Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  The sorceress nodded. "Yes, they are a strange pair, this Charley and her Sam. Charley has already overcome things that would have beaten many a lesser person, but never have I seen such a determined and survival-oriented ego. She adapts incredibly. Already the blindness is simply accepted as an inconvenience and she is using her other senses more and doing much with confidence—including knowing her limits. She uses the cat's vision sparingly, when she needs it, instead of trying to make the animal substitute eyes. Yes, she is incredibly strong and yet the irony is that she believes herself to be incredibly weak. Somehow her ideal is to be a man with a better tailor and more clothing options." The old one sighed.

  "Now, this other one—this Sam," Yobi continued, "she's a real mess. Charley does not understand that it is perfectly fine to enjoy being a courtesan so long as it was a valid choice on her part. Few men have the courage that she showed in tracking down Asterial and her whole gang in hostile country with only two pistols. This Sam, though—I'm beginning to wonder if the breakthrough will ever really come with her. She wants to run and hide. She wants to be docile. She'd be perfectly fine as a slave or some peasant. She wants to avoid all responsibility and all pressures. Even if I can pull her back from Pasedo's mental acids, I don't know if she'll ever have the will and temperament to take on the Storm Princess. That is another reason for keeping Charley alive, Dorion. The only act of bravery and will, the assumption of risk and danger, was when Sam rushed to save her friend. She draws strength and resolve from Charley. So it is not just as a decoy that our girl is important. I think she will be essential in the ultimate battle."

  Dorion nodded. "I think I see what you mean. So how do we work this and who does what?"

  "I, obviously, can go nowhere in the flesh, and I don't have an acolyte I'd trust on something like this. I've made arrangements with some various people who owe me in ways they dare not refuse my will to get them through, but they will need a native guide and helper, as it were, preferably one with some magical talents, odd and arcane as those talents might be, and a full Akhbreed citizen able to move freely throughout Akahlar."

  Dorion stared at her a moment, then gulped. "You mean— me?"

  "Oh, good! I'm happy you volunteer. Saves me the trouble of putting pressure on you."

  "Hey, wait! I'm not—I mean, damn it, Yobi! You know the limits of my magic! That's why I wound up here in the first place! I'm in lousy shape; I'm a poor shot and even poorer with any other weapons. What the hell good would I be?"

  "You're streetwise, as they call it in the cities. You think fast when you have to, sweet Dorion, and you're basically trustworthy and with a strong sense of honor that is almost nonexistent around here. That is worth more than muscle. I can command muscle, but never honor."

  Dorion thought about it. "You mean—me? Alone, with those two, for all that distance?"

  Yobi gave her cackling laugh. "Yes, indeed. I'm transferring complete control to you, but their Master will be Boolean himself. That means that even if someone should get to you, they would be useless and always driven to Boolean. Frankly, I'd remove their slavery if I thought it would be productive, but Boday needs discipline or she'll be more hindrance than help, and Charley needs the same external discipline because of her beauty and her blindness. And so long as they have those rings no one is going to abduct or make off with them, since they know their prize is both useless and dangerous. Nor do I want her wandering off lost somewhere, particularly out of fear. That's a very real possibility when she discovers, as she must, that she is not exactly blind."

  Dorion, whose eyes were also little use because of the magical radiations of his apprenticeship but who was of sufficient power that he saw, as Yobi did, by other means, understood what the sorceress meant. This kind of blindness shifted the eyes rather than destroying them. As Charley would discover, there were many things she could now see that before she either could not or could not see properly, nor could any sighted person. But seeing on a magical plane often meant one saw what one wished one could not see.

  Dorion sighed. "All right. When?"

