Songs of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER 8 ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

“Are you really a slave? A real slave?”

Mia looked up at the young soldier who was gawking at her and thought, No, of course not. I’m naked and hairless and wearing this ring in my nose just to make a fashion statement. But, aloud, she replied, “Yes, my lord.”

“My lord,” several of the young soldiers responded, giggling, and the boy said, “I ain’t never been called no ‘lord’ before.”

“My lord, since all people are above me in status, you are as worthy of respect as a prince or king. There is no difference to a slave.”

“You mean—you got to do what we say?”

“My lord, all people are my superiors, but I have but one master.”

These weren’t actually bad kids, she thought to herself, somewhat surprised. They were quite typical of the kind of young men you’d find anywhere in a city or an army. Young men from typical peasant and worker backgrounds who were probably away from home for the first time in their lives. It was in some ways a disturbing concept for her. You always thought of the “enemy” as something mean and nasty, an evil force composed of evil men. Instead, they were very much normal folks, just as on the “good” side, who were either in the service of evil or the tools of it, with no more choice in the matter than she had. Nothing more brought home what a waste wars truly were.

“How’d you get this way?” one of them asked. Being from the poorer classes, they had never really seen a slave up close before. “You do something really bad?”

“My lords, my crime was to have been born too poor and to have fallen into evil company. The only proper way to make a slave is if it actually makes things better for that one.”

“That ain’t the way the Hypboreyans do it,” one of them remarked. “They breed “em.”

She found that idea most unpleasant to think about.

“So what d’ya do?” another one asked.

“My lords, I attend to my master. I do all the little things so that he need not bother himself about them. Anything he wants or needs, I try and do.”

“I got a want and need I could use somebody for,” one of the boys muttered to the chuckles of the others.

“And,” she added, “I dance.”

“Yeah? Will you dance for us?”

“I would need my master’s permission. Wait, and I will ask him.”

She ran up to the room, where Joe was lying down, feeling the effects of the day’s activities all of a sudden. “Master, some of the young soldiers wish me to dance for them. I should like to do so.”

He looked at her. “I’m not gonna be there to bail you out this time.”

“I feel I can take care of myself with those boys.”

He didn’t like it, but Marge had predicted to him that, sooner or later, Mia would ask just such a thing, and had promised to watch out for the dancer if things got out of hand.

“Okay, but if this goes bad and you come back all beat up, don’t expect sympathy.”

“Oh, thank you, Master!” she cried, then hunted for and found her castanets and rushed back down again. It wasn’t just her need to dance, which was strong enough that it stopped just short of a compulsion, but also something she didn’t quite understand on a conscious level, but which Marge did.

The liveryman had predicted that few soldiers would be in town, and he’d been right. There were only eight boys, the members of a squad that had escaped rigorous field training by drawing some kind of cleanup detail.

They went to the edge of town, at the livery stable, where there was a fair amount of room and good torch lighting. Above, on a nearby roof, unseen to them, Marge landed and perched to watch and watch out for her companion. She understood well the real reason Mia wanted to dance for these strangers, the reason Mia wanted what heretofore she had shunned.

The slave had examined herself in the bathhouse mirror, and had seen someone reflected back so different and strange-looking that she hardly recognized it. The shaving had chipped away a central core of her ego, as, of course, it was designed to do. Mia’s dancer’s body was lean and trim, but her breasts were quite small and rock hard; in spite of a perfect curve at the pelvis, she was very much of a neuter as those things went, particularly in a world where bare breasts were common. Shorn of her long hair, the neuter effect was reinforced, particularly in her eyes.

Mia needed to know if she was still a woman in the eyes of others.

. She started slow, but quickly picked up the pace, using the castanets to give not merely rhythm to her moves but emphasis to her major ones, and she held the onlookers spellbound. Marge too, was fascinated. That girl could dance!

The whistles, claps and very male reactions from the small group of soldiers was just what Mia needed, and she reveled in it. Marge, reading the emotions of the group, understood Joe’s reluctance to allow this, but she also read Mia’s supercharged emotional state. The way she was dancing right into them, charging them up, made Marge realize that, this time, she didn’t want Joe to rescue her, nor Marge, either. She finished right at the entrance to the stables with a big finish and ducked inside. Easy enough to get away at that point when they ran after her, but she did not come out.

All of the soldier boys would wind up being punished for being late checking back into their camp.

Mia was in fact bruised and sore the next morning, but she didn’t seem to mind it a bit. Joe was somewhat concerned; but, apparently, however she’d come by them, it hadn’t been against her will or her wishes. He could have forced her to tell him, of course, but he decided he’d rather not ask, not only to preserve what dignity she still had but also because he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

In spite of some soreness and stiffness, Mia was in an extremely upbeat, confident mood, possibly as good as he’d ever seen her. And, why not? The previous day had been a banner one for her. She’d proved herself more than capable in the fight with the thieves, and, later on, she’d proven herself in the only other area that was important or even relevant to her. She had nothing left to prove to herself, and that made her spirit soar.

“It’s a good thing we’re laying over, though,” Joe commented, looking at some of those bruises. “You wouldn’t be much good in a fight or on a horse at this point.”

“I can do anything you demand of me, Master,” she responded. “You know, if you do not mind, I may remain like this even after we return. Not having to wash or fool with that hair makes things much easier.”

