Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Huh? Why no touching?"

  "Just a feeling. There's an old legend, back home as well as here and elsewhere, about what the Germans in my native world deemed doppelgangers. It was said that everyone in the world had, somewhere, an exact duplicate, and if the two ever met and made contact, they would both cease to exist. It's unlikely that there really are many doubles, but people have fallen through out-planes to ones below—it's happened many times, enough to be recorded. There's a possibility that there is some kind of difference at the atomic or molecular level that would in fact cause two duplicates from different worlds to cancel one another out. I'm not positive, but why take chances? If we can get that close to her we can nail her a hundred ways. Why sacrifice yourself?"

  She nodded. "Well, I'm in favor of that sentiment. Now, how long do we have to wait?"

  "Who knows? Not long, I hope. We've started his clock counting down and he wants to attack before the explosion. We all shared the vision of that room, which pretty well confirmed our deductions of what it must look like. I noted the pentagrams, too. Cromil. Some of your buddies are playing in this on his side."

  "Awhe's always had the problem the Stormriders with him, and their Sudog pets. Probably just gonna use them to confirm his kills, that's all- They can't do much damage now."

  Yobi's great, hooded head shook slightly. "I would like to know the importance of the small red dots in the hubs on that globe of his," she commented. "They weren't regular enough to be aim points."

  Nobody else had noticed them, including Sam. Nothing we can do or know about it until we're there," Boolean pointed out. "Still, didn't underestimate the bastard. Whoops! On your marks, ladies and gentleman' Looks like they switched on the juice!"

  "Give it a couple of minutes to make certain it's not a test, or not some ploy to draw out potential attackers," Yobi responded nervously.

  "Hey! Don't I get a gun or a sword or something?" Sam asked, more nervous than they were, and maybe a lot more now that she saw these high-power sorcerers were scared, too.

  Crim gave a half-smile. "You never could shoot worth a damn. We had you on the rifle coming along, but a rifle wouldn't be much use there and would blow the disguise. And your arm strength now isn't what it used to be. Your looks and the probable ignorance of most of the staff in there as to what's going on inside the War Room is your best defense. If you need a weapon, Boday or I will get you one somehow."

  "Yeah, thanks. I think."

  "I think it's on for real," Yobi pronounced at last. "That is one hellish amount of power being pumped out of there and in to there as well. Thinking time is done, people. Let us go, and may the gods of Akahlar and the misdirected prayers of its foolish people ride with us!"

  This time Sam rode in front of Etanalon, who provided some kind of shield that kept out the wind chill and preserved at least some warmth. Still, it was cold and she was cold and she wasn't sure whether she'd like to freeze to death or go into the jaws of that fortress.

  They fanned out; Crim on the left, then Yobi, Boolean in the center and slightly forward, then she and Etanalon on the right, and finally Boday on their right. A sort of V-shaped flying wedge, going over the glaciers and snowy peaks. One more rise, and then it was before them, looking very much as Boday had drawn it only bigger than Sam had imagined it. She had also thought that Boday had exaggerated the smooth, almost plastic-looking appearance, but it really did look unreal, like some humongous giant kid's lost toy.

  She, too, felt curiously unreal at this point. From a troubled teenager back in the land of television, cars, rock and roll, and shopping malls, to a fugitive running from storms that chased her and bad dreams that plagued her, to the descent through the maelstrom to Tubikosa, the initial safe haven and then, betrayal by Zenchur, the strange spell of Boolean's, the kidnapping of Charley and her sale to Boday, the love potion that turned Boday into her lover, the strange life they'd led in which she'd grown fat and bored, the demon of the Jewel of Omak, the wagon train, Hude, the great storm and flood, the torture-rape, rescue by Charley and the demon, the fleeing from the mercenaries, Pasedo's and a strange new peasant's life as Misa, then Crim and Kira, Yobi, the great overland journey and her mental breakdown on it, Etanalon and her magic mirrors, then the unexpected life with four husbands and an extended family in a primitive place, the attack by Zamofir, the rescue, the body switching ploy, and all the rest, it all seemed, somehow, like something in a dream, a panorama, that had a few good parts but was mostly nightmare.

