It grew dark quickly as night overtook us. Every once in a while I’d check the radio, but all signals were either faint or very intermittent; Pinnacles was never mentioned.
A bit after dark, we saw some movement in the area and froze. I drew one of the pistols and watched nervously. My night vision was extremely good—our eyes worked best in the murky twilight of the jungle, and were most sensitive to bright light—but it was by no means nocturnal vision. Therefore, I had difficulty seeing just who or what came into view. The Warden sense vaguely tracked the newcomer, but it was impossible to really tell much about its shape.
Whoever it was crept cautiously to the center of the clearing, seemed to stop and look around, then whispered nervously, “There is thunder in the south.” That was the identifying phrase Darva had been told, but while our hopes rose our caution did not let down. If Morah knew of one hideout from captives, he certainly knew many of the passwords.
I looked at Darva and gestured at the pistol. She nodded, moved away from me, then approached the dark shape. “The Destroyer builds,” she whispered, giving the response.
I heard a sharp sigh. “Thank the gods!” a female voice said in low but clear tones. “Who’s there?”
“Darva. Who are you?” She walked closer to the dark shape.
“I am Hemara,” the other responded, “from the Valley of Cloud.”
“I am from Thunderkor,” Darva told her. “Come closer, so we may see each other clearly.”
The other moved, and now I too could make out the shape. She was indeed a changeling, a large woman with a reddish yet very human face that differed only in that she appeared to have two large compound eyes of bright orange in place of the normal ones. She seemed to be carrying something smooth and round on her back.
Darva turned and whispered to me, “All right, you can come out I think it’s safe.”
I moved from my hideaway and approached them. Up close, I could see that far more in the woman was changed than I had first noticed. Her body was black, hard, and shiny, like an insect’s, and that round thing on her back was a huge black shell of some kind. She was standing on four of her eight legs—no arms—and these were also covered in a hard shell and had small pads at their tips ending in a single hard nail each. Still, she retained short-cropped humanoid black hair on her head.
The newcomer turned, looked at me, then back at Darva, then back at me again. “There are two of you?”
“Sort of,” I responded. “It’s a long story. Anyway, I’m Park and I’m the male.”
Her very human mouth showed delighted surprise. “A pair! How wonderful!” There was a wistful note in that last, that I couldn’t help but catch.
“Maybe,” I told her. “For now, what’s the plan to get out of here? I feel like a sitting duck.”
She looked suddenly crestfallen. “I’d hoped that you…”
Darva sighed. “Just another refugee. Well, join the party and we’ll wait some more.”
She wasn’t really constructed for the jungle, but down flat, or almost so, she could blend in pretty well with the rocks. Time passed as we talked,’ explaining where the pistols came from and telling her a little about ourselves—very little, really. As for Hemara, she’d been caught poaching by her Company—a very serious offense. As punishment, she was given to a Company apt as an experimental being on whom to practice. When not a plaything she was on public exhibition near the Company headquarters as a deterrent, and they had outdone themselves in providing a really nasty example. Without hands or claws she couldn’t really manipulate much. Settling an interesting point, she said that the compound eye’s multi-images resolved into a single image in her brain, but that she could focus on only one point She could either see very far, but nothing close, or vice versa, and if she fixed on an object she could see only that object and its surroundings. That meant almost constantly changing focus to get a clear picture. She was a sad example of how far the cruel and insane minds that ran Charon could go, and yet she said she had seen and met worse. I probably had too, but the scene in that square after the fight had been so much of an overload that I found it hard to remember the shapes clearly.
We were joined later that evening by three more changelings. One was a man whose face was a hideous devil’s mask and whose bent, winged body made him permanently bowlegged. His bat wings, however, were not functional. He was a good reminder of how volatile the Warden power could be. He’d been more or less stealing lessons, hiding himself and listening in while his local sore instructed his apts. Then he tried experimenting on his own and had been doing very well, but one night he’d had a horrible nightmare…
The second creature was part long, gray limbless worm and part human torso topped by a hairless man’s head. The body, perhaps five meters long, glistened and left a trail of ichor. He wouldn’t tell us how he’d gotten that way, but we discovered he ate dirt.
The last one was surprisingly human, and decidedly uncomfortable with us. She was small, quite attractive, and had a distinctive pair of devil’s horns. She appeared to be a nervous wreck and I’m afraid our all-changeling group didn’t help her mood. Her name was Emla Quoor. She’d been in the group in the square, and she’d been terrified from that point on. There was little we could do to comfort her, except to point out that she must have some real guts and intelligence to make it this far undetected and in one piece. She looked like she’d been through hell, though, and I wasn’t about to press her further. Others could do that—if we ever got picked up.
Suddenly a rumbling erupted all around us. “Oh, brother!” somebody swore. “You can’t go three hours out here without getting dumped on.” As the skies opened up for what promised to be the usual long deluge, everyone moved into the shelter of the trees. The way the wind whipped things up, though, there was no question but that everyone would be pretty well drenched.
Lightning swirled around the Pinnacles, lighting up the area intermittently in what, I had to admit, was an impressive scene. I looked out into the little clearing which was brightly lit by a lightning flash, then dark again. Then came a second bolt, but this tune there was somebody—or something—there, standing in the middle. “There’s somebody here!” I called to the others and drew my pistol.
All eyes peered nervously into the clearing—it was empty. They glared at me, but I stood firm. “Somebody was there,” I assured them. “I do not see things.” I flicked the power on the pistol to full.
Another lightning blast, and once again the figure appeared—a tall, thin human in a long black cloak and hood. Not a trooper, that was for sure. One of the others caught sight of it too, and mumbled confirmation of my sighting. All turned to look, nerves on edge.
The figure was certainly standing there now in the rain for all to see. Slowly it approached us. It came right into our midst and looked around. The impression was of a very dark human face inside the hood, but little else. Finally a woman’s voice announced: “There is thunder in the south.”
“The Destroyer builds,” returned the stranger in a very deep female voice. She turned and nodded. “Is this all of you?”
“Us and the human girl over there,” the worm-man responded.
“I am Frienta,” the newcomer introduced herself. “I’m sorry to have kept you all waiting, but there are heavy patrols on the road and I decided to wait and use the storm for cover.”