“You are from Koril’s organization?” I asked.
“Master Koril is certainly involved, although it is not entirely his organization, or anyone’s,” Frienta replied curtly. “However, we have to move you and hundreds more out of the region, and that is a massive logistical effort. More than half of our people have already been caught or killed in this region, and you are not out of danger yet yourself. We must now get you quickly to an assembly point.” She looked around. “Are you up to a long march in the-rain?”
The human woman and the devil-man both groaned. Frienta took notice of them, then looked at our worm-man. “What about you? How fast can you travel?”
“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “The wetter it is, the better.”
“Well, then, our success depends on the two of you.” She looked at Darva and me. “You’re the biggest. Do you think you could each carry one of these?”
I looked at Darva, who shrugged. “Why not?” I replied. “But they’ll have to hang on tight.”
The devil-man gave a grotesque expression which I hoped was one of gratitude. The human woman seemed extremely nervous and uncertain. “Come on—climb up and get as comfortable as you can,” I said, trying to sound as friendly and reassuring as possible. “I’m not poison, I don’t bite—not people on my side anyway—and riding beats walking in this stuff.”
The devil-man had little problem getting on Darva’s back, but he apparently weighed more than he looked, given the expression on her face. Frienta went over to the human. “Come. I will help you.”
She looked over at me. “I—I don’t know. Maybe I can walk…”
“I have no time or patience for such prejudice,” the strange dark women said acidly. “You too are nonhuman, as those horns attest.”
The woman stepped back, obviously upset by the sudden attitude of the one whom she’d considered her only ally. Abruptly I was aware of a flaring of the Wardens within the dark woman’s body, and I sensed complex message information flow from her outstretched arm to the scared woman. It was as if there were now thousands, perhaps millions of tiny weblike cords of energy linking the two.
Then, somewhat jerkily, the human walked up to me, and with Frienta’s assistance, climbed on my back and clung tightly. Frienta nodded to herself, stepped back, and traced a few symbols in the air. “There!” she announced, satisfied. “You are bound there until I free you!” She turned to the rest of us. “Cornel Follow me quickly! This is not the time to stay in one place!”
I was aware of the rigidity of the woman on my back, and said to Frienta, “You are an apt.”
“A minor one,” she responded crisply. Then we were off into the rain-soaked jungle in the midst of the darkness.
It was a long and arduous journey, taken at a good pace. Frienta, whose face I never could see clearly and whose body was masked by her black robes, proved extremely quick and agile—and apparently tireless. The extra burdens Darva and I carried soon proved to be wearing, but we had no choice but to go on. Worm-man and Hemara proved capable of some speed under adverse conditions, but none of us were cut out for this sort of thing. Frienta seemed to sense when one or more of us was spent and absolutely had to rest, and the breaks were well timed although not as frequent as we would have wished.
We walked all night through a wilderness so complete that after a while none of us had any sense of where we were, how far we’d come, or in what direction we were going. We finally reached a small clearing in the jungle where Frienta proclaimed a complete stop. We would be allowed to forage for food, each according to our own needs, then get some sleep. It was not well, she told us, to travel much in daylight and we still had a long way to go—more than two nights’ march at the least.
Even relieved of our burdens, Darva and I felt exhausted, but we knew we needed strength now more than ever. We picked no fights, settling for catching and eating a number of small animals that were no real challenge and supplementing this with what wild fruits we could find. Then we slept through most of the day.
Frienta revealed no more of herself in light than in darkness—a fact that intrigued us all more and more. We felt certain she was some sort of changeling herself, but what sort we had no idea. We rotated guard positions while the others slept, but I kept the laser pistols. Most of the others didn’t know how to use them and a couple simply couldn’t. Besides, I didn’t really fully trust anybody except Darva, who certainly didn’t know how to shoot, and myself.
The next night was much like the first, although we got a break in the rain which certainly helped me a little. My human passenger said next to nothing during the entire journey, and I was glad for that. I was too tired to be conversational. During the middle of the third night we suddenly broke out onto a wide, sandy beach. We had reached the coast—the south coast again, as it turned out, but more than a hundred kilometers west of Bourget.
It was with relief that we realized that we were at the end of our journey. Our mysterious guide had taken us unerringly to the right spot through the jungle, avoiding all Companies and all but a very few roads—and also avoiding the worst of the jungle and swamps.
“We are safe now,” Frienta assured us. “The encampment here is protected from interlopers by high sorcery.”
I looked around. “Encampment?”
“Come,” she beckoned, and we walked down the beach a little to where it curved inland, forming a small bay. It looked desolate, totally deserted, until we turned slightly inland on the bay’s south side. Suddenly we found ourselves in a very large if primitive village, with tents, even fires and torchlight. It was so surprising that several of us uttered sounds of amazement; I, for one, stopped, then turned and stepped back a few meters and turned again. Desertion and silence. Walk a few steps forward, and there it was—a true camp with hundreds of beings, both changeling and human.
Frienta waved a ghostly arm. “Just find yourself a comfortable place and settle in,” she told us. “Ample food to your requirements will be provided, but we are out of tents and other shelters, I fear. If you can make no arrangements, you can use the jungle in the rear. The spell covers the entire south side of the bay but only to a depth of ninety meters from the beach—so if you go beyond, into the forest, take care.”
Our little group dispersed quickly as our fellow travelers found others they knew among the teeming throng of creatures on the beach. Our nervous human joined a small group of her own kind with evident relief.
Darva looked at me. “Well? What shall we do now?”
I shrugged. “Sleep, I think. Tomorrow we’ll find out_ what comes next.” I looked around at the various kinds of creatures on the beach, some of which were the stuff of real nightmares. Charon had taken criminal minds, insane minds, and given them great power. Much of that insanity could be seen reflected in its victims on the beach as well as in our former company, I reflected. Koril might prove more sympathetic, I knew; but he was still a politician, a king dethroned who wanted his position back and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. This system had been in effect when he was in charge before, and even before that, and he’d done nothing then to stop it. And that, of course, was something most of these people, the changelings in particular, would simply overlook; almost all were natives, and that alone accounted for a certain naivete to which was now added an exponential increase in trust borne of hope and desperation.
How were we different from the aliens, Darva had asked me—and I really wasn’t sure of an answer. If I wasn’t, then perhaps Koril saw few differences either. He would be unlikely to eliminate an external alien menace only to allow another to fester here homegrown. There was no question in my mind that these people were being used, as always. Sooner or later I knew, something would have to be done.