Horrors of the Dancing Gods

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARTERY

ALVI POKED THROUGH HER OLD HEAPED-UP CLOTHES BUT made no attempt to put anything back on. Joe understood and was sympathetic. The halfling was luxuriating in being free and being herself with a friend but had been raised and conditioned all those years to conceal everything most of the time.

That was going to have to change.

Joe retrieved the broadside she'd plucked from the chief highwayman's stuff, unfolded it, and took it over to Alvi. "Can you read this?" she asked.

Alvi frowned, took it, then stared at the drawings. "Wow. Somebody knew a lot about us!"

"You can read it, then?"

"Sure. Can't you?"

"You'll discover that readers are few and far between in this land," Joe told her. "And if there's a nymph — any kind, any variety — that knows how, I've never heard of her. Truth is, I can read a language of the place where I'm originally from, but it no more looks or sounds like anything here or on that paper than these trees look like horses. I've tried learning that now and again, but I just haven't got the patience."

"Oh, anybody can if they want to. But all right. `Fifty thousand gold pieces in the national currency of choice to anyone bringing the above to the nearest Alganzian Consul.' "

"Never heard of this Alganzia. Have you?"

"Yes, it's along the coast not that far from my own home. Not my country, though, or my father's nobility. I don't know that we ever had anything to do with them one way or the other. It has been said that their trade includes black magic and the like from even farther-off evil lands, but I know nothing more, not even the truth of that."

"Middlemen for Hell. Interesting. What else does it say?"

"Oh. Hmmm `Nearest Alganzian Consul. Man is Duke Mahlaus of Month Keep in the Western Dark. He is dispensable, but proof of death in the form of something personal of his, such as his signet ring, required. Other is called Alvida Zwickda, answers to AM, a halfling who must be taken alive and brought unharmed to the Consul. Death of the Duke without the halfling is no pay. Halfling without Duke will be accepted. Nature of the creature is known only to the Consuls. Do not insult us with ringers if you value your life. Anyone having information on either or both may gain a reward up to ten pieces of gold for submitting that information to a Consul, upon verification of the information by us. Note: creature will probably be disguised as human girl, possibly as the Duke's daughter.' Creature! The nerve of them, whoever they are!"

Joe understood the poster a lot more clearly than did the girl, knowing the type of people it would be going to. In point of fact, Alvi really was more creature than human and probably one of a kind at that, but putting it that way kind of ensured that she'd be delivered intact. It was a pretty effective sexual "keep off the grass" statement for thugs. "That's all it says? There is nothing else?"

"No. Nothing more. Except this little thing down here that says 'Local 286, KBRSS.' "

"Kidnappers, Brigands, Rogues, Scoundrels, and Sappers Union, printing division," Joe explained offhandedly. "Never mind about them. The fact is, you are not described."

"Huh? That's my face there! As good a drawing as I've ever seen! In fact, if things were normal, I'd probably try and buy the original for my wall!"

"Doesn't matter. The point is, because they're dealing with such crooked wretches, they didn't want to give anything at all away about how you differ from human or faerie normal. If they did, every Consul on the planet would be deluged with fake Alvis rigged up with fake arms, fake breasts, fake tails, even enchanted ringers that looked legit for all the world. But so long as you're one of a kind, as I think you are, there's no way to find out just what makes you different, so they have to deliver the real thing."

"But what good does that do?"

"Faces are easy. It's overall form that's hard. It's not that rough to do a little safe makeover of you so that you won't look anything like this sketch, and they wouldn't be looking real closely at the face, anyway. Short of you bumping into somebody who knows a lot of details, like one of those Consuls, the odds are pretty good that we can disguise you so that you can move around safely. Then maybe we can start trying to figure this thing out."

"But why would the Alganzia want me?"

"Not the Alganzia. If what you've told me about them is true, they're just middlemen, probably hired to do this for somebody or other, some client. Some very rich, very powerful, very important client, I have to say, if they risk being directly named like that on a broadside. The fact that they deal in black magic and darkest sorcery says a lot, too." For the first time Joe wondered if this had anything to do with the rising pervasive feeling of evil and malaise that was spreading throughout the whole land. Something was rising, something at least as powerful and evil as Boquillas and the crazy mad sorcerers and rebel Prince of Hell she'd already faced. What was it? Every five or ten years or at least once every generation?

Why, she just might have accidentally stumbled into something as nasty and bizarre as anything in the history of this twisted world!

Of course, she didn't really believe she could have that kind of luck, but maybe. Who could say for sure?

