Free 03. Masters of Flux and Anchor by Jack L. Chalker

desire it in the least. There were compromises to be made in this life, but they were, on reflection, no worse than other compromises everyone had to make.
    What had her life been? First an ugly duckling tomboy, then a dugger—property, really—who was used by the major powers of World and saw her lover die in their arguments. One who was then used by those same powers, who convinced her it was her destiny to mount a revolu¬tion and become a saint. Years in which she had deprived herself of everything, while killing those who did not bend to her and overlooking the sins of those who went along, even depriving herself of her own daughter's growing up and exposing the innocent child to evil and a life of savagery. Spirit could have still been here now, normal and married and happy, had she not been corrupted by her own mother's stubborn defiance and chosen savagery over this. And for what? The Reformed Church that mother had built had been false to the core; the Empire she'd founded had crumbled quickly into disarray, leaving most no better off than before, and at the cost of thousands dead to build it.
    No collar or spells had converted her, in the end. They had only served to show her how ugly and futile it had all been. No more. She liked being a wife, she liked someone else to do the thinking for a change, she liked being sexy and have men's eyes twinkle as she swayed by, she liked the idea that she might have a second chance to be a mother in every sense of the word. She liked being the center of attention rather than the center of power. To Hell with the past and all its damage! She was going to live in the present now, and that was that.
    It was too late to wonder if she had done right, so she dismissed the question from her mind. A binding spell could never be undone, and could be transferred only by the efforts of a wizard more powerful than the accepter. And Coydt van Haas was dead, thank Heaven!
     
     
     
    5
    SOUL RIDER'S SONG
     
     
     
    "We can't just sit here and twiddle our thumbs!" Jeff protested. "We have to do something!"
    Sondra had sent word to him, summoning him quickly from Globhus to Pericles.
    "What do you think we ought to do, sonny boy?" the stringer snapped back. "Mobilize half of World? They'd laugh at you. Go back and forth through every inch of the void? You could fly within fifty meters of her a hundred times and never see her."
    Jeff was a large, muscular young man with wild hair and a thick, if unkempt, full black beard. "It's easy for you! It's not your mother and grandmother who might be dying out there someplace!"
    That hurt, and required an answer. "Jeff—I was saving this for a better time, but I'm your aunt. Spirit's my sister."
    He stared at her. "Don't feed me that shit. Cass only had one kid."
    "That's true, but Spirit and I have the same father."
    He was suddenly fascinated. "You mean—you're one of Matson's kids?"
    She nodded. "So, you see, I've got a stake in this, too. A personal stake as well as a professional obligation. The only thing I can figure out is that they always shadowed Mervyn, and when they saw I was going off in the right direction they took a chance on me."
    "Yeah, well, it seems to me—"
    "Look, Jeff," she interrupted, "let's get a few things straight. First of all, I could have handled the duggers and that whatever-it-was machine, but so could your grand¬mother. Those duggers couldn't have stalked Mervyn and me, made the right choices, and organized to do what they did. Somebody else put them up to it, and that somebody did their thinking for them. And that someone was power¬ful enough to literally collapse and undo the whole Fluxland, while keeping me at bay almost as an afterthought. And I'm a pretty strong wizard."
    He calmed down a little. "Yeah—but who? Where do we start?"
    "With Zelligman Ivan," Mervyn's voice told them, and they turned to see the old wizard enter.
    "Mervyn!" Sondra exclaimed. "Thank Heaven they found you!"
    " 'Bout time you got