Horrors of the Dancing Gods

THE ENTITY STRIKES BACK

THERE WAS MORE ACTIVITY IN THE WOODS THAN THERE appeared to be from the air or from their initial base not far inside.

Proceeding through the dense thicket, they found a honeycomb of well-developed trails, some obviously quite recent. 'Now and again there were users of those trails as well, causing the four companions to scramble for cover and hold their breaths — and occasionally their noses — until the creatures were long gone by. They included a small corps of the fish-eyed monsters Marge thought of as cousins of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, looking very much out of place there, as well as furry man-sized things with drooling mouths and hideous laughs and cries and others too indescribable and unimaginable to handle.

Clearly many, if not most, had once been human or faerie and had paid a price for crossing over to this third side, a price they were now too insane even to realize they had paid. Perhaps they had seen what no mind could conceive; perhaps it was a rite of initiation. The fact remained, they saw a great many creatures as they went those few miles in, and at no point did they see anything remotely familiar.

Because of their nature and their insanity, however, those creatures did not keep order and discipline well, as predicted. Only one group, in fact, seemed to maintain any semblance of military bearing as it marched past, and those looked like a cross between trolls and minor demons. They did, however, have a good snappy march and could be heard singing as they passed nearby.

"Now Sauron had no friend

To help him in the end;

Not even an orc or a slave.

It was dirty Fordo Baggins

What kicked his little wagon

And laid poor Sauron in his grave!"

"Haven't they got the wrong mythology?" Marge whispered to Poquah.

He shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps they changed sides. Perhaps all such denizens of the Sea of Dreams think they're going to emerge victorious."

"Not much farther now," she told them. "Just up here. I don't see or hear much in front of us, so maybe they'll only have a token guard on the place."

"Don't bet on it," the Imir responded. "This is the one place they know we must come. Irving, you cannot hesitate. You know the words. The moment you have the McGuffin in your hands, you must say them no matter what happens, no matter who pops out, no matter who gets threatened or killed. It is our only hope."

Irving nodded in the darkness, although he was feeling less and less sure of himself on this.

They reached the edge of the meadow, well within sight of their goal, and Marge put a finger to her lips for absolute silence, then pointed.

Even in the darkness it was easy to see the area. The Tree of Knowledge gave off its faerie glow, and all of them had faerie sight; beyond, they could see the outcrop, and Irving saw something more.

"Right there," Irving whispered very quietly. "In the hillside in back of the flat rock, there's some kind of recess with something in it. I bet that's it."

Both Marge and Poquah looked and saw absolutely nothing.

"Suppose I just let it get a little light and then I sneak around and get it," Irving suggested in the same low whisper.

"I see it, too," Larae told them. "Why don't I try it from the other side at the same time. One of us might get to it even if the other is caught."

Irving nodded. "Poquah, you cover Larae. You might be able to get a shot in. Marge can cover me. She's sensitized to the place and can warn me."

"We may have a little complication," Marge whispered, pointing first over to one side of the altar and then to the other. There, deep in the shadows, were two creatures, both armed, one a fair bit larger than the other but both indistinct in the limited real light and giving off only very faint auras.

"Is either one—?" the Imir started, but Marge shook her head to tell him no.

"If the entity is here, I can't sense it at the moment, but it won't take it long once they know we've arrived."

"Well, we should be able to take both of them out pretty quietly," Poquah said confidently. "Still, watch carefully for others."

"It's gonna start getting light any time now," Larae noted. "Let's get moving and get in position."

Irving was nervous seeing the Imir and Larae go off and vanish in the woods, but he knew that it was now or never and that there was no other choice. He found Larae's bravery to be incredible, too, and he only wished he felt as confident or even as foolishly courageous. Instead, all he wanted to do was pee in his codpiece, and he made every effort not to as he moved forward with Marge.

He frankly wouldn't have trusted Marge with Larae, particularly in this setting, but something deep down told him that Marge would never, never harm him. It was a feeling he had to go with.

Marge was trying to get some sort of fix on the guards, who seemed well concealed. Neither was male; she got no sense of reaction from either of them.

