02. Riders of the Winds (13 page)

₇

_Stormrider

_{too
effective. That crazy one, Boday, is also pretty good with many kinds of weapons, including the whip and crossbow. Charley, of course, is much more limited, but she'll make it."}

_{ever
have the will and temperament to take on the Storm Princess. That is another reason for keeping Charley alive, Dorion. The only act of bravery and will, the assumption of risk and danger, was when Sam rushed to save her friend. She draws strength and resolve from Charley. So it is not just as a decoy that our girl is important. I think she will be essential in the ultimate battle."}

_{National Geographic
shot of some African warrior woman. With her Mediterranean-type features and all those tattoos and straight, short black hair she'd looked very different; it took this to see the real Boday—more black African than exotic Lebanese, for example.}

_{see
Dorian—not with Shadowcat, with her eyes. Not really him, but an odd, wriggling glowing shape that was mostly deep reds but occasionally showed or flashed other colors as well. This against the eternal gray nothingness was disconcerting; she could not see Boday or any of the landscape or the horses at all.}

_{love
to get his balls in her grasp and squeeze hard—if he has any balls."}

_{Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! I'm back! I found a career I really like as a high-class hooker. I'm blind, and, oh, yes, I'm now black, and I'm a slave girl who dresses like a porno belly dancer, but other than that, everything's just fine. Oh, I almost forgot. You remember my best friend Sam? She got real fat and married another woman . . .}

_{did
and what you
were.}

_{gorgeous,
but it wasn't just that. She liked them young, old, tall, short, fat, thin—you name it. She couldn't explain it, but she knew what her ideal was and she missed it. That wasn't alchemy; it was deep.}

_{could
see puzzled her. Why was Boday nonexistent save for that odd and fragile red strand, and the horses and the landscape a seamless deep gray, but Dorion this strange, fuzzy red blur and Shadowcat that lavender blob?}

_{my
slaves and there will be no references to others."}

_{Maybe not as impenetrable as they think,
was
hiding out and would have been killed instantly if discovered.}

_I
wanted."

_{tsk-tsked.
"Too bad. So pretty. What about the cat? We have to check on all animals, you know."}

_her."

_{bath
and perhaps purchase more useful clothing? I should like to feel and smell the life of a city after all that time in the Kudaan."}

_{those
kinds of women around, and they were forced to buy what they needed and move on fast—which suited them just fine.}

_wonderful.

_{too
well in Akahlar, you'd better watch out, something was lurking there ready to bite you.}

_{don't
think. Once in the null, though, we'll have to be patient and pick and choose with care. If I do a Navigator's trick and force a world on my own at this point, it'll be noticed by everybody and they'll have a perfect trail. We're going to have to sit and wait out there and hope something decent comes up that I either know or can handle and cross at that point. If we can cross a colonial wedge undetected and cross from there into Quodac, there is no way they can find us except by luck. If Klittichom had enough agents and wealth to cover all the possibilities he'd be in charge already, and Quodac's officials aren't nearly as corrupt as Mashtopol's. Quodac means a breather, and then we can plug in to some of Yobi's muscle." They approached the border with little trouble, but Dorion didn't want to cross at any point close to civilization. He suggested that, after dark, they move a considerable distance from the gate along the border until the land would no longer support the horses without having to turn inland or force them into the null zone.}

_{bath
..." She added the last less wistfully than reverently. She knew how she had to look and she knew how her hair felt and she certainly knew how everybody smelled. These Akahlar people didn't seem to take too many baths, but that was an area too gross for her to compromise, and gross was the word for all of them by now.}

_{That
would sure tell them where we exited and give them something of a lead. All right—here it is. Boday—mount up and stay behind Charley as usual. We're going across!"}

_{"Stop! Turn around and head back for the bank! It's a trap!"}

_{is
that thing?" Charley asked, scared.}

_{He
brought that thing in!"}

_think!"

_{that
good a magician! Besides, the cure might be worse than the disease."}

_{see!
Yes, it's worth a try!" He turned and explained it as quickly as possible to Boday. "Stay here," he ordered. "Boday and I will go see."}

_{winch,
a sculpture that shall enter into legend!" she muttered, and began to assemble a very strange-looking device from bits and pieces of boards and equipment she found lying about.}

_{detests
critics enough later on; she cannot
abide
them looking over her shoulder as she creates!"}

_{me
with that crossbow and some puny wire? Sticks and stones can't break
my
bones for I am a creature of sorcery!" he mocked. "And that half-baked magician of yours is no match for me no matter what magic he intends shooting up that wire."}

_{this
stick!" she screamed at him, aimed, and fired the crossbow.}

₈

_{A Chase Down Memory Lane}

_alive."

