Songs of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER 5 PLOTS GO WRONG, AS USUAL

Throckmorton P. Ruddygore looked his old self and none the worse for wear, almost out of place in his grand sorcerer’s robes, which he favored in Husaquahr. Of course, he also looked out of place in his characteristic formal wear on Earth. Frankly, he looked as if he should be wearing a red suit with white fur trim, for there was not one from Earth who met him who didn’t immediately think of him as the perfect, perhaps the real Santa Claus.

“Joe! Tiana! And, oh yes, the young master Irving as well! Welcome, welcome to my humble abode!”

Irving looked around the sumptuous great hall, with its ornate gold on almost everything, its finely polished handcrafted furniture, thick, plush rugs, and all the rest that shouted the height of luxury, even back home, and sniggered a bit.

“Come, now. Have seats! Anywhere at all, please. How was your vacation?”

Joe took one of the chairs and Tiana sat down cross-legged on the floor to his left without even thinking about it.

“Restful, until the last week or so, “Joe told him. “Irving’s gotten pretty good on a horse and shows real potential. We had a pretty rough trip until the last day, though. Short on money, long on problems. It was worth it, I think, to get back into some kind of trim, and, of course, to get to know my son a little bit more.”

The old sorcerer nodded. Irving had just sat down in the plushest, most comfortable chair he’d ever experienced in his whole life when the host said, “But, come, come! I’m forgetting my manners. You must be starved after such a journey! Come, let us sup, and then we’ll have time to talk!”

Irving was suddenly torn between leaving the most luxurious seat he’d ever sat in and the idea of real, decent food. It was no contest; food won. Besides, he thought, this joint is so big, if I don’t follow them now, I may never find my way out.

They walked for what seemed like a mile, then entered a huge banquet hall, with a long table and plush red chairs and a kind of screened-off area where, it appeared, the food came from.

“We’ll just eat in the small dining room tonight,” Ruddygore said almost apologetically.

Showoff! Irving thought. But the old geezer really did have things to show off, he had to admit that. Now this was the way to live!

“Take any seat,” Ruddygore told them. “We don’t stand on formality here most of the time.”

Joe took a seat to one side of the far end and Irving the other. Ruddygore went around to sit at the head, then noticed that Tiana was just standing there. “Come, come, girl! Sit!”

She looked almost in tears. “I—I can’t. I just can’t, that’s all.”

The sorcerer got up and walked around to her and looked her over with a gaze so fixed and concentrated that it seemed as if he even looked inside her and inventoried the atoms in her structure.

“Oh, my! The Rules have been rather vicious to you since we came back, haven’t they, my dear? Oh, my! I must be growing old and senile. That possibility simply never entered my head. Well, there are no slaves at Terindell—fairy folk work for peanuts and have a much lower overhead than humans. And I’ll not have any guest in my house serving here. Tell you what— you go into the kitchen and eat what you like and gossip with the help, and we’ll talk together, you and I, privately later. Okay?”

She nodded, looked at Joe, who seemed a little confused, but shrugged, and she walked back behind the screen and presumably into the kitchen.

“What’s that about?” Joe asked him. “We all ate at the cafes together.”

Ruddygore took his seat and nodded. “True, but that’s a different situation. Those sorts of places are within her allowable social range. In this setting, she could serve us, but she could not join us. How long has she been fixed in this level?”

“A couple of days. Oh, it’s been little changes all along, but this way, just maybe two, three days tops.”

“I thought as much. She’s going to have a tough time because she’s smart and strong-willed and used to equality, at the very least. I’ve seen minds snap under that sort of strain.”

“Can’t you unslave her?” Irving asked him. “I mean, you’re a superpowerful wizard, right?”

“True, young sir, but I am bound by the Rules just as much as she is. She may not like it, but she understands that as well. The only two ways I know would be to use the most powerful of djinn magicks, which I will not do unless there is no alternative, so dangerous is it, or, alternatively, to switch her soul to another body with different Rules.”

“You can do that?”

“No, that’s one outside my knowledge. I could put one into an empty vessel—that’s simple. It’s getting it out, and maintaining the empty vessel, that’s the problem. It’s one that Sugasto somehow solved, or probably either appropriated or got from Baron Boquillas.”

“I keep hearin’ ’bout this bad dude the Baron. What’s his problem?” the boy asked.

“He’s a throwback. The most brilliant mathemagical mind in ten thousand years. There’s probably not a single thing we can imagine that he couldn’t figure out how to do if he wanted to do so.”

“Yeah? So how come you beat him, then?”

Ruddygore sighed. “The Baron suffers from several flaws without which he would have been invincible. For one thing, he suffers from an admirable lack of imagination. He’s predictable to a degree, and his mind works in narrow channels. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t come up with highly innovative new ways to cause trouble—that television preacher business he tried on Earth was highly creative—but he is obsessed only with Earthly power over others. He is unshakable in his belief that out of Hell can come all of the solutions to all of the problems of the universe. He was taken in by that idea, just as many others were and continue to be taken in by it, and because he knows he is brilliant, he is incapable of believing that he can be taken in. It’s a nasty little mental circle common to megalomaniacs.”

“And you lost him when you had him?”

