with no master, and the first free person who touched me
would be my new master."
"Well, I wouldn't, if I could. I don't want you away from
me from now on, and this'11 keep you close. You made your
bed and you're stuck with me, but cut that Mistress crap. It
sounds wrong when it's addressed to me. Just Charley is
fine."
That pleased him. "As you wish—Charley."
She suddenly came over and gave him the hug of his life,
clinging to him, breaking out into tears. "I need you, Dorion.
I need your eyes, your strength, and, most of all, I need your
company."
"Whatever you want, I'll try to do, Charley," he told her
sincerely, "spell or no spell."
"Just hold me," she sobbed. "Just hold me close until I
can believe you're really real."
He did so, and felt better and more important than he ever
had in his whole life. It wasn't until much later, lying there,
her head in his lap and him stroking her hair, that he suddenly
was struck by a wrongness. Not from Coleel or that bunch,
but something wasn't quite right. Looking down at her still
angelic face, as dirty and scratched up as it was, he suddenly
realized that he'd been looking at it all the time.
206 Jack L. Chalker
Like Coleel, he'd assumed that the slave spell had neutral-
ized when Haiagar had died, making Charley temporarily free
but only until someone, anyone, else touched her ring. Any-
one but him, of course, since a slave could not be a master of
his own mistress. But there wasn't just the sensitizing spell in
her ring; it was complete. It was still Yobi's original—he
knew her handiwork well enough. But that spell bound her
not to Dorion—that was only temporary and had been neutral-
ized by his own actions—but to Boolean. If Boolean had
died, or been swept away, or had even been transformed into
some four-armed, four-breasted plant girl, the spell would
have been negated the same as ColeePs had been when
Haiagar died. The spell, however, was intact. Although Char-
ley didn't seem to realize it, she, too, was still a slave.
His own excited start bumped her head a bit and frightened
her for a moment. ' 'What's the matter? You hear something?''
"No, no, Charley—your ring! Yobi's spell's still on!
Don't you see what that means?"
She sighed. "You mean—I*m still a slave after all?"
"Yes, but it means a lot more than that. Charley—it means
Boolean's still alive! Still alive and still unchanged." He
gave a low chuckle. "It means either that he was as smart as I
thought he was, or that, for all that, the bastards missed
him!"
She frowned. "That explains it, then. Just lying here,
feeling a little safe for the first time in a long time, I suddenly
had this thing in the back of my head whispering that I should
go to Masalur hub and find somebody. But—if you're right,
Boolean couldn't be there, not now. Jesus, Dorion! I'm gonna
wind up with a full-scale compulsion to find Boolean, and I
no longer have his address!"
"Then you must use your head to fight it. You know he
can't be in Masalur, so going there does not fulfill the com-
mand. You can not find him, not with things as they are.
Your duly, then, is to simply remain free and alive and out of
anyone else's hands until he can find you—or until some clue
presents itself.''
She thought that one over. "1—I guess you're right. I
guess that's why I can fight it, why it's not overriding
everything. Why I didn't really know until you told me. But
that means it could be a real long time. Out in the woods,
207
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
naked, savages, really. Sort of caveman and cavegirl, only
without the cave or the skins. And fugitives, too. We can
never be seen or mix with others. Around here, Akhbreed's
gone from being the highest to the lowest of the low."
"I know. But it's a big world, a whole planet, and it's real
warm here all the time, and it's thick forest around here.
We'll be hard to spot or catch. If we can only find a source of
food and water, we could make out okay." The fact was,
Dorion didn't feel hesitant about it at all. Except for the food
problem, which would have to be solved and soon, this came
about as close to his private fantasies as he could ever come.
She frowned, still thinking, although this wasn't one of her
fantasies. "Dorion? How can you be my property if I'm still
a slave to Boolean? Property can't own property."
"That's what fooled me for a while. Because I wasn't
bound to you—that would be beyond the spell—but because I
bound myself that way, freely and of my own will. It's the
only way possible."
"And you gave the magician's life up and came after me to
live tike this—for me." She said it like she couldn't get over
it.
