07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (24 page)

"The Pyron council?"

"Nope nope.
Consul.
Like junior ambassador. Ambassadors all in Zone, but sometimes have consuls in other countries where business is done. Faster."

"Well, what does this consul say?"

"Says you will not have to stay on ship to Pyron. Consul has arranged for passage to your destination from Kolznar. Says you will be met at pier when we dock. Warns you not to fly to or in Alkazar. Can be big trouble, yep yep."

That was both good news and bad news. The good news was that she was actually going to get off this thing and hit land! But the instructions not to fly—that was almost crushing. It was inside her, something she had to continually fight not doing even now. To still be a groundling even on land was not something she'd thought would happen.

"Purser?"

"Madam?"

"How is it that you read the writings of Pyron? Do you read
all
the tongues of the people you transport?"

"Nope nope. Only read Kuall and Commercand. Commercand is language used by all who travel and trade between hexes. Simple, direct, but all the same no matter what tongue you think in. Makes trade possible. Also used in diplomacy, yep yep. That's what this note is in. If somebody can write it, odds are there will always be somebody else where you are who can read it."

"How long until we get in?"

"About two hours, no more, yep yep," the purser responded, ripping up the note into little pieces and then putting the pieces back into the envelope. She thought it an interesting custom. "May take a little while to dock the ship, though. They're always busy and it's tricky. We'll get pilot in about an hour, yep yep. Then it's in their hands."

"Indeed? What is a pilot?"

"Captain with no ship but knows the harbors. Pilot takes over to dock ships in big ports and get them out. Otherwise we crash into things. Very convenient, yep yep."

She had to agree with that, although the job never would have occurred to her.

She wondered about the little horrors who'd taken off and flown into this Kolznar the previous night. If she could not fly, then why could they?

She decided to go back up to her cabin and get together the few things she had with her, put them in the waist pack, and then watch the landing. It would even be interesting to see this pilot creature; he, she, or it was unlikely to be of Magid, considering, and so would almost certainly be Alkazarian.

She walked back, unlocked the door, and walked in. Almost immediately she sensed a wrongness about it, although she was more curious than afraid, considering how long she'd been aboard and that she knew just about everybody.

The door shut behind her, and she realized that the lamp was out. This wasn't unusual in a high-tech hex, but normally there was a kind of glowing bar that went on that allowed you to see well enough for the basics. Now, suddenly, it was pitch-black.

She knew she was not alone.

She could have sensed it before, but had not been thinking about such things. Now, though, all her senses were on full alert because of the darkness, and she knew not only that someone else was there, but who it was, and that was a shock.

"That is far enough," said a familiar voice. "I have in my hands a weapon that can fry you like a roasted bird in an instant, and I see just fine in the infrared, so I can see you as clearly as if we were on deck."

"Then why do you not use it and kill me? That
is
what you came in here for," Jaysu responded, oddly calm and sounding not at all terrified. She realized then that she should have known from the beginning that Algensor, the Kehudan, was not on the up and up. Nobody took a ship to
return
to their home hex. You just went through a Zone Gate. Some detective she was!

"I need to know who sent you the message you just received, and what it said," the Kehudan told her, becoming unnerved by Jaysu's lack of panic.

"I do not believe that concerns you," she told the agent calmly. Her heightened senses located the creature precisely and saw her with greater clarity than the Kehudan could have imagined. "I think you might as well shoot me."

Algensor wasn't prepared for this. "Do you understand what I am saying, foolish shaman? Tell me or I will shoot you!"

"But if I tell you, then you will shoot me anyway, so why give you anything for the deed?"

Jaysu saw the numbers tied to the glowing strings, the numbers she did not understand but did not have to, since the meaning was forming unbidden in her mind. She knew exactly what did what, and it was as simple as moving her own finger.

"Then perhaps I will give you pain," the Kehudan threatened. "Sear off some of those wings, and perhaps carve off the hands and feet.
Talk
!"

