Changewinds 03 - War of the Maelstrom

by Jack L. Chalker

Nine of the fifteen girls sleeping in the Disease Pit, including Sam, were there. A few from the other enclosures also showed up, but Sam told them to go see if they could find others and gather them to themselves. The ones who weren't pregnant had a lot better mobility and were in general in a lot better shape.

  Not that anybody who'd undergone the storm's approach was in that good a shape. All were soaked, mud-covered, and scared. Sam noted that the pregnant contingent seemed, oddly, to be holding up better than some of the others, judging from the yells and screams and hysterics coming to them in the dark. She wondered just how many of them, if only for a fleeting instant, had hoped that the fearsome storm would come their way, overwhelm them, and end their problems.

  "Ain't nobody gonna ride down here and get us together?" Meda asked nobody in particular. "They just can't let us rot here in the mud in the dark."

  "They can and they will," Sam assured her. "I've seen this kind of thing before, only in daylight. They'll wait in their shelters until they are dead certain the storm's gone, then slowly come out. First thing then they'll ring this place with what security they can until the army gets here, and then they'll wait for dawn. They're scared, too. They know a lot of us got caught out here but they don't know how close the storm got or what it might have done or not done. They won't take any chances until they can see properly. Anybody checked the shelters?"

  "I was near one when it collapsed," somebody said. "Made an awful racket and just missed me. With that wind I bet there's not a one standing, or, if there is, not a one anybody but a fool would get under."

  Sam nodded to herself. "That's what I figured. Can't see a thing in this pitch dark, and I ain't so sure I even know which direction's what, so there's no use in moving right now. Best thing we can do is kind'a huddle down here and wait for light. It's gonna be a pretty miserable night, but until we know what's what, there's nothin' we can do."

  That fact made Sam even less happy than the others. She wondered if Kira had been out there, maybe camped on the way here from whatever she was checking out. What if Crim was now cut off? If the storm cut the roads between here and the capital they'd be blocking them off and nobody would be allowed through for days. More than enough time for Klittichom's henchmen to come here and ferret her out. Worse, it was equally possible that Kira had been caught dead center in the storm. If that was the case, nobody would be coming for her.

  "I wonder what they gonna do with us?" Putie wondered aloud. "If everything's wrecked and all, there ain't no way we can just go back to normal here no matter what." She sighed. I'm gettin' tempted to just start walkin' towards the null at first light."

  Sam chuckled dryly. "Yeah? And just how far do you think you can walk, Putie? Or most of you? Even if you got some food and water, it's maybe ten leegs to the border and another thirty or forty leegs across." That was, at best, something like twenty-five miles, a fair day on a slow horse. "Besides, they'll be heavily patrolling all the way. There was lots of folks living in the path of that Changewind and they ain't dead, but they ain't folks no more, neither. We got to play it by hunch, that's all."

  "Who you all kiddin'?" Meda said derisively. "We ain't got no say in it at all. We gonna sit here 'cause there ain't noplace else to go, and then when day comes we gonna do just what they tell us t'do, like good Akhbreed girls. It just the way things are, that all. Only time I disobeyed and did somethin' on my own, 'gainst the rules, I got myself knocked up. The gods made the rules and every time we go 'gainst 'em we get screwed."

  That started up something of a debate that, while on a basic level, was actually over the proper role of women in this society and also the class system. Sam listened to them, slightly bemused by it. Not that any of them sounded like revolutionaries; every one of them would have been over-joyed to just go home and pick up where they left off, get married if anybody would have them, and keep house and have lots more babies. But that wasn't a choice they had, and so there was a natural human tendency to try and cheat fate. Finally Sam decided to take charge.

  "Hold it! Hold it! Look, I don't know how long it is 'til dawn and I don't know what the hell will happen then, but it's startin' to get a little bit better here and there's a fair amount of grass. Each of you take a hand of the one closest to you, and let's get over where it's more comfortable and try and settle down. We're not doin' ourselves or our babies no good by sitting up all night in rotten muck."