Ruddygore sighed. “Alas, yes. I should have known better, but after what happened back on Earth when he was loosed there, essentially powerless himself, I didn’t dare allow him to remain there again.”

“Then why not just kill him? I mean, he kills lots of folks, don’t he?”

Ruddygore nodded. “The Rules again. They gave him his chance, his way out, by seducing me with the idea that I could use and control him to get at Sugasto. It’s an arbitrary Rule, but it’s not one we can hate, either. Your father’s escaped death more than once because of the same regulation.” There was a commotion behind him, and he paused and brightened. “Ah, but I think the food has arrived! Business and hard thinking can wait until we’ve done.”

And arrive it did. Short, plump fairies who looked like a cross between the Munchkins and the Pillsbury Doughboy began marching out with platter after platter, course after course. It was an impeccably cooked feast for twelve, and even after Joe and Irv had eaten their fill and Ruddygore had eaten six times theirs, there was plenty left over.

And when they’d protested over and over that they couldn’t handle another thing, Ruddygore signaled the end to it. Finally he got up and said, “Joe, why don’t you take Irving down and show him around? I suspect he’d enjoy the games room in particular. We’ll speak in a little while.”

Joe nodded, glad to have an excuse to walk some of this off and knowing already that he was going to regret this overindulgence later, but knowing, too, that it was worth it.

Ruddygore watched them go, then gave a signal. An elf in household livery appeared almost instantly.

“Has the girl finished eating?”

“Yes, sir. She ate pretty good.”

“Very well. Give me five minutes and bring her to my study.”

The elf bowed and vanished.

Ruddygore’s study was smaller than the great halls, but it was no tiny room. It couldn’t be, since, among other things, it had to hold the complete Books of Rules. They rose there, from floor to ceiling, in custom-made, built-in bookcases, covering every wall and allowing only for the door. A sturdy ladder on rails mat would hold even the sorcerer’s great bulk went completely around the place. Ruddygore studied the seemingly identical thick, red-bound volumes for a moment, then pulled the ladder around, got up to one particular shelf, and pulled down a volume. He checked to see that it was the right one, then went over to his desk, fished around in a crowded drawer, and came up with a small case from which he removed a brilliant lavender jewel whose one outstanding feature was that it was totally flat on one side. He placed the jewel on the book, his hand on both, and concentrated.

It was a convenient gimmick for looking up things in a hurry or impressing others that you knew everything in all those books. For a while, perhaps a couple of hours unless he used it again, he did know every single word in that one book. It would fade, of course, but he didn’t want to retain it. An intelligent man didn’t know everything, he simply knew how to look everything up quickly and efficiently.

There was a knock at the door, and he said, “Come in.” The door opened, and Tiana walked in, hesitantly. The elf closed the door from the outside, leaving them alone.

Ruddygore settled back in his chair and she stood in front of his desk. He didn’t offer her a seat because he knew, particularly now, that she could not do so alone in his presence.

“I am really sorry,” he began. “I was preoccupied. I’d spent all that time with the djinn, which is an unnerving experience for anyone, then the quick hustle out, and all those loose ends to attend to—I should have thought to safeguard you before you returned.”

“My lord, it is not anyone’s fault but mine,” she responded. “My ego blinded me. Even so, with this build I could hardly have been an Amazon warrior. Joe belongs out and free to do what he does best. Given this body, there is nothing much else I could have become when I chose to go with him.”

“But you still had the romantic view of it all, didn’t you? It is only now, when all the strings are finally tied, that you realize all the implications of it, and it is very hard on you.”

“Yes, my lord. Very hard.”

“You do know why the system exists here. I know you do. I ran into an Earth phrase that catches the very essence of life: ‘There is no such thing as a free meal.’ Somebody always pays. You live in a hot climate, you have bugs upon bugs and tropical diseases. You live in a house and you have high costs. Live in a flat and you have horrible and noisy neighbors. Every positive has negatives. To be in the upper classes means to be virtual prisoners, unable to see and do anything you really wish, dressing thus and so, attending this and so, and having a totally regulated life. If everyone were rich and nobody had to work, there’d soon be no one to maintain the roads, guard the wealth, build the buildings and tear them down, cook the food, grow and crush and age the wine, and so on. Money is meaningless in itself. It gains its meaning from the blood, sweat, and toil, the labor, materials, services, and skills that it took to get us things.”

“Yes, my lord. I understand this.”

“Earth has a dynamic system, ours is relatively static. The Rules and the laws under them guarantee inequality without much change, but we accept it as the price for the meal. Here, no one is involuntarily unemployed or homeless against his or her will. Here the system provides the basics to everyone, and in the process we have rid ourselves of many of the social tensions, the hatreds, prejudices, and fears, that bring out the worst in Earth society. That was built-in the moment the Founders decided upon the supremacy of magic over technology. Tell me—did you mink slavery was so bad, so evil, when you were on the other side of it?”

“In truth I did not, my lord. Not really.” It is not dishonorable… “But also, in truth, I did not wish ever to become one.”

“Well you are and you will probably remain one. In a sense, you’re lucky. Your master is your husband, if not in law, then in fact; and, since you both still bear the infection of the were, you at least get to be somebody and something else every full moon. You may be the only slave who gets three days off a month.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “But it is the other twenty-seven days that I dread.”

