Empires of Flux & Anchor

16 SAINT DEVIL

“Cass! Watch out for his hate!” Suzl called to her. “He was castrated by the old Church and stuck with it in a binding spell! Power’s the only thing he’s got and hate’s his only fuel!”

“She’s right, you know,” Coydt told her. “In a way, we have things in common, you and I. Both of us were abused by the system, and both of us are trapped in binding spells that leave power as the only outlet. Power for its own sake.”

“Yes, we’re probably a pair made for each other, but you’ve become so foul that it’s impossible. What you have done to me and mine cannot be excused.”

“Excused?” He laughed. “I don’t ask to be excused! It amused me to do it. It proved out many of the theories I’ve read in the old books and fragments, the old records. Power needs no excuse! Power exists, and those who have it make the rules! Look what I’ve made them swallow in Anchor Logh! Your birthplace, the start of everything you’ve done—and the ending of it. The end of your empire, and the beginning of a new one, one based on reality. They were sheep under the old Church, willingly sending off their children to slavery and death! Actually thanking the Church for its tyranny! Then they followed you, built monuments to you, called you a liberator and denounced the old ways, not ever once thinking that by doing so they were denouncing themselves.

“And all they had done was changed mistresses, substituting one rule for another. You were the Fluxlord to whom they gladly sent their daughters, and you bound those daughters to absolute obedience, and then you sent them back to unquestionably enforce whatever rules you and your empire thought up.”

“I gave them their freedom,” Kasdi responded.

“What freedom? To happily send the best of their young off to die in distant wars for a cause you decided? And how did you free them, make their life better? Was it really different in any way?”

“Science is once again open to them.”

“Ah! Science! And I thank you for that. As long and hard as our research teams worked to develop the amplifier machines, it wasn’t until your own bright ones came up with the new transformers capable of handling an Anchor’s power and the internal electronics needed to feed them that we had the answers. The scientists thought they were working on a means of inter-Anchor communication, which is what attracted us in the first place. Perhaps they will invent that, but mine is of more immediate practicality. Science is always a two-edged sword like that. That’s why it was suppressed and feared by the old Church.”

“You’ve killed thousands in Anchor Logh,” she accused. “You killed my father.”

“Oh? I hadn’t known. But, no matter, it will simply add spice to your attack. And how many have you killed, or caused to be killed, I wonder? Ever add it up? I’ll bet you’ve got me beaten by at least hundreds of thousands. And for what?”

“To keep scum like you from opening the Hellgates! To save World!”

“I would open the Hellgates only as a last resort. The rest are, in their own way, self-deluded fanatics like yourself. They, too, are idealists; only they will go to any length for those ideals. Me, now, I know that there’s nothing mystical about it and that the chances of your vision of Hell on World is about even with theirs. If you were caught and trapped for over twenty-five hundred years in a terrible place, cut off from your own and from any life at all, would you be grateful to those who released you? Or would that hate be so refined as to destroy all human life? Perhaps, one day, I’ll be bored enough or disgusted enough to find out. Right now I would rather not take the bet, and they can’t do it without me. You see? I’m the best friend either Church has!”

She thought for a moment. “Suppose I took your binding spell? I have already, in a sense, castrated myself. Being superficially male wouldn’t bother me. What would you do then?”

He chuckled. “I’d hardly reform and start praising the Goddess, but it would be worth a great deal to me. It would be worth Anchor Logh and the researches I and my teams have compiled over the centuries. It would be worth the truth about World and Hell. It doesn’t really matter what I offer. Eternal slavery. Anything. You see, it can only be assumed by one of equal or greater power than myself. That’s the real curse, don’t you see? There is no one equal to me.”

“You seem pretty sure of that. Want me to try?”

He shrugged. “What have I to lose?”

She reached out and found the binding spell. It was absurdly simple and direct, in no strange language and with no traps for the unwary. How it must have frustrated him, galled him, all these years to have godlike power unlike almost any other and yet not be able to break this one simple little spell! She was quite sincere in her offer, and she reached out and voluntarily seized it, took hold of it, and reached to bring it to her.

The spell remained in Coydt.

He laughed, but it was a strange laugh, half triumphant and half sad. “Not even close,” he told her. “I’ve had it hurt. You have a great deal of power, but I have more. You have much training and experience, but I have more, for I know what it is and what it is for. I will not kill you, if it can be avoided. No, I will take you into Anchor as my bride, and you shall serve me gladly, worshipfully. Your binding spells are easily accommodated by ones I will place upon you. Sex, needless to say, I will not require. With you as my servile slave, I will own your empire.”

Tremendous energy emerged from his body and lashed out at her. She quickly brought up her own personal shields and drew upon Flux to push it away. Both of their bodies and the three meters separating them crackled with raw electrical energy so clear and blinding it could have been seen and felt even by one without the power.

She strained against his massive onslaught, and perspiration broke out all over her body. She held him in check, but barely, and she could not hold his thoughts.

“Do you know what you’ve been worshipping all these years? A giant bag of poisonous gasses! A world, just like this world, but so huge it keeps us in its gravity as a natural captive. A world so foul and poisonous nothing could live there. The stars are but other worlds, more distant than our own.”

