“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.