She nodded. "Yeah. Second biggest shock I ever had. You're the third. What happened to you at the hotel? Who changed you into—that?"
"I'm not sure what 'that' is," she told them honestly. "Some sort of bird, I guess."
"Some sort, yes," Mervyn agreed, and made a gesture. Between them appeared a huge mirrored surface, and she could see herself.
Her body was that of a giant falcon, and her arms were wings, but her underside, raised up and facing them, was human all the way, and she had her own face, although feathers replaced hair on her head. She stared at the reflection for a moment more in wonder than in shock or horror.
"The only reason I didn't bring you down was because I sensed the Soul Rider still inside you," the wizard told her. "It has certainly delivered you from evil." The mirror vanished, and both riders dismounted and sat down, relaxing. "Now, then, tell me all that you have been through. Spare nothing."
She went into extreme detail, although it still seemed like a dream to her. When she finished the wizard just nodded and sat thoughtfully for a moment. Finally he said, "It is very clever. It is. in fact, diabolical. It should have worked completely, for I know that white a Soul Rider can exist in Anchor its powers there are minimal and mostly involved in influencing specific actions of others. I would love to know how you escaped, how it escaped."
"I'm not sure _I_ do," Cass replied. "I don't have any real memories between the time they stuck that hood over me until I was suddenly flying in the void, but there's a sense there of something— terrible. I really can't describe it."
"I can read it inside you, but aside from verifying your sensations there is nothing more I can make of them. It is certainly not anything I've ever experienced from a Soul Rider before, nor are they particularly—terrible, as you call it." He sighed— "No matter for now. It is a question now of what to do next."
Cass looked at them. "If you're such a powerful wizard, how come you two are riding to Anchor Logh? Couldn't you just transform the both of you into flying things like me and make it quicker?"
"I could," the wizard agreed, "but, for one thing, we would arrive without bags or horses, and that would terrify the guards. There were also other factors, not the least of which was timing. I needed some time to think, and it would not do to arrive too early. If we got the aid we are seeking they would be hot to ride out immediately and on their own, and that would be disastrous. And, finally, I wanted to check this route in detail, for it forms the third arm of the triangle with Globbus, Persellus, and Anchor Logh, with the Hellgate in the center of that triangle. I wanted no surprises, and could trust none but a wizard of my rank to do the survey. I suspected that Haldayne was not acting alone. Otherwise he would not be so bold in his actions."
"Well, you'll clearly get no help from Anchor Logh, not with dear Daji as the power behind the throne."
"On the contrary, I think we will get it. This dual personality trick is a favorite of Haldayne's in Anchor, because it is impossible to detect there. By the same token, a command from a third party must be made in order to summon up the original personality."
"But surely Haldayne and she have agents in the Temple, ones that will find out I escaped and trigger it."
"Perhaps," Mervyn replied, "but perhaps not. All the Daji personality knows is that her pet escaped and is gone. This will upset her for a while, but the Sister General will console her and give her a new toy or something and she may forget all about it. The agents might never know, or never know the importance. Even if they do find out, they must trigger the other personality, and one or more must be taken through this intriguing gate access and then get to Haldayne, who must respond. This will take time, particularly since those agents are unlikely to be wizards of any significance. By that time we will have had our audience."
"Maybe," Cass said dubiously, "but what good will that do us? I mean, if this woman is this highly placed, then she's probably got agents or corrupt innocents all over the place. That army might wind up fighting on the wrong side if at all."
"But I don't care about its loyalty," Mervyn told her. "Don't you see? Haldayne has rigged things to lose. They will contribute and they will fight well with us because of that alone. After—well, think of this. Isn't it obvious to you by now that we must not only conquer Persellus but Anchor Logh as well?"
Both of the others looked shocked. It really hadn't occurred to either of them until now.
