Quest for the Well of Souls Read online

  They were short. Though great plumes of water rose all around the cutter, and it looked as if the smaller craft had been completely destroyed, as the water calmed, it became clear that none of the missiles had come within fifty meters of the attacking craft.

  The Trader continued to turn, bow now facing the pursuer's stern. The exceptionally strong current allowed the smaller craft to close, but, with the cannon-washes from the salvo, it wasn't any easier to turn than the much larger vessel.

  Ordinarily the Trader would accept such a challenge and engage at a fixed distance circularly, ship-to-ship, but the cutter's rockets gave it added range, and the captain dared not let it come in too close. That was frustrating; the rocket mines obviously had a greater range than the Trader's cannon, and, although the big ship could stand some hits, it could not do so without casualties, and if they didn't immediately disable the opposing craft they'd soon be at the attacker's mercy. The captain wasn't one to take such risks if he could avoid them.

  Looking out at the attacker, whose second missile was already in the air, the eerie face and glowing eyes of the captain never wavered, but he shouted to the navigator, "Did you get me a fix?"

  Before the navigator could reply, the grenade struck, closer this time, metal fragments flying from it and causing a series of nasty gashes in the Trader's side and forward superstructure.

  The captain shouted corrective orders; the fog was becoming thick again, and the cutter was becoming harder to see—as was the Trader. In a matter of minutes they would be invisible to each other. This, oddly, favored the cutter, which would continue to close because of its smaller, lighter nature as they both followed the current.

  Joshi peered out from under a tarpaulin. "God! I wish I could see what's going on!" he complained. "Fog's getting thick again!"

  "You're better off alive!" snapped Mavra Chang. "Get back under here and stay here! This captain knows what he's doing!"

  I hope, she added silently to herself. There was no way that she or Joshi could swim.

  The navigator on the bridge had waited for a short interlude in the exchange. Now it gave the information. "34 south, 62 west!" it called.

  "Exactly!" snapped the captain. "How close are we to the Ecundan hex point and Usurk?"

  The navigator brightened with the light of understanding. "At this speed," it replied, "maybe ten, twelve minutes' time at the most!"

  That satisfied the captain. "All aloft!" he yelled. "Full sail!" Their bow was angled away from their pursuer at this point, the proper angle, and there was an eight- to ten-kilometer wind blowing.

  The cutter, which, even though it was closing, was having increasing difficulty locating the bigger craft in the fog, got enough of a glimpse to see the sails unfurling.

  The Parmiter, on a watch platform midships, cried out, "They're putting on sail! We have to catch them fast or we might lose them! Com'on, you bastards! They can't see us but we can still see them! If you can't hit something that size from this distance, we're all lost!"

  The Parmiter was right. The early morning light of the sun occasionally revealed a small part of the Toorine Trader. Coming out of the still-darker northwest, their craft, of black aluminum, was indistinguishable from the water.

  The bow tube fired again, and this time it was a close call. They were not only closing, they were getting the range; had they been able to use two bow tubes, they might have hit the Trader dead on. The constant turning, however, made aiming more chancy, for each time a tube came up the angle had changed slightly.

  On the bridge of the Toorine Trader the captain was becoming worried. The last shot had blown a gash in the stern and blew open a hatch cover. Obviously the cutter was getting the range while managing to keep just out of cannon's reach. The captain resolved that if he got out of this, the company was going to pay for some of those rocket mines for his ship.

  "We must be getting close to the border!" The captain shouted to the navigator. "Man boiler room! Preheat coke! Man Type A defenses!"

  Two Twosh bowling-pins scampered across the deck on bright white-gloved hands, then hopped atop a tarpaulin-covered shape at the bow. The tarp came off, revealing a device resembling a small telescope with a dome-shaped housing. The Twosh poised before a control board with form-fitting indentations to the rear of the device, huge oval eyes staring at the dead controls.

  Another rocket mine soared, then struck amidships, blowing a huge hole in the side of the Trader.

