Empires of Flux & Anchor

9 WEDDING GIFTS

Kasdi looked pale. “Even when I heard, I could hardly believe it. I mean, how often does your best friend fall in love with your daughter? And Suzl? She’s the same age as I am!”

“You know age isn’t what’s bothering you,” Mervyn responded accusingly. “You love Suzl, and you love duggers, but she’s a dugger and a freak and she’s gone and taken your daughter, not somebody else’s.”

She stared at him, but knew that he spoke true. “All right, I admit it, but Heaven help me, I can’t get rid of it. I had hoped for some strong, handsome wizard. That may have been the mother talking or a girlish fantasy, but nothing in Spirit’s background says this is even remotely thinkable. The list of boys she turned down is amazing, and the ones she went out with were all big, handsome, virile types.”

“But her circumstance and her way of looking at things have changed. Ever see the way she looks at a flower? As if she can see right through the surface to some inner beauty and complexity? She sees everything, and everybody, that way. I think we’d all be better off if we could think or see others only that way.”

“But Suzl’s always been so impulsive and irresponsible!”

“Not now. Oh, to everyone else, yes. But not towards Spirit. After all those years and all those ugly people and spells, she needed somebody badly—and she got that somebody. She always put on a big front, and she still does, but it was an act. She was miserable and she hated herself and almost everything else. She doesn’t, not anymore.”

“I still want to see them—right away.”

Mervyn grinned. “Suzl predicted you would, and said they’d wait. Um—Kasdi. Don’t muck it up. I doubt if you could, considering the nature of that spell, but don’t muck it up. They’re really happy.”

“I just want to talk to them.”

“Go then. But take care. Coydt has dropped out of sight of late, and there are rumblings that whatever those evil ones are planning is close at hand. Also, there is more to this Spirit and Suzl business than was at first apparent. It may be connected. I know that we have some divine intervention at work here, and it’s working in its usual mysterious fashion.”

She stared at him. “You mean the Soul Rider?”

He nodded. “It is interesting, but the new spell linking both of them is organized in much the same way as the language Coydt imposed on Spirit, but it does not bear her signature. I begin to suspect that the spell that Spirit has is only superficially the spell that Coydt designed for her. It looks right, smells right, tastes right, even to me and certainly to Coydt who must have checked the work, but I think he got took. I think that language is Soul Rider language—the pure mathematics of Flux married to the human brain, a brain in which it was designed to ride as a supplement and observer, but which now thinks just that same way. Our Soul Rider, I think, has plans for Spirit and for Suzl, too—and perhaps as well for our friend Coydt.”

There was nothing to say to that, so she let it pass. “Anything new on this Matson business?”

“No. He’s been effectively disposing of Coydt’s agents in Anchor, including some of the best, while keeping out of sight himself. He lets Jomo draw the flies, then traps them, milks them for information, and disposes of them. He’s getting closer—or was, until Coydt dropped out of sight. Since then, our mysterious “friend dropped out as well. The fact that Coydt chose to go underground rather than face down his foe is uncharacteristic. It means the evil one has something more important to do. It all begins to sound ominous.”

“Let them try their worst,” she replied. “I don’t fear it—I welcome it. Let’s get it out in the open so we can deal with it. I respect their power and the deviousness of their minds, but I don’t fear their attempts. But now, I suppose I should fly. It is not every day that your best friend takes up with your daughter and fathers her child.”

To Suzl it was like being reborn. She was happy, truly happy, and very excited about life. She didn’t care what anyone else thought about the way she looked, and she liked things just fine. In fact, she’d fight the whole world and spit in its eye if it didn’t like her, or Spirit, or anything else they liked or did. And that went for dear old Cass, too, who, she knew, was inevitably coming.

Wizards traveled conventionally only when it suited their needs. Otherwise, they transformed themselves into birdlike creatures and sped to places perhaps weeks of travel away in a matter of hours.

