ing just slightly on the lower pair. And, odder still, they had
thin, prehensile tails that did not come out of the spine but out
of the point between the vagina and the rectum, about a foot
long and ending in a structure that looked like a... well, penis.
They were the objects of a lot of attention, and it was good
they were not self-conscious about things. Everyone had the
same thought: so these were what the Changewind made of
the Masalurians. . . .
"Folks, these are Modar and Sobroa," Boolean told them.
"Don't ask me which is which now, but you'll tell when talking
to them- Modar used to be six-two and all male, and Sobroa
was about this size and the best-looking female adept I ever
came across. They were among the small staff who volunteered
to maintain the shield and defenses and remain at their posts."
"If our form shocks you," said one, in a strange, two-
toned kind of voice, "think of what it was for us to suddenly
find ourselves this.) hope you will get used to us, because we
have not yet gotten used to us and we learn more every day-1
fear it will be years before we learn everything."
"What matters," Boolean told them, "is that Sobroa was a
trained healer and a midwife. She has no powers now, but she
has delivered a lot of babies and she knows basic first aid and
medicine. Modar was my librarian and something of a roman-
tic and dreamer on the side. He found and mostly designed
this place, and there's nothing about it he doesn't know.'*
"Do you like it?" asked the other one, in a voice that was
identical to the first yet somehow different in tone and accent.
"It's beautiful." Sam responded. "Was this a kind of
retreat?"
Boolean nodded. "When we had to get away—me or any
of the staff—we came here. There's no shipping to speak of
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
295
on this world, and the population is concentrated in the less
tropical climate zones for reasons that would be obvious if
you saw them. These islands are a thousand miles from
anyone and are likely to stay that way, at least for a number
of years. Food. water, all the basics almost fall into your lap.
But since it's a Masalurian colony, I highly doubt if anybody
would look for you here. Anyone here now is welcome to
remain here. Charley, you, and Dorion, of course. Just re-
member that you are the guests of Sobroa and Modar, they're
not your servants. We will be leaving in the morning, and we
won't be back until it's done."
It was tempting, really tempting, but first Boday, then
Crim, talked to Boolean.
"Boday has not found her Susama to once more give her
up. She will go, and if she can be of help to the last she will
; do so! And if, by miracle of miracles, she survives, she will
• immortalize the greatest battle in the history of the cosmos!"
, "Just not knowing would drive us nuts," Crim told him.
r "Maybe we can do nothing, and maybe we're crazy, but I
;;.' want to be there at the end, and I feel inside that Kira does as
well. We already almost died for this."
"You both are welcome and may be useful," Boolean told
••••' them. "But, remember, if it's you or the enemy, you'll be
• left to the fates. And if it turns out that you can do nothing,
^ then stay out of the way. Now get some sleep."
>'. The goodbyes were tearful, with Charley doing a lot of
;[• hugging and kissing and crying and breaking up Sam and
J Boday as well, but then it was time. They who would remain
V watched the others climb on their enchanted saddles, rise up
I;' into the burgeoning sunrise, take one last loop around, and
J' then become tiny specks and vanish in the warm light of day.
? Dorion looked at Charley. "You wish you were going with
them, don't you?" he asked her.
She just smiled and didn't answer.
"Well," he sighed, "so do I. May the gods who brought
us all to this point be with them still."
High in the air over the sparkling blue ocean, Sam felt her
breakfast remaining lumped in her throat, but she looked
ahead, not back. She hadn't slept much, but she felt very wide
awake, very keyed up.
My god, it's really happening, she told herself. Here we go!
12
The Citadel at the Edge of Chaos
WHEN KUTTICHORN HAD dubbed himself the Horned Demon
of the Snows he wasn't just doing it to make himself sound
colorful.
All her time in Akahlar, Sam had spent in the subtropical
or tropical belt, until she'd almost forgotten there was any
such thing as winter or that cold meant like the inside of a
freezer, not merely a bit of a chill after an intense rain.
