Jack Chalker - Shadow of the Well of Souls

It was a long way yet in the dark to the border.

The sight of Nathan Brazil’s broad-brimmed hat, soggy and crumpled though it was, atop the top spoke of the ship’s wheel made everything else, from the escape to the weather to the girl’s extraordinary powers, seem distant and pale. More, his empathic link with the girl told him that not only had she not done it, she was unaware of anyone else around to do it, either.

Either I’m losing my mind or there’s somebody else here,he told himself.

The girl, riding out the storm just behind the mainmast, instantly sensed his feelings of danger and confusion and turned to look back at him, all her vast array of senses and powers deployed against a threat.

There was nothing. No threat at all. She frowned. No threat, but there was something else, something different here. Something that had not been there before, not until that odd lurch the ship had taken. Whatever it was, it was no enemy, but why couldn’t she see it or find it? There was only something vague, and that something, like a fuzzy, friendly ghostlike presence, was back there with Nathan Brazil.

Brazil had no choice but to retake the wheel, removing the hat first and throwing it forward. The wind caught it, but it was too soggy to blow away; it skidded across the deck and stuck against the side. He unlocked the wheel and began to try to think of ways to use this wind rather than fight it. It was no use, though. Somebody—or something— had put that hat on the wheel. Something that was there with him now. Something that even the girl could only dimly perceive.

“What are you? Who are you?” he yelled against the howling gale. “Stop playing children’s games and show yourself! Where the hell are you?”

“Right here at your side, Captain Brazil,” responded a low, deep, resonant voice that nonetheless was not formed by humanlike lips.

Nathan Brazil almost jumped out of his skin. He whirled around, letting go of the wheel.

“Right here,” said the voice, and when it spoke, he could suddenly see it, if only vaguely.

It was big, big enough to tower the better part of a meter over him, and broad and strong of body. It had a head much like a snake’s or a giant lizard’s, long and flattened with two big, yellow catlike eyes that popped up from its surface, and a large, thick serpentine body that was balanced on two thick legs that ended in clawed, webbed feet but started too far down the torso to be a main support for the rest of it. It balanced now on those two feet and on the remainder of that body, which ended in a broad, almost shovellike tail. Extruding from either side of the torso, a bit below where the shoulders ought to have been, were two very thin, frail-looking arms terminating in four clawed, long webbed fingers and an opposable thumb. Like the legs, they extended out from the torso, more like a reptile than a mammal. The whole thing was covered in silvery scales that seemed to give off a rainbow of colors as the swirling clouds varied the available light and which were probably spectacular in direct sunlight.

“Don’t you think you’d better tend to the wheel first?” the creature asked him in a calm, pleasant voice. “I just had the very devil of a swim just to catch up with you. I’d rather not go back in the water again for a while.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Brazil commented, turning back to the wheel and, with some difficulty, wrestling it back under control. It was a miracle that the lone sail, even deployed as little as it was, hadn’t been torn to shreds. Whoever had built this boat had really known how to build.

“Uh, if you don’t mind,” Brazil said, trying not to look around or away but keep his eyes on steering, “just who the hell are you and why did you go to all the trouble of swimming after us in the first place? And why couldn’t we see you?”

“Survival trait, they tell me. The arms, as you might have noticed, are very limber, but they ain’t real big or real muscular, and the legs, while strong, don’t let you move real fast. That would’ve made us sittin’ ducks in our own land, let alone from outside threats. Dahir’s a nontech hex, you know.”

“So you’re a Dahir!” Another one 1 don’t quite remember looking like this, let alone with this trick, he thought. “A very long way from home, aren’t you? And a damned good swimmer for an inland race.”

“It was another thing that just came naturally, sort of. Dahir’s inland, true, but it’s real swampy. Lowlands, wetter than the Everglades. The routine’s to swim along pretty much like a snake and stand up to feed or do whatever else you feel like doin’. Of course, we walk around the houses and lodges and the like, but for any kind of travel, well, it’s kinda like takin’ the car even though the grocery store’s only two blocks away. You know you should walk, but it’s so much easier to ride. Even though this is ocean, to tell you the truth I never even thought about not bein’ able to swim in it. I gotta admit, though, I almost lost it when it got so rough all of a sudden. I’d actually missed you and was gettin’ dragged away to the side and then forward a little when one of them waves just picked me up and dropped me kerplang on the deck.”

“So that’s what shook the ship! You’re another one of the people who came in through the gate from Earth, I gather. You’re a long way from the Everglades and corner grocer’s here.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter, neither. I was dropped, drugged, dragged around a jungle for I don’t know how long, then carried through to here and more or less thrown in. I really don’t remember a lot of it, except that I knew I was dyin’.”

“You’re from Mavra’s group, then.”

“I guess. I know who she is, but only by hearin’ about it. I understand she was the leader of that group of nutty Amazons who grabbed us. As I said, I was drugged and sick most of the time, and it’s all a daze. Not nearly as much of a shock as wakin’ up like this, I gotta say, but the in between’s a little fuzzy. For the record, I’m Gus Olafsson. Everybody just calls me Gus, even in Dahir.”

“A Swede?”

“Minnesota. United States. To tell the truth, though, the area’s kind of Scandinavia west, with the Swedes there, the Norwegians, and even the Finns up in the Iron Mountain district. You know the place?”

“No, sorry. I’ve actually spent very little time in the States, and I don’t know much about the interior at all. I heard much of it was flat, dull, and cold.”

“Well, not all of it, but that describes where I come from pretty well. Pretty area, though, up around the lake district. It was a nice place to grow up but not a great place to make a livin’ in if you didn’t want to do the same old things. I didn’t. Instead, I picked a way to see the world, all right. More than one, as it’s turned out. In fact, the things you can do as a Dahir woulda been real handy for my profession, except, of course, when somebody would have to see me, which would cause a right good monster movie-style panic, I’d say. Shame, though. It’d be a real advantage not to be seen in most cases. I coulda done great investigative work right in plain sight.”

“You were some sort of reporter?”

“News photographer. Television, actually. Started at small stations, worked my way up until I got some really good footage, then went freelance, gettin’ work from the networks and local stations. Finally impressed folks enough, I guess, that I got an offer from the news network, and I’ve been doin’ that, well, until them Amazons more or less killed me and I wound up here like this.”