He shrugged. “If you like it, great.” He wasn’t going to press her on it. “Uh—tonight is the first full moon, you know.”

She stopped. “I had not thought of that, Master. What shall we do about it? We should not become each other. It would not be right, nor fair, at this time.”

“Yeah. Disregarding the slave part, I don’t want those bruises. But, I have an idea if you don’t mind skipping some sleep tonight. I’ve done it before and it wasn’t so awful, and it might give us a way to find out what the hell is going on around here. This is too close to the border. I wouldn’t like to be stuck up north and discover that everything’s happening down here.”

“What do you have in mind, Master?” He reached down and pulled a crumpled blanket away. Marge was asleep under it.

“I’m going to give instructions that our room is not to be entered or touched today,” he told her. “That’ll keep Marge from having nasty interruptions.”

“I can do the clean and make up, Master. I used to be a maid, you remember.”

“Good.” He looked down at the sleeping Marge. “How would you like to fly?”

It felt kind of silly and looked sillier, all three of them there sitting on the floor, Mia to the left of Marge and holding her left hand, and Joe to the right of the Kauri, holding her right hand.

The curse of the were was a curse of the blood; by blood was it transmitted and by blood was it carried and held. Almost all of such curses were specific to some animal or demonic form, but there was a very rare form in which the last part of the curse’s spell had somehow been miswritten or garbled when first applied. Upon the nights of the full moon, such a one was transformed until either morning or moonset. But, since only half the curse was truly operable, at this mystic moment, both Joe and Tiana would turn into the nearest living animal, and remain that way until either moonset or dawn, whichever came first.

Although the faerie were neither human nor animal in the scientific sense, they qualified under the curse, as Joe had discovered more than once.

“It’s getting pretty boring,” Joe said grumpily, “and it’s pretty dark out there. Are you sure about this night, Marge?”

“I’m sure. Moonrise is a little late tonight. Any time now.”

“I truly hope so, my lady,” Mia sighed. “I am sitting on a particularly painful bruise.”

“Don’t worry about that. Weres are particularly fast healers,” Marge noted. “I remember hearing about one who had his head chopped through with an ax. The ax went through and. came out bloody, but aside from a scar that faded in a few days and a bad sore throat, he was no worse for wear. Scared the bejezus out of everybody and made a legend.”

“Did he get away?” Joe asked, not having heard that one.

“No. Somebody found an ornamental pole with a silver tip. Drove it right through him, poor guy.”

Joe was about to say something as soon as he could think what it was, when, suddenly, as the moon cleared the horizon opposite the window, it happened.

Joe felt a sudden dizziness and blurring of vision and thought, then a series of strange sensations as parts of him seemed to grow or contract or do other such things.

And, on the floor of the room, now sat three absolutely identical Kauris, holding hands. So identical were they, in fact, that not even another Kauri could tell them apart, save that Mia’s collar hung loosely around her neck. She let go of Marge and shook her wrists, and the two bracelets fell to the floor, then did the same with the anklets. Her collar, however, would have to remain uncomfortably on. Her head just wasn’t sufficiently smaller than her normal one to permit that.

And although her pierced earrings fell through the flesh to the floor, the ring still remained in her nose.

They hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed logical. Ruddygore said that, once in, nothing save death could remove ft.

Marge looked at it critically. “Huh! The only Kauri slave in all history! I hope that doesn’t set a precedent.”

“It won’t,” Joe responded, in a voice absolutely identical to Marge’s. “I think at least we’ll find that the ring has no effect.”

“You are right!” Mia said, delighted. “You are not my master or mistress or whatever it means for now.”

“Only temporarily,” Joe reminded her. “Jeez. The last time I was turned female I was embarrassed as hell. This just feels like a different suit of clothes. Maybe I’m finally getting able to handle almost anything.”

“I—I have never been of faerie before,” Mia commented. “It does not feel all that different. I wish I could keep these breasts, though.” She reached up and touched the back of her head. “And hair again!”

“You want different?” Joe responded. “Try a whole new set of muscles along your back you never had before.”

“Well, we can all sit in here and gab, or we can have a little fun,” Marge said. “Let me put out the light.” She went over and blew out the oil lamp.

“But it’s so dark—” Mia began, then stopped, her words ending with a gasp. It wasn’t dark. Everything was so clear, so sharp, so detailed! And the other two, they were softly glowing, a beautiful pastel reddish pink.

No, there was a difference, but very slight, in Joe’s glow, almost as if there was some green which the reddish glow did not quite mask.

“Been so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to see human,” Marge commented. “The main thing to remember, though, is to think only about those things that need thinking about, like where you’re goin’ and what you wanna do. Let the body do what it does naturally and don’t fight it. Guide, but let the body do the work.” She went over to the window. “Everybody ready?”

“But I have never flown before—on my own wings!”

“Just get up on the windowsill, look where you’re goin’ —that’s the important part—and kick off!” Marge said, disappearing out the window.

“Go ahead,” Joe urged her. “It’s just your mental conditioning getting in the way. I was the same way once myself.” He got her up on the windowsill, but she looked out and got really nervous.

Suddenly, Joe pushed her behind, and out she went. For a moment, she felt as if she were falling, but, suddenly, she felt the flap of the wings on her back and soared upward.