As they drew closer on their end, to within perhaps five meters of the nearest guard and nine or ten from the McGuffin's cubbyhole in the rock, she had a sinking feeling, one that was confirmed as the sky began to lighten and they could finally get something of a decent normal-light view of the scene in the light of false dawn.

Irving saw what Marge saw and had the same thoughts she'd already considered.

The figure was definitely a wood nymph, or, more accurately, it had begun as one. The face, arms, upper torso were all still clearly the same, but instead of being inside a tree, she was a tree, at least in a sense. Instead of two legs extending from the hips, there was a single green stalk the width of both thighs going down deep into the ground. The creature clearly had some serpentlike mobility, but only within about the three-meter range the roots would allow.

She was also pregnant, obesely so, with an enormously distended abdomen.

Irving felt he had to risk a whisper. "That can't possibly be my dad, can it? I mean, you can't get that pregnant in a few weeks, can you?"

"Not normally you can't," she responded, "but we don't know what black magic and Rules apply here. At the moment I'm concerned with the fact that she's got a light but sharp-looking blade in each hand."

"Yeah, well, I guess she's still easier to handle than the one on Larae's side," Irving noted, gesturing.

It wasn't as easy to see the other creature from, this angle, but you could see enough to realize that while fundamentally the same as the wood nymph now, it had not begun as a wood nymph but rather as something else.

Poquah, who had a much better view from the opposite side, was appalled. The figure, while "planted," had three sets of arms, each with a full-blown sword, and three sets of breasts, and she seemed to be almost three times as pregnant as the other. Both the Imir and Lame examined the guardians, and both determined that pregnant or not, if both extended themselves on their stalks to the fullest, they could cover the entire altar area. Short of killing them both, the only way through, using the original plan, would be to somehow lop off all their limbs, and that didn't seem too likely a possibility.

"This is what became of Irving's changed father and the girl he was with, isn't it?" Lame whispered. "The description is too close."

Poquah nodded. "I am afraid so. And I think that Irving knows it, too. They are enchanted, of course, or cursed, or something similar. That means they won't recognize us in all likelihood and will kill us, even Irving, if they can. Not good."

"I wonder if one of us could get up behind them," she said. "I can virtually see the bird-thing from here. If I can just come in from the rocks, I might be able to reach down and grab it and still be just out of their range."

"A diversion, then. Good. Go. I will give you five minutes to get into position. Then you do it or I at least will die. Give me your spear. You won't need it now."

He saw that she had removed literally everything, and for the first time he could see her as she really was and as she had been cursed. It was quite the most bizarre thing he'd seen of its kind, and, most unusual of all, it didn't look cooked up by magic. If someone from Mars were to see that body and not understand anything about how the human body was constructed or know of the specifics of the sexes, that person might accept it as "normal."

The leather straps and such had cut into her and chafed; for the first time she felt totally free and took a minute or two before starting off to get full circulation back. Then, taking only the sling but no stones for it in one hand, she eased off to the forest wall at the rock face.

Irving was still trying to figure out what to do. He couldn't bring himself to kill his father no matter what, but he didn't want his father, under some weird enchantment, to kill him, either.

Marge had no solutions for him, but she couldn't figure out the scene as she saw it. "Little Miss Alvi over there was half-human and mortal. She should have been able to get the McGuinn. Why stop her?"

"Maybe they act first and think later," Irving suggested. "Some do, but not here. L-look! It's Larae! Up there!"

Irving frowned, then saw the girl's figure slowly emerge and make its way carefully over on very slender finger-thin ledges and handholds toward the back of the McGuffin's shrine.

As she emerged, Poquah stepped out of the forest and into plain view about halfway between the Tree and the altar area and out of reach of either guardian by at least a small amount, or so he hoped.

Up until then neither of the two planted ones had moved so much as a muscle, imitating the trees around them, but now, suddenly, the eyes opened and they began to seem very animated.

Marge reached out to restrain Irving, but it was too late. The boy drew his sword and stepped out of the other side, just opposite Poquah and perhaps just out of range of Joe.

"Dad!" he shouted. "It's me, Irving! If there's any of you left in there, don't try and harm me!"

The nymph's face contorted as if in agony, and finally she managed, "Irving? No! Back! I — can — not — stop my — self. Go! Get — way!"

