Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  To Charley, the collar and chain was the ultimate in degradation. The metal used was light and thin, but the collar was welded around her neck and the chain, maybe six or seven feet of it, was welded to it. Very quickly she had been reduced to being paraded around, filthy and naked, on a leash, like a trained dog, and Halagar wasn't above having her basically do tricks as well. In fact, he bragged and showed off so much that eventually he yielded to the social pressure and new comradeship and actually loaned her out to them. She had always Hked anonymous, uncomplicated sex up to now, but these men were filthy, brutish, and a little sadistic, and she had no choice but to go through her entire vast sexual playbook with them on the grass for hours, unable to put her mind on automatic because of their nature, feeling at the end bruised, battered, and utterly defiled, and she was commanded to act like she enjoyed it and beg for more.

  And some of them were only nominally Akhbreed, and many had very bizarre turn-ons, and those caused her both shock and disgust like she'd never known.

  And they were in no mood to turn in. They were all killing time until three o'clock when the major battle would begin, and that seemed like forever. When it finally ended, about an hour before Zero Hour, she was so battered and so exhausted that she just lay there, unable and unwilling to move, but she couldn't stop thinking, even in a state of shock, trying to hold on to her sanity. Boday had been right; she'd still been a child, naive and stupid about this kind of life, romantic in a world that was truly a cesspool. She was property and treated worse than his horse, and it would continue to be this way, over and over, because that was all she was good for, the only use she was to the master. And it would go on like this, day after day, week after week, year after year.

  She couldn't stand it, she knew that, but she also had to obey, had to do it, without choice, without thinking, with no hope of rescue. She thought of those hollow, dead expressions on the slaves back in Tishbaal and knew that she would be as shriven and without hope inside as that in very short order. The time had come, now, here, tonight. She knew she had to do it before she was commanded to speak only Short Speech or to never use English. "Charley, be gone!" she said aloud, firmly, and slowly her expression changed to one of dull acceptance, her manner relaxed, as one who thought only in the most limited ways and matched her situation. The slave spell was not gone, but Charley was, and little Shari actually managed to drift into an exhausted sleep.

  * * *

  Masalur was an almost fairy-tale land; its central castle and government offices, with their many spires and minarets shimmering in their Mandan gold sheathing, were known far and wide as the most exotic and distinctive such buildings in all Akahlar.

  Beyond the government center with its architectural beauty and landscaped gardens and parks was a ring road, and just beyond on all sides was the commercial heart of Masalur, with its shops and bazaars and business centers for everything from commodities to insurance. One actually had to go about three miles from the center to hit the first all-housing areas, and these were densely packed, multistory apartment buildings containing hundreds of small flats. The final ring was the region of wealthy merchants who outdid each other with lavish homes and grounds. Only beyond that, perhaps an eleven-mile-circular city, did the land become rolling hills and farms sufficient to feed the city population, more man two million in normal times, perhaps double that now with me refugees inside.

  Although it was in the early hours of the morning, after even the last of the clubs and night spots had shut down, there was no mistaking mat a major storm was rolling in. Clouds seemed to rush in and thicken around the government center itself, the storm center appearing to form almost directly atop the royal castle. Those with the magic sight might have seen a glow in the clouds and wondered, and also seen me outer edges of the storm appear to take on the looks of strange beasts whose eyes and mouths were illuminated whenever lightning discharged inside me storm. The better magicians and Chief Sorcerer's staff would have recognized them as Sundogs, more here than could be remembered to be in any one area before. The Sundogs were weak and minor imps attracted from me nether-hells by the conditions of great storms, but they were generally harmless and could not sustain themselves in Akahlar without the cloud "bodies" which would dissipate with the storm itself.

  It would have taken an expert in both demonology and military tactics to recognize that the Sudogs were not merely using the storm for a brief reality but were moving around purposely, cautiously, almost as if directing the storm's shape and makeup. This they could not really do, but a sorcerer with contacts in the nether-hells could use them to "see" from their unique vantage point, and if that sorcerer had power over storms, this information would allow very precise targeting.

  For the first few minutes, those who were awake below ignored the storm as just another inconvenience; subtropical regions were used to being rained on at all hours. Now, though, the storm seemed to exude a strange sensation to those with the magical talent, as if those below it were descending in a fast elevator, and men and women in various places suddenly woke up, grabbed their robes, and headed for the alarms.

  Changewind! A Changewind coming, in the hub itself!

  Hub cities were far too dense to allow for full shelter and warning, but the alarms rang anyway all over the place, and sleeping people were roused and headed for what shelters there were if they believed that they were in any real danger. The government centers, of course, were sheathed in Mandan, the only substance that would deflect a Changewind. The royals, the permanent staff, the nearby senior bureaucrats, and the military command began quickly shutting the windows, pulling the shutters, fixing the seals to keep even the breath of Changewind out, then going down to the below-ground shelters where the winds, if the shields held, could not penetrate at all. A surface covered by Mandan gold was also safe below it; that was why, even out in the open, a pit or trench and a cloak of Mandan on top might well save you.

