Horrors of the Dancing Gods

THE PATH OF THE McGUFFIN

^"DON^'T GET TOO COCKY WITH THIS NEW FREEDOM STUFF," Joe warned Alvi as they made their way down to the Great River Road. "Remember, a lot of people will hurt what they don't like, even kill it, and we need some cooperation."

Alvi nodded, but she was really gaining confidence fast, even to the point of altering her long-used straight-up pose, letting the tail extend out stiffly, and bending forward while walking, which appeared to increase her stability vastly and give her not only a strong and confident forward gait but an easy way to break into a run. Joe hoped she wouldn't, though; wood nymphs weren't built for speed, and Joe had not found any reason to rush.

On the River Road even Alvi's odd appearance was a matter of culture and knowledge more than anything else, considering the vast number of very strange faerie races that were all around as well. There were ones with butterfly wings, ones with gossamer wings, ones with little birdlike wings, and a lot with no wings at all. Near the bank were hippogryphs, mermaidlike Virgans, powder-blue water nymphs with their transparent skin flaps like lace and the somewhat unsettling illusion that if you stared at them hard enough and close enough, you could see their insides, and lots, lots more. More faerie folk, in fact, than humans, who were there in good numbers as well, both on the river in small sailboats and barges and along the shores.

The humans themselves were a variety of their own races, with skins from near black through all the shades of brown and tan and orange-yellow, very tall and extremely short, covered in every conceivable color and style of hair or with no hair at all. In and around them were various elves, their colors and tunics showing their origins and tribal natures. The more elemental the creature, the less the fashion; nymphs tended to be unclad, needing little, while many other fairies were even more costumed than the humans.

"Get outta the road, you halfling freak!" a gruff man's voice shouted, and Alvi turned and saw a big, bearded man on a horse-drawn cart right behind her. She stuck her tongue out at him and made a face, but when he moved his hand to the whip, she suddenly thought better of it and gave way.

Lesson one, Joe thought.

But she was undeterred generally, and one fellow, perhaps only partly in jest, shouted out a job offer — if she could handle three sets of oars at once. She smiled but declined.

Finding a ferry across the River of Dancing Gods at that point wasn't easy. There weren't that many, since the river here was so wide that only a free-sailing vessel could handle it and so meandering that there was little demand for crossings when you'd have to travel so far along the other side just to cover a relatively short straight-line distance. They had to go south anyway, though, so they kept on, hoping that they'd be able to do it by Yingling, where the river took a wide eastward bend that would take them not only in the wrong direction but toward the major City-States and their very dense and potentially hostile populations.

Alvi, in spite of the attitudes and looks, was having a ball out in the real world without playacting or being weighted down in a massive costume for the first time in her whole life.

"You said you knew the skills of war," the halfling noted to Joe as they went along.

Joe nodded. "Yes, although it's been a long time, and at this weight and balance and with these muscles, I probably couldn't wrestle a two-year-old and win. Once, long ago, I fought one of the legendary battles of modern history on this floodplain, maybe twenty, thirty kilometers west of here. A war of armies, human and faerie, and demon princes, dragons — the whole works. Scared the wits out of me then, but it's great to look back now that it's so far in the past. I think that's the way with most great battles and the people who fight them. A time of killing, carnage, death, and terror with you crapping in your pants becomes more and more a glorious and wonderful heroic experience over time. I wonder if I was nearly as good as I think I was."

"You did pretty well against those guys."

"Yes, but that was improvising with what I had. Why do you ask, anyway?'

"I was just wondering if you'd train me."

"Huh?"

"My upper arms are pretty strong, really, 'cause they've done all the work. I often wondered what would happen with maybe a saber or sword in my top right hand, maybe a fencing foil or short sword for the middle, and even a rope or whip for the bottom."

Joe laughed. "Could you really handle all that at once if you had them? I mean, you're talking about doing three different things at once with your hands."