Marge was suddenly beside her. “Relax, let the wings do the work,” she cautioned. “Don’t even think about them. Justly.”

Now Joe was beside her, too, and they were up, up in the night sky, far over the town.

Once she learned to let go and relax, it became almost second nature to fly. It was wonderful, one of the greatest feelings she’d ever known!

The landscape spread out all around her, but it looked quite different, not only because of the aerial perspective but also because of additional sights and information she was now receiving. Somehow, she instantly knew where she was in relation to anything else she could see, and just exactly how far it was to any point from there. While it was clearly dark, everything was easily visible in great detail, and much that was not seen by human eyes was visible, too. The very air had slight, subtle coloration and texture, and tiny sparklies of varying colors moved along, saying exactly where the air was moving, and how fast.

Areas of forest and field and far-off mountains also had their own strange patterns. Complex patterns, mostly, like tiny spi-derweblike strings of every color, intensity, and hue, and in and around areas where nothing should be there were patches of various pastel blobs in a variety of sizes.

It was beautiful.

“Fairy sight,” Joe told her. “The strings are spells, magic and sorcery of some sort. The blobs are living things, creatures mostly of faerie. Although we’re a sort of soft red, in general watch out for the reds and yellows and whites. They tend to be on the darker side of faerie. The blues and greens tend to be almost always to the good, the rest sort of in-betweens. Don’t take them for granted, though. As the Kauri are reds, and not evil, so, too, are there exceptions to all the Rules.”

“The reason why they call the darkest magic black is that it is,” Marge told her. “And black strings and blobs blend in and can’t be so easily seen until it’s too late. If you ever see any sort of blackness and suspect it might have moved, ever so slightly, stay away! Don’t depend on fairy flesh or the were curse to save you—there are things far worse than death. Just imagine something eating you alive… forever.”

The point was well taken, although, in truth, as weres they were better protected than Marge.

“Let’s go over to the military encampment first,” Joe suggested. “It’s likely to have fewer defenses from ones like us than the other place where the bigwigs are, and I want to see just what the hell they’re training for.”

It was becoming easier by the moment. You just picked some sparklies that were going in the general direction you wanted and got into their flow. Only when you had no lifting aid from the air did you work at it, and it quickly was becoming automatic, even at that.

“Remember,” Marge warned, “we’re just about incapable of an offense, so, if you run into anything, fly or run like hell. If you can’t, let me handle it and go along with whatever I do, no matter how idiotic it looks to you. There are a few things only experience can tell you.”

From this height, you could see the military camp clearly, even at this distance. It was huge, with tents and temporary structures all over the place, some going all the way out to the horizon.

A lot of the Valisandran army was there, much of it bedding down for the night, but both Joe and Mia were struck by the enormous waves of feelings coming from the camp. Enormous waves of loneliness, unhappiness, even despair, and, over all, an atmosphere of terrible fear you could almost see. It was almost too much for Mia to handle, and she fought back tears. “Those poor guys,” she sympathized.

“Yeah, you really get the weight of the world as a Kauri.” Marge sighed. “After a while, though, you get to handle most anything. To me, that’s the biggest banquet hall I ever did see.”

“Yes, but how do you feed on it?” Mia asked, and, almost immediately, her body told her. “Ohhh…” she managed.

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t feel hungry right now,” Marge told her, “because I’ve had no problems getting energy around this place and you got what I got. Maybe tomorrow night. It just seems normal only you get a whole extra body kick to it and, instead of being tired at the end, you’re rarin’ to go.”

Joe ignored the interchange, far more interested in the lay of the land. “There’s the centaurs there. Big, mean-looking suckers, aren’t they? They’d be like mounted archers that could hit a target at a couple of hundred yards, I bet. And over there, off by themselves… Bentar! I knew those bastards would be here someplace!”

The Bentar were the fiercest race of fighting fairies, totally without mercy, conscience, or any moral sense at all. Their tall, grim visages were at once like a bird of prey and yet oddly reptilian, with mean eyes that reflected the light. You didn’t need fairy sight to know those were real sons of bitches down there.

“I don’t understand it,” Marge said, shaking her head. “It looks as if they’re assembling something the size of the Battle of Sorrow’s Gorge, yet where’s the heavy stuff? The big catapults and siege machines and all the rest and the second army on wheels with all the supplies?”

Joe thought it over. “The only reason you’d have something like this without those things is if you didn’t think you were going to need them,” he replied. “That’s not an army of conquest being assembled down there—it’s an army of occupation.”

Mia looked out over the assemblage and to the stars beyond, and, quite suddenly, a few of the stars winked out, then on again, then others did the same.

“Black shapes!” she warned. “Coming in fast from the plain! Flying!”

“Scatter!” Marge shouted. “Rendezvous back on the hotel roof!”

The concept of being eaten alive forever hadn’t lingered far from Mia’s consciousness. She was off like a shot.

The Kauri, it was true, had no offense at all, but they were by no means helpless. In addition to Marge’s bag of illusory magic tricks, they were very light and very, very fast when they needed to be, and had a flight instinct second to none. There were some birds and tiny fairies, like pixies, that could match them in speed, but for both speed and distance they were virtually unequaled.

