Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

  "We do not have to beat you!" Tsao hissed menacingly. "We need only kill your bitch, or perhaps turn her into a toad or something. You may kill us, but you will then not have the power to stop what is going on in there!"

  "Oh, I don't know," Boolean responded. "Let's you and him fight and see."

  Instantly the entire hall was ablaze in beams of magic energy, not mere lightning as with the adepts, but brilliant, blinding yellow and white light like searchlights, emanating from all four sorcerers. And in the center, where the beams clashed, equidistant from the now darkened, still forms of die sorcerers, figures took shape. Weird, demonic figures, misshapen, horrible, like the gods of some ancient tribes suddenly come to life, and they battled one another with psychic swords and hand-to-hand, or hand to claw or tentacle or whatever contacted what.

  For the fighting shapes were constantly changing: wolf-like, jaws glistening, spectral heads and snouts closed on dragon necks, and many forms were too nightmarish and too bizarre to figure out.

  Rather quickly it seemed that two were getting the upper hand, smashing and then hacking at the other two almost at will, more and more, over and over, until it almost was like kicking a guy after he was down. The figures of the losers began to shrink, first to dog size, then cat, then mouse, until heavy psychic feet stomped on them and crushed them into pulp. Sam could only watch, terrified, unable to move out of the alcove, and wondering who was what.

  As quickly as it had begun, it was over, and for a moment all Sam could see was the same four figures standing there, looking exactly the same, but unmoving. To Sam's astonishment, Boday suddenly walked between Boolean and Etanalon and right up to the enemy pair standing there. She looked at one quizzically, then the other, shrugged, and pushed the yellow-robed one over. He fell and shattered, like porcelain, on the floor. The other she also pushed, and he fell and shattered as well, only into a foul-smelling black dust.

  Boolean sighed and turned to Etanalon. "Well, that wasn't bad, was it?"

  "I was out of practice," she responded. "It took more out of me than I would have liked. Where in the world is Yobi?"

  "She comes," Boday assured them. "She had to take on another one in the fine robes of the masters along with two adepts. Crim. by the way, found some wonderful little bombs on the soldiers we took out down there. You pull this thing and throw and a few seconds later they blow up and shoot little tiny pieces of metal all over the place. We thought they might form a nice introduction to the room down there."

  "Grenades, huh? Worth a try," Boolean said, thinking. "Sam, you okay?"

  "All but my heart. I think that's in my mouth," she said shakily. "Are we gonna hav'ta go through more of that in there?"

  "No, it'll probably be a lot harder. Ah—here's Crim. Boday said you found grenades—throw bombs."

  He nodded. "Four of them, anyway. Say, Yobi was having a tough time with those guys back there. If I hadn't been able to take one of 'em out while they were all concentrating on her she'd have had it- Why didn't you…." He suddenly saw the remains of the two sorcerers. "Oh. Never mind."

  Yobi came thundering through the door, partly shattering it, looking winded. Of the trio of sorcerers, she was the only one who looked as bad as ever, but, of course, she could never be accused of looking ordinary.

  "You know who that slimy little twerp was?" she thundered. "Bolaquar! Vice Chairman of the Guild itself! No wonder nobody'd listen to us!"

  "Well, that was Franz Golimafar," Boolean responded, pointing. "And that thing over there was once Hocheen you remember him. You sense any more big shots on our back?"

  "No, but lots of adepts are about. You were right about the soldiers—mostly headquarters types. Couldn't shoot straight even at a target my size. Not too many folks here, unless the rest are all in there. I guess somebody rushed 'em into action before they were ready."

  "Yeah, well, speaking of rushed…. You feel up to the rest? Yobi? Etanalon?"

  They both nodded. "Let's get it over with while I'm still sharp," said the silver-robed sorceress. She looked at the great doors. "That's a mean set of spelts on there, though. Could take some real effort breaking through and set off all sorts of alarms to whoever's in there."

  Boolean turned to Sam. "Well, I guess that's your job, then, Sam. This time, don't close the damned door behind you. Leave it open for us to come in."

  "You think they're not layin' for us after all that?" she asked him. "Damn, you two would'a woke the dead with that fight. In fact, lookin' at the one guy, you probably did."