When she arrived in Pericles and reformed into her familiar self, she went immediately to where the two were. She found Suzl sitting on a rock playing a tune on the octarina as a bunch of satyrs danced. Spirit lounged lazily beside her, stroking her a bit. It was disconcerting to Kasdi to see the affection.

Suzl stopped playing and got up. “Hi, Cass. We knew you’d be along sooner or later.” The satyrs looked miffed, but stopped and wandered off.

She was somewhat shocked by Suzl’s appearance. Although Mervyn had prepared her somewhat, it was not the same person she’d known. The face was more than ever the old, cute Suzl she’d known, but the body was extremely bizarre and unsettling. She was a head shorter than Kasdi now, no more than one-hundred-forty centimeters. Her arms were short and stubby and barely reached her waist—or, rather, where her waist should have been. Two enormous, impossibly firm breasts stretched out a full thirty centimeters, and while she had a short, fat stomach, it seemed as if her thighs began just below the breasts and were certainly more than half her body, and her back curved into it, giving her an almost birdlike gait. The male organ, which seemed to have grown to about fifteen centimeters, rested on a leathery forward scrotum in a state of permanent semi-erection, but it did allow her freedom to walk. Spirit seemed to have a preference for long hair, though. Both her lush auburn hair and Suzl’s thick black hair reached like capes almost to their ankles.

Spirit was as lovely as ever, but her breasts were obviously enlarged and below them was an extremely prominent and obvious bulge. She looked as if she’d swallowed the world’s largest melon. And she looked very content and very happy. “Want to tell me how all this came about?” Suzl shrugged. “It just… happened, that’s all.”

“But you’re old enough to be her mother. Father, anyway,” she said, repeating her lame argument that had not worked on Mervyn.

Suzl grinned. “Yeah, I’m the same age as you, but I don’t look it or feel it like you do. Come on—you know the age isn’t bothering you, nor even who I am. It’s what I am that disturbs you. Some of my best friends are freaks, but I don’t like my daughter marrying one.”

She started to reply, then closed her mouth, wondering if Suzl had given the comments to Mervyn or if it had been the other way around. Nevertheless, what Suzl said was still true, but she had felt forced to say it, and although she felt a little ashamed of herself, it didn’t change the gut feeling of wrongness inside her, however much her vows kept her from acting on the prejudice. “All right,” she said finally, “I accept that. But—do you two really love each other?”

“You can’t know how much,” Suzl replied, and Kasdi was both surprised and shocked to see Spirit nod and smile.

“Can she understand me now?”

“Not in the sense you and I can. Actually, not you at all, except through me. We can’t talk, but we know each other better than any two people I ever heard of. Call it reading emotions or feelings or whatever, but it’s got most conversation beat to Hell, I’ll tell you that.”

“But—what about you? Particularly in Anchor. How do they react?”

Suzl grinned. “More shocked than with any dugger I ever saw, of course. But I love it, and you know the rules. You wrote ’em. If it’s the result of an involuntary spell, standards can’t be applied against a Fluxer in Anchor. Not your Anchors, anyway. I actually went into a temple a while back and registered myself. I am now, legally and officially, an Anchor-born male with Flux spells and dispensation. It drove the bureaucrats nuts, but they couldn’t deny the sex. I can wear clothes again, if I could ever find a fit, but I won’t because Spirit doesn’t want it.” She paused for a moment, growing serious. “You’re very upset. Am I really such a shock to you?”

She looked at the dugger and had to nod sadly.

“Yes. I’m sorry, Suzl. May Heaven forgive me, but I have to be honest, particularly with you.”

“Well, this body’s no fun to travel with, but it is the most excessive in a small area I think possible. I didn’t ask for any of it. I was born short, and when my body was adjusted to carry all this, I wound up even shorter. Eighteen years of different wizards with crazy ideas and a lot of power did this to me, and if you’d stayed a dugger in Flux all those years without any Flux power, you would have wound up at least as different. What I couldn’t handle, though, up here in the brain, was fixed by wizards. I don’t care if I’m a monster to you, or to all of World. I’m not a monster to Spirit, or to myself, and that’s all that counts. Don’t you pity her or me. We pity you and your prejudices.