"Yes, Charley," he replied, not adding that it was cer-
tainly the best of his possible alternatives.
It was well past noon when two high rebel officers and a
sorcerer of the Second Rank sought out Coleel, who was
beginning to think that the mop-up work from the night would
be never-ending.
The Second Rank sorcerer was one of only two on site
during the whole battle; the rest had participated, somehow,
remotely in a way only Klittichom knew. The rebels had a
large number of acolytes, magicians, and adepts, but very
few of the Second Rank. Their powers and egos did not in the
main make them terribly cooperative with one another nor
willing to be under one of their own.
This one was a mean old fart with a face that looked like
he'd died about three centuries past and refused to recognize
the fact, but he had a fairly strong walk. His name was
Rutanibir, and he was short-tempered, mean, and pissed off
at the universe in general. What his motives were for working
208 Jack L. Chalker
with Klittichom wasn't known, but he was a key man in the
field.
"You have this homosexual woman?" Rutanibir asked him
in a shaky voice.
"Yes, Master. I—"
"Silence! Why wasn't I notified immediately of this? Take
me to her at once!"
Silence was one thing he didn't want to concede. "Master,
this was reported, but so close to the start of the battle that
word did not apparently get to you. She's under my control as
a slave, though, and she was commanded not to move.
Come. I will take you to her."
They walked briskly along, the throng parting rapidly and
averting its gaze from the wizened old man in the silvery
robes. Because of the fear he generated, it took only a few
minutes to find the coach and go up to it.
"Boday!" Coleel cried out. "Come! Attend me!"
There was no reply, and he frowned, suddenly nervous. He
jumped up on top and saw that she wasn't in the seat or foot
well, nor under the tarps. He climbed down, looked inside,
under, and all around. She simply wasn't there anywhere.
"Incompetent idiot!" Rutanibir snapped. "No wonder you
never made Second Rank! Whoever gave you those black
robes should be drummed from the Order! You knew she was
important, even vital! Yet you let her sit here, unattended, all
night, with all hell breaking loose, and didn't even think
about her! Didn't think at all. . . ."
"Master, I—" Coleel suddenly stopped and stood straight
up, a tremendous look of confusion on his face. "Why in the
name of the Seven Sacred Words did I do that? You are
correct. Master—it makes no sense at all. And that magician—
Dorion. I gave him free run of the place! And parked right
here. not two leegs from the rest of his party. And I spent five
days in the coach and never even sensed the presence of an
unwanted familiar. I admit to abject incompetence. Master,
and throw myself at your mercy."
Oddly, his talk calmed rather than enraged the old sorcerer,
who waved off the comments with a casual hand gesture.
"That son of a bitch," he muttered under his breath, more to
himself than to any of the others. "Sixty-one-percent casual-
ties and we still missed the old bastard. It has to be. All
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 209
that—and he wasn't even home! He's been standing here,
next to all of us, playing games with us and laughing at us all
this time!"
The two military men turned and stared at him. and it was
finally Coleel who asked, "Pardon, Master, but do you mean
I was bested by superior power? Who? Who would have such
power and such audacity?"
"Boolean, of course, you idiot!" the sorcerer snapped.
"Son of a bitch!" He turned to one of the generals. "You
said you had a man back in Covanti who thought he'd tracked
the girl. At the time it didn't seem worth pursuing, but if
Boolean's here then we still have a chance."
"Yes, sir. Fellow's name is Zamofir, one of our best
agents. He thinks that she got caught up in a move to give
brides to a bunch of ex-convicts developing a valuable busi-
ness in one of the Covantian colonies. He's got a band of men
with him, loyal to our money if not to us, and he's willing to
go. He's in Covanti still."
"Good, good. It's no mean feat even for one of Boolean's
skills to follow such a slender and nebulous thing as a mar-
riage thread over three kingdoms and into colonies. It'll take
time. Lots of time. I can reach some of my people planted in
Grotag's office in a matter of hours. All I need is my kit and
someplace quiet. Your Zamofir and his band can be riding to
her before Boolean is even clear of Masalur." He put one
wizened hand into a fist and gently struck his other palm with
it. "Yes, indeed. So he's outsmarted us, has he? Escaped and
all that. Well, precious little good it will do him if your man's
right. And he'd better be right. General. He'd better be
right. . . ."