  "No, that's insulated in there," Etanalon told her. "If they knew, reinforcements would have come out, if there's anyone in there to reinforce. We can't get any sense of who's in there or what's happening, and if we can't, they can't."

  "Crim, Boday, you roll in to the right and left as soon as Sam's through," Boolean told them. "Crim, give Boday two of those grenades. Yeah. Fresh clips. Okay, Sam, you open that door, get behind it, and stay behind it until you hear four explosions or we tell you to come out. That should protect you from them, and maybe the surprise and shock will nail a few or take a couple of sorcerers' eyes from that globe in there back here, screwing up the system. The two of you roll in as soon as the things explode and you blast anything blastable. I doubt if you'll be able to nail anybody actually in the area around the globe. They're bound to be shielded. You just keep the slaves and military boys and whatever off our backs, and when your ammunition runs out, head for cover and stay there—understand?"

  They both nodded. Sam looked at the pair and shook her head. Crim was really grim and serious about this, but Boday was having the time of her life.

  The alchemical artist looked over at Boolean and asked. "That shield any barrier to us or just to magic types?"

  "Everybody inside, as far as shooting or the like goes. Anybody who steps outside is dead, though."

  "Even the Storm Princess?" she asked.

  "Hmmm…. No, you're right. If the Storm Princess emerges from that well down there, she's all yours. Sam stay back and unobtrusive if you can. The odds the once we've joined they won't be able to tell you and the real Storm Princess apart on the magic level, so you'll be relatively safe. If we can break that shield, or the Storm Princess comes out, you get in. Send those Changewinds elsewhere. Understand?"

  Sam nodded, not quite certain what she could do or how but willing to play it by ear. This was the big one, and her major job right now was to open that damned door. She went over to it, took a deep breath, and pushed.

  It didn't open.

  "Try pulling, dear." Etanalon suggested. "That also leaves you out here, where it's safer."

  Sam felt foolish, pulled the door open full, and then stood behind it in the hall. Boday and Crim rushed in, threw the grenades, and came right back out again. Sam almost slammed the door and inside she could hear four muffled reports. Then she opened it wide again and they went back in, shooting anything they saw.

  Boolean led, then Etanalon, and finally Yobi, they strode past the bodies of the dead sorcerers and into the great hall. Sam, feeling suddenly alone and more vulnerable out in the hall than in the eye of the storm, came in after.

  The surprise conventional grenades and subsequent machine-gun spraying had been far more effective than they'd dreamed it could be. Not prepared for trouble, watching the show blow and fascinated by it, adepts, some probably quite powerful, as well as a number of rebel officers in fully festooned uniforms, lay dead or dying all around. No amount of armor will protect someone who didn't put it on, as the bloody remains of black-robed men and women attested.

  The place looked like a miniature of the Roman Coliseum with a roof on, but the main floor was untouched by any of the carnage, any of the action above or outside. There they stood in their pentagrams, staring at that huge globe representing Akahlar, the hubs brightly glowing against the gray, semi-transparent skin of the rest, and something was happening.

  Almost a third of the globe's hubs, from Arctic to Antarctic, were blacken
ed, their lights out, as if crossed off on somebody's battle map, in a great and ugly crescent that was widening even as the globe was slowly turning.

  Sam watched from the top row of seats, spellbound, sickened by what the sight entailed. And then she looked down and saw them. There they were the man in the crimson robes with the horns on his head and her, standing there, eyes calmly fixed on that spinning globe.

  She looked back at Klittichom, feared Horned Demon of the Snows, most powerful and evil of sorcerers, and all she could marvel at was that, even in her visions and nightmares, he'd looked as huge and imposing, and now—hell, he wasn't much if any bigger than she was. A little, tiny man, which even the horns didn't help get much bigger.

  She could see, too, for the first time, the magical shield that protected them even at this stage; clear, almost totally transparent, but present sort of in a shimmery effect produced by the lights and the fact that it wasn't still but in motion.

  "He's got a spin on it somehow," Yobi noted. "Makes it hard to bum a hole through."

  "It's got to be going on its own momentum," Etanalon noted. "If we can speed it up a bit rather than slow it down, we might be able to present the same face if we can match its revolutions per minute. What do you say. Boolean?"

