Midnight at the Well of Souls

creatures would go back to their tree burrows, Swarm Queen included. How long to dawn? he wondered.

A sudden thought came to him, and he started carefully to draw a pentagram around the circle. He tried to be casual, so it didn’t look as if he were doing much of anything; but his hoof managed to make the mark in the grassy meadow. This was a long shot, he knew, but it might stall the Swarm Queen until morning.

He was about halfway around when brush crackled and he saw Vardia walk onto the knoll and into the circle, the Swarm Queen resting on her sun leaf. There was a shadow above, and Bat landed back in the circle. As soon as Vardia was across the toadstool ring, the Swarm Queen flew back over to her seat under the tree and resumed that casual and unnatural sitting position.

Too late, he thought, and stopped the pentagram. I’ll have to accept the spell and break it.

The Swarm Queen looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then, quickly, she looked at the circle. “Be free within the circle,” she said almost casually in that tiny, old-woman’s voice.

Bat staggered a few seconds, then caught himself and looked around, surprised. He saw the others and looked amazed.

“Brazil! Vardia! Wuju! How’d you get here?” he asked in a puzzled tone.

Wuju looked around strangely at the assemblage. She saw Brazil and went over to him. “Nathan!” she said fearfully. “What’s happening?”

Vardia looked around and barely whispered, “What a strange dream.”

Bat whirled, spied the Swarm Queen, and started to walk toward her. He got to the circle, and suddenly couldn’t make his feet move. He flapped his wings for a takeoff, but didn’t go off the ground.

“What the hell is this?” Bat asked strangely. “Last I remember I was flying near the shoreline when I heard this strange music—and now I wake up here!”

“These creatures seem to—” Wuju began, but the Swarm Queen suddenly snapped, “Stand mute!” and the Dillian’s voice died in midsentence.

The Swarm Queen glanced up at the barely visible sky.

“There’s a storm coming,” she said more to herself than to anyone. “It will not be over until after dawn. Therefore, the simplest thing should be the best.” She looked up at the buzzing swarm, then flipped over and walked into the circle. Brazil could feel the power building up. The Swarm Queen flipped again lightly, and sat on the side of a toadstool, inside the ring, forelegs behind her to steady her.

“What shall we do with the interlopers?” she asked the swarm.

“Make them fit,” came a collective answer from the swarm.

“Make them fit,” the Swarm Queen echoed. “And how can we make them fit when we have so little time?”

“Transform them, transform them,” suggested the swarm.

The Swarm Queen’s gaze fell on Wuju, who almost withered at the look and clung to Brazil.

“You wish him?” the Swarm Queen asked acidly. “You shall have him!” Her eyes burned like coal, and the humming of the swarm intensified to an almost unbearable intensity.

Where Wuju had been, there was suddenly a doe, slighter smaller and sleeker than Brazil’s stag. The doe looked around at the lights, confused, and then leaned down and munched a little grass, oblivious to the proceedings.

The Swarm Queen turned to Vardia. “Plant, you want so much to act the animal, so shall you be!”

The buzzing increased again, and where Vardia had stood was another doe, identical to the one that had been Wuju.

“It’s easier to use something local, that you know,” the Swarm Queen remarked to no one in particular. “I have to hurry.” She turned her gaze on Cousin Bat.

“You like them, be like them!” she ordered, and Bat, too, turned into a doe identical in every way to the other two.

Now she turned to Brazil. “Stags should not think,” she said. “It is unnatural. Here is your harem, stag. Dominate them, rule them, but as what you are, not what you pretend to be!”

The swarm increased again, and Brazil’s mind went blank, dull, unthinking.

“And finally,” pronounced the Swarm Queen, “so that so complex a spell, done so hurriedly, does not break, I bequeath to the four the fear and terror of all but their own kind, and of all things which disturb the beasts. They are free of the circle.”

Brazil suddenly bolted into the dark, the other three following quickly behind.

There was the rumble of thunder, the flash of lightning.

“The circle is broken,” intoned the Swarm Queen.

“We go to shelter,” responded the swarm as it dispersed. The other creatures came alive, some gibbering insanely, others howling, as the lightning and thunder increased.

The Swarm Queen flipped and walked quickly over to her tree and into the base.

“Sloppy job,” she muttered to herself. “I hate to rush.”

The rain started to fall.

* * *

Even though it was a sloppy spell, it took Brazil almost a full day and night to break it. The flaw was a simple one: at no time during the encounter had the Swarm Queen heard him talk, and it just hadn’t occurred to her that he could. The input-output device on the translator continued to operate, although it did little good for the rest of the night in the storm and throughout the next day, when the nocturnal Faerie were asleep.

When the creatures emerged at nightfall, though, they talked. The conversations were myriad, complex, and involved actions and concepts alien to his experience, but they did form words and sentences which the transceiver mounted in his antlers delivered to his brain. These words, although mostly nonsense, gave a continual input that banged at his mind, stimulated it, gave it something to grab onto. Slowly self-awareness returned, concepts formed, forced their way through the spell’s barrier.

That spark inside of him that had always ensured his preservation would not let him lapse or quit. Concepts battered at his brain, forcing word pictures in his mind, building constructs which burst into his consciousness.

It was like a war against an invisible barrier, something inside him attacking, always beating at the blocks that had been placed.

Suddenly, he was through. Memories crowded back, and with them came reason. He felt exhausted—he was totally worn out from the struggle, yet he knew that precious time had been wasted, and more roadblocks raised.

He looked around in the dark. It was very hard to see anything except the flitting shapes of the Faerie, but he knew that he must be deep inside the hex. He looked around. Asleep nearby were the three transformed members of the expedition, absolutely identical even to scent. The Swarm Queen had been in a hurry and had used but a single model.

Realizing there was little that could be done until shortly before dawn, lest he give himself away to some curious Faerie by acting undeer-like, he relaxed and waited for the sky to lighten.

* * *

With daylight came safety, and the freedom to move. He spent over an hour trying to make some kind of contact with the three does, but their stares were blank, their actions totally natural. The spell could not be broken from without as far as they were concerned.

For a while he considered abandoning them; they would follow him to the border, of course, but would be unable to cross it. The stakes certainly warranted it; logic dictated it.

But he knew he couldn’t do it. Not without a good try.

He started off, wishing he could trace the wild, crazy route they had used to get where they were. He decided that the best thing to do would be to head due east; no matter what, that would bring him to the ocean sooner or later, and from there he could get his bearings.