  All forcing her here, forcing her to this place in this time, going against the cause of her suffering and the suffering of millions. Yet, somehow, even as they closed on the place, she felt curiously distanced, more observer than key participant and guest of honor.

  Guest of honor at a funeral, anyway.

  Suddenly, just in front of them, there was a great rumble and roar and they halted almost immediately. She knew what was coming, felt it coming, and was the only one among them who did not fear it; in fact, she had to shout to the others to close in and not to break ranks.

  The great central maelstrom of the Changewind burst through ahead of them, a tremendous, tubular gray-white funnel reaching from the outer perimeter of the "saucer" upwards until it gathered and reached the clouds. The air rumbled and it grew suddenly quite dark, and lightning and thunder began to fill the frozen skies.

  Instantly, Sam seemed to know what to do. What was a terrible nightmare to the others was to her a source of power, of strength.

  "Etanalon! Let me take the lead and everybody come as close as you can to us!" she shouted above the rising winds and sudden blizzard-like snows stirred up by the great white thing before them. "Boolean! It's okay in the middle, remember? You told me that! They're still there! They're keeping this one right where it is, feeding on it. using its power!"

  "Yeah, fine," he responded nervously, "but while I could project myself inside, there's no way for us to physically enter now! He's beaten us!"

  "The hell with that!" she shot back. "Look at the waves from the Changewind radiating outward, warping the very mountains! But they do not touch us because I won't let them' Now, if you all got the guts. let's go in there, and kick their ass!"

  "What how?" Yobi asked, sounding even more panicky than the rest.

  "Right through that motherfucker! You asked me to trust you and you forced me all this way; now you put your trust in me and in my hands or it was all for nothing! Come on!"

  For Boolean, once he'd made the decision to press on, it suddenly became a matter of extreme academic interest to him. Of course! Of course! That's how he does it! Draws a single great wind up through the nether-hells and holds it just below Akahlar with a magnetic repulser. Keeps it there, building, letting off "steam," as it were, by opening small, mostly random Changewinds all over the place. This place not Greenland, not Iceland.' Northwest Territories, by god! It's the damned magnetic north pole!

  The Changewind wasn't attracted to this place, it was repelled by it, diverting it southward. The in-plane angle must be… yes, yes. I see it now! I see how he's doing it! Son of a bitch! What a great mind did I help destroy….

  They approached the maelstrom, tiny specks against the vast and turbulent atmosphere around them, and, as they did, all but Sam and Etanalon closed their eyes, although they would have never admitted to it one another, gritted what teeth they had, and waited for the end.

  There was sudden dead silence and calm. "We're through," Etanalon breathed, with obvious amazement. "We're inside me Maelstrom itself! Physically inside."

  They set down on top of the saucer-like mesa, feeling like ants on a concrete slab, slid off, and looked around. To those with the magic sight, the raised domed shape in the center seemed alive, radiating fingers of blue-white magical energy, fingers that went up and then contacted the edges of the Maelstrom and mated with it.

  Boolean dropped to his knees, took out a small pocketknife and scraped a bit at the "saucer."

  "Mandan gold," he told
them. "The whitish color were oxides and residues. This place just isn't coated with a thin layer of Mandan, it's all Mandan at least the outer shell. Protect the rebel troops my ass! He's been taking what those rebels and gangs bought or stole and melting it down and reforming it!"

  "Yeah, it and the Maelstrom protects them from everybody but me," Sam noted. "Uh, I hate to mention this, but while we're safe here, how in hell do we get m this thing? The Maelstrom sort'a form fits around it and there's all sorts of flyin' debris down there. I can keep the storm off our backs easy enough, but I sure can't deflect that shit. And there don't seem to be no entry up here."

  Yobi was still unnerved at being within the one thing she could not control and the only thing she really feared, but she had regained some self-control and this coupled with a desire to get the hell off of here.