Mia rose, caught a fast current, and made six or seven miles from the military camp to the hotel roof in no more than seven minutes, a sprint that, she suddenly realized, meant she’d made something like sixty miles an hour! And she’d done it without really thinking at all!

Incredibly impressed with herself, she was equally amazed to find that Joe had beaten her.

“It’s the collar,” he said. “Probably slowed you down a bit. And, yeah, I’m impressed, too. I never knew she could do that. And we’re not even breathing particularly hard!” He looked around and frowned. “But where is Marge?”

They waited worriedly for several minutes. Finally, the real Kauri arrived, but not from the direction of camp, flying low.

“Sorry, but I figured I’d give ’em something to chase in the wrong direction. They’re pretty slow, relatively speaking. I had actually to slow down so I wouldn’t lose ’em until I was ready to.”

“What were they?” Joe asked, looking around at the sky.

“Nazga. All leathery wings and teeth and hard as a rock. Not too bright on their own, though, and one of ’em had riders. Odds were they were just told to patrol for flying intruders as a routine thing.”

“I’m not so sure about that other gathering now,” Joe said worriedly. “They’ll have a lot more security there than at the camp, and it’s possible they may be warned about us.”

“Aw, I doubt if those flying stomachs will bother warning anybody. They have enough trouble remembering their own names,” Marge replied. “But, you’re right. They’ll have a lot more security. I’m still game, though, if you are.”

Joe sat back on the rooftop and sighed. Mia looked at him and couldn’t get over how naturally feminine the moves and manner of the big macho man were as a Kauri. The fact that it was still his methodical fighting man’s mind speaking actually just gave his form real strength.

In fact, except for the slight difference in accent and choice of words, Joe, as a Kauri, seemed just like Marge.

“All right,” he said at last. “But we don’t push it. If we can’t get near, then we can’t get near. Understood?”

They both nodded.

“And, in any event,” he reminded them, “we’d better be back well before dawn.”

Mia looked at the horizon. “But where do we look for them?” she asked.

“We follow the road, of course,” he answered. “If they’ve got it blocked north, then it’s got to lead where they don’t want anyone going.”

They hadn’t flown on long before Mia said, “There’s a slight fog of some kind. You can see all right, but it’s like a thin, dark film over everything.”

“That’s been there since we entered this vile land,” Marge responded. “It’s just that you hadn’t had anything to contrast it with before. Now it’s getting more dense.”

“What is it?” Mia asked, curious.

“It is evil,” Marge told her. “It is the cloak of pure evil.” The Kauri felt no heat or cold, but Mia still felt a very real chill go through her. “It seems to come from the northwest,” she noted.

“Yes,” Joe agreed. “From Hypboreya.”

They passed over some military roadblocks, Joe noting that all the guards were Bentar. Clearly, if you got this far, you weren’t just going to be turned around with a warning. If you were lucky, the creatures from the dark side of faerie would kill you.

Beyond the roadblocks they flew low to the ground, hoping to avoid any faster and more efficient flying sentinels. Marge, who had all the experience in this sort of thing, took the lead, as the road and ground rose sharply in a series of switchbacks leading up the side of the great plateau. On a tiny ledge, Marge settled and the other two joined her.

“Well,” she said, “there it is.”

Below them were possibly the darkest forces in the service of Hypboreya, lined up as if for inspection, more immobile than any such armed force could possibly be. An army of the living dead.

“They look in a lot better shape than that crew Sugasto had around him the last time I had a run-in with him,” Marge commented.

“Those were reanimated corpses,” Joe reminded her. “Their value is as much psychological as anything, as you proved. Even a Kauri can kick their face in. I would doubt if they could handle the reanimation without a real expert sorcerer in the immediate neighborhood to keep them moving and direct their every action. These people below us are corpses, in a way, but they’re not dead. These are people whose souls he’s stolen and got bottled up somewhere, but whose bodies keep on. No souls, but with the rest of their brains keeping their bodies going, maybe even some of their skills, just no way to use them. They don’t think, but they can obey even complex commands.”

Mia was appalled. “There are thousands of them! Both men and women, too! Even children in some of those brigades! How monstrous!”

Joe nodded. “That’s why they’re so confident. They can probably send small numbers of these, mixed by age and sex, into various parts of Marquewood and maybe beyond. They’d have to be fed, of course, but they wouldn’t care what they ate. And, for whatever reason, their masters could send them anywhere, to do just about anything. There, Mia, is the step below slaves, doing whatever they’re told, knowing nothing, feeling nothing.”

“It’s the sickest thing I ever saw!” Marge commented. “It’s turning people into—robots. Machines.”

“Will they do that to their whole army?” Mia asked, sickened. “Those boys…”

“No, I doubt it,” Joe reassured her. “For one thing, a power like this is unique. The power to do this is also the power to pull the swaps. If you had that kind of power, would you let all your underlings know it? Who would you trust? Even Sugasto has to sleep sometime, have guards, servants. How would he know who to trust? Uh-uh. The Master of Dead would die himself before he’d let that secret out to anybody.”

“Except the Dark Baron,” Marge reminded him. “Remember, Boquillas pulled that trick, too, back on Earth.”