"No problem. It was one of my kid's games I used to practice in my room. I'd play a kind of catch, bouncing a ball and alternately catching and tossing or dropping it hand to hand to hand to hand and so on. Found that on my top and bottom set I'm right-handed and with the middle pair the left works best. You figure that out. I never did. I guess it's just the way it's wired. I always wondered if I'd be good in a duel, but I never had the chance, 'cause nobody was supposed to even know about the other sets, right? And training me with those kinds of weapons wasn't on Daddy's list of priorities. I can do pretty fair with a bow, though, and I wanted to learn the rest."

Joe considered it. "Well, I suppose I could teach you the basics, but it's years to get really good with any of them, you know."

"So? If I can get some decent training up front, I'll get better. How long did you have to train to get to be expert?'

Joe coughed, a bit embarrassed by the answer. "I didn't — much. A few months, really, with a good teacher. My edge was mostly the fact that I had a magic sword that knew more about the business than I did."

"Yeah? Where'd you get one of those? And what happened to it?"

"It was given to me by a powerful sorcerer, and where he got it from I have no idea. It — and me, too, I think — was to finish off the most evil sorcerer of our time, and it did. We did — but at the cost of me winding up as a wood nymph and the sword being consumed by volcanic fires. Since then I've been trying to get back to my old self somehow, and you can see the result. Heck, I often wonder if we were bound together, that sword and me, and if neither of us could live as we were without the other. It sure seemed like I lost something inside when it fell, impaling the body of the Dark Baron, Esmilio Boquillas, and consuming him as well."

"Lost something? Like what?"

"I don't know. I thought I knew, but I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't been wrong, that what I lost wasn't my big hero mode so much as my reason for being around at all. I mean, you're right, it's not all that bad being a wood nymph in Husaquahr if you were born one and raised one and that's all you ever were or were going to be. But it's pretty damned dull and limited if you've been other things and wind up one. I wasn't sure what I had of the old me left until that business in the woods back there. It stirred up something I thought was long dead."

"If it did, then you must have wasted a lot the past few years."

"Huh?"

"Well, if you found that feeling of fun, of accomplishment, again, then it was there all the time, right? So maybe if you'd been looking for some adventure and people who needed help and helped them instead of moping around and feeling sorry for yourself and trying to undo what was done, you'd have had a happy few years. Well? I mean, it sure sounds like it."

Joe thought it sounded like time to change the subject again. "Never mind about me. What makes you so bloodthirsty all of a sudden?'

"Freedom. This. All my life I've been told what kind of horrible existence I'd have if I ever got discovered and was forced out into the world. Well, maybe I don't know much yet, but I do know that most folks don't give a damn if you don't bother them, not around here, and that what you really need to get along is both a skill or skills and a way to defend your own self and whatever you own. The sword, the bow, the whip — these are the things that give people the feeling of power over others around here. If I have them and know how to use them, maybe that'll give the others pause about making comments or worse about me. I also have faerie sight and some small abilities with minor spells as well as a fair amount of book learning. Put them all together and maybe I stay free."

It was a real thought.

"All right," Joe agreed, "tell you what — if we can find an old, serviceable pair of fencing foils, we can start with that. I think even I can handle one of those, and rusty as I am on skills and totally unconditioned for any such use in this body, I still could probably hold my own for teaching. If you learn to fence reasonably, handle a rapier well, you're one up on a lot of people who only know brute strength defense with a saber or short sword. We'll see how long the money holds out and what we can afford here. Still, it's not a bad idea if you can handle it, and I've seen your nerve in action. I mean, if we go on any kind of adventure together, somebody is going to have to protect me!"

* * *

It wasn't that difficult to find a vendor in one of the towns along the Great River Road who had such a set; secondhand weapons were quite common in the region, particularly well-used ones pawned or lost in gambling by students at the civil and military institutions of the southern City-States. Finding them in any decent condition, well balanced and with the safety caps still present, was a bit harder. Joe also found that her very rusty and virtually never used knowledge of fencing foils wasn't really all that good, either. With the great sword, you just heaved and let it do the work. At Joe's best, as the person she'd once been, there wouldn't have been much of a contest with such weapons — Joe could put up a decent front and show but wasn't really all that good. Compared with someone who knew nothing and had never had any training, however, Joe was an expert.