She reached down, found the pouch with the gold, and brought it over to Alvi. The halfling looked at it, gasped at the amount in there, then frowned, reached in, and pulled out her father's ring. Joe had stuck it in there for safekeeping.

"Sorry. Thought I told you about that," the nymph commented. "It was all I could really salvage."

"It's — it's more than enough." She took it, found the ring finger of her top right hand, and slipped it on. It was much too loose, of course, but…

Suddenly there was a bright flash from the ring, and her whole hand seemed bathed in an eerie, unearthly glow. Joe was as startled as Alvi, and both could see the intricate strands of a previously hidden spell there.

Alvi nervously pulled the ring off her finger, and the glow died. "Some kind of spell! A trap!"

"No, no!" Joe exclaimed, rushing to her. "I doubt that. I know how some of these suckers think. Remember? They asked for the signet ring in the broadside, almost as an afterthought. But they did specify it. They want both you and the ring. They just don't want anybody getting the idea that he can hold them up for even more than a king's ransom to get both. Or — or maybe they don't want anybody so curious about that ring that they'll play with it. I wonder what they don't want anybody to find out."

"Well, here! You're welcome to it! I'm not putting the thing on again!"

Joe thought a moment. "It didn't try and stop you from removing it, did it?'

"No, but—"

"Did it hurt?"

"No, just tickled a little, but—"

"So? Put it back on. Be ready to yank it off if need be, but I doubt if you will. I don't think it's trying to hurt you or do anything to you. I think it's a message."

"Huh? From who?"

"Your father, maybe, or your mother, or who knows? It didn't go off when your dad had it on, so the odds are that it was intended for you if he should die. Probably activated only when he died. It might activate only on your finger, although being a common spell, it would most likely be crackable by any thief with any ability at all. Go ahead. Try it. I'm right here."

Alvi thought it over for a moment, then sighed and cautiously replaced the ring almost as if afraid it would bite her finger off. Again there was the glow, which enveloped the hand, but there was nothing else apparent in the effect.

"Turn your hand over or try different positions," Joe suggested. "It's got to do something more than just glow."

It did. With the palm out and angled slightly down, there was a crackling sound, and then, quite clearly, there was a man's voice, not loud but actually rather calm and conversational.

"Alvi, if you are hearing this, then I must assume that I am dead and you are now alone," the voice noted. "I also must assume that you or we failed to contact any friendly power among the established Majin, so that you are truly alone. If this is not so, then you should go with them. You are ill equipped, I fear, for the only alternatives and should use them only as a last resort."

"That's my father's voice!" she exclaimed in wonder.

"However, if you are alone and all else is lost, then there is no choice. Under the stone of this ring, released by a small catch that you will find if you feel along it, is a tiny pellet of poison. If you are captured by dark forces and there is no hope of escape, you must use it. Not only for your own sake — for they will kill you or worse after they are done with you, anyway — but for the sake of the entire world. They must not be permitted to use you! And your only hope if all else has failed is to go straight into the den of your worst enemies. Your only hope for a future and to banish this evil is to travel to Carcosa and within it to locate the path to Far Yuggoth. There, eons ago, one of my great ancestors, at the risk of life and soul, hid the Grand McGuffin, that thing that all seek. The McGuffin's power is vast but personal; any who meet its criteria may be granted what they need and most desire. But to ensure that it could never be used by darkness, a curse was placed upon it by my family so that only one born of woman who carries also the seed of faerie may approach it and live."

"That's me!" Alvi breathed.

And also me, Joe thought excitedly. Seek all this time, go through all that crap, and when you give up and head on home, it falls into your lap!

"Many years ago I betrayed much of this in order to regain your mother's freedom and safety, but they do not know where and they do not know how. The location and map I entrust to you alone. Trust no one but seek help from the good races of faerie. Farewell."

The glow faded. "That's it?" Joe said, frowning. "Where's the map? What's the location?'

"Good heavens! You don't suppose it was elsewhere on him, do you?"

Joe shook her head. "I don't think so. At least I hope not. Anything we didn't take with us last night is gone now. Here — let me see that ring."

Alvi slipped it off once more and handed it over. Nothing was evident except that… Hmmm… "That's odd," Joe muttered. "There's still a heck of a spell on this ring. I'd swear it looks more complicated now than it did before."