“It’s still driving you nuts.”

“Yes. Some of it, anyway. The fact that I could not even eat a meal with all of you, or that he is no longer my husband nor I his wife. Even the common women have some sort of lives of their own. We met one with a cafe, and there are others who do other things, even help plant the fields. A slave, on the other hand, exists only to serve a master. It is my sole activity and interest. To serve him. When he was short of money, I did not hesitate to sneak away and sell my body to two crude and filthy men I chanced upon. On my own—but to serve him. And not just him. It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and doing the dishes in the kitchen.”

“That’s what a slave does. It’s not like slaves of war or conquest. I could, however, make it easier on you. Easier for you to adjust to and accept this.”

“Yes, my lord, but I—I don’t know. If that were to happen, the last of me would be gone, like the last of him finally went when he was the nymph. And I fear, too, the loss of whatever love or affection he still feels for me.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be like that. You’d still be you. You just wouldn’t be in as much agony. It would be a little thing to help you and to help him. If he loves you now, it wouldn’t change. But it might make it easier on him, too. He feels for your situation. I see that he does. And the both of you may have to go into some danger ahead. If that happens, I want you unhesitatingly at his side.”

He got up and came around the desk and stood in front of her. His enormity made her seem and feel even smaller than she was.

“Are you willing?”

“I—I guess so. We’ve always trusted you.”

“Do so now. Just clear your mind, relax, and do not resist me.” He waited a moment, then put his huge hand on her forehead and the top of her head. She swayed, then he let go and she caught her balance, blinked, and frowned. “I—I do not feel any different.”

“You won’t,” he told her. “But you’ll sleep better and worry less. Now go, and my man will show you where your quarters are. You can get unpacked and get things ready. We’ll have a busy time coming up.”

She bent a knee and bowed slightly. “Thank you, my lord.”

The door opened, although he hadn’t given a signal, and the elf in livery was there to take her away. “See that the boy is kept amused and bring up the mercenary,” he called to the elf, who nodded and shut the door.

He still felt badly doing it, but he’d known that someday this was coming. It was too bad, really, but it couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t avoid wondering if he shouldn’t have just gone the whole way with her. Well, he’d have to sleep on that.

By the time she reached the room, she wouldn’t even remember that they’d ever spoken in here. What he’d done was simply to use his speed-learned knowledge of the Rules on slaves to analyze those that bound her, then did a process known as back-weaving to the magical trade. She would still be much the same, but now her perspective would be different; the slave reaction would feel the normal and natural one to her, the Tiana perspective more abstract.

Having such power—and much more than this mere trifle— always bothered him, and he wanted to make certain that it always bothered him. He had become an adept and worked as hard and as long as he could to become the best in his trade because he had seen such power used for evil or, worse, for its own sake. Only by becoming the best could he protect himself. Those who had not the blood and the talent for it he felt a special responsibility toward, viewing the world as filled with potential victims. No one, not Sugasto, not Boquillas, was ever going to best him at this game. Never. Sugasto was powerful, but impatient, unwilling to take the time to learn the nuances, the little tricks of the trade that made one sorcerer that hairs-breadth better than the others. Boquillas had a mind he could not hope to match, but the Baron was like the mathematician who memorized every possible combination of cards in a poker hand and played by strictly mathematical rules. Put him in a game with amateurs and decent players and he won every time. But put him in a game with a master of psychology and bluff who didn’t even care what cards he was dealt, and Boquillas could always be taken to the cleaners.

There was a knock, the door opened once again, and now Joe was admitted.

“Have a seat, Joe,” he invited. “Cigar? Chocolate bonbons?” The sorcerer grinned. “My secret ultimate vice.”

“That’s okay. I’m still digesting dinner. Now what’s this about losing the Baron?”

“Well, you remember that we returned to the City-States, since I had business to take care of there and you wanted to get away. At the time, the Baron was in the body of Mahalo Mc-Mahon and thought it the perfect disguise. I had her—or him— or whatever under my spell, and I wanted to give Boquillas enough leash to lead me to Sugasto without slipping away. It didn’t happen. The Baron was kidnapped off the streets in broad daylight by men none of my people had ever seen before, and almost immediately my psychic link was broken. That meant somebody with a good deal of power made the snatch, and that meant they knew who was in that body.”

“Sugasto?”

“Possibly. Possibly not. It’s uncertain whether the Baron would work under Sugasto. With, yes. And by my own doing Boquillas had enough protections to be able to wriggle out of most binding spells of others, anyway. It’s even possible he had those spells to ward off even me cast upon him before we ever got to Earth. He was always quite cautious.”

“Who, then?”

“Hard to say. Boquillas took his instructions from the demons of Hell themselves, and they cannot be underestimated, no matter what their alleged limitations in the here and now. Hell borders upon all points in space-time simultaneously, so they almost certainly knew what went on back on Earth. It wouldn’t take more than a demonic message to a competent coven to pull this off. In fact, I could almost swear that he pulled this off himself.”

“I thought you said it was impossible for him to get his powers back!”

