Quest for the Well of Souls - By Jack L. Chalker & James P. Baen Page 0,13

powerful voodoo is the one one's mind believes in, she found.

And so, at first, she was cautious. Having a translator meant she could understand them and they her—although the device added an eerie tone to her voice.

Just the right effect. Ambreza-like, but not Ambreza. Something else: The Goddess!

And, of course, finally she announced to the local natives that if they served her she would show herself once without their suffering any ill effects. When she eventually walked into the firelight, ghostly and eerie, they did what she had hoped. They fell on their faces and worshipped her.

But, she warned them, to tell the Ambreza was to risk her wrath. Even to tell other tribes would bring down upon them a fate worse than death. Her tribe had kept the faith. They were the People of the Goddess, and they reveled in that knowledge.

Mavra demanded offerings, and offerings she got. Hoards of food dumped at the door of the compound. Tobacco, too. Rare on the Well World, the substance was much prized; the Ambreza took most of the crop, of course—but now she had some to trade with the monthly supply ship for things she wanted more than the now largely unneeded provisions.

For tobacco, the ship's crews would bring what she asked. Since Glathriel was a nontech hex, machines were out; but books, geographies, and grammars were useful. She learned to read several related languages and waded through everything in their published histories.

She was, by her eleventh escape attempt, probably the greatest living expert on Well World life, geography, and geology. And she reread the books frequently, turning pages with nose and tongue until the volumes were almost unreadable. Even after she changed she continued to read voraciously; it was one of the few activities that kept her properly stimulated.

She also gave native hunters advice on game traps, which increased their yields, and suggestions for the manufacture of new nontech weapons. The Glathriel, of course, worshipped her all the more. The Ambreza became suspicious, but there was little they could do. The situation had gone too far.

Then, one night just after she changed, she noticed a strange glow in the direction of the village. Positioning herself nearby, she watched as one of the huts burned and people screamed. They got only one out alive, a young boy with massive burns on hands and feet.

She ordered him brought to the compound and launched one of her little rockets to signal the Ambreza. More Goddess magic.

And the Ambreza doctor had come, and looked at the boy.

"There's no hope," he told her. "I can get him to a hospital, yes, but not in time to do any good. He's horribly burned. I might save his life, but never his limbs, and he'll bear those tremendous scars his whole life as a cripple. Best I put him out of his misery."

Something rose in her, looking at the burnt and pitiful boy of ten or eleven. "That's not a pet to be put out of its misery!" she'd shouted to the beaverlike creature. "That's a person! If you won't save him for yourself, save him for me!"

She didn't know why she'd said that, it just seemed right, somehow. The helpless, disfigured boy in some way reminded her of her own differences, and she took the Ambreza's comments personally.

She accompanied the boy and the doctor to Ambreza and saw him later, still sedated in a high-tech hospital. He was a mass of scars, and both hands and feet had been amputated.

They argued with her. Ordinarily they wouldn't have paid any attention, but the Ambreza felt a special guilt and a special responsibility for Mavra Chang.

"But what can he do?" they had asked. "The tribe would kill him. You can't help him. Make sense!"

And, suddenly, the solution had risen, unbidden, in her brain and come out. Such intuition was uncharacteristic of her; it was the change.

"He's a male!" she'd shouted back. "If the Olbornians still have those yellow stones, take him there! Touch his shattered arms until they change, then his twisted legs until they change! Make him a Chang like me, and give him to me!"

They were stunned. They didn't know what to do.

So they did what she had asked, with a little push from their psychiatric technicians and a lot of nudging from Serge Ortega.

They hypno-burned his tortured brain clear of memories and then adjusted him for his new existence, with Mavra doing the instructing. She was like a maniac as she went at it, but