02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (32 page)

She looked out at the apron, fairly short in this area, and to the void beyond. Usually the scene was a total sameness, but not now. Out there, so close to Anchor it could be dimly made out, was . . . something. She stared at it and frowned.

"The machine you and your friends sought to destroy," Weiz told her, seeing her fascination. "Come. Walk down the other side and we will take a look at it. As you can see, it is still very much intact."

They walked out onto the apron and across the area bounding Flux and Anchor, It was odd to be going into Flux, and her wizard's senses switched on in an instant.

The machine was basically a cube, with an operator's cab on one side. It had never been moved here; it had obviously been built, or more likely created, in Flux.

"It is an amplifier," Weiz told her. "It magnifies the power of the wizard in the chair a thousandfold." She saw the enormous Flux energy flowing into it on all sides and saw, too, the massive concentration that radiated outward from it.

Another figure, a man, walked up to them. She turned and looked at him and knew him in an instant. That handsome face, those bulging muscles, that light, gray-tinged hair and beard she had seen only once, other than in pictures and accounts, but she knew who it was.

"Suzlette, Meet Prince Coydt," Weiz said amiably.

Prince of Darkness, Prince of Evil. Demon Prince. What did you say to such a man as this?

"Hello, sir," she managed.

15

SHADOW PLAY

Coydt van Haaz stood there dressed in a loose flannel shirt, blue denim work pants, and boots; a slight smile played on his face. "You may go now, Captain. Remain on the wall. I may need you later."

Weiz looked nervous, but he responded crisply, "Yes, sir," and departed, leaving Coydt and Suzl alone in Flux. She stared at him, feeling the tremendous energy inside him and also real fear inside her.

"The captain really
is
fond of you," Coydt told her. "He's quite smitten, in fact. What about you? Is he the idea you had of the kind of men who took this Anchor?"

"No," she responded, adding "sir" almost as an afterthought. "I
do
like him."

"That's nice. One wizard to another, open, honest. I like that."

"I'm no wizard," she responded.

"How very astute of you to realize that. One without power in Flux is a victim who finds a way to survive, to accommodate to power. But one with Flux power who has no knowledge or training in its use is in far greater danger from a real wizard, for only those with the power can take the binding spell."

She nodded slightly but did not respond. All she could think of was that he was going to do something awful to her and she needed to buy time, any kind of time, if only to think of something to do.

"Take me, for example. Did you ever wonder how I wound up this way? What colored my attitudes, drove me on?"

"I've often wondered how anyone could wind up like you."

"It was over four hundred years ago, in a place very much like that one back there," Coydt began. "I was pretty wild as a kid, the youngest of eleven and always out to prove myself. Even then I liked the thrill of things, the danger, the risks. I'd take any bet, and, of course, boys being boys, they were always egging me on. One day, after getting a scolding from the local priestess for some minor mischief, the gang dared me to get back at the Church. I was fifteen, and I was clever. The appeal of sneaking into an all-women's domain and stealing something was irresistible. I resolved to sneak into the temple itself and steal a personal artifact from some high-up temple priestess."

"I can see you weren't bothered by religion even then."

"About as much as you or even old Mervyn is. I broke into the local laundry in the city where the temple robes were done, and I stole one that fit. Then I appropriated a pretty good wig and some sandals that basically fit from one of my sisters. And, one day, I just walked right into that temple and back to the living quarters. None of them gave me a second glance. In fact, my only mistake was that I really had no way of knowing where was where in there. I wound up in some office I shouldn't have been in and got challenged. My falsetto was not all that convincing, I'm afraid, and close-up the deception was quickly unmasked. I almost didn't mind getting caught then, because of the shock on their faces. I expected to be sent to the local jail, where they'd either cover it up to save embarrassment or make me a local hero to my peers. Instead, I was hauled up before a religious court in the temple that was strictly for priestesses and was presided over by the Sister General herself. I was charged with heresy."

"Go on," she encouraged him, interested in spite of herself.