"You have no idea of pain," Jaysu told her. "You have no idea what an Amboran must undergo to get to the High Priestess level. I have experienced such pain as you can never comprehend, and I cannot be threatened by it."

"I don't know if you're more alien than I believed or just ignorant and naive, but I have no more time to waste on this. Last chance. What was in the message and who sent it?"

"How should I know?" Jaysu mocked her. "I can't read, you know."

Seething with frustration, Algensor pulled the trigger on the energy pistol, aiming at Jaysu's feet.

Nothing happened.

Jaysu smiled to herself. "Now what will you do?" she asked the creature.

Algensor was unnerved by the failure of the gun. Clearly, she'd tested it to make sure it was fully energized and operational, but even as she tried to fire it repeatedly, it would not work.

"Try shooting into the toilet," Jaysu suggested. "Messy, but it will work."

Algensor was so angry she did just that, firing into the toilet area. There was a crack and a flash that illuminated the cabin for an instant, and the sound of something sizzling.

The Kehudan brought the pistol back up and fired at Jaysu.

Again the pistol refused to work.

She pointed to the roostlike sleep box and set the thing on fire, and managed to hit the cabin door. But when she aimed at Jaysu, the gun would not fire.

"Then I'll get you with poison!" the Kehudan snarled, and started toward Jaysu, who was only a few meters away. But Algensor's ample feet didn't seem to work. She strained, but she couldn't move toward the Amboran.

Now it was the would-be assassin's turn to panic. "
You!
You're doing this to me, aren't you?"

"My oaths will not allow me to let someone harm another, but basically it is simply instinct. I am reacting to your threat." Jaysu turned, picked up her pack, checked for a few basics, and deciding that anything she didn't have she could replace or do without, put it on.

"Then you're not going to kill me?"

Jaysu sighed and shook her head in pity. "I cannot deliberately harm another thinking being," she told the Kehudan. "Still, if you tell me who sent you, or hired you, to do this, I will allow you to walk out of the cabin and off the ship when it docks."

Algensor wasn't fully cowed, although she was defeated. "Foolish girl! Don't you realize that almost every passenger on this
ship
works for your enemies?"

"I suspected as much, but it seemed too much trouble to go to just for me. I simply wish to know what it is that allows you to try and take my life when I am no threat to you. Reward? At the command of your people? Some cause?"

"Most of us work for reward," the Kehudan admitted. "But some of us also work for our governments. Mine is terrified of the alliance that has grown up so quickly around Chalidang, and the way we live, just atop the waves, makes us very vulnerable to any sort of military attack. It was they who instructed me that you were not to get off this ship. You have stopped me, but I do not see how you are going to stop the others."

"The same way," Jaysu responded matter-of-factly. "Now I wish you to remain here until we are at the dock. Once we are in port, you may emerge and leave the ship so long as you do
not
have hold of that weapon. The weapon must stay here." She turned and opened the door, then looked back, seeing in the light flooding into the cabin the silvery insectlike creature that was to have killed her, and a very nasty looking thing in her tentacles that must be the pistol.

"It was a message from the Pyron chief in this place we are going to," Jaysu said. "All it said was that I was to get off the ship and be met there. Happy now?"

And with that, Jaysu stepped out of the cabin and let the door close.

She did wonder how long it would take before the Kehudan stopped fighting and dropped the pistol so she could leave, but it wasn't really her affair.

Jaysu still could not understand why they were all so afraid of her. What could
she
do? She didn't even understand why Core thought she could be of value in this affair.

She wasn't completely confident, either, in her ability to remain alive through it. True, she had little to worry about in these kinds of situations, but here, in high-tech areas, she was still vulnerable to long-range weapons fired without warning. She would never detect the hostile intent in time, let alone pick it out.

She had no desire to remain in a high-tech hex for long. Not now, particularly.

She wondered if Wally would try and pounce on her. She decided that being out on deck was no more or less dangerous than being inside. On deck, someone in one of those boats might take a shot at her, but inside, well, Wally had been the one creature she'd not detected fully until he'd moved. Best not to give him any advantage.

