Empires of Flux & Anchor

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!