Empires of Flux & Anchor

10 KILLING HEROES

By the time help arrived, Suzl was ready to commit mass murder or even suicide. Her temper was calmed only by Spirit, and even she had problems containing her emotional partner.

First they’d tried to keep them in the temple while Spirit was going nuts. Then somebody recognized Spirit and understood that problem, but they all got worried and overly solicitous of the pregnant girl. Then they had problems with Suzl. Word had come of Spirit’s attachment to a stranger dugger, but here was a perfectly normal-looking young woman, totally nude, who didn’t seem able to speak or understand any more than Spirit.

At that point there was sudden fear of an epidemic, as if Suzl was proof that whatever was wrong with Spirit was catching. So they wound up sticking them in a livestock pen that wasn’t private and had been recently used by cows as it was intended to, delivering food to them on trays attached to long sticks.

After a little of that, some wiser heads in the Church decided that it would be a bit hard to explain this sort of condition should Sister Kasdi show up, and they were moved out of town to a small pasture which had few trees but some room. It wasn’t great, but it beat the livestock pen.

She did have time to reflect on the earlier situation, though, and realized that her present form was useful in at least one way. The saddlebag on her horse had contained her registration document and photos as well as all her vitals as a dugger. All of that showed, of course, a deformed creature with massive sexual abnormalities. She was very different looking now, so at least Coydt’s people would be looking for someone who no longer existed. Unfortunately, they would also tie that creature and that name to Spirit, and they were sitting ducks out there if word got around that Spirit was in fact there.

“There” was Anchor Nanzee; that much was clear. It was the easternmost of the cluster that contained Anchor Logh, and Suzl had been there many times with Ravi on the route. It was hard rock and rolling country, with some rugged-looking, tree-covered hills, and it was here that some of the new scientific generation were actually talking of getting electricity from water. How that was possible when water even put out a match Suzl never understood, but after half her life in Flux she didn’t disbelieve anything anymore.

Suzl was also getting more and more frustrated by her inability to communicate and almost envied Spirit’s blithe acceptance. Not long ago she had been the most grotesque of freaks, but fully able to communicate. Now she found that even simple and obvious sign language would tend to bring less understanding than smiles. She thought being a physical freak was in some ways easier to take. Nobody necessarily confused deformity with stupidity, since it was so easily disproved, but mutes, it seemed, were always assumed to be childish or retarded.

Most distressing of all was that Spirit, being in Anchor, now was suffering the pains and discomforts of pregnancy, problems Suzl could sense and almost feel herself, but that she could do nothing about.

It was a real relief when, after four days, Sister Kasdi showed up. By that point they were both very glad to see anybody, but Kasdi was more shocked at Suzl’s appearance now than she had been in Pericles.

Oh, Goddess forgive me! she thought. I’ve given my own daughter to a lesbian relationship and sanctified it with a church marriage! And nobody looking at Spirit could say it wasn’t-consummated either. Of all the Suzls, she felt least comfortable with this one. The fat dugger woman pushing middle age was consistent with her own view of herself and her generation; the spell-deformed creature was horrible, but there was a certain acceptance of it. But here was Suzl, looking like she had looked back in school in Anchor Logh, all cute and chubby and very much all-woman—and apparently nearly worshipped even now by her beautiful and pregnant daughter.

Clearly, something very strange had happened to them on their way to their new home, and it wasn’t anything she could handle there or even at Hope. She got them washed off and cleaned up, then headed for Flux. She decided she could use the huge bird form and somehow carry both of them on her back, so she worked the spell. Suzl watched, saw the spell, made several improvements on it, then did it herself. She knew that Spirit could never ride on her mother’s back, but she might permit herself to be picked up and held by Suzl’s clawlike legs.

When Suzl worked her transformation, Kasdi was even more shocked. Somehow Suzl had Flux power now and the ability to use it. She almost oozed it, in fact—and this was inexplicable. Bowing to the inevitable, she took off and headed back for Pericles.

Suzl found flying tremendous fun, and she was fascinated to see at last the stringer trails she’d followed blindly for so long. From up high they looked like a series of crisscrossing, multicolored carnival lights stretching off in all directions. Somewhere down there was Ravi, she thought mischievously. One day she’d like to meet up with the little wimp again and pay him back for his parting shots at her. How pleasant it would feel to leave him with no sexual organ at all and a tremendous sex urge.