“All this time I’ve been playing at being a woman when actually I’m a man. I’m a man with a magically deformed body. All I wanted was two things—to forget the play acting and say, ‘Here I am; take me as I really am,’ and somebody who’d totally ignore what I looked like on the outside and see me as a human being and nothing else. Well, finally I got it all, and there’s nothing more I want. I love her, Cass, more than you know, and she loves me the same despite what you see.”

Kasdi was touched by Suzl’s frankness and sincerity, and it was clear just by the way Spirit looked at her and stroked her body that it was in fact mutual. She would have to accept it, she knew, no matter what her inner feelings and prejudices. But she knew Suzl well, and she wondered how long all this would last.

“Suzl—this will sound funny, all things considered, and I know your feelings about religion, but—are you sincere enough in this to marry her in a binding spell in Flux?”

“In a minute,” came the unhesitating response.

Kasdi thought a minute. “But how can Spirit take the vows? Or even understand them?”

“She will. If you’re big enough, we’ll do it right here and now with you performing the service. Spirit understands and goes along.”

Kasdi looked at Spirit and got the odd feeling that she did understand all this.

“All right, then. Join hands and come forward.”

The service was simple, the spell voluntary but binding. It was actually less a spell than a locking in of what was already there, and what was there was more than in ninety percent of all marriages. Spirit could not follow the service, but she accepted the spell in the same way Suzl did.

Something stirred, coming from none of the three humans. Kasdi saw and felt it, and was somewhat startled by it. The binding spell merged with the odd linking spell, absolutely freezing their emotional bond at the level it then was, which was high indeed. They would never separate of their own accord as long as they both lived.

They embraced and kissed passionately, and it was done and official.

Mervyn arrived and seemed satisfied at this resolution. He had been very nervous of Kasdi up to the bitter end.

Kasdi remained with them a while, ashamed of her own prejudices, but she knew she had to get back shortly. No one even knew where she was at this point. She explained the situation to Suzl, who nodded.

“We must be leaving, too.”

Kasdi looked at Spirit. “What? Now?”

“I’ve given them a wedding present,” Mervyn told her. “It’s a small new Fluxland not on any maps, and only Spirit can see the string that leads there. I’ll show you where it is, but nobody can pass the shield except Spirit, Suzl, and those whom they allow. Yet it’s within your cluster and within easy reach of any of us. It’s a tropical garden, with some pretty lakes and waterfalls and lots of harmless wildlife. Though not very large, about ten kilometers by ten, it will support them without need for magic or fear. It’s a refuge, a home. Spirit could not create it, but Suzl was able to tell me what they both wished, and so I created it and gave it to them. Spirit most certainly can maintain it, and that shield is total self-protection. A few of my people, centaurs and mermaids mostly, will be there to help them with any problems, and may stay if these two wish it.”

“I can ride a horse again,” Suzl added, “and it’s only three days. We want the child born there. It’s in Flux, so there’s no real danger or pain.”

“I was thinking about the journey. Maybe you can ride, but Spirit can’t. And she’s certainly in no condition to run.”

“She’s in great shape and she can make it. Just sure and easy. Don’t worry so much. You’re going to be a grandma.”

Suzl appreciated the special saddle that allowed her to ride normally once more. Spirit knew where they were going, somehow—she always knew, it seemed—and led them back to the main string. She was using her Flux power to compensate for her off-balance condition, but kept a steady walking pace.

Spirit was feeling wonderful these days. Suzl was her rock and link to humanity. She knew, too, that Suzl was at last at peace with herself, and that was wonderful. The dugger’s bizarre and sexually provocative appearance was somehow wonderful, too. She was unique and different, as Spirit was unique and different. She loved every bit of Suzl, particularly that restored and strong self beneath that odd exterior. She felt Suzl’s love and devotion and, yes, strength, and returned it in full measure. They would not just have a child; they would have a lot of children. The new life beginning inside her excited and thrilled her.

