Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  "This is your sister, whom you seek to destroy," Sam told her.

  "Get out of my mind, bitch!"

  The thought was so sharp, so violent, and so filled with rage that for a moment Sam was taken aback, but she knew she had to press onward. She had to know.

  "I am not your enemy! Not necessarily, anyway! This system sickens me! I don't want to defend it! But all you and Horny there have done is tried to kill me, and I know that you know he's a slimeball! Give me your reasoning! Tell me your plans! Show me why I should not fight you!"

  The Storm Princess whirled. "Klittichorn! The bitch is here! In my mind! Get her out! Get her out!" The unnaturally low voice she shared with Sam echoed across the chamber and everybody else froze.

  Klittichorn looked up at her, then stood up and stared straight at the Storm Princess. The distance was fairly great, yet it seemed as if he were looking not only at the woman but through her. A tiny, thin beam of white light seemed to shoot from him to the Storm Princess, ricochet off the woman, and land somewhere on the pulsing violet globe.

  One of the yellow lights on the globe changed to white. "She, she's in Covanti!" one of the others shouted. "In the damned hub! Low hills… near the border…."

  "Got her!" Klittichom shouted. "Princess, get back down here at once! Places, everybody! Full power up! We got her!"

  Suddenly contact was broken, completely, absolutely, leaving Sam there wide awake in the darkness. It was still Jesus! So fucking still you could cut it with a knife! What have I done? she wondered to herself. She got up, and managed to carefully step over and around sleeping girls and get to the edge of the enclosure. There was a fire still burning in the fire pit, although it was slowly dying, and she went over to it and tried to think. Five places, five pentagrams, but only one Storm Princess. That spinning violent globe—Akahlar? The shining yellow lights—hubs? Think! Think! How much time? Had to be. Had to be hubs. The white one had been near the middle, where the hot places were, and this was sure one of them. Covanti, then.

  Five places but only one Storm Princess. That was important, somehow. What the hell did the globe do? The five of them stand there, they concentrate on someplace, the pentagrams point, and where they all come together is the target. That had to be it. Made no sense but what did around here? Four of them… sorcerers. Akhbreed sorcerers, probably, the others like Yobi, misshapen, changed, by their own misfired powers, but powers they still had.

  What would they send? Some great demon stormriders, perhaps, or great magic spells, or what? No time to run, no place to run to. Ten minutes alone in the dark on that road, right around here, and she'd be in the hands of slavers and it would be bye-bye Sammie anyway.

  Wait a minute…. Wait a minute… Stormriders, big spells; they wouldn't need her for that. The Storm Princess could do only one thing, and it was the one thing none of them could do. Could that gizmo maybe broadcast that power? Send it here like it was some kind of radio or something? But what good would it do to send even a hurricane here? Her powers were at least the equal of the Storm Princess's, and she now knew how to draw the power from the storms, shape them, direct them, and she'd be closer to the storm than the Princess, closer to the elementals, whatever they were, who guided and fueled it and obeyed the Storm Princess. They would know that.

  Changewind!

  The term itself explained everything and yet was the greatest terror she knew. That big gadget—some way to focus magic power. Could those four sorcerers do what no sorcerer dared to do and actually cause or call or create the conditions for a Changewind? Poke a hole someplace?

  Call it. Yeah, but they were powerless to control it or do anything with it. The Akhbreed sorcerers feared Changewinds' as much as anybody, since they were just as much helpless victims of the storm as the average person. But they were far away, inside that domed chamber, far from the Changewind they would call, safe from its effects.

  Could the Storm Princess even command a Changewind?

  The temperature seemed to be dropping, the very air thinning. Deep within the darkness there were terrible rumblings that caused the ground to vibrate. Sam stood up, turned, and looked around into the darkness. The conditions and the vibrations were already waking up most of the women, but they were sleepy and confused.

  Let's see…. You could save yourself from a Changewind by covering yourself completely with Mandan gold, the only stuff that could shield you. But there was no Mandan here not in hubs. They carried it on the trails and in the colonies and in Crim's wagon, but not here, in a place like this. It would take a lot, anyway.

  She had never faced a Changewind in person, although she'd seen one in a vision, through other eyes. These fancy places were supposed to have crypts, big underground chambers lined with Mandan, for everybody to run into! That's how it had been. But even if the manor house had one, it wouldn't be big enough for everybody here, and the house was like three-quarters of a mile away. Forget it. They'd panic here and most wouldn't make it anyway.

  Think…. Think…. Damn it, something in what you just thought. Think, Sam!

  If they sent a storm she was of equal power at least to the Storm Princess, and closer.

  Was the Changewind, for all its fearsome results, actually just another big storm? It had to be! Otherwise none of Klittichorn's shit would work!

  There! Tremendous sound and lightning just off to the east, between here and the border. Tremendous explosions, and women screaming all around her.

  Far off, the sound of a siren kind of like a volunteer fire department came to her ears, and to the others, and immediately the large number of women began screaming in panic, "Changewind! Changewind! Make for the house!"

  Sam moved away from the panicking mob, away from the enclosures, towards the storm. Was she enough? Was she up to this yet? Was she forgetting something, maybe?