  They did get together, and she led them to an area she could feel was fairly thick grass. It wasn't dry, but it wasn't muddy, either, nor did it have a lot of debris, and in the swiftly rebuilding heat and near-suffocating humidity, it was an island in the midst of chaos.

  "Everybody just sit or lie down and try and get a little sleep," she told them. "I know that probably isn't possible but give it a try. It's been a hell of a night."

  A single firm voice and a little confidence was really what they needed, and she was a bit surprised although pleased at how her authority, even though a newcomer and stranger to them, was accepted. For a while there was quiet, and then somebody whispered to somebody and finally there was something of a set of whispered conversations. Sam didn't try to hear them nor care what they were saying; she moved a bit away, staked out a plush plot of grass, and sat, staring out at the darkness.

  Contrary to all that Meda said, there was at least one woman in the group who wasn't about to wait around for the men to decide anything. The darkness was frustrating; there was a little light now as the clouds broke and some stars shone through, but there wasn't any sort of moon around Akahlar, at least not the sort that would illuminate the landscape well enough to see.

  At least now she knew she could do it—turn and twist the Changewind. The most feared thing in this whole crazy world was the one thing that did not threaten her at all. She already knew that she could summon more common storms and use their power as a weapon; she had killed with that power. There might be more things one could do than that, but she hadn't been able to test it all. It didn't matter. What she did know was enough. No matter what happened from this point on, she would no longer be defenseless, nor hesitate to use that power when necessary.

  The reaction of the Storm Princess infuriated her still. She couldn't comprehend it, not really. If this Princess was her twin, then she at least had the same amount of brains. She had to know it was Klittichom who killed her mother and that he was using her. Maybe she was bewitched, under some kind of spell, but it didn't seem like it when she was inside the Princess's skull.

  Revenge, they'd said. She was fueled entirely by a fanatical desire to revenge herself and her people against the Akhbreed kings and their sorcerers. Did she, could she, hate so much that she didn't even care that she was being used? That the only thing that mattered to her was the destruction of the Akhbreed empire? My god! Did she see her relationship with Klittichom as a sort of deal with the devil? Had she willingly sold her soul to evil so long as it carried out her hateful wishes?

  No matter what, Sam knew, from now on the Storm Princess had to be treated as an insane enemy. There could be no more attempts at reaching a compromise or understanding with her. Perhaps that was why Boolean stood so firmly against them in spite of his own alleged lack of enthusiasm for the system.

  Or was Boolean just a sort of reverse Storm Princess, hating Klittichorn so much that he'd preserve the power and the system and oppress billions forever pay any price just to get his own revenge?

  Shit, she wished she knew the answer to that one.

  If she knew what direction was what, if she had any real landmarks, she would have set out that night to get some distance between her and her inevitable pursuers. It certainly wouldn't do to just start walking and perhaps walk right into Covanti, or worse, into whatever the Changewind had wrought. They wouldn't have as easy a time cleaning up this mess as they had the previous one she'd seen in her vision. The area was much wider, the warning had been too short, and the region too densely populated. Well, whatever they were now, they also had th
e night to prepare, to evacuate, or to make ready to defend themselves. It might take an Akhbreed sorcerer as well as an army to control that region, and that was one type of person she didn't want to meet here right now.

  She was also more physically limited than before, when she'd built up all those muscles and done all that running and lifting. She would walk if she had to, but if there was a way to ride somehow she preferred it. As for Crim well, she'd make it possible to follow if she could, but no matter what, Crim was gonna have to find her.

  Someone approached her in the dark, and she turned and strained to see who it was. Putie, from the smallness of the figure.

  "I thought I told you to try and get some sleep," Sam admonished her.

  "Couldn't. Ain't had much sleep nohow, so out here and on grass it ain't possible. That's true for most of us. We sorta been— well, talkin'."

  "I noticed."

  "'Bout you."

  Sam frowned. "What's this all about? You speakin' for the group?"

