She had all that news, all that information, and no way to impart it to anyone. She was not back the way she used to be, but still very much a freak in the human world.
10
KILLING HEROES
By the time help arrived, Suzl was ready to commit mass murder or even suicide. Her temper was calmed only by Spirit, and even she had problems containing her emotional partner.
First they’d tried to keep them in the temple while Spirit was going nuts. Then somebody recognized Spirit and understood that problem, but they all got worried and overly solicitous of the pregnant girl. Then they had problems with Suzl. Word had come of Spirit’s attachment to a stranger dugger, but here was a perfectly normal-looking young woman, totally nude, who didn’t seem able to speak or understand any more than Spirit.
At that point there was sudden fear of an epidemic, as if Suzl was proof that whatever was wrong with Spirit was catching. So they wound up sticking them in a livestock pen that wasn’t private and had been recently used by cows as it was intended to, delivering food to them on trays attached to long sticks.
After a little of that, some wiser heads in the Church decided that it would be a bit hard to explain this sort of condition should Sister Kasdi show up, and they were moved out of town to a small pasture which had few trees but some room. It wasn’t great, but it beat the livestock pen.
She did have time to reflect on the earlier situation, though, and realized that her present form was useful in at least one way. The saddlebag on her horse had contained her registration document and photos as well as all her vitals as a dugger. All of that showed, of course, a deformed creature with massive sexual abnormalities. She was very different looking now, so at least Coydt’s people would be looking for someone who no longer existed. Unfortunately, they would also tie that creature and that name to Spirit, and they were sitting ducks out there if word got around that Spirit was in fact there.
“There” was Anchor Nanzee; that much was clear. It was the easternmost of the cluster that contained Anchor Logh, and Suzl had been there many times with Ravi on the route. It was hard rock and rolling country, with some rugged-looking, tree-covered hills, and it was here that some of the new scientific generation were actually talking of getting electricity from water. How that was possible when water even put out a match Suzl never understood, but after half her life in Flux she didn’t disbelieve anything anymore.
Suzl was also getting more and more frustrated by her inability to communicate and almost envied Spirit’s blithe acceptance. Not long ago she had been the most grotesque of freaks, but fully able to communicate. Now she found that even simple and obvious sign language would tend to bring less understanding than smiles. She thought being a physical freak was in some ways easier to take. Nobody necessarily confused deformity with stupidity, since it was so easily disproved, but mutes, it seemed, were always assumed to be childish or retarded.
Most distressing of all was that Spirit, being in Anchor, now was suffering the pains and discomforts of pregnancy, problems Suzl could sense and almost feel herself, but that she could do nothing about.
It was a real relief when, after four days, Sister Kasdi showed up. By that point they were both very glad to see anybody, but Kasdi was more shocked at Suzl’s appearance now than she had been in Pericles.
Oh, Goddess forgive me! she thought. I’ve given my own daughter to a lesbian relationship and sanctified it with a church marriage! And nobody looking at Spirit could say it wasn’t-consummated either. Of all the Suzls, she felt least comfortable with this one. The fat dugger woman pushing middle age was consistent with her own view of herself and her generation; the spell-deformed creature was horrible, but there was a certain acceptance of it. But here was Suzl, looking like she had looked back in school in Anchor Logh, all cute and chubby and very much all-woman—and apparently nearly worshipped even now by her beautiful and pregnant daughter.
Clearly, something very strange had happened to them on their way to their new home, and it wasn’t anything she could handle there or even at Hope. She got them washed off and cleaned up, then headed for Flux. She decided she could use the huge bird form and somehow carry both of them on her back, so she worked the spell. Suzl watched, saw the spell, made several improvements on it, then did it herself. She knew that Spirit could never ride on her mother’s back, but she might permit herself to be picked up and held by Suzl’s clawlike legs.
