Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  Sam was still pretty shaken by the news, but she was thinking clearly now. "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that because I'm havin' the kid she can't? And that once the kid is born she'll lose her powers?"

  "That is the way we believe it works, yes," the sorceress replied.

  Kira, too, was fascinated by this. "Then we might already have won. The only way they can retain their power and keep to their plan is if they kill her and her unborn child. There are a number of very pleasant, tranquil places deep in the colonies where someone could hide for a year or more. We need only take Misa there and wait until the child is born. Then the Storm Princess's power dies and with it Klittichom's dream of controlling the Changewinds."

  "Sam," she responded. "Misa was just another place to hide. Susama in Akhbreed, Sam for short in any tongue. I like the picture you're painting, but it's all wrong."

  "Huh? What do you mean? Etanalon just said"

  "what Klittichom already knows," Sam finished.

  "We don't know for certain that he knows," Kira retorted. "We don't even know that he's not chasing Charley all over the map."

  "Maybe he is, but I doubt it. For one thing, 1 tune in every once in a while to the Storm Princess. I got to figure she somehow tunes in on me. And I don't sell old Homy short.

  They got a pretty good idea of me by now. I think. We had to fight off the hired guns back off Quodac, remember, and I think maybe that slimy bastard Zamofir has got to know more than he's putting out. He saw me on the train, maybe even arranged the attack because I was there. He was there at the rock camp, too the only survivor from their side. Figure he saw it all. heard everything. Then, later, he shows up at Pasedo's and narrowly misses me."

  Kira sighed. "Yes, and Pasedo's people knew you were pregnant at that point. Crim should have drowned that little creep. All right so Klittichom knows. What good does that do him if he can't find you?"

  Sam sighed. "Well, suppose I was him. Six months…. So I got three months to go, give or take, right? He'll figure from the rape Zenchur would have reported to him, which is good enough. Now, he's spent years building his armies and making his plans. Years finding and shaping and building up this Storm Princess until she'll do exactly what he wants her to. He's got Boolean bottled up, everything shaping up nice whether I'm around or not, and then he finds out he made one tiny mistake. He kept her a virgin instead of getting her knocked up when he had the chance."

  "It would have been difficult unless the soldiers who took her from her homeland had ravished her, and no doubt they had strict orders on that," Etanalon noted. "This is a lengthy plan of Klittichom's, carried out with much patience. He arranged everything so that she would be his willing accomplice, from the massacre of her people and mother onwards. Do not doubt it. He manipulated the threads of her destiny to create what he had. A child would have interfered with that."

  "Yeah, and I guess he kept her on a tight enough leash so she couldn't fool around on her own," Sam noted.

  "Most certainly. She would have been most public, you see, and always guarded. But remember, too, that she is in all senses except her background you another version of you. On that level, she might have been no more likely to 'fool around,' as you put it, than you would at least not with men. Of course, she would not admit it, even to herself, and she would expect an arranged marriage at some point, but she would run from such feelings in horror, as you tried to do. It was a factor that Klittichom overlooked. Or, perhaps, one he simply took for granted and'reinforced in you. It simply never occurred to him that there were other ways than romance to cause pregnancy. In his own way, he's rather conservative and old-fashioned in his outlook. It never seems to have occurred to him that, in spite of all, Storm Princesses are still born. At any rate, it is done."

  "Yes," Kira put in, "but now what can we do? All it's done is to start the clock ticking on the end of the world."

  "I don't see how, even with all his tricks, he can get her to go along with him on this," Sam commented. "I mean, no matter what, 1 don't think I could trust that homy bastard."

  "Hatred and revenge fuel her," Etanalon told them. "She is convinced that only as the liberator of the colonial races and the destroyer of Akhbreed power and rule can she both avenge and give meaning to the deaths of her mother and her people, as well as give meaning to her own life."