“Yeah, but only with help. He has no real power of his own, remember. I don’t know if Sugasto told him, or if he simply figured it out after seeing it done. He’s that smart. And, remember, he had a way so that even Dacaro, who was working the thing for him, couldn’t figure it out himself, and Ruddygore said the Baron purged his mind of the mechanism to prevent it getting out. So, it’s Sugasto. That means our Master of the Dead did all that handiwork himself down there. Others can control and work them, of course, but only he can make a zombie.”

“That’s what your old body is or was like then,” Marge noted.

He nodded. “But he’ll need more than animation, more than programming, and more than just a good actor to pull off his scheme. The government knew we weren’t coming back and was glad to get rid of us, I think. They couldn’t oppose our return, but they’d assassinate both if they had the slightest suspicion they were being had.”

“But what are they doing here!” Mia asked him.

Joe pointed to a small compound just beyond the lines of zombies. “There. That’s the reason. This whole force is a bodyguard for whoever’s in there. Dollars to doughnuts that’s Sugasto in there with his commanders, and that the vast majority of these poor people were created on the spot, maybe over the last couple of days.”

“Then those crates near the building there—see them?” Mia pointed. “They are commercial wine crates—but there is not much wine grown in Valisandra. Even I know that.”

Marge gave a slight gasp. “That’s because those bottles have no wine in them. They’re the souls of these people!”

“We must do something,” Mia said. “We can’t just leave these poor people like this.”

“Go to fairy sight,” Marge told them. “Just concentrate and keep looking.”

They did, and slowly a complex of huge multicolored strings, crisscrossing and knotting this way and that, formed like a bubble over the whole compound, including the crates. It was the largest, most complex protective spell even Marge could remember.

“We’d never get past that,” she said firmly. “Even if we managed to evade the zombies, the Bentar, and whatever else is prowling about, there is just no way. We’d trigger something, get caught, and wind up in little bottles ourselves.” The Kauri sighed in frustration. “Short of somebody like Ruddygore, the only one who might break in there would be Macore. He even broke into Ruddygore’s vaults, remember.”

“Macore, I’m afraid, is more likely down with the dead,” Joe told her. “He passed through this region a couple of weeks ago. The innkeeper at the border remembered him.”

“It’s not much of a solution, in any event, I guess,” Marge said. “If we smashed the bottles, we’d liberate the souls but that would just allow them to pass on. The only way to restore them would be to* catch each one of them and stick the bottle down his or her throat, the way Ruddygore did with you. The trouble with that is, like Ruddygore, we’d have no way of knowing who was who, and the zombie we were trying to save would be trying to kill us for it. No, face it, it’s back to back and belly to belly at the zombie jamboree and we got to run.”

“Huh?”

“You’re too young. Zombie Jamboree: The Song That Killed Calypso by Lord Invader and his Three Penetrators. Never mind. It’s just my grave sense of humor coming up in a hopeless situation.”

“Look!” Mia cried in an excited whisper. “Someone’s coming out of the meeting place!”

Several figures, in fact. The distance was far enough that even with the Kauris’ super nightsight and eaglelike telescopic vision it was hard to make them out.

“The big guy in black’s got to be Sugasto, the old Master of the Dead himself!” Marge told them. “The others are probably his aides and military leaders—but who’s that long-haired sexy broad with him? I can’t quite get a fix on her.”

“I can’t, either,” Joe replied. “We need to get closer, and, right now, that would set off every alarm they have with them outside. Man! What I wouldn’t give for a telescopic rifle right now! Just a couple of shots and it would all be over!”

Marge wasn’t listening. “Whoever that girl is, she’s hanging all over Sugasto. Funny, I never thought he’d be interested in that kind of thing. I—oh, my God!”

It was said so sharply that it almost triggered the other two’s escape instincts. Joe calmed down, noting that a Kauri heart beat just as hard as a human one when scared. “What?” he managed.

“That girl with Sugasto! It’s Mahalo McMahon!”

“Can’t be,” Joe responded. “The Dark Baron was—” It hit him. “—in the body of Ma— Oh, my God!”

“They are together!” Marge added, stating the obvious. “For some reason, the Baron’s still in her body!”

“Could be he no longer knows how to get out of it,” Joe suggested, staring. It was the Hawaiian’s body. That was clear now. “Maybe Sugasto thinks it’s in his interest to keep the Baron like that, too. Who knows what Rules came into play?”

“Perhaps,” Mia suggested, “the Dark Baron has found that he likes being a young and attractive woman.”

“The Baron had as much interest in sex as a grapefruit does,” Joe replied. “But if that’s still him in that body, then it doesn’t matter about the rest, just as it doesn’t matter if the old bastard’s a coequal, Sugasto’s mistress, or his spiritual advisor. What it does mean is that the best mind in the history of sorcery is coupled with an incredibly powerful sorcerer. And our two most hated enemies are united and we’re walking right into their lair!”

“Uh-oh! Watch it!” Marge yelled, and all three took off as suddenly a beam of blinding yellow light emerged from the black-robed sorcerer and headed right for them.

The ledge on which they’d been standing a fraction of a second earlier exploded with a loud bang, throwing fragments of rock all over the place.

They weren’t waiting around to find out what came next, plunging rapidly over the other side toward the lowlands below.

“Look out behind and above!” Marge warned them, although they could barely hear her. From behind them, over the cliff wall, emerged a shimmering web of gold and crimson magic strings, woven tightly like a net, yet expanding like some gigantic firework. It descended rapidly now, continuing to fan out as it did so, and none of the three were sure they were going to make it when the thing finally got to their level.