Coydt seemed to enjoy telling the story, as if it was something bottled up inside him that needed to come out. "They were faced with an unprecedented situation, and they resolved it as best their little minds could. They could think of only one way to sponge out the heresy, and they did it. They took me to the temple clinic, filled me with all sorts of chemicals, and then performed agonizingly painful surgery on me. They castrated me, then used the scrotum to create a vagina. By more surgery and drugs, they smoothed my skin, changed my muscle tone, raised my voice half an octave— well, you get the picture. When they finished, months later, I was still very much a man inside, but outside I was an overly large, lunkish woman. Now the temple had not been violated, you see?" His tone grew suddenly bitter and seemed tinged with an insane anger.
"I
was fifteen years old!"

"I didn't even know such a thing was possible in Anchor," Suzl admitted.

"My parents were told, of course," he went on, not really hearing her. "My mother said it was divine punishment. My father thought it was funny.
Funny
!"
He struggled to retain control of himself, and finally got it. When he continued his tale, his voice was calm and rational once more, but his story was not.

"Using various hormones and hypnotics, they kept me around for a couple of years as the temple slave. I was property, and that was that. I was still masculine enough to be a pretend man to the horny bitches, too. But the old Sister General retired, and the new one was a real moral type. She told me that it was over, that I had the choice of joining the priesthood or being sold to Flux. Three guesses which one I gladly took, even though I had no idea what was out there. After what they'd done to me, what did I have to fear?"

"Believe it or not, I understand. I've had some sexual identity problems myself."

"When they found out I had some of the power, they sold me to a wizard in Globbus who needed an assistant. He was a rather unpleasant fellow named Voryer, and he heard of my condition and thought it was very funny, too. The first spell he taught me was the binding spell. He said he liked his first lesson to be one his pupils never forgot."

Slowly, all of Coydt's clothing faded. He reached up to the side of his face and drew his finger down the side of his beard, and it and the moustache peeled away and fell to the ground. In most ways, his body was male and muscular. He had a tight ass and the sort of hip and other bone structure one would expect. In many ways, he reminded her of Dar, a huge farm boy who'd had a female organ, thanks to a spell, but there was a bit more to Coydt. The breasts were clearly breasts, although they were sized well enough that under a shirt they would just resemble overly large pectorals. Except for his hair, eyebrows, and pubic hair, he had less body hair than did Suzl or Spirit. Suddenly the carefully tailored clothing faded back in, and the false but very convincing beard and moustache jumped up, reformed, and reattached to his face. He looked now quite the normal, handsome man again.

"The voice broke and the breasts shrank when the hormones ran down and the male ones dominated," he told her. "But you can see what I had become. I learned all I could from the old wizard, and when I had more power than he did, I killed him. For years I plunged into spell research, learning all I could and getting ever stronger. I tried to find a way to break that spell, and I couldn't. I was a man who felt like a man and loved pretty women, but I couldn't make love to them. Oh, I could make them
think
they had a good time, but
I
couldn't have it. I hid my problem with cheap love spells, building a reputation as a hot lover. I worked so hard building up my muscles that I became very strong, and I liked to pick fights. I studied with the masters of every physical fighting form, and I mastered every weapon of Anchor and Flux.

"When I was ready, I hired on with a stringer who needed big-time protection, so I could get back into my old home Anchor. I strangled my mother, then cornered and beat the hell out of my father. When he was down and out, I took a knife and made him like me, only a little messier. When he didn't laugh, I cut out his tongue and blinded him and left him there to bleed to death. One by one, I tracked down every priestess that had been at that temple during those times. All of 'em, including many who'd moved on or retired, who were still alive. Each one of them I could get into Flux I made into obedient whores. Those I couldn't died, but they all died begging and on their knees. The authorities couldn't catch me. Oh, not that I wasn't collared now and then, but they couldn't
hold
me. Now I had only this spell to break, and I went looking through all of Flux for the key.

