Riders Of The Winds

by Jack L. Chalker

  "Remain here and relax," Dorion told them. "I can't see any sign of a train down there and the place looks more Akhbreed than what we saw on the other side, but you never can tell about anything. If I go in alone at first I can get the lay of the land without rousing too much suspicion. A magician can always travel between the worlds on his own, and without you two I won't stand out so much." He looked around. "I'd go back up close to the woods and off the trail and just wait. From the looks of the sun we've got about three hours to Sunset. A half hour down, one or two in town, and then maybe three-quarters of an hour to an hour back up here. You are commanded to hide, wait, and make no contact with anyone until I return. Avoid contact unless it's forced, defend yourself in that case if you have to, but avoid being seen. Understand?"

  Boday nodded. "Yes, we understand. But it will be very inconvenient if something happens and you do not return."

  He thought about that "Well, I don't think it'll be that serious, but if I don't return by sunrise you are to consider me dead and are to make it on your own to Boolean by whatever means you wish. Your one overriding command is to reach Boolean. In that case you, Boday, will be the warrior slave Koba and you, Charley, will be the courtesan slave Yssa, as before, and no torture, no spell, will prevail to get your true identity. And while you will do anything you must to reach Boolean as fast and as safely as possible, you will not reveal the name of your Master, only that you must go to him. Understand?"

  They both nodded. "Take care of yourself," Charley told him sincerely. "Don't make us go off on our own again."

  He grinned. "I don't intend to." And, with that, he was off and going down the trail towards the town.

  "Come," Boday said firmly. "We must get off the trail and hide ourselves." There was no hesitancy or thought of disobedience in any way. Although they were quite casual with Dorion, they were bound to carry out his commands.

  They found a spot about a hundred yards off the trail that had a means of getting into what Dorion called the woods—more like a jungle, really. The horses could be brought to cover, however, and still have something to graze upon, and they would be able to monitor the trail without being seen.

  "Boday is uncomfortable with this situation," she growled, sitting as guard just behind a few trees and with a clear view of the immediate trail. "She is an artist, not a slave and a warrior, although there are many she would love to kill right now. Still, she perseveres for the sake of her beloved Susama."

  It being still daylight, Shadowcat had no interest in being anything but a lump, and Charley disturbed him and then sat petting him, making a sort of conversation possible so long as she watched herself. The distance to the trail was much too long to carry her thoughts.

  "You really miss Sam, don't you?" Boday seemed surprised and also surprisingly soft. "Yes. Boday loves her. Do you think that anything else would have brought her forth from her comfortable studio, her art, and keep her going through all this?"

  "But—it's due to a potion. One of your own potions. You know that."

  Boday shrugged. "What difference? One feels what one feels. Boday dreams about her, thinks about her all the time. It is real. It is now a part of Boday, the most important part. All those husbands, and all those lovers—male, female, and other—over the years, and Boday never really loved any of them, nor felt any love really from them, either. It made her heart cold, her art surface and cynical. Now Boday both loves and suffers. One day she will create art that none will deny is great and glorious and immortal—if she lives. The potion was perhaps part of Boday's destiny." She paused a moment, reflecting. "You, however. You have never loved. You have lusted, as Dorion lusts for you, but never loved."

  Charley was startled. "Dorion lusts after me? But he could take me anytime he wanted to! I'd have to obey! Hell, he could have both of us if he wanted to, and you know it."

  Boday gave a slight smile. "Yes, but he is from a cloistered youth, and he has never learned how to approach women properly, nor read them, as most do when they are just teens. What he did learn during that time was a strong sense of honor and propriety which is keeping him dull and miserable. His status as a magician is the only thing that gives him any sense of self-worth, and he feels flawed in that. Far worse when he has to admit it, worse yet when he must admit it to women."

  Charley was stunned by this. "How did you figure all this out?"

