02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (35 page)

"Do you know what you've been worshipping all these years? A giant bag of poisonous gasses! A world, just like
this
world, but so huge it keeps us in its gravity as a natural captive. A world so foul and poisonous nothing could live there. The stars are but other worlds, more distant than our own."

She had already lost her faith, but there was underneath still a bedrock that sustained her, told her she knew her place in the universe. The empire had been a device for powerful men to rule indirectly what they could not directly have. They had wanted Anchor, and she had delivered the Church to them while sacrificing all. Now Coydt was saying that even the faith had been a lie, that there was nothing out there but science and nature. The thought of the Soul Rider came to her.

"But I have seen the supernatural, had it in my body, had it guide me here to this place!"

He was unmoved.
"Machines and unnatural and artificial life, or life perhaps left over from the time before men were here! There are no gods and goddesses except those here on World! Those with the power are the gods! There is nothing else!"

The energy from him intensified, and she found it more and more difficult to counter it. She thought fast, knowing that she could not sustain it long, that her defense now was being sustained only by her contempt for him and for what he had done to her family. She reached out to Suzl, who sent her the power, and for a moment the combined assault staggered him.

But only for a moment. Suzl's power was raw, untrained, unformed. A shard of crackling yellow-white light came from his side and joined the link with Suzl, then traveled up it, overwhelming it. Suzl cried out in sudden pain, and the link was diverted. Now her power, despite all her efforts, was flowing not to Kasdi but to Coydt. He burned with a new fury, a new sense of triumph, and he attacked with renewed force and vigor.
"I
am the way, the truth, the light!"
he trumpeted.
"On your knees before me and worship me!"

A tremendous force, like a giant's hand, pressed on her, and she fell to her knees.
"This is the man who crippled Spirit and killed my father!"
she kept repeating to herself over and over, trying to drown out his force and his will. Her clothing burned away from her, and the force pushed against her head, bowing it down.

"Itis meaningless to resist further,"
he argued.
"I am the god of World, and my name is Power. I can grant any wish, or visit any calamity, when, where, and how I choose and on whomever I choose! Fight me no more! Surrender control of your power to me, and be the priestess of my Church! You shall have your daughter and grandson and friends, and you will have no worries, no cares, no pressures upon you. I will take away those things and give you peace. Otherwise you shall die, and as you truly know in your heart, you will be dead forever."

The vision of her father, bleeding, rotting, hanging from a pole came to her, and she summoned enough strength to raise her head and look him in the eye. It was, she realized, the last thing she had to throw at him. Already his visions of her as she would be were creeping into her mind, looking desirable, alluring, and she was having more and more trouble casting them out. Her head drooped again, and she felt so tired, so sick of it all. . . . "No!" she cried. "No!" And drew her last ounce of strength.

There was a loud explosion, and suddenly Coydt cried out and fell forward. She barely had the strength to move out of his way, but she saw in his back an enormous hole,
a
tremendous outpouring of blood, and she heard him scream and moan as she felt the power weaken as he withdrew it into himself.

He almost won it back by her confusion and hesitancy, but she saw his bloody back and drew on what reserves she couldn't possibly know or guess that she had. He screamed again, but the pain and damage were so great, the shock and loss of blood so severe, that he could sustain his life or fight off her attack.

A tall, dark figure behind her lowered his shotgun and broke it, inserting two more shells. Coydt managed to turn himself over onto his side and see the man standing there. "Matson," he croaked, blood running from his mouth. "Why?"

"You shouldn't have done that to the girl, Coydt. She was kin."

Kasdi had not the strength to attack or to do much of anything, but she had enough to keep Coydt from coming up with any kind of repair spell. But he wasn't through yet, and he managed to chuckle, coughing up blood and phlegm as he did so.