"I — let me see. Wow! That is some sort of complicated weaving! At least now we know what some of the master sorcerers were doing visiting us. But — what good does this do me? 'Trust no one,' he says, then leaves me with a spell so intricate that it would take an expert magician even to come close to figuring it out and no other clues at all. What do I do now? If I take it to a sorcerer, how will I know I haven't just handed something of great value over to somebody who shouldn't have it? And if I don't, then what do I do?"

Joe thought things over. "Poor kid. I don't know if your dad was supposed to unlock more of this, or one spell was supposed to unlock the other, or what, but whatever else we need is probably still locked up in here. I know a sorcerer who could unscramble this easily and is about as trustworthy as any here — he had the Lamp of Lakash in his possession, and rather than use it for himself, he destroyed it. But he's still weeks away up north, and they're bound to be on the lookout for you. Still, I can't see any other way. To get through that spell would take a master sorcerer, or…"

Alvi sensed that her new friend was thinking of something. "Yes?" she prompted. "Or what?"

"Or a master thief," Joe finished. "Hmmm… Maybe two days back south and a few wasted days west, but if he hasn't cracked up on a desert island already, he could do this. It would be child's play for him. He stole the Lamp from Ruddygore's own vaults."

"A thief? But wouldn't a thief keep it for himself? Or double-cross all of us?"

"No, there's honor among thieves, no matter what you've heard. At least there is here. The Rules demand it. He's formally retired and hardly needs the money, so he wouldn't care about it all that much. And if he did, he'd be willing to come in with us and share any outcome. I haven't seen him in a very long time, either. Yes, he's certainly the answer."

"You know a thief?'

"I know the greatest living thief in all Husaquahr, the one they still tell legends about in the guildhalls of the nations. He's a very old friend who more than once helped save us all from the forces of evil. He retired a while ago, and when last I knew of him, he was running charter tours of the islands and coast of Leander just west of Yingling. We may be able to cross the River of Dancing Gods just below here, in Quoos, so we don't have to also cross the Rombis and then go down by older back roads to the coast."

"But we just came up from there! It's thickly populated. Not much jungle or forest cover. And if everybody in creation's got one of those broadsides…"

"Your nerve and your self-control will be all that's needed," Joe told her. "First remove anything from any pockets or compartments in those clothes, and then we'll weight them with stones and sink them in the lake." "Sink them! But what will I wear?"

"Nothing. As crazy as it sounds, naked is your best disguise. Put on clothing and you'll call attention to your face. Then let me survey the plants around here. Many secrete very effective dyes. Repeating that wonderful pattern on your face and torso would be great, but I don't think I have either the materials or the artistic skill to do it. Blocks of color, though — that should be easy."

"You — you really think my pattern is wonderful?"

"Oh, yeah. It's beautiful, honey. Trust me. That, the arms, the whole thing will be what people look at first and will remember, too. Trust me. Let me see what I can do."

By soaking various small cuttings and leaves in water, Joe had managed to come up with several interesting colors. She chose a dark green for the stomach area, applied it carefully with some grasses used as a brush so as not to overlap the natural coloration of the hips and the area below, then extended it around to the back and up so that two rounded areas on the back went up and met at a point right at the small of the back. Next a golden yellow for the lowermost breasts and arms, again layered to a point design on Alvi's back. The middle arms and breast area she made a pink color, the topmost a pale blue that extended to the upper shoulders, neck, and face. The hair, cut as short as possible with the knife and some stones, turned a much darker blue when touched with the same dye. Joe thought that bald would be better yet but knew that Alvi was already going to be as self-conscious as hell.

Then the wood nymph mixed several of the dyes together, added more water, poured the resulting dark mixture into a gourd, and said, "Now, the finishing touch. Take some of it, swish it around the inside of your mouth, all over your tongue, you name it, then spit it out."

Alvi looked uncertain but did as she was told. She made a face when she spit. "Tastes awful!"

"Yep. Now open wide. Uh huh… Very nice. The whole inside of your mouth, including your tongue, is purple except your teeth, which remain pretty much white." She stepped back. "I can guarantee you that you are now as colorful as I can paint you and that people will look at everything except the details of your face first."

"This stuff — it comes off, though?'

'Well, not right away, but eventually, yes." The truth was, Joe had no idea how long it would last, but she knew that the chemicals she'd used on normal human skin were as indelible as permanent ink. It would dull long before it washed off, which was just what Joe wanted. "The question is, do you have the guts to walk straight down a road like that?"

"Oh, my God! I don't know if I can!"