  Sam nodded. "Frankly, I wouldn't mind being the liberator myself, but not at the cost of having old Homy around to pick up the pieces. The system here is bad, but I can imagine worse." She turned to Kira. "Don't you see? If I was old Homy, faced with all this work and all this power goin' down the tubes, I'd move it up. I'd go with what I had and take a chance, ready or not. He's gonna do it, Kira. He's gonna do it before my baby's born. I don't want my baby growin' up in his world, or even in the wreckage a defeat would leave behind. We don't have much time, Kira. You got to contact Boolean. You got to tell him that the whole deal's off. Tell him either we hit them now, or it's going down and soon. We need to get together whatever forces we can and move on them before they move on us. No more bullshit. No more sneaking around. We hit them first, quick and dirty, or it's all over."

  2

  Political Pictures

  SUCH WAS THE luxurious and glamorous reputation of the Imperial High Court of Covanti that Covantians had a saying that it was better lo be the one who emptied the King's toilets than to be a merchant prince. And, after a few days there, even Charley and Boday had some reason to believe it.

  Halagar, the old friend and one-time schoolmate of Dorion who was now an Imperial Courier for the Court, had brought them straight in to the palace without incident, and in record time. It was far easier when one was travelling with clear Imperial protection; there might have been all sorts of thugs, thieves, and murderers waiting to claim Klittichom's reward for them, but none of them dared act against people under the protection of one from the Court. Rewards were only of value if one lived to spend them, and Halagar's large, jewel-encrusted ring gave him some kind of psychic contact with the Akhbreed sorcerers who maintained and guarded this land.

  Of course, that protection extended only to the land and colonies of Covanti; once outside of that domain, they were also beyond the reach of any sort of Covantian imperial protection, supernatural or otherwise. And there was still five worlds, four of which were under other kingdoms, before they reached Masalur and Boolean.

  As far as Charley was concerned, she didn't care if she ever reached Boolean now. She had been giving a lot of thought to that, although, to be sure, the decisions about her future were not hers to make.

  She had come to Akahlar not by anyone's grand design but simply because she had been with Sam when the two great wizards had come for their Storm Princess clone; one to kill, the other to save. Like the innocent passenger in a car crash, she'd had nothing at all to do with the accident but she nonetheless suffered all the consequences.

  Then Boolean had taken advantage of her presence and her superficial resemblance to Sam to make of her a decoy; to make her appear as Sam would have if everything had gone exactly right, if the idealized potential in Sam's genes had been a hundred percent realized. She was beautiful, sexy, perfectly proportioned, and, after falling into Boday's alchemical hands, virtually engineered to be a courtesan, a high-class whore, whose sole function was to give pleasure to men and to find high pleasure in that as well.

  And although she had had "I'm gonna conquer the world" Superwoman ambitions in her old life, and now sometimes felt guilty remembering them, the fact was, she liked the job and the situation. The only problem she really had with it, and it was a big one, was that she was designed to stand out in any crowd, the better to attract the attention of those forces seeking Sam who would see the resemblance and take her for her friend. She was the decoy, dependent on her own wits and the powers and authority of others to save herself without benefit of Sam's powers or anything else. That was why she was here, on the road, in the middle of a strange world, on her way to Boolean. Until
she, or Sam, reached that safety neither could hope for any long-term peace.

  Or so she'd thought. Now, in the Imperial Court, she was beginning to wonder. For the first time since she'd worked the high-class geisha route back in Mashtopol, she fell safe and comfortable.

  More, the odds of her realty getting any further were slimmer even than the odds she would have gotten this far. Set upon by the gang in the Kudaan Wastes, she'd managed to escape and to rescue Sam and Boday and the others, but at the cost of her eyesight. Witnessing the supernatural battle between Aslerial, Blue Witch of the Kudaan Wastes and Ktittichom ally, and the demon from Sam's amulet had caused some kind of radiation effect. All sorcerers who dealt in or with such powers had suffered the same fate and had alternate ways of seeing, but they knew magic or had powers she did not. Even Dorion didn't see with his eyes, although nobody could really tell that just from meeting him.