  "The Changewind protects against sorcery," she said a bit unsteadily, "and Mandan gold against the Changewind, but Mandan gold is no protection from sorcery." She picked a spot, pointed a long, gnarled finger at it, and a beam of pure white magical energy sprang from it and struck the surface of the "saucer." It began to neatly, almost surgically, bum a neat path right through the top.

  "Get ready, everybody!" Boolean warned. "All this energy might disguise us, but the odds are about even that somebody's gonna be down there to find out about the hole in the roof!"

  13

  War of the Maelstrom

  THEY FLOATED DOWN through the hole, which was wide enough for both Crim and Boday to drop first, Crim with the machine gun ready, Boday with the crossbow, to cover both angles. They appeared to have dropped into a fairly large office, but nobody was home.

  Boolean dropped next, then Sam, Etanalon, and, finally. Yobi, whose bulk nearly filled out all the available space. Still, she turned, looked up, and made a series of passes over the roof. The section she had cut out quivered a moment, hanging as it was by only a metallic thread, then went back up into the sealing and reversed the cut. The roof was once again solid and intact.

  "Electricity, intercoms—nice place," Boolean noted. "All the comforts of home. But this was never a sorcerer's office. One of the political or military leaders, most likely."

  Yobi closed her eyes in concentration, then opened them again. "The door leads to a smaller outer office which also accesses other offices," she told them. "All the offices here are vacant, but the hallway outside passes more, and some of those are occupied. I sense no major power as yet within the immediate region. Do any of you?"

  "No," Boolean responded. "Crim, Boday your job. Go!"

  Boday's eyes were glazed. "Boday feels like the star of an action epic that will live forever," she said with awe, and, with Crim, they made their way, wall by wall and door by door, out and into the hall and then down. In the first office there were two senior officers in full uniform and a half a dozen lower-ranking military of about as many races, all pouring over maps and dispatches and seeming very busy.

  "The hell with the crossbow," Crim muttered, back against the wall next to the doorway. He threw the safety off the machine gun, checked the clip, then turned so he was framed in the doorway and let loose a volley. Bodies, chairs, and papers flew everywhere. They both rushed in and while Crim finished two that lay moaning with short bursts, Boday found a fencing sword and ran another through.

  The noise attracted others, who were met with a hail of gunfire as they rushed to see what the problem was. When no more people came running. Boolean stepped into the hall, raised his arms, and blue-white lightning snaked from his hands and the bodies shimmered and vanished. Vanished, too, were his furs and buckskins; now he wore the shimmering emerald green robe of his office, and. somehow, he looked both younger and radiant in a powerful son of way. For the first time, he looked to Sam like the kind of sorcerer she'd expected to meet, and she grew a little more confident. He grinned, turned to her, bowed, and gestured for her to emerge.

  "Seems to me if you can do that and look like that, you don't need Crim or Boday or me," she muttered.

  "I don't like to waste it. I may need every bit of it and won't have any time to recharge. Onward."

  She held her breath and began walking as regally as she could. Boday and Crim emerged and fell in behind her, and none looked to see what the sorcerers were doing. They reached a down stairway, and she didn't hesitate, but paraded down it. When she reached the landing she saw two men, one kind of frog-faced and the other with a turtle-like red and yellow-spotted head, at the bottom with automatic weapons ready. They almost opened up, but their eyes widened when they saw who was coming down.

  "Why do you train weapons on me?" she thundered in her most imperious, spoiled-brat tone. "Have you gone mad?"

  They stood and snapped to attention. "Pardon, Highness, but we thought, that is, we heard…."

  She strode past them and, behind her, Crim took the one on the left and broke his back and Boday punched in the throat of the one on the right. Even as they both collapsed, Crim muttered, "Too easy so far. Much too easy."

  "Perhaps they are as stupidly confident in their own winds defense as the sorcerers of the hubs are with their shields," Boday responded hopefully.

  Sam checked the floor and saw that it seemed to lead just to more offices or people's rooms or whatever. No sign of the wide hallway with the double doors. She decided to go down another flight, and they followed. The place couldn't be this empty, could it?"

