Empires of Flux & Anchor

It would be Matson’s and the soldiers’ job to get them into the temple. It would be Kasdi’s job to get them positioned and moving through the temple so that they could command it. Little by little, then, more and more good soldiers would be ferried in a few at a time, and they would fortify the temple against the outside. At the same time, small teams of wizards led by Anchor Logh natives would move out and attempt to reach and breach the wall and the shield.

On the twelfth day everyone held their breath as Spirit delivered a 368.5-gram healthy-looking baby boy. The delivery was not effortless, but it was painless, thanks to the wizard powers of Flux. The child looked quite normal and human in every way, to the relief of all, but didn’t really seem to look like either Spirit or Suzl—or Kasdi or Matson. He was cute, though, and both grandparents were pleased. As both parents were mute and illiterate, Kasdi, with Matson’s shrugging permission, named him Jeffron, a diminutive form of her own father’s name, and so it was recorded by Mervyn in the official registers.

Suzl was a bit put off when it turned out to be a boy. She had so expected a girl that the idea that it might not be hadn’t even entered her mind. She was, however, relieved that it was over and that mother and baby were doing fine, and also relieved, as were Mervyn and Kasdi, that the Soul Rider this time had remained with the mother.

“Maybe it only likes or favors women,” Kasdi theorized. “How do we know?”

Suzl warmed quickly to the child, however, particularly when she discovered that she could breastfeed as well as Spirit. Duty now called, however, and it was time for her to make good on her end of the bargain.

How much do you remember of your past? she asked Spirit. It was sometimes unsettling to discover the lack of frames of reference when talking to the woman who had, after all, grown up normally.

But Spirit had put almost her entire past so far out of her mind that it might as well not exist. What was there was sometimes hard to dig out. With that last visit to Anchor Logh, Spirit, by spell or by psychology, had literally buried all that she had been.

Slowly, Suzl began to draw from her a present state of mind. She could not remember much, and what she did remember was impossible to grab hold of or build upon. To Spirit, it seemed, there was only the present, and her practical memory seemed to go back only to the time when she gave Suzl her powers to use. She could not remember life without Suzl, nor could she remember what Suzl had looked like before. She did, however, remember her mother—her real one—as her mother and a kindly, middle-aged man who she seemed to think might have been her father. Suzl recognized the vision as not her father, but her maternal grandfather, who apparently had made quite an impression on her. She did not remember Coydt.

Still, Suzl was able to put across the idea that a lot of people, perhaps the kindly man, were in trouble from evil others, and that she was needed to guide some rescuers to the place where she had surrendered her powers. She agreed to help, simply by following Suzl’s lead and doing what was asked of her, whether or not she understood what she was doing.

Anchor Logh had been in the grip of the enemy for sixteen days when they returned to the Hellgate, hidden behind a shield that had revealed none of its secrets.

Spirit led Suzl, Kasdi, Matson, Zlidon, and Macree down the ladder to the long tube. Jomo took command of the caldera itself, to make sure that nothing went wrong at this end.

Tatalane had come up with a reasonable compromise on the lighting situation, and all now looked slightly inhuman with their eyes adjusted. All now had eyes like those of a cat, eyes that adjusted for any available light and would be fine in all but total darkness. Texture, contrast, and distance ability were all quite good, although the laws of physics, which had to be obeyed for an Anchor situation, had rendered them colorblind, and there was a focusing problem they had to get used to. Either they could see far away or very close up, but not both at the same time.

It was the first time in a fearsome Hellgate for the three men, and the first time in many years for Kasdi, but while there seemed to be a flickering of some bright, ghostly spiderlike thing here and there in the tunnels, they were allowed to progress to the vortex.

Suzl could see the patterns clearly, and it was with some amazement that she realized that Kasdi could not. But the priestess had never forgotten the pattern needed to open that way, and she did not now. Matson reached into a pack on Zlidon’s back and removed three small devices, which he proceeded to set. “Now, when I tell you, you open that thing and these three things go through. I don’t think they’ll be expecting anything. We’ll give it a count of twenty, then I’ll go through and check to see what else is needed.”

“No,” Kasdi told him. “I will go. There will still be some Flux power on the emergence spot. You would not be able to draw the pattern and get back in time. I will be able to shield myself.”

He stared at her a minute, then nodded. “O.K. In, look around, and back. If all’s clear, we all go through. If not, we’ll give them a lot worse than these three, then go right in after. You’re sure Suzl understands her part?”

“I think so. She’s better.”

“O.K., as soon as we’re in, it’s back for the next group. When we get a minimum of a dozen or so, we’ll start to move out and explore the place. Now—let’s do it!”

Kasdi traced the combination, hoping that the devices would go through without a human attached. As far as she knew, it had never been tried this way. Matson tossed in the devices, and all held their breaths, hoping that they would not hit the wall and bounce back into the chamber. They went through, and Kasdi started counting down from thirty aloud. At “five” she traced the pattern again, and then held her breath and jumped in at “zero.” Jeffron, in Spirit’s arms, was crying, the sound reverberating up and down the tube. Instantly the sound was cut off and replaced with a far different one.

The room had been sealed except for a trap door at the top. The grenades had blown right through the floor and had also blown the trap door right out, sending it far into the hallway. The bloody bodies of three men, who’d obviously been sitting almost on top of the explosives playing cards, were about in heaps, as were the remains of their deck and their chips. The lights in the immediate area had been blown out, but the generator was still humming at the far end of the hall. She ducked back on the spot and traced the design. Jeffron’s cries suddenly picked up where they’d left off.

“Three men dead, big hole!” she shouted over the baby’s din. “Lights are smashed, but the power’s still on!”

Matson nodded “Let’s go,” he said coolly.

She traced the pattern, and they all went in except Suzl and Spirit and the baby, of course. Suzl watched them vanish, then nodded to Spirit and they made their way back along the tunnel There was a fair number of people to get through yet. After that, she’d sit up with Jomo at the top of the caldera and, with the big dugger, worry herself sick.

They all made it through safely and quickly heaved themselves through the hole in the ceiling. There were some shouts down the corridor, and the sound of a few people running. Somebody yelled, “Get some lights down here!”

They took their postions, and Matson handed Kasdi a semiautomatic rifle that seemed to weigh a ton. She took it anyway, getting a gun belt from Zlidon’s pack filled with ready clips. She wasn’t much of a shot, and killing this way wasn’t exactly her field, but she was prepared to do it.

“Want us to blow the generator?” Macree whispered.

“No,” the stringer responded. “Let’s see if we can keep it intact. If the power stays on, nobody will come running except those in the temple itself. Maybe we can take it as it is.”

“If they don’t have five hundred men in here,” Zlidon added worriedly.

There were some torches with the fire equipment on each level, and somebody finally thought of them. Two torches flared down the hallway, and after adjusting to the new light, they could see four or five men coming down the hallway. All wore pistols, but none had their pistols drawn. Clearly they were thinking less of an attack than of an accident, which meant they either had relaxed too much or weren’t that bright. Either way, it was a break.

They let the newcomers come all the way down, until they actually passed Matson and Macree. They saw the bodies of the three men and the huge hole in the floor, and hands went to their guns—but too late. They were mowed down so easily there wasn’t any challenge to it at all.

Matson waited for the noise to abate, then stamped out the torches. They held their breath, listening, but heard nothing more. Finally Matson said, “Dump the bodies down the hole. I don’t care if the next group