"And, if we do, I certainly would prefer a good share of their army out under our control in Flux— It'll make things a lot less bloody, I suspect." He laughed. "No, now that we know it all, I think we are about to give a truly bitter pill to Mister Haldayne." He sighed and got up. "And now we must let the others know of our plans. That will mean a slight inconvenience."
"I could fly back with it," Cass suggested. "I kind of like this."
"No, unless you were lucky enough to come across a first class wizard they would at least try to kill you, certainly not listen to what you have to say, or believe a word of it if they do. I'm afraid I must go, but this time I will take the express. You two are still half a day's ride from Anchor Logh. You go on, and I will catch up to you."
It was Suzl who looked distressed at that. "But how will we find our way in the void?"
Mervyn chuckled. "That should present no problem at all. You see, as she is just discovering, Cass is a wizard herself and a fairly strong one, although limited right now to her own self."
"What!" they both cried in unison.
He nodded. "It took this stress and trauma to bring it out, although it has been latent all along. That is why the Soul Rider chose you. I knew it the moment I sensed the Rider, for Riders are limited to using the powers and abilities of their hosts. That is why your escape is so puzzling— Flux has no power in Anchor, as you well know. Now that you know, and now that crisis has brought it out, you can use it. You could not have found lis unless you were following a main trail—correct?"
Cass nodded soberly. "Yes, that's true. I found I could see them. But I thought it was the Soul Rider or the transformation."
"No. It merely brought them out in you. Now, understand, you have power but no knowledge— That means that this power as regards specific things will affect only you or that which you need or which threatens you. Without much study and much mathematical training you cannot know how powerful you really are or use it practically. But you can follow this trail, and if you need water you can find or even create it. Besides, I still want a good look at this whole route by a wizard I can trust. You fill that bill."
"But—what about this form?" she asked lamely.
"If you concentrate hard enough, you can be anyone or anything you wish to be, with any attributes you need," he told her. "It will take much experimentation to get it right all the time, but you should at least have no problem whatsoever in becoming yourself, for you know your true form better than anyone. Try it now. Just close your eyes and concentrate on your old self. Picture it, and want to be that way again. Go ahead."
She did as instructed— She remembered herself, not as she was, but as she remembered that slightly redone Cass in the mirror at Miss Rona's. She pictured it, remembered it, and called up the same amazed satisfaction.
She opened her eyes. "See? Nothing?"
"Oh no?" Suzl responded. "Don't you feel a little—shorter? And maybe a little hairier?"
She looked down at herself, and gasped. She was, in fact, human once again. That body looked very familiar, although it was stark naked. She brought her arms up and looked at her hands. Her hands! She felt her head, and there was hair there, although not tied, just streaming down. "I did it." she said wonderingly.
"That you did. And if you need to be a bird woman again, just think of that image you saw. That's the way it works on a personal basis."
She grinned. "I'll be damned! Wow!" She hesitated a moment. "But—wait a minute. I can't go into Anchor dressed like this."
"Why not?" Suzl asked. "That's the way you left it."
/>
The wizard shrugged. "We'll have to teach you a few simple tricks when we can. For now—" he snapped his fingers—"that should do it." And, suddenly, she had on a short-sleeve red pull-over shirt, brown work pants, and boots. "Yeah, you will…" she breathed.
"Well, I'm off. If I'm not back before you get to Anchor, wait on the apron for me. Under no account go in there alone. Particularly not you, Cass. If word is out, Haldayne will have you marked for instant death this time, Soul Rider or not."
16
HOMECOMING
They rode along for a while, just getting up to date.
"After you disappeared, and Nadya came screaming out of the room, there was holy Hell to pay all over Globbus, I'll tell you," Suzl said. "It was pretty clear after the initial search failed to find you, though, that you'd been snatched and carried off, and there was no problem guessing by who and where to. They met again after that and switched some things around, particularly the training and stakeout stuff, but otherwise they just accepted it. There wasn't anything they could do short of attacking Persellus then and there, and they weren't ready to do that yet, no matter how much we screamed at them."
She thought for a moment. "How did Matson take it?"
