05. Twilight at the Well of Souls - The Legacy of Nathan Brazil (32 page)

Darkness fell, and they camped for another lonely, windy, cold night without food and, now, without much hope.

"We tried our best," Brazil tried to console them, although he felt more in need of it than in the mood to give it. "We'll continue to try as long as possible, until we just can't any more."

"I can see only one way out," Mavra told them.

"Tomorrow, early, while we still have strength, we must try and fly down into the canyon."

"How wide is an Avenue?" Prola asked apprehensively.

Brazil thought about it. "Thirty meters, more or less," he replied. "The chasm is a bit wider, of course, but we don't know how far we'd have to glide and what narrow spots we might have to dodge."

"Fully extended," Mavra noted, "my wingspan and yours is roughly eight or nine meters. It doesn't give us very much maneuverability—and with those wicked updrafts and downdrafts, and those clouds . . ."

"It was
your
idea to fly," he came back. "Don't try talking me out of it at this stage. It's the only thing we can do—and I want to do it so little it wouldn't take very much to let me freeze and starve up here."

"Near midday tomorrow, then," she agreed ruefully, "when whatever sun gets down in there is available to us."

They slept fitfully that night, not wanting to think about, let alone face, the day ahead. And when the first of them awoke and looked around, hope was dashed even further. The clouds had risen now; the whole world was a sea of swirling white in every direction.

They nibbled some snow and relaxed, unable to move until the sun or weather patterns burned some of the fog away.

"It's like this a lot near Avenues," Brazil told them. "You get the same reaction when two dissimilar hexes—seasonally, that is—meet at a border, and that's a border out there, of course, a border with a thirty meter strip in between that's subject to wind and weather patterns from both hexes."

They were silent most of the morning, and the mists would not clear. Brazil finally motioned for the Gedemondan to come over and "plug in," as he thought of it.

"Mavra—what have you been thinking about?" he asked gently, trying to get her mind off the situation.

She gave a wry chuckle. "Other places. Other peo
ple," she replied. "I wonder how the battle went? I wonder who won? And whether it made a damn bit of difference? I wonder if they bit on that empty shell of a body you left them, or if they're all lined up somewhere, fighting yet. It would be nice to know before I. . ."

"Die?" he completed. "Does that really scare you?"

"Yes, of course, " she replied. "I'm not like you, Brazil. I don't think anyone is. I'd like to see that new universe."

He hesitated a moment, then said, "Well, that tells me something about you I was wondering about." He didn't elaborate, but it settled a nagging reservation he had had. He had wondered, up to this point, whether or not she might not have desired, been happy, in her Dillian existence. Of course, Asam's treachery would have dispelled that, but only for the two of them. It wasn't fair, though, to do to anyone what he intended for her if she could have been happy in some alternate existence.

It wasn't fair anyway, he knew, but she wouldn't believe that until she found it out for herself.

The Gedemondan broke the contact. "The fog is lifting," he noted.

They looked around and saw it was true. The sun was visible now, about a quarter of the way up in the sky, and it was burning through the thin cloudiness that seemed impossible at this altitude.

"I think I see a peak over there!" Prola called excitedly. "And another, there! Yes! I think it's clearing."

The Gedemondan suddenly stiffened and looked around nervously. "I don't think all is well," he whispered. "I sense others near by. I—I allowed my own personal emotions to cloud my senses," he explained apologetically. "Now I can read them. We are being watched!"

They tensed, and the Agitar drew his coppery swordlike tast, which could conduct thousands of volts of electricity from his body. They waited tensely to see who the hell could possibly have penetrated this fog and found them at such a height.

"Helloooo . . . !" boomed a voice from somewhere just to the left of them, a call that echoed back and forth between the peaks. "Hey! Nate! Where are you?" it called. "Come on—I won! I gotcha dead to rights. You can't move. I took your challenge and I've won, Nate! I've won!"

Brazil gestured with his head to the Gedemondan, who placed a pad on his head allowing speech.

"Over here!" he called wearily. "How the hell did you ever find us?"