  "Shift ballast to compensate!" screamed the captain. Come on, you bastards, where's that border?

  Then suddenly, as if someone had lifted a dirty curtain, the Toorine Trader came out of the fog and stood clear to the pursuers, a sitting duck.

  "We got 'em!" screamed the Parmiter in triumph. "Now let's finish 'em off!"

  The rocket crews sniggered and loaded for the kill. They were aiming at the midsection, hoping to strike the central mast. That would leave the big craft at their mercy.

  The Parmiter's crew took its time on this one, no longer worried about the problems of fog and elevation. They were so busy making sure of their shot that they failed to notice faint wisps of white begin to rise from the Trader's twin stacks.

  On the bow, the two Twosh at the strange console suddenly yipped in glee as sophisticated control panels came to life before them. A radar mast flipped up and started its slow back and forth sweep, and a large grid in front of one Twosh showed the cutter clearly.

  The captain had won his gamble. Now, in the fight and run, with the current carrying most of the load, they'd drifted back over the high-tech hex border, into Usurk. That had activated all their technical devices.

  They could see the flare in the hand of a ghostly shape on the cutter deck prepare to touch off the rocket mine that would administer the coup de grâce to the Toorine Trader.

  But the Twosh suddenly elevated their platform to proper height, locked on, and fired with computer-aided accuracy.

  The odd-looking telescope was better known as a laser cannon.

  At the same time the Trader turned; sails came down in record time and when the master gauge on the bridge read ready a slim tendril shot out from the captain and pulled a lever, activating the great engines and twin screws.

  Huge clouds of smoke billowed from the Trader's stacks before the sails were even down, and it turned with astonishing speed and bore in on the small cutter.

  "Fire!" screamed the Parmiter, but at that moment a blinding beam of greenish-white light struck them full force. The grenade rose a half-meter, then exploded. The laser beam swept down, slicing off a part of the cutter's bow.

  The small ship exploded.

  There was a blinding flash and roar as the balance of the rocket grenades ignited, and a great plume of water shot up, then fell, leaving only fragments where the ship had been.

  A collective sigh of relief traveled the length of the Toorine Trader.

  The captain surveyed the scene, its odd, transparent head cocked a little to one side. "Maybe they're right," it murmured to itself. "Maybe those grenades are too damned explosive to carry."

  Damage-control personnel started cleaning up, patching, and repairing, taking advantage of the high-tech hex to use their best equipment.

  The Trader approached the now-visible coast of Ecundo, which looked wild and forbidding this far south. Shortly she'd head north, back up that coast, almost all the way under sail.

  As the ship headed toward the land, it moved away from a single, tiny figure drifting south in the current. It was too small, and soon much too far away, to be heard or noticed except by a few curious seabirds.

  "Help me! Oh, please, god! Somebody help me!" came the anguished voice of the Parmiter. "Doc! Grune! Somebody! Anybody! Help me!"

  But there was no one to help the Parmiter this time.

  Nocha

  The Torrine Trader had been patched well; only the fresh wood on parts of the bow, midsection, and superstructure hinted that something had been amiss.

  A we
ek later, the Trader was several hundred kilometers out, steaming across the Sea of Turagin to the northwest, on its way to deliver to Wygon huge crates of things whose function they couldn't fathom and couldn't have cared less about.

  It was cold in Nocha, slightly above freezing. The crew stayed belowdecks as much as possible; the sea was extremely rough, and one could easily fall overboard into the chilly waters. Nobody wanted that—not in Nocha, where, only a few meters below the raging surface, thousand-toothed insects waited for just such a bonanza.

  They were definitely not company customers, anyway, and no crewman wanted to give them anything for free.

  The storm and cold had driven a tiny airborne figure farther west. She was almost exhausted, and had begun to doubt her ability to continue. No land had been in sight since she'd flown out over the sea to intercept the Trader before its landfall in Wygon three days hence—according to the schedule obtained from the company office in Domien.