Suzl had wondered, and continued to wonder, what the child would look like. Would the genetics be Dar’s, or those of her old self, or the way she was now? Mervyn had said that if it had been in Anchor the genes would be Dar’s, but in Flux it could be any way at all.

They turned off the main string which was leading them to Anchor and headed directly for their new haven. Although neither realized it, within half a day they approached the huge caldera that was the Hellgate itself. Once Spirit saw it, though, she felt curiously drawn to it. Suzl, in all her years in Flux, and never seen one, so they let curiosity get the better of them.

At one point along the huge, concave dish-shaped depression there was a metal ladder. Suzl, with her short arms and prominences, did not like the idea of climbing down that ladder, and even less did she like the idea of a pregnant Spirit descending it, but Spirit was adamant and so she had no choice.

In the center was a smaller hole, with another ladder going down. Suzl feared the Guardians, fierce creatures none had ever lived to tell about, who blocked this way into the gates, but she also knew from Cass’s experiences that, when you were with a Soul Rider, the guardians let you pass.

The ladder this time was very short, and when Spirit reached bottom, the whole section of tunnel glowed. Suzl could only follow and worry. As they walked, the glowing section in back of them would fade out and the one ahead would glow. Finally they reached the end of the tunnel, where they saw a whirling vortex of pure energy spiraling not inward but outward and then, to Suzl’s eyes, vanishing in the tunnel. To one side was a large console with a tremendous number of buttons and controls that softly hummed.

Spirit went right up to the vortex, and Suzl feared that she would try and step inside, but she stopped just in front of it. Spirit alone saw and felt the vast amount of energy coming from that whirling fury. She saw it, felt it, and let it soak into her. Suddenly she turned and seemed, even to Suzl, to be even more beautiful, even more alluring than ever, and she was somehow glowing.

Make love to me. Now. Here. With all your passion.

All thoughts but that vanished from Suzl’s mind. She felt the roaring energy now, but had no thoughts, only emotions.

All that binds me, I keep. All that I have to give I give to you, freely, now and forever. Together only we are one, indivisible.

It went on for hours and hours, until both passed out.

Suzl awoke first, sat up, and shook her head. She remembered what had happened, and where, but she could not understand why. Her first fear was for the baby, and she looked around and saw Spirit sleeping soundly on the floor of the tunnel, looking apparently unhurt. But Suzl also saw more, things she had never seen before.

Something had been done to them; something had been radically changed, and it required thought. Suzl could see the complex lines of force linking herself with Spirit and could see the massive rush of energy emerging from the vortex outward and into the very wall of the tunnel. She knew she was seeing what wizards could see, but she saw more than they usually did. Although few had ever been inside a Hellgate and even fewer had survived to tell about it, she knew the general layout. What she hadn’t expected to see were four outlets arranged around the vortex between the machine and the swirl itself, one on each wall and one on the ceiling and another on the floor, each forming a unique pattern of its own. It was, she thought, something like a children’s connect-the-dots puzzle. You just stood there and traced the proper pattern and… what? The thing opened, and it took you to Anchor.

She frowned. This was all new to her, and although she’d heard Cass tell the tale of her own entry, it had never been this clear or this obvious. She was lousy in math and had nearly flunked geometry, but she had instantly recognized and grasped the purposes of the four outlets through which the power flowed. Flowed, in fact, into the temple basements, where it was tapped and stepped down and converted into usable electricity for each of the capitals.

The machine was another story. Always the conventional wisdom and the teaching of the Church had said that those machines sealed the Hellgates to prevent the return of the evil ones—but it wasn’t so. It was, in fact, obviously the vortex that prevented it. The free energy was far too violently agitated to permit any sort of passage. It would instantly atomize anything solid and scramble any energy pattern. The key to unlocking the gate, if in fact it was a gate and there was another side, was just as obviously not a combination of button and switch pushing on the machines, but something far more complex, something having to do with the vortex itself.

Part of the machine’s job was to tame and route the energy that flowed from the vortex as an escape valve for its own situation, but that was only part of it. The machine blocked and directed the energy flow, but the four waveform groups were each rearranged into a complex pattern, probably the most complex type of pattern possible. And yet—each pattern was only superficially similar. Each was also unique.

