Exiles at the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  She was appalled, unbelieving. "You mean the mules—all of them—were once people?"

  The priest nodded. "It is so." He turned to the guards. "Hold her arms tight," he cautioned. Then he turned back to Mavra. She felt strong hands holding her arms just behind the wrist. The priest waved his arms again, and she felt movement return to her whole body.

  "Touch her hands to the Sacred Stone!" the priest commanded, his voice echoing through the damp cavern. The two powerful arms ignored her twisting and pushed her unwilling hands to the faceted yellow orb.

  Something like a strong, burning electric shock went through her arms to her shoulders. The effect was so strong and so painful that she screamed and actually pulled away from the wretched thing despite the strength of her two captors.

  "That was Mavra!" Vistaru yelled. "Come on! Hurry!" she called to Hosuru and Renard, who rushed ahead. Neither cared any more if there was a whole army ahead; they were going in now.

  Inside the chamber, the priest seemed to smile and intoned, "Again!" This time the terrible shock and pain went from her hips to her toes, and, strangely, wound up in her ears. Again she screamed and fought to pull away.

  "Again!" the priest commanded, but at that moment the onrushing Lata and Agitar charged, Renard yelling bloodcurdling screams that echoed terrifyingly off the cavern walls.

  The priest turned, looking stunned and surprised. Like most fanatics, the concept that anybody would invade his holiest of places had simply never occurred to him, and he couldn't handle it. He stood there petrified. Not the two guards. They dropped Mavra and whirled. They had no pistols, which was fortunate, but they bore ceremonial steel swords, which they drew.

  Keeping all their attention on the guards and priest, Renard and Vistaru both yelled, "Run, Mavra! Get out of here! We'll handle this!"

  The first guard took advantage of this distraction to advance on Renard, sword poised, saberlike, in front of him.

  Renard smiled grimly, and moved his tast out in a similar manner, as if preparing to duel. The guard looked at the thin, snaky copper-clad whip and chuckled. He moved with his sword, and Renard brought the tast up, touching the sword.

  Sparks flew, and the guard screamed and dropped to the floor of the cavern, the point where his hand gripped the hilt actually smoking slightly.

  Vistaru, who still had some venom left, swooped at the other one, suddenly turning on her internal light to catch the foe off-guard. He was too good for that, and he stabbed in with his sword.

  And missed.

  She did an aerial backflip and plunged her stinger into his stomach, then pushed off him. The guard yowled, then seemed to stiffen, as he dropped to the floor, limp, lying eyes wide-open and unseeing.

  Mavra felt the guards release their grip on her and felt the cold stone as they dropped her. Her whole body was tingling and her mind wouldn't clear, but she had enough sense to hear Renard's shout to run, and take that advice. A naked, stunned Mavra Chang wasn't going to be much good in a fight.

  She was dizzy, and couldn't seem to get up, so she took off on all fours. Her head seemed heavy; she couldn't lift it, but she could see enough to head for the exit and did so, almost knocking over the guard just now meeting his end from Renard's tast. She wanted to crawl fast, but she couldn't lift her head up far enough; a nerve in the back of it was killing her, and her hair was hanging down in front, further obscuring her vision. But she made the steps and scampered out, passing the now-dead guards slumped under their still burning torches. Out ahead, she could see, was blackness, and that was where she wanted to be.

  She crawled into the bushes before she stopped, chest heaving, and tried to clear her head. She looked back at the entrance, but she couldn't get her head up quite far enough, or hold it even far enough to see out of the tops of her eyes without that nerve pinching and hurting.

  With the return of her wind came a clearer head. She was still on all fours. Why, she began to wonder. It was dark, but Obie had given her night vision, and she put her head chin against chest, essentially upside down, and looked back at herself. Her hair fell straight down.

  Her thin, lithe body was unchanged, her two small breasts hanging down and tugging slightly as a result of being dead weight.

  My arms! she suddenly thought in panic. What did they do?

  She also felt two long bending sensations with her head that way.

