Jack Chalker - Empires of Flux & Anchor

“No! There’s a better way!” Ransom shouted back. “You—Zida! You’re the bell ringer. Get back there and ring it for all it’s worth. Give the emergency alarm! Don’t stop ringing for anything. That’ll bring a lot of folks running. Whoever’s out there won’t chance shooting people coming here, or they’ll never get away. They’ll run when they figure what we’re doing. Give it ten minutes of steady ringing, and then we’ll chance somebody making a run for it.”

The bell ringer scurried through the sacristy and back to the tower loft as quickly as possible.

Ransom looked around. There were three exits, the main one and two forward that were mainly fire exits. “Quickly—before the bells drown me out. I want one of you volunteers at each door!” He looked at his watch. “I’ll signal you when to try it. Move!”

The bells began ringing.

Once Anchor Logh had been not only a country but a fortress. The huge stone wall, itself a fortress with guard stations and battlements and room for four soldiers to march abreast on top, went completely around Anchor Logh, twenty meters high, with gates only at the two outermost ends. The days when Anchor feared Flux were gone now, although few Anchor folk actually went into Flux and many, like Spirit’s grandfather, still distrusted it. The gates at both ends were simple affairs now, and the guard stations were mostly tourist lookouts into the mysterious void beyond. Not only had the wall lost its purpose in the era of the Reformation, but it had shown in the earliest attacks just how ridiculously porous it was.

Coydt had fast horses, and knew his way around Anchor Logh as he knew his way around much of World. He was more than five hundred years old, renewing and keeping himself young through his own massive Flux powers, and that was a lot of time to explore and get to know even a world.

He wanted to get into Flux quickly, where he would be nearly invulnerable, but he knew that his inevitable pursuers would also know this and try to second-guess him. He had been close enough to hear the bell ring steadily as they rode off, and immediately guessed its purpose. He cursed himself for overlooking that detail. He did not, however, underestimate the intelligence or will of the people of Anchor Logh. Many people that he’d known well over his long years had died because they had dismissed simple folk as “just farmers” or “just grocery clerks.” A bullet from a determined grocery clerk was just as deadly as one from a professional soldier.

Most of his band had scattered, changed into different clothes, and made off along predetermined routes to various places in Anchor Logh. Their alibis had been easily prearranged. With him he kept only his two closest aides and adepts, Zekah and Yorek, and they kept close watch on Spirit.

They were riding so fast that Spirit more than once thought of escape, perhaps by veering off and leading them a chase through any farm or nearby spotted town where help would be available, but both the young adepts had submachine guns and she knew she could be cut down the moment she bolted—a fact they took precious time to point out to her as they forced her to mount.

As evil and insane as these men were, she had no wish to die like that priestess, and where there was life, there was always the possibility of escape.

Coydt’s timing and choice of exit points was perfect. He had run a dry run on another church, rigging an accidental-looking fire and a jammed exit, and he had a pretty good idea how long a panicked congregation took to summon help and for that help to arrive, sort things out, and take action. Then someone would have to rush back into the capital, explain the problem, and write out the notes and descriptions. These would then have to be put into capsules, attached to homing pigeons, and sent out to all the outposts around Anchor Logh. He knew the locations of those outposts, and all the back roads, and just how long it would take horsemen from those outposts, once they got the alarm, to adequately patrol their sections of the wall. Although it was an extra hour’s ride, he’d picked the point he had judged most difficult to reach and had confederates waiting there. When the great wall came into view, there was no sign of any opposition force on the Anchor side.

Someone was atop the wall, flashing a short signal with some sort of lantern and mirror device, and they pulled right up to the wall, stopped, and dismounted.

From atop the wall came a large and professionally made rope ladder. Zekah scrambled up first, while Yorek covered Spirit. When the adept was atop the wall, he looked around there and on the other side and then came back to the edge. “O.K.! Let’s move!” he shouted back to them.

“All right, girl—start climbing. Make it fast, or I’ll break that pretty nose of yours and we’ll carry you. Move it! Now!”

She hesitated a moment, could see no way out, and so did as instructed. Once at the top, Zekah took her arm and pointed. “Now down the other side. Better move quickly. He’s in a bad mood.”

She hardly had a chance to look at anything before she was on another rope ladder, this one leading down to the ground outside the wall. Only then did she have a chance to stop and get her wits about her. Two monstrous, horrible shapes waited on the other side, one on either side of her and about three meters away. They were grotesque—caricatures of human beings with faces that looked like the leering living dead. Surely, if Coydt’s soul showed his true self, he would look like their brother. She shuddered, and abandoned any hope of running right now. The idea of one of those things even touching her was horrible.

She stood on the Anchor apron, a bit of solidity that extended past the wall and in the old days had presented a barren buffer through which an attacking force would have to pass to get to the wall. Beyond the apron, perhaps a hundred meters at this point, loomed the Flux.

It looked like a solid wall of some translucent material, somewhat of an amber shade, stretching from the end of the apron as far up as the eye could follow. There were no features of any sort discernible in it, but the Flux seemed alive, somehow, with thousands of tiny firefly-like sparkles going off at any given moment. She had gaped at this sight from the wall as a student and again as a visitor to a border town, but it still gave off a cold and forbidding chill.

Coydt and Yorek came down the other side, while Zekah continued to cover them from the top of the wall. It had been four hours since the abduction.

Yorek ran unhesitatingly into the void and quickly returned, leading three horses. They must have been waiting just inside the Flux, but they had been totally invisible until they emerged into Anchor.

Coydt’s foul, hurried mood seemed to pass quickly now, and he visibly relaxed, looked at her, and grinned. “You like my little creatures, I see.”

“They’re horrible,” she muttered.

“They were normal people once, but they went off in the void by themselves for one reason or another. Both have some Flux power—not much—and it turned on them. Alone, out there, with power, but no skill at using it, and with no wizard’s protection, your own nightmares become real; you go nuts, and your outer form reflects your inner fears. You think about that as we go. Take the spotted horse there. Once inside, you’ll be lost. You’ll never find your way anywhere except by luck, even back here. I’ll have my string on you, so you’ll leave a trail I can follow no matter where you go or how you twist and turn. But if you get away, I’ll leave you out there a while before I come and get you. Let you have a taste of what they went through. You think about that, and them. Once inside, I’m the only protection you’ve got.”