Empires of Flux & Anchor

“You’re worse than that. Because of all this, you stole Spirit’s life, too. She should be training for a trade, romancing the boys, facing a solid future and a normal marriage and life. Now she’s a pregnant mental cripple worshipfully married to a thirty-seven-year-old woman who’s always been a social and sexual deviate. Coydt didn’t do that because she was Cassie and Matson’s daughter. He did it because she was the daughter of a monument you created, something she didn’t even know until almost when it happened! You robbed me of her all the way along, you know. I never even was able to say one word to her without pretending to be somebody else! You took my daughter, my chance for love and a normal life, everything—and gave me what in return? A chance to wear a rag, to age fifty years in eighteen, to sleep on stone and straw, unable to even keep a lock of my daughter’s hair or ever be loved by anyone except as some kind of angel or demigod. It’s more than my life! You took mine and Spirit’s humanity!”

Jomo looked down at her sadly, and there seemed to be a tear in one of his bulging eyes. Matson leaned back against a pillar and lit a cigar, looking a little sad. Down below, Suzl watched the thing play out, not understanding the words but totally understanding them all the same. Her first look at Matson, alive and well, had told her just what was coming. She didn’t need to know the words, for she knew the situation and she knew Cass.

Poor Cassie, she thought sadly. All that power, all that influence, all that force—and it’s nothing. Welcome to the real world, Cass. I’m sorry you had to finally make the trip.

“Are you finished?” Mervyn asked her.

“I’m only starting,” she snapped. “It’s the only thing I can do and you know it. I can’t live any other way. I can’t kill myself, because I can’t violate my vows. But I’ll fight no more for you, old man. I’ll make no more pious speeches. I’m no good to you in any way anymore—no good to anybody. I’m a priestess, and I will remain one, even if my faith is weak and I feel like I’ve been raped. But I resign my sainthood. The Church and the empire sink or swim without Sister Kasdi. I’ve retired. I will do no more killing for you. Do it yourself from now on.”

“You’ve paid a big price, Cass,” Matson said finally, “but it hasn’t been a waste. The old boy’s right in one thing. We’re moving again. Thinking again. The change I saw in the people during this business, going through those Anchors, was amazing. But I can’t really talk about this. After all, I didn’t have to pay the bill.”

Mervyn sighed. “Well, if you will fight no more for empire, even to protect it, will you fight for personal reasons?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I came here not just because I received word that you two had met. I came here primarily because the three of you were here. Word has come that Coydt has made his move. He has taken Anchor Logh, and we are powerless to do anything about it.”

“What!”

“Somehow—I don’t know how, and won’t until I get there, I suspect—there is a wizard’s shield of tremendous force around the entirety of Anchor Logh. No one has been able to penetrate it. And Coydt and at least fifteen hundred insane killers are inside that shield right now, doing whatever they wish.”

11 EXPLORATORY MISSION

“Why Anchor Logh?” Kasdi asked them as they studied the situation in the map room. “There are twenty- eight Anchors. Why is it always Anchor Logh?”

“It isn’t, really,” Mervyn replied. “There have been attacks on many Anchors, and our forces had to fight street-to-street taking some of them. It boils down in this case, I’m afraid, to you again. Coydt is feeling the pressure and he doesn’t like it. Obviously he planned this operation carefully with the rest of the Seven. If they can get away with it once, here, they need take not twenty-eight Anchors but only seven to access the gates from within. If they can take, and hold, a single Anchor for a matter of days, or weeks, or whatever, it will show that it can be done. Then they will only have to solve the communications problem to unlock all the gates within the requisite one minute period. Considering the other obstacles, they will solve that one,too.”

“So this is their demonstration,” she said sourly. “To the others and to me. He knows that all the people I hold dear are there. He knows I will have to come to him.”

Mervyn nodded. “Yes. And he’ll have you in Anchor, where his might will overwhelm your power. He wants you, too, Matson. He doesn’t know who or what you are, but you’ve cost him the heart of his own personal organization. He’ll meet you in Anchor, but on turf he totally controls.”

“First,” the old stringer commented practically, “we have to figure out how to get the hell in.”

It was agreed that Mervyn and Kasdi would fly to Anchor Logh and assess the situation. Others of the Nine and some of the top wizards on the side of the empire were already flocking to the border, and troops had been mobilized and were moving in. Should the shield lift, Anchor Logh would be instantly under a siege more powerful than any force seen since Balacyn.

The whole of Anchor was invisible to those not blessed or cursed with the wizards’ Flux power. There was only an indistinct grayness, a solidification of the void into a barrier none could pass.

The big names in wizardry were already there. Here now was Tatalane, the green, elfin wizard only one meter tall with the shell-like ears and piercing emerald eyes. Here, too, was Krupe, the fat, balding wizard who was never far from his wine. Also present were the beautiful wizard MacDonna, all two-hundred-fifteen centimeters of her, with flaming red hair and piercing blue eyes, and the tiny, dark-skinned Kyubioshi, her shaved head and quiet presence making her seem almost a life-sized statue. Five of the Nine, then, were present here, the other four holding back lest this terror be but a diversion for some other less obvious plot.

“The shield is multilayered and extremely thick,” Tatalane told them gravely. “This is no work of some major sorcerer; it is most certainly the combined and practiced work of an entire team of enormous power.”

Kasdi shook her head in wonder. “But how can they do it? Anchors can’t have shields. The magic doesn’t work there!”

“The shield isn’t in Anchor,” Krupe explained.

“It’s so simple I’m surprised no one ever thought of it before. It is by our measurements exactly five meters into Flux around the entire Anchor boundary.”

“It’s simple why it was never tried before,” Mervyn put in. “Nobody has ever been able to make, let alone sustain, a shield that is roughly three hundred kilometers by one hundred around. I’ll hand this to Coydt—he’s the first man in the history of World to get so much power to cooperate for so long.”

Kasdi stepped back and looked thoughtfully at the shield. “What I want to know is how they expect to get back out. They can’t sustain this indefinitely.”

“I suspect we couldn’t stop the wizards,” Krupe noted. “The shield doesn’t need a top, nor could it have one. It’s too high up for us to get over it, of course, but they could pick any point up there at a reasonable altitude and simply fly out. As for the others, it’s unknown, but I’m sure they have something planned. If I were they, I’d simply have a good stock of uniforms like we use, put up some resistance, then fade and join our own troops. We’d never know if they were good at it. We have too many soldiers to sort them out. We’ll work on covering that angle, of course—it’d be a simple matter to vary our own uniforms— but that is not the problem now. We have a battalion and some very good wizards covering the Hellgate in case they want to use the back door, by the way. Pity we can’t use it.”

“Years ago I could have, with the Soul Rider inside me,” Kasdi noted. “But even if we could, only a few could go and there would surely be a nasty reception committee waiting at the other end.”

“We could take care of that to a point,” Matson said. “Send in a few good concussion and shrapnel bombs ahead of us. It’d clear the corridors and probably blow the power plant as well. Everybody would be equally in the dark. Then come up with automatic fire to establish ourselves. From that point, anybody who knew the temple could probably give ’em a good run for their money—providing they didn’t stumble in the dark and kill themselves. I