Soul Rider #01: Spirits of Flux and Anchor

by Jack L. Chalker

  They finally stopped at a water pocket, a small area undistinguished from the rest of the void except for a wizard-created pool of clear water large enough for people and horses. Mervyn, who was well practiced in elaborate magic, created the spartan food for them all. They were quite impressed, but many of them had already lost a good deal of their fear in the boredom of the void. The terrible Flux was proving only a wasteland, and the only wizardry so far was entirely on their side. By the end of the second day, Cass guessed, they would be getting both cocky and itchy from too little threat and too much boredom.

  Sentries were posted and they bedded down for the night, with Mervyn agreeing to sleep first and then take over from Cass. She readily agreed, and just sat there by the pool for quite a while, looking at her reflection in the water and absorbed in thought. Suzl, acting the old hand, checked out the rest and then came over to her. "You seem pretty quiet," she noted. "Problems, or does it come magically from putting on the robe?"

  Cass smiled. "Thanks. I need you, Suzl, to remind me just who I am and where I've come from. Any problems?"

  "Nope. Not really. A couple of 'em made passes at me and I had a good deal of fun letting them discover why I was along and what was so different. Now they're scared silly of me. It's fun giving orders to guys the smallest of whom are a head taller than me."

  She looked at Suzl. "You know, when that curse backfired I figured you were out of luck, but the more I look at the way this whole thing is turning out I think you got the best of the deal in many ways."

  Suzl suddenly looked at her seriously. "What's wrong with you? Only weeks ago we were two naive farm girls scared of getting sold as slaves, who knew that if we didn't we'd be pressured into marrying some ignorant farm boy, stuck having a mess of kids and stuck in a boring job for life to boot—or joining the priesthood and having our brains mashed and everything worthwhile a no-no. You know deep down that you would never have accepted it. It would've killed you. Me, too, which is why they decided my number would come up.

  Psychologically unfit for normal socialization' they once called me— I snuck in and read the teacher's report. I'm eighteen and a half and I've already lived more than I would have in ninety years of Anchor Logh."

  Cass nodded. "What you say is true, and I don't deny it. I'm not longing for what was. I simply said that you have the best of the deal. You're free, independent, and tough. You'll roam all over World and see everything and have a ball. I envy that."

  "Well, why can't you? Hell, you're a wizard. You don't even need a stringer."

  "Partly because I am a wizard," she replied, then added, "and partly because I am a priestess."

  Suzl looked at her oddly. "Now aren't you taking the show just a little bit too seriously? Me, I'm stuck as I am. Lucky for me I don't mind a bit. But you—you can be anything, do anything you want to do."

  Cass sighed, knowing that she could not explain it, particularly to one such as Suzl. Still, she said, "No, Suzl, I'm trapped just like these poor soldiers and all the rest who got thrown out of Anchor. I'm just beginning to realize how trapped I am. You remember us talking about little people becoming important by accident? Well, I'm discovering that when you become important you get trapped as well. That's okay for now, let's drop it. I'm being forced by Mervyn and the rest to make a decision, a big one, and I'm not ready to make it. I'll have to settle it within myself."

  Suzl just shrugged and shook her head. Finally she said, "I wonder what a battle in Flux is like?"

  18

  BATTLE

  It was understood by the officers and men that the Adjutant would not lead them into battle, but would direct it instead from a command post. They didn't mind, since harm to her was the worst thing they feared. She did visit with them, though, informally. She really felt like they were her people, after getting to know some on the trail. It was now a major duty of hers to hear their confessions, because, as battle neared, they began once again thinking of this less as a new game. Unconsciously, perhaps, she wove a spell, finding that she could remember all the details of each of them.

  This was far different than playing priestess back in Anchor Logh. For her, too, this was no game, and they needed her desperately. She left the strategy and tactics to others, leaving her troops only when she had to consult Mervyn on a particular spell to ease a young boy's problems. She found no trouble on an individual basis; they seemed to believe and accept everything she told them, including cautions against prejudice towards those not quite human and of Flux.

