Songs of the Dancing Gods (41 page)

Suddenly he was in the midst of roaring, howling Bentar and was in a fierce duel. In spite of their numbers and ferocity, the Bentar did not press in, facing the only thing that they were truly afraid of— iron!

He pressed them back and got to the open door, but now they were between him and Mia—Tiana. “I’ll be back!” he shouted and ducked out the door.

Boquillas struggled to get up from the floor, feeling her jaw. “After him, you idiots!” she screamed. “I want him alive! Better to risk iron than me later!”

Joe undid the swordbelt and let it drop. He was naked and exposed, with just Irving in his hand, but it gave him total freedom of movement. The bronze swords of the Bentar had cut him in several places, but he was beyond feeling pain. He tried to head up the stairway, hoping at least to get to the bodies, but the stairwell was filled with troopers armed with swords, knives, maces, and other unpleasant stuff. He’d never make it up through that mob, damn it! He had to get clear, wait until he could think!

He bounded down the stairs, leaping the railings, and came eventually to the main entry hall. All the forces he hadn’t seen coming in seemed to be flowing out from all directions except the inner circle. Slash! Hack! Cut! Men and Bentar screamed, limbs flew. Although his body now bled from a hundred wounds, he was still on the go. He made the circle corridor and started to run, but, just past the first archway out to the crater, he faced a horde of men charging toward him. Turning back, he saw the others coming down the hall in a full rush.

He ducked back through the arch and down to the crater walk.

Man! It was hot! Even the stones around the narrow walkway burned his feet.

He started to run one way, then another, but soldiers of all kinds seemed to be popping out or blocking just about every exit he could see! The only possible exit was where those blank-eyed monsters were watching television, but he couldn’t get to that! He suddenly felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, trapped on the battlements with great forces all around and no bucket of water to throw.

Boquillas poked her head out of one of the upper tower windows. “You can’t win, Joe! Those human soldiers there—see their lances and bolts? Silver-coated, Joe! I know the secret of your longevity! Give it up! Give one of them the sword and surrender! This time there is no way out! Who knows, you might always escape from the tower, right?”

‘He took his eyes off the closing forces for a moment and saw her up there, and suddenly from that tower window flew red and yellow magic strings, aimed right at him!

He jumped up on the side of the low crater wall, barely six inches thick, and watched the spells hit right where he’d been and explode with a big puff of smoke.

“Give it up, Joe, and come down from there!” Boquillas yelled to him. “There is no way out! There is no escape this time!”

He looked at all the forces around him, saw the silver tips, then saw that Boquillas was readying yet another bolt, while, behind him, the heat and terrible, almost choking sulfurous fumes rose from the bubbling and churning two-thousand-degree lava far below, and realized that Marge had been right, but that the Rules were often cruel.

Holding Irving almost like a javelin, he hurled it with full force into the mob of soldiers, where it penetrated and speared two Bentar and one human soldier before it came to rest.

Then, as Boquillas’ new spell left her hands, he took a deep breath, and jumped backward into the pit.

Not trusting his sudden horrible scream of anguish, cut off in midsound, they all rushed to the edge of the pit and looked down.

There was nothing there. Nothing, and no one, except the bubbling, hissing lava.

CHAPTER 1 3

THE END OF THE WORLD BLUES

No conclusion of an epic saga is complete without a wizard’s battle. —The Books of Rules, XV, 397(a) THE SMALL RING IN TlANA’S NOSE SUDDENLY CRACKLED A BIT, and she felt an irritating, slightly painful tingling there that soon passed.

Boquillas stared out the window at the sight she’d just witnessed, unable really to believe it. “He’s dead,” she muttered, amazed to her core. “He really killed himself.”

“Noooo!” Tiana cried, even though she knew from the reaction in her nose ring that it was true, and tears began flowing down her face.

Boquillas sighed, turned away from the window, and came back to Tiana. “Somehow,” the sorceress said, almost to herself, “I never thought he was the martyr type. Stupid! I would have made him a demigod.”

“He’d already been a demigod,” Tiana reminded her defiantly through her tears. “And he hated it.”

