Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  This, then, was the outlaw capital, the seat of the unholy of the Kudaan Wastes. No wonder the worst could hide out here! No power could find such a place except by treachery, and the system didn't really care enough to even attempt that sort of thing anymore.

  They moved now down into it, into a throng of people, animals, changelings, and creatures, the discards of Akahlar. Boday was entranced by the vision, so much so that she seemed to forget her own situation. The cave was enormous, and it seemed to go off in the distance a tremendous way. On the floor of it were buildings, marketplaces, bazaars, a tremendous life energy that knew no day or night; a town with few laws and few limits that was a continual now, without regard for yesterday or tomorrow.

  They, however, could not explore it. When they reached a central square, Hooton turned them abruptly and led them to a squared-off building that seemed made entirely of glass that was inches thick. Two guards, huge and somewhat piglike, nodded and grunted and then gave way, and a jaillike door was unlocked and opened. Hooton then carefully removed the nooses, untied their hands, and while they were still rubbing their raw wrists they were rudely shoved inside, so that both of them landed sprawling on a hay-strewn floor. The door clanged shut behind them, and .the sounds of the great room became terribly muted.

  "That swine!" Boday hissed, and managed to roll over and come to a sitting position. "Are you all right?"

  Charley groaned, then managed to sit up and nod, feeling her neck. God! It still felt like she had a rope around it! She tried breathing hard through her mouth and tried to get hold of herself. Then and only then did she take stock of the cubicle.

  It was small enough for her to see all of it, if a bit blurry, and beyond she could see the lights and activities of the city beneath the ground. It wasn't very big—maybe six feet by six feet, give or take, filled with a rotting straw floor that, when you dug down in it, led to an unpleasantly sticky cold stone floor. Over in one corner was a foul, rusted chamber pot, and in another a clay jug of water that had a bit of scum on top. Boday went over to it, frowned, stirred it with her finger, then tasted it.

  "It seems all right," she said dubiously, then sighed. "And it is all we have." Still, she stared at it. "As an alchemist, Boday would suspect that this (water is somewhat drugged. Still, she is dying of thirst, and what difference can it make now anyway?"

  It was a practical, pragmatic statement and Charley couldn't disagree. They both drank it, and even though it tasted flat and mineral-heavy, it was what they needed.

  The door opened, and Hooton was there again. "I've made all the arrangements," he told them, then put a basket down. "Here's some food. It ain't much but it'll keep you going. Best make yourselves comfortable. You'll be on display here until the next slave auction, and that ain't for three days yet. There's a bunch that saw you come in got real interested in you. Ain't too often we get full-blooded Akhbreed down here." And, with that, he closed the door and the noises again faded.

  Charley sighed and went to one of the walls. Transparent. There were already some people out there looking at them. Sizing up the merchandise. Not just men and half-men, either. There were some women out there as well, but from the looks of them even Hooton would be an improvement. She tried to imagine the kind of woman who'd do well as an equal in a society like this. These looked the part. The one with the wrestler's muscles, purple makeup, spiked green hair, and leather outfit looked just Boday's type.

  She went over to Boday, who was ignoring the outside traffic and checking the contents of the basket.

  "Slightly stale bread, moldy cheese, some slabs of some sort of meat that might not poison us, if we can stand to chew it and our teeth are strong enough for it. Not much else. And the amphora ..." She uncorked it and sniffed it. "Ugh! The cheapest wine imaginable!"

  Charley had not been able to tolerate meat since she entered this life and this look-alike existence, but she was far too hungry not to eat her share of the rest, including the wine. It was bad, barely drinkable, but it dissolved the bread enough to make it edible. The cheese wasn't so bad—all cheese smelled yucky anyway—if you just scraped some of the mold off with your nails first.

  The wine was, however, definitely alcoholic to a much higher degree than she was used to. In a little while she felt light-headed, even a bit silly, and, somehow, not so horribly down anymore.

  Boday, who usually had a high tolerance for alcohol, was feeling it a little bit, too. She got up after a while and pressed herself against the wall. "Boday feels like she is at the zoo," she muttered, slurring her words a bit, "but something is wrong. The people they are on the inside of the cage and the animals are out there looking in!" She seemed to find this thought funny and began chuckling.

  The chuckling was contagious. For some reason the comment struck Charley that way as well and she started laughing. Then she went over and started making very graphic obscene gestures and moves to the crowd. This kept up for a while, until, finally, both women just sank down in the straw and, within minutes of one another, passed out.

  There was no telling how long they slept; there was no way of telling any sort of time in a place like this. But from the way every bone and muscle in their bodies ached when they finally awoke, they had been out a very long time. The worst part, Charley thought to herself, was that she felt like she hadn't slept at all.

  There was another basket of the same just inside the door. No telling how long it'd been there, but it was clearly what they got until they ate it and needed another.

  Boday made her way, crawling, to it and settled down, back against the glass, looking glassy-eyed. "Boday feels like shit," she muttered wearily. "All of the energy, the fight, has gone out of her. What is the use of fighting anymore, anyway? She is sick of fighting, of running, of worrying. There is no escape. They can do what they want with her."