  And many of them were strange indeed— The Flux wizards had strange tastes and bizarre imaginations, it appeared. And they kept coming down the road from Globbus and from the direction of Anchor Bakha, and from trails that came to the far side of Persellus as well. A mighty army had been assembled, the mightiest, perhaps, ever seen on World since Hell was sealed. A mighty army to meet an unprecedented challenge to the failure of World, the one thing all of the forces, no matter how strange or inhuman, had in common.

  Suzl went off for a while to see if Nadya and Dar had returned yet. Cass didn't know how long she was away, for time had lost all meaning to her in her single-minded devotion to what she saw as her duty, but one day, as Cass was walking back from another full round of counseling and confessionals', she spotted the familiar figure on the hill near the local command post.

  Suzl waved and ran to her, and they hugged. "Did you find them?" Cass asked.

  "Oh, yeah. You ought to see Nadya—decked out just like you and acting just as crazy. Dar's even crazier—says he's gonna lead the attack from his side. He's going to get his fool head blown off." She paused a moment. "Guess who I came up with? Matson!"

  Matson' The name was like a cold bucket of water in Cass's face. Suddenly that became the most important thing in the world to her. "Where is he?"

  Suzl jerked a thumb towards the tent— "Up there. He and some of his duggers who volunteered are leading in a Fluxland crew." She shivered slightly — "One that's really weird. The people are the animals there, I think."

  She brushed by Suzl and walked over to the tent, then paused as she saw him, sitting on a folding chair, cigar clenched in his teeth. He was apparently waiting for someone, and glanced up at her, then away, not recognizing her at first. He looked back again, frowned, and got up. "That you, Cass, in that church getup?"

  She laughed. "Yes, I'm afraid it is. Mervyn stuck me good."

  "We heard how you got snatched and then escaped, more or less," he told her, not referring to Suzl's comment that he went nearly crazy at the abduction. "I'm trying to decide whether or not to dock your pay for the period."

  "You would, too, wouldn't you? You stringers are a tight lot."

  He got up and walked up to her. "Is it allowed to kiss a priestess?"

  "My feet and my hand," she responded jokingly. "Yeah, and my ass, too," he came back in the same vein. He grabbed her and kissed her, very long and very hard. Finally he broke away and said. "I want you back with the company when this is through. Look, I've got to talk some things over with the old boy and the midget, but we'll meet in Persellus, you hear?"

  She nodded, her head spinning. "Yes. In Persellus." After she left him, she still felt in some kind of a. daze. She had been, she knew, at war with herself these past few days, and she now knew which side had won. She was a wizard, and, therefore, she could have him, and he was everything that mattered most.

  Before Persellus could be invaded, the three top wizards had to first break what they called Haldayne's shield. This was not a barrier in the physical sense, but more a mental zone of control. Each Fluxland was the product of the unrestrained mind of the controlling wizard, and it was as large and as stable as that wizard's will. To invade before that control was broken would only mean that the attackers would come under the will and control of the defender. There was not much profit in that.

  However, breaking the shield was not the end of it. Haldayne had first broken the goddess's shield, then faced her down physically, an
d only then was he able to impose himself on the land. With his shield broken, the land would still remain his and in his vision. To remake the land, and make it stick, the wizards would have to progress to a point within the Fluxland where their own powers and wills could reach the farthest corners of Persellus— That ground, which might be all the way to the capital, would have to be won the hard way.

  Watches had been synchronized, and the three top wizards positioned at the three decided-upon points of entry. Like most Fluxlands, Persellus was basically circular, although with jagged edges. At the appointed time, with only a small company of carefully selected junior wizards for any direct protection, all three of the chief wizards stepped into the land of Persellus, and began walking forward until they met resistance. Haldayne had -to keep them out, or surrender control. Haldayne was not the type to surrender anything easily.