  "Well, if we can't brake it somehow, maybe we can get it going so fast it'll burn a hole in the floor. Let's give it a go."

  "Wait a minute'" Sam almost shouted. "Look at them! They don't even know this all happened, or that we're here! Just gimme one of the machine guns and I'll go down there and blow their fucking brains out."

  "They know, dear," Etanalon assured her. "They just don't consider us relevant right now. We are about to make ourselves relevant. Hold on."

  The shield seemed to pick up speed until the reflections were just tiny lines of light apparently suspended in the nothingness above the floor. Beams of red-hot energy shot from all three, converging on a single spot, and it began to create a black streak that widened more and more.

  The three sorcerers on the other side broke off their concentration, came out as a group, ducked under the black streak, and lined up against the trio in the seats. This time there was no introductory chatter, no insults, no nothing. The battle was immediately joined, and it nearly filled a quarter of the hall. Crim just barely got out of the way of the field of fire, and Sam walked around the top to the opposite side, away from them, and tried to think.

  Boday crept up to her. "So, Susama, how do you think it is going?"

  "Who the hell knows?" she muttered. "At least they've had to temporarily break off from the looks of it. Holy shit, Boday! That means"

  At that moment the walls supporting the entire War Room seemed to collapse in a roar, knocking her briefly forward and tumbling Boday most of the way down to the pit. She rolled, turned, and saw that those walls, perhaps the whole building, no longer existed.

  The Maelstrom was contracting onto them!

  She rolled, concentrated, and began to push it back. Oh, no you don't, bitch! I beat you once. I'll beat you again!

  On the opposite side where the sorcerer's battle was taking place, the strategy of the defenders was clear. They had their backs to the stage, as it were; Yobi, Etanalon, and Boolean all had their backs to the wall. Contract the Maelstrom down into them while pressing them or holding them in place and you engulfed them in a power they couldn't resist, couldn't change, and couldn't keep from being subject to.

  Sam could help them, immunize them, but that would put them on the outside once more with her, undefended, on the inside. And where in hell was Klittichorn?

  Damn it all, this wasn't right! Feel the storm, become the storm, control the damned storm!

  Now she was there, inside the storm, as the heart of it, but not alone. She felt and sensed the other's presence, the only other in this, her domain, who dared to be there, where even Klittichorn dared not intrude.

  "You can not win this time!" the Storm Princess taunted her. "The last time it was I who was remote from the storm attacking you at your center! Now it is you who are remote ami the storm is here, around me, where I can squeeze your fawnds!"

  With a shock, Sam realized that, while they certainly had seen her, they still thought that she was back in Masalur or someplace like that because of the child's impulses. They— even the Storm Princess—thought she, on scene, was Charley!

  She flicked her vision around to where the sorcerers were joined. Still three to three; Klittichom seemed off to one side, fiddling with something but not joining the fight, depending on the Maelstrom to finish them off. What was he fiddling with? Some kind of portable computer! He was running his shit through to see how to keep the thing up until he could get back to ruining the world!

  Once started, he can't stop until he's done it through, the words came to her. He didn't dare shut it down, so now my god, the winds were still coming, only running wild!

  Still, first things first. She turned her attention back to where her opposite number had never deviated attention from the wizard's war.

  Yobi in particular was only inches from the slowly tightening wall. For a moment Sam wondered why she didn't just contract quickly, but then she realized that there was only so much you could do and keep control without overrunning your own people. First things first; the Storm Princess was right.

  Sam reached out to the storm wall and pulled a segment out- It seemed to her like taffy, and she made it a mentally formed fist aimed straight across from one side of the closing circle to the other, right through the defending sorcerers.

  The Storm Princess saw it and tried to block, but so unexpected was the action that she deflected the Changewind segment only slightly, so that it sliced right through the middle where the sorcerers' psychic selves were battling! There were screams and some or most were affected in some way, but it was impossible to tell who or how many.

  "Damn it!" she screamed to the Storm Princess. "Stop it! This is madness! Madness! They didn't kill your mother or your people, you stupid little bitch? Klittichom ordered it to get your dumbass support for this! He suckered you like he suckered everybody else. Can't you see he's getting you to slaughter your own people in order to become a god?"