“It is. Everything I’ve ever been taught says so. But I just can’t shake the feeling that, somehow, he found some sort of opening to regain at least some power. I’ve been spending as much time as I can spare poring over the Rules, trying to find some way for it to be possible. It’s not really my intellect speaking, I admit, but gut instinct, combined with the knowledge that, if there is a loophole, however minute it may be, somewhere in this vast assemblage of verbiage, Boquillas would find it.”

“That’s all we need. And what about Sugasto? He was going great guns when we left, then he’s suddenly well back of where he was before.”

“Sugasto was part of an overall plan directed from Hell to take over both Earth and Husaquahr simultaneously, forcing Armageddon. When we thwarted the Baron, somebody, probably some dumb demon, let it slip. That is hardly what Sugasto wishes. He wants to rule all Husaquahr and, instead, he finds he’s being used to end the world. He put on the brakes, severed his direct ties with the Underworld, pulled back, retrenched, and he’s been trying since to figure out what to do next. I believe he was unnerved. Of course, Hell didn’t really want Armageddon yet, either. It was the plot of some ambitious lower demons, remember, to impress the boss. One wonders where rebels against Hell are sent? Oh, well.”

“So it’s a loss of nerve?”

“More likely a change of tactics. Now he’s been trying to do it with alliances and promises, Boquillas style. He’s got some interested parties, but not enough. The others who might join with him wish first to see a demonstration that he or he and others can deal with me. Until then, he’s stalled, but that’s not good enough. He has more than twenty million people under his control. That cannot, must not, be a permanent condition.”

“That I go along with.”

“And, of course, I have my own nightmares. What if Boquillas does somehow strike a bargain with Sugasto? That might be the catalyst to drive those malcontented forces to him. With Sugasto’s powers and Boquillas’ knowledge, it might even be enough to finish me. The last time I faced down the Baron it was a near thing. With the two of them combined in power and with their armies and lands, the Council would not hesitate to go over to them again as well just to protect their own turf, for all the good it would do them with Esmilio or Sugasto calling the shots.”

“So what can I do about it?”

“I need intelligence. I need to know what it’s like comfortably behind Sugasto’s boundaries. What he’s doing. What the rumors are. What foreign faces might be about.”

“Surely Marquewood, High Pothique, and Leander, not to mention the others, have people in there.”

“Indeed they do. And if you were still running the empire, I might even trust what some of them are giving me.”

“Surely Marquewood is dependable!”

“Indeed? My native land is also our greatest danger and might well fall soon without a single act of war unless something can be done. Think of that!”

“Come again?”

“When you and Tiana ruled, you were deities. They made you demigods and built statues to you all over, even in other lands. You were literally worshiped.”

“Yeah, I know. It was embarrassing as hell.”

“Well, did you think that stopped when you left? You went back to Heaven, right? But what would be the effect if you both reappeared?”

“Hey! Hold it! You said both our bodies were dead!”

“In Sugasto’s hands, the term is meaningless. We feared at the time that he might have gotten them. He removed the souls of the mermaid and the nymph, probably bottling them up somewhere, and he used his spell to keep the bodies alive. I have reason to believe that those bodies are about to be reanimated with the souls of henchmen fanatically loyal to Sugasto. Think of what would happen if both of you—the old pair—suddenly descended into the main square of the capital. They would again be the divine rulers of the land and even gain the loyalty of those outside the old empire who joined the cult. And Sugasto would rule them. The rest of High Pothique, then Leander, would be child’s play to knock over. The City-States would have to knuckle under or face economic ruin and siege. In one grand gesture, he would control the River of Dancing Gods from the source to its mouth, and all its primary tributaries. The one who did that, which no one has ever done, would be considered truly divine, a living god, by the entire continent. You know that.”

It was so damned simple. “We really blew it, didn’t we?”

“Well, things sort of grew of their own accord, remember, far beyond our own plans.”

Joe thought a moment. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Just producing the animated bodies wouldn’t do. It might impress the boondocks, but it certainly wouldn’t be accepted as the two of you in the palace and capital where they knew you so well. They’re going to have to walk like you, talk like you, act like you in every way. They’re going to have to know your Earth background, Tiana’s education, likes, dislikes, and do it flawlessly. There is now in Marquewood intensive research into just that sort of thing. But they can’t absorb it by magic, either. Any spells on your bodies would be immediately detected. By definition, demigods can’t have binding spells. We’ve got some time while they learn all there is to learn and then rehearse-, rehearse, rehearse until they are perfect. If they are not believed and accepted, they’ll be converted to figureheads and be unable to make the key changes needed.”

“You know where they are?”

“The area, yes. It’s deep inside enemy territory, Joe, as it would be, and quite secluded. Far up in the Cold Wastes of Hypboreya, where Sugasto goes to plot.”

“But if you know this, why not use the Lamp of Lakash? Irving’s never used it. He’s safe.”

“Well, first, because it wouldn’t work in this matter.”

“Why not?”

“Remember, its power is localized, which is why we can’t stop a war or solve all the world’s problems with the damned thing. To use the Lamp against those bodies we would have to take the Lamp close enough to them for it to work. And I am not about to risk getting the Lamp into Sugasto’s hands! Never! Even if I could.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I have become so fearful of it getting into the wrong hands since it was once stolen that it is now put even beyond my reach.”

Joe sighed. “I see. But, then—what exactly are you proposing?”

