His accent was peculiar; it translated to her brain as something out of a children’s pirate epic, colorful and unique. She wondered how much of it was put on for the show of attention, or whether, as with some others she had known, he had put on the act so often that he had become the character he liked to play.
His audience was mostly young, of course, and they peppered him with questions. Mavra eased over to one of them and whispered, “Who is he, anyway?”
The youngster looked shocked. “Why, that’s Asam —the Colonel himself!” came the awed reply.
She didn’t remember anything about rank in Dillia. “I’m sorry, I’m new here,” she told the awe-struck youth. “Can you tell me about him? Why is he called the Colonel?”
“Why, he’s been completely around the world!” her informant breathed. “He’s served more’n fifty hexes at one time or another. Doin’ all sorts of stuff—smugglin’, explorin’, courier—you name it!”
A soldier of fortune, she thought, surprised. A Dillian soldier of fortune, an adventurer, an anything-for-a-price risk-taker—she knew the type. To have gotten this old he had to be damned good even if half the stories told about him probably weren’t true. If in fact he had been around the Well World, he was one of the very few who ever had. That alone said something about him—and was the kind of accomplishment to make a legend right there, thus probably true.
“And the Colonel part?” she pressed.
“Aw, he’s been every kind’a rank and stuff you can think of in a lotta armies. When he got the plague serum from Czill to Morguhn against all the Dhabi attempts to stop him, why, they made him an honorary Colonel there. Dunno why, but he stuck with that. It’s what most everybody calls him.”
She nodded and turned again to the powerful and legendary center of attention, who was off on a tangent, telling some tale of fighting frost-giants in a far-off hex long ago.
“If he’s that kind of man, what’s he doing here? Just hunting?” she asked the youth after a while.
An older man edged over, hearing her question. “Pardon, miss, but it’s his obsession. Imagine being all over the world here and doing all he’s done and have Gedemondas right next door—he was born here, Uplake. It’s a puzzle for him. Off and on he’s sworn to capture a Gedemondan and find out what makes ’em tick before he dies.”
Her eyebrows arched and a slight smile played across her face. “Oh, he has, has he?” she muttered under her breath. She stood there for a while, until the story was done, then pressed a question through the throng to him. “Have you ever seen a Gedemondan?” she called out.
He smiled and took another swig, eyes playing appreciatively over her form. “Yes, m’beauty, many times,” he replied. “A couple of times some of the creatures actually tried to do me in, pushing avalances on me. Other times, I seen them at a distance, off across a valley or makin’ them strange sounds echoin’ off the snow-cliffs.”
She doubted the Gedemondans had ever wanted to do him in. If they had, he would be dead now, she knew.
She had Asam on the right track now, and finally he looked around and asked, “Anybody else here seen a Gedemondan? If so, I wanta know about it.”
There it was. “I have,” she called out. “I’ve seen a whole lot of them. I’ve been in one of their cities and I’ve talked to them.”
Asam almost choked on his ale. “Cities? Talked to them?” he echoed, then leaned toward the bartender. “Who is that girl, anyway?” he asked in a low rumble out of the side of his mouth.
The bartender looked over at her, following the gaze of the rest of the patrons, also staring at her, mostly wondering if the insanity was contagious.
“A recent Entry,” the bartender whispered back. “Only been here a few days. A little batty if you ask me.”
Asam turned those strange green eyes again in her direction. “What’s yer name, honey?”
“Mavra,” she told him. “Mavra Chang.”
To her surprise, he just nodded to himself. “Ortega’s Mavra?”
“Not exactly,” she shot back, somewhat irritated at being thought of that way. “We don’t have much mutual love, you know.”
Asam laughed heartily. “Well, girl, looks like you’n me we got a lot to talk about.” He drained the last of the mug. “Sorry, folks, business first!” he announced, and made his way outside.
The structure, like most, was open to the street on one side, but even then it was a problem for the two of them to make it outside. Still, the youngsters followed in what looked like a slow-motion stampede, Mavra thought with a chuckle.
Asam was using a hunter’s cabin, the kind of place built for working transients, and it was to that log structure, one with walls and a door that shut, that they went.
Finally assured of some privacy, he sighed, relaxed a bit, and took out a pipe. “You don’t mind if I light up, do you?” he asked in a calm, casual tone that retained some of the accent though not nearly as much as he had put on in the bar.
“Go ahead,” she invited. “You’re the first smoker I’ve seen on this whole world.”
“Just need the right contacts,” he replied. “Stuff’s damned expensive, and the only varieties worth a damn are grown in just a couple of far-off hexes. We Dillians are crazy about the stuff—I dunno, maybe it’s the biochemistry. But only a few of us can afford it.”
“Watch it,” she said playfully. “Your education’s showing.”
He laughed. “Oh, well, we hav’ta do somethin’ ’bout that, don’t we? Yer can’t let yer act slip, right?”
She returned the laugh. She was beginning to like the Colonel—he was her kind.
“So,” he said after a few moments, “tell me about Gedemondas.”
“I was there,” she told him. “A long, long time ago, it’s true. I may look like a youngster but I’m a spry thousand-year-old. If you know Ortega well enough to recognize my name, you know the basic story.”
He nodded. “I know the basics from the history tapes. I do a lot of work for him, off and on, and we got to know each other real well.”
She was suddenly suspicious. “You’re not working for him now, are you?”
He laughed again. “No, I’m not. But I’ll be honest with you; he did get in touch with me. Me and a lot of others, I suspect. Asked me to be on the lookout for you and the others and let him know.”
“And have you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not going to, either. Let’s face it, there’s no profit in it. And I’m pretty well doing what I want to do these days. Besides, I didn’t know until a few minutes ago you were in Dillia, let alone as a Dillian. Bet he’ll know as soon as word goes Downlake, though. It was kind of a general all-points, you know. Before I decide much of anything, I want to know just what the hell’s up. And, most of all, I want to know about Gedemondas.”
They weren’t kidding about his fixation, she realized. But that was all to the good.
“First of all,” she began, “do you know who Nathan Brazil is?”
He chuckled. “That’s sort of a joke on the Well World, you know. A supernatural creature, a myth, a legend, whatever.”
She nodded. “It’s not a myth or legend anymore,” she told him. “He’s coming again to the Well World. He has to get into the Well of Souls.” Briefly, she outlined the basic history to date, the rip in space, the damage to the Well World and consequently to all reality, the fact that Brazil was going to the Well to, in essence, turn it off, fix it, then start it up again.
He listened intently, green eyes reflecting the flickering gaslight almost like a cat’s. He didn’t interrupt, although he did occasionally grunt or nod. She did not elaborate on the plan or the problems; that would come much later, after it was clear which side Asam was on.