With growing wonder, she thought she had the answer. Anchors were not distinct from Flux; they were a part of it. Just as wizards created Fluxlands out of their own minds, so the four Anchors were created by the builders of the machine and were stabilized by it. She thought of the fear most Anchor folk had of Flux and Fluxers and of the terrible prejudice they had shown her, and she had to chuckle. They and their world were as much a Fluxland as, say, Pericles—only, since they were fully determined by machine, the Anchors were unvarying and rock-stable.

All this was new to World’s knowledge, as far as she knew, and yet it seemed so obvious to her, totally new and untrained. Obvious…

She directed her new sense inwardly and saw the tangled mass of spells that had been heaped upon her, starting with that idiot curse. The intricacies had baffled the best wizards, including Mervyn, but they were perfectly clear to her. She formulated a complex series of strung-together counters and sent them down, and watched the patterns neutralize, dissolve, and vanish. As she did, she felt a little dizzy and shook her head. When it passed, she looked down at herself again.

There was no penis. The breasts were large, but about the size they had been eighteen years ago. She was chubby, just like then, but that was all. With a feeling of horror, she realized suddenly what she had so casually done. All the spells were gone. All of them—except one. The odd linking spell to Spirit remained, rock-solid and beyond her newly found power and understanding to undo. It was, in fact, still oddly familiar, and she looked back up at the great machine before the vortex and saw what it was.

The spell was of the same type as those being generated by the machine. Oh, infinitely simpler, but still of the same type and of the same oddly inhuman pattern. Was in fact the Soul Rider not a creature at all, but an extension of another machine somewhere?

Spirit moaned and turned slightly, bringing Suzl back to her immediate situation. She’d dissolved all the spells, and she was now, physically, an eighteen-year-old totally female female. All the physical and mental spells that had created a weird, artificial freak were gone. All that effort on Mervyn’s part had been totally wasted.

Or had it? She wondered about that for a moment. She had made the choice to remain a freak forever, and that was important. Nor had she regretted it one bit. Spirit had known and understood the sacrifice. She had also forced Cass to stare at her own human weaknesses and prejudices, and to overcome them. That, too, was important.

And now Spirit had brought them both here, had drawn in and diverted a fantastic amount of power from the primary source. The Soul Rider might have determined the route, but she was absolutely certain that Spirit had understood exactly what she was doing. Suzl stared at the sleeping pregnant woman again, knowing that her love was still firm and her commitment sure. She looked inside, beyond, following the linking spell to Coydt’s spell. No, it wasn’t quite. Mervyn was right, although he hadn’t put his finger on it. The spell was only superficially Coydt’s. The evil one’s work was overlaid on another spell—a machine spell. She followed Coydt’s work and easily stripped it away, leaving only the actual spell in place. She examined it and saw that it was related to the others. That was why Spirit was immune to most spells. In a sense, she was as stabilized physically as an Anchor.

She realized with a sudden shock that Spirit had no Flux power. Yes, the Soul Rider was still there, its aura creating a curious double image of Spirit if looked at in a wizard’s way. All of Spirit’s power, and perhaps more considering the overload, had been transferred to her. She knew that this was impossible—it was known by all that Flux power could not be transferred, conferred, increased or decreased in an individual—but that’s what had happened. And Spirit had known she was doing it, even if the Soul Rider had told her how.

Tears came to Suzl’s eyes as she realized that Spirit had made the ultimate sacrifice for her, just as she had made her choice in Pericles for Spirit’s sake. But the Soul Rider, too, had won and beaten Coydt’s game.

It was suddenly quite clear who was feeding all this understanding to her and why she had such easy use of the power. The Soul Rider, prevented from using the power through Spirit, now could deal, by virtue of that linking spell, through Suzl.

We are one… Indivisible.

