Empires of Flux & Anchor

why you have no choice.”

“No, you can’t. I doubt if you ever will. You’re strong by nature. A leader type, Coydt called it.

I’ve been strong by necessity. You retired, and now I’m ready to retire. Good-bye, Cass. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I—I hope you do, too, Suzl.”

The great, misshapen creature that was Suzl was helped by duggers, many as strange and grotesque as herself, into a wagon and she rode off. They rode down to the end of the perimeter and lifted her off, then drove away. She looked around the void, and there were tears in her eyes, not just for herself, but for Cass and Spirit and the others as well. None of them really understood, but, oddly, Coydt would have. She was a terrible freak with the power. If she remained this way, she could survive and even learn to use that power. Eventually she would dominate and make others like herself, and others like she wanted to be would be forced to worship her. She would be yet another child of Coydt’s, and she knew it. World had too many Coydts now. Hard choices. No more hard choices…

She engaged the spell. She felt momentarily dizzy and lost her balance, but her mind cleared quickly. She sat up and looked down at herself. She was normal again! If anything, a little slimmer, a little shapelier. It was odd. She didn’t feel any different. She remembered everything clearly, the good and the bad. Mostly bad, though, she knew. A depressed, unhappy, unnatural and abnormal life that had accomplished very little. Flux had been cruel to her, and she hated it. Still, she had the power, and, interestingly, she now knew a couple of spells. She got up and gestured at the void, and a shining mirror appeared. No taller, but she was shapelier, sexier, better proportioned. The breasts were still big and sensual, but after what she’d been cursed with, they were just fine. Big and sexy—not deformed.

She made her hair longer, so that it came down on both sides of her face and, pushed forward, kind of hung down sexy-like over the breasts. She gave the image a sensual kiss. Big eyes and sexy lips. She liked what she saw there. The earrings with the tags had returned, but nothing else. She used the power instead. Rosy lips, shadow, eyebrows… everything. She created clothing by using very fine black mesh that hugged tight and hid nothing, not even the tattoo. To this she added open-toed shiny black shoes with thin eighteen-centimeter heels, very high, but they made her seem taller and gave her such a walk!

Lengthen and paint the fingernails and color the toenails to match; set things for no unwanted body hair—and she decided she was ready. It was, she thought, the first and only positive help the power had been.

She turned and faced the Anchor border, and something inside her whispered that, even now, she could turn around. Some ghostly link, perhaps with the Soul Rider or the Guardian, or some corner of her mind the spell had missed? She knew she could, realized that there was a certain chance here at freedom, but if she walked back into Anchor, it was for keeps.

She walked into Anchor with a strut and a wiggle that was worthy of any Main Street entertainer. There was a new temporary set of stairs there and two soldiers standing guard at it. Their eyes looked at all of her in a way she had never been looked at before, and she found she loved it. She walked up to them and waited.

“What do you wish, lady?” one of them asked.

“Sir, my husband, Captain Weiz, is somewhere in this area. I would appreciate it ever so much if you could take me to him,” she said in a voice that was high, yet soft and sexy, and rather helpless-sounding.

“We’ve been told to expect you,” one of the soldiers replied. “Allow me to help you up the walkway here.”

She allowed it, even enjoyed it. She had seen other women do this and be treated this way, but she had never been. The trick, she decided, was in never letting men know what suckers they were for this sort of thing. This is what I’ve always wanted, she realized, and didn’t even trouble herself about whether it was the spell or her real self thinking. Whichever, it was true, and she neither looked back at the void nor had any regrets.

Dannon and Cloise brought Spirit to the apron with them. Cass watched them come, and still she felt nothing but contempt for the pair she’d entrusted Spirit to all those years. Dannon was wearing a military-style uniform with second lieutenant’s bars sewn on. Cloise walked behind him, looking just as ridiculous in her hooker’s outfit as she had before, but also looking very strong-willed and confident. Behind them was Spirit, on whom the same sort of outfit looked absolutely stunning. She, however, did not look happy about the whole thing.

Cass had taken Mervyn’s advice, with the advice and help of a few others. She had filled herself out a bit, trimmed off those boyish edges and flattened chest, kept the smooth bronze color on her skin, and made her hair a light brown streaked with blond. She wore a light tan pullover shirt, blue work pants, and a pair of riding boots. She had smoothed her faced and skin a bit as well, and made herself look attractive but thirtyish. She wanted to give the onlookers, particularly those on that wall, a look at a strong, independent woman who was in every way their match. It was the only blow she had left to strike.

They came up to her and stopped. “Hello, Sister Kasdi,” Dannon said, clearly not happy to be there. “You look quite different now.”

“Not Sister Kasdi, just Cass,” she responded coolly. “I no longer represent the Church or the empire. I’m here as a concerned mother and grandmother.” She paused for a moment then looked at Spirit. “No drugs or hypnos, and she’s been told the truth?”

They both nodded.

“Spirit, how do you feel?” Cass asked her.

“Sick,” the woman replied, and Cloise and Dannon both looked startled.

A man came out of the void behind Cass with Jeffron in his arms. That, too, had been a little rub in the noses of the onlookers. The boy wasn’t crying, just sucking his thumb and looking around wide-eyed.

“Here is your son. Spirit,” Cass told her, taking the baby from the man and walking up to her daughter, whose height, with the shoes, was towering in proportion. “My grandson. The real one.”

She took the boy and held him close. Then she said, “They told me Suzl was dead. Is that the truth?”

She thought a moment. “Yes.”

Spirit looked around at all of them. “What am I to do now?”

“Choose,” Cass told her. “Remain here if you wish. Or we will arrange to take you through the temple and into one of the other three Anchors and get you and the boy settled in.”

She stepped forward and looked at the two whom she’d loved and thought of as her parents almost all her life. “You make me sick,” she told them, and they both looked shocked. “Most of the people I can understand, but not you. I loved you and you betrayed us! Out there in Flux I thought how nice it would be to be back in normal, loving Anchor Logh. I felt cut off, lonely, insecure. But not nearly as cut off, lonely, and insecure as I felt this past two weeks. There’s more love out there than in all of Anchor Logh.” She handed the baby back to a startled Cass, kicked off her shoes and removed the rest of her clothing. She was still a lot taller than Cass. “Coming, Mother?” she asked the woman with the child.

All of a sudden they all realized what she was going to do, and all for reasons of their own yelled out, “Spirit! Wait! Don’t!”

Cass looked at her, feeling not a little pride and admiration for her courage, but she wasn’t sure if the result was right. “You don’t have to. There are three other Anchors. It’ll hurt them, certainly, but it’s for keeps. They’ll recover. You won’t.”

“I’ve been there before,” Spirit replied. “The first time I wasn’t prepared for it, mentally or emotionally. I am now. Hard as I’ll try, I won’t be able to forget what happened this time. But, you know, maybe I’m better off not understanding what you people are saying and doing. Maybe it’d be a lot nicer if everybody saw the beauty in a butterfly’s wing or the wonderful patterns in a blade of grass and if everybody spent a lot more time on love and had no more time for fear and hatred.”

“I could lift that spell, you know,” Cass told her. “I could take it on myself. It would be far better than what I had all those years.”

“No. Jeffey’s got to know both worlds. He needs a wizard’s protection, and he needs experience and guidance I can’t give.”

“There’ll be no men in that little Fluxland, you know.”

“Oh, World’s full of men, just as nice and just as rotten as the ones we’ve known so far. If we need them, either of us, I’m sure we can find them.”