They were able to make a decent deal on both an older set and a fair bow and quiver of arrows. It actually made Joe feel a little better that they had something to use, no matter how inadequate. This was still a fairly dangerous land and a primitive one, and in much of it life was very cheap. Just having weapons on display kept a bit of the threat away. It was sort of like putting a top burglar alarm on your house. The alarm wouldn't keep out a decent burglar, but an average one might look at the trouble of undoing yours versus the lack of trouble going into your alarmless neighbor's and decide to burgle next door instead.

After all, the only people who really knew how good you were with any weaponry were ones who'd seen you in action. Until then, you were always a potential threat.

Crossing the great river wasn't nearly as easy. Despairing of finding a decent ferry that far down, Joe finally decided that the only way would be to take a river tramp, a small ship that went from port to port along the river, up and down, carrying local supplies and commerce. Many were little more than filthy barges with single rectangular sails, occasionally in league with some river faerie or having a few muscular oarsmen aboard for the hard parts.

Such was the Catarwahl, apparently last cleaned sometime around the expulsion from Eden and smelling like it, too, manned by the somewhat questionable and unquestionably boozy Captain Letchu, along with his wife and son, who could be told apart less by age than by the mustache the wife had. They were going downriver now, which meant they could mostly follow the slow but dependable currents in a kind of diagonal pattern, crisscrossing the river in a series of triangles until they reached the end. Going back upriver, if they had no wind, was a matter of contracting with some hippogryphs or other river faerie to give them a decent tow.

"I'll takes yer as fer as Azkim," the captain told them. "No more for that pittance."

"You're a money-grubber of the first water," Joe retorted. "This is river robbery, and you know it. It just about cleans us out."

That was by no means the truth, but it was more than a bargaining ploy. Letchu was in fact charging them about ten times what any other ferry would, and it wasn't a good idea to give people like that the idea that you perhaps had even more money or valuables. This drooling, filthy trio was nonetheless bigger than bears and looked twice as mean.

Alvi seemed entranced by the prospect of crossing the big river and oblivious to most of the unspoken parts of the deal, but standing on the rail near the bow as they pulled away from the dock, she seemed excited and relieved.

"It's a good thing you are a halfling and me a wood nymph, considering this," Joe noted sourly. "I have a good idea that if we seemed to have any value ourselves, we'd wind up being tied up and sold down in Yingling."

"Really? They do that?"

"Sure. Back where I came from they called it 'Shang-haiing' somebody, after a city way off on the other side of the world where the ships would often be headed in ancient days. Unable to get sailors to go on those long and risky but very profitable voyages, they just hired men to find people in the bars, drug or knock them out, and they'd wake up well out at sea, where they either signed on as crew or got tossed overboard with lead weights. Most of 'em signed. The women, well, they were sold as domestics, field workers, prostitutes, you name it. Not much different here. There's still things like slavery here, too, handy if you have a need for planters and pickers and such back in those huge jungle plantations. That's why most of the good guys here travel in groups. The bad guys, too, come to think of it."

"Well, all I can say is that I don't see the world as quite as nasty as you," Alvi noted. "I'm sure that's all part of it, but there's so much more. It's kind of pretty here on the river, with all those creatures in the water, all the boats big and small, the colorful costumes — I am really getting to like it in spite of how mean some of 'em can be." She sniffed. "I have to admit, though, its smells leave something to be desired right now." She discovered that any exposed part of her that touched any part of the ship got covered in some thick, foul-smelling black stuff. Joe was not immune, either, but chuckled.

"It's peat, I think. They take it out of bogs up north, and it's burned for heat. It's cleaner than the dung, but it's no winner."

"They cook with it?" Alvi was appalled.

"No, they don't usually cook with it," Joe told her. "They use wood for that, if and when they can find it in condition to be properly burned. Sometimes oils. It's used to heat their houses. It gets extremely cold up north, I can tell you."

Alvi thought that over. "I–I think I know what you mean, but I don't remember ever being so cold that I had to heat the inside of a place. Is that where they make the snow?"