  Charley was almost startled to hear Boday voice her own depression, as deep and despairing as the slight drunk had been manic. It was over for them, and something inside her just didn't care anymore. She felt so weak and small and helpless that she had no choice but to accept fate.

  "It is the wine, you know, or perhaps the water," Boday noted in that still down, detached tone. "Not that what we feel is not the truth, the result of all that has gone before and all that is. It simply builds on that. Ah—Boday sees you do not fully understand. She is an alchemist. The caves here, they must grow a hundred different kinds of fungus. A minor potion, really. You drink it and for a while you have no worries or fears or inhibitions. Then it goes the other way, and the rest of the time you are passive, fatalistic, without real strength or will.

  Just a way to see that we perform now and then for the customers and otherwise do not fight or resist or try and make trouble."

  A potion? Charley stared at the amphora. The trouble was, while Boday was making sense, somehow it didn't really matter to either of them that they knew. What could they do but accept it? She no longer cared anymore.

  Hell, inside her was another, simpler personality that was probably a lot more useful here. Hell, three words in English would bring up a spell that would banish Charley from her mind and bring forth Shari, an ignorant, servile, willing slave who could only think in the few hundred words of the Short Speech. Hell, she always wondered what would happen if she herself spoke the three simple words aloud, but she'd never tried because then there'd be nobody who would know how to bring Charley back. She wondered now if that even mattered. Still, she could bring up that part of her without any spell. She'd had long practice at it. You just relaxed, put everything out of your mind, and began to think only in the servile Short Speech. Mistress, I be Shari. How may Shari serve Mistress . . . ?

  So easy, so tempting, so worry free. So damned cowardly.

  The hell with it. Not yet. There was plenty of time if it became really unbearable, but, until then, where there was life there had to be some hope of something. If only she had a real command of this language! At least Boday had somebody to bitch to.


  They had to have slept a very long time, since there were only two more "meals" and one more, and better, sleep before they came for them. When they did, they didn't bother to truss them up or chain them or anything. Charley guessed they already had proven that, at least for now, they weren't the suicidal type, and, down here, with this crowd, what the hell were they going to do and where could they go, anyway? The crowd was like something out of a bad horror movie, with shouting and screaming figures dressed mostly in rags or patchwork stuff and many looking and sounding only vaguely human. They were pawed and pushed as their guards made way for them to walk through to the marketplace, and it was pretty unpleasant. There was almost a sense of relief when they made this little platform in a kind of square surrounded by broken-down stalls that was clearly the center of commerce, such as it was. The crowd was jovial enough, but somehow both women felt more like the unwelcome guests of honor at an execution than the objects of an auction.

  Far back in the crowd, an unassuming figure in a full brown robe, looking much like an out-of-place friar, stared at them, then did something of a double-take and stared some more. The cut of his robe marked him as a magician, but its color and design did not denote high rank. He had a pudgy, boyish face, although he was more stocky than fat, and rumpled, thin brown hair to his shoulders that compensated only slightly for his massive but natural bald spot atop his head.

  He was there almost as an afterthought; captives and slaves weren't of any real interest to him unless they were somebody important. In fact, he hated this crowd and would have timed his visit differently had he remembered about this, but here he was, and as he'd needed to purchase some essential charms at the bazaar he wasn't about to go back and make a second, later trip. This would be over soon enough.

  At first he'd thought the two women an odd pair. The tall one with all those tattoos over her body was at once mean-looking and singularly unattractive; the small one, though, looked so frail, a courtesan far from her element, helpless and afraid.

  That courtesan looked damned familiar. That long hair and those eye tattoos took away from it somewhat, but he was knowledgeable enough to see through them and overlay the familiar on her feature and form. Yes . . . Trim the hair and restyle it, remove the tattoos, add maybe fifteen or twenty halg to the weight ...

  By the gods, they've captured one of Boolean's simulacra! Perhaps the very one Zamofir had spoken of when he was through here!

  Suddenly it all made lots of sense, but what to do? He couldn't deprive this mob of their show, that was for sure. Halting the auction at this point was out of the question, and he certainly had little with which to outbid those here. Calming himself, he got control of his thoughts and knew that there was no time to do anything here and now. The best he could do was to note the buyer and then get that information back to Yobi as fast as possible.

  You could tell the Grand Auctioneer in an instant. For one thing, he was clean, well groomed, and dressed in a fine togalike garment and shiny leather boots and definitely had a lot more than most of this mob. For another, he was clearly in his element in front of the crowd and very much the businessman. He was accompanied by a woman who had once been beautiful, but her face and her silver hair told of a life where fate had been less than kind, and while she was clean and well dressed herself she walked with a pronounced limp. As she came up to the platform, Charley could see that the woman had two fingers missing on her left hand, and a small brass or copper ring through her nose. She also carried a small book and stylus with her, and propped herself to one side of the platform. The Grand Auctioneer came up to her and said something that the crowd noises made it impossible to hear, and she nodded. Then the auctioneer mounted the platform.

  He turned, faced the crowd, and with exaggerated hand gestures pleaded for and men finally achieved a level of quiet.

