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WAR OF THE MAELSTROM
"Don't be nervous, child, this will only take a moment,"
the sorcerer said in the kind of voice your family doctor used just before he
gave you a shot. "Just sit in the chair here a moment and give me your hand.
Yes, that's nice. Left hand, please."
There were burners going and the smell of something unpleasant cooking. He
reached around, picked up a small object, tossed it a few times in his hand
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and then blew on it.
She saw it was a thin gold band, like a wedding band, only it had four tiny
different colored gems set in it. He took the ring
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finger.
Instantly she felt strange, different. She had all her memo-
ries, she knew who and what she was and where she was, but something inside
her head had changed. She realized that the ring contained a spell or a
combination of spells that acted on the wearer, and that if she removed the
ring the spells would not longer be active.
The trouble was, she had no desire to remove the ring, not ever. She felt
good, happy, even content, and excited as well about the future. She
remembered everything about the
Changewind and the Storm Princess and Klittichom and the rest, but somehow
they were no longer important to her, no longer even relevant. She knew it was
the spell doing that, but it didn't make any difference. For the first time
she realized what Boday must have felt like when she'd taken that strong love
potion. The fact that she knew better, knew that mere were other important
priorities, knew that she was the victim of a spell, didn't matter in the
least. Even that was irrelevant.
Her whole view of herself and society had been turned upside down in an
instant as well, and it, too, didn't bother her. She was a helpless, pregnant
girl, out on her own, and she couldn't make it on her own. She wanted her baby
and a home and solidity. She wanted somebody to take care of her and support
her and she wanted to take her place in that household and have lots of babies
and be an uncomplaining wife and mother. She was excited by the prospect,
anxious to begin. Her world was instantly redefined as her husbands and
children and home to be; all else was irrelevant.
Even sexually, the world was turned upside down for her, although right side
up from most points of view. A few
114 Jack L Chaiker moments before she would have thought the idea of a hus-
band, a man, silly, and as for the idea of desiring and needing a
man ridiculous. Now, strangely, the idea of having not one but many husbands
excited her all the more, even turned her on a little.
The sorcerer helped her out of the chair. "Now go join the others out the back
door there and wait in the wagon."
She got up and went out the door as directed and found a tall, burly, bearded
man there next to a covered wagon. He helped her up the back steps, and she
appreciated it, and found Putie and the other one already sitting there. Putie
looked up at her and smiled. "It's all changed, hasn't it?"
she asked in a voice that seemed softer, dreamier, and gentler than before.
"Yes," Sam replied, her own low voice sounding softer and sexier in her ears.
"Isn't it wonderful?"
Boolean, Lord High Sorcerer of Masalur, was royally pissed.
"What do you mean, you lost her?"
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Crim's voice came distantly out of the glowing green crys-
tal. "I lost her, that's all. All hell broke loose in Covanti all of a sudden.
As near as I can figure out, somehow, Klittichom found out where she was. Not
generally exactly where she was. I don't know how or why, but that's the word
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I'm getting. That Changewind that roared through was their at-
tempt to nail her."
"It didn't. I had definite energy readings afterwards show-
ing she was still very much alive and still whole. Then, very abruptly, the
readings stopped. Cold. Like she no longer existed. It wasn't the Changewind,
so what the hell happened?"
"I couldn't guess." Crim responded. "It wasn't Klittichom's men. They're all
over here now moving heaven and earth to block her exit and nail her. If
somebody'd gotten her, the news would spread around here like wildfire."
Boolean thought for a moment. "I'm still getting some readings indicating that
the fetus is whole, a new proto-Storm
Princess. But they're weak and vague and don't allow me any sort of location
except that she's still somewhere in the hundreds and hundreds of possible
worlds of Covanti. That means she's been neither killed nor transformed, which
is something, but something upset her matrix, her mathematical
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 115
perfection that made her a Storm Princess. She's not now. 1
can only guess she's under some sort of spell that's changed something about
her that the matrix deems essential. Timing, is everything now, Crim. You
should not have left her."
"What could I do? They got drawings of a fattened-up
Storm Princess at all the exit stations now, and the border's pretty well
monitored here. It seemed the easiest way to slip her past, and it was until
that damned Changewind. Now we got a state of emergency here, martial law in
the immedi-
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