The wizard was quite surprised to see them again, and seemed a bit annoyed and preoccupied, but he couldn’t eliminate his fascination for this new thing. There were certain rules for both Anchor and Flux, and between Kasdi’s earlier experiences and now Suzl’s strange transformation quite a number had been broken. The old man’s world had been turned upside-down within a generation, and it both bothered and stimulated him.

Pericles was a far busier place than the one they had left. It seemed as if human riders and wizard-transformed messengers were coming and going with incredible frequency, and even the creatures of the Fluxland could not be found playing as usual, although once or twice they would be glimpsed going from one of the marble structures to another with businesslike efficiency and worried looks. Still, Mervyn took time out from whatever was going on to see them and quickly came to the same conclusion that Suzl had—that the Soul Rider had indeed finally found the loophole in Coydt’s trap.

“Suzl is not like Spirit,” he assured Kasdi. “The mere act of the transformation proved that, not to mention her unsettling ability to materialize lit cigars in her mouth that she developed just this afternoon. She’d been trying to communicate with me all through this, though, and going slightly crazy with frustration. I wish I knew just what she was trying to tell us.”

“Knowing Suzl, the mere fact that she can’t shoot off her big mouth is the problem. The fact that the old Suzl is back at all worries me more.”

Mervyn chuckled dryly. “I know your feelings, and understand them, if I do not agree with them. Take heart in the fact that the host of a Soul Rider is not the master or mistress of his or her own fate. You of all people should know that. Spirit was lonely and had a desperate need for close companionship. Suzl was disaffected and attracted to Spirit. The Soul Rider closed that gap, filled both needs, and magnified the emotional kernels, having found someone it could trust to put its plan into action.”

“You mean the Soul Rider caused them to fall in love?”

“In a way. The seeds were there, or it would never have worked, but once the seeds were there, it did the rest—which might or might not otherwise have happened. Spirit was turned on by Suzl’s sexual grossness and liked it that way. It was sincere. But that was necessary to the Soul Rider because at the time it could do nothing about it. When conditions were right and the Soul Rider’s spells perfected linking the two so that the power could be transferred, that was no longer necessary. Again, the seeds were there. Suzl felt weak and powerless and it almost destroyed her. Now she’s neither—and is happy except for the language barrier. Spirit sensed Suzl’s unhappiness and reacted badly to my major attempt to compensate. She realized, I think, just what Suzl really was going through and knew that the new Suzl, while content, was a lie I constructed. She took the appropriate actions. In many ways it was an expression of love, since Suzl’s other form suited Spirit a bit more.”

“Yes, but what do we do now?”

“Why, nothing, I would suspect. Suzl has no training and can not receive any, yet she is able to manage spells that I would be hesitant to try. That means the Soul Rider is feeding them to her as she needs them. It’s one very powerful wizard in two bodies, both necessary for the magic. Together, they are no more in danger than you or I. Let them go to their Fluxland and be happy.”

She didn’t like it, but had no alternatives at the time, so she changed the subject. “What’s all the comings and goings around here?”

“Come into the map room over there and I’ll show you.”

Suzl had been standing there, knowing that she was being discussed, unable to follow it at all. Still, she had hopes of getting through to one or the other of these two, so she tagged along. Spirit remained in the meadow, just relaxing. The period and strain in Anchor had taken a toll on her, and she was feeling neither totally well nor in any way ambitious.

Spread out on a round table in the center of a comfortably appointed room just inside the marble building were all sorts of papers and documents. A centaur and two nymphs were over to one side, working on some of those documents and correlating them.

Mervyn picked up a huge bound volume and opened it. On each of its large pages was pasted a picture or drawing of an individual man or woman, along with a lot of handwritten information about them.

“A rogue’s gallery of World,” he told Kasdi. “These are Fluxlords of great power, one and all. Every one of them tinged with some form of madness, as it must be.”

Kasdi grinned. “Are you in there?”

He nodded. “Yes, indeed, although the file is rather less than objective, I’m afraid. And you, too. See?” He turned to a place about three-quarters of the way back in the volume, and there she saw her picture and vital statistics, and in between what looked like dozens of scribbled pages.

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.

