Read 03. Quest for the Well of Souls for Free Online Page A

them all as the kind of creature she had become—even though she knew she was a freak and that the people of her past did not resemble her present form.
    That was right after the last time she'd tried to escape, to run for the border, to somehow find out what the hell the Gedemondan meant.
    Doing so didn't seem so important, either, anymore.
    She had brooded and dreamed and sunk into a tremendous, suicidal depression after that, and then the change had come over her. She didn't understand it, but she accepted it.
    On a world with 1560 races, there was room enough for one more, a Chang, if you will.
    And Joshi had come along just after that, as if in answer to this new feeling inside her.
    She rolled over and got up unsteadily. It was no simple task, yet she'd done it so often it had become second nature. She stretched again, and her long hair swung down over her face. She didn't mind that it reached the floor both in front and behind her ears; no more than she minded that her horse's tail was now a great broom, trailing behind her.
    She walked over to a low, two-meter-long mirror, and turned her head, shaking it a bit to clear the hair from her eyes.
    You've changed in more ways than one, Mavra Chang, she told herself.
    The creature that stared back was a strange one indeed to all but her and Joshi. In fact, it had been years before she even asked for a mirror. Not until after she'd changed.
    First, remove the limbs from the torso of a small woman; then turn it face down, elevating the hips about a meter off the ground, the shoulders about eighty centimeters. Now attach a perfectly proportioned pair of mule's front legs on the shoulders. Add two hind legs, also a mule's, but keep it all "human," perfectly matched to the hairless orange torso—except for the hooves on all four feet. Replace the woman's ears with meter-long jackass ears of human skin. The result is even more impressive when one realizes that the woman was originally under 150 centimeters, head and legs included, so that the ears are actually longer than the torso. Now, as a final touch, add a horse's tail at the base of the spine. The last was a gift from Antor Trelig's New Pompeii party so long ago. Thus had Mavra Chang been transformed by the cats of the Olborn.
    She didn't worry about her hair blocking her vision; at maximum head lift she could see less than three meters ahead, anyway. She had learned to rely less on her eyes than on other organs, the ears in particular. Although they gave no better hearing than the originals, they were independently controllable from small muscles in the scalp. These she used as an insect would use its feelers.
    She walked to the outer, roofed part of the compound, lowered her face to the ground, and grabbed a sheet of leather in her teeth. She pulled it back, to reveal a crude leather bag, which she then lifted with her teeth. The Ambreza kept her teeth in good shape.
    Her neck muscles were the only aid she needed to lift the heavy sack. Placing a foreleg on either side of the bag, she worked at it with nose and mouth until it was wide enough open for her face. Inside was chopped cooked meat, cold but still fresh. She ate as a dog might. Afterward, she managed to close the bag, replace it in the hole, and cover it again.
    The Ambreza left nice little tabbed plastic bags of tasteless trash every month. But she'd never accepted that. That routine made her dependent on others, and she had not stood it for long.
    She walked over to the small fresh-water spring that ran through the compound on its way to the nearby Sea of Turagin. She lowered her face into the water and drank deeply. Its coldness refreshed her completely.
    No dependencies, not for long, she thought with satisfaction. The dominant culture in this hex was primitive human. The natives were a dark people with Negroid facial features but compact build. Their hair was straight and black like her own. Originally, the locals panicked themselves with tales that the