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
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
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
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?”