  Particles no larger than small stones broke free from the great mass known as the Seat of Probability on a dimensional center far "below" Akahlar, which was only the closest-in point where carbon-based life could exist and did. The small particles immediately shot out, breaking down, colliding again and again, gaining speed and momentum, breaking free of their parent block, and shooting up through the Lower Hells, punching through one after the other, their explosive reactions widening more and more and attaining a circular, cyclonic shape, remaining in the Lower Hells only until they found a weak spot to continue through their outward, upward journey towards the dimensions and realms of men.

  Klittichom and his associates, through the "eyes" of the Sudogs who were too dull to realize their own danger, were providing that weak point, and the Storm Princess in full possession of her powers was holding and shaping the resulting storm center, waiting for the Changewind to break through.

  Since the Changewind was supposedly random, and Mandan gold scarce, not even the richest of kingdoms nor the greatest of sorcerers ever lined the below-ground shelters. Mandan would protect you from a Changewind bearing down upon you, but the odds of one breaking into Akahlar under your very feet were so small as to not be worth calculating.

  From their aerial vantage points, the Sudogs watched in fascination as the very ground of the government circle and into the business circle seemed to glow with a dull, white magical fluorescence, then grow stronger and stronger, more and more brilliant, until suddenly there was a tremendous rush and a great, swirling, tornado-like maelstrom broke free and reached for the storm clouds above.

  Buildings, grounds, trees, streets, and all upon them seemed to shiver and melt at the touch of the white cyclone; the Mandan gold sheathing on the government buildings turned dark but held, yet began to crumple inwards into a heap as the supporting structures under them were melted away by the power from below; blackened gold foil that protected now only itself.

  The maelstrom and the gathering storm mated in a dance of power, obliterating the Sudogs and all else and wid
ening the regular storm into a monster of wind, rain, and local tornados which, while not Changewinds, were nonetheless black angels of death in the dark.

  The mass now covered almost the eleven-mite radius of the city proper, with the white whirling maelstrom at its heart the center of its own meteorological solar system. Its energy partly expended on what it was touching, it could not remain still, and instead began to move with the storm itself. The core maelstrom widened, becoming less powerful only in degree, touching and changing all that it contacted, and moving now, out of the center, with the great storm.

  Normally its passage would be swift; fifteen or twenty minutes and the white maelstrom within would find its weak point and travel upwards once more leaving the lesser but still devastating storm to blow itself out in the null, but this was not the pattern here.

  The storm took a turn and began a stow, steady march around the city, dragging the Changewind at its core with it, as if somehow orbiting the center of its birth and unwitting or unable to break free. In less than an hour it had made an unprecedented, impossible three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circuit in a widening spiral, obliterating, then reforming all out into the farm belt itself. Masalur was not merely to be devastated or decimated, it was to cease to exist.

  Across the null border between the colonies and the hub, from three sides, whole divisions of rebel troops began to move briskly across; thousands of men on foot following lines of calvary that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon, bearing down on the armies of Masalur, who were now caught between the oncoming force and the Changewind at their backs.

  Even with the strongest telescopes, it was nearly impossible to see just what was going on at the hub border, but, unaided and without even magical sight, the entire horizon seemed to be glowing and the enormous booming claps of thunder rolled across the null and mixed with the distant sounds of artillery opening up.

  Halagar stood on the ridge and watched from afar. He'd given up on the telescope, but just the fact that he could near so much rumbling from so far away and see the whole horizon apparently ablaze awed him and his companions. They watched, too, open-mouthed, as great, demonic stormriders came out of the null clouds and right into the command areas of the rebels with reports and information, and carried instructions from the general staff back with a speed that nothing else in Akahlar could match and that no defender could slow or even effect.

  Less than a half a mile from Halagar, Dorion stood atop the coach that had brought them here only an hour before, open-mouthed and with heart sinking. With his magic sight he could see and psychically feet the power out there, the finger of white barely glimpsed now and again as the spiral widened outwards. There was nothing else to see, of course, and no way to know just what it was like over there; Boday, exhausted from driving much of the past few days and through some of each night, had watched for a few minutes, then curled up and went soundly to steep on the driver's seat.

  But, somehow, even with nothing really to see. he couldn't stop watching.

  He had actually been treated with the utmost respect since being captured. The adept, whose name was Coleel, proved a rather pleasant, even interesting fellow, with enough power and skills to be totally confident of himself; second rank in all respects save having successfully stood the examination by a committee of full Akhbreed sorcerers—something that, shortly, might be a bit difficult to assemble anyway.