  Behind the wizards, a good three hundred meters behind, came the leading edge of the troops. Cass had been ordered to remain behind, but. as time wore on and things seemed stalled, she impatiently saddled her horse and rode toward Persellus, passing backed up troops, light artillery, and supply wagons. After all this, she decided she was not going to miss at least seeing what was going on.

  What was going on was awesome and spectacular.

  The countryside had changed so much she would not have recognized it as Persellus. Dark, rumbling mountains spitting smoke and fire were all around, and the countryside was covered with a fine gray ash. She finally determined where the river was, but it was mud and ash-swollen and choked with debris. Although the landscape was lit with an eerie glow that made it possible to see great distances, the sky was black as pitch, with no stars, no Heaven, nothing to break it.

  Ahead, far in the distance but so enormous that it dominated all else, was a tremendous figure illuminated in lines of energy. It had the rough shape of a man, rising up from the ground, but its head was horribly demonic. It was no projection, despite the fact that it was seen only by the outline of the blazing energy, for it moved and roared a terrible, hateful sound that went through the very ground and made it tremble. It was battling something—three strong, solid, straight lines of force directed at it from the ground. One struck it from behind, one from its left side, and one came from the small, wizened figure of a man seated in a folding chair in the middle of what passed for the road directly ahead of them. -

  The great energy beast was strong, and it would occasionally reach out and grasp one of the energy beams as if it were a rope, fight with it, then force it away, but it could not deal effectively With three such attacks from three different directions. Each time it concentrated on one, the other two took advantage to attempt to coil themselves around its ghostly body. Still, it had been fighting this way for hours.

  Cass was enthralled with the display, and at a loss to understand why most of the soldiers in back acted bored and uncomfortable and were not watching at all. She suddenly realized that what she was watching and hearing was on a different frequency than normal, like the stringer's strings. The soldiers were not interested because they could neither see nor hear it.

  The great beast was clearly tiring, and the energy beams were having more and more success. One from the side finally reached the creature's neck and began coiling itself around that hideous face. The demon reached up to tear the beam away, but now Mervyn shot out at the thing's legs, while the one behind—that would be Tatalane—grasped at its arms and tried to pull them away from the neck.

  Mervyn pulled, and the beast roared and rocked, then bent over, barely keeping on its "feet." A second beam now went for its neck, and then a third. The creature screamed in agony, and there was a sudden great, blinding flare of light in the distance and, a bit later, a tremendous thunder-clap rolled down the valley that all could hear. When Cass could see again, the far horizon was clear.

  Two junior wizards helped the old wizard to walk back to a wagon. They lifted him in, gently, then took the reins. There was the sound of horns all about, echoed in the distance. The shield was down. Haldayne retained his control over what he'd had, but could no longer exercise control beyond it. If he tried, he'd send the land back to Flux, and have nothing to defend.

  The troops advanced perhaps a kilometer when they met resistance. Well dug-in defenders of Persellus opened up on them with massive machine gun fire, and the air all around them went chill and was filled with terrible shapes from Hell itself.

  The initial advance was cut to shreds by the fire, and frustrated by its inability to see the enemy positions past the illusory phantoms. The defender's task now was simple— They far outnumbered the attackers, and while they had few decent wizards, neither did the attacking forces for a while. The effort of breaking the shield was great, and it would be hours, perhaps more, before any of the three chief sorcerers could be in any condition to help. Haldayne, too, was in much the same shape, but he would also regain strength the more time went on, perhaps enough to reestablish and extend his shield. Because of their inferior numbers, the attackers had to advance well into the country before this could happen, or the scenario just played out would happen again, with Haldayne able to redeploy and even by spell resupply and reform his defenders so that the next round would be just as costly. If the attackers stalled for any great length of time, each and every time, they would be wiped out.

