^ level would be down at the very time he needed it the most.
^ Worse, the locals here would probably not be Akhbreed and
180 Jack L. Chalker
their blood, let alone blood type, was probably unsuited to his
needs. Without Charley, he would die.
He cursed himself for not simply tearing Halagar's throat
out one night as he'd been sorely tempted to do. Instead, he'd
kept her in the courtesan mind-set, having learned of the spell
from her own brain, so that she could not betray the full facts
about herself to the man the imp had never liked or trusted.
He could not destroy the cat body deliberately; that was
against his nature and the rules here. He could provoke a
killing, which would free him, but that would only take him
back either to the netherhell or perhaps to Yobi's laboratory
in the Kudaan, very far from here. It was a last-chance
option, but it might well be too late if they killed Boolean.
Looking out from the bushes, he saw the Hedum bring up a
sleek coach with six fast horses. To his surprise he saw the
Hedum driver get down and Boday climb up and take the
reins. Bewitched, certainly, and under the control of the evil
ones. Two Hedum put large chests and blankets and bedrolls
on top of the carriage in the luggage rack and secured them,
'then jumped back down, and Dorion emerged from the tent
with the black-clad adept and both got into the coach. Dorion
looked unhappy but not bewitched, which might or might not
be some advantage. Shadowcat wondered what blood type
both the magician and Boday were.
He eyed the luggage rack and judged where the coach had
to pass and the probable speed of it when it did, then looked
around for a convenient and climbable tree. It might be for
nothing, he knew, but it seemed the obvious thing to do.
The rebel forces around Masalur were so confident that
they even had bleachers erected for the big shots.
It was a far thicker but better organized crowd than the one
back at Tishbaal; only the best rebel troops were here, all
well-trained and eager to see some real action. They, and
their support troops, remained relatively apart from the oth-
ers, who seemed to be of all races, shapes, and sizes. Here,
too, were large numbers of robed magicians and sorcerers of
all ranks, although Third Rank types dominated with a smat-
tering of black-clad adepts, and there were very few with the
colorful robes of the Second Rank. The fact that there were
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 181
any at all was impressive to me observers. The one thing they
all had in common was that they were on the outs with their
own establishment, either having been changed or malformed
or having committed some political or ethical violations that
had at best estranged them from their own kind and at worst
embittered them towards it.
Here, too, surprisingly, were a fair number of distinguished-
looking and not so distinguished-looking Akhbreed; men, and
some women, of obvious wealth or power in key areas with
their own axes to grind, hoping to carve out wider niches in
the wreckage the new order would leave, and very useful to
ones like Klittichom. Men like Duke Alon Pasedo, whose
family was barred by Akhbreed law and spells from coming
this distance, but who had many grudges against his kingdom
and many friends among those who sought to inherit this
worid. There were a lot of Pasedos about, although they were
dressing plainly and keeping a low profile. There was no use
in giving any of the colonial troops who would have to fight
in this, any idea that they might also be serving the interests
of some Akhbreed types.
Most of the Akhbreed on hand, however, had gotten the
slave treatment. Much of the stands, the temporary buildings,
field kitchens, and pit toilets had been built by them, and vast
numbers continued to do the manual labor and dirty work of
maintaining the whole place. They weren't really needed to
(he extent they were being used, but the rebel command staff
guessed rightly that the sight of them in such low situations
and so debased would keep morale among the native troops
high.
The Hedum acted as the traffic cops, keeping the various
factions separate and out of each other's way. They were
polite but very firm and imposed a sense of order and strength
on the vast assemblage.
One look at such a mighty, organized, and confident force
and Halagar knew he had made the right choice. Any Chief
Sorcerer who would remain bunkered inside his hub and
allow this so close to him was another who was more smoke
than fire, a sure sign of the system's rotten core.