A huge figure glided out of the fog and approached them carefully. It carried in two of its six hands a small electronic device.

"This is a high-tech hex, Nate," Serge Ortega told him. "Haven't you ever heard of radar?"

Above the Borgo Pass

ORTEGA HAD A FAIRLY LARGE FORCE AROUND, AND as they walked with him the size became more apparent. They were also well armed and well equipped with the best in weaponry and detection gear and obviously digging in.

"I must say that it's damned hard to think of you as a pegasus," the Ulik said jokingly. "And a passionate pink one at that! My, my!"

Brazil could only snort at this commentary, since the Gedemondan could only be an effective speech conduit when they were standing still. He and Mavra could only seethe and take it; all hope was now gone.

"The Borgo Pass," Ortega told them. "It's the narrowest point in the whole chasm, barely ten meters clearance on either side of the Avenue and with nice, natural fortifications on both sides. As you saw from the landscape above, anyone who wants to reach the equator has to come up the Avenue itself—and has to get past this spot."

There was a lot of activity around the mostly obscured pass; they could see a portable crane lifting some gun emplacement down into the mist and cloud layer below, supervised by a number of small flying things.

"You might be interested to know how I figured out your plot," the Ulik continued, gloating unashamedly. "To be truthful about it, I deduced it as you went along and the final pieces only fell into place a couple of days ago, but I'd already guessed the rough outline. It was clear from the start, at least after I discovered how you'd evaded our traps in Zone, that yours was a campaign of misdirection. Still, nothing could deny the fact that, sooner or later, you would have to move in force toward one or more of the Avenues, and as soon as the Hakazit moved up the Isthmus I knew from its direction and the direction of the Dillians that you had to be coming to this area. Although your double in the ship gave me some uneasy moments, I admit, I rejected water Avenues as simply too risky. That left Yaxa-Harbigor or here. Now, you had an army for each, as did the council, and a double for each, which drove us crazy. So, which Avenue?" He paused, savoring his moment of triumph. "I rejected Yaxa-Harbigor not only because the inhabitants around there are incredibly formidable anywhere and damn near absolute in their own neighborhood, but also because that would put Gunit Sangh's army in between, by far the more formidable of the two," he continued. "But a glance at a map showed that, if you turned westward and started the other Awbrian force northward, you'd have a massive double army coming down on a smaller and less equipped council force. Ergo, Ellerbanta, since Verion is inhospitable, nasty, alien, and probably lethal. I'm not sure those fancy charged-up glowworms can be reasoned with. Good thing they're superstitious, though, or we couldn't hold both sides of the pass."

Brazil halted and gestured with his head to the Gedemondan, who understood and made the link.

"All right, Serge, but how did
you
get here?" he wanted to know.

Ortega chuckled. "All in good time, my boy, all in good time. So, anyway, old Gunit Sangh and his crew wouldn't listen to a lot of what I had to say and paid for their mistakes. They got outmaneuvered time and time again. Well, once I knew where you were headed, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Your curious friend Gypsy had told me that I could leave Zone without withering into dust, and I finally had it, completely, up to
here,
with sitting in my private little prison while everybody else had all the fun. Oh, I could have ordered folks over here, but I simply could not deny myself the pleasure of this. You don't know what it's meant to me, Nate, leaving that stinking hole. Seeing stars, breathing clean air, feeling the wind and heat and cold and rain . . . It's almost like being reborn. I may be the only man anywhere who can identify with you, Nate. My little prison, really, isn't that much different than the prison you've been living in all those thousands of years. We were both trapped by our own devices."

"But how did you get here?" Brazil persisted. "I mean, Ulik's almost on the other side of the world from here, even if it
is
at the equator, and that bulk of yours can't fly."

Ortega laughed. "Oh, but it
can,
Nate, although it damned near killed me from being out of practice. I'll show you one in a little while."

"One what?" he wanted to know.