Joe felt a burning sensation on his feet and legs but the thing barely brushed him, then dropped on past. Still, he felt suddenly terribly weakened, drained of energy, and was forced to the ground. He looked around, suddenly exhausted, and watched it drop just behind him and contract, singeing the ground a bit as it did so.

The other two were ahead of him; they had to have cleared it. But, man! What a hell of a piece of sorcery that was, and all extemporaneous! That guy has gotten good! he thought angrily. Too good. He looked down at the petite Kauri leg that had been just missed and saw an angry-looking welt, the kind he’d get from pressing his real leg against a hot stove.

That was the one trouble with the were curse, he thought grumpily. Only silver could really kill you, but whatever was tried still felt like the real thing and hurt like hell.

He tried to fly, but made it only a few yards before coming down again. He just didn’t have the energy. That thing, whatever it was, had drained him. He tested the leg, but even though it hurt like hell, he thought he was able to walk. How far was that place from town? Twenty miles, maybe, but that was air miles. And how far had they gotten away? He looked back at the cliff. Maybe four, five miles as the Kauri flies, tops. A long walk, and Kauris weren’t built for walking. Worse, some kind of alarm would be raised, if only because the Bentar at the roadblocks and on patrol would have seen the net spell as well and guessed the rest.

It was a vast area and he was now quite small, but if they brought in some aerial patrols of those creatures near the army camp, his pale passionate pink glow wouldn’t be hard to differentiate from the rest of the landscape. The best thing to do, he decided, was to find some cover and just lie low. Come sunup, he’d be himself again, stark naked and still grounded, but in much better shape to handle that kind of journey. He worried most about Marge and Mia. When he didn’t show up, they might well assume he got captured in the net. That would impel Mia, at least, to try and find him. He hoped that Marge could keep her from doing that.

There was the sudden sound of leathery wings high overhead, and, despite the pain, he ran for the cover of a nearby small stand of trees. The same wings that made flying so wonderful were real inhibitors in a run, catching the air and nearly pulling him off balance, but he made it. The real question was whether or not he’d been spotted from the air before he did.

This is ridiculous! he thought to himself: I’m a guy whose mortal flesh was changed by a curse into a Kauri and I have the fairy soul of a wood nymph! All that, and here I am huddling in the dark.

Wait a minute! Was there something that one of those perverted oddities might give him? There were a ton of Kauri tricks, if he knew how to do them. Unfortunately, these bodies didn’t come with owner’s manuals.

Currently, he was all fairy, and wood nymphs and Kauris were closely related. If he still had the wood nymph part, then maybe he could mate with one of these trees. It was a perfect. hiding place, but even if it were possible and he knew how to do it, there were real problems with it. Suppose it really worked and he was stuck forever as its nymph? Or worse, suppose he mistimed things and the sun came up and he changed back into Joe? Either thought was pretty ugly.

He heard horses and the shouts of men and Bentar, and there was still the sound of wings above, and they were coming closer. He tried to think, and realized that thinking what Joe would do was the wrong way to go. Joe was mortal and had quite different attributes. The real question was, what would Marge do if it were her here instead of him?

Marge, he realized suddenly, wouldn’t do anything. She’d let go, relax, clear her mind completely and with discipline keep it that way, letting the fairy part take complete control.

“Check those trees!” a Bentar snapped to subordinates, who galloped toward him.

Go blank, go blank, let instinct take over…

Slowly he pressed back into the nearest tree, backing up against the hard, tough bark.

Something gave, and the bark seemed almost spongelike, enveloping him just as the first Bentar reached the grove.

“Beat all the bushes and check those treetops!” the Bentar sergeant ordered.

“Uh—you mean climb ’em?” one of the soldiers asked.

“No, I mean flap your arms and go up and tweet like a bird!” their chief responded sarcastically. “Of course I mean climb ’em!”

Joe was enveloped in a cocoon of darkness, yet he could hear them clearly. Suddenly he felt little, painful pricks and felt a tremendous itch. With a shock, he realized that he was feeling what the tree was feeling, and the Bentar was using its clawed hands and feet and climbing! He could feel the creature on the branches above, but it was like a monkey on an elephant in comparison. The Bentar soldier poked and probed, but finally shouted down, “There’s nothing up here, sergeant!”

“This one’s clean, too!” someone else shouted from another point.

“Aw, we don’t even know what we’re lookin’ for, Sarge, or whether there’s anything to look for!” his soldier protested. “We can’t climb and poke every damned tree and bush in the place!”

“Whatever it was, it was pale red and it flew,” the sergeant responded. “I saw the aura briefly. But, yeah, you’re right. Come on down, you two! Whatever it is, it isn’t here or we’d have seen it or smelled it by now!” He snorted, then muttered, “This is no job for a soldier! If he thinks there’s something here, he should send those brainless mortals he’s got.”

The Bentar clambered down from the trees and remounted. The leathery wing sound came close enough to rustle the leaves.

“Start a sweep west of here, and let us know if you spot anything,” the sergeant shouted to the flyer. “If you do, we’ll come running, but I’m not going to waste time with this. It’s pointless!”