  She no longer had arms. She now had forelegs—thin and with a knee joint that bent only one way, locking the other way. It led down to a perfectly formed, fairly thick hoof of some whitish-gray substance like fingernails. There was no hair; the legs were still the same flesh color as the rest of her, the skin still looked human. But they were the legs of the little mule.

  Looking farther back, she saw what she expected to see, and sighed. Now she understood why she couldn't get off all fours, and why she couldn't seem to get her head up properly. The forelegs were a good twenty percent shorter than the hind legs. In the mule, the long neck compensated; a human head and neck wasn't designed to go that far.

  Renard and the two Lata came out of the cave. She heard them more than saw them, and, after a moment's hesitation, called to them. They were there in a flash.

  "Mavra, you ought to have seen that old boy's face when—" Renard started cheerfully, when she walked out of the brush into the torchlight. They all three gasped, mouths agape. For the first time they could see and know what the Olbornians had done to Mavra Chang.

  First, take the arms and legs off a woman's torso. Then turn it face down, the hips about a meter high, the shoulders about eighty centimeters. Now put a perfectly proportioned pair of mule's hind legs on the hips, so that the base of the body kind of melds into it. Now put two mule's legs on the shoulders, long enough to reach the ground but shorter because of the angle of the body. But don't add an animal's hair or skin—keep it all human, perfectly matched to the torso, except for hard, naillike hooves on all four feet, and, as a final touch, remove the human ears from her head and replace them with large, almost meter-long jackass ears, still out of the same human skin material. Then continue the woman's hair down across the back a bit into a thicker mane of the same color hair, extending along the spine to about where the breasts hung down on the underside. And, since the torso hasn't been otherwise altered, remember to put Mavra's horse's tail growing out of the waist at the base of the spinal column, above the hips, actually starting slightly in front of the hind legs, and drape it crudely over the rectum.

  The others felt tears of pity rise within them. "Oh, my god!" was all Renard could say, and he felt bad about it as soon as it was out.

  She shifted slightly, then turned her head to one side, almost far enough to look directly at him. Her hair hung down well below her face, crazily. Her voice was the same; even, level, and rich, but her eyes, when she turned her head to one side to look at them, said something else was inside her.

  "I know," she told them. "I figured it out. Those little mules they have—they make them with that stone in there, from people. I touched it twice, then got away when you arrived. Tell me—is anything else changed?"

  Choking back tears, Renard sat beside her and gently described her to herself, including the ears and misplaced tail.

  The odd thing was, they all thought, she looked strange and exotic, to Renard almost erotic, a curious and not unattractive little creature that engendered affection with the pity. But it was still an impractical, misdesigned creature, a one-of-a-kind on a world with 1560 races.

  "Maybe I should go back in and complete the process," she suggested, hoping the hoarseness and thickness in her speech would not betray how she really felt.

  "I wouldn't," Vistaru said softly, sympathetically. Mavra was already beginning to hate that tone. "You saw how they treated those mules? The thing does something to the mind, too. You'd be an animal, as good as dead."

  Renard had a sudden thought. "Look!" he said excitedly. "It isn't forever!"

  "The priest said it was irreversib
le," Mavra responded. "He said it so joyfully I believed him."

  "No! No!" the Agitar protested. "You haven't been through the Well Gate yet!"

  "The priest said the stone's power was from the Well," she retorted.

  "That's true," Vistaru put in, "but so is everything else on the Well World. Why that stone is there and why it does what it does we'll probably never know—it's a substitute for something they would have to handle on their own planet, that's all. Like the magic hexes here, which really mean they can tap a limited part of the Well to compensate for something in their designed homes. You still haven't been classified and added to the Well's input, so whatever changes the stone made won't affect that."

  Mavra felt renewed hope. "Not forever," she almost breathed, and seemed to relax. Suddenly she was upset that she'd let something show through the armor, and she took a deep breath.

  "Not forever," Renard agreed. "Look, want to head for a Zone Gate now? Not Olborn's certainly, but we can get in somewhere, I'm sure. We can run you through like you ran me through."