  She realized, suddenly, that she'd picked up a long stick from the cooking area without even thinking about it. She made to throw it away as the sounds of panic receded behind her, then stopped as she was about to throw. A pointer. Something to focus on, like they had.

  She pressed the stick in the dirt and with all her might began to trace a circle, unsure in the darkness whether or not it was even taking real shape in the ground. Then a line here, then there, then again, and again, and again, if there was a pentagon in the middle of the star, she was within it, and it was pointed towards the terrible lightning and thunder and explosive sounds that now seemed so close.

  She heard some people behind her and turned. "Who's there?" she called. Even now, the wind was starting to pick up, to blow things about, but that was not the Changewind, only the effects from its leading edge. It was coming, but it was not here yet.

  "It's Quisu and Putie!" she heard Quisu's voice call. "Come! Get under some shelter! It might help! There's no way we gonna make it up there in time!"

  "Stay back!" Sam shouted to them. "Don't go into the shelter! Get everybody still there out in the open but behind me! You understand? Out in the open and behind me! Sit on the ground' This wind's gonna be real fierce real fast'"

  "You crazy!" Putie shouted. "Nobody faces down a Changewind!"

  "Maybe I am," Sam called back. "We'll know in about two minutes! Now do what I say!"

  Tremendous gusts now hit her, and the leading edge of rain that would become quickly intense. She heard somebody yell as they were knocked down, and she heard the sounds of things blowing this way and that, things that were normally too heavy to blow anywhere. Within another minute she could hear the sound of thatched roofs coming apart, and the cracking sounds of some of the enclosures starting to give way. There were screams as well, but she couldn't pay attention to anything now except that coming storm, invisible in the darkness.

  Strangely, she felt remarkably calm, as if something inside her was relieved that a climax had actually come, that action was required without nagging questions of right and wrong.

  She reached out into that thundering that seemed marching straight for
her, not denying it, not hiding from it, almost welcoming it. She felt the strength, the energy, flow into her and she suddenly stiffened, a look of pure amazement on her face in the lightning's glow, as her whole body felt not the sudden, pounding rain and wind but rather the most intense, sustained orgasmic feeling she had ever known. The power flowing to her was enormous, beyond belief, but all she could think was, Come on, you stupid bitch of a princess! Let's see how you take on this fat, pregnant, peasant dyke who hates your god-damned guts!

  4

  The Victorious Trap

  THE STORM WAS small by weather standards, but what it could do was something no ordinary storm, regardless of size or power, could do, and that was why it was so feared.

  And yet, as she concentrated on it, as she felt its power and grabbed for it, she understood that, for all its strange nature, it was still a storm. She reached out in ways she could not explain to anyone and saw it as an entity, raw yet conforming to the rules of storms so long as it was within Akahlar's domain. It had some dominion over matter and energy, of what it touched and what it might do, yet upper steering currents still held it in some tight fashion; landforms, even those it could transform, none the less bounced and jostled it, turned it, and reshaped it even as it reshaped them.

  All storms had a distinctive shape and obeyed their own internal rules of consistency, and lost their power once those internal rules were altered. With an ordinary storm that was not impossible to do, but with this one the internal rules were hard to find in all the confusing masses of hissing, snapping energy. Fed as it was by a tiny particle of the monoblock whose instability had created all that was, it was the most alive and active thing in all nature, spitting off particles of matter and energy, mating with what it found and changing it in ways that seemed at first totally random but which she came to realize were in some way mathematical. The random bursts of particles and waves from its tiny but super-powered center were only half the equation; the process was only completed when they interacted with what was already there, binding the random fury to their laws and creating a fearful symmetry in what was created.

  There was no way to grab that center and guide or direct it; it was unfathomable, a brilliant, sputtering, incomprehensible mass. The trick was to control the storm by its edges, to shape it, pick up the myriad whiplike appendages of energy that flew from it, and hold them in the mind like reins on a herd of wild horses.

  And something, someone else, was busily locating and getting hold of those whiplike energy reins. Sam could sense the other, feel it, watch just what was being done. She didn't understand it; she didn't have to understand it; the practical demonstration was enough.

  The other's power stemmed from intense but measured hatred; Sam used rage, which was rawer and less controlled but in its own way just as strong. She began to reach out to the energy reins that the other had so considerately already grabbed and stabilized and began a mental tug of war for their control.

  For a while, it seemed an even match, the storm oscillating first this way and then that, but having something of its own way as the struggle for its steering energies was in dispute, but there was a grave difference between Sam and the Storm Princess, one that had nothing to do with children in wombs or experience or even proximity.

  If Sam did not stop the storm, it would quickly swallow her and all the others helpless in the open behind her; the Storm Princess was safe far to the north in her dome, under no threat no matter which way the storm or struggle went. In the test of wills, experience versus self-preservation, self-preservation had the emotional intensity to give Sam a slight edge…

  One by one, she pried the tendrils of the Changewind from the grip of the Storm Princess and gathered them to herself. The first few did not come easy, and there was much back-and-forth tugging and twisting. The Storm Princess tried strategy, letting her enemy have several very suddenly while making a grab for others to hold tightly, but it was a tactic that worked only once. Slowly but inexorably, with a building sense of power and satisfaction, Sam gained complete control. Klittichom had miscalculated; even with all his studies and planning, he had too much fear and respect for the Changewind, too much faith in its ability to dominate. Now he would know.