  "You are too young, my precious flower. You may have had hundreds of men, but they were just a commodity to you, all the same after a while. You mistake your expertise on sex for expertise in people, but they are not the same. Most men see women more as objects than equals; do not make the same mistake in reverse or you become like what you hate in them. Boday is close to twice your age, and, she suspects, has lived four times your lifetime. Boday knows these things."

  Charley made no reply, but the words hit home and were very uncharacteristic of Boday. Perhaps she, or maybe all of them, had missed something in the woman, seeing only the flake. And, of course, that's just what Boday was accusing her of doing. Seeing only the surface and never looking beneath. Her two-level personality she had mostly taken for granted as, like Boday's love for Sam, it was alchemically induced. At least, she'd been telling herself that all along. But was she kidding herself, really? It wasn't magic, it was drugs of some kind, permanent or not. Wasn't that really the difference between magic and alchemy? Magic created and destroyed; alchemy only enhanced or depressed what was already there.

  Now Boday was saying that most, maybe all people acted on several levels, the public one being perhaps the best perceived to others but the least important in terms of really understand-big the person underneath.

  "You are learning, my sweet," Boday commented, and Charley suddenly realized that while she held Shadowcat her inner musings were basically public knowledge.

  Boday looked out and frowned. "It is growing dark now and there is no sign of him. Boday begins to be nervous. Each of these paths so far has led to a bottleneck that has spelled trouble."

  Charley began to share the nervousness. "What happens if he doesn't come back by dawn?"

  Boday sighed. "We have our orders and we must obey them. First we go back across the border. Then we use some of the valuables in the saddlebags and we buy incongruous clothing and create for ourselves still other appearances, and then we bribe our way across or hire aid or we make it alone. If Boday can get some alchemist's supplies she can change us yet again. We can do only that becuase we can do nothing else. Our free will is limited to improvising how we carry out our commands."

  Charley knew that Boday was right, although she didn't relish it. There was still a long way to go and a lot that could go wrong.

  Later on in the night someone did come up the trail on horseback, and Charley peered out and looked in the general direction of the sounds approaching from below. Boday was instantly at her side.

  "It's Dorion," Charley said with some relief.

  Boday didn't know English but she could understand that much. "How do you know? There are clouds tonight and the moon is either hidden or not yet up. Boday sees little."

  The dark, however, was the same as bright daylight to Charley. She groped for the Akhbreed words. "Shari see Dorion melagas," she tried, fumbling for the word for "aura" and settling for the one for "soul." She had stared at little else for quite some time now.

  Boday was still worried. "I hope he is still in control of himself," she muttered. "Still, what could we do if he isn't? If he commanded us to surrender to the enemy we would be forced to do so."

  And that summed up their dilemma and their frustrations all at once. They were subject to Dorion, and dependent on his own wit and independence.

  Dorion stopped at the top of the trail at the edge of the woods. "Come out! Bring the horses and packs!" he called. "I think we might actually have gotten a break this time!"

  Charley gave a mental summons to Shadowcat, and they got the horses and saddled them, packing up with a mixture of apprehens
ion and relief. Charley worried when they made then-way slowly out into the open because the cat had not yet shown up, but suddenly there was a flying fuzzball of lavender jumping up on the saddle, barely holding on with all claws. She helped him up and then stuck him in his makeshift riding sling.

  "Don't cut it so close the next time," Charley warned the cat. "Remember, you need me as much as I need you."

  The cat reacted with typical indifference.

  Dorion was patient but seemed excited. "The town's an Akhbreed colonial town, although it's got a fair number of natives working there," he told them. "The thing is, I ran into an Imperial courier down there who's somebody I used to know. Somebody I was a kid with way back when. He's the one who brought this world up, by the way—carrying dispatches to Covanti. This is one of the fastest places to cross over, it seems, which is why it came up."

  Boday wasn't so certain that this was a good thing. "How much does this person know?" she asked him. "About what happened back there, that is? Or about us? And how trustworthy might he or she be?"