  "If he's paranoid enough it could be," Boolean said from behind them, reading their thoughts.

  Sam reached the next floor and pressed on the big wooden door leading from the stairwell to the floor itself. It opened easily and she thought she recognized it as leading, maybe from the opposite side, to the grand entrance. She strode on, the door closed behind her, and only then did she turn and realize that nobody had followed.

  At almost the same moment, from the opposite stairwell, two figures emerged, dressed in black robes. A man and a woman, both young-looking, both clearly adepts of power. She stood there a moment, feeling totally exposed, and wondering what to do, hoping they wouldn't spot her—but they did.

  "Highness," said the woman, sounding startled. "We thought you were already in the War Room. We were going in to observe."

  "They are still focusing the beam." she responded, hoping what she was saying made any sense. "I took advantage of it to retrieve something I had forgotten."

  That seemed to puzzle the adept. "But your quarters are over here. I" The other, male adept poked her with his elbow and she suddenly realized the way she was sounding. Who were they, who called the Storm Princess "Highness," to question her?

  "Come, Highness. We are all going the same place," said the male diplomatically, and she had to walk out into the hall while they started walking behind her.

  Jesus! Now what? she wondered, trying to figure something out.

  At that moment there was a crackling sound behind them, like a massive electrical short, that caused them all to freeze in place. The two adepts and Sam all turned, startled, and saw a resplendent Boolean standing there, flanked by Etanalon in robes of shimmering silver and looking to Sam like the Good Witch of the North.

  There was an immediate and near blinding exchange of crackling energy between the adepts and the invading sorcerers, and, slowly, the black robes seemed to catch fire and burn with the intensity of a torch. In less than thirty seconds, both were nothing more than heaps of black ash on the great carpet.

  "Oh, dear! Now they're going to have to get that cleaned," Etanalon remarked with seeming sincerity.

  "Sorry to leave you like that," Boolean said to Sam. "We had some unexpected and unpleasant company back there and there was a nasty little spell on the door to take care of." There were the sounds of shooting and an explosion behind them in the stairwell, the sound echoing eerily in the stillness of the hall. "It seems, though, that even the defensive spells here can't tell you apart from the real thing."

  "No, but we can," said a crackling male voice from just b
ehind her back. Sam turned and saw two robed figures step out from alcoves or side stairs or someplace on either side of the big double doors that had seemed too close before and now seemed an eternity away.

  One of the sorcerers wore a yellow robe embroidered with elaborate Oriental-like designs in shimmering red; the other violet, with trim in silver. Both hoods were down, revealing one very old cadaverous man's face, the speaker, and the other, the one in violet well, it looked more like an animated death's head.

  "Nice to see you, John. You're looking quite well," said the yellow-robed sorcerer. "And you, Valentina Ilushya, have never looked more beautiful."

  "Sorry I can't say the same for you, Franz. And if that's still Tsao, I double the regret," Boolean responded. "You look dead on your feet, Tsao."

  Sam suddenly realized that she was in the midst of the cross-fire and carefully edged over to one side. Tsao pointed a skeletal finger in her direction and a bolt shot from it, but Etanalon flicked her own finger and it deflected, allowing Sam to get clear.

  Boolean sighed. "Well, this explains some of my political troubles, anyway. I always figured you for treason, Franz, but not to be subordinate to anyone else, least of all Roy. And Tsao, you were never the political type. Not since I beat you out of Masalur. Is that it? It's just revenge against me?"

  "For a hundred years I served that old man," Tsao hissed in a voice that sounded more reptilian than human. "A century! And in a mere eight years you became his favorite, you usurped my rightful position. Twenty years I spent in exile because of you!"

  "That's because you were an incompetent toady, Tsao. And because it just so happened I had my own portable computer in my trunk when I got here. Took me three years to get the current matched, but after that you didn't have a prayer. Reinventing the three-pronged outlet was the bitch. You don't have a prayer now, either, Tsao. Or do you think Etanalon is more your speed? I never fought you, Franz, but treason always motivates me."