Chalker, Jack L. – Well of Souls 05 – Twilight at the Well of Souls

“Bitter?” Marquoz asked him.

“Not bitter. Just tired. Very, very tired, Marquoz. You can’t believe what it’s like to live day after day, year after year, century after century, for uncounted centuries. I’m a foolish, foolish man, Marquoz. I did this to myself. I chose it, freely, without turning a hair or doubting a second. But nobody, nobody can imag­ine how horribly lonely it is. Lonely and dull. Races don’t mature overnight; they do it over thousands of years. And you wait, and you watch everybody you cared about grow old and turn to dust, and mankind goes forward maybe a millimeter or less every century or two. Finally you decide you want out, decide you can’t take it any more—and you can’t get out. You’re trapped, absolutely.”

“Gypsy told us you might kill yourself once you fixed the Well,” Asam said uneasily. “Sounds like he wasn’t far off the mark.”

Brazil smiled bitterly. “It all depends, Asam. That’s the only place I can do it, but I can’t unless there’s somebody to take over the watch, assume the respon­sibility.”

The Dillian suddenly reached down and gripped Brazil tightly in iron fists. “Not Mavra! You won’t do that to Mavra!” he growled.

Brazil reached up and peeled the angry centaur’s hands from his shoulder. “I won’t do that to anyone, Asam,” he said gently. “I couldn’t do it. All I can do is offer choices. That’s all anybody in this life gets— choices. I’m the only one in the whole damned uni­verse with no choices, really, at all.”

There wasn’t much to say to that, so Marquoz brought him back to the original subject. “Well, so what’s the plot of this crazy business?”

Brazil looked up at Asam and rubbed his shoulder a little. “Look, Colonel, got one of your cigars? I’ve been going crazy with these damned cheap bastard cigarettes trying to convince you I was Gypsy.”

Asam went over to his pack, rummaged around, found two, threw one to him and stuck the other in his mouth. Marquoz watched them light up mourn­fully, wanting nothing more than to join them and no longer having the suction in his mouth to manage it.

“I’ll just sniff yours,” he moped.

Settled down again, Brazil continued the story, ex­plaining things up to this point. “Now, two nights hence, Gypsy’s going to deliberately expose himself as me,” he told them. “That’ll lead them to the correct conclusion that the one they know about is the real one. And I’ll still be here—sort of.”

Marquoz nodded. “I think I see. Gypsy will use those powers of his to come here instantly. Brazil will make his usual appearances—only you’ll be gone. They’ll think they have the correct one and they’ll move in for the kill.”

He nodded. “And I’ll have a day’s head start. I plan to leave tomorrow night. A few of those Agitar­ian Entries we picked up a few days ago aren’t what they seem. They’re Nautilus crew and they’ve got a couple of those pegasus—pegasi? Eh, who cares? Anyway, I’m about the same size as one of them and they can carry double, anyway. We’ll form half the team. A couple of Eflik will take Mavra with us on a conveyance designed for that purpose. Don’t look alarmed, Asam, we tried it and it’s perfectly safe and the Eflik are more than able to handle the weight if we don’t fly more than a couple of hours at a time.”

“It’s not that I’m thinkin’ of,” the centaur said darkly.

Brazil sighed. “I told you I wouldn’t force anything on anybody. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to do a damned thing. It’s up to Mavra all the way. It’s her show, really.”

“She’d better change the act, then,” said a voice behind them. They all whirled around, startled.

Standing there, looking very much his old self, was Gypsy.

“They caught me before I was ready,” the new­comer said disgustedly. “Nothing I could do. They were going to drug me.”

“Oh, shit,” Brazil muttered. “Well, I guess we go now, then. It might still work.”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Marquoz wanted to know. “So you have to go an extra few hours’ flight. That shouldn’t be more than an inconvenience.”

“It’ll be tough on the Eflik,” Brazil replied, “but a little more risky for us. We’ll have to fly by night, hide by day. Verion will be impossible to cross for the next few days—it’s some kind of rutting season there and those worms glow like electric lights. We’ll be spotted, and what can be spotted can be reported and maybe shot down. That’ll mean a southern route—and Yua’s Awbrians aren’t far enough along yet to have drawn Khatir’s forces away from the Avenue or even provide a good diversion.”

“I’ve helped with that,” Gypsy told him. “I stopped off and dropped in on Yua to explain the situation. She’s proceeding with all speed. It’s riskier than it would be night after next, but the odds are still pretty much with us. I say we go.”

