Horrors of the Dancing Gods (12 page)

"Marge! How good it is to see you again!" the sorcerer exclaimed, sounding both sincere and delighted. "I'm very glad that you could come." He went over, took her hand, and, bending down, kissed it softly. It was a very nice gesture, but it also served as
a reminder of just how huge a man he was compared to her or, frankly, almost anybody else.

"I'm glad to be back for a bit," she responded, smiling. "But let's face it, when you're the one calling, it's not like I'm going to ignore it!"

He grinned and pulled over a huge, high-backed padded chair and then sank into it. The chair, made of the hardest woods and of ancient lineage that had borne the weight of sorcerers and kings, nonetheless sagged and almost seemed ready to scream in protest.

"You'll pardon my manners," he said more softly. "I'm sure that Poquah has already told you that I'm well off my feed of late."

"You
do
look and sound unusually tired," Marge admitted to him. "This new pall seems to sap the very energy out of folks."

"It's worse than that for sorcerers. The thing is, it is so pervasive, we spend much of our energy just keeping things up to snuff. With no chance to renew or get away, it takes its toll."

"I assume it's why you called me here, or at least part of your reason."

He nodded. "More or less. It's not the pall itself so much as the cause and object of it. It is slowly, incrementally, almost particle by particle, draining the free magic out of Husaquahr."

"But that's impossible! I mean, the faerie, alone account for a great deal of it."

"True, but it is less of a drain on the faerie, for you are essentially defined as much by your powers as by your form. That is not free magic energy. You feel it, certainly, but not to the extent that someone like me feels it. I call upon the energy, I gather it, I weave it into the patterns we call spells.
That
is free magic, and
that
is what is slowly being sucked out. At this rate it's not going to be a terrible blow to us today or tomorrow, but sooner or later it will be. And since it puts pressure on all of us who use free magic, it drives us closer to exhaustion. When we can't fight it anymore, it will accelerate. I think that's the idea. Collapse those of us who can guard Husaquahr, and anybody can move in and take over. And whoever controls the free magic in the end controls the faerie as well, since you are subject to it as
much as
to your own predefined limitations."

She gave a low whistle. "Then this is serious."

"Indeed. Very much so."

"Do you know who's causing it?"

He nodded. "I think so. He took great pains to disguise himself, but the concerted efforts of the whole Council were brought to bear, and we've rooted him out. The thing is, we can't do much about him. The only member of the Council who could act refuses to acknowledge or recognize the problem. Whether it's because he's been bought off with promises of even greater power or has been deluded, I can't say. Either way, under his protection, if only by his inaction, this continues."

"The rest of you can't stop it? I mean, you wrote all those Rules and you're stuck with something like
this?"

Ruddygore sighed. "That really
is
part of the problem. We wrote those Rules and we're stuck with them. Oh, I suspect that the whole of the Council could combine in single unitary purpose to dislodge our recalcitrant brother and perhaps get to this evil source he protects, but that won't happen. We can't even change the damned Rules until every single sorcerer has a copy—that alone takes
years!"

"Seems to me you dealt with Boquillas right off, at least in stripping him of his powers and exiling him to Earth," she noted.

"Indeed. Stripping powers. Exiling. With Boquillas right in front of us. But what if he hadn't been in our custody? We would have been helpless. We still needed the bunch of you to go off and pull him out to where he was vulnerable, and even then, he was only temporarily so. Finally Joe sent him to Hell, but the bastard still didn't go there—instead he sought out the enemies of all creation, consorted with them, and is mounting a rather effective takeover bid."

Marge was startled.
"Takeover?
Boquillas is alive—and he's actually trying to conquer
Hell?"

"And other things. There seems to be no stopping that man."

Marge began to see where this was going. "You are telling me that the Dark Baron, last seen in the body of a pretty woman stabbed through the heart with a sword and falling headfirst into volcanic lava, is somehow behind all that's happening now. You really
are
saying that, aren't you?"

"I'm afraid so. Things are still unfinished with him."

She blew up. "How the hell can they
ever
be settled? Jeez! We've exiled him, stripped him of his powers, stabbed him,
dissolved him in molten rock . . . !
If all
that
didn't work, then what the hell
can?"

"I assure you that this is not exactly normal even for such ones as Esmilio and myself. The Lamp of Lakash could have done it—its magic overrides natural law, the Rules, you name it. I—I thought he was gone, though, and that the Lamp had been shown to be more of a danger to us than a protection for us. I got rid of it. It was a very stupid thing for me to do. The whole reason why it was here, why it had been
allowed
to be here, was that it was the ultimate weapon against the ultimate attacks. Nothing could stand against it.
Nothing
save God and
perhaps
the Devil. That's why it was so dangerous. Like all ultimate weapons, defensive or not, it was always a two-edged sword."

"Great! You know what we went through to
get
you that thing? Can't you get it back?"

"Impossible. That route is gone."

"Then what are we talking about here? After all that stuff, all those adventures, all those fights and spells and wars and personal tragedies and sacrifices—after all that,
the bad guys win?"

Ruddygore sighed. "What can I say to the first charges? That acquiring great knowledge and tremendous power makes one feel almost godlike? That you begin to forget that you are
not
truly a god and that the very last thing you are is infallible? Guilty. As to the second—not so long as the Rules prevail in Husaquahr."

"Huh?'