  "He," Dorion told them. "His name is Halagar. When we were kids we all looked up to him. He was a natural leader type. The kind you admired and hated all at the same time. You know—he was stronger than you, better-looking than you, always smarter than you. That kind. He's gotten older, just like me, but he hasn't changed all that much. As for what he knows—well, I've never known him to betray a confidence or an old friend. He might if he had direct orders, big pay, and believed in it, but I don't think that's the case here."

  Boday still wasn't so sure, even as they made their way slowly and carefully down the trail to town. "If he is so Mister Wonderful how is it that he is a mere courier?"

  "Oh, couriers are highly paid and highly skilled," the magician assured her. "And you're on your own and pretty independent of bosses and the like. They might have to be anywhere. He says he's taking it easy for now after some experiences that were a lot more harrowing. He talks about being in the military but whose and where I don't know. I think he might have been a mercenary, and ex-mercenaries don't like to advertise that. Some folks think a mercenary can always be bought."

  Boday was clearly thinking along those lines as well, but there was nothing to do but follow Dorion's lead.

  "There's a ship due in here tomorrow," Dorion continued. "It's a freighter but it'll carry passengers as well. A few days' sail and we'll cross the null into Covanti. When we do that we'll be buried enough that it'll be a lot easier to move, and we can rely on some of Yobi's people to take the load off."

  "Sounds good," Charley responded, sharing some of Boday's doubts but not voicing them. "Maybe too good to be true."

  Dorion had apparently been talking over old times with this Halagar in the bar of the small inn there and carefully getting what information he could about the town and the situation before figuring out a way to introduce and explain the two of them. His cover story here was pretty close to the truth: that he had been conned by an Akhbreed sorcerer into taking two female slaves consigned from one sorcerer to another.

  "He knows that there's a whole mob on the lookout for three women wanted by Klittichorn," Dorion told them, "but the general word is that one's short and fat, one's-got a painted body, and the third resembles the Storm Princess but has the butterfly tattoos. Neither of you now matches any of those descriptions, really, and if you just keep your slave personas from this point on I don't mink anybody's going to associate you two with them."

  "That Stormrider did," Charley noted. "And those guys chasing us . . ."

  "Not the same. The Stormrider no more 'sees' in the conventional sense than you do—or I do, for that matter. The patterns he saw are invisible to those without full magic sight, and I don't think he had much of a chance to have reported them to anyone. None of those men ever got close enough to get a good look; they were being summoned by the Stormrider by magical means. Now, that doesn't mean I want to stay around here any longer than we have to. The sooner we've crossed into Covanti and even beyond the more obscure all trails will be and the less likelihood of even a smart guy figuring out what's what there'll be. If Halagar is what he says and still basically honest, he can be a real help as far as Covanti hub itself."

  "And if he is not?" Boday pressed. "If he turns out to be an enemy?"

  They were coming right into the town now, and Dorion looked around, then sighed. "Then we will dispose of him as discreetly as possible. Any old friend who would betray me deserves no more respect from me than he gives."

  Boday smiled. That, at least, was unambiguous, but left her with a great deal of latitude.

  "There won't be many people in the inn," Dorion told them. "I think we're the only ones other than Halagar with a room there, which is a good thing since I don't think they can have more than four rooms total. They don't use this world much; mostly it's used by people like Halagar who want speed over all else, and for shipping emergency and highly perishable stuff. Ah! Here we are! Let's get the horses stabled and then we'll get some real food—not great but a lot better than what we've been eating—and sleep in real beds."

  Until now Charley hardly remembered that she was wearing just the cloak, but now she suddenly felt self-conscious, not only about that but about how rotten her hair and her overall appearance might be—and she had no way to improve on it. Boday sensed her sudden feeling.

