Empires of Flux & Anchor

She was lost in such thought when she suddenly became aware of a throat clearing and snapped out of it for a while. Sister Karla, the administrative priestess for the level, stood there looking apologetic. “Sorry I must disturb you, Sister, but the wizard Mervyn is here to see you.”

Kasdi brightened a bit. “Send him in! And don’t hesitate to disturb me. It is not good when I think too much.”

The priestess frowned a moment in puzzlement, then turned and walked back out the door. A moment later Mervyn entered, stopped, and looked around. He had the look of a very old man with flowing white hair and beard and a floor-length robe of cream-colored silk embroidered with gold trim. It was not a church robe, of course—only women could be priestesses—but one more in keeping with the image he liked to project. Only his bright, piercing eyes that seemed to look everywhere at once revealed the strength hidden in that baggy robe and those ancient features.

“Hmph! No furniture for guests yet, I see.” He made a quick pass with his hand and then sat—in a comfortable, padded chair which simply appeared behind him. He studied her face for a moment. “You look lousy,” he told her.

She chuckled. “Always the soul of tact, aren’t you?”

“After six hundred and forty-seven years I have earned the right not to have to play silly social games. You’re—what?—thirty-six, and you look half as old as I do. Your eyes and bearing look even older, and that’s going some.”

“It hasn’t been a very easy life, as you well know. That Yalah business a week ago took a lot out of me, too. I slept for three days after that, and since that time I’ve been happy just living simply and routinely here.”

He rose slightly and looked on the table at the paper in front of her. It was a map of World, a very simple map with a few notations written in by Kasdi. It was a record of progress and achievement unprecedented in history, but he suspected that this record wasn’t what she saw in that map. Instead, it represented seventeen years of hard work and sacrifice on her part. The map was her autobiography.

The map showed the seven “clusters” of Anchors, four to a group, or cluster, each equidistant from a Hellgate in the center of the square they formed. They were quite symmetrically spaced around the perimeter of the planet, a fact that only reinforced the logic of a divine plan. A full four clusters were now under the Reformed Church, more than half the planet, with the Fluxlands between, inside, or on the stringer routes through the void that connected them, all either under the control of her partisans or in truce with them. There were still many bizarre lands there, and many mad rulers like the late, unlamented Gyasiros, but all had chosen not to challenge her power but to accommodate it.

The rest had fallen through a combination of arms and sorcery, as had Gyasiros. They had been tough at the start, with much bloodshed and wizards’ contests, but there were few such these days. The word was getting around, and all save the maddest of egomaniacs found some room in their demented psyches for a compromise between the Church’s wishes and their own egos. Not that the old Church and the old order had been a pushover, but not since the Battle of Balacyn, fourteen years earlier, when armies of more than a million faced off in Flux, along with some of the most powerful living wizards known—on both sides—had they tried a major offensive. Still, the next cluster would be as well-defended as any in the past, and both sides still lost bitter and bloody battles.

In fact, although much of Flux was getting easier, the Anchors were becoming harder and harder, as the opposition had plenty of time to prepare and had learned so much about its foes. Now only stringers crossed the line between old and new, and only with difficulty and much suspicion.

“I worry about how much longer we have to go,” she told him wearily. “How many more years, how many more lives?”

“I’d worry about what happens when it’s done,” he responded.

“Huh?”

“We’re the founders of a new world here. Science once again is flowering in Anchor, and a freed people are building new institutions, new ways, that we never dreamed of. Eventually there will be greatness here again—and you will have shut yourself off from ever being a part of it. In the name of moving this world forward, you’ve pushed yourself backward to the most primitive sort of life. Have you ever thought of that?”

“No,” she answered truthfully. “There’s no way to do what must be done for this new world you speak of if I think of my own future. The next problem, the next march, the next Yalah, the next threat to what we have already built—those occupy my mind.” She sighed. “I suppose I shall retire when it’s over. Walk World from end to end, pole to pole, seeing all that there is to see. Perhaps teach or preach or both. I don’t know. It’s so far off.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“But that wasn’t what you came all this way to talk about, and I know it. Now—what’s the real reason for all this?”

“The greater evil is on the move once more. I think at least the first part of the move will be in your direction.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You mean the Seven? I thought we must have weakened them enormously; it’s been so long since they tried anything.”

He sighed. “They are not at all weakened, nor is your statement correct. They are, in most cases, very much in the background. Only rarely does one like a Haldayne draw attention to himself, and then only when it’s part of the plan. Just who do you think we’ve been fighting all these years?”

“Why, the old Church, of course!”

“And who exactly is the old Church? Doesn’t corruption on such a scale show us something right there? I have just recently come into some information that suggests that Her Perfect Highness, the Queen of Heaven, might in fact be Gifford Haldayne’s older sister.”

That startled her. “What! I have fought them a long time, I know, but I never thought—”

“Yes, indeed,” he interrupted. “Who would? This is not to say that the church is, as an entity, a direct and knowing agent of the Seven. Proof of that would be sufficient to win you the rest of World without lifting a finger. But the corruption begins at the very top. How do you suppose they finally discovered the gate entrances inside the temples, buried under the very foundations? They poked and probed and experimented until it was discovered—having access to temples.”

“But—this is monstrous!”

“Indeed. However, up to now it’s worked to our advantage. The Seven now control three of the gates through their subtle control of the church. They are very busy making certain they lose no more of those gates. Had we not discovered them shortly after they discovered the temple entrances and denied them access to at least one, they might have fulfilled their plan without us even realizing it was so until the hordes of Hell overran us. That’s what your Soul Rider was rushing to Anchor Logh to prevent, and when it did, it rushed to some other emergency. Since then, they’ve been very busy just trying to hold onto what they have, and with not much success. If you spent years fighting off an attacker and still knew you were losing, would you keep on doing the same thing?”

She considered it. “No. Of course not. I would have acted long before this, in fact.”

He nodded. “I think the Queen of Heaven is the boss—or was, anyway. She kept them in line because the church was the seat of her power, and she threw everything into trying to keep it. Now, however, my agents inform me that the others have rebelled, citing her failures, and that she has been forced to go along. There was allegedly a summit meeting of all Seven, the first such known to me. At that meeting all the restraints came off. Our friend the Queen of Heaven will continue to defend in her old ways, perhaps assisted by others, but there will now be a division of forces and a new direction. The word in Flux is that they want to tackle you first, before this grand new plan is put into operation.”

“You mean, call me out and face me down? I’d almost welcome that, even three or four to one.”

“Don’t take it lightly. They are more powerful than any other wizards known, except for yourself. It is my firm conviction that one or perhaps several of them are at least your equal. However, calling you out is simply not their way. It would bring the Nine in a flash, and they know it. They are not ready to face down all of us. They are infinitely patient, preferring to minimize risks to themselves and suffer a thousand defeats if they gain the final victory. Still, they are diabolically clever and you must be on guard.” He paused a moment. “I fear that your one soft spot in your armor may be in peril.”

She felt a shock go through her. “But—how could they know? And if they did, why haven’t they acted before