  The plea didn't work, but it took the Storm Princess's mind off the attack, and somebody over there was still clearly fighting somebody now that the Changewind element had passed and dissipated, and now even the Storm Princess would be hard-pressed to tell who was who they were fighting at an angle to the winds, on the same level!

  "Quiet, whore' slut! Usurper.' Do you think I am stupid? I am a Princess, daughter of a god and the Storm Queen, my mother. You are but a reflection, a distorted, ugly shadow of my own godhood! I alone am anointed by the gods and by my mother, who is now a Goddess above us all, to rule an Akahlar I remake because it pleases me! What is even Klittichorn to me now? I need only close the Maelstrom completely, and then there will be only one, no other!"

  Jesus! What a stupid, demented asshole! Sam thought, incredulous. And yet, and yet something in what she said. If Klittichorn was the big brain, the guy who figured all the angles, he must also have figured that she'd nail him at the end of this as well. How could he stop her? Unless….

  The hell with this. Where was this mad princess? There still on the floor, maybe ten feet from Klittichorn. And somebody else? Who? The battle over there seemed to be over. Who the hell was that?

  Klittichom turned away from the portable computer, got up, and looked straight at Boolean. The green sorcerer looked terribly old and near exhaustion, his formerly dark hair and beard now white, but, the fact was, while Klittichorn had fought no battles, he didn't exactly look in peak condition himself.

  "Hello, Roy," Boolean said softly. "You came very close to pulling it off."

  "Well, Doctor Lang, I would not have had this turn out any other way, assuming that we had to meet at all." the little man in crimson responded. "It is fitting that you should be here for the end."

  Boolean looked up at the spinni
ng globe. "Impressive gadget, Roy, but I make only a quarter of the hubs gone. Your three sorcerers are gone, and even I can't tell which Storm Princess is which at the moment."

  Klittichom chuckled. "You are weak. Doctor Lang. Too much has gone out of you. All you have done by this is murder about a hundred million people instead of letting them be transformed into something different. And that will be sufficient for me. I did not want to murder them, but you forced me to do so. Then I will dispose of the pitiful wreck that is all that remains of you, then I will achieve First Rank, and bring logic and order to this chaos as my destiny commands."

  "What do you mean, murder?"

  "You see those red dots up there? Each one represents a bomb, each scientifically worked out as to its placement, geography, and kilotonnage to completely eradicate all life within each of the hubs. The timers began the moment we activated the full system. Naturally, any that we were able to cover in the more merciful Changewind manner were transformed along with the lands and people and are no more. The rest, they will begin going off any time now. The signal has been given, was given, the moment I had to shut down the progression. You can not believe how long I have planned this, covering every eventuality, even this. Nor do I care which little bitch is which. Either one will do."

  Boolean blanched. "Roy, have you gone mad? I dishonored you. I admit that. Perhaps in a few minutes I will pay the price for it. I don't think I deserve it, but at least I can understand how it would be justice to you. But you're talking about genocide, Roy! My God, would you dishonor your own parents? Have you looked at yourself, Roy? I no longer see the face of the victim, I see the face of the Khmer Rouge there, murdering, slaughtering millions of their own. How can you become like them, Roy? How can you give those who murdered your family and enslaved you for so long the final victory?"

  "I reject your pitiful moralizing!" Klittichorn snapped back. "The man you knew is no more! /have replaced him!/, in human form, have become the incarnation of Siva, the destroyer of Universes! What is done here is nothing compared to what I do merely for sport! The girl, can you not recognize her by her mastery of such energy as Durga, the Goddess of Death? And your girl her other aspect. Kali? Soon we shall combine, we two, in the Dance that Heralds the End of the World, and lose our Earthly aspects, having done our duty, and resume our rightful place at the left hand of Isvara Brahman, there to witness the timeless recreation of a better world' You see everything only with the blind eyes and arrogant ignorance of the westerner! You who so polluted and defiled poor Cambodia that I had to send the dark children to wipe them out, to purge them of the west and its evil! Come! Let us do our little dance, corrupter of souls, so that I may get on and do mine!"