Now Suzl had the power and Spirit had the Soul Rider with the knowledge of how to use that power. Apart, the Soul Rider was powerless, and Suzl’s power would be meaningless, since, as she had reflected, she was poor in those very aptitudes and skills so needed to make use of it. On a practical level, Spirit would be entirely at Suzl’s mercy in Flux, while her own demonstrated physical skills would make her the boss in Anchor. Spirit would still see the things in nature and have the joys she had, and Suzl would be her connection with humanity. It was a perfect partnership, with one hitch. She no longer had the one thing that would make them opposites.

Spirit stirred, moaned a bit, then opened her eyes and looked at Suzl, who felt sudden apprehension and fear. But Spirit smiled and her face took on the look of childlike delight. That special bond of communication through the linking spell was still there.

It worked! Spirit did not say it, nor were words communicated, but the idea and the excitement came through.

Suzl nodded. Yes, but…

Spirit sat up, then got unsteadily to her feet with Suzl’s assistance. The bulging stomach was something of a problem on a rounded surface, and they were still in a tube. This is what you are really like.

Suzl nodded again.

You are cute/attractive/erotic. She halted for a moment. Did you fear I would no longer love you?

Suzl acknowledged the fear she knew Spirit had already sensed and understood. Somehow, the new wizard understood, Spirit retained that ability to look at people and things in ways no other human could.

You are the same inside.

But not outside.

There was a slight blurring of the double imaging, and along the linking spell floated a few more patterns. Suzl received them, and instantly she knew them for what they were and felt both silly and relieved.

She had the power. Lots of it. If Kasdi could change into a half-bird and if wizards could change people into plants or substitute wheels for legs or merge human and horse, then what was a simple sex organ? She was back to basics, but her dual nature was still there if she wished or needed it. She could be anything she needed to be—providing somebody, the Soul Rider or another wizard, told her the spell. Spirit had realized this from the start, but she had been blind to it. It wasn’t the same as Mervyn’s neutralization, for she had the power. In point of fact, to all those with strong Flux power, sexual identity and appearance was merely a matter of personal preference, like the kind of clothing you wore or the kind of food you liked.

Suzl suddenly felt better than she ever had in her entire life. She was free, totally free, and in love, and she had the power! She wondered suddenly if power flowed both ways along that linking spell, and tried it. It did, indeed. Spirit, then, was not totally powerless after all. She could still read the strings and take what was needed—from Suzl. They needed each other more than ever.

We should go now.

Spirit agreed, and they made their way back along the fearsome tunnel. Suzl found it much easier to go up ladders now, and she led and got to the top and started to haul herself out when something made her stop and look around. What she saw made her duck back down, almost kicking Spirit in the face.

Up on the rim, near the far ladder, were a whole host of human figures, most on horseback. They weren’t alone.

Spirit sensed the danger and quickly went back a bit in the tunnel, but Suzl decided to risk another peek. If the Soul Rider was willing, she’d like to know just what was going on up there.

She risked poking her head up and wished for some way to find out what all that was about. Not only did she want to know for curiosity’s sake; she also knew that she’d left her horse tethered to that ladder up there, so they must know that someone was down here.

Energy flowed from her directly to the rim, and she found that she had limits that seemed contrary to logic. She could not make out any of the words being said, but she could see them clearly, and she saw at once that they were all wizards of great power. Two had, in fact, discovered her horse, and they were obviously discussing its implications. She hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t draw the correct conclusions, and cursed her inability to make out the words.

“… Queer saddle. Must be a strayed dugger or some thin’.”

“Gotta be really monstrous to set in a get-up like that,” another noted. “What d’ya think happened to him?”

“Looks like he went down and got creamed by the Guardian,” yet another voice put in. “Sure isn’t anywhere around here. I’d know if it was. I don’t like it bein’ here, though. I smell trouble. After all this, I’ll take a look down the hole and see if we can get us a spy. It’d be just like one of those damned Soul Riders to horn in on this.”

“Why not take a look now?” somebody suggested.

The man sighed. “Because my going in there is the whole point of this exercise, Stupid! Right now, just post two good riflemen up here at the ladder and have them blast away at anything they see down there.”