When Suzl worked her transformation, Kasdi was even more shocked. Somehow Suzl had Flux power now and the ability to use it. She almost oozed it, in fact—and this was inexplicable. Bowing to the inevitable, she took off and headed back for Pericles.
Suzl found flying tremendous fun, and she was fascinated to see at last the stringer trails she’d followed blindly for so long. From up high they looked like a series of crisscrossing, multicolored carnival lights stretching off in all directions. Somewhere down there was Ravi, she thought mischievously. One day she’d like to meet up with the little wimp again and pay him back for his parting shots at her. How pleasant it would feel to leave him with no sexual organ at all and a tremendous sex urge.
The wizard was quite surprised to see them again, and seemed a bit annoyed and preoccupied, but he couldn’t eliminate his fascination for this new thing. There were certain rules for both Anchor and Flux, and between Kasdi’s earlier experiences and now Suzl’s strange transformation quite a number had been broken. The old man’s world had been turned upside-down within a generation, and it both bothered and stimulated him.
Pericles was a far busier place than the one they had left. It seemed as if human riders and wizard-transformed messengers were coming and going with incredible frequency, and even the creatures of the Fluxland could not be found playing as usual, although once or twice they would be glimpsed going from one of the marble structures to another with businesslike efficiency and worried looks. Still, Mervyn took time out from whatever was going on to see them and quickly came to the same conclusion that Suzl had—that the Soul Rider had indeed finally found the loophole in Coydt’s trap.
“Suzl is not like Spirit,” he assured Kasdi. “The mere act of the transformation proved that, not to mention her unsettling ability to materialize lit cigars in her mouth that she developed just this afternoon. She’d been trying to communicate with me all through this, though, and going slightly crazy with frustration. I wish I knew just what she was trying to tell us.”
“Knowing Suzl, the mere fact that she can’t shoot off her big mouth is the problem. The fact that the old Suzl is back at all worries me more.”
Mervyn chuckled dryly. “I know your feelings, and understand them, if I do not agree with them. Take heart in the fact that the host of a Soul Rider is not the master or mistress of his or her own fate. You of all people should know that. Spirit was lonely and had a desperate need for close companionship. Suzl was disaffected and attracted to Spirit. The Soul Rider closed that gap, filled both needs, and magnified the emotional kernels, having found someone it could trust to put its plan into action.”
“You mean the Soul Rider caused them to fall in love?”
“In a way. The seeds were there, or it would never have worked, but once the seeds were there, it did the rest—which might or might not otherwise have happened. Spirit was turned on by Suzl’s sexual grossness and liked it that way. It was sincere. But that was necessary to the Soul Rider because at the time it could do nothing about it. When conditions were right and the Soul Rider’s spells perfected linking the two so that the power could be transferred, that was no longer necessary. Again, the seeds were there. Suzl felt weak and powerless and it almost destroyed her. Now she’s neither—and is happy except for the language barrier. Spirit sensed Suzl’s unhappiness and reacted badly to my major attempt to compensate. She realized, I think, just what Suzl really was going through and knew that the new Suzl, while content, was a lie I constructed. She took the appropriate actions. In many ways it was an expression of love, since Su
zl’s other form suited Spirit a bit more.”
“Yes, but what do we do now?”
“Why, nothing, I would suspect. Suzl has no training and can not receive any, yet she is able to manage spells that I would be hesitant to try. That means the Soul Rider is feeding them to her as she needs them. It’s one very powerful wizard in two bodies, both necessary for the magic. Together, they are no more in danger than you or I. Let them go to their Fluxland and be happy.”
She didn’t like it, but had no alternatives at the time, so she changed the subject. “What’s all the comings and goings around here?”
“Come into the map room over there and I’ll show you.”
Suzl had been standing there, knowing that she was being discussed, unable to follow it at all. Still, she had hopes of getting through to one or the other of these two, so she tagged along. Spirit remained in the meadow, just relaxing. The period and strain in Anchor had taken a toll on her, and she was feeling neither totally well nor in any way ambitious.
