be an awfully long time going home or rejoining their forces.