Boquillas sighed. “Well, when Plan A goes a little off, you have to improvise a bit.” She reached out and touched the slave ring in Tiana’s nose in the same two-fingered manner Joe had used. “You’re mine, now, and you’re all I’ve got, so you’re going to have to do, my dear. A bit of a letdown for me, but a considerable come-up for you. He’s gone, so you’ll have to replace him. Same script, just different parts, that’s all. At least you won’t blow it by killing yourself, too. The little bit I just added there compels obedience. You’re my property now, all legal and proper, and you cannot act against my interests.”

It killed Tiana to call Boquillas by any term of respect, but she had no choice. “Then, Mistress, you will restore me to my old body and rule as Joe?”

“No, no. Joe had no magical powers. Never did. Were I inside him, the whole Council, with Ruddygore leading the pack, couldn’t give me what I need, and that cursed sword would never accept me in any event, which would queer everything. No, my dear, it’s obvious. I shall still become Tiana; now it is you who will become Joe.”

“I? Joe? Mistress, it would be obscene!”

Boquillas grinned. “I know. That’s why I like it. At least you’re easier to do. That protective spell Sugasto gave you includes what I call a soul-puller mechanism. My own powers aren’t up to creating one, but since he’s kindly provided one, it should be simple. We’ll still need Sugasto to complete the process with me, of course. Until he returns, you shall attend me as my slave and not leave my side, and you shall begin telling me those details I need to know. And stop that confounded blubbering! You’re going to have to learn to be a man, not a swishy wimp!”

Tiana obeyed, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Joe was dead, and, no matter who she was, she loved him. Even now, knowing the truth, her memory fully restored, she knew that she’d remain this way forever if she could only have him back.

This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out, not at all. Joe was gone, she was a helpless captive of the powers of Darkness, the chief villain immune to harm or malignant sorcery herself by virtue of tying her fate to the survival of the world. This just wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.

But hadn’t Joe been magnificent in that final fight! If love meant anything, if sacrifice meant anything, and if evil could be that sloppy, there had to be same way, somehow, to stop this foul plan.

“I don’t believe it!”

Macore nodded sadly. “I saw it myself, from my perch in the tower room. He went out fighting like the greatest heroes of old, and when hundreds of them surrounded him, he got a bunch more by hurling the sword and then jumped in. Even the villains will tell stories of that great fighter to their grandchildren!”

“I thought—somehow, this time, I had that feeling, but I thought it would be me,” Marge said, feeling empty inside and fighting back tears.

Neither Macore nor Marge were caught yet and there was a question as to whether or not anyone even suspected they were there. Everybody had gone after Joe and Mia, as Joe had predicted, should one side be exposed.

Macore had spent the better part of the day asleep under one of the already made-up beds in the royal tower; Marge had used her own resources to do the same. Neither had abandoned his or her friends, although both felt as if they had. When it was clear that the other two had been caught, they retreated to the empty part of the palace and decided that there was no chance of their doing anything in the way of a rescue until nightfall. Macore had heard the commotion and wound up with a windowseat on the great fight and sacrifice. Marge had already been out somewhere and only now got the details.

“So what do we do now?” Macore asked her. “Joe’s dead, which means Mia’s enslaved to somebody, probably the Baron, and beyond being just plucked out. We’d have to kill the Baron to free her now. There’s nobody left now capable of destroying the bodies, either. And, to top it all off, I can’t get my gear back because I’d have to fight off dozens of enraged zombies!”

“There’s got to be something we can do for her,” Marge told the little thief. “If I know Boquillas, he’s vamping right now, picking her brains to get all the details he can. She still knows an awful lot about palace routine, palace personalities, and Tiana’s own habits and quirks. Maybe enough.” She started thinking furiously. “Where’s his sword?”

“Still out there in the center court. It seems to have a life of its own for real. It won’t let anybody pick it up. It’s stuck partway into the rocks itself and just won’t budge.”

“Excalibur,” she responded.

“Huh?”

“The Sword in the Stone—an old Earth legend about another such sword. It won’t budge until it accepts a new owner, and that’s the only one who’d have the right and ability to pull it out.”

“Who would that be?”