  Cass watched from her original position, well back of the fighting, but she could see everything clearly. More and more troops were filing past her and marching towards those deadly gun emplacements, then dropping and trying to dig in. Artillery was set up near her, and soon the boom of cannon fire was added to the din, as the gunners attempted to line up on the machine guns. She watched the carnage with mounting horror, saw the field littered with the dead, and was revolted as she had never been in her life. Never in her most terrible nightmares could she imagine the reality of this massacre.

  She glanced over and was startled to see Matson, cigar and all, sitting high on his horse and directing some—creatures—who were hauling up some very odd-looking things. They appeared to be a large number of parallel metal pipes all lashed together. When they were in range, he gave a series of signals and smaller shapes moved up behind the tubes. In less than a minute a hundred tubes, almost at the same time, erupted with a roar and flashing smoke and fire, and ahead the gunnery positions were pounded with an entire line, perhaps three hundred meters across, of massive explosions. The roar was deafening.

  The small creatures behind the tubes, whatever they were, were fast and professional and moved to Matson's barked orders. A second salvo went off, and, after the last explosion had discharged, there was a roar and cheer from troops up ahead. They moved forward. Matson's guns had pushed back or wiped out the machine gun nests, and the columns moved forward once more.

  Another kilometer, and suddenly the ground opened up ahead of the advancing troops, like a giant mouth. They fell in, and it swallowed them and closed again. From behind came more withering machine gun and rifle fire, pushing the attackers back.

  Less than a hundred meters from Cass's new position, Matson frowned, barked more orders to the creatures hauling the tubes forward, and rode up to the forward command group where the junior wizards were conferring with the field commanders on how to overcome this obstacle.

  The stringer shouted something at them, and they nodded, and two of the junior wizards went back with him to his launchers. She waited, as they all did, to see what was up.

  To her surprise, the troops were now ordered forward, and they went slowly, nervously, to the area of the trap. All defending fire stopped suddenly. When enough soldiers were on the area of the trap, it opened again, swallowing them, but at the same time Matson's tubes opened up, concentrating their rounds on the opening. This time there were no explosions, for the tubes shot not explosive rounds but huge balls of some gooey substance. The mass filled in the mouth before it could close, and as it tried it just compacted the new material, which seemed to quickly harden. Can
nons opened up on the gun emplacements beyond the "mouth" at almost the same time, and again troops moved forward— The "mouth" shimmered and shook and tried to free itself, but it was hopeless. Matson had effectively filled it and paved it over.

  It went like that for some time, although time became blurred into the sameness of death— Haldayne had a huge population to call upon, but he couldn't use them. His own volcanos had filled in enough of the valley to make any massive deployment of forces from behind very slow and difficult. The geographic strategy he had laid out to keep the attackers on a single, predictable line of march worked against him as well, and he had three sides to defend.

  Mervyn, however, was still unconscious, and bird messengers brought news that Krupe, too, was still out, while tiny Tatalane was conscious but very, very weak. Still, there was no sign at all of any attempt to raise another shield, which told them that Haldayne was in at least as bad shape himself.

  In what turned out to be more than nine hours of continuous fighting, Mervyn's force had gained almost fifteen kilometers,, Krupe's twelve, and Tatalane's sixteen, but that last was the most important. She was coming in from the side, which had a couple of nasty volcanos in the way but was also the least defended, there being no natural road in from that point. Terrain had been her biggest enemy, but now that she had somehow cleared the mountains she was on a plain heading directly for the capital.

  Cass rode back to a field kitchen and got a canteen filled not with water but with beer, then headed for Matson. He was surprised to see her, but he looked very, very tired and suddenly very old, and his shirt was soaked with perspiration. Still, he managed a smile. "I thought you weren't supposed to be up here with the common folk," he managed to joke-

  She threw him the canteen. "Here. Drink your damned religion."

  He caught it, opened it, and swallowed, then looked surprised and pleased. "I'll be damned! It's beer!" He said that last like it was the most wondrous and beautiful word in the language.