“Assassination. Find those bodies and kill them. Destroy them utterly so that they can never again be resurrected or used in this fashion, even on a local level.”

“Ruddygore—that body of me was your creation. I don’t give a damn about it. But you’re asking me to kill Tiana’s body, too.”

“Not just kill. Utterly destroy. Burning, acid, that sort of thing.”

“That’s the natural body of the woman I married. The woman whose mind and soul is now trapped in the body and mind-set of a slave.”

“I know. But unless you can find out how in the hell they swap minds and souls so effortlessly and have somebody there to do it, it doesn’t do anybody any damned good anyway. But, alive, it can do horrible damage.”

Joe thought about it. He was uneasy enough at anybody else doing it, but he didn’t want this job at all. “Doesn’t it seem stupid to send up the only guy they can get all the details from to make their Joe real?”

“Ordinarily, yes, but I suspect you’re going to be more of a target here than in there. Also, you have certain advantages.

There are few guns here, and no silver bullets, to my knowledge. As a were, without silver in your bloodstream, you’re essentially immortal. That’s a rather good edge in a fight. You’re resourceful, and you’re used to working in the enemy backfield. As a barbarian with a face as yet unknown to the enemy, you won’t be out of place in a militaristic state girding for conquest. And, frankly, you above all others have at least some stake in saving your adopted country from, essentially, yourself.”

“What about Tiana?”

“That’s up to you. She has many of the same advantages as you. She’s still tough, she’s as smart as she ever was—don’t ever forget that!—and she’ll do her duty. I think, in fact, she above all should have the right to be there.”

“Have you told her yet? I assume you talked to her.”

“I did, I didn’t tell her, and she won’t remember we talked.”

Joe started. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing much, I assure you. She is the way she is for the same reason that you became fully and completely Joey the wood nymph, not due to my sorcery. I gave her some protections. She will no longer answer to Tiana. That’s an essential one, I think. She will answer to Ti, or any other name you want to give her, but if you call ‘Tiana,’ she will not respond. Since no one but Boquillas knows what the two of you now look like, it is a safety precaution. I might suggest a total name change if you can keep it straight. You, too, at least temporarily.”

“It’s her body, damn it! Why didn’t you tell her of this, or at the same time as me?”

“Because she would be incapable of making an honest decision on it, and because slaves do not discuss matters of import with their betters. They tune them out. You tell her, as master to slave, but she cannot be here as a coequal, even in this.”

“If I take her, and they capture us both, they’ll have everything they need,” he pointed out.

“That is not exactly true. She has a very strong memory of a slave she once knew, the daughter of a dirt poor serf who wound up a palace maid. I built on the memory, fusing it with a bit of imagination and other histories I know to give her a complete background from birth to now. She’s protected better than you in some ways.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Tell me true—do you still love her?”

“I—sort of. Not in the way I used to. I know that sounds terrible, but it hasn’t been quite the same since, well, she went from being a mermaid to this current body. But I do care for and about her, a lot.”

“Don’t blame yourself for that. Tiana did it when she used the Lamp to wish you back.”

“Huh?”

“The mermaid’s spell. Men who make love to mermaids always consider it to be the greatest emotional and sexual experience they ever had. When she wished you back, when she was a mermaid, she wished you’d return as the perfect mermaid lover and make love to her. She thought it would insure your fidelity. It did—but no longer to her.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” Joe breathed. “And I been thinking I was a dirty skunk!”

“Does that make it easier?”

“It does and it doesn’t. Damn, Ruddygore! This means I can never really be totally satisfied by any woman ever again!”

“Everything has its price.”

“Easy for you to say! And while I’m at it, I’ve got another problem along those lines.” Quickly he told the sorcerer about his encounter with the wood nymphs.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” the sorcerer told him. “There didn’t seem much point in bringing it up, since at the time I could do nothing about it. When I had Boquillas/Mahalo under my spell I tried to get the mechanism, but he had cleverly laid the same sort of mental traps in himself as I use. The moment I demanded it, the formula and its concepts erased. Dacaro wasn’t much more help. He performed them, sometimes, but it was far too complex for him to understand, let alone remember. He only said that it was strikingly different every single time, as if each switch required its own independent spell. I’ve worked and worked on it and I can’t understand how it’s even possible.”

“So I’ve got to watch out for silver and iron.”

“No, it’s more complex than that. Iron is only a threat if it kills at the same time both body and soul. Silver is fatal to the body; it will release the soul which will form its husk. Then you would be vulnerable to iron alone. The were curse goes when the body goes. In effect, the odds are that you’re as close to unkillable as anything short of angel or demon.”

“Great. So I’m an almost immortal guy who can never be lucky in love again, but if I do get potted with silver or burned to a crisp, I become a wood nymph.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Ruddygore admitted. “I wouldn’t take it all that hard. Fairies are immune from the Lamp. You knew that. If we’d brought you and the Lamp together early enough, we might have stopped it before your soul completely transformed, but by the time we did, it was already totally changed, and, of course, we also did it from a slight distance. The Lamp was faced with a dilemma and it did what it could. It formed the old ‘you’ as modified by Tiana’s wish around the fairy core.”

“Isn’t there any way to unmodify it?”

