02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (21 page)

The last thing Suzl needed was a library, but she watched from the background, and when Kasdi's picture showed, she suddenly got very interested. To the dismay of the other two, who were hardly even aware she'd followed them, Suzl leafed through the book until she found a number of familiar faces and guessed what it must be about.

Kasdi moved to pull her away, but Mervyn stopped her. "Wait. We may be on to something here."

Stringers and duggers knew Fluxlords well. They'd better, for they had to deal with them regularly. From the series of familiar faces in the book, Suzl knew what it must contain and searched frantically for one in particular. Finally Darien's page came up, and she stopped, pointed to it, then made a motion with her index finger as if she were slitting her own throat.

"Darien!" Kasdi explained. "What can she mean? That Darien's dead?"

Suzl realized from the expressions that the message was incomplete, and so again pointed to Darien, then made the same slit motion—this time across Kasdi's neck.

"I think she's accusing Darien of a plot against you," the wizard suggested.

Kasdi's look of shock and surprise told Suzl she'd scored one. She leafed back through the book, stopping every once in a while at a face she'd seen in that mob at the Hellgate and going through the same motions.

Mervyn frowned. "A wizard's revolt. This sounds ill. But where could she have learned this in so short a time?" He rustled through a pile of papers and came up with a map of the cluster. "Their route from here would be mostly like . . . so." He began to trace with his finger, and when it came close to the Hellgate Suzl reached out, grabbed his wrist, and put it directly on top.

"At the Hellgate!" Kasdi exclaimed. "So they were going to their wedding gift by a route that took them by the Hellgate, and there they saw all these wizards gathered." She stopped. "Why at the Hellgate? And how? None of those Fluxlords could even stand to be in the same land at the same time, let alone gather and cooperate on something. It explains how those two wound up in the temple, though. I thought we'd sealed those internal entries. I wonder now if they
can
be sealed?"

Again Suzl was leafing through the picture book, but did not find who she was looking for. She looked up, shook her head from side to side, then pointed at the shelves around.

Mervyn frowned. "More Fluxlord pictures? Or . . . not a Fluxlord, perhaps? Ah!" He walked over to a shelf, took down another book, brought it over to Suzl and opened it. There were, perhaps, a hundred more faces covered, but she didn't have to go far. The face of a handsome, bearded man smiling back at the observer was enough.

"Coydt van Haaz. I should have known," Kasdi sighed.

But Suzl continued to flip through and found a few more pictures as well.

"These are the prime enemy," Mervyn told the Sister. "The Seven and all those of a strong power that we know of who work with them. She has picked out a number of strong-arm wizards who work this side of World, and also Varishnikar Stomsk and Zelligman Ivan, two more of the Seven. Put them all together with the Fluxlords she picked out and you have a concentration of power that could level a Fluxland. Put that together with what
we
have learned and it spells disaster."

Kasdi looked up at the old man. "What have you learned, then?"

"A number of people who work directly or indirectly for Coydt and others of the Seven have been recruiting in both Flux and Anchor. They are looking for killers, the kind of people who have a grudge against the Church, the system, or life in general. One by one, these people have been vanishing from their usual haunts. Not just a few, or even a dozen, but hundreds. The Seven are recruiting an army."

She looked worried. "And no sign of where they are?"

"We've tried very hard to infiltrate that group, but once in Flux and with the power of the Seven we've been unable to fool them. Oh, a few we've never heard from again, but those I suspect were caught by one of high power and are now unrecognizable."

She nodded. "Do any of them have Flux power?"

"Inconsequential. A lot of false wizards, few with anything worth mentioning. What is also interesting and ties in with Suzl's information is that, despite a wonderfully vicious rogue's gallery of females, all of them have been male. That immediately puts the Coydt signature on them."

"He hates women?"

"No, not at all. He believes women to be the inferior sex, far too emotional and mentally different to be worth trusting. It gives you an idea of World ruled by Coydt. Women as the servants, slaves, and baby rearers, with no power or decision-making abilities."