"He was pissed. Took it as a personal insult. Wanted to ride in with a rescue right away. I think he really likes you, Cass."
She smiled. "I wonder what he'll think when he finds out I'm a wizard? Me—that's still pretty hard to accept."
Suzl shrugged. "I don't know. There was always something funny about you, ever since we got caught up in that Paring Rite. Even when bad things happened to you they turned out O.K.."
"Does it change anything between us—as friends?"
"Not on my account, uh uh. Might be good to have a friend with some power around here. What about you, though? Everybody says when you get that kind of power you go nuts."
"Maybe I always was nuts, so it doesn't matter. I don't know, Suzl. I guess I don't really believe it yet. Back in the gym, when we all got together and swore we were coming back and take our revenge on Anchor Logh—I didn't believe that, either. Not for a minute. And yet, here we are, heading back in, with you and me knowing that they plan to do just that. I'm really off balance, and have been all this time. I mean, just think of the others."
"Huh?"
"The others taken in the Paring Rite, not just in Anchor Logh but all over World. Almost nobody escapes becoming somebody's slave or somebody's thing. And yet, here we are, right in the thick of great events like World's never seen before. Maybe causing a lot of it. I never thought of myself as any great mover and shaker. I mean, I'm still me, Cass, off the farm at Anchor Logh."
Suzl shrugged. "Maybe it's because we think of those big movers and shakers all wrong. Maybe we build 'em up after they're dead and gone or something into saints and angels and all that. I think maybe that all those greats really went to the bathroom same as we, and maybe got stomach aches and thought of themselves as folks just off some farm. And they probably were."
"Yeah, but why us? Why not a couple of the others? Ivon or Krai or Jodee, for example? And why now?"
"I think it's just gotta be somebody, sometime, and we just happen to be it. I don't think it's planned. Look, the way I see it, this bastard Haldayne came up with this plot and put it into operation. This brought forth your Soul Rider or whatever it is, who picked you because you were the first one it ran into who had this power or whatever. Now, whether or not it was that thing or you that went nuts and violated the Temple we'll never know, but maybe it picked you because it knew you were the type to do just that. Who knows? This Mervyn reads minds pretty good, I think, and if he can, why not a creature of some kind? Once you were stuck with it, it used you and your power to unmask the plot. All because it,was just floating along or something and you just happened to be the first one in the way. See?"
She sighed. "Maybe you're right. Uh—this Mervyn and you have been riding along for some time. Did he do anything about your—problem?"
She laughed. "I don't have a problem. Other people might, but I don't. Oh, he looked at it, decided it was too complicated, and offered to turn me one hundred percent male. That he could do."
"And you refused?"
She nodded. "I like it this way. Because you got snatched we had extra time, and I went over to one of the bars. Had a ball with it. Nope, I like it. No more periods, no more afraid of getting pregnant, none of that. But I like the way I look, and I like my tits and ass. I got the best of both worlds. There's lots of guys who only like other guys, you know. I'm the only one you know that can have it both ways and not be a pervert." She giggled at that.
"And Dar, of course."
"Yeah, well, maybe. But he's still pretty hung up on his maleness, and I don't think he'll ever have the kind of freedom I feel."
"Speaking of freedom, how come the shirtless look? It's sexy with your equipment, but hardly usual."
"Men don't have to wear shirts if they're comfortable without them. Oh, don't worry, I have a couple packed for dear old Anchor Logh. This is just kind of a turn-on. Makes me feel really free, that's all."
They rode along, laughing and joking like two schoolgirls. When the horses seemed thirsty, Cass found it easy to identify which of the off-trail strings led to water pockets. It was all becoming very familiar very fast now. She was beginning to enjoy this newfound sense and the power it brought, and she only hoped she had enough self-control to keep from going wild with it. That, of course, was the madness of the wizard.