  You do not send a storm to do in a Storm Princess.

  Sam felt the other's control weaken and then fade away, and she quickly gathered up the balance of the whiplike energy leads and gained complete control of the Changewind. She had it, absolutely, and she was exultant. She'd done it! She'd beaten the Storm Princess and Klittichom and now was mistress of the one thing in Akahlar everybody feared!

  The godlike feelings were punctured by sudden confusion. Okay, she had it now, what the hell did she do with it?

  Clearly so long as it remained relatively in place it was drawing strength, intensifying if anything, and that was the last thing she wanted. She had to get rid of it, send it on a course that might cause terrible effects but which would dissipate it as well, send it, weakened, up into the out-plane. To kill a storm you spent its fury.

  It was close enough to the null that she tried to send it there, but while it shifted a few miles it could go no further. Powerful energies and upper air currents forced it back upon itself, refusing to let the storm approach the null. The conditions the null exerted against storms from the worlds was what kept Akahlar functioning; there was no way out there.

  The hub, then. It had to be the hub. There were mountains someplace, mountains that could dissipate a storm, but she didn't know where they were or how to find them. All her concentration had to be on holding that storm; there wasn't much of a chance to check a road map even is she had one.

  The circle around the star. Hubs weren't perfect circles but they were close; she was on the eastern border, so west, or north and west, were her only alternatives. She searched for upper air currents high above the storm, found them, and began to tie the upper tendrils of the storm's steering energies to them. She began to tie them—one, five, ten—and still the storm remained, so she frantically began to tie all that she had in messy clusters, until she reached the critical number where she felt a sudden wrenching, felt the storm begin to move, lumbering, but away. She realized that now was the riskiest part, for the only way to send it was to let it go, and she didn't understand enough of the complexities of storm movement and the influence of other things on it to be certain it would not double back on her. Still, there was no other way.

  She released the reins and suddenly felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her and was speeding now away.

  She was suddenly standing ankle-deep in mud with wind and torrential rain cascading over her body, the darkness so absolute she could see nothing at all. She felt a sudden rush of self-satisfaction, and in the midst of the more ordinary storm still raging around her, she laughed and raised her arms to the heavens.

  Oddly, she felt neither tired nor drained; in fact, she felt really alive, energized, as if somehow the energy she had absorbed from the storm's periphery had somehow super-charged her. Not only did she feel so incredibly alive, but her mind seemed to be working with the crystal clarity only absolute self-confidence brought. She knew she could not celebrate for long; they had failed to kill her with all their power and gadgetry and magic, but they knew just where she was now. The Changewind would wreak havoc in the local area and that and the aftermath of the more conventional storms that spun off the great wind would make it as difficult for her pursuers as for her, but it wouldn't take long for them to compensate for that. Not even the mighty Changewind could touch her; she knew that, now. But a bullet, or a sword, would have little trouble making that fact irrelevant.

  She also remembered what the Akhbreed did after a Changewind, how they mercilessly came down with their armies and massacred the changed victims. She could do nothing to stop that, not now, but it would mean the Covanti army would be moving this way as soon as it was clear and there was light. The fact that she had saved the Abrasis estate meant little except tha
t this region would be an ideal staging ground for the soldiers going into the Changewind-ravaged areas. And with them would come men contacted by Klittichom, charged to find her at any cost.

  The wind, the rain, were dying down rapidly now, as the great storm sped swiftly away on its new track. Sam was able to hear herself once more, and immediately turned into the darkness. "Anybody!" she shouted. "Shout out! Is everybody okay?"

  There were a number of cries in response, some quite close to her, and soon there were a few dozen voices yelling back.

  "All right! Listen to my voice and come to me!" Sam shouted. "Everybody who can hear me shut up and come to me!" She kept repeating that over and over, and, slowly, they came. With the skies still totally overcast, the fires and torches all drenched into uselessness, and all lighting, even in the distance towards the manor, out, they were still effectively blind but Sam's solution began to gather them.

  "Sahma! Is that you?" she heard Putie's voice call out—

  "Yeah! Over here! Everybody over here so we can find ourselves and figure our what to do next."

  Others were now shouting off in the distance, but they didn't seem close enough to hail. One by one, though, the drenched and mud-caked survivors made it to Sam.

  The Disease Pit, as the enclosure for the pregnant girls was nicknamed, was the last in a line and a bit off to itself, and it was no surprise that almost everyone who came to her was from there. The ones left were the ones like Putie and Quisu who couldn't run in panic and knew they'd never make the manor house and so had simply remained to meet their fates.

  The rain had become nothing more than a fine mist in the air now, and the wind was down to a gentle breeze. Sam took time to grab her Covantian super-long hair and try and squeeze out what felt like a ton of water. It was like putting a wet mop in a wringer. Maybe very long hair really did make her look better, but she wondered if appearances were worth the price.