  "We can not do much about the clothing—the old outfit never was much and is a mass of shrunken wrinkles right now—but we can at least comb the hair and get it looking somewhat presentable . . . so. Both of us would prefer a true bath and a wider choice of wardrobe and perhaps some slight makeup, but we do what we must with what we have. There! Not as lovely as you could look by half, but more than good enough."

  It was no longer enough to simply follow Dorion's crimson aura; now there were steps and obstacles about which she could know nothing, and it was up to Boday to take her hand and guide her as well as she could.

  Charley had never particularly liked Boday, but she was beginning to see why Sam had stuck by her. Boday was more and more showing her other, more hidden side, at least to Charley, and, most of all, she was totally trustworthy in a world where everybody seemed against Charley, Sam, and all that was good and holy. There was certainly no getting around the fact that Boday felt no guilt for turning young girls into mindless courtesans and whose only objection to slavery was which end she was on, but that wasn't all her fault, either. This world had bred Boday, and Akahlar bred harder, harsher people with ideas and standards formed in a quite different world than Charley's home. And even back home, there were people brought up to believe with all their heart that suicide for god was the best thing you could do so long as you took enemies with you and lots of equally weird stuff. Didn't the same guy who wrote "All men are created equal" own slaves? You couldn't blame them so much as you could blame the system that created them.

  If nothing else, Charley was beginning to learn perspective.

  The inn was small; a bar and back kitchen area opened onto a relatively tiny room with just five round tables. There was no electricity or other modern conveniences; even by Boday's standards this place was pretty primitive. In back and opposite the bar was a steep wooden staircase and rail leading upstairs. If the top floor wasn't any bigger than the bottom, then the four rooms up there were pretty small and the bathroom had to be in the back of the place.

  Boday described it softly to Charley, who sighed and said, "Well, there goes the dream of a nice bath."

  The inn was run by a couple of middle-aged Akhbreed types, the man of medium height but with bushy red hair and moustache and a great belly that no tunic could disguise. The woman, presumably his wife, was a bit shorter but of equal girth, wearing the traditional baggy dress and sandals and with short graying hair. They appeared to be in their fifties and they looked well suited to this sort of job in this middle-of-nowhere location.

  The man greeted Dorion. "Well, I see you are back with your charges, magician,"
he said in a gravel voice that suited him. "You'll need two rooms, you know. No way to put three of you in one of ours."

  "That's fine," Dorion responded. "I think the best thing to do would be to get settled in as best we can. Do you have any facilities for bathing? I think after so long on the trail that's a top priority."

  The innkeeper scratched his chin. "Well, sir, we got one tub and heating the water's no problem. You understand, though, there'll be a charge."

  "Just add it to the bill. If you can get started on that now, I'd also like to find some more suitable clothing for this pair. The elements have pretty well wrecked what they came with."

  "We usually just go over to Quodac for that," the innkeeper responded. "No use in keeping much stock here, being so close to the border and all. Benzlau, he runs the dock and warehouse, keeps a stock of things, though, in case there's need. Might not be much of a fit, or much at all in women's clothes, but I'll get down there when we're through here and see if he can get a wub to open up the company supply store there. Closed now, of course."

  "Wub?"

  "The lizard folk. That's what we all calls 'em. They ain't too bright but they does a lot of heavy labor with no complaints around here. Most folks use 'em for most everything, but I don't allow 'em in here. For one thing, they get really nutty in the head when they get some booze in 'em, if you know what I mean, and they'll steal that sort of stuff. Best to keep 'em out of places like this."

  The good old Akhbreed colonial mentality strikes again, Charley thought sourly. For people who weren't that bright that one back on the beach sure got the message fast and had no problems with a map. The fact was, they probably had more interaction with the "wub" than this guy did who lived and worked here simply because he treated them as the animals he saw them as being, while they'd treated the one as an equal human being. She couldn't help but wonder what most of this world, inhabited by only its natives, might be like. There might possibly be "wub" cities and "wub" kings and all the rest. The government probably knew, but to these people who lived here it was not only irrelevant, it was unimaginable.