There was a gruff shouted response from above and then the wings flapped harder but grew swiftly fainter as it moved away. The Bentar turned on their horses and were soon gone as well.

In a few more minutes, it was as quiet as a grave again.

Joe, however, once more became a bit concerned about being trapped in the tree. Okay, I got in, now how do I get out?

And, after a moment, it came to him that you got out the same way you got in—by relaxing and willing yourself out. There was a gentle pushing, as if the matter at his back was firming up behind him and expanding, and he emerged from the tree.

He was relieved to find he was still a Kauri. That meant he was still a were and, therefore, still human, too. For all he knew, the wood nymph thing had nothing to do with it. This might well have been entirely a Kauri defense mechanism, since they were so close.

The leg no longer hurt very much. The were spell was repairing it, as it tended to repair almost anything except a silver wound.

If only that fairy soul business had been as a Kauri, he mused. Then he might have been able to accept it. Flying around, seeing the world, maybe even with Marge for company. But a wood nymph!

He was feeling better, even a bit stronger, but he didn’t want to test out his wings yet. No telling what was still around. Best to wait a bit, even if it meant he didn’t make it back before dawn. The object was to make it back at all. At least so long as he kept under cover here they were unlikely to come back and check this grove again, but it was a fair distance to the next cover.

Still, if he got back at all, it would have been worth it. The Baron in league with Sugasto again, and still in Mahalo’s sexy body! He wondered what happened to the real Mahalo McMahon. He’d totally forgotten to ask. She was stuck in the Baron’s nearly dead body the last he knew and being brought here, kept alive mostly by Ruddygore’s magic. Of course, Ruddygore had still had the Lamp at the time, so she could be anything or anybody. She’d have made an ideal Kauri, that’s for sure.

Make a wish. You can be anything and anybody you want to be. What would he do if offered that? He thought about it, and he had a lot more options than she had, because he knew Hu-saquahr and what was available here. There was a male counterpart to the Kauri someplace, he remembered hearing. It’d be nice to fly places and seduce all those troubled women, but as good as the Kauri life-style might be, it was, like most fairy lives, in the end, a pretty one-dimensional life that went on forever, never really adding new dimensions. That, more even than old friendship, was why Marge kept inviting herself along on these missions. It was a way, however limited, to do something a bit different.

The thing was, he realized that he’d just wish to be his old self again. He liked himself, his body, his image. He’d like to be smarter, or maybe wiser, and know a lot more, but, overall, he liked being Joe just fine.

Only he wasn’t Joe right now, he was a Kauri who looked and felt more like Marge. That body and those Kauri instincts were telling him right now what he needed to do to get his energy back, but he was going to trust to dawn first.

Still, it was worth risking a bit at this point to see if he could make at least most of the way back the easy way. He looked out and looked around and saw nothing close that was threatening. The wings spread, and he was airborne.

He was pretty weak, but flying, even from cover to cover, was sure better and faster than walking. By dawn, though, he still wasn’t back, and he was just too dead to go much farther. He felt sure he was beyond the first blockade, though, and knew it when he saw a ranch not far away. There was a barn there with a real hayloft, and he made for it, going in the top small door and collapsing on the hay stored there just as the first rays of the sun came over the horizon. Exhausted almost beyond endurance, he lay there, almost too tired to sleep, and watched the golden orb creep lazily up into the sky, its first warming rays coming right in the hayloft door and washing over him.

Suddenly he stirred himself up and looked down at himself. Wait a minute! This isn’t right! Then he sank back, too tired to even think straight anymore.

The sun was up and it was a bright, new day, and he was still a Kauri.

Marge was tired, too, but she wasn’t about to go to sleep yet. Mia had changed back to herself with the first rays of the sun, and she was frantic. “He is in the hands of those maniacs, I know it!” she wailed. “We must rescue him!”

Marge shook her head. “No, we can’t. I sure can’t do a damned thing now, even if I wanted to, and what the hell can you do? You go out there now, hollering that your master’s gone, and lots of things are gonna happen. First, they’ll all start checking to see if he’s still alive by touching your ring. When it’s established he is, they’ll turn you over to the military camp. The camp will put two and two together—spies last night, a missing master this morning—and send you right up to Sugasto and the Baron. If they’ve got Joe, then they’ve got both of you, and that’s the end of that and everybody else. You saw those poor mindless zombies. In fact, they might be able to milk you for enough information to do a great Tiana. Remember, they want the palace Ti, the demigoddess Ti, and that’s the one you knew. You’d wind up plunging the whole world into darkness.”

“What can I do, then?”

“Well, I, for one, have known Joe longer than anybody here, and I think that if they had him captured they’d already be here for us. Think about it. He’s got no more resistance to common spells than you do, and about now he’d be in his human body again. He’d talk, and we’d be taken. You see any Bentar? Any soldiers coming up the stairs?”

“No.”

“Then he’s not captured. And, thanks to your ring, we know he’s not dead. I think he got hurt, maybe badly, in that mess last night—he took that dive steeper than we did.”

“But then—”

“Hear me out. He’s a were. Folks around here, even bad folks, don’t carry around silver-tipped arrows and they sure don’t shoot them at Kauris. That means his wounds, no matter what they were, kept him down for the count but that he’ll be good as new today. Look at you—not a bruise or sore spot on you! If he’s got any sense, he’ll hole up someplace, get some sleep, then start back. Since there’s another moon tonight, goodness knows what he’ll come back as, if it’s after dark, but he’ll be back.”