  "Sorta, See, most of us, we was right behind you, no more than two hands back." A hand was roughly six feet. "In the storm, I mean. Everybody else was runin' 'round in panic and scared shitless, but you was real calm, you told us to sit down, then you walked to the storm. We could see you clear— first in the lightnin', then even more when you started glowin'."

  Sam was startled. "I glowed?"

  "Uh-huh. Swamp fire we call it back home. Green light that just come from the sky and set you glowin'. Real spooky. But there you was, just standin' there, facin' the storm, and gruntin' and groanin' and sometimes wavin' your hands in the air and the like, like you was pushin' that Changewind away from us."

  That was uncomfortable. "Putie, you know nobody, not even the greatest sorcerers and high priests, can do anything with a Changewind."

  "Yeah, maybe. That's what we all was told. But, back home, the Slimeys, they got this crazy goddess they call the Queen of Thunder. They make these crazy carvin's of her and they worship her. They say she's an Akhbreed goddess who can control the Changewinds and got sent someplace 'cause the others were Jealous of her. That she's plotted revenge for thousands of years and will one day come back and strike down the sorcerers and their gods with the Changewind, and that all the lesser races who come to her side and fight for her will be raised up over the Akhbreed. They spend a lot of time findin' shrines to her and destroyin' them. But Quisu says that the lizards in Dolimaku have almost the same thing, only it ain't just Akhbreed but the rule of men she's gonna get rid of. That she rules a goddess court of women only and she bears a daughter as a virgin. Another girl said she's in her world, too, only a peasant goddess, who brings the rain to breathe life into the soil."

  "Well, that's not exactly true," Sam responded, trying to limit her reply and having an uneasy feeling where this was going. "There is somebody who has power over storms, and she did come from peasant stock, but she has only that one power. Otherwise she's as human as anybody else— and forget that goddess and virgin crap. There's a bad sorcerer who's got her and he's using her and these cults to build an army so he can knock off the Akhbreed sorcerers and take over."

  "Yeah, well, I thought you'd say somethin' like that. But you ain't really one of us. Like you was talkin' just now low but some big words, too. like you was tryin' to hide yourself. We noticed. And the way you take charge, give orders. More like a guy would, or somebody from high up, anyways. You wasn't scared of that Changewind. Ain't nobody not scared of the Changewind, but you wasn't. And now you tell me all this 'bout this storm goddess and this evil sorcerer. Ain't none of us ever heard anything tike that. Who are you, Sahma? And what?"

  Sam sighed. "It's kind'a hard to explain to you who I am, but I'm human, you got to believe that. No goddess, no princess, no Akhbreed sorcerer or magician. My name is Susama Boday, and I come from Tubikosa." No use in trying to explain the concept of out-planes and worlds beyond Akahlar to Putie; she barely understood the other worlds adjoining her own.

  "You're married, then?" It was the almost universal Akhbreed custom that you had but one name and that you took your mate's surname when you married.

  "Sort of. Yes. I know about the evil parts of the cities, Putie, because that's where I came from and lived. Boday is an artist and alchemist who took pretty young refugee girls on the run like you and makes them into beautiful, living works of art, so they can work for a master and he can sell their bodies to the higher classes. Not just women but men and even kids are turned into playthings for those with strange appetites who can afford them. Those who can not be made attractive for that flesh trade are turned to slaves to do all the dirty work and cleanup. That's where the ones from the colonies wind up when they run to the cities."

  "But you weren't no slave."

  "No," Sam admitted. "It's made me feel guilty for a while now, that I didn't feel guilty then. Oh, I might have wound up a slave, but in a complicated set of things Boday swallowed a strong love potion and I was there and so the potion fixed on me. That is why I say I am sort of married. It gave me someone to protect me and my friend who became a high-class whore, so I went along. I, well, I found out things about myself, that I had some strange needs, too, and it kind of worked. What I didn't know was this storm and evil sorcerer business. Another sorcerer who wants to stop the bad one found that I was another, maybe the only other, who was born with that power. Even I didn't know it at the time. He forced me to try and come to him, since the evil one has him kind'a pinned down. That's how me, Boday, and my friend Shari got on a Navigator's train, and the enemy hit it, killed most, captured me, and that's when I was raped. Not once. Over and over, by lots of filthy creatures who called themselves men, while I was tied to a rock."