When she got back to her viewing area just below the wheelhouse, she saw the pilot boat coming out to meet them. It was an ugly little craft, dull gray and with a gun of some kind mounted forward. It didn't look like the kind of craft anyone would use just to take a harbor expert out and back; it looked more like a craft you'd run up rivers and through harbors looking for criminals or smugglers.

If the Alkazarians were as ugly and mean-looking as their craft, she could see why everybody was nervous about them.

But as it turned out, they weren't. They were, if anything, downright
cute.

Averaging only a bit over a meter high, the Alkazarian crew of the pilot boat looked like nothing so much as flurry little animated toy bears or bear cubs. They were, in fact, bipeds, with short three-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, but otherwise they were
darling
little things, with blow-dry fluffy brown fur, little black button eyes, and everything else that said ursine. The black uniforms with leather belts and lots of braid, and the little hats that sat between their pointed ears, added to the comic effect, and they leaped and jumped around like small children preparing to match speed and direction with the large ship, from which a metallic stairway had been lowered.

She knew she should be laughing at their cute antics, but her other senses were almost screaming at her to ignore appearances. These little creatures radiated a cold, hard evil, an inner soul that recognized only fear and the instigation of fear as valid emotions. Even Wally hadn't been as dead inside as any of those little creatures.

Still, as an Alkazarian in a particularly ornate decorated uniform walked to the side of the boat and then, after judging distance and motion, made an effortless leap to the stair and started up, she couldn't keep her eyes off the others. Impressions flooded into her mind, ugly impressions, like those of a nightmare. Fleeting images of these little creatures running in crazed packs, thrilled by the chase, then taking one of their own and killing them and—
eating
their own!
Cannibals?
It was—ghoulish.

They had high technology, trade, all this. Why would they revert to savagery, and with such enjoyment?

She hoped she was seeing some vestigial memory of an ancient past, but deep down she knew she was not. The ones on that boat had been in that pack, and had eaten of their own, and to them it was not an unpleasant memory.

She didn't like these little creatures one bit.

In fact, she was beginning to wonder if there were
any
alien creatures, by which she meant not Amborans, that she could trust. She'd met few here, although the little purser and the crew in general had treated her well. Still, that was their job.

Could it be that the only ones she could truly trust in all this were the sinister looking Pyrons?

Land was visible now, dead ahead, a definite shoreline, and almost dead center in it, a tall mountain range that looked not unlike home. It did not seem to stretch from horizon to horizon, though, but was sharply vertical only in that central area and then tapered away on both sides. It was odd-looking, and the ship had to move in much closer in order for her to realize that it was a V-shaped formation whose base reached the coast but fanned out from it diagonally inland.

It was the tall center of that mountain at the base of the V that they were headed for, and soon it began to dominate the skyline to the south. It was not volcanic; there were layers of rock going up into the sky for several kilometers, the tallest mountain she'd ever seen by far, and the rest of the range was just about as tall.

It was quite warm at the surface, even hot, but there was snow up on those peaks, and from various points along the mountainside there were hundreds of waterfalls.

The mountain did not quite reach the sea; instead there was a half bowl at the base that was not much above sea level but was hundreds of square kilometers in size, and it was not empty.

The city at the bottom of the mountain had its own landscape, this one artificial, consisting of large scale docks, even dry-docks, giant warehouses, and, beyond the waterfront, densely packed high rises that went back almost to the mountain itself and off on either side as far as she could see.

It was a huge, bustling, dramatic, modern city that did not look like it belonged there. It was difficult to believe that creatures such as the Alkazarians could have built it.

There was certainly an inconsistency of styles. Buildings were very different from one another, in shape, in form, in color, in every way she could think of save that they were almost all high rises. It was almost as if a portion of Zone were built not inside enclosed and fixed quarters, but along this harbor, each race carving out its own little piece of itself.