“Fairy flesh? I sincerely doubt it. Even if your soul was removed by whatever trick Sugasto uses, it would still be fairy. But is it so horrible? Marge seems to enjoy it.”

“Marge is not a brainless bimbo living in a tree!”

“Well, I can’t do much about the tree, or the bimbo part whatever that is, but Tiana’s wish at least insured that you won’t turn brainless. She also wished your mind restored with all of its memories. The Lamp’s magic supercedes the Rules of Husaquahr. That is why it is so dangerous.”

“Wait a second. You’re saying that even if my body were destroyed, I’d still have my memories, who I was and what I was, and be as smart as I ever was?”

“I guarantee it. In fact, even now, you’re a very rare breed indeed. You’re a hybrid. Your invocation of fairy sight shows that. The wood nymph is one of the most common creatures of faerie, and all will consider you one of them, since they see the inside first. If you really reach, you’ve probably got all the powers a wood nymph has, although there are, admittedly, fewer of those than with some races and the majority of those powers I’m sure you’d rather not invoke. Still, you should never reject something in the arsenal.”

Joe sighed. “Yeah, and the only one I can think of that might be useful isn’t gonna be much good in the Cold Wastes. No trees.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

He looked at Ruddygore. “All right. Against all my instincts and better judgment, I’ll try. But I have a very bad feeling about this one, and the last one was something of a disaster. Most of all, I hate leaving Irving, but he’s not ready by a long shot to get into this sort of thing and, in a bad situation, he’d be a club over my head.”

“I agree. But if he’s in Gorodo’s capable hands and learning how to be as great a fighter as his father, I think he’ll be okay.”

“Gorodo! Oh, he’ll love Gorodo! On that son of a bitch’s final exam, I got turned into a horse!”

“Oh, that Circe’s a setup. Didn’t you ever figure that out? Everybody winds up a horse or cow or pig or something. If you can’t face that kind of problem and still make it back, then you’re not going to make it in this world as a mercenary, are you?”

“Well I’d be damned!”

“Not before Judgment Day, if you’re cautious and lucky.”

Joe got up to leave, then hesitated. “What about Macore? I could use a master thief on this kind of job.”

Ruddygore sighed. “I’m afraid he’s gone mad, and I’m not certain where he is now. Again, fallout from that last unpleasantness. It started that first night, when he was exposed for the first time to that infernal cable television and wound up watching one hundred and twenty-two consecutive episodes of Gilligan’s Island.”

Joe chuckled. “I remember.”

“If there’s a better argument for keeping technology out of Husaquahr, this is it. On the way back, he bought, or more likely stole, a battery-powered television, a battery videocassette player, and, somehow, he got all of the hundreds of episodes of that infernal show. Naturally, being from here, he never really understood about batteries, and it didn’t take long for the batteries to run down. He was frantic! He offered all and sundry anything, slavery for life, any theft of anything, you name it— anything—for a battery recharge. I could have done it, of course, but I thought that, if it seemed impossible, he’d eventually give it up! Instead, he set out on a quest for someone, anyone, who could put more ‘magic energy’ into his batteries. When he was asked where he was going, he responded…” Ruddygore coughed apologetically. “He said he was going on a three-hour tour…”

Ti was very pleased with the way she had unpacked and laid out the room, although, truth to tell, there wasn’t much to unpack. Well, traveling light made for easy work, and she never minded that.

She wanted to do her exercises, but she wasn’t certain if she should. She’d been upset about something, although she wasn’t sure what—oh, yes, they wouldn’t let her clean up in the kitchen—and then that elf came to take her to the room and she had some kind of dizzy spell. Probably due to overeating that rich food after so long on short rations. It really screwed up the system. Well, she’d skip it one more day. After sleeping a night in a damp forest on wood chips, she felt as if she hadn’t slept at all.

She went over and stared out the window. It was dark, but there were torches all along the outer wall reflecting eerily on the river below. It was kind of pretty, really. She imagined herself dancing along that wall, beneath those torches. It would be kind of neat to do it. She still felt a bit confused, almost as if she were two people, one Ti the slave girl that she felt was her true self, the other the grander figure of some other time and place and world, which she remembered but somehow could no longer quite comprehend.

Joe came in, looking tired and oddly bothered, and she said, “Is there anything I can get you, Master?”

He started to tell her never to call him “Master,” always “Joe,” then stopped. Even though it made him feel that he was trapped in an old episode of I Dream of Jeannie as much as Macore was hung up on Gilligan’s Island, it was the proper slave response here. If he was going to be using an alias in enemy country, and if she was what she now was, it was far better if she did call him “Master” and went through the rest of the rigmarole as well.

Instead he said, “Yeah, Ti, it’s fine. Come, sit here. I have to talk some important things over with you.”

She came over and sat on the rug at his feet, looking up at him.

Briefly, but spelling out as much of the implications as he could, he told her the situation with their old bodies, Sugasto, and what Ruddygore was proposing. She listened attentively, but couldn’t conceal from her face that she didn’t like what she was hearing very much at all.

“Any comments?” he prompted. “Speak freely and honestly. It’s your old body and your neck.”