"Eventually I signed on with a wizard named Grymphin, who had one hell of a library from the old days. He was also, it turned out, one of the Seven of that time. He was one hell of a math whiz, though, and he was devoting his life to breaking the codes used by the Hellgates and to stabilize Anchors. We didn't know about the temple entrances then, not until less than twenty years ago, but he was determined to just walk into a Hellgate, right past the Guardian. Got so fired up convinced he had it one day that he tried it himself."

"I take it he was wrong."

"No, he was right. Only I changed one little number in a string that seemed five kilometers long. He got zapped; I won the resulting power struggle. And that's how I got my present job."

"But you never found the way to break it."

"No. But
you
did. You or somebody. I figured by using that language on Spirit, considering who she was, they'd bend heaven and hell to figure it out. The basic spell is the same. I want to know how it was done. Tell me, and you'll be fine and so will she. Come on—you don't owe Saint Bitch anything, either one of you."

"As a woman in
your
idea of Anchor?"

"Was it so terrible? Truthfully, now—could you see yourself as Madame Weiz?"

She thought about it, and the horrible truth was that she could. She made no direct reply, though.

"I thought as much. You don't like to admit it, but my little demonstration was quite effective. Come, now—never mind the philosophical or ideological objections. What is your personal objection to living that way? Just yours?"

She thought a moment. "It's demeaning."

"Oh, come. Being the consort to a homosexual stringer is not demeaning? Looking like a bloated sexual nightmare wasn't demeaning? Only a handful of people are ever truly free in any society, and that's as much accident as design, even in my case. You're a survivor, which is a valuable thing to be, but you are not a leader. Being his wife, the mother of his children, a ranking woman because of that and a privileged one as well—you'll live a better, more satisfying life than you have ever lived. Tell me—have you ever been truly free?"

She thought about it. "Yes. Once. With Spirit after I got the power."

Coydt laughed. "Don't be absurd! The Soul Rider used you, cast its spell upon both of you, to bind you together, and not because it was a romantic soul either. It needed you to work the power it can command in Flux. I have dampened the spell chemically in Anchor, and now I remove it entirely. You may still love her, but you don't
need
her."

And it was true. She
did
love Spirit, and always would, but she did not crave her. More education. "Uh—Spirit. What have you done with her?"

"The same as with you, only more intensive. And we gave her a goal, something to strive for. We showed her a baby that looks
exactly
like hers. It didn't originally, but that was no trouble. She is convinced it's hers. She's not really a survivor like you, you know. She actually needs other people. Her conditioning will proceed well because of the baby. It is an incentive and a threat. I cannot bring her into Flux without giving the Soul Rider opportunities, but perhaps in time I will risk even that, since she has no power. She will continue to love you, if it suits the Soul Rider, but she will love that child more. She will be a good wife to someone. Which brings us back to the big question. How did my binding spell get dissolved?"

"It didn't," she told him. "You've lost again, for all your power. Her spell is diverted to the Hellgate machine by the Guardian only if she stays in Anchor.
You
seem able to talk to the Guardian. Why not command it to do the same thing?"

"And be stuck in Anchor as well?" Coydt sighed. "I feared as much, I might as well tell you. All my science, all my research, all of it says that there is only one way to break a binding spell, and that's to have someone of equal or greater power take it voluntarily in Flux. I have never found anyone my equal in power, not even those assholes that are the rest of the Seven. Perhaps I will, after all, have to teach them the machine language so we can open the Gates. If they don't kill us, they will be able to do anything."

She stared at him. "You
know
what's behind those Hellgates, don't you? You really do!"

"I know . . . some . . . of it. There are many gaps. I'm still not sure what the Soul Riders are, for example, or exactly how we came to be in this situation. But I know much. More than anyone else, certainly. I found it, in little bits and pieces over the centuries, from sorcerers I knew and some that I killed. Bit by bit I put the pieces together. I suspect that what I do not know, I lack the frame of reference to know." He sighed. "But I've talked and dallied enough. Back to business."