  Mavra shook her head violently. "No, no, not yet. Later, yes. As soon as possible. But the surrounding hexes are in the war. This hex is in the war. That's for normal times. We have to get to Gedemondas."

  "I can do that!" Vistaru protested.

  Mavra shook her head again. "No, you can't. You won't know what the engine module looks like, nor how it's destroyed. Besides, I have never ever backed out on a commission yet once I've accepted it. They wanted me along and I said yes. After—a Zone Gate—maybe in Gedemondas, if they'll talk to us at all, or in Dillia next door."

  "Be reasonable, Mavra!" Renard protested. "Look at you! You can't see three meters ahead of you. You can't feed yourself, you're stark naked with no protection against the elements, in the middle of territory whose natives would take you back to the stone and finish the job in an instant." He got up, looked down on her, and gently moved the horse's tail aside. "You're even going to have bathroom trouble. Your vagina's where your ass should be, and the ass is farther up. The human anatomy is designed for sitting or squatting. Those legs are not designed for your body. You can't go on!"

  She tried to look at him squarely, failed. It hurt too much. "I'm going," she maintained stubbornly. "With you if you'll have me. Without you if not. If you want, you can be my guide and aide when I have to see far or eat, and clean me off when I shit. If not, I'll go anyway, and I'll make it. When you were sucking your thumb on sponge, and I didn't know where I was, I didn't let you go, and I didn't quit. This won't stop me, either."

  "She's right, you know," Hosuru said quietly. "At least, about completing the mission first. The whole world is at stake in Gedemondas. She's needed there. If we can get her there, it's our duty to try."

  "Okay," Vistaru said dubiously, trying to see the flaw in the other Lata's logic. "If you're going to be stubborn, we'll all go. But I think a day or two in that new condition may cure you of this bravado. If it does, don't feel ashamed, weak, or a failure to ask us to get you to a Zone Gate. I wouldn't."

  Mavra chuckled mirthlessly. "Shame and weakness don't scare me, but I die when I'm a failure to myself." She shifted again. "Did anybody get my clothes? I might still manage some of them, with Renard's soldier's kit. And we ought to get out of here. Sooner or later somebody's going to notice the high priest didn't come back and raise a hue and cry. We'd best be well away."

  Renard threw up his hands. "I have your clothes. We'll see, later. Now, let's move! This way!" There was resignation and a total lack of understanding in his voice.

  He wouldn't understand, Mavra thought. None of them would.

  * * *

  Apparently the shock of the slayings was too much for the Olbornians. There was no pursuit that they ever knew about.

  Mavra found that she could trot, like the little mules. Left legs out, push, right legs out, push, and again, faster and faster. She had no feeling at all in the hoofs, which helped, but all of the exposed skin area was just like normal exposed skin area. The Lata helped, flying alongside or just in front, telling her what was ahead so she didn't run into trees or hurt her neck, and could make some speed.

  Morning had them some distance away. Renard mounted Doma, whom he'd been leading, and they scouted the terrain. It was clear that things were not going to be as difficult as they feared from the Olbornian score.

  For the "Well's Chosen Ones," they were quite obviously getting the hell beat out of them. They had run afoul of a coast watch set around the Sacred Stones areas; it had been sheer bad luck to pick that spot to camp. The rest of the country was wide open, with the telltale signs of a war going badly all over: military carts drawn by teams of mules hauling supplies and large cannon and mortars south; a steady stream of aimless refugees north.

  They stuck to open country, which was mostly deserted now, everyone down south into the fight or guarding the Sacred Stones and Zone Gate. They were able to relax and straighten out their situation.

  Because of the precariousness of the camp, Doma's packs had never been unloaded, so they still had their supplies. They ate first; to Mavra, it was a humiliating type of experience she would have to get used to. They'd started to spoon-feed her, but she'd resisted that. They opened a tin of meat which Renard warmed, then broke up some small fruit, and put it in a wooden bowl. By standing on her hind legs and kneeling on her forelegs, she could eat, like a dog or cat. It was hard; the thin legs were even thinner at the ankles, and the legs moved forward, not back, and the damned bowl kept moving, but she managed it and the food tasted good. Water she drank by two methods: lapping, like an animal, and sticking her face in the pan and drinking the top half down.

