Midnight at the Well of Souls wos-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Just like the Markovians.”

  She was silent for a while. Suddenly she asked, “How do you know all this, Nathan? The people here don’t, those children of the Markovians who didn’t leave.”

  “You got that, did you?” he responded admiringly. “Yes, when the last were changed, they sealed the Well. Those who didn’t want to go, lost their nerve, or were happy here—they stayed, with only a memory, perhaps even regret once it was done, for they kept the phrase ‘until midnight at the Well of Souls’ alive as the symbol of forever. How do I know all this? I’m brilliant, that’s why. And so is Skander—that’s why we’re going where we have to go.”

  She accepted his explanation, not noticing the evasion. “But if everything is sealed, why bother?” she asked. “Skander can’t do any harm, can he?”

  “Deep beneath our feet is a great machine,” he told her seriously. “The Markovian brain is so powerful that it created and maintained the home worlds as it maintains this one; the brain keeps the equations that sustain all unnaturally created matter, that can undo the fabric of time, space, and matter as it created them. Skander wants to change those equations. Not just our lives but our very existence is at stake.”

  She looked at him for a long time, then turned idly, staring into the forest, lost in her thoughts.

  Suddenly she said, “Look, Nathan! The flying lights are out! And I can hear something!”

  He turned and looked into the forest. They were insects of some kind, he thought, glowing as they flitted through the forest. The light, he saw, was constant—the blinking that had been apparent from shore was an illusion, caused by their passage behind the dense foliage. The darkness was too complete for his deer vision to get any detail, but the floating, gliding lights were clear. There was something very familiar about them, he thought. I’ve never been here, yet I’ve seen this before.

  “Listen!” Wuju whispered. “Hear it?”

  Brazil’s fine-trained ears had already picked it up even over the crashing of the waves.

  It was music, haunting, strange, even eerie music, music that seemed to penetrate their very bodies.

  “It’s so strange,” Wuju said softly. “So beautiful.”

  The Faerie! he thought suddenly. Of course there’d be Faerie! He cursed himself for not thinking of it before. This close to the equator there was bound to be magic, he realized. Some of those authoritarian sons of bitches had snuck onto Old Earth and it had been hell getting rid of them. He looked anxiously at Wuju. She had a dreamy look on her face, and her upper torso was swaying in time to the music.

  “Wuju!” he said sharply. “Come on! Snap out of it!”

  She pushed him away and started forward, toward the woods. He rushed up and tried to block her way, but she wouldn’t be deterred. He opened his mouth and tried to grab her arm, but it wouldn’t hold.

  “Wuju!” he called after her. “Don’t go in! Don’t desert us!”

  Suddenly a dark shape swooped down from the sky at him. He ducked by lowering his forelegs and started running. It swooped again, and he cursed the poor vision that kept him from taking full advantage of his reflexes.

  He heard maniacal laughter above him, and the mad thing swooped again, brushing him this time.

  They’re forcing me into the forest! he realized. Every time he moved in any direction but in the creature’s, laughing and gibbering, it would swoop in and block his way.

  “Cousin Bat! Don’t do it! It’s Nathan Brazil!” he called to the dark shape, knowing the effort was futile, that the bat was under a Faerie spell.

  Brazil was in the woods now, where Bat couldn’t follow by flying. He saw the creature standing there, outlined in the starlight glare on the ocean, looking up and down the beach.

  He looked around, and barely made out a large form heading away about eight meters farther in.

  It’s useless, he realized. The music’s got her and Bat’s got me.

  I’ve faced them down before, he thought, and won. Maybe again, because they don’t know that. No choice here, though. If I don’t follow they’ll send some other creatures after me.

  He could barely see despite the light from the flitting bugs that grew thicker and thicker as he entered the forest, but he smelled Wuju’s scent and followed it.

  After what must have been twenty minutes, he emerged into a clearing in the woods.

  A toadstool ring, he thought grimly.

  Under a particularly huge tree was a wide ring composed of huge brown toadstools. The music came from here, made by the thousands of insects that swarmed in the center of the ring. Wuju was in the ring, too, almost covered by the creatures, so thick now that they lit up the place like a lamp. She was dancing and swaying to the eerie music of their wings, as were a number of other creatures, of varying shapes and sizes.