  She had no broad, great wings to maintain herself on comfortable updrafts above the storm. Her powers of flight were tremendous and included the ability to zig and zag almost at right angles with no effort as well as to stand still. But doing so meant that her wings had to work constantly to keep her aloft.

  And right now all four pairs were sore as hell.

  In desperation, she climbed as high as she dared, letting the gusts carry her tiny, frail body along like a leaf in the wind, allowing her some rest and forcing her to use her own powers only when she lost altitude. The system was working, yes, but it was a stopgap measure and not one that could be maintained for long periods. It was also taking her westward, although southwest, northwest, or due west she had no way of knowing.

  The westward drift almost did her in. Hardly able to see, desperately fighting the elements, she was not prepared when the storm suddenly ceased and a wave of warmth washed over her. The atmosphere was also quite calm and at very low pressure, and she began dropping like a rock before she knew it.

  Straining painfully to pull out of the fall, she realized she'd been blown across a sea-hex border. She pulled out just before hitting the waves and managed to maintain a low altitude. That was not enough; a gleaming silver fish that looked to be half teeth leaped from the water to grab at her. In panic, she managed to gain a little more.

  Too exhausted to think straight she began to allow sensations of impending doom to penetrate her consciousness. She realized that, if she didn't find some place to land soon, she would drop into the suddenly placid sea. And wet wings would incapacitate her, leaving her easy and tempting prey for those silvery appetites below.

  She had no idea where she was, or how far it might be from one place to another. Hookl, probably, since it was so warm—certainly not Jol, where icebergs abounded.

  She'd settle for an iceberg right now, she thought longingly.

  She drifted as best she could, certain that any moment now her wings would fall off from sheer overuse, berating herself for being such a fool. There'd be islands, she'd told herself, or other boats to use—but Jol was in no condition for shipping right now, and Nocha had been cold and rough and barren of land and traffic.

  And then she saw it. Yes, there it was—a speck near the horizon. In hopeful desperation, she flew toward it with her last available energy.

  It was an island, she saw. Not much of one—a crooked, twisted spire of rock jutting from the water, its glassy sheen partially obscured by low vegetation.

  For a moment those growths worried her; she had no idea what sort of creature might live there, nor what it ate—those hungry fish weren't its prey, that was certain; but anything that could coexist with them had to be a little nastier than they. It didn't matter, though, she told herself. Her alternative to landing was to become a sure snack for the toothy beasties in the waters.

  The island was a bit larger than it had seemed at first, and she could see bird nests tucked among the mossy growths, so she decided to take a chance on it. Not much larger than some of the seabirds herself, she chose a big nest on the cliffside that definitely looked deserted, and settled down into it thankfully.

  It was hard and brittle and had a lot of sharp places, but she felt none of them. Within seconds, she was asleep.

  * * *

  It had been a dreamless sleep, hard and overly long. She stirred with difficulty; her head pounded, and her eyes felt as if they had weights on them. She sat up and groaned and opened her eyes that burned like fire, and gave a gasp.

  She was not alone on the island.

  A creature three times her size stood watching her. The thing clung to the sheer and slippery face of the rock effortlessly, as if it were level.

  She uttered a short cry of panic, then rose immediately to her feet.

  She had never seen a Yaxa close up before.

  The giant creature's shiny death's head turned toward her. "Don't try flying out," it advised. "I took the precaution of temporarily disabling your wings."

  Immediately she tried to flex them, and they felt like lead. She looked over her shoulder, and saw that small clips had been placed on them, linking them together at their tips. The wings were too fragile to try and work the clips off, and the clips were out of reach of her hands.

  The Yaxa was satisfied with her demonstration, and for good reason. Lata were tiny, delicate-looking creatures, but they were also very dangerous to most warm-blooded life forms.

  The prisoner looked like a small girl of ten or eleven; it was impossible to judge a Lata's age, for they looked almost the same from a few years after hatching until they died. Aging was an exclusively internal affair.