Somehow, this Klittichom had stumbled onto the great
power that me Storm Princess possessed. He probably wasn't
the first, but he was the first to realize the weakness in the
182 Jack L. Chalker
center of the system after so many thousands of years; to
realize that he might get away with using that power simply
because his colleagues in sorcery could not believe that they
were not impregnable. To have godlike power means nothing
in the end if you have not the wisdom for it.
The Hedum traffic director pointed him towards a small
three-sided tent pavilion. Sitting there were three officers, a
senior and two juniors. One had pea-green skin and bug eyes
and looked more like a giant lizard than a variation of human-
ity; another was bald, squat, with an incredibly wide face
and hairless skull from which protruded two bony horns like
great but misplaced carnivorous teeth. The third was a tiny,
gnomelike creature with huge upturned pointed ears, a rather
stupid expression, eyes like dinner plates, and who looked
like he had been born old. None were races he recognized,
and the quality of their uniforms—and the sameness of them
in this vast jigsaw army—indicated that they were probably
from Klittichom's own staff.
"Yes, name?" the gnome asked him.
"Halagar, sir. A mercenary officer by trade but a volunteer
to this cause. I have proved it by capturing the fugitive Boday
and turning him over to the adept at the Masalur border."
"Indeed. Well, welcome, then, sir. We have no billeting
for such as you—unexpected, that is—but you arc welcome
to set up anywhere over there near the tree line where you can
find space. There's a cold field kitchen there and pit toilets
just in the woods. I would suggest, to avoid problems, that
you remain in that area. You'll get as good a view as anyone
from that camp." He looked over at Charley. "And this, I
take it, is a prize of battle?"
"My personal slave," he responded.
"Well, the rules here are that all slaves are put in the pens
and assigned work and cared for en masse, so to speak. It
avoids, ah, nasty situations."
"I understand, but for practical reasons she should stay
with me. She is blind."
"Indeed? Then why keep her, then? What good is she?"
The horned giant looked at Charley and then over at the
gnome. "Stupid question," he rumbled.
"I, uh—oh, I see. Yes, ahem! Welt, she'll have to be
with you at all times, even when taking a leak, and because
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 183
she's blind I suggest you see one of the smiths and get a
collar and chain for her so you can stake her and not have to
constantly be watching out for her. Just see one of them along
here—they'll do it."
He nodded. "Thank you, sirs. I believe this is going to be
a most interesting new time for me as well as Akahtar."
The green-dunned one looked over at him and said, in a
surprisingly pleasant and mellow upper-class accent, "Tell
me* as a soldier of fortune and professional, what do you
think of die operation so far?"
Halagar shrugged. "To be frank, sir, it shows the other
side as stupid, dry-rotted, and impotent. If I were this sor-
cerer over there, I'd have waited until everything was in place
over here, then sent my entire army in with everything they
had backed by all the sorcerers and sorcery at my command.
As cramped and exposed and backed up as you are here, your
automatic weapons would shoot as many of your own people
as them, and you would be broken and destroyed. The fact that
be has not done this shows that be must lose, and he's
supposed to be one of die smarter ones."
"You are not alone in that line of thinking," the gnome
told him. "Many of us recommended a low-key and covert
build-up even with the organizational problems that would
cause for that very reason. However, we tried build-ups of
this kind in a dozen areas where we could bring a concentra-
tion of forces, and the reactions were always the same. If they
will not help one another, our sorcery is at least the equal of
their sorcery out in the open like this. You do diem an
injustice when you think them stupid, however. Think of the
cost in lives and materiel to put down something like this.
Their militia is designed to hold and maintain the colonies,
not fight a frontal war. Far easier to endure, and allow our
own weaknesses to consume us."