Brazil nodded, looking over at Asam. “Get Mavra, will you?”

For a moment the Dillian hesitated, thinking, perhaps, that if she didn’t go there was no further threat.

“Not thinking of changing sides now, are you, Asam?” Marquoz prodded the centaur. “If you did, you’d lose her anyway.”

The Colonel sighed and went out to find Mavra.

Brazil turned to Gypsy. “You old son of a bitch, you’re going to have to explain yourself to me before this is over.”

Gypsy grinned. “Maybe. Before it’s over,” he said playfully. “Hey, Marquoz, about time we got together for this! We’re a team again this time!”

“Could be,” the Hakazit responded thoughtfully. “Could be . . .”

Brazil shifted uncomfortably. “Wonder what’s keep­ing Asam? Damn it, we’ve got to get a lot of stuff to­gether before we go, and we have to go as quietly as possible. Gypsy, can you cover for us?”

He nodded. “For a little while, which is all we need. It’s a big army, a big, long line. I think I can put in the required Brazil appearances with no trouble and maybe occasionally become Mavra if the question comes up.”

“Okay, then. Damn! What’s wrong out there? Is Mavra so mad at me she won’t even come back? Or did Asam . . . ?” He let the thought trail off.

Suddenly they were all on their feet, nervous and anxious. Brazil looked at Gypsy. “Give yourself some protective coloration,” he told the dark man. “We’re going to find out what’s up.”

Gypsy shimmered, changed, became a Hakazit.

“That’s a female Hakazit,” Marquoz noted play­fully.

“Got to keep up your reputation,” Gypsy came back, and they went out.

They spread out, looking around the flat valley floor. Thousands of creatures of many different races were camped out there, firelights stretching in all di­rections, but they couldn’t see any sign of Asam or Mavra Chang.

Brazil called his humans to him and gave them in­structions to comb the area. Gypsy, disguised as a Hakazit, quickly memorized names and faces as Bra­zil did so.

As more time passed and no word came, Brazil turned to Gypsy and said, “I don’t like the feel of this.”

“Me neither,” Gypsy agreed. “You think maybe we’ve had it our own way too long and the odds are starting to balance out now?”

“I’m afraid—” Brazil began, but was cut off by a shout from one of his humans. He took off at a run in the indicated direction and Gypsy lumbered along behind him.

Very near the small river was a grove of trees, and it was to these that the runners directed them. Brazil reached the river first and spotted Marquoz, standing there and looking at something in the river mud. Next to the Hakazit stood Asam, looking stricken.

“Right in the middle .of the whole goddamn army!” Marquoz snarled. “God! We were so damnably cocky! Those sons of bitches!”

Brazil looked down at the mud. He could see the hoofprints of a Dillian, walking along the river and very near the clump of trees. Part of the bank was torn from its moorings just ahead and there the hoofprints became a tangled, blotched mess. No other prints could be seen anywhere.

“Damn it! How the hell do you snatch a five hun­dred kilo Dillian out from under the noses of ten thousand friendly troops?” Marquoz fumed.

Asam looked up at Brazil, his face ashen, his ex­pression a mixture of grief and bewilderment.

“She’s gone,” he rasped in an unbelieving tone. “They’ve got her.”

Gypsy lumbered up behind them, stopped, and in­stantly realized what must have happened.

“Oh, shit,” said both Nathan Brazil and Gypsy in unison.

Bache, Later That Night

they studied, probed, interviewed, and investigated all through the wee hours to no avail. A few Dillians in a camp nearby thought they might have heard a disturbance, some Hakazit close to the trees vaguely recalled seeing some dark shapes in the air, but all really heard and saw very little. Like their leaders, they felt secure inside their own camp and tended to discount any disturbance or commotion as obviously none of their business and certainly not enemy action.

“Why her?” Asam continued to moan. “Why not you, Brazil? You’re what they want, not her.”

“But they couldn’t get to me,” he pointed out. “It had to be a small operation, probably only a few creatures, mostly ones also found on our side so they weren’t even noticed. Besides, they’re skittish now. Suppose they snatched me and I laughed at them, changed into somebody else, then vanished? Then where are they? Uh uh. Now, taking Mavra is a whole different situation. The Dillians idolize her—and, frankly, so do you—so it’ll have a demoralizing effect on the troops and their commander. And they know her story—mostly from Ortega if from nowhere else. They know she means something to me—the only family, I guess you’d say, I have. It’s possible they know, from capturing some key people or something, that I insisted on her going through the Well with me. Blackmail, a doorstop, I don’t know. But it makes sense.”