  But the little-girl image was enhanced by the fact that Lata were less than a meter tall and incredibly slender. Externally humanoid, internally they were more like insects, able to eat and digest literally anything organic. Even their soft, creamy skin was illusion, for it covered a flexible chitinous inner skin. Lata were almost impervious to temperature changes because their metabolism was flexible enough to keep them comfortable under all conditions except extreme cold and extreme heat.

  They had tiny pointed ears, and tough, black hair which grew in a rough pageboy cut. Their four pairs of transparent wings kept their light bodies aloft much in the manner of a bee and gave them their exceptional maneuverability.

  This particular Lata was a pastel pink. Her stinger—a wicked point of striped red and black descending from the spine down to the floor of the nest, was set on a hinged joint—it could be stiff and straight, its normal position, or bend back, allowing the Lata to sit. Her venom could paralyze or kill organisms many times her size. It was the poison that the Yaxa feared and respected.

  "How are you called, Lata?" the Yaxa asked.

  "I am Vistaru of the Deer Grove," she replied, trying not to show her nervousness. Never had she felt so helpless in the face of an enemy.

  Yaxa never displayed emotion; they had no way to, and their voices translated hard and icy-brittle. And yet, there seemed to be a note of genuine surprise in the creature's voice when it responded. "Vistaru? The one who aided Mavra Chang in the wars long past?"

  She nodded slowly, amazed that her name would even be known after all this time.

  The Yaxa seemed hesitant, somehow, as if trying to decide what to do. It was uncharacteristic of the great insects. Its enigmatic eyes studied her closely.

  "I should have thought you'd be in the male mode by now," the Yaxa said.

  "I would have," she told the Yaxa, "but I've kept putting that off. To be a male is to have the responsibility for raising a child, and I have not yet been in a position to do that properly."

  The Yaxa remained motionless, impassive, still thinking unknown thoughts. Finally, it said, "Ortega sent you here to help find Mavra Chang." It was not a question, it was a statement.

  Vistaru nodded, but volunteered no additional information: their races were old enemies. As odd as this Yaxa was acting, she still did not expect to survive the encounter.

  "Then I was right,
" the huge butterfly murmured aloud to itself. "She is missing, not dead."'

  "What is that to you?" Vistaru challenged. "If you didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, it was only because Trelig or someone beat you to it."

  "Brave talk," the Yaxa noted coldly, but almost approvingly. "Still, I'll strike a bargain with you. Answer truthfully my questions, which will only make us equal in knowledge, and I shall make certain that you have the opportunity to experience the male mode."

  Vistaru stared hard at the creature in wonder, but could not fathom what she was talking about. Although they were biochemically closer to each other than either was to the humans, mentally the Lata were much closer to humans.

  "We'll see," Vistaru said cautiously. "Ask your questions."

  "Do you know who smashed the Chang compound?" the Yaxa asked.

  That was an easy one. "No. But we think it was a gang hired by Antor Trelig."

  That answer seemed to satisfy the Yaxa. "I can assume that the Ambreza have activated all their antiescape plans and followed every conceivable procedure?" the Yaxa asked.

  Vistaru nodded. "She is almost certainly not in Glathriel or Ambreza, nor does she seem to have crossed the border into Ginzin."

  "Then she went by ship, as I suspected," the Yaxa said. "The question is, willingly or unwillingly."

  "Trelig would have no use for her male companion, Joshi," Vistaru pointed out. "With hypnos available, one doesn't need any other pressure on a source of information. But he's gone, too. We assume that they got away." The Lata stopped, suddenly not sure that she hadn't given away too much.

  "You needn't concern yourself,"' the Yaxa told her, as if reading her mind. "I had already come to similar conclusions. I assume that you are out here, in the middle of nowhere, for the same reason I am—you are hoping to intersect the Toorine Trader."

  The Lata didn't reply, but her expression told it all.