“Then what-?”

“I’m gonna grab some sleep because I want to be fresh tonight in case we have to do a little looking. It won’t be easy, since there’ll be open season on Kauris, but I’ve got some experience in this. You’ll stick close here because he might come back. If he’s not back by tomorrow morning, then we start panicking.”

“I—very well. But what should I do?”

“You can serve your master best today by convincing everybody that he’s still here, and, perhaps, is a bit under the weather. You’ve got a sick master up here, but not too sick. Just a bug, no big deal. That’ll keep people out and questions down to a minimum. Fetch meals as if for him—the kind of stuff he’d order, remember. You get the idea?”

She nodded. “I understand and will do as you say. For one day and night, anyway.”

“Good girl. Do it right. I just hope nobody notices.”

“Notices what?”

“We forgot in all the worry to slip on your bracelets and anklets, and you sure aren’t gonna get them on now. Just hope nobody up here believes in were anythings any more than most folks do. Don’t worry—I doubt if they will. Me, I’m gonna get some real sleep.”

Mia felt momentary panic. The bracelets and anklets! Still there on the floor. The small earrings were still there, too, but she had those with a clasp to allow for full moon times. She moved to put them back in, then thought better of it. No, nothing but the collar and the nose ring. She looked at herself in the mirror. God! So very plain, sexless. But she would leave them off. If anybody asked, it would be that they were cut off by her master’s orders, which she could not question.

Somehow, she knew, they would have to find a way to get a collar with a clasp, against the rules or not. Otherwise, what happened if she changed into something sometime with either too large a neck or, perhaps, an animal like a horse? She wouldn’t strangle, but the collar would then fall through the reforming flesh and it wouldn’t fit back on, either.

As ready as she could be, she took a deep breath, tried to stay calm, then opened the door and went down to see about keeping up the lie, wishing all the time that it was true.

It was a harrowing day for Mia, who was almost a nervous wreck by the time Marge awakened. She had tried getting some sleep, but what little came was fitful, and every noise woke her back up.

There was no problem taking some of the money they had and getting fake meals. Money was money, although most of the meals were dumped in the chamber pot and the mess, mixed with the usual contents of the chamber pot that she could hardly avoid adding, already attracting flies.

That worried her a bit. It would be just like the way things were going suddenly for a fly to land on her just at moonrise. Everything worried her, all of a sudden.

Only the cafe lady had noticed her lack of jewelry, and she’d lied and said it looked just fine. Coming back with the dinner had, in fact, caused her only problem; some of the troops were in town, and apparently word of her dance and extraperformance activities had gotten around fast. She was filled with requests, and feared she would be delayed too long and moonrise would occur right then and there, with her in the middle of the street surrounded by soldiers. She also knew that they’d come after her and maybe up to the room if she said she’d ask permission, but then she-got the bright idea to note that her master was sick. Real sick. Some kind of flu. She didn’t know if it was catching… Kerchoo! She had a clear field.

Marge sat there, nervously waiting for her. “About time!” “I had to get through a horde of lustful soldiers, my lady,” she apologized. “I was not sure I would be here in time.”

“Yeah, well, I kinda figured something like that. You still got a few minutes yet, and I’m still only mildly worried about Joe. After all, he’d be naked and on foot, with those patrols about, and it’s a long way. I—”

There was a sudden figure at the window, that of a Kauri. Joe climbed in, and Mia and Marge both frowned, then Mia looked down at her unchanged self and Marge at Mia’s normality.

“I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with this crazy curse!” he grumbled. “This never happened before. Never.”

Quickly he filled them in on what had happened—up to a point.

Marge, of course, caught it immediately. “Uh, Joe… You look awfully good and awfully fit and strong by Kauri standards for somebody who got drained by a spell that strong.”

His eyes rolled heavenward, then to Mia, then back to her. “The curse must have restored it as I slept,” he responded at last. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t change back.”

Until that moment, Marge had never thought a Kauri could look embarrassed. She knew that there was only one way he could have gotten that kind of energy recharge, but she resisted the urgings of her Texas fairy soul to bring it up and rub it in. If he was as drained as he said, and then still made it that far, when he woke up it wouldn’t have been an option but a compulsion.

“So what do we do now?” Marge asked instead. “The only way I know to go when you have a bent curse is to visit a witch doctor, but somehow I don’t think we want a Kauri walking into any witch doctor in these parts and saying she’s really a were and couldn’t switch back because of a sorcerous jolt!”

“Perhaps it will repair itself now, Master,” Mia said hopefully. “The moon will be up any moment.”

“Jeez! That’s a point!” Marge commented. “Maybe we should get into some kind of position…”

But it was too late. He saw Mia’s form blur and twist, actually saw her very brief change into Kauri form. He, too, felt it, but he suddenly realized that he was out of position.

“Well, we’ve got two of us, anyway,” Marge noted, looking at her twin where Mia had stood moments before. Joe, however, had been slightly closer not to Marge, but to Mia.

“I never realized that before,” the Kauri went on, staring at the new Joe. “It even duplicated the nose ring! Holy smoke, Joe! You own yourself!”

Joe let out a long, exasperated sigh.