Exiles at the Well of Souls

eyes. It was chilly now, yes; it must be well into the night. But that wasn’t it.

Doma suddenly awoke and shook her great head. She snorted nervously. Mavra lifted her head a little, sure now that she wasn’t going crazy. The pegasus sensed it, too.

There it was. A noise. Scrunch-scrunch; scrunch-scrunch, over and over, a little louder each time.

Someone—or something—was walking rather calmly and steadily up the trail, something confident even in the night and snow.

Scrunch-scrunch,the snow was falling under its feet. It seemed to be big.

And now the noise stopped. Whatever it was was right outside the door, she knew. She started to call out, to warn the others, but somehow she couldn’t seem to make a move, only stare at that closed door. Even Doma seemed suddenly calm, but expectant. She was reminded of the Olbornian priest’s power over her, but this wasn’t like that. It was—something else. Something strange, completely new.

The door opened, surprisingly silently considering its rusting hinges and bad fit. A blast of chilly air hit her, and she felt the others stir uncomfortably.

A huge white furry shape was there. It was tall—tall enough that it had to bend a little to stick its head just inside the door. A face looked in at her, and smiled slightly. It raised a huge hairy white paw and put a huge, clawed index finger to its mouth.

Gedemondas—a Back Trail

Antor Trelig cursed for the thousandth time. One mishap after another on this damned journey, he thought sourly. Avalanches in front of them, the trail undercut—almost as if someone was trying to stop them or slow them down, although no one had been sighted of any kind.

The trail was a lot more obvious on the map than it was in reality; it wasn’t well maintained, some of the shelters were in disrepair and obviously had been so for years, and the trail often vanished without visible landmarks, causing the Agitar to have to probe gingerly ahead with their tasts. Their party of fourteen—twelve Agitar, he, and his not-so-loyal wife, Burodir—was now nine, still including Burodir, unfortunately.

But the landmarks were reasonably clear; the terrain was not bad, most of the climbing having been at the beginning, and as many times as the trail had vanished it had also been crystal clear, as if tramped down by the soles of many feet.

This had worried him at first, until he was reminded by the Agitar that this was, after all, somebody’s hex, and somebody had to live in it.

In a way, that thought was the most disturbing. They had neither seen nor heard a native in all this time, in all this way. It made no sense at all that there shouldn’t be some creatures somewhere along the way, except the occasional panic-inducing arctic hare, or whatever it was, and a few small weasellike creatures.

And yet—somehow, they’d made it. Somehow they’d kept to this trail. Somehow they were going all the way. He was, anyway. What the others did was up to them.

He studied the maps and aerial photos from the Cebu scouts. He knew pretty much where he was, although without the prescouting he would have been lost and dead now, he had to admit. The inner ring of mountains, slightly taller than the outer but hidden before now, was clearly ahead. And, just on the other side of that big, glacier-carved peak over there, and over a bit, was a U-shaped valley with a very important large object lying askew on a ledge.

They would not make it today, that was for sure. But sometime tomorrow afternoon, certainly, if nothing else happened.

Along the Intermountain Trail

“Ifrit! My field glasses!” Ben Yulin commanded. The cow reached into the pack of her cowife and quickly extracted them.

“Here, Master,” she said eagerly, handing them to him. He took them without a word and put them to his eyes.

They were not merely binoculars; they had additional special lenses that helped his nearsightedness. With the already ground prescription snow goggles, they brought anything within their range into sharp, clear focus.

“Trouble?” growled a low voice next to him.

He looked away and over at the thing. It looked like a walking hairy bush, about as tall as he, with no apparent eyes, ears, or other organs. In actuality, it was not a single creature, but a colony of thirty-six Lamotien, adapted to the cold weather and the snow.

“That shack up there,” he pointed suspiciously ahead. “Doesn’t look right, somehow. I don’t want any more tricks like that fake trail. We lost two good cows there.” Neither his, he failed to add.

“We lost thirty brothers, don’t forget!” snapped the Lamotien. “We agree it looks strange. What should be done about it?”

Yulin thought a minute, trying to find a good solution without risking his noble neck or his possessions. “Why don’t a couple of you go on up? Turn white or something and take a look around.”

The Lamotien considered it. “Two each, we think. Arctic hares.” The creature seemed to come apart all of a sudden; breaking into small, equal-sized fuzzy masses. Two of the things came off one side and jumped to the snow; two others from the left. Yulin watched, fascinated as always, as the rest of the shaggy creature reformed and readjusted. It looked slightly thinner, but otherwise the same.

Now the two Lamotien in the snow ran together, seemed to blend into one big shaggy lump. The other pair did the same. Slowly, as if there were unseen puppeteer’s hands under the shaggy mops, there was a poking here, a wrinkle there, a bend here, a growth there.

Two arctic hares were there in less than two minutes. They scampered off naturally in the direction of the cabin. The rest waited; only the colony leader had a translator, so they’d have to reform before he knew the story. They didn’t have vocal communication, that was for sure. He wondered if they talked when they melded, became one being with common mind, or what. He’d asked, but the Lamotien told him not to worry about it, the concept was beyond him anyway.

The hares returned in a little more than ten minutes, disconnected, jumped back into the hairy lump, and melded again. The shape was silent for a minute, talking to the scouts or maybe absorbing the scouts’ brief memories.

Finally, it said, “The place is deserted. You’re right about it being funny, though. Lots of packs and supplies still there. Somebody was there not long ago, and left—not of their own will, we’ll wager. Too much stuff left.”

That had him worried. “Think they were the centaurs we’ve been following?”

“Probably,” the Lamotien agreed. “But whoever they are, they’re gone now.”

“Tracks?”

The Lamotien paused. “That’s the funny part. There aren’t any. We see their tracks, lots of snow disturbances where they unpacked, and all that. But no other tracks for hundreds of meters in any direction. None.”

“Well, they didn’t come back this way,” Yulin said, worried now. “So where did they go?”

They all looked around at the silent mountains.

“And with whom?” responded the Lamotien.