“Jomo refused to give up on me and dragged me back to one of the wizards supporting the batteries,” he told her. “I didn’t know any of it, of course, until later. Much later. They put a sustaining spell on me and dumped me in a wagon, or so I later learned. Jomo took the wagon and found a stringer he knew in the back. The stringer, whose name we never got, guided Jomo all the way to Globbus, where they again decided I was beyond saving. But I didn’t die—I couldn’t—and they finally bowed to Jomo’s persistence and worked on me. When I finally came to again, it was three weeks after the battle; I was recovering, and the bill wiped out half my assets.”

“You could have come back. Told me.”

“What good would that do? By that time you’d taken all your vows. I was still going to come back, if only to let you see, but Mervyn came and visited me and convinced me not to.”

“Mervyn!” For the first time in her life she said that name with bitterness.

“You were organizing your new church, starting your revolution, and beginning to put together the new empire. Mervyn pointed out that you’d already taken your vows and were bound to them. He said if I didn’t stay dead, it would destroy you and the whole thing would collapse. I think he was right. Look at you now—you’re shaking like a leaf.”

She pulled herself unsteadily to a sitting position, then turned and looked not at Matson but at the beauty of Pericles. “It was a lie all along,” she whispered. “All of it has been a stinking lie!”

She remembered the commitment she’d made so long ago in Hope, a commitment to Mervyn. At that time he’d asked her if Matson’s still being alive would change things, hinting at a possible survival, but she had been so sure of his death and still in a state of emotional shock that she’d said it wouldn’t make any difference. She realized now that the wizard was testing her out in more than a theoretical way. He had the leader of the revolution he and his colleagues had wanted so much, and he had only one threat to that leader, that symbol, on which they would build their empire.

Such potential leaders come very rarely in human civilization, and even more rarely are they in the position to act to change history forever. Mervyn had known that, had understood that there was no one else who could rally a revolution and keep its fires burning. And when she had assured him that she was committed, that Matson’s survival would not change her, he’d known it was a lie, even if she herself did not at the time.

You can’t lie to a wizard…

But a wizard can lie to a wizard.

“Where have you been for all these years?” she asked him, still staring out at the beauty of the Fluxland.

“I retired from the business, basically. I didn’t want to go back to it on the other side of World under some phony name and face. I didn’t really want to go back at all. I’d really survived in that game longer than most and I figured that hole in my chest was telling me that I’d used up the last of my luck. I have to admit that having a pack of powerful wizards anxious to retire me was part of it, too. I got the real strong feeling that they’d be real nice to me if I went along, but that it would be nothing at all to make me really dead if I didn’t. I went up to Strongford, a nice Fluxland up north that’s full of retired stringers and folks who were either dead or missing for one reason or another. Jomo declared me dead, then paid off the rest and came up to a dugger’s haven near Strongford. Got a job and a fat account.”

Strongford was very exclusive, and by design. The shield, maintained by powerful retired stringers in concert, was incredibly strong and selective. It admitted everyone, with the exception that it kept out any wizards who were not members of the stringer’s guild, but you could leave only by special permission. A lot of people with a lot of ill-gotten gains took advantage of that, and the place had a lot of money and was something of a pleasant, benign pleasure palace where no questions were asked—and a rake-off of the enormous profits went to the guild. Matson described himself as “in the hotel business,” but since a place you couldn’t leave except to be thrown out to the wolves hardly needed a hotel, it was pretty obvious that the place was not the usual sort of rental hotel. He was also a deputy there, helping to keep things right and peaceful and to teach newcomers the rules.

“Why did you come back, then?” she asked him.

“You know why. We got word of the snatch, and it was pretty easy to put two and two together. I mean, you didn’t have time for Spirit to have been anybody else’s kid, although she was something the wizards in Globbus sort of forgot to mention in all this. She’s my daughter as much as yours, and I couldn’t stand by and let that bastard get away with this, even if I’d never seen her. Old man Stankovitch—the head stringer wizard in Strong-ford—agreed with me, and I put on the old outfit, picked up Jomo, and we headed south. I didn’t want to cross old Merv, though, so I got in touch with him, and he’s been my protection.”

And mine, too, Kasdi thought, growing more bitter. He knew he couldn’t keep word of the reappearance of Jomo and Matson from her, so he diverted her. No wonder he was so annoyed to see her here now, when Matson was here, but because of the emergency with Spirit and Suzl, he couldn’t deny her entry. No wonder he was so anxious to get rid of her!

And now, here he was, coming up the stairs to them, looking resigned. He stopped and faced her. “So now it’s out in the open. In a way, I’m almost glad. It’s been quite a burden for me to carry.”