'Well, you've got to, that's all. You just do it. We'll take it easy, but you've got to get used to yourself as completely exposed, as you are, and to hell with the rest of the world. Now, people are going to look at you. They're going to stare, frankly. Some of 'em will make signs to ward off evil when they see you and rush their kids inside. Others will be mean, cruel, call you all sorts of names, tease and heckle you. It'll get you for a while, but sooner or later you just have to decide that this is who and what you are, and if others don't like it, they can just shut up and get out of your way. I'm going to be along the whole time, with you and right beside you. I went from being a man — tall, muscles, heroic type — to looking like this, and it was pretty damned hard. I never have fully come to grips with it, so in a way I've got nobody, either. I have nothing in common with my sister wood nymphs except my looks, and everybody else treats me like a brainless piece of elemental ass, so no matter what happens, there'll be at least me to regard you as a person and treat you like one. Clear?"

Alvi nodded, uncertain but also atoned "You were really a guy once?'

"Uh huh. Born and raised a mortal male, father of a male child, teamster and barbarian hero at different points. A crazy bit of magic turned me into this, and since then I've been wandering this world alone, looking for a way out. You and me, we got the same damned problem, really."

"I think I'd rather have your problem," Alvi noted.

"Maybe. Maybe you just haven't discovered how little anybody thinks of wood nymphs — a reputation mostly deserved, by the way. It is true that you'll be an unwanted halfling, considered a monster by most, if a harmless one, but when they discover that you are a monster with money, some things will be possible. Right now we clean up and find you something to eat. I'm afraid it's going to be all fruits and veggies around here for now, but we may be able to do better on the road."

"That will be fine," she assured Joe. "I–I only hope that I can do it."

That, of course, worried Joe as well. Hell, it'd been weeks before she'd had the nerve to go out by herself, and that had been after a lot of unknowing preparation as a were in the time before the old body and its curse had been destroyed in the lava fires. Alvi could use a little were curse now, but it wasn't exactly something you picked up at the market.

Finding a good meal for Alvi, however, was even easier than going to the market — for a wood nymph. In fact, within a wood nymph's narrow range were some astonishing built-in abilities, including being able to communicate and in many cases use plants the way she'd used the clinging vines against the knife wielder and a kind of instinctive knowledge about plants and plant capabilities — even about plants she'd never seen before, in places she'd never been. She had known instantly which of the surrounding plant juices would make dyes and had been able to extract what was needed without harming the plants themselves. Similarly, there were drugs that could be extracted from others, drugs that healed, others that made you high or were anesthetics, all sorts of things like that. Once she identified them, she needed only merge with the plant to extract a safe amount, then hold it within her until she wanted to excrete it.

There were, of course, limits. Wood nymphs were hardly biologists, let alone biochemists; she had no idea how to mix anything if the raw stuff wasn't there. And it might be that Alvi's constitution wasn't nearly as human as she assumed. But the odds were that it was.

Now, was there anything possibly around here that might help the halfling over the initial jitters? Self-confidence would be important to her disguise; with a hue and cry out, they could hardly wait long or people would start looking more closely into things, and maybe those Consuls would start describing Alvi a bit more fully.

There seemed to be nothing around that was in the nature of a really strong hypnotic, although such plant substances did exist and always seemed to be handy when the bad guys needed them. The best she could find was a kind of mild substance that dulled the mind and made you a little euphoric but also uninhibited and open to a degree of suggestion. Risky in that it might cause Alvi to do something that might betray her, but it was better than nothing. It would be easy enough to remove from the leaves and place within the fruit, although finding the dose that was needed would take experimenting.

After Alvi ate, they got rid of the clothes as Joe had suggested — not without some regrets from Alvi — and, using some vines, Joe made her a kind of belt with loops that would allow the purse and the dagger to be attached and easily carried.

"What now?' Alvi asked the nymph.

"Overland, I think. If we can head west for a while, we should come to a secondary trail going pretty well south, which is where we want to go, and intersecting the great River Road. Come, my beautiful spider. Put your hand and hand and hand in mine and I'll lead you through the back country. No pain yet."

Alvi laughed. "Your what?"

"Beautiful spider. Eight limbs, all the colors of the world, a walking work of art!"

The halfling laughed again. "I like that! Why don't you call me that, then? It'll be a name between us."

"Huh? What?"

"Spider. You can't very well keep calling me Alvi, or what's the good of all this?"

"Hey! Why not? Joe and the spider lady off through the jungle! Sounds pretty good to me. Sounds like the start of another great adventure long after I'd decided that there'd be no more great adventures for the likes of me! Yes, indeed. This could very well be the start of a be-you-fi-ful friendship!"