Irving felt tears of pity come to his eyes and also tears of conviction. "I cannot, will not believe that you can harm me!"

"Believe it!" Poquah called to him. "Do you think he can control it? Someone else programmed the body! Someone who doesn't give one damn about you!"

Larae had reached a small, crooked bush growing out of the side of the rock and had locked her legs around it. Irving tried not to watch what was going on but knew full well that the bush and its branches wouldn't have supported his weight as they did hers, nor was he in the kind of shape to hang and dangle like that.

Had it been directly over the enclosure with the idol, there would have been little trouble at that point, but it was slightly off, forcing her to swing on her legs like a gymnast. She had the base of the sling in her right hand and, using it, was trying to encircle the neck of die birdlike statue on every pass.

"Go!" Joe shouted insistently. "Run! No hope! No hope! Bo — Bo—"

Larae latched onto McGuffin just as Joe began to speak, and, twisting the handle deftly with her wrist, she pulled up and away and it came loose!

Joe and Alvi could not help but hear it when it happened, hitting against the side of the rock a couple of times, and both immediately turned and began slashing.

"Make the wish!" Poquah shouted to her. "In the name of all that's holy, make the wish now!"

But Larae didn't speak, not immediately, gathering up the unexpectedly heavy statue in her hands, swinging one more time, then doing a nearly classical dismount off to one side. A sword from Alvi's top hand came so close, there was a tiny scratch and some blood beaded up on her leg, but she had it, and, grinning broadly and knowing she was out of range, she got to her feet and held it up, totally forgetting that now was more dangerous a time than before.

"Larae! Make the wish!" Irving screamed at the top of his lungs, and she suddenly realized her error and started to speak—

A figure leapt out of the trees nearby and brought her crashing to the ground, the statue falling from her grasp and rolling slightly onto the forest floor. The newcomer rushed for it, picked it up, then stood back against a tree, a look of beatific insanity on its face.

"I wish I was the god of this whole world and all living things within it!" Joel Thebes shouted. "Bow down and prostrate yourself before me—now!"

For a moment the entire world seemed to pause, then Marge stepped out behind Irving. "I don't feel like bowing down to him," she noted, as much puzzled as relieved. "Do you?"

"Not a bit."

Thebes gaped, his face changing from a look of godlike power to the sort of horror no one should ever have glimpsed. He looked at the statue in his arms, turned it around, studied it as if it were some new species of creature, and finally read off something stamped on the roughhewn base.

"USA. 1941!" he read in total disbelief. "No! It can't be! USA! 1941! It can't be! It's not only a fake, it's the fake!" And with that he screamed with such terror that it echoed throughout the valley and caused even those who could not remember such things to pause and shudder for just a moment.

Irving ran to Thebes, barely paying him any attention, and helped a shaking Larae to her feet. "I am all right," she assured him. "I just feel very stupid."

Thebes sank down, staring vacantly at the black bird idol and the inscription and otherwise not moving at all.

"Don't worry about it," Irving sighed. "We've lost. I don't see how it's possible with everybody assuring us that the McGuffin wasn't gotten, but it was. It's a phony. A fake. Your wish wouldn't have done a damned thing."

A strange, eerie, yet commanding voice, an inhuman voice, said, "I assure you that it is as much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else here. And in this case, at least, as much of a relief. I certainly didn't go through all that I have endured to bow down ultimately to that!"

The troll-like soldiers appeared from all points of the forest, swords and bows at the ready. They were not particularly menacing, but they made it very clear that there was no escape. It was also clear that the one thing they feared and no other was the entity who spoke to them all now and who was in every sense their master.

It was a large creature, perhaps three meters high and in perfect proportion for its size. It had a hideous demonic face, blazing red eyes, and dark sickly purple skin that seemed somewhat reptilian. The mouth was permanently twisted into an insane smile that barely disguised the rows of sharp teeth within, and from its head grew two huge, grotesquely curled, and oversized ram's horns. From the waist it was covered with dense purple hair that made it almost seem as if it were wearing bizarre pants, down to thick legs that ended in granite hooves. It was a satyrlike creature but one from a nymph's nightmares. The arms and hands were huge and powerful and ended in razor-sharp claws a good seventy-five millimeters long. But what struck Marge was the genitalia, which were overly large even in proportion to the gigantic body.