Asam looked angrily down at him. “And you? What will you do now?”

Brazil shook his head. “I don’t know. I really don’t, Colonel. All I can do right now is get our people to work on this, but time’s short. I’ll have to decide by tomorrow night, that’s certain. I still think I can reach the Well, but it’s clear they would take this action only if they were moving on this spot even now. I can’t afford to wait or they’ll have me cut off.” He paused. “And, damn it, it’s not right! I don’t want the responsibility of turning that machine off. All those people out there . . . All gone, like they’d never been. All the great and small, everybody. I don’t know whether I could bring myself to do it.”

“Then take someone else,” Asam responded.

Brazil looked around. “Who else is qualified? Gypsy? He has to stay here in order for the trick to work. Otherwise I’m an open target. And I’m not sure just what he is, anyway. He might not have any feel­ings at all about the rest of the universe. Yua? She faithfully expects me to wipe out the universe and create paradise. Marquoz? Somehow, I don’t think Marquoz deep down cares a damn about people, ex­cept for Gypsy. You? Hell, you don’t even know what you’re destroying. Only Mavra truly understands the responsibility.”

Asam looked sternly down at him. “A lot of good people have fought and died in your name. Don’t you have a responsibility to them?”

He smiled crookedly and shook his head. “You see? You really don’t understand it at all. Civiliza­tions, countless quadrillions of people, their greatness, their thoughts and ideas and achievements . . . they’re an abstract to you. Only these few who died here have any meaning for you because they’re what you know. The Well World’s too limited. There aren’t any Mi­chelangelos or Leonardo da Vincis here, no Homer, no Tolstoy or even Mark Twain. No Handel or Beethoven or Stravinsky. Multiplied by all the races in the universe, each with their own stunning crea­tions. You really don’t understand what it is to erase that.”

“I don’t understand what you say, it’s true,” the Dillian responded, “but I think I understand you pretty well. It’s not all those funny names and whatever they did that really concerns you, I’m thinking. It’s the fact that you haven’t got a sucker to take over so you can die.”

Brazil looked at hirn with ancient eyes, eyes that showed pain and hurts beyond pain, agony that wis­dom nutures. “If you believe that,” he said slowly, “then you don’t understand me at all.”

Asam turned and walked back into his tent. It looked very empty now, and he wasn’t sure what he himself felt about it all beyond the urge to start smash­ing things. He didn’t, though; he reached into his pack and brought out a very large flask and took a long, long pull.

Asam never dreamed; at least, he couldn’t remem­ber his dreams beyond a couple of extremely vivid childhood nightmares. Still, he thought he must be dreaming, there being no other explanation for it.

A rustling sound awakened him—at least he thought so—but his eyes saw nothing in the darkness at first. Then, slowly, the room seemed to be filling with a ghostly kind of white light.

The booze, he thought. It must be the booze. But it was the booze that clouded his memory, that and the fatigue he felt, from recognizing at once a sight he had not seen in a long while but knew well.

Then with a start he did realize what it was, and his hand went to his sword. Guns might do only super­ficial damage to the damned things, but they could be sliced the same as anybody else.

“Put the sword away, Colonel. I’m here to talk, not to fight,” said the Dahbi as it oozed the last few centi­meters out of the floor and solidified in front of him, not three meters away.

His hand didn’t leave the sword hilt, but while he tensed he did not yet pull it out.

“What the hell do you want?” he croaked.

“What I said. Talk. Nothing more. I have already harmed you far more than putting a knife in your heart, as you must be aware. You will never know how much satisfaction that gave me, nor how it pains me to have to offer to give her back to you.”

He relaxed, but just slightly, a cold chill coming over him. “Sangh. Gunit Sangh himself!” he breathed. “You got guts, I’ll give you that.”

“There’s very little threat, really,” the Dahbi re­plied. “I can swim through the very rock, you know. Besides, I wanted you to know that I personally su­pervised the little operation earlier this evening. It lends force—and a little justice—to it all, don’t you think?”

“You got your bloody nerve,” he spat. “Justice!”

“Temper, Colonel, temper!” Gunit Sangh said mockingly. “I have something you want. You have something I want. Obviously what I have can not be far away—there hasn’t been time, and you people are, ah, rather bulky, shall we say? But you’ll never find her. You might, if you had a few weeks to look, but we’re currently marching on you and you are shortly going to be far too busy to do so. Besides, discovery would only mean her death.”