Mervyn still hadn't returned by the time they reached the border of Anchor Logh. Because traffic was being stopped in Globbus and was not likely to come via Persellus, they felt reasonably safe in remaining there, just inside the Flux. Cass did not take Mervyn's warning lightly—Haldayne now would kill her on sight, since time was so crucial at this point that he would bet the Soul Rider would not find another suitable host in time to stop him.
"He seems so confident," Cass said worriedly. "But Haldayne's good, real good, and he knows more about his enemies than they do about him."
"Sure, but if he's on to the fact that we know about his lady love there in the Temple, he might just give it up as not worth it," Suzl responded hopefully. "What's the use of fighting it out if you can't gain anything?"
Cass shrugged. "Who knows what he thinks? I wish I knew more about what this was really about."
"Huh? Sleep through your religion classes? It's ail checking out in that department."
"Well, maybe. But I've been through that gate to Hell, and I've seen the so-called sacred seal. The gate's supernatural enough, but that seal is a machine, Suzl. Real strange looking all right, but a machine all the same, a very fancy kind of machine but still a relative to the ones in the capital and the Temple. It sure wasn't put there by the ones who built that Hellgate—it just looks 'too different, that's all. More like something we would build if we knew how. Now, if the Holy Mother and Her Blessed Angels forced the demons into that hole and then sealed it with the seven seals, why did they use a machine? Why not just use the Flux power, or godly powers? And don't give me that crap about the ways of gods and demons being unknowable to humankind. Somebody knows. Haldayne, for example, knows, and maybe Mervyn does, too."
"Yeah, but the old boy didn't know the gate connected to the Temple until you told him. Boy! I never saw him so shook!"
Cass nodded. "The big thing is, if you can use this gate to get to the temple in Anchor Logh, then the odds are you can get to other Temples through other gates. That says to me that, for some reason, it's the Anchors that are important in this, not really the Flux, and I'm sure old Merv's wondering now just how many Anchors Haldayne's side already controls. He sure knows more about those gates than Mervyn and the others."
Conversation drifted to other things as they waited. Time hung heavy in the void if only because there was no sense of it. Finally, though, a huge, dark shape came from the direction of the trail. They watched, ready to dart into Anchor if need
be, but the enormous flying shape landed, shimmered, and changed into Mervyn's old man form, and they relaxed. Cass saw that there was a certain, indefinable something radiating from the man that marked Mervyn as Mervyn and no one else to her. Suzl, however, needed her nerves calmed, for she had none of these senses.
The wizard walked up to them carrying a small satchel. "I've notified everyone I could find of your information—those that needed to know it, anyway," he told them. "We want to keep your escape secret, and I'm afraid I didn't tell them the source, so you are still officially missing, even to my fellow sorcerers. We are going to move up the attack, even though we might not have everybody, just to keep Haldayne off balance." He put down the satchel, fumbled with the catch, then opened it and reached inside, first bringing out a cube, almost a meter square, of some undefined grayish substance. He put it in front of him, stepped back and made a gesture with his wrist. The cube shimmered, grew, and seemed to inflate as if it were some sort of balloon, until, standing there, was a full-sized living mule. "It's so convenient when you have to to be able to compress them down to maximum survivable density," he said, ignoring their total lack of understanding.
He reached down into the bag once more and pulled out clothing. "We are going to have to be convincing," he told them, "and have easy access. Both of you get undressed here and now. We're going in undercover, you might say."
After she undressed, the wizard handed her a robe— It was the scarlet and gray robe of a parish priestess. She put it on, and it was a bit too large for her. "Well, grow into it. You're going to have to change your appearance totally here and now anyway. We want as many basic differences between you and your original looks as possible, and height is important because it's the first thing noticed. I want you very tall in bare feet—call it a hundred seventy-five, even a hundred and eighty centimeters. Very tall. And looking like nobody you know."
She frowned. "That's tough. Aside from my friends, the only women I can think of enough to concentrate on are my mother, my sisters, and those two priestesses."
Soul Rider #01: Spirits of Flux and Anchor Page 22