“My neck belongs to you,” she noted, “along with the rest of me. But I cannot say mat the news that my old self still lives does not fill me with longing, and the idea that we are to destroy it, well, it is very hard. When I thought it dead, that was that, but to find that it is alive, and that we are to kill it… If it lives, there is always some hope. If it dies, then I am a slave forever.”

“I know. The odds are we won’t get the chance anyway. We’re taking a journey through lands we don’t know, held by people we do know and who hate us as much as we hate them, toward a goal we really don’t want to reach, and even if we do would most likely put us in the hands of our worst enemies.” He paused. “You do not have to go, you know. I know you’re not supposed to make big decisions for yourself, but this is one you must make. You can remain here, in service of Castle Terindell, and look after Irving for me.”

“But you are going, regardless?”

“It was put to me in Ruddygore’s usual democratic fashion, which is basically, ‘You don’t have to do this, it’s your choice, but, remember, if you don’t, evil will win, millions will die, and it’ll be all your fault.’ Yes, I have to go.”

“Then I go.”

“You’re sure?”

She looked up at him. “If you go, and never return, then all of this was for nothing. If you go, and fail because I was not there when you needed me, it will be even worse. Perhaps this is why destiny has bound me to you. In the past, sometime, you have needed me before in such matters.”

“We’ll probably be killed. Or worse, caught by Sugasto.”

“Then we go opposing evil, and that has meaning. And we might just beat them, as before, which would make everything worth it.”

There was more of the old Tiana beneath this servile veneer than he’d thought or feared. It made him feel better.

“Okay, then. It means starting out again in just a couple of days. We have a long journey, and the clock is running, and we don’t know how long the clock runs.”

“This Sugasto is a coward at heart or he would not have stopped his war,” she noted. “There are only two bodies that will do. He will not risk them until he is very, very sure of them.”

“Good point,” he agreed. He looked over near the window. “What’s that on the floor?”

“A straw mat,” she responded. “It is for me to sleep on.”

“Bullshit! Blow out that oil lamp and come sleep in this big featherbed with me! Who knows when we’ll get the chance to be this luxurious again?”

She grinned happily and blew out the light.

Joe was walking across the great hall on his way outside when a firm soprano voice suddenly said, in English, in a solid West Texas accent, “Hi, sailor! New in town? Want to have a good time?”

He stopped dead, turned, and there, sitting on a fur-covered stool, was a creature of faerie. She was small, perhaps a bit over four feet in height, and quite sexy; almost a deep red variation of a nymph, to whom her sort were closely related, but with big, varicolored wings that seemed to catch any light and throw back a beauteous, changing, yet butterflylike appearance.

“Marge!” he shouted, and she ran to him and gave him a big hug. He hesitated to return it for a moment because of the wings, but she said, playfully, “You ought to know by now that these wings can’t be damaged by hugs!”

“What are you doing here?” he asked her, happy enough to see her in any event. “Did Ruddygore send for you?”

“No, he doesn’t have to. I’m kind of tuned in to you folks and I just sort of know when things are wrong and trouble’s brewing, and that always brings me like a wildcatter to oil. So, how are you?”

“Not good,” he replied honestly. “Everything’s going the wrong way, as usual.”

“Nasty job? I assume the Baron slipped the noose.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I’ve just been around here long enough now to figure things like that out. The moment they brought that bastard back here I knew we’d eventually be in for it.”

“Well, that’s part of it, but not the main job. And there are— well, complications.”

“C’mon. Tell Auntie Marge about them. She’s a very good confessor.”

Marge was a changeling, one of those very rare individuals who arrived in this world with just some long-unsuspected single gene or trace of ancient faerie in her that caused the Rules to change her outright to her ancestral race. A former English teacher in Texas who’d lost her job and wound up a battered wife, she’d been running away and contemplating suicide when Joe had picked her up as a hitchhiker on a lonely stretch of West Texas highway just before being picked up himself by Ruddy-gore. She had, in effect, unknowingly hitched a ride to Husaquahr, where she’d turned into what she was now: a Kauri, a flying fairy race with a rather unique function.

Like almost all members of the nymph family, the Kauri were natural, near compulsive seductresses, but, unlike most of the rest, who had some role in the management of one or another aspect of nature, the Kauri “weeded people” as they called it. Natural empaths, they could sense and were attracted to deep depression and other black moods in others, and, through seduction, they could take on and remove those heavy emotional loads, converting the energy into food. Because they had to absorb whatever came along, they tended to be the most intelligent of the nymph family, so Marge, in fact, had lost none of her memory or IQ; because part of their talents came in a sort of hypnotic hold over mortals, they could seem to look like any female the subject desired, so Marge had lost none of her personality and cunning. Like all nymphs, however, they were passive by nature, and rarely even able to defend themselves against an attack, although Marge had managed it, briefly, on one or two occasions. When you’re being grabbed by a rotting corpse, even instinct can sometimes be overcome.

And, alone among the nymph family, they could fly.

Joe told her about Ti, and what they had been asked to do.

She whistled. “Wow! That’s as mean a kick as this world’s thrown yet.”

“It’s like a pact with the devil, though,” he noted. “Don’t destroy the body and she’s still a slave but Sugasto wins. Destroy the body, and she’s lower than nothing forever. They’re not going to pull any more soul snatches with her even if they find out about her; being as she is would suit them just fine.”