  She was suddenly aware that she had more of an audience than just Putie, and sighed again. What the hell? They'd seen her in action. If she couldn't win them over they could buy favor, maybe even out of their misery, by turning her in the next day.

  "So did they kill your husband and friend? And how'd you wind up here, of all places?"

  "No, my mate and my friend are still alive, or at least were the last time I got word. It was my friend and a badly wounded man from the train, the father of two captive girls, who rescued us. But more bad guys chased us, we got separated, and that was the last I saw of them. I worked on a plantation for a while as a picker and they gave me a potion to forget all, but the sorcerer who needs me didn't forget and sent a mercenary to get me out and get me to sorcerers who restored my memory. The rest up to here is a long story, but we got to here and found that Covanti decided to throw in with the bad sorcerer 'cause they're scared of him, and they figure if they can turn me over they'll buy out of whatever he's plannin'. I got in okay but gettin' out is the trick, so we came up with this idea when we heard of the gathering here. Tomorrow or the next day my mercenary, who's a Navigator, would show up and volunteer to take some girls home who might be on his route. I'd go along, and just be one of the girls. No papers, no mess. That's how it was supposed to work. Now, if he wasn't devoured in the Changewind, he'll be cut off for days, maybe weeks, and I can't wait around for him. They know I'm here. Not just in Covanti, here. They'll be comin' for me. They tried with the storm but we were even there. Now they'll come with men and guns."

  The audience was spellbound, not so much by her real predicament as by the romance of it all.

  Quisu's voice came from the darkness. "You mean you made it this far, against all those forces? And you're gonna try and keep ahead of them, even now?"

  "Sure. I'm not defenseless, no matter how I look, and I've got a lot of experience now. I'm not gonna get taken in or screwed again."

  "But one woman, pregnant, alone, out there…. "

  "You had your brains washed with your faces! Meda was right in one sense: the system's set up by men for men. But that's the system, not any edict from the gods! Maybe we're not as tall or as strong as the men, but people didn't get to living in houses and growing food and having all the things they have and
do 'cause they were bigger or stronger. The narga is both bigger and stronger than any man, but who works for who? Do horses ride us? So long as we're just as smart as men—and we are— we can do what they do. If I was a man I'd still be in the same fix as I am now and chased by the same folks."

  That silenced them for a moment, and then Putie said softly, "Take us with you when you go. If brains are all that matters, the more brains the better."

  "I wish I could. Lord! Do I wish I could! But you're all further along than me, and my fat hides some of mine. I mean, they might not notice one woman, but a cartload of pregnant women are gonna be kind'a hard to miss. And what happens when you're due? And I ain't even headin' for the sorcerer any more. They'll be lookin' for me that way most of all. I'd love to take you all, but! don't even know where I'm goin' myself, or if I'll get there. You see how it is. Now, go on back and get some rest. And, remember, my life depends on you not giving me away tomorrow. These vultures are going to attack much of Akahlar soon, I know it. Perhaps I can do nothing, but so long as I live I might be able to fight them. No one else could."

  They didn't respond, but slowly drifted away, back to their grassy plots, visions of romance and adventure still in their heads.

  Putie, however, did not go back, but waited for the rest to get out of earshot, then lowered her voice.

  "This Boday's not your husband, right?" she said more then asked. "It's a girl, isn't it?"

  Sam was startled again. "What makes you think that?"

  "The way you talked. I ain't had no learnin' but I ain't dumb. Boday is female case, and the only time you didn't say the name you used a word ain't nobody uses for their husband. That, the bit 'bout the love potion, and how you found out you was kind'a strange, too, all fit with the goddess stories. And there you was married, but the kid's a rape child. It all fits."

  "You are pretty smart," Sam responded. "But I told you to forget the goddess bit. It's more like a curse on the family line than any kind of big magic. Does it bother you that I'm married to a woman?"