  Not that she was totally blind. Rather, her eyes could see things of magic; the supernatural had its own colors and auras that were revealed to her when she was in proximity to them, but there was a lot less magic in the world than even most of the inhabitants thought. She had been able to see the terrible Stormrider in the Quodac void, a sight she might have chosen to avoid, but most of the time the world was a dull and meaningless gray null. It was an irony, really; most people in Akahlar, from the lowest to the highest, feared magic and the supernatural because they were things they could neither see nor understand. Magic, however, could not sneak up on her, but she was totally defenseless and at the mercy of the normal world.

  More, having fallen into captivity in the Kudaan and sold into slavery, the small gold ring in her nose bound her with strong magic as a slave who could not escape her master and who was compelled to obey that master. Right now that role was delegated to Dorion, a rather sweet and shy sorcerer's apprentice who couldn't make himself take advantage of the situation, but, thanks to Yobi, the powerful witch and his own mentor, Charley really "belonged" to Boolean.

  Her only convenience was Shadowcat, a medium-sized tomcat somehow bound to her as she was to Boolean. Through a tiny sharing of blood, she and the cat were somehow linked, and if she willed it and concentrated, she could see, in the strange fish-eyed and monochromatic way a cat saw, and from that small and low vantage point, just what the animal could see. This was handy only to a degree. Shadowcat might have been something supernatural, but deep down he was a cat, and cats didn't go where you wanted them to, nor necessarily look at what you wanted to see.

  The other advantage Shadowcat gave her was a two-edged sword. She had been unable to master the complex polytonal language of the Akhbreed; it was doubtful that anyone not born to it or who had not absorbed it in some magical way as Sam had done, could ever master it. After all this time she understood it well enough to get by, although following a fast-talking multi-party conversation was sometimes impossible, but that was about the limit. She could understand Boday, for example, but not speak to her, except in the servile Short Speech of the courtesan whose few hundred words were designed strictly for the job of woman of pleasure. Many magicians, including Dorion, could handle English, having learned it by spell, since for some reason English, or a form of it, was a major language of the high Akhbreed sorcerers, but without Dorion or Boolean around she was cut off there, too. On her own she was effectively both blind and voiceless.

  The Shadowcat binding spell also gave her a way out of that; when she held the cat others in her immediate vicinity could read her thoughts. The problem was, everybody could read all her thoughts, so she didn't use that much unless it was an emergency.

  Still, for the only thing she could really do, and the thing she like doing the most, she didn't need to see or speak. She had concentrated not on dwelling on her problems but on coping with her situation, and, with a lot of patience and thought she was as self-sufficient as she needed to be or could be. She could memorize the basics of almost any room of normal size in a half hour; she could find the bathroom or chamber pot or whatever was available for the need and tend to herself. She could dress herself as much as one of her class and station dressed, fix her jewelry and her hair, apply perfume and even some limited cosmetics. There were tricks you just worked out for doing that. Even pouring a drink, the finger unobtrusively just below the rim of cup or glass telling her when it was full. That sort of thing. She'd arranged what little supplies she'd picked up so that she could find them and use them in the same ways every time.

  In the Covanti court, they had placed her with the royal concubines, in a sort of loose harem that was pretty good and had a lot. There were real hot showers, and slaves to do your hair and nails and the like, a pick of perfumes, cosmetics, and assistance for her in putting them on, along with good-tasting tilings to eat and fine wines of the region and coffees and teas served regularly. Each concubine slept on satin sheets and pillows atop feather beds and had little to do until summoned but play around with the luxury. There wasn't much of a level of conversation that she felt left out of; while the Short Speech was reserved for when they were outside, just about all the women had been born and raised to this position and purpose. They were all illiterate, and appallingly ignorant of the world or much of anything outside the immediate Covanti royal grounds. They mostly did superficial comparisons of the men of the Court, and how they were in bed, and did and redid their own and each other's hair, makeup, and the like, did exercises and tried out dances. They were all pros, just like she was, only they had a kind of status and a gilded cage and they knew of nor wanted much else. This was the highest level to which they could aspire.