  The music grew in intensity and volume as more and more of the creatures of light came to the ring. Sitting in the hollow of the great tree, still and observing, was a glowing insect much, much larger than the others—perhaps close to a meter. It had the oval shape of a beetle, and a light, ribbed underside that was highly flexible. Two long, jointed hind legs were held in front of it in a bent but relaxed position, and two forelegs, longer and with sharp-toothed ridges, that seemed to be leading the insect orchestra, waving in perfect time. It sat like this, underside exposed, leaning against the tree, a face on a telescoping neck down on the chest, watching things. The face was strange, not insect-like at all, nor was the position of the sitter nor the fact that it had only four limbs. It appeared to have a tiny, scruffy moustache, topped by a perfectly round and black nose, and two almost human eyes that reflected the glare of the proceedings with an evil and ancient leer.

  There was a sudden darkness above, and Cousin Bat landed in the middle of the circle, bowed to the large onlooker, and joined the dance. The strange eyes of the lead bug darted around the circle, then over to Brazil, whose form was just barely visible still hidden by the forest.

  * * *

  Suddenly the leader’s forelegs went into a V shape, and the music stopped, everyone staying perfectly still; even the bugs seemed frozen in midflight.

  The lead bug, who Brazil knew was the Swarm Queen, spoke to Cousin Bat, and Brazil found it interesting that the translator carried it as the voice of an incredibly tiny and ancient old woman.

  So are the legends of witches born, he thought sardonically.

  “You have brought only two! I charged you to bring all three!” the Swarm Queen accused Bat.

  Bat bowed, his voice flat and mechanical. “The other is a plant, Highness. It is rooted for the night, asleep beyond any recall except the morning sun.”

  “That is unacceptable,” the Swarm Queen snapped. “We have dealt with this problem before. Wait!” She turned to Brazil, and he felt the piercing eyes fall on him.

  “Deer! Come into the circle!” the Swarm Queen ordered, and Brazil felt himself moving slowly, haltingly, toward the circle despite no order on his part. He felt the energy grow to almost overpowering proportions as he crossed the toadstool ring.

  “The ring binds you all! Bound be ye till my return, or till morning, till midnight at the Well of Souls,” she intoned, then flipped over on her stomach, supported by all four legs. The back had long, integral wings and seemed to glow with the same stuff as her underside, although Brazil knew that was mostly reflection.

  “You will show me,” she said to the bat, and Bat immediately took off, the Swarm Queen following with a tinkling sound that was like a single note in the eerie Faerie symphony.

  Brazil tried to recross the circle of toadstoals, found he couldn’t. He idly kicked at one, but it proved to be more rock than toadstool, and his hoof met with a clacking sound but nothing else.

  He looked at the inhabitants of the circle. All, like Wuju, were frozen, like statues, although he could see that they were breathing. There was a monotonous, yet pleasant, hum from the Faerie, marking place.

  Many of the other creatures wer
e vaguely humanoid; all were small, a few monkey-like, but all were distorted, hellish versions of their former selves.

  Brazil remembered the encounters on Old Earth. Since the Faerie created their own press to suit themselves, they had a pretty good reputation in folklore and superstition. He had never discovered how they had managed to get in. Oh, some representatives of many other races had—some as volunteers to teach the people, some because their home worlds had closed before they personally had reached maturity and Old Earth had the room and a compatible biosphere.

  He wondered idly if those primitive peasants who told such wonderful stories of the Faerie would still like them if they knew that these folk doubled as the basis for witches and many evil spirits. Once created by some Markovian mind, they could not be wiped out; they had to run their course and survive or fail as the rules said.

  They had done too well. They worked their magic and dominated their own hex, using the collective mental powers of the swarm directed and guided by the Swarm Queen who was mother to them all, and tried to spread out. They managed to interfere in thirteen other Southern hexes where the mathematics did not forbid their enormous powers, before the Markovians finally moved to limit them to their own hex.

  Here they were in their own element, and supreme. How many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of swarms existed in this hex? Brazil wondered. I beat them outside of their own element once, but can I do it here?

  About an hour passed, with Brazil, the only moving thing in the ring, getting more and more nervous; yet he held onto a streak of optimism deep inside. If they couldn’t succeed with Vardia before daybreak, these nocturnal 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 ha
rd 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.

  He moved with the swiftness that only a deer could have in the forest, and the three followed him loyally, almost slavishly. Part of the spell, he guessed. The Swarm Queen had bound Wuju to him, and then duplicated her transformation precisely on the other two, which simplified things a great deal.

  He made the ocean before nightfall, but had no way of telling if he were north or south of the Faerie colony he sought. He decided that he had accomplished enough for one day, and that the next day would tell the story.

  He awoke later than intended, the sunlight already glaring down on the ocean, causing diamond-like facets to cover the surface.

  Which way? he wondered. Am I north or south of our last position?