"Remember the one that got Joe in his fix but nonetheless saved both your tails more than once? That, no matter what, there has to be one out available? At least one? That nothing, not even
certain
doom, can be inevitable even if it
is
the most likely outcome?"

"Um, yeah. But—"

"That's why I've been studying here and racking my brains for so long. I am as much subject to the Rules as you are. It hit me after a fashion that the Rules would no more permit such an absolute action as I took with the Lamp than they would permit you to be executed without somehow providing a way of escape whether you discovered and took it or not. Like you, my first thoughts were on reversing the dismissal of the Lamp, and I wasted a lot of precious months trying to figure out a way around the action before I finally accepted that I had done too good a job. The Lamp is out, and there is no reversal of that—of this I am now certain. That meant, however, that under the Rules there had to be some sort of backup. Perhaps not as effective, but something had to exist beyond the Lamp, something here in this world and accessible, although perhaps not without great cost, that will at least do the job."

She thought it over but wasn't all that thrilled by the concept. "I remind you, sir, that many years ago now I was one of those who came to this world because of just such a problem. The Baron and his demon allies were beating up everybody and everything, and not even the great powers of this world could stop them, so off we went to find the Lamp and wrest it from its ten-foot-tall killer-bunny guardian. That deal brought Sugasto into the picture, and it was more than Hell to pay before we got rid of
him,
never mind the Baron. Okay, we got rid of them, and we got rid of the Lamp so it couldn't be stolen and do irreparable harm. Great. Now here it is, a few years later, there's some new evil spreading over the land, nobody can stop it or deal with it, and we have to find some kind of supermagic thingie nobody else knows about and steal it and round and round and round we go."

Ruddygore let her go on and get it out of her system, but he ignored her weary sarcasm. "Marge, there is no such thing as
'new'
evil. There is only evil, eternal and vicious, and it is
never
new. Creative certainly, but it is very old indeed. It is the same evil that crept into the Garden, the same evil that sunk ancient Atlantis, that brought fear and war and horrors to
two
universes and more. It has many names. War, pestilence, genocide, hatred, intolerance, torture, fear—all those and more. But it's universal, it's been there almost since the beginning, and it will be there until the end. It varies mostly in degree and in its capacity to reinvent itself. Indeed, did you know that there is actually an entire
continent
devoted to evil right here in this world? Has no one ever told you of Far Yuggoth?"

The name had a familiarity and perhaps a slightly chilling tone to it. "I have heard it mentioned," she admitted, "but not often and never directly. I thought it was a myth, like the Boogeyman."

"Those who know of it don't
want
to think about it. Those who have ever known of it or been close to it never wish to think of its existence again. When you consider the amount of evil we have here even in quiet times, let alone when ones like our old friend the Baron was at large, and Sugasto, and the rest—well, a continent of concentrated evil is best left mythological. It is not, however. It is very real."

Marge frowned. "Yeah? Then why hasn't
it
spawned all the stuff that goes on elsewhere? And how come we aren't in a constant war with
it?"

"We are," the sorcerer told her. "The Baron was once a good and noble sorcerer," he said, smiling slightly, "like myself, who got so caught up in the injustices he saw in
this
part of the world that he was led by demons to go down to Yuggoth and learn the parts of magic forbidden to any and all here. He did so, in contravention of our guild, and
that,
as
much as or more than his breaking of the covenants and his war against us, was why he lost his powers and was exiled—but also why he was so difficult to beat. It was there he learned the gateway to Hell and made his alliances with the demon princes. Now you also know the source of Sugasto and his zombie trickery. We can keep it somewhat confined and controlled not only because of constant and heavy vigilance but also because, being evil, the denizens of Yuggoth are their own worst enemies, too. We also have a deal with the King of Horror, who reigns as temporal absolute ruler there, to safeguard his own throne and hide our support so long as he reins in as much as he can. Even so, you can readily see and experience just how much evil escapes to our regions!"

Marge nodded. This was all new and interesting ... and not at
all
heading in any direction where she wanted to go.

Still, she couldn't help her curiosity. "The King of Horror? You mean Satan?"

"No, Satan's King of Hell, Prince of the Powers of the Air, ruler of a dimensional context you cannot imagine. The King is, well, a sorcerer, a great power like myself and my colleagues, with a decided bent for that sort of thing. He's propelled himself to the top there and remains, hated by all his subjects as you'd expect. You can imagine that his power is enormous—anything less and he'd have been knocked off long before now."

"And he
likes
that kind of existence?"

"Well, he's got more than he could ever want and is greater than he ever dreamed he could be. Why not? But staying on top—aye, that's always the trick, isn't it?"

"I've seen enough evil in this and the other world that I'm not too sure how good a job he does," she noted.

"But that's the point! He does a
superb
job. I seriously doubt if anyone can ever do it better. Certainly nobody has before. He's got both worlds to worry about, too. Just consider—we
have
always beaten what gets out here, and back on Earth, who would have wagered a fig that half a century after the atom bomb people wouldn't have already blown themselves to Hell without further intervention? Compared to
that,
wars, minigenocides, mass murders, demonic possessions, natural disasters, and the like seem rather trivial. No, he's definitely worth his weight in anything precious, that's for sure, but just as
certain his eye is a bit too busy to be on sparrows."

"You almost make him somebody likable," she noted.