will not return to the way they were, and they will leave this place a costly hell.”
The stringer nodded. “I figured as much. That’s why we have to take this time to make a deal. We have to keep all this quiet from the rest of Anchor Logh, or the other wizards will panic and let the shields drop as they run, and everybody will be primed for the last stand. Then it might be too late.”
The general frowned. “Too late for what?”
“A deal. Suppose there was no invasion outside of this small area? Suppose we let you keep Anchor Logh and run it without any interference? What would you say then?”
Both officer’s mouths fell open in surprise. Finally, the general recovered. “At what price?”
“The empire controls the machines, and the temple becomes a sort of embassy. We need to insure that it’s not a free and easy passage to the Hellgate. Beyond the temple, no one leaves or enters without the permission of your government and the empire’s. The stringer guild will deal with you at east and west gate. I’ve seen a thousand Fluxlands, General, and so have most of the others. We’ll keep your trade open, and we’ll be the intermediaries between the empire and your people. It makes no sense to cost a million lives and make this a wasteland. No sense at all, for either side. They want to keep this contained. If you’re here, running the place, they can do so. They do it by co-opting you into the empire. Making it legitimate. Anchor Logh is restored, but has total internal self- government. Everybody benefits and nobody else dies.”
“If we could only trust the empire on that,” Weiz put in. “But it’s a theocracy. How can we trust it?”
“Guarantees can be worked out. You and the Church have both been working with an illusion. The empire isn’t the Church; the Church serves the empire. Nine wizards set policy and control everything that it does, and none of them are in the least bit committed to the Church. The war has bled off the surplus population so far, but that won’t last forever. Flux will absorb the surplus, though, as it always has in one way or another. The ones with the power, the Nine Who Guard, are really mostly concerned with securing those Hellgates. Secondarily, they went as far as they could in learning. They needed a mechanism to break the control of the wizards, each of whom had some piece of old knowledge that usually meant nothing to them until fitted into the whole. They needed a way to pry the ancient stuff out, and they needed Anchors, with fixed laws, to experiment with what they learned. I think they can spare Anchor Logh.”
“It seems reasonable to me,” Weiz noted. “But it’ll have to be sold to higher-ups, in secret, while everything is contained here.”
“Just keep your men on the wall. I’ll stop them and explain the conditions there, too. I think the head of the Nine will be among the first through. You sell it to your side; I’ll sell it to mine.”
“It’s a tough job,” the general noted. “Still, I agree, for what that’s worth, and I’ll cooperate so long as there are no tricks. But no empire forces are to cross the wall or extend more than a kilometer in either direction. If they do, it’s all off.”
“These are hard choices you’re handing both sides, Matson,” Weiz noted. “You’re the only one free and clear in all this. You don’t give a damn.”
“Life is all hard choices, Captain,” the stringer replied. “I’ve had more than my share. But most folks never get any choices at all, and hard as they are, I’d rather be the one making the decisions.”
Weiz stirred. “Did you see a woman in Flux? Short, chubby, kind of cute?”
“Yeah, Suzl’s alive. Why? What’s she to you?”
“I… sort of married her.”
Matson chuckled. “On orders, of course.”
“Well, yes, on orders. But I find her a little special.”
“You can hardly even know her!”
Weiz shrugged. “I’m a gambler.”
“Well, we’ll see if she is. Do your job first, Captain. The rest is academic if we fail.”
It had been kind of imposing, even threatening, to stand in front of a point in Flux and try to talk an invading force into not going into Anchor. Fortunately, the initial shield opening was quite small, and there were few soldiers to work with—and a wizard. The wizard had contained the assault and sent for Mervyn.
Weiz was a glib talker, and it had been a surprisingly easy sell on the Anchor side, although, of course, it would be years before the military government felt safe enough to relax and remove its martial law organization designed mostly to fight a tough war. On the empire’s side, there was almost a feeling of relief at Matson’s offer. Many of them were appalled at legitimizing such a terrible and repressive sexist regime, but when you had the Fluxlands for an example, the bizarre could be made palatable and the unthinkable allowed. The people of Anchor Logh knew the hard choice. All-out war to the death or the system they had now. Most hardly liked the system, but they were terrified of the alternative. They consoled themselves that such a rigid system would have to bend someday, and slowly reforms would return. They would wait, making a characteristically human decision that none not in their place could comprehend.
They had seen the burned-out and desolate future, and they had decided
Mervyn had called in a whole crew of top wizards to examine the spell on Suzl and found it fully lived up to her expectations. Its traps were based on her own Flux power; automatic spells that would trigger when the one before was touched. Such was the way of curses. They could see the traps, but there were so many of them, and all of them so subtle, that there was no way to disarm them without exploding them, to the detriment of any wizard—and innocent bystander—who tried. Coydt had made good use, too, of the linking spell between Suzl and Spirit, now inoperative. Through that, Coydt had engineered a system which would backfire on Suzl when she disabled the spell, sending it along via the linking spell to Spirit and attaching it to the binding spell. To free Suzl would send the curse intact to Spirit, making her curse even more grotesque.
There was always a chance, of course, that the Soul Rider could work it out, but they wouldn’t know until it was tried. As far as the Soul Rider was concerned, Suzl was convinced that her part in all this was done. The Soul Rider had stuck with Spirit. It would not risk her, particularly when Suzl could still use the power through the Soul Rider’s spells. From the Soul Rider’s point of view, Suzl, as translator and spell receptor, was still just fine the way she now was.
“And the binding spell Coydt handed me?” she asked the spell doctors. “What would it do?”
“He was as good as his word,” they replied. “You would remember, but your perspective will have changed. You would see your previous life as a waste, a miserable emptiness. You would see this system of theirs as perhaps not right for others, but just what you’ve always wanted and needed. Once in place, you would consider it natural and normal. You would know all the rules, and you would embrace them. It would dampen your aggressive streak, and pump up your hormones, and freeze your sexual orientation, and focus your interests on what your new life demanded. There would be no regrets.”
“And the body?”
“Physically and emotionally, you would be seventeen or eighteen again and would be somewhat frozen there.”
“So it’s
“Perhaps not. When we get to really understand the power amplifiers, we can perhaps reform and refocus them. Technology and our knowledge will advance. What one person created, another can surely uncreate one day.”
“One day.”
Cass was appalled that she was even considering the binding spell. “For whom? A guy who was ordered to marry you and parade you around to draw me in? A man you’ve known for maybe a day?”
“Or somebody else. What does it matter, Cass? I told you a while back that you just can’t relate to what kind of life I’ve had.”
“But you’ve always been the clever one, the big mouth who’d always point out the truth. You figured out how to reach the Guardian and made it all possible! You’ve always been the independent free spirit!”
“It was an act, Cass. An act to convince everybody, even myself, that I wasn’t a freak, wasn’t owned, wasn’t property. But I was. The only time I felt really genuine, really free—with Spirit—turns out to be phony as well. My