"It would never work. Nobody has ever said men and women weren't different—if they weren't, they wouldn't be attracted to each other. But World has always been run with an equal partnership, with different occupations certainly, but in sum an equal sharing of power and authority. The old Church rotted when it began to make itself dominant."

"Coydt has little love for the Church or scripture. He does, however, have access to writings lost to the rest of us. His ideas are both radical and unthinkable, but I suspect they are not new ones."

She shivered. The very idea of a world totally dominated by the male ego was frightening. "And what will he do with this army now that he has it?"

Mervyn frowned. "I had suspected an attack on an Anchor, but with Suzl's information it seems likely to be a bolder plan. Considering all this, he might be thinking of attacking Hope itself. After all, an attack on Anchor would only be a temporary victory after which all the participants would be exposed. And what good would Fluxlords be in Anchor?"

"Then I'd better get back there at once."

"Yes, perhaps you should. But that leaves open the question of why he called a meeting at a Hellgate. Most of these Fluxlords would hardly look forward to opening the gates, as much as they fear the empire. It would be like risking the removal of one's heart in order to cure a badly bruised knee."

"Well, we'll soon know. I think perhaps I will pay a call on our friend Darien. He's close and I know his limits."

"You do that. I'll see to Spirit and Suzl. Save your worries for the fight that's coming. The way this is shaping up, it's an all-out attempt to stop you out of sheer desperation."

"Another Balacyn," she sighed. She remembered Balacyn. She'd still been young and idealistic then. Her whole future had been turned by the shock of seeing Matson fall in the rather minor battle for Persellus. She had been revolted by combat then, and she still had not any idea of what the old guard could do.

Balacyn taught them. All of the Seven and their cohorts were there, as well as the best wizards of the old Church, and she and the Nine and all the best on their side faced them over an obscure and meaningless little Fluxland. It had gone on for three weeks of sheer horror, and after all of the tremendous powers of wizardry were employed, it was finally decided not by magic but by sheer body count. Over a quarter of a million people had died in that terrible battle, and on the magic front, in fact, the reformed Church barely held against a terrible psychic onslaught. But they could not hold; they had to advance and crush the spreading rebellion, and so they had sent their armies in as the revolutionaries had been pushed back by magic, and Kasdi's troops, filled with the fires of revolution, had fought like wild beasts, killing the other side at a ratio of six or seven to one. Wizards, too, had died both in the battle and from the stress of it.

The old order held most of World that day, but they had to fall back, losing too much to sustain an offensive. Many wars had been fought since Balacyn, but never on such a scale again. Both sides knew that such a fight a second time would cost at least as many, and World had barely forty million people, even counting those inhabitants of all the Fluxlands. The cream of both sides had been lost at Balacyn; the next one would take a million lives and probably be just as indecisive. Both sides recognized this and had limited their actions after, for neither wanted to inherit the shell of a destroyed World.

But the old order had been losing those smaller battles and suffering more and more desertions from their sides, as the powerful and the opportunistic had perceived an eventual winner.

Were they, then, about to risk all-out war? They certainly had the wizardry for it, if Suzl was to be believed. The power, yes—but not the men. An army of even a few thousand madmen would not be nearly enough.

She went out to find Spirit and say good-bye, still brooding on these dark matters, then stopped. It was an odd feeling, unlike any she had ever felt before, a sense of something not quite right, something very close by.

Suzl, now satisfied that the message had gotten across, had been following Kasdi out when she saw the robed figure suddenly stop and look around curiously, disturbed expression on her face, then abruptly begin walking, not towards Spirit, but down a walkway and towards another of the marble buildings across the field and partially masked by some tall trees.
Now what the hell?
Suzl wondered.
It must be the power, but
I've
got the power and I don't see anything.
Now very curious, she followed the small figure along the path. Suzl did not worry about Spirit; she would know in a minute if she was wanted or needed.