  "All right, all right!" he said in a penetrating, professional voice that seemed to cut through all noise almost as if amplified, yet not shouting at all. "Now, we don't have much today, but what we do have is well worth the wait. I know most of you can't afford either of mem, but you can sit there quietly and drool and pretend you are. The serious bidders and their agents to my right, please. Let them through! Thank you, thank you!"

  About a dozen people made their way to the designated spot. All were better dressed and obviously more affluent than the masses in the crowd, although many were as strange in, their own ways as the rest here. Most were men, but a few were women, and perhaps two-thirds of them also wore rings in their noses.

  "Ah!" said the Grand Auctioneer with satisfaction. "All set? Very well, then. You've seen this pair on display now, so you know pretty well what you're getting physically." He turned to Boday. "Do you have a name and any skills to recommend yourself?"

  She glared at him. Boday always expected to be recognized, even here.

  "You see before you Boday, the greatest alchemical artist of the age, and one of her finest creations!" she bragged.

  The crowd roared, mostly with laughter, which seemed to infuriate Boday even more. She glared at them and they seemed collectively taken aback at the glare.

  "There you are!" the auctioneer told the crowd. "An alchemist and artist of the body. Two for the price of one, ladies and gentlemen! A slave such as this can be most useful! Can I have a starting bid, please?"

  Charley stared out at the crowd in wonder. Why were they all here and making so merry at mis? These were the poor, the misshapen, the dregs of this underground society. Looking at the real bidders, it was clear that even slaves of such people would be better off than most of this lot.

  And then it hit her. That was it, wasn't it? These were the losers, the dregs of the lowest society of Akahlar. The accursed and misshapen, without hope, without anything much at all.

  But they were still better than slaves.

  So long as there were slaves in this society, they were not the lowest, not the bottom of the ladder. So long as there were slaves there was always somebody to look down on, somebody so you could always say to yourself, "Well, I may be at my rock bottom but at least I'm not a slave." And if the slaves were pure Akhbreed, so much the better. She and Boday represented to these people that which had shut them out and cast them out, and just to see them sold into bondage was a sort of vicarious revenge.

  The auctioneer was going well now, occasionally going fast enough to make a singsong chant in numerical units, although units of what wasn't clear. Surely money as such meant nothing to these people; there had to be some alternate value system here that was represented by the numbers.

  The bidding slowed at eleven hundred and fifty, and the auctioneer began cajoling the bidders, alternately flattering and insulting them, trying to get another bid. It was now like pulling teeth, but he got another two hundred and then started his close.

  "Thirteen fifty . . . once! Twice! Three times! Sold!" He pointed to a huge pale man in a white toga whose head was shaved and who looked almost like a marble monument. The man had a ring in his nose.

  Boday was told to step down off the platform and stand by the woman with the ledger, and the auctioneer brought Charley front and center.

  "The girl speaks no Akhbreed!" Boday shouted to the auctioneer. "She knows only the Short Speech but understands much. She is Shari, a courtesan."

  "Ah! You hear?" the Grand Auctioneer asked the crowd. "No need of breaking in this one. A courtesan, schooled only in pleasure and service. A beauty if there ever was one here. Never before have we had a jewel like this to sell! Who needs a hub when you can have this one forever at your beck and call? How much am I offered?"

  Charley felt a sense of unreality about it all. The whole thing had more of a dreamlike quality to it for her, and she felt a curious intellectual detachment from the proceedings. She was curious to see just how much she'd go for in whatever it was they were using to pay.

  The answer was a lot. In the first minute she'd passed Boday, somewhat to Boday's clear irritation, and the bidding was still
quite spirited. When it passed two thousand virtually all noise ceased except the auctioneer's chant. When she went above twenty-five hundred the auctioneer was talking about a "new record" for any individual.

  She felt a curious thrill at that, even though she knew she should be ashamed of herself for feeling that way. What's happened to me in this world? she wondered, more amazed man upset in spite of it all. Yeah, I wanted to be senior class president, prom queen, college coed, and then found my own cosmetics business and make a million before I was thirty. And look at me now! First a high-class hooker who finds she likes it, then, standing here, mentally charged up at how much people are paying for me! Have I changed, or didn't I just know myself before?

  "Sold! Three thousand one hundred, a new record by far!" the auctioneer declared.

  She looked over, hoping to see the same buyer as Boday, but instead it was a small, ugly character in a black robe and hood standing two away from Boday's new master. It was hard to tell if the buyer was male or female or maybe something else.

  She was led off the platform and placed next to Boday as the auctioneer wound up his pitch, promised big deals in affordable merchandise and booty at the auction the next day, then stepped down himself. "Make way! Make way! Coming through! Successful bidders please follow!"

  Boday shrugged and looked at Charley, men the two followed the auctioneer, then the two buyers, and finally the woman with the ledger book. They went across the square, through the crowd that was now straining for one last glimpse but was also beginning to break up, then down a narrow alley between two stalls and to a door halfway through to the next block. The auctioneer took out some keys on a big ring, opened the door with one, then walked in and they followed.

  "You two sit on the divan there in the anteroom," he told them in a cold, businesslike tone. "No talking or moving around."