"We are doing what we can to find the cause," the Director assured him. "Possibly a changewind deflection from some point. We will need to find it to see how or even if we can deal with it, though."
"I want the cause found. I want it stopped!" the Duke ordered.
Duke Pasedo was not the only one becoming aware of the phenomenon. When strong powers are exercised anywhere, those most sensitive to those powers grow aware of mem, and with each passing incident the location and then the source grows more and more apparent.
Klittichorn, who liked to be known as the Horned Demon of the Snows although he was no demon and his horns were mere ornaments, was troubled. Several times now his concentration had been broken by a sense of activity somewhere far off. He liked it least because it was coming from a region where it should not be. The only one who had crossed through Mashtopol had been that courtesan girl, and he had forces looking for her and he knew at least where she was not.
Was it someone new, someone he'd missed in spite of his best efforts? Or had that son of a bitch Boolean drawn him off with a decoy?
No, that didn't make sense, either. If the courtesan was a decoy, then the real one would be well away from Mashtopol by now and in another direction. Hell, it had been over two months since the showdown with his trusted agent Asterial, Blue Witch of the Kudaan Wastes, and all it had done was have her trapped in a nether-hell with some nutty demon Boolean had cornered and coerced into service. That had been a major blow, since she was the only really trustworthy one with any real power he'd had there. Damn! With thousands of worlds it was pretty damned difficult to cover everywhere with quality people!
That silly Duke with the messiah complex might have nabbed the real one, but he sure as hell wouldn't hold on to her. He'd play Boolean off against him for the best advantage and fast. But there had been a split-off somewhere. The courtesan and that lunatic artist were missing their friend, the other one who'd fallen through. What if that one had lost her mind and perhaps had fallen into the hands of some of the crooked characters out there? Hell, she could be some kind of mindless slave or bound by all sorts of nasty spells somewhere in the Wastes with neither she nor whoever had her even aware of her nature.
Could she be the one? Could he have been a sucker, maybe still a sucker? That other one had been reported a tub of lard wed to a lesbian loony, hardly the sort, and yet ... If the duplicate were ever physically transformed her effectiveness would cease, yet would putting on all that weight qualify?
He slapped his forehead. Shit! I've been a double-dyed idiot! 1 could do battle with a great sorcerer or a greater soldier, but I keep getting taken in by that bastard of a con man! Outsmarting him was like trying to find the escape clause in a Satanic contract!
But if the other was a decoy, then the magic worked by the first might be out of dreams or emotional periods, not conscious acts. If she was still in the Kudaan, that meant that Boolean didn't have her, either. He turned and shouted, "Adjutant!"
A man entered and bowed. "Sir?"
"I have reason to believe that Boolean's suckered us again and that the girl we've been chasing is a decoy. The one we want is the fat one, and I think she's under somebody's control and still in the Kudaan. Sooner or later somebody is going to notice the same things I have felt and find the source. I want her found first!"
The Adjutant looked thoughtful. "It won't be easy. Some of our patrols got massacred in there the last time, and if we take an army in they'll just go to ground and all we'll have is another Chief Sorcerer and perhaps a king as an enemy. To have any chance in that hole will require magic."
Klittichorn nodded. This fellow was a damned good man and he'd learned to rely heavily on his mind before going off half-cocked. "Yes, yes, I agree. And Sudogs aren't going to do it. We can't maintain them long enough there. We shall need Stormriders."
"But they themselves will cause some of the same disruptions as she would," the Adjutant pointed out. "And how are we to find her? A fat girl the same height as Her Highness isn't much to go on."
Klittichorn was thinking hard. "Their energy will be of a different sort. Still, you are right. Without a description all the spies on the ground and Stormriders in the air would be useless. And who knows what she looks like by now, within the limits? We'll just have to put people in there and wait for the next manifestation of stormbringer power. With the riders present it should be quite easy to localize it. That could possibly take weeks, but if Boolean hasn't found her by now I think at least we start even. Better than even, since he has nothing like my forces at his command."
"As you will, sir. Should I call off the ones hunting the artist and the courtesan?"
"No. For one thing, we can't be sure of the decoy. If they are anywhere close to making a run for it and need a diversion, it's just like Boolean to arrange something like this to draw us off. Besides, if we miss this time the artist will give us another chance. They foolishly married one another back in Tubikosa and that invoked a spell. They are linked until the death of one of them, whether they know it or not, and it has certain, other attributes that might prove useful just in case."
"As you wish, sir."
"And, Adjutant ..."
"Sir?"
"We cannot afford to allow this to drag on. One or the other and quickly. We are reaching the point where limited and theoretical tests are of no further benefit. The conditions under which a full-scale operation will work are quite precise mathematically and do not occur every day or week or even month. We must show our strength to retain our allies and gain new converts, if not through the demonstration that we could actually win then through fear of our disfavor. I should not like any wild cards out there, as it were, complicating matters, no matter how remote the possibility."
The Adjutant bowed. "We will do all that is possible, sir; of that I assure you."
The sorcerer chuckled. "This is Akahlar, where nothing is impossible!"