Spread out on a round table in the center of a comfortably appointed room just inside the marble building were all sorts of papers and documents. A centaur and two nymphs were over to one side, working on some of those documents and correlating them.
Mervyn picked up a huge bound volume and opened it. On each of its large pages was pasted a picture or drawing of an individual man or woman, along with a lot of handwritten information about them.
“A rogue’s gallery of World,” he told Kasdi. “These are Fluxlords of great power, one and all. Every one of them tinged with some form of madness, as it must be.”
Kasdi grinned. “Are you in there?”
He nodded. “Yes, indeed, although the file is rather less than objective, I’m afraid. And you, too. See?” He turned to a place about three-quarters of the way back in the volume, and there she saw her picture and vital statistics, and in between what looked like dozens of scribbled pages.
The last thing Suzl needed was a library, but she watched from the background, and when Kasdi’s picture showed, she suddenly got very interested. To the dismay of the other two, who were hardly even aware she’d followed them, Suzl leafed through the book until she found a number of familiar faces and guessed what it must be about.
Kasdi moved to pull her away, but Mervyn stopped her. “Wait. We may be on to something here.”
Stringers and duggers knew Fluxlords well. They’d better, for they had to deal with them regularly. From the series of familiar faces in the book, Suzl knew what it must contain and searched frantically for one in particular. Finally Darien’s page came up, and she stopped, pointed to it, then made a motion with her index finger as if she were slitting her own throat.
“Darien!” Kasdi explained. “What can she mean? That Darien’s dead?”
Suzl realized from the expressions that the message was incomplete, and so again pointed to Darien, then made the same slit motion—this time across Kasdi’s neck.
“I think she’s accusing Darien of a plot against you,” the wizard suggested.
Kasdi’s look of shock and surprise told Suzl she’d scored one. She leafed back through the book, stopping every once in a while at a face she’d seen in that mob at the Hellgate and going through the same motions.
Mervyn frowned. “A wizard’s revolt. This sounds ill. But where could she have learned this in so short a time?” He rustled through a pile of papers and came up with a map of the cluster. “Their route from here would be mostly like… so.” He began to trace with his finger, and when it came close to the Hellgate Suzl reached out, grabbed his wrist, and put it directly on top.
“At the Hellgate!” Kasdi exclaimed. “So they were going to their wedding gift by a route that took them by the Hellgate, and there they saw all these wizards gathered.” She stopped. “Why at the Hellgate? And how? None of those Fluxlords could even stand to be in the same land at the same time, let alone gather and cooperate on something. It explains how those two wound up in the temple, though. I thought we’d sealed those internal entries. I wonder now if they can be sealed?”
Again Suzl was leafing through the picture book, but did not find who she was looking for. She looked up, shook her head from side to side, then pointed at the shelves around.
Mervyn frowned. “More Fluxlord pictures? Or… not a Fluxlord, perhaps? Ah!” He walked over to a shelf, took down another book, brought it over to Suzl and opened it. There were, perhaps, a hundred more faces covered, but she didn’t have to go far. The face of a handsome, bearded man smiling back at the observer was enough.
“Coydt van Haaz. I should have known,” Kasdi sighed.
But Suzl continued to flip through and found a few more pictures as well.
“These are the prime enemy,” Mervyn told the Sister. “The Seven and all those of a strong power that we know of who work with them. She has picked out a number of strong-arm wizards who work this side of World, and also Varishnikar Stomsk and Zelligman Ivan, two more of the Seven. Put them all together with the Fluxlords she picked out and you have a concentration of power that could level a Fluxland. Put that together with what we have learned and it spells disaster.”
Kasdi looked up at the old man. “What have you learned, then?”