"The only weakness we have," Ac homed giant picked
up, "is that UK basic compactness and circular shape of the
hubs makes them ideal defensive positions both from a mili-
tary and magic point of view, and we have a less than
cohesive force. They can reinforce from the center as needed,
either power or men or both. They know it, and that's why
they sit, waiting us out, believing we'll not be able to keep
our forces together for a long siege—and it might even be die
184 fack L. Chalker
correct strategy under the old rules. This is a collection of
independent races not used to dealing as equals with anyone
other than themselves. Different, squabbling, with little in
common except the thirst for freedom. But you remove that
center out there, before your own forces begin to fall apart,
and you have them. Tomorrow, at three in the morning, we
will remove that center and attack from three sides. Tomor-
row night, we will turn that center from enemies into auto-
matic allies."
"Uh, do you have a Mandan cloak?" the green one asked
him.
"No. We lost most of our supplies early on. Would there
be a problem from this point? I know Changewmds never
cross nulls."
"That's true, but it means you should wait a day before
going in yourself and seeing the aftermath, just in case there
are spin-offs. With a storm of this concentration the weakness
down to the Seat of Probability remains unstable, and in spite
of buying, begging, borrowing, or stealing every Mandan
gold cloak we could lay our hands on for several years we
haven't nearly enough. Well, just watch from here and wait.
When it's all secure, we'll see if we can spare some for
people like you. Thank you—that's all."
Halagar set up the bedroll in an area that had a fair number
of Akhbreed, including some of his own kind who he recog-
nized and who recognized him. Some were men like himself,
who saw this side as the winner and thus the more profitable
to be on; others were pirates, bandit chiefs, and other very
tough customers, some of whom he'd gone after as a lawman.
To Charley, the collar and chain was the ultimate in degra-
dation. The metal used was light and thin, but the collar was
welded around her neck and the chain, maybe six or seven
feet of it, was welded to it. Very quickly she had been
reduced to being paraded around, filthy and naked, on a
leash, like a trained dog, and Halagar wasn't above having
her basically do tricks as well. In fact, he bragged and
showed off so much that eventually he yielded to the social
pressure and new comradeship and actually loaned her out to
them. She had always Hked anonymous, uncomplicated sex
up to now, but these men were filthy, brutish, and a little
sadistic, and she had no choice but to go through her entire
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 385
vast sexual playbook with them on the grass for hours, unable
to put her mind on automatic because of their nature, feeling
at the end bruised, battered, and utterly defiled, and she was
commanded to act like she enjoyed it and beg for more.
And some of them were only nominally Akhbreed, and
many had very bizarre turn-ons, and those caused her both
shock and disgust like she'd never known.
And they were in no mood to turn in. They were all killing
time until three o'clock when the major battle would begin,
and that seemed like forever. When it finally ended, about an
hour before Zero Hour, she was so battered and so exhausted
that she just lay there, unable and unwilling to move, but she
couldn't stop thinking, even in a state of shock, trying to hold
on to her sanity. Boday had been right; she'd still been a
child, naive and stupid about this kind of life, romantic in a
world that was truly a cesspool. She was property and treated
worse than his horse, and it would continue to be this way,
over and over, because that was all she was good for, the
only use she was to the master. And it would go on like this,
day after day, week after week, year after year.
She couldn't stand it, she knew that, but she also had
to obey, had to do it, without choice, without thinking, with
no hope of rescue. She thought of those hollow, dead expres-
sions on the slaves back in Tishbaal and knew that she would
be as shriven and without hope inside as that in very short
order. The time had come, now, here, tonight. She knew she
had to do it before she was commanded to speak only Short
Speech or to never use English. "Charley, be gone!" she said
aloud, firmly, and slowly her expression changed to one of
dull acceptance, her manner relaxed, as one who thought only
in the most limited ways and matched her situation.
The slave spell was not gone, but Charley was, and little
Shari actually managed to drift into an exhausted sleep.
Masalur was an almost fairy-tale land; its central castle and
government offices, with their many spires and minarets shim-
mering in their Mandan gold sheathing, were known far and
wide as the most exotic and distinctive such buildings in all
Akahlar.
Beyond the government center with its architectural beauty
186 Jack L. Chalker
and landscaped gardens and parks was a ring road, and just
beyond on all sides was the commercial heart of Masalur,