She had already lost her faith, but there was underneath still a bedrock that sustained her, told her she knew her place in the universe. The empire had been a device for powerful men to rule indirectly what they could not directly have. They had wanted Anchor, and she had delivered the Church to them while sacrificing all. Now Coydt was saying that even the faith had been a lie, that there was nothing out there but science and nature. The thought of the Soul Rider came to her.

“But I have seen the supernatural, had it in my body, had it guide me here to this place!”

He was unmoved. “Machines and unnatural and artificial life, or life perhaps left over from the time before men were here! There are no gods and goddesses except those here on World! Those with the power are the gods! There is nothing else!”

The energy from him intensified, and she found it more and more difficult to counter it. She thought fast, knowing that she could not sustain it long, that her defense now was being sustained only by her contempt for him and for what he had done to her family. She reached out to Suzl, who sent her the power, and for a moment the combined assault staggered him.

But only for a moment. Suzl’s power was raw, untrained, unformed. A shard of crackling yellow-white light came from his side and joined the link with Suzl, then traveled up it, overwhelming it. Suzl cried out in sudden pain, and the link was diverted. Now her power, despite all her efforts, was flowing not to Kasdi but to Coydt. He burned with a new fury, a new sense of triumph, and he attacked with renewed force and vigor. “I am the way, the truth, the light!” he trumpeted. “On your knees before me and worship me!”

A tremendous force, like a giant’s hand, pressed on her, and she fell to her knees. “This is the man who crippled Spirit and killed my father!” she kept repeating to herself over and over, trying to drown out his force and his will. Her clothing burned away from her, and the force pushed against her head, bowing it down.

“It is meaningless to resist further,” he argued. “I am the god of World, and my name is Power. I can grant any wish, or visit any calamity, when, where, and how I choose and on whomever I choose! Fight me no more! Surrender control of your power to me, and be the priestess of my Church! You shall have your daughter and grandson and friends, and you will have no worries, no cares, no pressures upon you. I will take away those things and give you peace. Otherwise you shall die, and as you truly know in your heart, you will be dead forever.”

The vision of her father, bleeding, rotting, hanging from a pole came to her, and she summoned enough strength to raise her head and look him in the eye. It was, she realized, the last thing she had to throw at him. Already his visions of her as she would be were creeping into her mind, looking desirable, alluring, and she was having more and more trouble casting them out. Her head drooped again, and she felt so tired, so sick of it all… “No!” she cried. “No!” And drew her last ounce of strength.

There was a loud explosion, and suddenly Coydt cried out and fell forward. She barely had the strength to move out of his way, but she saw in his back an enormous hole, a tremendous outpouring of blood, and she heard him scream and moan as she felt the power weaken as he withdrew it into himself.

He almost won it back by her confusion and hesitancy, but she saw his bloody back and drew on what reserves she couldn’t possibly know or guess that she had. He screamed again, but the pain and damage were so great, the shock and loss of blood so severe, that he could sustain his life or fight off her attack.

A tall, dark figure behind her lowered his shotgun and broke it, inserting two more shells. Coydt managed to turn himself over onto his side and see the man standing there. “Matson,” he croaked, blood running from his mouth. “Why?”

“You shouldn’t have done that to the girl, Coydt. She was kin.”

Kasdi had not the strength to attack or to do much of anything, but she had enough to keep Coydt from coming up with any kind of repair spell. But he wasn’t through yet, and he managed to chuckle, coughing up blood and phlegm as he did so.

“Done in by a man with the power of a shotgun. My own fault. First time I got careless in four hundred years.” He coughed again, as his life poured onto the spongy Flux surface. He still had enough strength to stem the flow, but he knew that too much of his insides were messed up. He had the power to heal himself, but if he took the concentration and time to do the spell, Kasdi would have a free hand to do with him as she willed. He knew it, and he made his decision.

“You think you’ve killed me, but you haven’t. You haven’t begun to kill me yet. You must kill a million before you kill me. I’ve still got your empire. All you have done is guarantee that at some point in the future the Hellgates will be opened.” He coughed some more and seemed to fade for a moment, but Kasdi was on guard and knew he was still alive. Any less powerful man, in Flux or Anchor, would be gone long before.

He opened his eyes and managed a smile. “And now I will make you mine,” he said softly. She realized what he was doing, but he put so much force of will into it and she was so weakened she couldn’t stop it.

Coydt took upon himself her binding spells. His body twitched and shimmered, and lying there was a mannish-looking woman, still big and powerful, and still dying. And he/she started laughing, then laughing and choking. There was a sudden convulsion of the whole body, and then the life force simply went out of it.

Coydt van Haaz was dead.

A dull explosion was heard, followed by a second, and then off to the south the whole of Flux seemed to flare into blinding power, but only for a brief instant.

The power was distributed in all directions, but was more intense because it was limited by and deflected from the Anchor boundary. They all felt a brief burning sensation, and then it was gone. With a start, Kasdi realized that her skin had turned a deep brown.

“I guess I put the things where they should’ve gone,” Matson said dryly. She turned and looked up at him, and saw that he was burned, too, on his face and hands. She had neither his clothing nor facial hair, and had taken it evenly all over. She looked back down at Coydt’s dead body.

“He finally found the way to break his binding spell,” she said softly.