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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
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"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
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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
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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
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