'Well, it's not made, it just falls. Temperature gets cold enough, it snows instead of rains. It's all water. They pack a lot of snow and ice in special boats now and use preserving spells to sustain them all the way downriver here so the rich folks can have chilled wines and store meat and fish for several days or even weeks."

"That's the only way I ever saw it," Alvi acknowledged. Do you think we'll get to anyplace that's really cold on this trip?"

"Not for a while, I hope." Joe laughed. "We're in the tropics and heading south into more of them. Where from there, though — that's what we have to find out. I hope we stay warm. I can take the cold, but not for long periods, and it can slow me down. If I freeze, I can be stiff for years, centuries, maybe forever, until I'm thawed out. And if you freeze, you're dead. I had enough cold stuff the last time, in the place where I wound up like this. I think I'm owed the heat."

It took about ninety minutes to make the full downriver crossing to the very small town of Azkim, and by that point and with scrambling to get out of the boat, both of them were black as, well, pitch.

"Now what?" Alvi asked Joe.

"First, I think we find a shallow river access and wash this crap off us. Then we'll find a place for you to buy something to eat, and we'll camp somewhere close. Too late to do much more today. Tomorrow we'll continue south, on this side of the river. Down to the Coast Highway, then west to the Leander border. If we can keep going at this pace more or less, we should make it to the jumping-off place for the Marmalade Islands and their resorts in maybe ten days to two weeks. If we're lucky, my old friend will still be doing three-hour tours…"

It was slow going once they veered off the River of Dancing Gods and took older, rarely used trails to the south and southwest, but that suited them both just fine. It made it easy almost to forget that Husaquahr existed, that there was hatred and bigotry and violence all around, and instead made it almost seem to be an extended and entertaining picnic.

It had been a long time since Joe had allowed herself to get friendly with, let alone close to, anybody else, and it was very strange: the longer they traveled together, the less odd Joe thought Alvi looked. In this world, where everybody seemed more than a little off, familiarity bred acceptance more than anything else.

Alvi, too, had the same reaction toward Joe, the first real friend and confidant outside of family members and close servants she'd ever known and somebody who seemed very wise and fascinating. The idea that Joe was a wood nymph hardly mattered; if Alvi had any prejudices toward the more elemental faerie, they surely didn't apply to Joe.

Several times they actually stepped behind cover when encountering parties of travelers, particularly humans; it was tough to know who was who and what was what in that unfamiliar region and whether anybody had yet caught on to who that six-armed halfling had been.

Joe did in fact try teaching Alvi a little of his fencing skills, but it wasn't anything serious. Alvi's body wasn't designed for finesse; clearly it would be better off with short swords, cutlasses, or possibly sabers, since a cut and slash would be most effective with all those arms. Joe wasn't that much better; the short reach, a lack of really fast reflexes, and easy tiring of the arm muscles just made swordplay ridiculous, and unlike mortals and perhaps halflings as well, all the exercising and workouts in the world wouldn't change a faerie body that was already predefined.

Shortly after reaching the coast, they came upon a small town sitting on a bluff above the wide ocean, and Joe was suddenly a bit wary. "You never know what's happened when you're out of circulation awhile," she commented. "Let me go in alone and snoop around and see if there's any kind of hue and cry for you. If there is, we'll bypass as much as we can. If not, we'll use the main road here and make a little time. I also want to get an idea of how far we still have to go."

Alvi didn't like it. "We been partners since we started; I hate to see you go in there alone. I mean, there's no trees, bushes, nothin' out there but grass and sand and this chalky dirt. You've got nothin' to defend yourself with if you need it. and wood nymphs don't travel much beyond where they live, do they? You're gonna stick out in your own way as much as I do."

"I'm used to that," Joe assured her. "Don't worry. Besides, I have nothing, so there's nothing for anybody to steal; I want nothing except some conversation, so they either talk to me or they don't. And I long ago swallowed my pride and decided to let the nymph part work if I have to. Just take it easy and use the fields here to get around to the other side, like that bluff with the gumdrop-shaped bush on it over there, and wait. I shouldn't be too long."