The trail was just where Joe had said it would be and about the right distance. Alvi was impressed. "How do you know this area? Are you from here?'

"No, just a knack. You memorize all the main routes when you haul freight." But it was more than that, although the rest was beyond easy explanation. Somehow the trees always knew where they were in relation to every other growing thing on the planet, and if they knew, she could find out. Put that on top of the memorized routes, and she almost always knew where she was to a matter of a few yards.

Alvi was fine until they heard some traffic coming the other way. Then she suddenly froze, and Joe could see and feel the tension in her.

"Come on, let's break for a snack over there," she suggested, and Alvi put up no argument. It was, Joe thought, time to see if this stuff worked and test it out before they got into heavy traffic as they neared the great river.

There was no apparent effect, at least not in the few minutes after eating, and Joe wondered if she'd vastly underestimated the dose needed to do much of anything. However, when Alvi started to get up, she seemed suddenly dizzy and a little uncertain, then gave a silly laugh. "Must be tired, or my tummy's upset. Got a little dizzy."

"Come, Pretty Spider, let us be off. There's a fair amount of daylight yet today, and we want to get into a better area by nightfall."

"Pretty Schpider. I love it when you say that." More tittering, but they walked out side by side.

"You just tell yourself that's who and what you are, over and over," Joe prompted. "Just think like that and enjoy the walk."

And, interestingly, after some initial slight hesitancy, Alvi did manage actually to face and then pass a small party of humans heading north. It wasn't that hard to do; one look at her and they gave ground and just stared, and Alvi acted as if they were staring in admiration rather than being totally appalled.

Joe relaxed a bit. Maybe by the time something hypnotic was available, it wouldn't be needed.

Traffic was quite light most of the day on the trail, which was not one of the major mutes in any event and basically serviced some feudal estates and small plantations in the legion, linking them with the river. It was in fact what folks back in Joe's native world and land had once known as a "rolling road," designed to be fairly straight and basically downhill and just wide enough so that barrels or sledges could be transported from the places where they had been harvested to the river piers.

Alvi was a bit tipsy but somewhat emboldened; at least she didn't shrink when they met the occasional person or take offense at some of the muttered curses, exclamations, and religious exorcisms performed as she passed, either. She was basically oblivious, and there weren't enough people to really worry about.

Near the end of the day they emerged from the jungle and looked out over a vast floodplain and the monstrous meandering river that was the land's heart and soul as well, the River of Dancing Gods.

By that time Alvi's intoxication had pretty well worn off, and she gazed out at the tremendous display in front of her, set off in a combination of light and shadow from the low sun in the distance, and gasped. "Wow!" she breathed.

"You've seen the river before, surely," Joe commented.

"Not really. Not like this. I mean, we came in from the cast and went through these big cities on the ocean and along this dirty flat region. Nothing like this."

"Well, that 'dirty flat region' and that plain out there are the reason so many creatures can live here," Joe pointed out. "All the good stuff that makes things grow and all the fresh water from countless rivers and streams far off to the north all come together here, washed down and deposited. You can look out from here and see all the river traffic, all the faerie colonies and such, and all the human towns, cities, and settlements as well. The really big cities are still to the south, but even from here we're probably looking at between a half million and a million souls as well as many times that in plants and animals. Thousands of kilometers north to here — that river is Husaquahr."

She was surprised at her own feeling at the scene and the sense of the great river as somehow hers and a part of her as well. Maybe she was getting more assimilated than she thought.

"It's so wide! How are we going to get across it?"

"Too wide to swim or bridge," the nymph agreed. "We'll have to be ferried across. We've got money, and there are many such boats along here, almost all run by some sort of faerie. We'll have to go down to the Great River Road, then walk south until we find someone who will take us. Not today, though. We've done enough for today. I suggest we camp out right around here somewhere and wait until dawn."

"I–I admit I could use it," Alvi told her. "I'm not used to this much walking, and I have been feeling a little sick for some reason."

Joe looked at the sky. "Looks like we might have some rain coming in tonight, so pick a sheltered spot and we'll relax. I should be able to find you enough to eat around here, and I'm afraid drink won't be a problem."

"What about you?" the halfling asked. "Don't you ever eat?"

"Not really," Joe told her. "Long ago I did, and enjoyed it, too. Now — well, all I need is sunlight and water and/or some healthy trees. I can drink and occasionally enjoy it, but that's about all. Just call me very low maintenance."