Heat shimmered off the desert floor and made the air dance in strange new patterns, distorting distance and rippling the few shadows. The small caravan made its way slowly and deliberately across the floor, following no road but only the experience of its Navigator, who sat then on a horse walking slowly beside the lead wagon.
He was a big man; not merely tall, although he was certainly that, but broad and tough, a mountain man's physique. He had a broad-brimmed white hat, creased in the middle, and wore light, almost cream-colored buckskins that showed his perspiration and the grit of the trail but also helped reflect the heat.
His face was broad and weathered, his hair and full beard long and strawberry blond, making him a striking figure in any setting. His odd, steel gray eyes, protected somewhat from the glare by swatches of black dabbed on beneath them, scanned the horizon, almost as if they sensed something not quite right. He reached down and took out his binoculars and looked again, then put up his hand.
"Hold up!" he called. "Break but stand ready! We have a rider coming and I'd rather meet anybody out here on the flats where they got no place to hide."
Distances were deceiving in the desert, but this rider was clearly very close. The Navigator frowned, wondering why he or one of his crew hadn't seen the rider long before now. It was almost as if both horse and rider had materialized out of the desert shimmer. He didn't like that. It meant either a sorcerous enemy or an emissary from an old friend who was about as welcome news as the sorcerous enemy.
The rider approached to about a thousand feet of the caravan but then halted, standing there shimmering in the heat as if some bizarre apparition, waiting. The Navigator again looked through the binoculars, then sighed, and shouted, "It's all right. I know who it is, although I don't think I want to know what it's about. Full break and at ease. I'll be back in a few minutes." With that he spurred his horse onward to meet the newcomer.
The closer he got to the rider, the more ephemeral the vision. It was a man, or something like a man, astride a great black horse, but it was curiously fiat, almost two-dimen
sional, and there were streaks or breaks in the vision that momentarily showed the desert beyond. Horse and rider almost merged into a black, streaking thing, but if you looked sharp you could see details, including the fact that the horse was standing not on, but slightly above, the desert floor.
The Navigator came very close to the apparition and stopped.
"Hello, Crim," said the dark rider, in a voice that was both ordinary and yet unnatural, with a slight echolike reverberation in it.
"I figured it was you," the Navigator responded. "You always liked to do things the dramatic way."
The dark rider laughed. "It is the only fun I get sometimes. I have an urgent problem that only you are in a position to help me solve."
"So what else is new?"
Again the laugh. "You are always one of the best I can turn to, Crim, in spite of your lack of any particular fear and respect for such as me. You have heard the rumors concerning the Storm Princess?"
Crim nodded. "Lots of 'em, and lots of activity as well. I can't say I approve much of the friends she has and the company she keeps."
"Nor do I, although from her point of view they are the only ones who would keep company with her so long as she persists in her prideful ambition. Klittichorn plays on it, and the military minds attracted to them know how to use all that power. I have spent years trying to convince the others to listen to me, but to no avail. My colleagues in the other capitals believe that I am attempting some sort of power play myself, or are too mad to care. The kings will unite against a common foe only when they personally feel threatened, and their minds are being expertly poisoned against me. I admit that I underestimated them, or, perhaps, overestimated myself. He is a great and cautious organizer and I am an opportunist. We were always that way. Now, perhaps, I finally pay for our differences, but it is not just me."
"You really think true empire is possible here?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it will not happen in spite of all their dreams, for Klittichorn is not interested in empire. He has an even grander design than theirs, and it could destroy all humanity everywhere. At the very best, it will eliminate civilization and most of the population of all the universes, not just those of Akahlar, in a form of devastation that would repel even him if he could see it. But he is blind to consequences, which is a common failing of his type. He is growing, Crim, but I can still stop him. Without the uniqueness of the Storm Princess both plans are doomed to failure. I found others in the Outplane. So did he, of course, but he killed them. I brought mine here, but they were ill-prepared for Akahlar or too easily recognized by Klittichorn's agents. They have me effectively boxed in, and I am running out of options. I believe I know where my most promising prospect is, but I dare not go to her myself or show any direct interest in her. This would be sensed."
Crim was intrigued. "Another Storm Princess? Huh! Think of that. And not far, I take it?"
"On your route. You recall the disaster that befell Jahoort's train?"
"Yeah. About three months back. He was a good man."
"Jahoort carried one of mine among his train, and another who precisely resembles the Princess. My doing—opportunistic again. It's worked fairly well, although I doubt if the young lady without the powers is exactly enamored of me or her role. I had arranged to separate them farther on, drawing off Klittichorn's people, but they were split in the disaster, or its aftermath. My people made the most thorough search of the whole region that has ever been made and could not find her. I believed she'd suffered some sort of injury to the head or fallen into one of the wild powers of this place. I would have known if she were dead. She has no real control of her powers and I have sensed her. It has already rained four times in the past eleven weeks on our august Royal Governor."