"Where did you come from?" Marge asked him.

"You would not believe," the creature responded. "However, in the immediate term I have been not very far from right here. You have no idea of my power, but you will. Not even I ever dreamed of such power, and it is only the beginning. You may try your wiles on me all you like, Succubus, but you should be aware that I am not like other creatures in this world and I will drain any energy I deem irritating. Don't worry, though. I have plans for you — for all of you. That's what all this has been about. I left the McGuffin right there, where it was, and ordered that none be allowed to approach it, since I knew that if anyone did take it, you wouldn't come. And you had to come. It isn't perfect justice without you all."

"Justice? What in hell are you?" Marge screamed at him. "Who are you to speak of justice?"

The entity shrugged. "Revenge, then. Justice for one is always revenge for another, in any event, is it not?" The sinister eyes went over them all.

"Ah! Poquah! I had so hoped you would be along. It would not be complete without you," the creature said. "And you, little Irving, all grown up! And Marge — shorn of all that diabetic-inducing happy fairy nonsense and more gorgeous than ever. And a bonus!" He looked at Larae. "My heavens! That is a creative job there! I didn't know there was that much creativity left in all of Hell! There certainly wasn't when I was dealing with them. Why, such a combination might well be quite amusing. Makes cross-dressing seem rather passé, doesn't it? Perhaps we'll make you a true matched set. Give Irving here a groin more like the one Marge has. Like father, like son, eh?"

Irving started to rush the creature and to hell with the consequences, but even as the soldiers brought up their weapons, the entity held up a hand casually and Irving found himself unable to push any farther forward.

The entity looked down and gave the boy a hideous smile. "Well, you're close enough now. I will think on the rest. It will be sufficient, I believe, for now to simply have your own father, such as she now is, cut off the one you were born with. Don't worry; you won't bleed to death. I'll see that it's quite clean."

"Who are you, you bastard?" Irving cried.

The creature paused, frowned, then gave that strange smile once more. "Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot to reintroduce myself, didn't I? We all seem to change so much these days. This used to be such a static place! I am Esmilio Boquillas, of course. Who else could I be?"

"You can't be the Dark Baron," Marge said at last. "He fell into a lake of lava, stabbed through the heart by a great sword whose destiny was to do just that."

"Precisely. Hurt like hell, too, but only for an instant," the creature replied. "You, however, leave out part of the story. Before I fell into that lava lake, surrounding a tree very much like that one over there, Joe here fell in as well. Fell in and was not consumed but instead was transformed. If Holmes survived the falls, why not Moriarty, eh? Even then I had more power in my little finger than any of you and more than sufficient power to have preserved my faerie soul."

"Come to think of it, you do look like Boquillas' soul would look," Marge agreed.

"I was forced into this form, for, you see, I was trapped, awakening in the Sea of Dreams itself. It took an incredible amount of nonstop salesmanship to talk the entities trapped there into aiding me."

"How did you get out, you monster?" Poquah challenged him. "Not even the alternate gods of that place can escape!"

"Not individually, no, but first of all, I was not a god. It's not nearly so much on the overhead, and I do match the mathematics of this world. The trick was to have them influence their vast and mostly hidden followers here — hidden until now — to become aware of me and to bring me through. In a sense, you can say I was prayed back into real existence. My soul was incorporeal, my faerie self was in flux, and it flowed into the vessel that they used for their prayers. This is a personification of a statue of a child-servant of Shub Niggurah, the Goat with a Thousand Young. It is quite imposing, is it not? Ah, I can see that you are impressed."

"What is with you, Boquillas? It's bad enough you won't stay dead, but you started off as a handsome, charming SOB who at least cared about people, who justified what he did as a rebellion against the system here and for the betterment of most." Marge felt she had nothing to lose, so why not say it all? "Now the only thing that's left is the SOB part."

"I finally learned the truth," Boquillas responded. "That it's all for nothing. That everything is, in the end, totally meaningless. That pleasure and power are the only things that matter, and then only because you should have what you will. Think of it! I have beaten all of you! I have beaten Hell itself! There is nothing I cannot do or have!"