"Done in by a man with the power of a shotgun. My own fault. First time I got careless in four hundred years." He coughed again, as his life poured onto the spongy Flux surface. He still had enough strength to stem the flow, but he knew that too much of his insides were messed up. He had the power to heal himself, but if he took the concentration and time to do the spell, Kasdi would have a free hand to do with him as she willed. He knew it, and he made his decision.

"You think you've killed me, but you haven't. You haven't begun to kill me yet. You must kill a million before you kill me. I've still got your empire. All you have done is guarantee that at some point in the future the Hellgates will be opened." He coughed some more and seemed to fade for a moment, but Kasdi was on guard and knew he was still alive. Any less powerful man, in Flux or Anchor, would be gone long before.

He opened his eyes and managed a smile. "And now I will make you mine," he said softly. She realized what he was doing, but he put so much force of will into it and she was so weakened she couldn't stop it.

Coydt took upon himself
her
binding spells. His body twitched and shimmered, and lying there was a mannish-looking woman, still big and powerful, and still dying. And he/she started laughing, then laughing and choking. There was a sudden convulsion of the whole body, and then the life force simply went out of it.

Coydt van Haaz was dead.

A dull explosion was heard, followed by a second, and then off to the south the whole of Flux seemed to flare into blinding power, but only for a brief instant.

The power was distributed in all directions, but was more intense because it was limited by and deflected from the Anchor boundary. They all felt a brief burning sensation, and then it was gone. With a start, Kasdi realized that her skin had turned a deep brown.

"I guess I put the things where they should've gone," Matson said dryly. She turned and looked up at him, and saw that he was burned, too, on his face and hands. She had neither his clothing nor facial hair, and had taken it evenly all over. She looked back down at Coydt's dead body.

"He finally found the way to break his binding spell," she said softly.

17

HARD CHOICES

Cass made her way over to Suzl, who hadn't moved much in the whole affair. The gross malformation was the worst Suzl had ever been and among the worst that Cass had ever seen. The woman was unnaturally balanced and grossly obscene.

"Let's see what we can do for you, Suzl," Cass said, and started examining the spell. She frowned. This was no spur-of-the-moment spell; it had been prepared in advance and custom-tailored to Suzl. It was in Spirit language and monstrously complicated.

"Don't fool with it, Cass," Suzl warned. "I may not understand a spell from a bill of lading, but I know curses when I see them. This thing has a million traps in it for anyone trying to take it out, and you don't know this language. I do. I've been looking at it this way and that for a little while."

Cass sighed. "Well, Mervyn and the others should be here soon. They might have better luck."

Suzl chuckled mirthlessly. "Yeah, he'll have a lot of nice psychology spells that will make me think this is just
wonderful
to be this way. He couldn't even lick the old curse, and that was child's play compared to this one. Coydt had everything planned out from the start. Everything but Mat-son's shotgun. At least I owed him that. He never knew Matson was here, and that was his only mistake."

"Perhaps if you can link with the Soul Rider—"

"Fat chance. Even if I could, it would revert Spirit. And Coydt knew the Soul Rider's langauge, too. I'll bet that somewhere in this spell there's a nasty little thing that would add on to Spirit's curse. She has enough trouble in Flux without turning into a
thing like I am."

Cass sighed. "But what's the alternative?"

"Cass, Coydt had a very evil mind. I doubt if I have ever known anybody more totally evil and yet so damned smart. Whatever he touched he corrupted, and that's still true. I have a way out that he gave to me. I think it's the only way out for many, many years."

Cass was shocked. "Not that binding spell! Suzl! It would turn you into a different
kind
of thing, one just as unpleasant."

Suzl sighed. "I'm tired, Cass. Real tired. All my life I've been owned by somebody and took orders. Every time Flux touched me, it was to turn me into something more strange, more grotesque. I was owned by the Church, then owned by stringers, then owned by the Soul Rider. None of 'em ever gave a damn about me. Even Spirit was a lie, just the Soul Rider hyping both of us up because it needed somebody to do its dirty work for it."