“You bastard,” Asam seethed. “How do I know you haven’t killed her already?”

The Dahbi acted stricken. “My word isn’t good enough? Well, perhaps it isn’t. But I need her—alive. Dead she’s of no use to anyone. Alive, she’s a hostage to Brazil and to you.”

Asam chuckled sourly. “She’s no hostage to Brazil,” he told the creature. “That bastard stopped caring for other folks a million years ago. He’s as cold as you are, Sangh.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the Dahbi responded, sound­ing sincere. “But that just makes things easier in a different way. If he’s unpleasant even to you, then what I ask should be all the simpler.”

The Dillian eyed the other suspiciously. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“A trade. Brazil trusts you. I can only assume that he intends to leave your forces before the battle, using your deaths as a diversion—perhaps leaving another simulacrum in his place to fool us. But it won’t work. We’re going to be looking for that. The odds are he’ll never make it to the Avenue, let alone the Well.”

“Then what do you need with me?” Asam growled.

“We might miss him. The odds are very much against it, but it’s possible. He is tricky.” He paused a moment. “Ah, you are sure which is the right Brazil, aren’t you?”

“I know who’s who,” the Colonel told him.

“So, you see, I cover the last possibility. The trade is simple—Mavra Chang for Brazil. Within the next day. Let’s say, by this time tomorrow night, at the latest. That will not only accomplish the main objec­tive but also prevent the coming battles. There will be no need to ask people to fight and die, you see?”

Asam frowned. “I don’t trust you one bit, Sangh. Since when do you care who lives and who dies ex­cept for yourself? I have no guarantees.”

“You have several,” Gunit Sangh responded. “You get Brazil to a Zone Gate and bring him through. Diplomatic immunity, remember? Even though the council is against you, they will not violate Zone. Take him to your own embassy. We will make the swap right there. Even better, you have couriers from here. Take Brazil, but don’t put him through until a courier comes with word that a living Mavra Chang is in my embassy at Zone.”

Asam fully relaxed now, thinking about it. Finally he said, “Why are you doing this, Sangh? Why agree to be the commander at all? What the hell are you getting out of this?”

“Consider,” the Dahbi replied, “what honors will come to the one who captures Nathan Brazil. The honors, the power, and the influence. Consider the perfect prison, under hundreds of meters of solid granite, the tunnel used to take him down collapsed about him save for a small mechanism to provide food and water. The council will not have Brazil. The Dahbi—I—will have Brazil. An unspoken hostage, so to speak. And I will have the gratitude of all those who did not lose their lives in foolish battles. Con­sider the effect on Ortega, no longer as feared or as in charge. His place will pass to me, and that fat ancient snake will die at last, his grip on the Well World and the council broken. It’s already been suggested that, as an old friend of Brazil’s, he can not be trusted in this matter. The possibilities are endless.”

Asam shivered slightly, thinking of an unchecked Gunit Sangh in charge, but, oddly, this sinister plan also reassured him. Sangh was being honest with him, partly out of confidence, partly out of the sheer arro­gance he exuded. He was saying the stakes were too high to risk a double cross now.

“We will transfer her to Zone after dark tomorrow, as quickly as possible,” the Dahbi told him. “We will receive any envoy you like at our embassy there to verify it. Then you will have eight hours to deliver your end of the bargain.”

“And after that?” he asked, thinking about it.

“You will be free to return to Dillia together,” Sangh told him. “Naturally, this will not settle any­thing personally between us. That will remain out­standing—as it has. Safe passage for you and the woman, alive, back to Dill’a is all I guarantee. After that we have no more bargain.”

He sighed. “I’ll consider it,” he told the creature. “And if I do not come through?”

“Then the woman will be the object of a ritual feast by my embassy personnel and no trace of her will re­main,” the Dahbi responded coldly.

“You bastard,” Asam swore angrily. “You dirty bastard. You and I will settle this personally one day.”

“One day,” the Dahbi agreed. “But not in the next two days.” It turned into its milky white state and slowly oozed into the ground until the last traces of it were gone.

“You bastard,” Asam repeated to the dark, but his mind was already whirling. Schemes, plots, ideas, were already hatching. He considered Gypsy—but, no. He couldn’t be sure he could trust the strange lit­tle man, and something might go wrong, betray them. Sangh was on to the plan anyway, and would still be looking for a Brazil getaway. No, it had to be on the square. He had to choose between Mavra and Brazil, it was that simple. And a simple choice.

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