"You haven't won a damned thing except a little petty revenge," Irving spat at him. "You're nothing, Boquillas. You're lower than whale shit, and that's on the bottom of the ocean! What have you accomplished? Revenge on a bunch of people who beat you at your own game several times when they couldn't have beaten a competent sorcerer even once? So you can be a big monster around here until those things you made the deal with show up. Then you're right down there lickin' their boots just like you would be if you'd stuck with Hell. And if you don't bring 'em through, Hell and the Council will just quarantine you here and eventually gang up and crush you unless the little creatures you betray around here get you first. You got nothin', Baron! Nothin' that means anything at all! You're still a loser! You'll always be one! That's your destiny. Troublemaker, misery maker, but endgame loser! And somewhere around there's the real black bird, 'cause there's got to be. Somebody — maybe Ruddygore or Lothar or somebody — is gonna get hold of it, and then you are really toast There ain't no way of gettin' around it. You got nothin'!"

"Perhaps, the Baron responded coldly. "But I have all of you."

That was a heck of a lot harder to argue with, Irving had to admit to himself.

"Now, I believe we will start with a bit of fun," Boquillas said almost to himself. "While the rest of you watch, I shall allow Joseph here to emasculate the son. Then a rather simple spell, and we can load an entire functioning vagina into the space thus vacated, using the same creative model of a curse visited upon the lovely lady here, only, of course, reversed. Then everyone — friends, companions, father — can watch as I none too gently rape the new daughter right here, then let you roam the forest for a while, with an unbreakable desire only for women, with even the thought of a man repulsive. As you can probably surmise, my impregnations always take, no matter what the condition of the mother or the time of the month, and they develop with astonishing speed. You can't go far. The birth pains will be excruciating, and then we will begin it all again. After that, we'll see to the lovely Marge here, who is not immune from the same sort of treatment, perhaps clipping her wings so she will stay around. And Poquah, I have a whole new mold for your faerie flesh, one that will keep you handy and in a cage nearby for years." He sighed. "Now, who am I leaving out? Ah, yes, the lady here with the wrong organ. I could restore you, I suppose, since that curse is tied to the authority of Hell, which touches not this wood, but this so appeals to me. It is so delightfully perverse. Hmmm…"

Boquillas was obviously having an enormously good time and was in no hurry at all. Not that they could do anything about it. Still, he was itching to demonstrate his total power over them and understood that anticipation was often torture of the worst kind.

He suddenly threw out his left hand toward Larae, and bolts of pure energy so strong that they seemed almost solid struck her. Irving cried out but could do nothing.

One by one the layers of spell upon her were neutralized, vaporized, until only Lothar's key spell was left, the one that had made her not a woman. Now, without radically changing her body and by sheer force of will, making up and implementing the complex magical equations in his head as if they were a child's arithmetic, he refashioned her, tweaked her, emphasized every feminine line, move, and curve, exaggerated the form in much the same way Marge's was exaggerated, and then actually enlarged the male genitalia at the same level of exaggeration. The result was obscene, a photo composite, of the ultimate woman and one major flaw.

"There! There is your girlfriend, boy, for as long as I choose her to be that way, and that may be until tomorrow or until Armageddon! Behaviorally the dream sex object, crazy about the boys, unable even to be turned on by a woman, yet like that, naked, displayed to the world, and on the make. Let us call it perfecting an imaginative concept." He turned back to Irving, whose expression of hatred was unbelievable, and bathed in it.

"All right, boy, it is your turn!" The clawed hand came out again, and Irving felt all the leather vanish, and every thing else as well, save the sword blade itself, which clanged to the ground.

"Come, altar boy!" Boquillas chuckled. "Approach now and lie down here on your back next to Daddy. Yes, that's right. Ah!"

Helpless, terrified, and close enough to the creature to smell its bad breath without being able to do a single thing, Irving lay there, naked and stretched out, watching as his father's nymph face^.and torso turned toward him, sword in hand.

The blade! He couldn't dissolve the blade!

It was iron alloy! The Rules still applied! But was there any iron in his father's sword? His father was the only faerie other than dwarves who could touch or handle it. If the double intention was to make her a guardian of the McGuffin, as seemed likely, then at least one of the swords had to be iron or contain it.