"A trublak," the Ulik replied. "It's a huge, pulpy worm with six pairs of huge, tough, transparent wings, about six meters long. Nasty-looking, but harmless. They are to Ulik pretty much what the horse was to our ancestors—transportation, muscle power, you name it. They're not very bright but easily domesticated. You have these reins, you sit on a saddlelike thing, and you use your own tail as part of the guidance. Took us about five days to get here, but we knew where you were heading before we started, even if you hadn't taken off yet. And no matter what, a good look at the relief maps told me you
had
to come by the Borgo Pass. Just
had
to. It's almost designed that way."

"But how the hell did you know what we were or who we were?" he persisted. "We're pretty well disguised, I think you'll admit."

Ortega shrugged. "Remember, the last time we met you were in the body of a stag. I knew the trick could be done and I knew you knew it. When we got word yesterday that your comatose body had been found in the rubble of battle I pretty well guessed what had happened—and waited here. It had to be a pretty fast ground animal or an airborne one, and I guessed a flyer since you'd want to make speed. What large, flying animal was on the continent and near where your armies had passed? It's easy when you're thinking dirty and playing with a full deck."

Brazil looked around at the frantic activity, slightly puzzled. "What's all this now, Serge?" he wanted to know. "You've won. Looks more like you're still moving in than preparing to move out."

Serge Ortega chuckled even more at some private joke, then called out, "All right, boys! Come on up!"

Out from a point beyond the portable crane came two figures. Two very familiar creatures.

One was a Hakazit, huge and imposing, and the other a tall human with a big grin on his face.

"Hello, Brazil," called Gypsy. "We were wondering if we'd beat you here or not."

"It would seem our timing was perfect," Marquoz noted with satisfaction. "A last reunion before the windup." He turned to Brazil. "I told
you
I wanted to be in on the finish."

The shock of seeing those two was so great that the communications link was broken for a few moments. When he regained it, all Brazil could blurt out was, "What the
hell
is going on here?"

Ortega grinned. "I resigned from the council, Nate. Oh, I've got to admit, up to the last moment I didn't know which way I would jump, didn't even know if I had the nerve to ever leave that place, but, when push came to shove, I really didn't have much choice.
I
couldn't condemn you to the same prison I hated so much. Not me—anybody
but
me, maybe. But I couldn't do that to somebody else, particularly an old buddy like you. I'd done all I could to keep the faith with the council; I'd given them every lead, prodded them this way and that, and even managed to save an awful lot of those Entries from being wiped out. I didn't worry about that after a bunch of the boys decided to ignore me anyway and sent a squad of fifty in to start killing the Entries in the Well Gate. You know what happened? Those amazons of yours got so pissed when the first volleys of arrows flew, they charged that squad and tore it literally to bits! They can take care of themselves pretty good, they can! And since high-tech weapons won't work in Zone, well, there's nobody with nerve enough to try it now,"

Gypsy looked at him, a smile on his face. "And, of course, Saint Serge, personal motives had nothing to do with it at all."

Ortega looked sheepish. "Well, of course, in a very minor way. I've been fighting that bastard Sangh for fifty years, and he's going for broke with this one. If he loses, he
really
loses, this time. He's the greatest threat to the stability of this world that ever was born, and he has to go. Some of the Dahbi aren't that bad. Gruesome, maybe, but a lot of other races are, too. Evil, though? No, that's reserved for Sangh. And his whole pitch has been that if he were in complete charge, he could do anything. Well, he's
been
in complete charge, and he's botched it. If you make the Well, he's botched it totally. He'll not only never be a threat but he'll lose face and standing among his own people, maybe lose his power base. Nobody likes to back a loser, and there'll be a lot of bitterness after all this. The Wars of the Well showed that—people don't like their sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, to be sacrificed at all, but when they get slaughtered in a losing cause, well, that's more than some can stand."

"So you changed sides," Brazil sighed.

Ortega's bushy eyebrows went up. "Why, Nate! I'm
surprised
at you! You know there's never been any side except
my
side. Hell, I've had my cake and eaten it too in this go-round. I've figured you out, outwitted and trapped you, and now I can turn around and stick it good to the ones I have a lot of scores to settle with. It's the time to settle scores again, Nate, I'm dying now and you know it and I know it. There's no way I'm going to die in peace and solitude."