"I'm tired, too, Suzl. I've been as much a victim and a pawn as you have, but I didn't really realize it until just a little while ago. Now I'm free, for the first time. I don't know why he did it, but he freed me."

"You really think so, Cass? I think
I
know why he did it, and I think Matson does, too. Tell me, Cass—could you take back on yourself all those binding spells and restrictions right now?"

"No. Never again. Even if there was a real need. Even if life depended on it. I could
never
bring myself to do it."

"Then he's got you, too, just like me. He's undermined the whole Church with what he did to Anchor Logh so quickly and easily. But the Church, and the empire, could stand that. You see, he's also taken away its foundation, the rock on which your Church and revolution sit. They won't march off to fight any more if their own homes are in such mortal danger, and they don't have the symbol, the example, to lean against and be inspired by. They don't have you anymore."

"I made my sacrifices! I deserve some reward!"

"Yeah, you have and you do. But that's not the way it'll be seen by others. They'll march for a saint, Cass, but not for a Fluxlord. And with nothing to keep your power, your temper, your wants and your needs down, that power will corrupt you just like it did all of them, Coydt included. He trapped you just as sure as he trapped me."

"Suzl—promise me you won't do anything rash until the wizards get here and I can sort this out. Will you at least do that?"

She nodded. "For a little while."

Relieved, Cass looked around. "Where's Matson?"

A fairly strong force had been waiting on standby north of Lamoine, but Coydt had ordered them well back and it had taken some time for Weiz to make it back to the town and then send a runner with the news. Now they rode forward to the wall. The fires were out, but it was still a smoking ruin up there.

General Shabir, chief administrator of the riding, looked disgusted. "I
told
him that it was a pushover. You know what he said? 'I
want
a pushover, but a convincing one.' "

Weiz nodded. The steps were in ruins, but were still serviceable for about three quarters of the distance. It wasn't easy, but a crew managed to get up with hooks and ropes and lower down netting for the troopers to climb up. One of the first to survey the apron from the top turned and shouted back, "Sir! There's a lone civilian standing there just below us! Looks like a stringer! He says he wants to talk to you!"

"Don't shoot!" Shabir ordered. "Tell him I'm coming up. Keep him covered, but that's all!" He turned to Weiz. "Want to come with me?"

The captain nodded.

The stairs on the side leading to the apron had been blown out about a meter, but they had somehow escaped catching fire. They were singed, but serviceable, and were easily drawn back and secured with hooks. With a hundred guns trained on him, Matson stood calmly and waited for the brass to show up.

The military men approached him cautiously but correctly. He had dropped his weapons belt and was clearly unarmed. "My name is Matson," he told them, not offering his hand. "Coydt van Haas is dead. Your wizard is dead over there, and I've blown up your pretty machine. If we can't come to some agreement fast, in an hour or so an awful lot of power is going to burst right through that area right there."

The military men swallowed hard at the news. Dimly, in the void, they could see where the machine should have been, and there was nothing.

"One of you wouldn't happen to have a cigar on you, would you?" the stringer asked. "I'm dying for a smoke."

One of the infantrymen looked to the officers, who nodded, then handed Matson a cigar and a safety match. He lit it and seemed much more content.

"If what you say is true," the general said slowly, "then it is the end of Anchor Logh. Many of my men are scum, I freely admit, but they've been made that way. They've marched and died on command in other people's armies for nothing. The Fluxlord I once served, and deserted for this, is a particularly nasty sort. The military leadership here is experienced and superior. They were given a chance to take their own land, and they did it. They will not return to the way they were, and they will leave this place a costly hell."

The stringer nodded. "I figured as much. That's why we have to take this time to make a deal. We have to keep all this quiet from the rest of Anchor Logh, or the other wizards will panic and let the shields drop as they run, and everybody will be primed for the last stand. Then it might be too late."

The general frowned. "Too late for what?"

"A deal. Suppose there was no invasion outside of this small area? Suppose we let you keep Anchor Logh and run it without any interference? What would you say then?"