_{months
to break this sucker down and understand what's doing what! We're going to have to try some desperation patches, slow and easy, trial and error, and see what we can get. The only way we're going to break through is for her to do it herself. Maybe try and convince
Misa
that
she
needs this information. Well, let's see what we can do. Kira, open her up to us."}

_{proud
of that. If we don' do it then som'body got to or there ain't nothin' to eat."}

_{can't,"
he responded firmly. "There's not enough time left and I need her. They're planning something big, Yobi, and within the year. Something horrible. I haven't quite gotten exactly what—not the full-scale thing at this point—but something so terrible it scares the hell out of even their own who have hints of it. They've just about stopped their small testing, and that means preparations for something more ambitious. I've
got
to have her!"}

_{You are married already, Misa!}

_{Yes! Look at your hand. See that mark there, the witchmark? See the thread flowing from it, out and away into the night? You must believe what I tell you. You must believe all that I tell you. You are married, and your mate is worried and wants to find you. You know it is true! Now, who is your mate? What does your mate look like? What is that name?}

_{Who is married to Boday? Picture the marriage. Where was it? Who was there? Who is Boday? Why does she love you? You must answer me. You must find the answers to these questions in your mind!}

_{How? Why?
Best
friend . . . Name was . . . Shari. Yes, but also . . . Char-lee. Charley."}

_{Remember. You must remember. Charley, Boday, Sam . . . Fill it in. Break it down. Remember . . . remember . . . remember!}

_{she
was Sam, but she didn't like Sam very much, either . . .}

_{Oh!"
she said, and then collapsed in a dead faint forward and lay there silently on the ground.}

_{She
thinks so. He has somehow managed to summon many small changewinds to the places he commands, although how this is done is a mystery, and she has managed to shape and turn them. But those were small, and one at a time. To control great ones, all at once, and all over Akahlar—that is something reason says cannot be done. Reason and experience also tell that such an event, done all at once, would create such an instability that the worlds themselves would collapse upon each other, that the changewinds would roam unchecked and over vast areas, and none would be safe. Such weight alone might draw all of creation down to the Seat of Probability and to oblivion. All that has ever existed, all that exists, and all that can or will exist will be no longer."}

_Remember!"

_{Her
face.
Her
form.}

_{is
you. The Storm Princess is you."}

_{How did she know that? She couldn't remember . . .}

_dead!"

_are
you?"

_{Sudden scene in the mind: she and a boy named Johnny out back of a bowling alley after dark. They were both sixteen and had grown up pretty much together. He was big, though, and she was short and slight. He made some passes. Scared but
curious, she responded. From the way he acted it wasn't his first time, but she knew what to do only from the romances and the soap operas. She liked the feelings, the hugging and the kissing, but she didn't want to go all the way. That was too much. He had a different idea. He dropped his pants and revealed his—his
thing.
It was big and stiff and
enormous
and not at all like she'd thought they were, although she didn't really know what she had thought. And he wanted to put it in her
mouth,
to
suck
on it, for god's sake! It was ugly and, and, he
peed
out of it! She had been revolted. She thought she was going to throw up. This wasn't like it was supposed to be at all! She'd run away from him, away from all of them . . .}

_{that
was what guys wanted and what girls were supposed to do then she wanted none of it.}

_{Scene: she and another girl, frightened, alone in a remote cabin someplace. She was scared to death. She clung to the girl friend—to Charley—the only real friend she had in the world at that time. And Charley had responded to her need and they had made love and it had been wonderful, for a time. She knew that from Charley's point of view it had been an act of compassion, not love, but it hadn't seemed wrong.}

_{Scene: Boday, who loved her because she was the.first one the artist had seen after inadvertently taking a love potion. Boday's sexual tastes were bizarre and her appetite insatiable, but it was also secure. No worry about what her Sam looked like or sounded like. The love and the strength were absolute, unquestioning. Sam had grown very fat and lazy under such love and security, but she still was insecure inside. Because Boday's love was chemical, she could not bring herself to think of it as genuine and so give some of it back. Because Boday was a woman, it was, somehow, still wrong. She was no damned}

_{Scene: on a big wagon train in Akahlar. She had compelled by the magic of a hypnotic charm, out of jealousy, guilt, and curiosity, one of the trail hands to make love to her and he had done his best. And she had felt little but disappointment. Nothing he had done was nearly as good as what she had
gotten from Boday, and the end for him came all too soon and was nothing much to her.}

_{Scene: Tied down on the rocky ground as three ugly, brutish, foul-smelling men had at her, over and over, as she closed her eyes and tried not to feel the foulness}

_{And the fucking Storm Princess was fat, too!
want
to be Charley? To be seen only as a body, a sex object, a fly trap for men?}

_{feel
uncomfortable this way.
Comfortable,
that was the word. She was comfortable and she didn't give a damn what anybody else thought. Sam had never liked herself but Misa had liked herself just fine.}

_{keep
liking herself just fine!}

_{was
a big man, well over six feet and with the look of one who is trim and lean but still had muscles to spare. His face and hands showed weathering and evidenced hard work and that said a lot about him as well. He was about as solid and all-around masculine a man as she'd ever seen in real life.}