  Charley found herself quickly slipping into their vacuous lifestyle without any problems. If they had no depth, they were at least all friendly and sympathetic, their competition between themselves limited mostly to boasting about their own sexual prowess or trying to top one another in style. It was more like a girls' luxurious summer camp back when she was, say, thirteen or fourteen. That lonely, friendless feeling she'd had since losing track of Sam in the gorge back in the Kudaan Wastes was filled, to a degree.

  Too, she had not realized just how much pressure she had been living under until it was removed. Here, with the Royal Courtesans, protected, cared for, she felt reasonably safe, and slept long and well without nightmares. Particularly considering her handicaps of language and sight, this was also the highest level to which she could reasonably aspire. Even in twenty years or more, when beauty was fading and demand for older women was lessened, the royal honor was kept, and all needs would be attended to for life. No worries, no insecurities, no real responsibilities it was a seductive thing, empty as it might be, particularly when you considered how she was, what she'd already been through, and what was waiting out there should she leave.

  And if it got too boring, there were the wines of Covanti and an endless supply of mild drugs that would take you for as long as you wanted into a state where everything was pleasant and wonderful and the silliest little things were endlessly amusing.

  She indulged herself in all the pleasures because she knew it would end, probably sooner than later. She was property, and not of Covanti's royal family as the others were, and she was being taken to her master.

  And then there was Halagar. She had seen him only through Shadowcat, but she had known him far more intimately than that. He was a big, strong, muscular man with an equally strong and handsome face, with a bodybuilder's frame and muscle control, and so worldly wise and experienced that he had taught her some new things in the bedroom. He was rough, yet tender, too, somehow, and he seemed to be as smitten with her as she was with him. On his part it was a strictly physical attraction, but that was the only kind she really knew and it fired up her ego and self-image to think that out of all the choices available to him he had chosen her.

  It had to be physical; somehow, for some reason, every time she was alone with him Charlene Sharkin just ceased to exist, leaving only Shari, her perfect courtesan alter ego, who had no memories beyond b
eing a courtesan, thought only in the Short Speech, and existed only to serve and please. There was a spell that would do that, of course; Sam had created it so she could have some fun back on that wagon train without betraying anything by accident. But that spell's words were English and known only to Sam and herself. Even on her own and without the spell, she could slip into Shari as easily as slipping into a dress, but she had always been there, as a sort of rider, able to regain control if needed. It was her "professional" persona. But this was different.

  She wondered, sometimes, if perhaps that spell were breaking down. That maybe it was her subconscious doing it; that, deep down, she really just wanted to be Shari and to hell with anything else. In Akahlar, Shari was all that she needed, required, or could actually be. The rest, Charley, was excess baggage. She knew, at least, that if she ever did wind up permanently in a harem like this, she would quickly become all Shari and remain that way. And, truth to tell, she wondered if that wouldn't be all for the best for her own sake. She would always prefer to be in total control of her own life, but, if that could not be, and if there was no hope of ever returning home and she had to live her life here, as she was, wasn't it better to forget what wasn't relevant and just enjoy, like the girls here?

  Sure, she was the brave, blind courtesan who'd outwitted and caused the destruction of a feared demon Stormrider by merely remembering a bit of high school physics, but there were only so many times you could get away with that, and she knew how lucky she'd been. One of these times, she'd lose. If not the next time, then the next, or the next. And, although one of her fantasies from the old days back home had been as the fierce and feared Amazonian warrior, it was different when you really faced those kind of things. On the whole, in real life, she knew that if she had to choose between being a warrior or a lover, she'd much rather be a lover.