Somehow, for some reason, it seemed more like a boast than a liability even to Joe. That was definitely a change.

The storm held off, if it was coming at all, but the spot under some large trees that Alvi had picked out and Joe had approved was pretty damned dark. Off in the distance there were lights — thousands of lights, like fireflies congregating in swarms — representing many of the inhabitants of the lower valley, and beyond, a strong glow on the horizon betrayed the even grander City-States built along the river's massive delta. But right on the hill it was dark, and only faerie sight would do.

"You know," Alvi said softly, "all those years growing up, basically imprisoned, all I could do was dream about just this: being out here, free, looking over the whole of the world."

"And now that it's happened, you're seeing that the velvet-lined prison wasn't all that bad?"

"Nope. I'm seeing that I was right. I was never meant to live a lie. Besides, what good is all that if you can't enjoy it? No, the only thing was, I never was sure if I could really make it out here. I'm still not, but today got me through a lot of it."

"Meeting other people without concealing anything about yourself," Joe prompted.

She nodded. "Yeah. I've got to tell you, after the first one or two, I just sort of stopped being afraid. It was crazy. I started getting a kick out of it, out of the way they would make signs to ward off the evil eye or mutter incantations or in a few cases guys actually just kind of stared at all these fits. The thing is, nobody did anything. I mean, if anything, they were a lot scareder of me than I was of them. Scared of me just because I looked wrong to them. Well, who's to say they don't look wrong to me?"

"That's a good attitude if you can keep it," Joe told her. "People can be extremely cruel, and I'm afraid that's one area where the faerie aren't that much different."

"Well, it's not exactly something I can do anything about, is it? I think I decided long ago that this was me and I might as well accept it. It is other people who have trouble with it. I only wish I had the kind of freedom you have with your own form. It would be nice if I had the same."

Freedom… Well, appearances were always for other people, Joe reflected, and no matter what they said, what you looked like defined an awful lot about you to other people, whether those definitions were true or not. Still, Alvi had a point, Joe hadn't been limited to anywhere in terms of going about the whole of the world; she hadn't been denied entry into any of the places of human or faerie where she'd really wanted to go, and she'd never had to worry about carrying supplies, even money or other mediums of exchange. The only thing she wanted, or so she thought, and didn't have was her old form back. Listening to Alvi, it didn't sound like a bright thing to wish for, and for the life of Joe, she wasn't at all sure why it would be such an advantage here, either. Had she been so depressed because she was no longer the mental and physical image of Joe's upbringing, or was it because her current form seemed so limiting? When it wasn't boring, when you were off to new places and on a new quest, it didn't seem all that much of a problem.

She cut that train of thought off almost as if it were dangerous. That way was the way of assimilation, the way to a sort of death, from her point of view. If she ever completely accepted this wood nymph incarnation and found it totally comfortable and natural, then she would truly be a wood nymph. She would cease to want to be what she was and have problems understanding why she'd once wanted anything else, and that would be that. Joe, the old, original Joe, would be dead, and she'd be somebody else.

"But you'd also grow old, and infirm, and eventually die," a voice inside her whispered. "You already missed out on being a parent; you hardly know your son and wouldn't have much in common. Beyond that, you would lose your health, your skills, and your ability to pursue adventures. Why do you want to be a man again? You liked it enough at the time, but you haven't met many men you've liked since becoming like this, have you? You think of men now and you see aging, leering assholes. Face it — you really can't remember what you liked about it, can you?"

Get out! Get out! Change the subject! Think of something else! Don't start arguing or thinking too deeply. Think of something else! Think about… Alvi.

The halfling's problems were quite different. She was trying against very tough odds finally and for the first time to be her real self. I wouldn't want to be her; Joe thought sincerely, not because of the grotesqueness of the form, which might be quite comfortable, but because it would be tough to be one of a kind and, worse, to be ostracized, cut off from much of this world. Getting Alvi an acceptable form was essential; otherwise she faced a life of quasi-exile in the lousy places of Husaquahr, along with a lot of other monsters, either eking out a subsistence living somehow or becoming practically enslaved to get the essentials. Right now, with Joe providing food and guidance and shepherding her through the region, she could see only the wonders.

Could this Great McGuffin, whatever it was, really change her into a real human woman? And Joe, perhaps, back to a youthful, muscular barbarian hero? Perhaps a restored Joe and a humanized Alvi together, barbarian warrior and consort, would go roaming the land in search of adventure.

That was a vision worth holding on to, if she could.