07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (3 page)

This was not supposed to be, but it was the most wonderful thing of all.

It was a sign. It was the sign she'd been waiting for. The gods would not allow a priestess to soar so close to Heaven if this were some evil being worked!

Jaysu began a leisurely turn and took a tour of Ambora. When she flew, it wasn't an ordeal to see much of the country. The wind was with her, and great distances could be covered easily.

She rose up high, and watched the warriors of many clans
swarm and play and hunt below. She did not envy them, but she did take in some of their joy. She also could sense their astonishment when they looked up and saw the strange figure hovering far above them in the highest currents. Curiously, while they were all puzzled at the sight of her, not a single one of them rose to see just who or what she was or how she was able to do this. Some began to do it, then suddenly lost interest.

She wasn't sure, but she suspected it was partly because of her. She already knew she had some power over other minds— which was how she'd remained solitary while she figured things out. These were powers only gods were wise enough to have. Why had they given so much of that power to someone like her?

The others at that meeting at Zone had said she was from where they'd come from, another world or worlds somewhere off in the heavens. Her memories had been left behind, but not her soul. How could that be? The girl they described had been a low-ranking priestess of a church she could not remember or understand. Even those who had told her who and what she'd supposedly been were at a loss to explain who and what she was becoming.

That
was the most frightening idea of all. The idea that it wasn't over, that something was still changing her at an increasingly rapid pace. Changing into—what? What more could she become? And to what end?

Still, to discover that she could fly again was the one bit of wonderful news. There was no feeling quite like flying— soaring across the vast landscape, feeling and seeing the wind currents, floating along lazily in thermals that carried her almost like the caressing hands of motherly goddesses. It was so
easy,
not like walking or running along the ground. Up here, gravity was no enemy.

She hadn't realized until this miraculous grand tour how beautiful Ambora was. A peninsular hex, surrounded on four sides by the ocean and on the western two by the continental landmass. Ambora's high volcanic peaks, sheer cliffs, and
dynamic if colorful landscape was in stark contrast to the apparent emptiness of the sea or the dark, gray-shrouded lands of the western region. She had no idea what might live there, nor what they could do. The truth was, she'd had little curiosity about them then or now—particularly after having seen so many of the monstrous races that lurked beyond Ambora when she'd been to that gathering place they called Zone. Slimy, dark things that crawled from the sea, serpentlike things that crawled on their bellies in the dust, leathery flying things that were half lizard and half bird with the worst of each, and all the others—no beauty, no grace. Yes, they had souls of the same sort as the Amborans, but they seemed disinterested in exploring the only part of them worth looking at.

Flying around the border of Ambora, she could see that it was virtually walled in. The walls weren't of stone or mud or wood, of course; but to one who could see thermals and sense minor fluctuations in local magnetic fields, they seemed like walls. Cold, rising up to heaven, straighter than anything in nature, dulling vision beyond and shimmering like air above a rushing lava flow. She had no desire to fly through one, even though she instinctively understood that it was possible. What might it be like on the other side? Even in Zone she had felt heavy in one office, light in another, freezing cold and wet in yet another, and nearly boiling in the one next to that. If that kind of variation was to be found there, presumably for the comfort of the other races, then what might it be like just over that boundary? Suddenly too cold, or with the air too thin—or might she drop like a stone when suddenly weighing far more?

And yet there was a very little trade with those who lived beyond the walls. It was precisely because they were so different that they had things Ambora could use but could not make, and for which they would accept Amboran surplus foods and certain minerals. She thought they were probably desperate for what was natural and pure and true. She could see in one of them, across that eerie border, the lights that had no fire and things moving far too fast for nature. The other
was one of the in-betweens, but there was belching smoke rising up from their own coastal area, fouling their air.

It did not occur to her that those neighbors found a land smelling of sulfides and belching liquid rock and gases from below the earth as unpleasant and obnoxious as she found theirs. She was growing in power, but not in wisdom. It was something Core had understood but she did not. When one sees herself and her kind as the standard of perfection against which all else is measured, it is impossible to have perspective.

She kept high and to herself during her grand tour, using it as a meditative experience as much as a learning one. She fasted during the whole of it, taking just a small bit of water each evening, and avoided all others until she felt cleansed, renewed, and ready to return.

She wanted to go home to assume the duties of High Priestess and to minister to and serve the Grand Falcon clan. She was beginning to understand that events were not taking the course she might devoutly wish. If the gods wished her to serve in some different way, she could hardly avoid their will.

There were other sensations she was getting—in the air, in the ground, in the water. They seemed as coldly powerful as the gill creature, Core, only more pervasive. They were everywhere, and it scared her. Forces she could not understand, pulses . . .

Numbers . . .

It was as if the whole land, the whole
world,
was related to numbers. The strings were far too complex for her to follow, and far too pervasive for her to take in, but she was aware that they formed patterns that wound in and out and through every particle of matter and energy.

The geometry of the gods. It was the universe. It was the rules by which the universe worked. It was what continually stabilized it—and everything within it.

An impossibly complex series came to her. It did not pass out, but instead went through to the very core of her material being.

She settled back on the side of a cliff and closed her eyes, trying to see this personal part with senses other than her sight. She gave up trying to decipher the patterns. Instead she tried to follow them mentally back down to the earth below, and through it, to its origin.

She followed it down, down, through layers of rock and what the rock sat upon, through depths of alien substance that could not be comprehended or sorted, down, down, to a center, a monstrous center, a cold, calculating, horrendous First Source, a Cause with no soul at its center but containing the souls beyond number . . .

She screamed in horror and passed out from the shock. It was more than she could handle, more than she could understand. Worst of all, it had sensed she was there. It had recognized just who and what she was, and it hadn't cared one whit . . .