Kasdi approached the strange building, the sense of strangeness and foreboding building inside her, but she stopped at the last of the trees and stepped off the walk and into partial concealment. The building was marble, like the rest, and had a series of stone steps leading up to a high porch, the roof over the porch supported by thick marble columns. There was no door as such, just a large squared cavity leading into the white stone block, but as she watched, a figure came out of that opening and looked around, yawned, and stretched. She recognized him in a minute—as would anyone who'd ever met him. She stepped out and continued to walk to the building, then up the steps to the porch area, hurrying now.

The figure hardly paid her any attention at first, but then looked at her again as she approached.

Huge brown eyes that seemed to be ready to pop out of a massive, deformed head opened even wider, and he moved to step back into the building. She saw it and shouted, "Oh, no, Jomo! You stay right where you are!"

Suzl, too, recognized that figure from their common past.

Jomo hesitated, trying to decide what to do, then turned and waited for her. When she reached him, he broke into a grin that looked so fierce and grotesque it would scare most people half to death. "Hi, Missy Cass. Been a long, long time."

So great was his bulk and so slight was she that the sight reminded Suzl of a cat trying to figure out a cow.

"Don't give me that, Jomo!" Kasdi responded sharply. "If you were glad to see me, you wouldn't have hidden out over here. How long have you been in Pericles?"

The huge dugger shrugged. "Not long."

"You know you can't lie to a wizard, Jomo. More like months, isn't it? You've been using this as your base and your hideout." And that, of course, meant that Mervyn knew a whole lot more about this business than he'd let her believe.

The big man nodded. "O.K., long time, then. Mister Mervyn, he need me."

"Where is he, Jomo?" she said firmly, but with a dread she could not conceal.

"He in the Map Room, last I know."

"Not Mervyn. You know who I mean."

"I'll take you off the hook, Jomo," said a voice from within the darkened entrance. "It's about time we got this all out anyway." With that the man walked out onto the porch and into the full light.

"Matson," she breathed.

He had changed a little in eighteen years, but not nearly so much as she had. Age had been good to Matson, making him, if anything, more ruggedly handsome than ever. Oh, his face was lined, and his hair and long, drooping moustache, which he'd just been starting to grow back then, were now partly gray, but he was trim, weathered, and in obviously excellent shape for a man who was certainly pushing the mid-fifties—and in superior shape for a man who'd died in her arms on a battlefield more than eighteen years before. He wore the all-black stringer outfit and gun belt, but was hatless and unarmed.

Kasdi swallowed hard, everything coming back in a rush. She started feeling dizzy and swayed a bit, and both Matson and Jomo ran over and steadied her and lay her down on the stone porch. She opened her eyes and saw his face looking down at her, and tears came to her eyes. "Take it easy, girl!" he said sharply, but with a real sense of concern in his tone. "I know I'm a shock, but I never thought this moment would come."

He understood what she was going through, but only slightly. Matson had taken her into slavery and then gotten her out of it. Matson had been the only man she'd ever made love to, the only man she had ever loved. And she still loved him, even after all these years, still loved him and wanted him desperately, as if all those years had never happened. Every feeling she had suppressed all those years welled up inside her so painfully she wondered if she could stand it.

And she was a Sister of the Church, bound by vow and spell not to act on any such feelings or in any way find release.

"You died in my arms,"
she wailed, choking back the tears.

"No, my little Cass," he responded, brushing back her tears. "Oh, I was good as dead, that's for sure. Nothing, no amount of magic, could have saved me in time—but you did."

"Me?" she sniffled.

He sat upon his horse, directing the artillery fire, when she'd come up. He remembered talking to her, then turning back, and then there was a tremendous explosion in his chest and he felt himself falling, and that was all. There was no pain; the shock was too great for that. There was only darkness and a curious sense of fading out, although his mind was strangely clear and he knew he was dying.

And then, suddenly, her voice had come to him in the nothingness. "No more," it said. "No more
. . ."
And he found the moment suspended, himself commanded not to die.