  "Tonight. After dark. I have horses ready capable of taking you into Mashtopol itself in just a couple of days. From that point I have a list of contacts and methods along the route that you must memorize. You'll have sufficient supplies for the initial journey and sufficent money along the way for whatever you need. Since enslavement of an Akhbreed is technically illegal, although nobody really cares, I've had papers drawn up showing them to be indentured under a spell certified by a ranking sorcerer—the sort of thing everybody makes up to make this kind of thing legal and proper. Officially, you and your superiors performed a service of magic the price of which was indenture. That makes their enslavement a consequence of their own free choice, and thus legal. Gad, how I love bureaucracy! You can commit murder and pillage so long as the paperwork's right!"

  He nodded soberly, thinking of the job. "All right, so what if we somehow manage, and I admit I'll be shocked if we do, to get them to Boolean? What do I do then? I mean, I'm not exactly a stranger to Boolean, and he wasn't too thrilled with me the last time I saw him."

  "All is forgiven and forgotten if you deliver them," Yobi assured him. "After that, it's up to you. You can transfer their control to Boolean and get out with a whole skin from this mess—and with a nice reward to boot—or you can stick it out if you prefer and if you and Boolean can stand each other for that long. That's the other reason why it must be you, though. Others might be able to shepherd them to the boundaries of Masalur, but you are from there and you know the region better than any other that I have. If anyone can sneak them in right past Klittichorn's nose, you can."

  "Yes," the magician sighed. "That is true enough. If I live that long."

  Both women looked very different from the way they had looked in years. To eliminate the butterfly design outline, they had treated Charley with a potion that triggered the release of all melanin within each cell and added it if it wasn't there. The result was a uniform chocolate brown complexion that suited her quite well. The process could be alchemically reversed but was otherwise stable, permanent, and self-renewing. Her hair had been cut to shoulder length and given a great deal of curl, and it had also been colored a reddish blond that contrasted greatly with her skin tone. She was still sexy and gorgeous and all that, but she was no longer obviously a courtesan but rather an Akhbreed colonial who probably had her hair dyed.

  The physical disguise was a deliberate and subtle choice. There were a lot of pretty girls in Akahlar, but the blind blonde would not be recognized without a very close inspection as one of the wanted women—but she would be remembered. The object was really to be recognized, but too late to do any good and not without a lot of work.

  Because she was "indentured" to a magician, she wasn't a free agent and thus wasn't as well expected to live up to the local dress codes. This was a relief to her, really; it had been so long since she'd worn a lot of clothes that she wasn't all that sure she could abide a complete and cover-all type outfit, and she certainly had doubts that she could ever again stand to wear a pair of shoes.

  The clothing thing didn't bother her—she always dreamed of having the body to dress lightly and sexily—but she remembered spending many fond hours shopping for shoes.

  In point of fact, she knew that slaves were fairly common among the Akhbreed nobility and many others important enough and rich enough to afford to create them. It was somewhat ironic that the very colonial system made them inevitable. Since none but Akhbreed could enter the hub cities, all non-Akhbreed were excluded if you lived in a hub. But the level of obedience and service slavery provided to feed upper-class egos was simply too tempting to ignore, and the strictures of the society were such that if you didn't fall into the hands of the criminal element but were still outcast from tribe and clan, you could wind up commercial property. As erotic as Charley was, and blind to boot, there was only one assumption possible as to what sort of slave she was, and she would have
to dress the part. Bare breasted, with the little beaded bottom she'd been wearing when taken from Hodamoc, and with a loose robe of semitransparent gauzelike material worn generally untied. To those were added dull bronze earrings, matching bracelets and anklets, and a thin necklace of braided chain.

  Boday was still tall and lean, but she didn't took so exotic when shorn of her elaborate mass of tattoos. In fact, she really didn't look all that bad. She had nice curves, a tight ass, and surprisingly smooth skin, although without all the artistic pyrotechnics her breasts looked rather small for all their firmness.

  The absence of the tattoos caused such a dramatic difference in her that they didn't feel they had to do much more. The only thing they worked on was her hair, although she hadn't forgiven them yet for not allowing her to dye it some nice rainbow colors. Instead it had become thick, wiry, and incredibly curly, and they had grown it out almost to a manelike stature. Through Shadowcat's eyes, Charley was able to see at least the basics and thought Boday resembled nothing so much as some National Geographic shot of some African warrior woman. With her Mediterranean-type features and all those tattoos and straight, short black hair she'd looked very different; it took this to see the real Boday—more black African than exotic Lebanese, for example.