“Beats me. Irving, maybe. Poor kid. If it’s true, he’s not only gonna be stuck here with no dad, he’s gonna wind up the great mercenary Irving with his great sword Irving.” She sighed. “Normally I’d think that was humor; but under the circumstances, I don’t feel all that funny.”

“Neither do I. They almost certainly know how we got in here now, so I’m not at all sure how we get out,” the thief commented. “One thing’s for sure—we can’t do anything, not to help her, not to help ourselves, unless we have a lot more information. Even if we somehow get out of this, which looks unlikely, what’s the use, except temporarily to save our own necks? If there’s any information that we could take with us, that would make at least some of this trip meaningful. Right now, the only thing we’ve got is bad news and worse news, and one of those items is that the Baron was throwing spells right and left out that window.”

“Is that the bad or the worse?” she asked. “Wait a minute! I’m thinking!” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe there is a way. Suppose there’s some way for me to talk to Mia.”

“So what? You’re now the enemy, right? She couldn’t do anything against the Baron’s interests, and that would include helping you. At least she doesn’t have to volunteer information, or they’d be scouring this dump for us now.”

Marge nodded. “Sure. But doing something against a master’s interest is a knowing act. Suppose she didn’t know she was giving us information?”

“How you gonna do that? Your mind-tricks work only on guys, right? And both the Baron and Mia are girls.”

“No, for short periods I can make anyone see me as I wish, so long as I’m female in the illusion. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to move around on Earth, let alone move around this place. You know that. I have no power over women, it’s true,

but if she thought she were talking to someone else, maybe unburdening herself, it might work.”

“Risky. If Boquillas has her powers back, it’s not gonna fool him or her or, what the hell, I’m getting dizzy with all this!”

“You work on an exit,” she told him, “and stay close to here and out of sight so I can find you again. I’m going to try something. It’s better than just sitting here.”

It wasn’t unusual to see the various female slaves who serviced the place at any point in the palace, day or night, and neither the human guards nor the Bentar gave a particularly small, very young-looking slave the slightest notice as she walked into the magician’s tower and scampered up the stairs.

Boquillas had kept Mia close to her, but there were times when the slave was alone and miserable on the living quarters floor, told to wait while her mistress went to tend to something or other.

The very young slave waited, pretending to clean something in the hall, men went over to Mia, who sat, looking miserable in one corner of a sitting parlor.

“You are new here,” the very young slave commented. “Do not take it so hard. After a while, you come to accept things, and you find it isn’t so bad.”

Mia looked up at her, her eyes still red, but all cried out at this point. “It is for me. I was not bom a slave, but high, and the master whom I loved and served is now burned in the fire pit.”

“High?”

She nodded. “I did not know myself until today. It was hidden from me. Once I was a mighty ruler, Queen to the one who is gone. Now I am less than you, for I am to become him in a mad scheme of my new mistress. Yet I would remain this way forever if I could but bring him back.”

I knew it! Marge thought triumphantly. She is Tiana!

“That is very strange,” Marge responded. “You are to become the man who died today? How is that, if he is dead and his body burned?”

“There is another body above. Already my mistress commands me respond only to the name of Joe.”

Marge thought a moment, hoping to plant a thought. “But if you are put in this man’s body, you will no longer be a slave.”

“No. But I can do nothing or try nothing. To kill my mistress is to destroy the world.”

“What? How?”

“I do not know. Somehow, if she dies, the volcano goes off, melts the horrible place out there, and unleashes an evil worse than she.”

“When will you become him?”

“Tomorrow. When the Master of the Dead returns.”

Marge sighed. “I must go now. I would not like your mistress to find me here and know you have told anyone so much.”

“Yes, thank you. It helps to talk about such things to one who is as powerless as I, but I would not like you to suffer because of it.”

Marge got up and quickly walked down the stairs again, hoping she could maintain the slave illusion long enough-to get back in the clear.

So it was Tiana after all! That devil Ruddygore! Still, she stopped and looked out at the volcanic pit. No matter what had caused it, or what fed and maintained it, if it were for all intents and purposes no more than a volcano, she could go down into it. The Kauri cleansed themselves by lava swims in their native forest. There was always the risk of iron in that soup, of course, but if it were molten and liquid, and if she swam fast enough, it couldn’t get in to poison her.