Their journey northward had turned steadily if slowly colder
by degrees as they passed each border or hub. Boolean
was able to put in a perspective she could somewhat under-
stand by asking her to think of Tubikosa as perhaps northern
Australia or New Guinea; Masalur would be somewhere around
northeast Africa, maybe Egypt, although with a lot better
rainfall. Klittichom, however, had his domain in the equiva-
lent of northern Sweden or perhaps even Iceland or Green-
land, up near or on the Arctic Circle.
It was hard for Sam to think of Akahlar as a planet like
Earth—in fact, the planet Earth itself. It was too different,
too exotic, without the land or sea or other areas to make any
comparisons. The intense pull and hold of the Seat of Proba-
bility, like a giant sun on a different and lower dimensional
plane, held Akahlar where it was, and had also slowly, over
the millennia, pulled the other Earths "nearest" to it down so
that they intersected for short periods, one atop the other. The
hubs and nulls were the only places where, because the
worlds were round, the intersection did not take place, and,
as such, they were the only parts of the real world of Akahlar
that had been able to develop.
Other than the increasing cold, the other thing Sam noticed
296
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 297
as they travelled northward was that the intersection points,
the parts of the colonies that overlapped Akahlar's reality,
grew shorter and more irregular, often much longer on one
side of a hub than another. Beyond the Arctic and Antarctic
Circles, there was virtually no overlap, just ice and snow and
occasional nulls to nowhere in patches here and there. It was
for this reason, as well as its hostile environment and remote-
ness, that Klittichom had chosen it. Almost no one lived
there; just about no one wanted to go there.
But in the region he had picked there were high volcanic
ranges providing unexpected warmth among the glacial ice,
and the means to tap geothermal heat and power. In a small
valley surrounded by glacier-clad volcanic mountain peaks,
he had built not just his home and laboratory but a small city,
populated by those who were the outcasts of Akhbreed soci-
ety. Here the political malcontents, the magicians with grudges
, real or imagined, the disgraced soldiers and criminal classes,
could gather with absolute immunity and safety and with a
level of comfort and protection that a similar area like the
Kudaan Wastes could not provide. Here resided the cream of
the outcasts; not merely Akhbreed but colonials as well,
picked up by Klittichom or his agents from their own worlds
and brought here to help their master plans.
Klittichom's great, dull-red castle, with its menorahlike
eight towers, dominated the scene. It was not merely his own
home and base, but the workplace for many of the people.
Below it, on the valley floor, stretched the comfortable and
hyper-insulated houses of the people—heated by geothermal
steam which also provided their hot water and even their
cooking medium—stretching out on either side of the central
greenhouses wherein were raised the best food crops adequate
for all their needs. Beyond, the massive herds of reindeer and
other arctic animals provided the sources of meat as well as
the work animals for the society. Just viewing it from the air,
as frigid as it was, the region impressed the hell out of all of
them. None, not even Boolean, had seen it before.
There were six of them now; all were clad in layer after
layer of heavy furs, gloves, you name it, to withstand the
bitter cold, but while it was enough to keep them alive and
out of harm's way from the elements, it didn't make any of
them feel warm or comfortable.
298 Jack L. Chalker
Yobi had joined them in the air over Hanahbak, a thousand
miles to the southeast, her great lower bulk covered with a
tremendous fur cloak. She looked as if she were just floating
there, a being who was her own craft, and if she used a saddle
or other conveyance they had not seen it.
"Is that it? Is that where we have to go?" Sam asked, now
used to being able to talk through muffled layers and masks
and still have the same power of speech as if they were all
sitting together comfortably around a fire inside a snug lodge.
"No, I just wanted to take a look at what he'd built,"
Boolean replied. "I think we're all impressed, although it
doesn't really surprise me. He never did anything halfway."
"The scale of it surprises and shocks me," Yobi put in. "I
had this picture of a frigid castle redoubt in the middle of
wastes, not a somewhat grand city. Didn't you say the fellow
was from a tropical place?"