He was a small, thin man with long, thinning black hair
just starting to turn gray; the most outstanding feature of his
sharply angled face was its long moustache, which he usu-
ally, as now, kept waxed and perfectly shaped so that it stuck
out from both sides of his face and curled up nicely. He
would never be considered handsome, but he could be charm-
ing if he wished; still, no matter how he dressed or where he
was, he always looked dapper and out of place beyond the
casinos and social gatherings of the business set.
210 Jack L. Chalker
Now he was dressed in casual riding clothes; a simple
cotton shirt and tough denim pants with boots, all of which
looked new and had some unnecessary fancy stitching. He
took out a long, thin cigar from his pocket but did not light it;
it was just a pacifier at this point. You didn't want to smoke,
not in here.
Several large, burly men dressed in the sort of clothes one
knew instantly were not bought special but were the ones in
which they lived and worked, entered the cave as well, all
illuminated by magical hanging lanterns that had plenty of
light but no heat or flame to speak of.
Zamofir, their leader and employer, pointed to a carton.
"There. Use the crowbar behind that box and get the lid off
that one."
One man got the crowbar and another assisted, and the lid
broke open revealing a box full of large metallic guns packed
in straw. One of the men reached down and picked one up
and looked at it quizzically. "Looks like a rifle of some kind,
but it's too fat to steady,'* he noted. "And where do you put
in the bullet?"
"Idiot!" Zamofir snapped. "Let me have that. This, gen-
tlemen, is what is known as an automatic rapid-firing gun,
known where it came from as a submachine gun. These, and
the cartons of ammunition around, were gotten with great
skill by Lord Klittichom using his powers to extend to the
outplane. They use these big, fat clips, like this. You turn it
over, press here, insert the clip so until it clicks in place, then
throw the safety here and it's ready to fire. To reload, you
just press here, the clip drops out, and you shove another in.
Clear so far?"
They all nodded, crowding around. "But how do you hit
anything with it?" one asked. "I mean, it doesn't even have
any decent sights and it's too square."
Zamofir sighed. "Follow me, gentlemen. I do not want to
demonstrate in here."
They went outside with the loaded gun, and Zamofir picked
a small, thin tree about thirty yards away. "Watch the tree.
Each one of these clips holds a hundred carefully packed
rounds. You just point the gun in the general direction, then
pull the trigger. Even you can do that." And, with that, he
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 211
demonstrated, and the rattling filled the air and smoke poured
from the top of the machine gun, although nobody noticed.
They were all watching as the tree was sliced almost in two
and much of the surrounding area was also pockmarked.
"The shells are ejected automatically. Don't bother with
them—we have a sufficient number of clips here. Each man
will take one of these and as many clips as is practical for him
to carry. We'll practice on the way, although little is really
needed once you leam how to keep the gun reasonably steady.
Now, there are twenty-one men and four women there at the
camp, but it's unlikely that more than half the men will be
mere at any given time. Their big product is a key mineral
found in certain kinds of ocean fish in that world, so they're
out in shifts for days on end on small boats trawling, while
the rest work the refining process back at the village. Twenty
of us, with these should be more than enough."
"How far is it?" somebody asked.
"We are riding hard and light, but the village is out of the
way and far outside me intersection point. Once we turn off
the main road, it is unlikely that there will be any people at
all between us and the village, so we'll be on our own but
unimpeded. If we do meet anyone, kill them and go on. With
consideration for the horses, it might well be seven or eight
days to the village, depending on conditions. Once we get
there, there is to be no quarter. Men, women, children,
livestock—if it moves, it dies. Particularly all the women. If
they surrender, we take their surrender, and then execute
them. All are to die and all buildings and structures burned,
and any boats, even so much as a rowboat, also burned. We
want the place devastated, so that even if someone should
escape, they would have no place to go and nowhere to
turn."
"Aw, can't we even have some fun before—" somebody