  Boday even admitted that this was how her own natural hair had looked. She had straightened it and lengthened it alchemi-cally before.

  But if she could no longer look so exotic, Boday was determined to dress that way and had designed and helped make most of her outfit. It was kind of a revealing leather bodice with silver rivetlike studs, long leather boots with fairly high heels, and a matching headband. Charley thought she looked like something escaped from an S & M porno movie, but, somehow, it suited Boday just fine. The whip, and the leather holster with its pistol, only completed the impression. Charley thought that when Boday started to sweat and move around a lot in that outfit it was going to become very uncomfortable, but the mad artist was not to be denied at least this much unless commanded to do so.

  Dorion dressed in a mud-brown cotton outfit that matched his robes but was a more conventional shirt and trousers, along with a broad felt brown hat with a crease in the middle. He had his robes and his magic paraphernalia with him, but the regulation outfit wasn't practical for a long horse journey. Neither, of course, was either outfit the two women were wearing, but right now that couldn't be helped. The first object was to get them through the tightest squeeze, which was Mashtopol, with the place surely swarming with Klittichorn's agents. Once through the bottleneck, they might be able to change not only clothing styles but a lot else—perhaps might be forced to do so.

  "I want to get a few things clear at the outset," he told them. "First of all, keep the abject slave stuff for the public, when strangers or any others are around. When it's just we three, you can dispense with the Master stuff and just talk to me pretty much as you would anyone else. Feel free to make comments and ask what you need. If I get sick of it I can always just order you to shut up, so don't abuse it."

  He looked at them and at the horses and knew he really didn't want this shit but, somehow, he was stuck. Well, he'd been the one who'd started all this rolling—even though she wasn't even die real Storm Princess double, damn it!

  "Now, Charley, I know you've been practicing but you're not going to be great as a free rider and you know it," he continued. "Your horse is old friends with the other two. It'll follow me, and that's where you'll be—just behind me. Boday, you're behind Charley and since you've got the weapons it's up to you to use your own judgment unless I countermand it specifically. Don't wait for an order if an attack or real threat appears, and make Charley's protection your first priority. Remember, I have some magical powers and they've gotten me this far alive and whole, so Charley's the one who needs your help. If I need it, I'll yell loud enough. Understood, both of you?"

  Charley nodded, as did Boday. Charley was a bit fascinated by something that hadn't been so until now, but which was both inexplicable and intriguing. She found that, somehow, she could see Dorian—not with Shadowcat, with her eyes. Not really him, but an odd, wriggling glowing shape that was mostly deep reds but occasionally showed or flashed other colors as well. This against the eternal gray nothingness was disconcerting; she could not see Boday or any of the landscape or the horses at all.

  There were, however, a few other things in view. An odd yellowish glow from a point about eye level and off to the right—Dorion's saddlebag, maybe, with the magic stuff in it? And Shadowcat—Shadowcat was a small deep lavender fuzz. She sent her mind to the cat's, and saw, from a very low perspective, that Dorion was where the deep red was, and that there was certainly a horse where the yellow came from.

  There was also a curious wispy light red string, almost like a single strand from a spider's web, that continually twisted and turned and seemed to go off into the distance. She realized suddenly that it came from Boday, but what it was and where it went was a mystery. Boday herself was in no way visible—but the wispy strand helped locate her.

  She was still blind for all practical purposes, but she began to realize that the radiations that had taken her sight had perhaps given her another, stranger one. Was this, then, what the magicians and sorcerers saw with their own eyes, or did they see clearly what she saw as only bizarre and pulsating shapes and colors? It didn't matter, but it was at least something she didn't have before, and it would allow her to keep Dorion in sight no matter what the light. She could not use the magic, but she could see it, and somehow that gave her a lift.