“You hypocrite!” she snapped. “You spout platitudes about the purity of the Church while you live in this echo of some pagan fantasy. You lie whenever it suits you. You don’t believe in the Church or its teachings one bit. You’re just a more subtle version of Coydt and Haldayne and the rest. You want power. You wanted more power than you could get on your own, all nine of you, so when I came along, I was your perfect patsy. And I trotted off and gave you your empire.”

Mervyn looked genuinely stung by the remarks. “I wish things truly were as simple and as cut-and-dried as you see everything. After all this time, you still see the world through a little girl’s eyes. In one way that’s a help, because it’s allowed you to bear your burdens, but in a situation like this it serves you ill. No one is all evil or all good. That has never been the nature of the conflict with the Seven. Not Coydt, certainly—the man is truly evil by any definition. But the rest are as sincere in what they believe as we are in opposing them. But it is not necessary to be evil to be wrong. They are wrong, and you are wrong now. We had a dying civilization and a dying race. You revived it. You made it live again.”

“You stole my life!”

“Nobody asked you to be a saint; we wanted merely a leader. You imposed all those conditions on yourself—against my will, if you’ll remember. That little girl side of you couldn’t deal with anything other than absolutes. You looked at yourself and you saw the face of Diastephanos, the Sister General who’d gone over to the other side. You stole your life, because you were so afraid to be human.”

“You gave me no choice, no chance to grow up! You manipulated me from the start, and you manipulated Matson, too, for that matter. I am exactly what you wanted most. I am your ultimate lie!

“You’re worse than that. Because of all this, you stole Spirit’s life, too. She should be training for a trade, romancing the boys, facing a solid future and a normal marriage and life. Now she’s a pregnant mental cripple worshipfully married to a thirty-seven-year-old woman who’s always been a social and sexual deviate. Coydt didn’t do that because she was Cassie and Matson’s daughter. He did it because she was the daughter of a monument you created, something she didn’t even know until almost when it happened! You robbed me of her all the way along, you know. I never even was able to say one word to her without pretending to be somebody else! You took my daughter, my chance for love and a normal life, everything—and gave me what in return? A chance to wear a rag, to age fifty years in eighteen, to sleep on stone and straw, unable to even keep a lock of my daughter’s hair or ever be loved by anyone except as some kind of angel or demigod. It’s more than my life! You took mine and Spirit’s humanity!”

Jomo looked down at her sadly, and there seemed to be a tear in one of his bulging eyes. Matson leaned back against a pillar and lit a cigar, looking a little sad. Down below, Suzl watched the thing play out, not understanding the words but totally understanding them all the same. Her first look at Matson, alive and well, had told her just what was coming. She didn’t need to know the words, for she knew the situation and she knew Cass.

Poor Cassie, she thought sadly. All that power, all that influence, all that force—and it’s nothing. Welcome to the real world, Cass. I’m sorry you had to finally make the trip.

“Are you finished?” Mervyn asked her.

“I’m only starting,” she snapped. “It’s the only thing I can do and you know it. I can’t live any other way. I can’t kill myself, because I can’t violate my vows. But I’ll fight no more for you, old man. I’ll make no more pious speeches. I’m no good to you in any way anymore—no good to anybody. I’m a priestess, and I will remain one, even if my faith is weak and I feel like I’ve been raped. But I resign my sainthood. The Church and the empire sink or swim without Sister Kasdi. I’ve retired. I will do no more killing for you. Do it yourself from now on.”

“You’ve paid a big price, Cass,” Matson said finally, “but it hasn’t been a waste. The old boy’s right in one thing. We’re moving again. Thinking again. The change I saw in the people during this business, going through those Anchors, was amazing. But I can’t really talk about this. After all, I didn’t have to pay the bill.”

Mervyn sighed. “Well, if you will fight no more for empire, even to protect it, will you fight for personal reasons?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I came here not just because I received word that you two had met. I came here primarily because the three of you were here. Word has come that Coydt has made his move. He has taken Anchor Logh, and we are powerless to do anything about it.”

“What!”

“Somehow—I don’t know how, and won’t until I get there, I suspect—there is a wizard’s shield of tremendous force around the entirety of Anchor Logh. No one has been able to penetrate it. And Coydt and at least fifteen hundred insane killers are inside that shield right now, doing whatever they wish.”