Changewinds 03 - War Of The Maelstrom - Chalker, Jack L Read online

  The general bowed. "Very well."

  "That's not all," the sorcerer added. "We have a growing danger to all our plans the longer we wait. The duplicate might still continue to elude us, since we haven't been able to find her in almost two years and we now have far less time and Boolean might be well served to Just hide her. How long would it take to get the word to all the armies in the field to assemble?"

  "All of them? For the full assault? Months. There are many hundreds of worlds that would have to be notified, given orders, and there's assembly time, and, of course, it must be done without alerting the Akhbreed." the officer replied.

  Klittichom did a little figuring in his head. "Let's see…. Assuming it was those apes with Asterial, it would be, hmm six months, give or take." He thought a moment. "You have eight weeks, General. Exactly fifty-six days and not one more. No excuses. Those who are not ready at that time we wilt do without. We will attack in full force starting at precisely twelve noon, our time here, progressively around alt of Akahtar. You must not give me any excuses or objections, General. I tell you that if we do not attack then we may never be able to attack. There is a new and potentially fatal element in our game and only this timing will block it."

  The general clearly didn't like it, but he made no objections to the basics. "Still, though, I am uneasy and so will our allies be at the lack of a truly valid test. It is one thing to create dust-devil changewinds in me deserts and high country here and there, but an Akhbreed Loci is a totally different matter. They will not rally, sir, in sufficient force to do the job, unless it can be proven that a hub, an Akhbreed hub, guarded by a great Akhbreed sorcerer and supported by thousands of lesser ones, can be as easily taken out. I mean no disrespect to you, Ma'am, or to you, sir, nor do I reflect my own confidence in saying that. It is a practical matter."

  "The masses are sheep. General! You do not need any mystic powers to hear them hewing, nor to know that there arc precious few wolves. We are all either predators or prey, General. You have only to pull the right levers to get the sheep marching to the slaughterhouse, one by one. If you can not do that, then you are a sorry wolf indeed and perhaps not the man to lead this great crusade."

  The General was not intimidated. "Then give me that lever. Give me something so startling that there can be no resistance. I can move them, but distance and die need for secrecy ties my hands. Give me something that will not betray us but which will none the less be so loud I will not have to raise my voice to reach the farthest colony of Akahlar."

  The sorcerer nodded. "Very well. I have been itching to do this ever since we managed to contain Boolean inside Masalur. I was going to do it anyway, but you and others pressed me not to out of fear it might tip our hand. I think we can do it so that it will not. I think we must do it, both for the reasons you name and to eliminate the only effective threat we have. Without Boolean, the threat is lessened greatly. Without the girl, it is effectively eliminated."

  "Then you intend to move against Masalur as a demonstration," the general said more than asked.

  "I do. It will be an excellent test no matter what, and we might just eliminate Boolean in the process, although I fear he leads a life as charmed as that girl we have been chasing." He paused a moment, then said in disgust, "Argh! He has bested me for so long he has gotten me trained to his mind-set. Damn him!"

  He got control of himself, then added, calmly, "We already have forces in the region. They can seal it off, block immediate word of the tragedy, and control that word when the navigators dare approach."

  The general nodded. "And when do you plan this demonstration to occur?"

  "It must be early enough to serve as such, and build confidence. 1 assume that you will be assembling the General Staff for the final preparations. That will take a few weeks. All right. Four weeks. Four weeks from today, at precisely two in the morning Masalur time. That will mean most of them will be asleep and there will be little time to flee or act on a major alarm. That date and time and the object are classified from this point. General Staff only, not even aides. We need enough people to know that we are the ones who did it and to be able to get that word back. Not enough to leak to Boolean or be intercepted by spies. You understand?"

  "Perfectly, sir. The timing will also be right in that it will spur our forces onward to assemble on the ready and will also be rather short even if the Akhbreed suspect. We will know if they do by whether or not an assault is made upon us here."

  Klittichom chuckled. "Yes, and even if they do they will find us gone, and there wilt be too little time to take proper countermeasures. Very well, General, it is decided. In twenty-eight days Masalur will cease to exist. And perhaps Boolean and his fat bitch as well."

  The Storm Princess stared at the sorcerer. ' 'Then I should get in some last-minute practice with you, I should think. I am relieved that the waiting is over and that we will finally act. The General can take care of the military matters here. You and I, Lord Klittichom, should leave for the Command Center as quickly as possible."

  The homed one nodded. "I agree. It is all or nothing. The die is here irrevocably cast. Now we will seize the threads of Destiny and play them to their ends, and, no matter what comes of this, or what decision is ultimately reached, all the worlds of Akahlar and perhaps all the worlds of Probability will be transformed forever."

  1

  The Mirrors of Truth

  IT HAD NOT been a good trip, and it hadn't gotten any better. Now, at least, they were with a qualified Navigator's train beading in the right direction, although that didn't give Sam a lot of comfort. The last time she'd been in such a train, it hadn't helped at all. In fact, she was one of the few survivors.