  They helped her on her horse and she settled in like the lifelong horsewoman she was. When they were down on the ranch many times when she was but a girl they had used their familiar horses and closed their eyes and tried all sorts of games and tricks that way. This wasn't so bad, as long as you didn't have to gallop for your life.

  They had made a sort of sling for Shadowcat, which the cat had taken to right away. Clearly there was some magical thing now residing within or controlling the cat, for he was quite loyal and willing to submit to a number of indignities.

  "I am surprised that Mistress Yobi did not come to see us off," Boday noted, taking advantage of the new freedom of speech.

  Dorion chuckled. "Mistress Yobi is pretty damned busy right now, and part of it is making some arrangements for our future security—if we get that far. We've already delayed too long and it's going to be tight. One of Klittichorn's agents is right now a guest at Hodamoc's, and it won't take that little moustachioed son of a bitch too long to put two and two together."

  Charley's head came up. "Moustachioed? Is that the word I understood in translation? Can this one you speak of be called Zamofir?"

  Dorion looked surprised. "You know him?"

  "The spineless swine of a mud demon!" Boday spat. "He was with our wagon train and then with the animals who tortured and defiled us! How much would Boday love to get his balls in her grasp and squeeze hard—if he has any balls."

  "He's a free-lance scum," Dorion told them. "Expensive, though, careful, effective, and, most important, he stays bought. The Horned One has offered him a bundle for you two and your friend, it's said, and he'll work like a demon to find us. If they've given him a bottomless money account, as they probably have, he can be a pretty nasty enemy, although, as I said, he's careful. He must have slipped up on that wagon train business, because he almost never gets close enough personally to get caught in anybody's hands." He sighed. "I'm not too worried about here to Mashtopol. I know this territory well and few will dare risk Yobi's wrath. But pray that your new look fools them in Mashtopol. It's so damned corrupt we can't count on anybody or anything."

  Riding by night and sleeping by day made the journey much easier, since they didn't have to contend with the hot sun, but they could never have done it on their own unless they'd stuck to the road. Dorion, however, seemed to know every back trail and crack and crevice, and seemed to see as well in the dark as Boday did in daylight. Charley envied
him that kind of second sight.

  She liked Dorion, too. Oh, he was chubby and he got out of breath in a hurry when he had to do anything energetic, but, what the hell. So he wasn't Mister Wonderful with the body of a barbarian and the head of a Greek god. He seemed a pretty nice, levelheaded guy, and it both impressed and somewhat puzzled Charley that, with them subject to his every whim, he had taken no advantage at all of that situation. She wasn't sure about Boday, but she sure as hell wouldn't have minded a therapeutic fuck or two in the wilderness. She began to wonder if the magician might not be as gay as Hodamoc.

  Still, when you can't even see the sights and you're strung out in a line so conversation's pretty limited, it gets pretty damned boring pretty fast. Charley began to imagine herself, as she sometimes did, going back home at this point. It had been so long, and she'd gone through so much.

  Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! I'm back! I found a career I really like as a high-class hooker. I'm blind, and, oh, yes, I'm now black, and I'm a slave girl who dresses like a porno belly dancer, but other than that, everything's just fine. Oh, I almost forgot. You remember my best friend Sam? She got real fat and married another woman . . .

  Their parents' sense of loss would still be there, of course, and maybe she and Sam had their faces on a million milk cartons, but there was no going back. Not now. The trouble was, it remained to be seen whether or not there was any real going forward, either.

  This whole period, both the dull sameness of Hodamoc's place and the more active but still strange and isolated time at Yobi's, had left her for the first time with a lot of time for introspection, and she had come to some conclusions about herself while still wrestling with others. Part of it was this last stay with people who knew both alchemy and magic and who had taken away some of her mental props by separating what was really her from what had been imposed upon her. Many could be made into courtesans, for example, by the kind of alchemical magic Boday used to wield, but few truly enjoyed it. The distinction, in purely Akahlarian terms, was between what you did and what you were.