"The Duke? But why would he have her? I heard nothing about any survivors coming in and I've been through there twice since Jahoort's wipeout. If he didn't know who she was he'd have put her with me or one of the others who came through, and if he did he'd be trying to bargain her to either you or Klittichorn while keeping her buried. But he wouldn't hold on to her for this long. She's too hot to hold, even in this place."
"There is a third possibility that never occurred to me until now, lulled as I was by the same logic you just used. What if she was injured, perhaps in the head, and was found by the Duke's people? Or, possibly, what if she just kept her mouth shut and played poor little lone survivor? The Duke is a collector of injured animals and stray cats, as it were."
Crim whistled. "He'd give her one of their patented amnesia potions and she'd join the crowd. If she wasn't on staff or anything I might never have seen or heard of her. Those peasants won't hardly speak to an outsider. That means she'll have a new identity, maybe a new personality, and she won't remember anything of what she was. And they're almost never alone, particularly the women."
"The process is alchemical?"
"Yeah, I think so. They might use spells if they need to— they got a couple of pretty good magicians on the staff—but I'd guess it was alchemical. Their own concoction, though. And it's permanent. I never heard of a relapse."
"There is no such thing as a permanent potion if it leaves its taker alive and physically intact. I can deal with it, even from here, but first we will need her away from that commune."
"You don't know what you're asking! First I told you how it's nearly impossible to get one alone. One of 'em coughs and everybody in the group wipes their nose. And what if you could, and get out of the canyon district unnoticed—also no mean trick, by the way. You know he's got a small army there. You'd have a dull-eyed ignorant peasant girl fighting like hell and probably so mad and so scared that Klittichorn's men would only have to look for the permanent moving rainstorm and that would be me."
"You haven't heard the half of it. In order to make the decoy believable and the real one be overlooked, I took advantage of a situation she brought on herself and rendered her permanently quite fat. She is very short, and she almost certainly weighs at least a hundred halgs."
"Oh, great! Forget it! Klittichorn will just have to destroy civilization, that's all. It's impossible."
"I am an Akhbreed sorcerer, and not without power and resources. This is Akahlar. Nothing is impossible here."
"Then get yourself another sucker. This one values what he has."
"But you have unique qualifications of all those available, not the least of which is that you speak English like a native and that is her own old native tongue. I don't make that the primary qualification—the last time I did the bastard turned traitor on me and wound up cursed—but you are the only one I trust because I know of your distaste for Klittichorn."
Crim sighed. "I'll need a lot of help, and a lot of briefing as well. And I still need convincing. What are you offering to spring her?"
"Nothing. Not a thing. She is of no value to me merely 'sprung,' as it were. I need her here. The first one, anyone, who delivers her here, alive and physically intact, will gain the ultimate. One wish, and no funny business about the terms and conditions. Anything within the power of an Akhbreed sorcerer, Crim. Anything. But it's all or nothing."
Crim stared hard at the. shadowlike horseman. "What's that sort of hovering there? A tree limb? You son of a bitch, you're riding in some nice park or forest all shaded and comfortable and I'm sitting out here in the middle of a desert hot enough to fry meat! You want her that bad, you ask the impossible, you give all the help and charms and information and everything else you have and you deliver three wishes."
"Two and it's done. One for you and one for Kira. Any more haggling and I'll make it a more open offer to others."
"All right, you bastard. But for that price you could just walk up to the Duke and get her."
"Perhaps, but he could not get her safely to me. And, of course, I cannot grant the only wishes that Pasedo would be interested in anyway, since even I cannot alter what a change wind has done. Nor could I trust him if he knew her value."
Crim sighed. "Ve
ry well, but this won't be easy. It'll take some time to figure out how to do it at all. I'll give you a preliminary list of what I think I'll need and soon. I'm only a few days from there now and we'll camp tonight at the river gorge. Take it up with Kira tonight at the gorge in the cool of the evening. If she still agrees, we'll make a good stab at it."
"This is the big one, Crim. Plenty for any whom you take into the plan, although of course the nature of the girl and my motives will be between us alone. Let the others wonder. But anyone who betrays us will find no refuge anywhere."
"Yeah. And we won't mention my reward, will we? Even the most trusted people can be tempted to knock me off and claim it themselves. No skin off your nose but plenty off mine."
"Agreed, for now. So long as you have and control the girl. If you lose her I reserve the right to broaden the offer. Now you are broiling and I have dallied long enough, so go, get a drink and make your time. All this riding fatigues me."
"Okay, you bastard. I'll see about your dirty work. At the gorge, tonight."
"At the gorge tonight," the strange dark rider echoed, then it turned and rode off.
Crim watched it go, away from him, out into the desert, until it was one with the rippling air. Only then did he turn and make his way back to the caravan, but he only idly gave the "ready to move out" sign with his hand. He was already beginning to formulate plans—not details, but a broad outline.
Some of this would require subtlety, and that was more of a Kira specialty. Still, you couldn't dream of a greater reward, but by damn they were going to earn every bit of it! And if Boolean had to be squeezed and sweated a little bit in the process, all the better.
5
Of Slavery, Decoys, and Shadowcats
Riders Of The Winds Page 12