“Sure thing, Coydt!”

Suzl felt frustration at not being able to make out the words, but she recognized the leader’s face when she saw it. She began to wonder if the Soul Rider had directed them here for this purpose rather than the other. Were they really free? What terrible plot were these wizards hatching with this prince of evil? More immediately, how were they to deal with the riflemen, even if everybody else went away?

“All right, everybody! Listen up!” Coydt called out. “Now, you all know the plan or you wouldn’t be here in the first place. This is phase two of a feasibility study. The first phase is done. All of you are top wizards, Fluxlords mostly, who’ve been trampled on by that little bitch in the tattered bathrobe. All of you know what’ll come next, once she’s beaten the last of you. Her power and the power of those who back her will be put into making this one big Holy Mother tyranny. One by one they’ll wipe you out as they feel like it, and then they’ll turn you and yours into scripture-quoting slaves. You all know what it’s like to have great power. All you have to do is put yourselves in her place and you know what’s got to be coming down the line.”

It was a good argument, particularly when each of them was, in fact, the kind of person who’d act just as he said.

“Now, I’m gonna show you how it’s done. She preaches revolution, so let’s give her a taste of revolution. All of you have Fluxlands and those Fluxlands have limited borders. Why? That’s all you can protect, defend, and hold. Now, she’s taken so much of World that there is no way in Heaven or Hell that she can protect, defend, and hold it all. Break her in pieces, scurry all those forces and wizards all about as you strike and run, and you demoralize her whole empire. Soldiers won’t keep marching hundreds of kilometers to fight when they know their own homes might be overrun. Wizards can’t keep you in line while they’re rushing around defending first this place, then that. And any church that can’t stop all hell from literally breaking loose in its own backyard isn’t gonna have many converts or keep the faithful in line. So that’ll provoke her into repression right off and, in turn, swell our own armies.”

“We know all this,” somebody shouted. “But we still doubt it’s possible.”

Coydt chuckled. “Oh, it’s possible, all right. Now, first I went into her own home Anchor and snatched her kid in broad daylight, then turned her into a nature fairy. They couldn’t stop me and none of my people even got a splinter. That sowed doubt and also took her mind off empire and towards revenge. She hasn’t taken a new place since. Next we recruited all over Anchor and Flux. We have a real army ready and willing at my signal to converge on the target. They’re mean, nasty, and full of hate. None of them could resist the idea of being able to loot an entire Anchor at will.

“Now, for my next trick, I’m going to demonstrate to you how to get in and out undetected. A selected sample of you will remain here. I’m going in that big hole over there and I’m coming back out by way of Anchor. I’m not going to be electrocuted or ripped to pieces or anything else either. And I’m taking two of you with me to show you how easy it is. Now, you’re welcome to try it yourself, but don’t kid yourselves. The Guardian is real and it’s deadly. Without me, all the Flux power in the world won’t save you. That’s why we’ll be able to get to them, and get out, at any time we want, but they won’t be able to get us. When I return here, you’ll know the whole plan will work. Then we can set a date and a target.”

Suzl watched as two Fluxlords dismounted and walked forward to Coydt. She recognized one of them—Darien, Lord of Kalgash, supposedly a friend and ally of Cass. She closely examined some of the others and picked out more than two dozen that she knew. She didn’t know the details of the betrayal Coydt had discussed with them, but she certainly had the general idea—and the names and faces. If she could get to Cass, she could finger a number of those damned traitors. One of them would talk and spill the details she could not make out.

She watched as Coydt and the other two grinned and flexed their Flux power. Where the three had stood now stood apparently three middle-level priestesses in temple robes. She really didn’t like the implications of that. It meant that Coydt and the other two were actually going to come in the Hellgate! And since all Hellgates exited in the temple basements in Anchor, they’d need disguises to escape detection. But how was it possible for Coydt to pass through the gate? Was this gate Guardian somehow destroyed? That, too, was important news, but it didn’t solve the immediate problem. She scampered back down the ladder to Spirit, who read her fear and concern.