  Maybe the only one by this point. She had thought long and hard about that and all it did was make her own personal depression worse. The kids at least had some kind of peace back at Pasedo's with their minds mercifully cleansed of the ugly memories of rape and murder. Charley and Boday who knew if they still lived, or where, or under what conditions? Even Boolean might not know, or might not care to know. She was the only one that was ever really important to him.

  She only thought she used to have nightmares; now she awoke, sometimes with a scream, drenched with sweat and shaking like a leaf. Her attempt to overcome the demonic fat she carried was out the window as well; she no longer had much energy, and she often felt a bit sick or strange, and she really no longer felt like doing much of anything other than eating and sleeping.

  The worst part was that she was having trouble remembering things clearly. She knew she had come from another world and had spent most of her life in that other place before being drawn here as a pawn in these sorcerers' games, but she couldn't really remember it, sort it out, or make sense of it. She had no clear vision of her old, pre-Akahlar self, nor any real memories of her family, although she must have had one.

  Rather, it seemed, somehow, that she'd always been this way, had sprung as she was, as if one of Boday's fantastic creations, cast out into an angry world she didn't understand as the plaything for others, the quarry in some fantastic supernatural chase. And now she moved towards Boolean, whether she wanted to or not, in a seemingly endless journey divided between those who wanted to kill her and those who didn't care about her, both companion and prisoner to the strangest split personality she could imagine.

  By day, her companion was Crim; a big, brawny, powerful man wise in the ways of Akahlar, a mercenary who, at least, was on her side. By night the big man vanished, replaced with the beautiful but no less tough Kira, a mysterious woman also from another world and place but now very much at home here. Once they had been two, but now, cursed, they shared an existence, the man by day, the woman by night, each otherwise a passive observer in the other's mind, an unimaginable marriage. It was hard enough to get to know or understand another person; Crim and Kira remained ciphers, friends or not.

  "We're going to have to cut out of the train," Crim commented to her as he sat on the wagon seat staring into
nothingness. "We're coming in to Covanti hub, and the heat will really be on there. I'll want to scout it out before we risk passage through the city-state."

  She nodded absently, not really caring any more.

  "Perhaps," Crim mused, "we can make use of the lay-over. Kira's quite concerned about your mental state and moodiness, and I think she's right. If you don't care if you make it or not, then you won't make it. Monanuck, the Pilot for this leg, tells me of a reliable physician in Brudok, a town near the border. I think we'll stop in there."

  Physicians here were different than what the word conjured up in her mind from some past, little-remembered life. They were sorcerers, usually Third Rank, but with particular skills in the healing spells and generally teamed with a top alchemist for those ills and injuries requiring potions.

  "I want no more drugs," she told him flatly. "They have been the cause of much of my misery, I think. Drugs and potions that bend and erase the mind and play nasty tricks on it."

  "Not that kind of physician," he responded. "But I think you ought to try her. There's little to lose, and you might find out what's wrong."

  Actually, Crim knew most of what was wrong with her even though she did not, but he had no quick fix for the problem nor any confidence she could deal with much of it if she heard it from him.

  "Why not?" she sighed.

  It was Kira, however, who took her to the physician's office in the small but prosperous-looking colonial border town. There was no telling who might be about looking for her in this sort of place, and night was far safer, even for two women on their own, than day.

  The physician was a woman in her mid-thirties, with a bit of prematurely graying hair she hadn't bothered to color out but had cut very short. She wore a satiny yellow robe, no makeup, and her only jewelry was some fancy, overlarge rings and some sort of charm necklace with various tiny things attached to them. That wasn't unusual for a sorceress those were various magical things or symbols used for invoking powers, Sam knew.

  It was immediately clear why Crim and Kira were keen on this particular one; she asked no probing questions about why they were there or where they were going or anything like that. In fact, she asked very few questions at all except for her age and the usual vital statistics. Then she probed, by laying on of hands, various parts of Sam's body, particularly her fat stomach, and then placed both hands on Sam's head, one on each side, shut her eyes and seemed to go into a light trance. Sam found she didn't really mind the exam; the sorceress was kind of attractive and the feelies evoked pleasant memories.

  Finally the physician broke her trance and sat down in a chair opposite Sam. She seemed to be thinking for a minute or two, then she said, "Well, you are not suffering from any physical diseases other than a minor and easily treatable infection that could lead to boils and you may have a cold coming on. However, there are some severe complications here that will take more than I can give, I'm afraid. You have a number of complicated spells acting on you, some of which are acting against others and causing some of your problems, and a couple of minor ones old enough that they are integrated into your very being. That was what took so long to detect. You further have some serious neurological problems stemming from an ingestion within the past year of a powerful potion that is unfamiliar to me. I could treat any one of them, but the combination is far too complex."

  Sam sighed. "Tell me something I don't know. So there's really nothing you can do."

  "Not me," the physician agreed, "but I think there is someone who can. In Covanti hub itself, however, is, I believe, someone who can help you a great deal."

