Midnight at the Well of Souls

“I think so,” the baron replied confidently. “Anything else?”

“Yes. While you prepare the two assistants I should like to talk to one who understands structures and electrical systems. Is that possible?”

“Well, yes,” the baron affirmed with some surprise. “But why?”

“It will be necessary to perform some minor sabotage to ease our task,” The Rel explained enigmatically. “Although we have studied it, we want to confirm our necessary actions to be doubly certain, hopefully with one who comprehends such things.”

“Done,” Azkfru told the creatures. “Now I must attend to other matters. Go out the side there and an assistant will take you to a room that will be private. I will send the technicians to you.”

“We go to prepare,” intoned The Rel, and floated out the designated exit.

Azkfru waited several minutes until he was certain the Northerner was well away, then went over to the doorway to his main waiting room and pressed the opening stud with his right foreleg.

“Enter, Mar Datham,” he said imperiously, and quickly got back to the dais that served as his work area. He struck his most awesome pose.

* * *

Datham Hain entered on the words, a shiver going through her at their majesty. Almost hypnotically, she entered the office.

She stopped as she saw him, and bent down automatically in a gesture of extreme subservience. Orgiastic spasms shook her, and she cowed in awe and fear.

He is God, she thought with absolute conviction. He is the epitome of greatness.

“My Lord and Master, I am your slave, Datham Hain. Command me!” she intoned and meant every word of it.

The sincerity carried over to Azkfru, who received it with satisfaction. The conditioning had stuck.

“Do you give yourself to me, Mar Datham, body and soul, to do with as I would, forever?” he intoned.

“I do, Master, my Lord God, I do! Command me to die and I shall do so gladly.”

Great now. Forever, if she was around all the time. But she would have only a few interviews until he had to trust her with all he had. Well, here goes the kicker, Azkfru thought.

“You are the lowest of the low, Mar Datham, lower than the fikhfs that breed to be eaten, lower than the defecations of the least of those fikhfs,” he intoned.

And it was so, she realized. She felt as low and as small as she could ever get. She felt so tiny and unimportant that she found it hard to think at all. Her mind was a complete blank, yet basking on pure emotion in the presence of Him who was All Glory.

“You will remain lowly scum,” the Master pronounced, “until I have other use for you. But as you are the lowest of the low, so can you be raised to the heights by my command.” Now came the clincher. “A great task will be placed in your hands, and your love and devotion to me above all else will determine all that is in your future, whether it be the mindless cleaners of the defecation pits or,” he paused for added emphasis, “perhaps even the chief concubine of a king.”

Hain groveled all the more at this thought suddenly placed in her witless head.

“And your name shall now be Kokur, nor will you answer to any other but it, and so you will stay and so you will be until you have successfully carried out my tasks. Then only will you be restored to a name, and then that name will be great. Go, now. My servant shall show you your duties until I shall call you for the task.”

She turned and left the office quickly, on quivering legs.

When the door closed behind her, the baron relaxed.

Well, he thought, it is done. For the next few days, if The Diviner and The Rel were successful, Datham Hain would truly be as low as one could get. Although consciously obedient and happy, that nasty subconscious would be helplessly humiliated by the job and the status, and that was perfect. After a few days, Hain would be willing to do anything to get out of there, and she would be offered a permanent return to that miserable state as opposed to elevation as high as she could possibly reach.

Hain would serve him, he felt confidently.

Kokur wasn’t a name, it was a job description.

Until The Diviner and The Rel returned, Datham Hain would work in the defecation pits, piling up the huge amounts of crap his barony produced—including her own—and then treating it with a series of chemicals and agents that would change its composition into a horrible but physically harmless mess. Hain would not only work there, she would sleep in it, walk in it, and, as her sole diet, eat it. And the only name she could respond to or think of herself as was Kokur, which meant dung-eater.

When off with The Diviner and The Rel, it would be a constant and humiliating reminder of her lowly status and her lifelong fate for failure, a reminder that would even reach others through the translating devices used around the Well World.

Datham Hain would be a most obedient slave.

Actually kind of attractive, he thought. Too bad she’s a breeder. 

DILLIA—MORNING (Enter Wu Julee, Asleep)

Wu Julee awoke from a dreamless sleep and looked around. She felt strange and slightly dizzy.

The overriding fact that hit her was that the pain was gone.

She closed her eyes and shook her head briskly. The dizziness worsened for a moment, then things seemed to steady.

She looked around.

She was in a beautiful forest, the likes of which she had never seen before. Trees grew straight as poles fifty or more meters in the air, almost disappearing into a slight morning mist. The undergrowth was equally lush and a vivid green. Beautiful flowers grew wildly all around her. There was a trail nearby, a nicely maintained one made of deep sawdust lined with small, irregular stones. There was a slight but steady roaring sound in the distance, but it didn’t seem threatening, only curious.

The path seemed to lead toward the roar in one direction, and she decided to follow it. Walking felt strange to her, but she thought little of it. She felt strange all over. She walked slowly down the trail about a kilometer, and it led her to the source of the increasing roar.

She came upon a waterfall, dropping majestically in three stages down the side of a mountain whose gray rocks were well worn by uncounted years of erosion. The falls fed a stream, or river, which flowed swiftly but rather shallowly over a rocky bottom seen clearly through the greenish tinge to the water’s surface. Here and there, she saw logs and remnants of logs that had fallen due to weathering or age. Many were covered with mossy yellow-green growths and several were nurse trees, their dead and decaying limbs providing a haven from which newer trees of a different type were growing. Small insects hummed and buzzed all around, and she watched them curiously.

A sudden crackle of underbrush made her turn with a start. She saw a small, brown-furred mammal with a rodent’s face and a broad flat tail jump into the stream carrying a twig in its mouth. Her eyes followed it until it made the opposite shore and ran into the underbrush formed by swampy weeds and long grains of grassy plants diagonally opposite her.

Still acting without conscious thought, like a newborn child seeing the world for the first time, she went up to the stream just far enough down that she wasn’t caught in the spray from the great falls.

She looked down at her reflection. She saw the face of a young woman barely in her teens, a face that looked back at her. Not beautiful, but pleasant, with long brown hair falling down over small but well-formed breasts.

She reached up with one hand and brushed back the hair on one side. Her skin was a light brown, her