’ “There’s still more, though, isn’t there? I can tell, remember. Your emotions are an open book here.”

“All right,” he sighed. “You alone would understand my problem. But I don’t want anyone else knowing, not even Ti.”

“My race always keeps its secrets.”

“Use your fairy sight. Look inside me, down to my soul, and look very hard for something unusual.”

“I can no more see a human soul than you can.”

“That’s what I mean. Look and don’t just see what you expect to see.”

She looked, and, for a moment, frowned, then saw it and gave a slight gasp. “You went fairy! I’ll be damned! Even the Lamp can’t change a fairy soul!”

He nodded. “So you have the package. Mum on that last part. Not only is it damned embarrassing to me, considering, but I don’t want any enemy finding it out and getting ideas. Silver, the right sorcery, and burning could do it. And,” he added hesitantly, “I particularly don’t want Irving to ever know, I just don’t think he could handle it.”

Marge sighed. “Man, you’re taking so much baggage on this trip you’re half whipped before you start! It’s a good thing I showed up when I did. No wonder you’ve been sending out those distress vibes!”

“Where we’re going to wind up it’s pretty cold,” he warned her. “You sure you’re up to that? You’ve never been in that kind of weather before.”

She shrugged. “We’re a hot race; plenty of warmth to spare. Just keep that dwarf-forged steel sword of yours away and I’ll be fine.”

“You really don’t have to go just for us, you know.”

“For you? Don’t forget, I’m the one who had that zombie horde sicced on me, and had to ignore that bastard’s sniggering laugh. It seems like we’re gonna have to endure that damned Baron to Judgment, but maybe we can send Sugasto straight to Hell!”

“Glad to have you as always. All we lack is Macore, but he’s off somewhere searching for Gilligan’s Island.”

“Oh, no! I always used to warn my students that TV could rot innocent minds, but I never really thought it went that far!” She paused. “Where’s Ti now?”

“In Terdiera with one of Santa’s elves getting together initial supplies and such for the trip. It’s going to be a long journey and much of it could be ugly. We don’t know what a Sugasto administration might be like, but I can guess.”

She nodded. “We’ve heard all sorts of rumors. A lot of bad fairy folk have gravitated to him, not to mention people, and he’s got a near lock on the dwarf kings, being able to blockade their trade if they don’t play ball with him, as well as gnomes, trolls, you name it. And, of course, he’s got two-thirds of the witches and warlocks in Creation with him and who knows how many overambitious magicians with real or imagined grudges. When a land comes under the control of evil here, it even takes on an evil life of its own. It’s in the Rules, I think. This won’t be any picnic, and you’re the only sword arm we’ve got.”

“Don’t you think I know it,” he told her. “Come on—I’m going to introduce Irving to Gorodo.”

“Oh, joy. He’ll just love that,” she responded, following him out.

Love, joy, awe, and all the other such descriptives did not begin to describe Irving’s first reaction to Gorodo. Abject terror, perhaps, was closest.

For one thing, someone who is nine feet tall, about five hundred pounds of pure muscle, and also has nine-inch fangs and a body covered with blue fur wasn’t exactly anybody’s idea of a teddy bear.

Joe was never sure just what Gorodo was; a member of the troll family, most likely, but in all his travels he’d never seen another like him. There were all sorts of stories about Ruddy-gore’s Master Armorer, most contradictory, all totally unbelievable, and all admitted to by the huge creature, but he remained the meanest, solidest enigma in Marquewood.

A long, taloned finger pointed at Joe. “You’ve really let yourself go to seed since I last had you,” the creature rumbled in a voice so deep it seemed to shake the ground. “You oughta let me get you back in real shape.”

Irving looked up at his father nervously and said, “I think maybe being a farmhand’s a real neat idea…”

“Nonsense!” the blue giant roared. “Ain’t nothin’ free in this world, boy, or the next, neither! No pain, no gain! But you stick with me a few months and really work at it and I’ll have you able to outrun and outfight anybody here. You stick with it, and there’s no place in Husaquahr you’ll fear to go and no enemy you won’t vanquish, and all the turd-wallowers will rum and wish they was you!”

“His bark’s worse than his bite, right?” Irving whispered hopefully.

“No, they’re about the same, son,” his father replied. “But he’s right. You’ve seen Ti. You want to be a male version of her?”

“Hell, no! Ain’t no way this boy’s gonna be no slave!”

“Well, there’s the only insurance you have right there. You know I’ve got to go away for a while, and why you can’t come with me. Imagine armies of him, only not on your side but out to get you. You want to be free and independent in this world, there’s the price of admission.”

“You plucked me outa Philly for this?”

Joe thought of the neighborhood, the gangs with their cocaine runners and needles and the rest, the number of potentially good kids living in squalor and dead in their teens, born and raised to lose. “Yes, son, I did.”

“Your father survived me and all I threw at him and came out a real man” Gorodo said. “Then he went out and eventually married a princess and took over an empire, then threw it away when he decided it wasn’t no fun anymore. That’s the kind of freedom I give, boy! The kind most folks only dream about. Lion or antelope, boy, there ain’t but two kinds. Be a turnip— that’s easy! Or be the one what eats turnips for lunch!”

“This,” Irving breathed, “ain’t gonna be no fun at all.”