Alvi was strangely hesitant. "Okay, but — I dunno. I just get a really strange feeling when I look at that little place there. I don't think I ever felt anything really like it before. It's — weird?"

Joe knew that such feelings weren't to be taken lightly in Husaquahr. "What kind of feeling? Queasy? Shivers? Chills?"

"Nothin' like that exactly. I–I said I can't describe it. Like — like whoever's up there already knows we're corning. Like we're expected for dinner or something."

Joe frowned. "Well, if you're getting that kind of feeling, maybe concealing you isn't the best way, but I don't think we should give them both of us at once if it is something unfriendly. Trust me on this one. Easy, casual walk up the road and into town, but keep an eye out and play it by my signals. I've been in bad spots before."

It was Alvi's turn to doubt "It could just be my imagination…"

"Probably not. Particularly when you start to doubt yourself. That's probably in the Rules someplace. Just be on guard and proceed slowly with me. No weapons. Unless we're attacked or you or I get a strong feeling of serious danger, we might just be spooking somebody unnecessarily."

It certainly didn't feel like an ambush. The tiny town of a half dozen ramshackle wooden structures looked to have seen much better days and to have survived mostly because the breeze off the land wasn't quite strong enough to blow it over the cliff. Once it had clearly been a way station for weary travelers on their way to and from the City-States and the Leander ocean resorts, but commerce, for some reason, had passed it by. From the looks of a boarded-up well and dry troughs, it appeared either that the well had run dry — unlikely in that climate — or that it was contaminated by something that had doomed this as a rest stop. Across the road were the remains of stables, now little more than boards on crude rock foundations.

As they drew close to the tiny town, Joe began to get the distinct impression that this was no ordinary town in a number of ways. The ramshackle buildings weren't close to the sort you'd find anywhere in Husaquahr, for one thing; for another, the signs were disturbingly out of place.

ALCOA PARA EL ALQUILER announced the faded sign on one half-falling-down building. EL ALIMENTO BUENO said another, weathered but clear enough for Joe to read. Inside was an arrow painted on one of the buildings that pointed to the wreckage across the road with the faded words LOS ESTABLOS. Below it, in a graffitilike scrawl, were the words "Por un llamatio bueno de tiempo Tina, 555-3721."

"Sure looks weird," Alvi commented.

Joe nodded. All the weirder because it was so familiar in many ways — but only to Joe.

A sudden wind came off the land as they actually crossed into the tiny ruin, its whistling sounds almost but not quite masking the sounds of the breakers on the cliff far below.

On the creaking porch of the old hotel sat a figure in a rocking chair, going slowly back and forth almost in time to the wind. It was wrapped in a colorful serapelike garment that looked to be perhaps Navajo or Hopi; the figure's head was down in its chest, masked by a huge sombrero.

As they cautiously approached, Alvi's hand went instinctively to the bow on her shoulder, easing it down in spite of what Joe had said. Now, quite close, the enigmatic figure, still rocking slowly, raised its head. The big sombrero came up, and inside was nothing at all, nothing but two glowing red eyes.

"Faith and begorra!" the apparition swore in a thick Irish brogue. "Ya needn't be fearin' me much this trip! Put away yer weapons and be at ease!"

"You've got the wrong accent for the clothes and setting," Joe noted, still wary, eyes on the thing, whatever it was.

"Oh, one's as good as the other, really, isn't it, now?" the thing responded. "Spanish, English, Husaquahrian, or Navajo, what's the difference?"

"I'm an Apache," Joe pointed out. "Not much relation with the Navajos."

The thing shrugged. "Again, what's the difference? A priest's a shaman and a shaman's a priest, and ya talk yer talks in whatever's understood. Take this spit of a ghost town. Never was much to it in its heyday, and there's even less now. The Earth didn't even miss it when it got rotated out, now, did it? Now 'tis neither here nor there, y' see. The mortals, they be so blind, it don't even exist for 'em in either plane, except when they camp here or just glance back outa the corner of one eye and like that. Only them that's got faerie blood can truly see it."

"But not you," Joe noted.