  His fall had been dramatic, although not for the usual reasons. As an apprentice to a sorcerer far to the east, he'd been posted as a magician in residence in a colonial capital, where, because he was already so powerful—a natural, as it were—he'd spent some of his copious spare time studying the natives and their culture instead of working all me time on his skills, and he had regaled Dorion with tales of these people, the Grofon, on their trip to this point. To hear him tell it, they were a particularly beautiful people, inside and out, almost angelic, and very similar to Akhbreed in appearance, but they were hermaphroditic- their whole world had developed unisexually—and had some "trivial" and "beautiful" differences like multicolored hair and bushy tails. A city boy and true believer, he'd expected to be posted to some primeval, primitive world with monstrous creatures more animal than Akhbreed, and instead he'd found a beautiful folk with a gentle culture. He'd become quite close to them—

  Then there came a ritualistic period in a local tribe's life, a period of just four weeks that came only once every twenty years, which fascinated him, but which had the inconvenience to come during the peak harvest time. The Imperial Governor, a royal relative on his first assignment, had blown his stack at having all the natives cease work for so long a period during so critical a time, and he ordered them back to work. When they ignored him, he ordered troops in, only to find that in the one matter of religion, they would rather die than work. Infuriated, the governor had declared a civil insurrection although none really existed and ordered mass executions in public—children as well as adults, randomly. Coleel was ordered to protect the troops; when he refused, the governor threatened to bring him up before an Imperial Court of Sorcery for violating his oaths. The governor had too many spells of protection from the Chief Sorcerer for Coleel to do anything to him, so the magician had done the most pragmatic thing available and shot the man in the head. He had men fled and lived with the natives in a far region of Grofon, for sixteen years a fugitive, until word of the rebellion had reached him and Klittichom's cause and protection was offered.

  Dorion thought it was too bad the guy was screwed, and wished he'd known him under more pleasant circumstances. Now an act of compassion and self-sacrifice was being turned into complicity in the greatest butchery in the history of Akahlar.

  It seemed it wasn't nearly as hard for Klittichom to get good recruits with high magical skills as it would have seemed.

  Dorion had no idea what they were going to do with him. but, although no spells had been cast on him and no guns were leveled at him, he had no more choice in that than did Boday. He looked back across the great null, and wondered what hell was going on over there. If Boolean still lived, he surely had been transformed into something far different than a sorcerer, and that was as good as being dead.

  8

  The Fugitives

  HALAGAR FINALLY DECIDED that he had to get at least a little sleep or he'd be shot to hell when anything interesting happened.

  For a while, he and his new comrades had watched and received relayed battle reports and wished they were in it somehow, but after a while came the realization that this wasn't his fight, not this time, nor would there be much to see before perhaps a day or so later. Better to be at your best than to waste yourself on this, and then look lousy just when you wanted to impress somebody.

  He went over to where Charley had passed out a few hours before and frowned as he thought he saw some smaller shape, like an animal, dart from her still form and off into the darkness. If I didn't know it was impossible, I'd swear it was her damned cat, he thought to himself.

  He went over and looked at her, and it did seem that she had a wound on her right breast, but that might well have been from the earlier night's play. Probably was, considering the location and considering it sure wasn't bleeding. Over tired, he told himself, lying down on his sleeping bag and stretching out.

  The boys had been a little rough with the girl, but, hell, that was all she was good for, and she'd survive. Besides, she'd paid off already. Letting them have their fun with her had turned a bunch of mercenaries and misfits into a kind of comradely unit with them all feeling kindly towards him. She was unique; the only one of her kind in captivity, maybe the only one anywhere if they did to other hubs what they were doing to Masalur. Hell, she'd be real useful in keeping a unit happy out in the bush and a real inducement to ride with him.

  He shut his eyes and relaxed and tried to get to sleep. With Boolean dead and the rest lining up for the slaughter, and with him and his pet and his new comrades and position, things were about as good as they coul
d be.

  Suddenly his eyes opened wide in sudden shock and pain; he tried to yell out, tried to scream, but nothing came. With tremendous force of will he reached up and grabbed onto whatever thing was tearing into his throat and came down on a small, furry body. In desperation, unable to breathe, hardly able to think, he grabbed the animal's torso and squeezed with all his might, trying to crush it, pull it away.

  It was a death grip, and he knew it, even as he pulled the creature off him. its gaping mouth taking much of his throat with it and threw it with all the force of his command down to the ground. He sat up, trying to talk, pointing at two glowing eyes in the dark, then sank back for the final time in death. The last thing he heard before darkness fell upon him was an eerie, gruesome voice inside his brain.

  "Bad man! Evil man! Die! Die!"

  At the moment Halagar died, Charley woke up and sat up. She was feeling sore and bruised and very frightened but she was suddenly very wide awake. She was also not Charley, but Shari, making any conclusions or decisions nearly impossible.

  Shadowcat was hurt, badly hurt; Halagar's will to live and his dying strength had been unexpected and particularly brutal. Most of the familiar's ribs had been crushed in the death embrace and he could barely move. He was bleeding inside, and he knew he didn't have a whole lot of time left. He reached out to Charley's brain and found only Shari there. It confused him, but he knew the trigger and sent it.

  "Charley return," he managed, glad that it required only mental contact,

  Slowly, and with some horror, Charley felt herself once again, and she didn't like it a bit. "Oh. god! It didn't work! I can't send myself away!" But there was something odd, something different. Halagar that bastard! Somehow she'd been tricked into believing he was Boolean. What in hell was happening to her now?