  Kira cleared her throat. "Uh, it is not easy for her to go through the hub, and it must be done quickly and without delay. I had hoped to have her stay over here for a day white I went over and checked things out, but for her to go into the hub to actually see a specialist is, uh, indelicate. I am afraid I can not explain further, except to say that there are people there who would do her harm."

  The sorceress sighed. "I see. Well, there is no way around it. If you do not get this straightened out, I'm very much afraid that it will consume and destroy you. It has already gone on far too long. The one I would send you to does not live in the city proper but in the hills along the eastern border. If you must pass through anyway, it seems far more dangerous to me, as a physician, not to make the stop than to make it."

  Kira nodded. "I see. Well, give me the details and I will see what can be done. Sam, go get dressed and I will be out in a minute." Sam was under no illusions that she wasn't being shoved into the next room so the two could talk, and she very much wanted to hear the conversation, but short of making a scene there wasn't any way they were going to say what they wanted to say with her there. She sighed, got down from the table, and went off to dress, figuring she could worm it out of Kira somehow later.

  As soon as Sam was out of the room, the physician whispered to Kira, "She doesn't know she is pregnant? Even though she is clearly more than six months along?"

  "She doesn't," Kira responded. "There has been no good way to tell her without depressing her even further. You see, the odds are quite good that it was the result of a rape. As for her ignorance, she is so used to thinking of herself as fat and ungainly that the additional burden, while it saps her strength, isn't the sort she would notice, as opposed to either of us."

  "Well. she's going to find out in another eight to ten weeks," the physician noted. "I think this specialist will be the right way to solve that and many of her other problems. I have known great successes from Etanalon, although there is danger. In such a mixture of spells and experience, she alone can be the ultimate physician to herself. Even Etanalon can only give her the means to cure herself as much as she might be cured. She should not have gone this long without a Second Rank specialist treating her. Her depression, her nightmares, her moodiness, her lack of control, which is only exacerbated by the pregnancy, saps her soul. Without the will to cure herself, she will go mad with the treatment or die without it-"

  Kira considered that. "She is stronger than she thinks she is. Deep down, she has shown great courage and resourcefulness when she had to. I think it's still there. Tell me where this Etanalon is, and I will do what I can."

  It was a quick and relatively easy passage into Covanti hub, much to Kira's relief. There were only two sleepy soldiers on guard, no particular hangers-on except a couple of dogs sound asleep on the border station porch, and the document checks were perfunctory at best. It was, in fact, so easy that Kira began to worry that some kind of a trap lay ahead. Either that, or they had successfully shaken their pursuers at this point and they were now regrouping beyond this point, where they knew that Sam would have to pass. She didn't like the idea of having such a solid and waiting line ahead, but at the moment she preferred it to complications here.

  Even so, they took no chances, travelling the outer loop road around to the east. It was well after midnight when they reached the small village nestled in a valley surrounded by low, rolling hills, and if anyone was about at that hour they certainly kept to themselves.

  Covanti was wine country, both the hub and some of its colonies. The vast bulk of Covanti wine came from colonial vineyards, but the really good stuff, the select stuff, came from small privately held vineyards within the hub itself. The sense of it being a peaceful and highly civilized region continued along the roads, which were generally well lit with oil lamps on high poles. The village had electricity, a rarity outside of the big cities, and looked less like a remote town on a mystical world than some tiny and quiet European village, right down to the red slate roofs and white stucco buildings.

  Etanalon lived above the village, in a small house overlooking the town and the valley. The road up was steep and not as well lit, and it took them almost an hour to get up there. Still, Kira didn't want to wait for daylight. She preferred to be up there before anyone saw them, and to remain up there until darkness again could shield a proper exit. Covanti had been easy to get into, but
it might be hell to get out of.

  Sam had been all right up to this point, but, now, looking at the ghostly small house with only the hint of a glow inside, she began to grow nervous. Nothing really good had ever come of her experiences with sorcerers. She didn't trust the ones she knew, let alone ones like this about which she knew nothing.

  What was a Second Rank sorcerer doing living in a gingerbread-style house up here, anyway? They were all crazy as loons from their power and experiments particularly the ones that went wrong and all they seemed to ever be interested in was increasing their own power and knowledge no matter who else got hurt.

  Looking at the house in the dim light and thinking that way, a thought came unbidden into her mind from that part that was mostly cut off. Hansel and Gretel. This didn't look like the kind of place where you'd want to help the old witch light her oven, that was for sure.

  Even Kira seemed a bit nervous. "It certainly doesn't look like a sorcerer's den," she noted, then sighed. "Well, here goes."

  She raised her hand to knock on the gnarled wooden door, but before she could do so it opened with a strong creaking sound and a dark figure stood just inside.

  "You are Etanalon?" Kira asked, wondering somehow if this wasn't a sophisticated trap, with them now irrevocably committed. A Second Rank sorceress out of the political way would be just the kind to be a friend to Klittichom.

  "Oh, do come in, both of you," responded a pleasant, high, elderly woman's voice. "I have some tea on the stove."