"He was, but humans are very adaptable," the sorcerer
responded. "He could never have accomplished all this in the
south, not with all the people and politics and the Guild
snooping about. Besides, look at the steam slowly rising from
the ground all around. There's plenty of heat available here
for almost anything you need. I bet inside those places, even
the castle, it's as warm as Masalur. And if you look at the
way the heat shimmers go, the odds are you can get from
almost anyplace to anyplace using heated underground tun-
nels there. Unless you're into skiing or herding reindeer, you
might never have to go outside or feel the cold."
"Then where is the man himself?" Crim asked.
"Not far, but better hidden and independent," Boolean
told him. "In fact, I think we'll find a reasonable place to
make camp here, and then send you and Boday to check it out
for us."
"Why not everybody?" Sam asked him.
"I think he knows we're near, or coming," the sorcerer
responded, "but I don't want to give him any free shots at us.
He has monitoring spells all over here to detect people like
us, but he feels he has nothing to fear from ordinary,
nonmagical people. Not that there won't be some guards, so
care will have to be taken, but to present the three of us to
him within sight of his headquarters would be to draw targets
299
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
on ourselves and give him a few free shots. No, let's keep
him guessing as to our strength and location and true nature."
"You don't think he'll panic just by the awareness that we
are close?" Yobi asked, concerned.
"Not so long as the Storm Princess knows and feels the
presence of the child half a hemisphere away, no. He seeks
godlike powers, but there is no way he can have godlike
omnipotence. I think our little trick with the switch will fool
him because it's too subtle and too unprecedented. I know the
way his mind works as well as anyone, at least on the surface
level."
They set up a camp back out of the weather in an old lava
tube. The outside was freezing and nasty, but heat radiated
from the walls within the tube, creating a frozen waterfall
where it broke to the outside and some level of comfort
within.
Crim surveyed the tube. "Comfortable, but I feel very
vulnerable in here," he commented. "If anybody discovers
we're here, they could just magically turn the lava back on,
or even give us a wall of water, and we'd be through."
"That kind of magic is always telegraphed," Yobi assured
him. "We have enough to prevent that sort of thing, so relax.
More important is the two of you and whether you can really
handle those flying saddles without one or another of us
propping you up. You'll have to go in low and be very
unobtrusive."
"Will he not see the spell that makes the saddles fly?"
Boday asked her worriedly.
"Probably not. It's too minor a spell and there are probably
thousands around a place like that. It would be drowned out
by the weight of all those already laid on, much as a whisper
is drowned by the roar of a crowd. Take care, though. If any
of the sentinels that are almost certain to be guarding the
place spot you, then all bets are off."
Crim looked a bit nervous. "You sure we can do this and
be back before sunset? I don't want Kira to come out under
these conditions."
"1 fear we will be deprived of poor Kira's company, but
for perhaps an hour or so, if that," Boolean told him. "It is
late spring here and we're close to the Arctic Circle if not
slightly past it. If we are, we won't meet her at all, for this
jack L. Chalker
300
time of year the sun does not set there. Were we in the
Antarctic, we wouldn't see you. Cheer up, my friends. We
may be in the jaws of death, but at least for now we are
absolutely safe from vampires."
Crim and Boday did a bit of practice flying around the
peaks and valleys near the cave and both decided that they
were pretty confident.
"It'll take you about a half hour to get there," Boolean
told them, "and spend only as much time as you absolutely
need to get the feel of the place, its tangible defenses, looks,
and me like. If you are not back here within three hours we
will have to assume that you were seen, possibly captured,
and we will go immediately. Understand? Boday. 1*11 expect
you to be able to sketch it when we get back, with Crim's
memory as a check. Temporarily, you'll have to be a realist.
Accuracy counts. The odds are, when we go in, we'll only
get the one shot. Either we go alt the way, or that's it."
She shrugged. "Boday is great at all art. She will do what
you wish and better that you dream!"
Sam hugged her. "Take care, now. If we're all gonna die
in this, don't you be the first."
Boday laughed. "The Gods of Chaos have woven our
destinies too tightly! Boday has suffered too much to die now
before she achieves immortality through the works she has yet