The thing hesitated a moment. "That's me own dear choice, y' see. It kinda limits what I can do, but it's a good deal safer. Lets me see and hear them what's linked without bein' really there to be noticed. And as fer the Apache, I never did see a green Apache of your likes!"

"This isn't exactly—"

"Oh, I know, Joe de Oro. I knows just who you were, but ya ain't no more, are ye?'

Joe was startled. "So you know who I am! Then this isn't just an accidental encounter."

"Faith! Nothin' I do is accidental! Strictly within the Rules, though, I be. Yes, strictly within the Rules. Not like some."

"Everyone's bound by the Rules here!"

"Indeed, 'tis so, but perhaps not for much longer. They're coming, you see, and it's not likely they can be stopped."

"Who is coming? What's all this about?" Joe asked.

"Well, there's Heaven and there's Hell, and then there's the other place. The place of the pretenders, those gods and demigods who may or may not have held sway for a while in one place or another but who in the end did not make it, you see. Kind of a dustbin of the gods, you might say. They are some of the worst things ever to have come out of creation. Individually, each could be vanquished. Even as a class, perhaps. But together — ah, together they create a new power. They were tossed where they were because their egos were such that there was no conceivable way they could combine forces. But they are combining now. They have their own unique definitions of good and evil and grudges against both Heaven and Hell. Surely you have felt them, felt how close they are to becoming real once more."

Joe nodded. "So that's what it is. But surely both Heaven and Hell can handle them."

"They could," the apparition agreed, "but they won't. Heaven may be so disgusted with everything, it'll just take its remainin' folk out and leave the rest to these bastards. Hell — well, Hell only wants what Heaven desires, y' see. And besides, if such concentrated evil was to really overrun all this universe, then it'd pollute the very Sea of Dreams, bringin' nightmare to Earth and perhaps the battle Hell really wants. It's willin' to give up this place, then, to gain the bigger prize — but y' see, since most of the folks that'll be left if these creatures break through and rule are already in Hell's pocket, they're not too terribly pleased by the prospect. They're just too bloody evil to work together against the usurpers and treacherous enough to make separate deals and stab one another in the back."

Joe began to see, and he did not like it one bit. "And what happens if they do break through and take over here? To us, I mean."

"There's far worse than death. Surely ya knows that much. They'll apportion for a while and remake all in their own images, but eventually they'll start to devour one another. Who can say? They don't look or act or think like anything or anybody ya knows."

Joe sighed and shrugged. "Why tell us this? What can we do about it?"

"Not 'us,' just you," the apparition responded. Joe turned and saw that Alvi was just standing there, frozen, unblinking as a statue.

"What did you do to her?"

"Nothin'; don't worry. We're just on a kinda plane that she's not ready for. She'll not know any of this has passed, but she doesn't need to. In the end it will all come down to you. That's what ya were brought here for, wasn't it?"

"For the last battle. I've done my bit! I've paid my price! Too much, if you ask me! I shouldn't have to do anything more. I don't even know how I could."

"I don't, either," the creature admitted, "but it's still in your lap because it's not finished. You jumped into that lava knowin' what would happen, but you had little toime to think about it; you hated the Baron far more, and you had no idea of the long-term price ye'd pay. Now you know the price and you got vulnerabilities including your friend here and your own son, who you drug over, subjected to all this, and then abandoned. Now you got to think — would you do it again? Would you save the world if it meant you'd always be as you are now, period, and if it might cost the life of your son as well? Or would you go over to 'em and let billions perish and their souls become darker'n pitch, including your own and those you save?"

"I don't know. I hope I never would, at least on those terms," Joe answered honestly. "Why me, anyway? I'm small, slight, physically weak, unarmed: not suited for much of the kind of battle you set up. With all the sorcerers still around here, I'm not a sane choice even to do this."

"Three reasons for starters," the creature replied. "For one, it's what you were brought here to do. It's your job.

For two, you alone among the creatures of faerie and men in all this world are immortal. They cannot kill you or touch the Tree that gives you this great power — unless you let them. And most compelling of all, at the end of what she seeks is that which you will find most irresistible to fight. If you continue with her, you're in. If you do not go with her, then become the nymph in the tree and forget all else, for you'll never change until the end of toime and you'll never adventure again and you will sit and watch him win at last."