  But it worked, and that was enough for her.

  Vistaru tied her hair up between and in back of her enormous ears with an elastic band, which kept it out of her face and food. She could even see level in front of her, by standing on her forelegs while kneeling on the hind ones. That position, too, was uncomfortable, but she didn't mind. It gave her neck some relief, and allowed her to see.

  The clothing was more of a problem, though she'd need it. It was slightly chilly in Olborn, and it would be frigid in the upper reaches of Gedemondas.

  They cut the sleeves off her shirt and managed to get it on. The pants were a bigger problem, and they didn't quite reach all the way, but Vistaru buckled the wide belt around her bare midsection and that helped. It looked wrong and stupid, and felt wrong, too, and the pants kept slipping, but it was something and it felt better. The long coat tailored for Gedemondas would possibly do what was needed, covering that impossible tail, they hoped. Some cut-off gloves might help protect the exposed skin in Gedemondas snow. Maybe.

  Oddly, Mavra felt better now. Obstacles were to be surmounted; that was part of the joy of it all. They noticed a pickup in her spirits they couldn't comprehend.

  Sleeping was the worst compromise; the animal's legs were designed for sleeping standing up, but the human torso was not, and sleeping on her stomach was no longer possible. She managed lying on her side.

  In the meantime, the war was going from bad to worse for those of Olborn. Occasionally they'd meet some frightened refugees, not looking as fierce or confident as those back in the priest's lair. Their world was coming apart, and with it their world-view and their notions of their place in it. No longer sure of anything, they were somehow sad and pathetic. People they ran into kept trying to surrender to them.

  Roving military patrols caused worse problems; most were composed of deserters with the social restraint imposed on them by their life's conditioning and faith in their favored status with the Well all gone; they brutalized the refugees, they tried brutalizing the alien party, but renewed Lata venom and Renard's highly charged personality soon dealt effectively with them.

  Mavra also found it interesting that no one gave her a second glance. To these insular people, she was just one more weird alien creature.

  But progress was slow, and they turned their attention to trying to
find some way to get Mavra and Renard on Doma. The problem was the great wings, which needed to be unimpeded, and which came down most of the length of the great animal's body.

  Finally, experimentation achieved a compromise that Doma and practicality could accept. Nonessential supplies were jettisoned, and the Lata took as much as they could in their pouches. The weight would slow them, but Doma would also be slowed and impeded. With the instruments tossed out—Renard insisted he never used them anyway—she could sit, legs astraddle, on the lower neck of the pegasus, while he sat just behind, body pressed into hers. Straps from some of the excess saddlebags would hold her, and Doma, while uncomfortable with the extra weight on her neck, managed. The only problem was that it took all three of the others and some cooperation and kneeling from Doma to get her up there in the first place.

  Finally, though, they could fly, and the distance sped by. They ducked south of the hex corner, avoiding any more priestly fanatics, and crossed barely into Palim.

  The inhabitants of the hex eyed them nervously, but did not interfere or challenge them. The Palim resembled nothing so much as giant long-haired elephants. Their form was deceptive, though; they were a high-technology people, with carefully managed groves of food trees and grain, and a criss-cross of a large electric rail system and odd, gumdrop-shaped city buildings in clusters linked by ramps. They stayed clear; the Palim seemed too unconcerned by the nearby violence. It indicated that they had elected to sit out the war, and that meant the Yaxa-Lamotien-Dasheen alliance was probably making good use of that rail system in the east.

  Even slowed, they made the border of Gedemondas in under two days. There was no doubt where they were; the great mountains of the frigid hex were visible from the flat plain, like some intrusive wall, a great distance before they reached it. With a few hours to scout around by air, they found the relatively small plains area that was in Gedemondas itself. It was the logical point for the two advancing armies to head for, and it was empty of all but some minor wildlife when they arrived.