A test of faith, she told herself. It must be a test of faith. I do not want this burden, but I am only a slave, the property of the gods. It is their will that I must accept.

Security Ministry, Chalidang

BARELY MOVING IN THE DEEP OCEAN WATERS, THEY STARED AT the screen.

Colonel General Sochiz of Cromlin appeared cocky and arrogant as he left his embassy and made his way through crowds toward the Well Gate. He pushed aside anybody who did not yield and ignored the stares. He did not care what anybody thought of him, and his great claws could cut steel rods if he was so inclined.

Josich would be so proud of him! The way they had looked as he had spoken! The way they had simply melted away as he strode off the platform, through the hall and out. That was fear, fear of power, and it felt most excellent.

When it was clear who he was, the others along the route gave way. No one, not even those who were larger and looked meaner than he, impeded his triumphal march.

He turned the corner and saw the utter blackness of the Gate directly ahead, its hexagonal shape unmistakable. He was almost to it when he suddenly realized that for this last, short stretch there was nobody in the corridor.

He stopped, suspicious. This was the way assassins worked. Well, let them come! Let them see he was not afraid of them!

A noise caused him to turn to the wall to his right, perhaps five meters in front of the Gate. It had no shape at first, but then took on a humanoid form that seemed to extrude right out of the wall. It looked like nothing he'd seen—almost like a moving idol from some primitive tribe. It was made completely of dull, rough, granitelike stone—a cartoonish, idiotic, and simplified face carved into it. Only the eyes said it was something more—the burning fire-orange eyes in the tranquil water—and the fact that it walked to him.

"Who are you who would block me?" the Cromlin general shouted. Both forward claws went up; one snatched at the creature while the tail reared up and the syringelike point at the end struck the head of the creature.

And broke off.

The creature reached up with a stony hand. It held the claw immobile, then grabbed the other. As the pain of losing the stinger hit the Cromlin's body, the creature ripped off the right claw and discarded it.

"You know my name," the creature said, in a tone that could only mean it had a translator. "Let it be the last thing you or any of your brothers hear."

"What name?" the creature screamed. "Who are you?"

"Jeremiah Wong Kincaid," came the reply, just before the second claw was ripped away. The stone right hand of the idol-like creature punched through the face of the Cromlin right between the protruding eyes and extended antennae, and kept going all the way into the brain.

It was a slow and messy way to die.

Just before stepping off into the Well Gate, Kincaid—if that was who it truly was—paused, turned, and located the monitoring camera. "Each of you in turn," he said in a tone all the more chilling for being so matter of fact, so cool and emotionless. "Josich, I could kill you at my pleasure, but that would be meaningless. I want you to see how I get the others, one by one, so that you live some time in abject fear. It is still not enough, but it will have to do. Monitor, see that the Chalidang get a copy of this, won't you?" And with that the creature vanished into the hex-shaped blackness.

Colonel General Mochida, Chief of State Security for the government of Chalidang, turned slowly in the water. His two huge yet oddly humanlike brown eyes protruded slightly from each side of his rigid-looking but surprisingly soft and pliant nautiluslike spiral shell. He looked at his subordinates. "Any luck yet on tracing the race?"

"No, sir. It almost has to be some northern race distorted somewhat in the southern biospheres. There are some races who can do that sort of thing among those in the South, but they don't look like that, and a couple that come close to that appearance but have no abilities to hide or extrude. In fact, none are water breathers."

"Idiot!" Mochida snapped. "The appearance was obviously distorted, probably by some sort of disrupter shield. As to the North—even if we assume that for some reason we don't already know all of them as well as we know ourselves— at least in terms of the computer database, it's never happened. No carbon-based life pattern has ever been recast here as a northerner. No, he is playing some sort of trick on us, and we will have to find out what he is doing and counter it quickly. I want him in pieces!
Pieces!
I don't want any of the Empress's old family or associates, let alone Her Majesty, losing any sleep over this, understand?"

The others waved their tentacles in a manner approximating a Chalidang nod, but it seemed perfunctory and Mochida felt it.

"Perhaps I do not make myself clear," he added. "For every victim from this point on, one of you will die—a random choice. I want this bastard and I want him now!"

That put the fear of the gods into them! Not that they fully understood what fear was. Too many failures, and it would be Colonel General Mochida who would have to explain failure directly to the Empress.

"Enough of this," Mochida said abruptly, shifting gears. "We need to know how many pieces of our puzzle remain to be located."

This was something they felt more comfortable discussing.

"There are eight pieces, General. Three are already in our possession," one of the commanders told him. "Two more are probably attainable without military action. The two that are going to prove
difficult
are to the east—one in very secure circumstances in the eastern ocean, the other an object of apparent religious veneration on the far eastern continent. The last piece, I fear, we still have not located."

"We must find it! If we can secure it and the others, then the rewards and power that await us will be as wondrous as the punishment for failure will be terrible. All the others were from here and to the east; I see no reason why the last piece should not be within the same region. There must be records,
something,
damn it! It was less than three hundred years ago that it was disassembled and scattered! All the others had some kind of record, some kind of trail."

"But most believe that the Straight Gate is only a legend!" one general protested. "It is difficult even to get taken seriously. Of necessity we must keep everyone outside our inner circles believing that it is a mere childish fable. If the others should ever get the idea that it is for real, then a coalition far greater than the one we now face would be turned against us, just as it was in the days of Jaz Hadun!"

"Subtlety is not the strong point of our race," Mochida admitted. "Still, treachery is, and that takes a great deal of talent and care. Let us concentrate on getting the other pieces as we search for this one. Do we at least know what it looks like?"