" 'Him'? What are you talking about?"

"Your destiny and those of others are intertwined. You have not yet completed your grand commission. Until you do, you can claim to win only battles, not a war. That evil which you feel growing and which threatens to pervade and engulf all of Husaquahr is partly of your doing. You must complete the task or, no matter how many victories you can claim, you will still lose it all."

Joe's mouth opened in shock and surprise. "Now, wait a minute! I had nothing to do with this — whatever it is. I know what my own task was, and that was accomplished when the Dark Baron fell into the lava and was consumed, and the great sword with him. If there is a new source of ultimate evil, that is for another. I know that much about the Rules!"

"And did not you, too, fall into the same lava? Did not you, too, find yourself consumed in fire? Yet, if this be true, who stands before me now?"

Joe had a sudden very sick feeling. "You're not telling me—"

"He had to get his powers back somehow. The way was through faerie. Unlike you, he really did die in that molten magma, but he was a bit better than that. He had long ago planned ahead. He went neither to Heaven nor to Hell but instead into the very Sea of Dreams, where the Beings of Power dwell forever, and what eons could not accomplish, he did in the blink of an eye. Now followers of things more evil than Hell itself have opened the way back for him, and he prepares the way for the others."

"So you're saying I have no choice."

"Sure. Lotsa choices and all bad. That's if ya gets them in the first place. It's a long journey, bein' faerie won't help you much, and the temptations, particularly for the likes of you, will be quite hard to resist. Make no mistake, Joe. Your life's not in real danger, but there's such ahead that may have ya pinyin' for death. Forget the colors of the enemy, too, and keep checkin' your own. Either way, both the Baron and you are done with this trip. Both of ya. Ya wins or loses this toime, either o' ya. That's why ya gits this here warnin'. That and because it's not balanced if you don't know who and what's out ahead. Y' see, he is waiting for you."

"Who — and what — are you?' Joe demanded to know. "Are you with Heaven or with Hell, with him or with me?"

"That's not for now. Perhaps sometoime in the future. I'll be keepin' my eye on ya, and we'll see if perhaps I'll show up now and then, if I can do that much. I think ya got it in ya to do it, me boy. Just remember that until the Old Ones can come through fer real, the Rules still bind here. Use 'em. And don't spend no more time cryin' over what ya ain't got no more. Instead, learn to use what ya do have. That — and beware vampire gophers!"

And with that, the wind suddenly struck Joe's body and there was nothing on the porch except an empty old wooden rocking chair going back and forth in the wind.

"What is it?" Alvi asked nervously. "Somebody in there?"

Joe realized that the halfling in fact was unaware that there had been a conversation or that any real time had passed.

"No, nobody in there," the nymph responded. "Not anymore."

Deep down Joe wasn't sure if she'd have gone against such power, particularly now and on her own, no matter what the situation or even the potential rewards. Now, though, the two words that would drive her to go anywhere and risk just about anything had been spoken, and if they were true, there was no question that this was destiny.

Joe had defeated his enemy more than once and had killed him once in human form. Now it was in the realm of faerie, soul to soul, immortality or oblivion, that they must meet one more time.

But where? And how? Joe couldn't read those complex Books of Rules, but she knew one thing all too well: nowhere in any of them did it guarantee that the good guys would win.

Joe looked again at the halfling, who was still puzzled by what seemed an odd change of mood in her nymph companion. Something in those Rules, some kind of thread of destiny or fate or whatever, or possibly the workings of the Baron himself, had brought them together at this point. Somewhere on the girl was the location of the Grand McGuffin, whatever that was beyond being what Alvi needed to become whole in some way and what Joe needed not just to get out of her current circumstances but as the only weapon against a resurgent Boquillas, now almost certainly of dark faerie nature.

The first step was to unlock that map in Alvi's ring's spell, and that would mean Macore. She hoped it would be easy for the onetime self-styled greatest thief in Husaquahr; it would certainly be good to see him, just like old times.

One step at a time, she thought. Like always.