They are coming. We must exit to Anchor.

Quickly they made their way back along the tube to the vortex and the four energy patterns. The gates were easy enough to operate—but which ones went where? That was an important question for several reasons, not the least of which was that all of the entryways were supposed to have been sealed with almost a full meter of crushed rock and cement at Cass’s order. Obviously one wasn’t if Coydt was going to try it—but which one? She reached out to the Soul Rider for help, but it was conspicuously silent.

There was a clanging sound at the far end of the tunnel that reverberated through to them. They were coming. The hell with it, Suzl decided. Let’s just pick one and trust the Soul Rider to pull us out of it. She traced the pattern nearest them on the right wall, grabbed Spirit’s arm, and stepped into what still seemed like a solid wall.

They were suddenly in complete darkness, and for a moment Suzl feared they would end up stuck in the concrete or rock. She still had hold of Spirit’s hand, and she calmed down as she realized she could breathe. She felt Spirit starting to panic at the closed-in darkness, and didn’t feel very reassuring, but she kept hold of the hand and began to probe. She wished violently to see.

Suddenly the place was bathed in an eerie, unnatural light. Suzl realized then that they were still on the gate, which was in the floor on this side, and that that gate was still, technically, Flux. The light she was seeing was being created by the energy around her.

She looked around frantically, fearing that Coydt and his buddies would be through behind them in a second, and saw a trap door in the ceiling which was not two meters above them. Of course! They had to have some way to get that concrete in!

She stared at it and pushed with her Flux power. It budged, then moved up and out of the way. They went for it, and suddenly the only light was the faint electric light from the opening above. Spirit reached down and, with difficulty, picked Suzl up and pushed her through the opening and to the floor above. Then Suzl strained to pull Spirit up enough to get both elbows on the flooring and hoist herself up. It was an ordeal, with the swollen abdomen, in Anchor.

They caught their breath for a moment, but Suzl could feel Spirit’s claustrophobia returning. They had to find somebody somewhere in this temple. There was not only a lot of news to tell, but somebody also ought to know that it didn’t matter how much junk you heaped on top of that Flux entry—it ignored it.

Coydt had known, she realized.

One of Kasdi’s innovations had been the installation of arrow exit-pointers in every corridor and stairway in every temple. Her whole life had been changed because she’d gotten lost in a temple once, and she’d never forgotten it. Suzl, therefore, was able to just follow the glowing green arrows, thanking heaven that Spirit had not been alone in trying this. The arrows would have meant nothing to her.

They were only part way up when they ran into a priestess in an administrative robe who was far more shocked to bump into them than the other way around. Suzl, in fact, thought she’d lost her mind, because she kept shrieking and making all sorts of weird noises.

She tried to tell the woman who they were and ask where they were, but found she couldn’t. Her mouth just wouldn’t form the words. Now I know how Spirit feels, she grumped, then straightened in shock. It was exactly how Spirit was. And now, as other priestesses scurried up to them, all making nonsense sounds, she realized that there had been a price to pay for all that Flux power.

The Soul Rider knew that it had to communicate directly with her in order to provide what was needed. Not residing in her body, it could not access her thoughts directly and feed what was needed. So they needed a common, transmittable language. Spirit’s nonverbal language. The language of the Soul Rider and the big machine.

That was why she was able to recognize so clearly those machine spells and identities, although none other ever had. That was why she could see the pitiful human attempts at mocking the language commands, commands they called “spells.” That was why the nonverbal link with Spirit was so clear it was almost thought-to-thought, but she’d been unable to understand Coydt and his men.

She had no spells on her but the Soul Rider’s, and she was not limited as Spirit was. Spirit’s spell had to outwardly mimic Coydt’s or else he would never have freed her. So Suzl had no fear of artifacts, no confusion as to signs and tools, any more than any other human. But her mind had been converted to the language of the machines, and that made speaking, understanding, reading, and writing impossible.

She had all that news, all that information, and no way to impart it to anyone. She was not back the way she used to be, but still very much a freak in the human world.