“A number of people who work directly or indirectly for Coydt and others of the Seven have been recruiting in both Flux and Anchor. They are looking for killers, the kind of people who have a grudge against the Church, the system, or life in general. One by one, these people have been vanishing from their usual haunts. Not just a few, or even a dozen, but hundreds. The Seven are recruiting an army.”
She looked worried. “And no sign of where they are?”
“We’ve tried very hard to infiltrate that group, but once in Flux and with the power of the Seven we’ve been unable to fool them. Oh, a few we’ve never heard from again, but those I suspect were caught by one of high power and are now unrecognizable.”
She nodded. “Do any of them have Flux power?”
“Inconsequential. A lot of false wizards, few with anything worth mentioning. What is also interesting and ties in with Suzl’s information is that, despite a wonderfully vicious rogue’s gallery of females, all of them have been male. That immediately puts the Coydt signature on them.”
“He hates women?”
“No, not at all. He believes women to be the inferior sex, far too emotional and mentally different to be worth trusting. It gives you an idea of World ruled by Coydt. Women as the servants, slaves, and baby rearers, with no power or decision-making abilities.”
“It would never work. Nobody has ever said men and women weren’t different—if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be attracted to each other. But World has always been run with an equal partnership, with different occupations certainly, but in sum an equal sharing of power and authority. The old Church rotted when it began to make itself dominant.”
“Coydt has little love for the Church or scripture. He does, however, have access to writings lost to the rest of us. His ideas are both radical and unthinkable, but I suspect they are not new ones.”
She shivered. The very idea of a world totally dominated by the male ego was frightening. “And what will he do with this army now that he has it?”
Mervyn frowned. “I had suspected an attack on an Anchor, but with Suzl’s information it seems likely to be a bolder plan. Considering all this, he might be thinking of attacking Hope itself. After all, an attack on Anchor would only be a temporary victory after which all the participants would be exposed. And what good would Fluxlords be in Anchor?”
“Then I’d better get back there at once.”
“Yes, perhaps you should. But that leaves open the question of why he called a meeting at a Hellgate. Most of these Fluxlords would hardly look forward to opening the gates, as much as they fear the empire. It would be like risking the removal of one’s heart in order to cure a badly bruised knee.”
“Well, we’ll soon know. I think perhaps I will pay a call
on our friend Darien. He’s close and I know his limits.”
“You do that. I’ll see to Spirit and Suzl. Save your worries for the fight that’s coming. The way this is shaping up, it’s an all-out attempt to stop you out of sheer desperation.”
“Another Balacyn,” she sighed. She remembered Balacyn. She’d still been young and idealistic then. Her whole future had been turned by the shock of seeing Matson fall in the rather minor battle for Persellus. She had been revolted by combat then, and she still had not any idea of what the old guard could do.
Balacyn taught them. All of the Seven and their cohorts were there, as well as the best wizards of the old Church, and she and the Nine and all the best on their side faced them over an obscure and meaningless little Fluxland. It had gone on for three weeks of sheer horror, and after all of the tremendous powers of wizardry were employed, it was finally decided not by magic but by sheer body count. Over a quarter of a million people had died in that terrible battle, and on the magic front, in fact, the reformed Church barely held against a terrible psychic onslaught. But they could not hold; they had to advance and crush the spreading rebellion, and so they had sent their armies in as the revolutionaries had been pushed back by magic, and Kasdi’s troops, filled with the fires of revolution, had fought like wild beasts, killing the other side at a ratio of six or seven to one. Wizards, too, had died both in the battle and from the stress of it.
The old order held most of World that day, but they had to fall back, losing too much to sustain an offensive. Many wars had been fought since Balacyn, but never on such a scale again. Both sides knew that such a fight a second time would cost at least as many, and World had barely forty million people, even counting those inhabitants of all the Fluxlands. The cream of both sides had been lost at Balacyn; the next one would take a million lives and probably be just as indecisive. Both sides recognized this and had limited their actions after, for neither wanted to inherit the shell of a destroyed World.
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