The nymph, the pain and torture showing, on her face and tears streaming out of her big eyes, reached out to touch and lift Irving's most private parts so they might be cut off. Under such circumstances it might have been tough to concentrate on something else, on influencing Dad instead, but even vague whiffs of incest didn't deter Irving from sheer necessity.

You love me, Joe. You love me and only me. You would do anything for me. Look at me, Joe. Love me. Love me and protect me from all mutilation and ham. Both of you love me. Both, of you. Love and protect…

That most eerie of looks came over Joe's face, and clearly there was only one thought there, one overriding set of emotions…

Both Joe's and Alvi's swords plunged into Boquillas' midsection.

Alvi's swords had no effect, but the sword in Joe's hands erupted in smoke and flames as it entered the entity's flesh, and Boquillas roared in horrible pain.

For the briefest of moments, as pain removed his concentration and before rage replaced it, they all suddenly felt themselves freed of influence.

"The spear!" Irving screamed, sitting up and jumping down. "The spear and the short sword! Iron! He's still under the Rules! Iron can kill him!"

Poquah could do little on that score, nor could Marge, but they both turned and began to work whatever magic they could on the gaping soldiers, who were too stupid and too confused to figure out what to do. This wasn't supposed to happen. You weren't supposed to be able to give a god the hotfoot.

If iron in fact could harm or kill the monster, then they'd been conned! One by one, without even glancing at each other, they faded quickly back into the woods and vanished.

Boquillas grimaced in pain, but the roaring subsided, and with a mighty effort of will he reached down and grabbed the sword and pulled it out of his groin, leaving a gaping, ugly scar that was still smoking.

At that moment, Larae cried, "Irving!" He turned, and she tossed him the dagger. He whirled and threw it right into the Baron's neck. Boquillas' head snapped back, and he roared again in agony.

Poquah looked around, spotted the spear where they'd left it just at the edge of the forest, and said to hell with it. The spear itself wasn't iron-coated, anyway, just the tip. He picked it up, turned, and sent it flying straight at the writhing monstrosity.

It struck Boquillas in the chest and went in deep. He grabbed at it but, still trying to extract the smoking, flaming dagger, broke it off instead. He was clearly in agony.

He was also, unfortunately, clearly still alive and not mortally wounded, although in tremendous pain.

And they were fresh out of iron.

The Baron managed finally to get at the dagger hilt and extract it from his neck, then toss it so high and so far that for all anybody knew, it went into orbit.

Boquillas still had the spear point in him and it was causing him some real agony, but it wasn't the kind that would finish him, only make him even angrier.

Blue energy shot from his fingers and struck Irving but suddenly flamed off as the spear tip continued to move inside him and cause further damage every time he repositioned his body to send out more spells.

"Hey! Irv! Think you know what you could do with a sword with a real steel blade?" called a friendly, familiar, but unexpected voice from just over and behind him. Irving looked up and to his complete astonishment saw Macore standing there holding a huge sword, the kind out of King Arthur. "Watch it! It's heavy as all blazes!" the thief called, and threw it down with all his might.

Boquillas whirled at the sound of Macore's voice and thundered, "So! Now we are virtually complete! Come, thief! I will give you something to remember me by!"

"Me first!" Macore shouted back, and tossed a bag of something at the creature that struck one of the huge horns and burst, spreading a powder all over him, including his eyes.

Macore grinned. "That's one for the professor!" he said cheerily. "Iron filings'll do it every time!"

Irving picked up the huge sword with both hands and, not stopping to think for a moment, rushed right at the huge creature, slashing as he struck.

Pieces of entity began flying everywhere. The giant pseudo-satyr roared and lashed out, but he was blinded, in agony, and nearly helpless against the slashing and cutting sword whose blade was the smoothest and sharpest Irving had ever seen.

"Hey, Joe! Got another not quite as big or fancy!" Macore called, tossing a smaller version to the still-implanted nymph, who caught it and began using it with gusto.

Macore then sat back on the rock and relaxed, watching the show and giving occasional pointers.

He didn't have to. All life went out of Esmillio Boquillas as soon as Irving brought him down with cuts to the legs and then severed his neck from his shoulders.