Horrors of the Dancing Gods

CRUISING DESTINY'S THREAD

THEY HAD DISCUSSED VARIOUS WAYS OF REACHING YUGGOTH, but eventually the evidence both from Macore and from other old hands around the docks convinced them that the hovecraft was the only reasonable way in. Out was a different question entirely. Additionally, word came by messenger from Ruddygore that their passage had been taken care of, which kind of settled the question. The message also stated that as yet even the nearly all powerful wizard hadn't been able to put a background to the halfling or a true name to the slain stepfather. It seemed almost inconceivable that that much could be hidden from Ruddygore, and this indicated to them all that whoever was behind this was very powerful and very formidable, indeed, in all realms.

The boat sailed once a week from its own private dock about ten kilometers west of the resort. It was a lonely spot, forced on the operator by a tourist industry that didn't want anybody scared off.

In point of fact, it looked like nobody wanted much to do with them. The spot consisted of a large pier, a small closed terminal and ticketing kiosk, and nothing else or any sign that anyone had set up even temporarily to help the passengers either on or off. There wasn't even a large sign to indicate what docked or sailed from this remote place, but somehow, just looking at it, you knew. You could feel it, a kind of deep chill down to your very soul.

Of course, gargoyles on the ticket kiosk didn't help, either.

Large black birds circled above and occasionally came down and landed on the kiosk. The huge yellow-eyed creatures seemed to be the masters of the area; the gulls and others so prevalent elsewhere seemed to avoid the place.

"Ravens," Marge noted. "It figures."

Irving walked up to the kiosk, ignoring the birds, and read the very fancy sign in the window. "Arrives one hour after sundown every Monday, leaves one hour before sunrise every Tuesday. Nice. I wonder what happens if it's late and doesn't get off until sunrise. Does it turn to dust or explode or something?"

Marge yawned. "Well, being a night person myself, I can't complain about the scheduling, but I guess we ought to keep crucifixes and the like around anyway, huh?"

"No religious symbol, for good or evil, has any power without the holder's complete and absolute faith in what it represents," Poquah reminded her. "I'm afraid we are all much too jaded to depend on that."

"Um, yeah. It does sort of put us at a disadvantage," she admitted.

Irving wandered back over, frowning.

"What's the matter, Irv? Second thoughts?"

"No," he replied. "I was just wondering where everyone else is."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

He looked up at the sky for a moment. "I would say we're no more than an hour or so before sundown. It's Monday, so unless they're skipping a week, they should be here in about two hours, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so. So?"

"Well, where's the traffic? Somebody has to use this service. That's a pretty big dock from the looks of it, and the length of space between the knobs they use to tie things up shows a pretty fair-sized boat, too. You don't run a big boat empty. You either run a small boat or no boat, right? But here we are, maybe two hours ahead of the boat, and we're the only ones here."

Poquah looked around and shook his head. "I don't know, but something tells me that we will find the answer to this shortly. I feel it. We will not be the only passengers."

And as the sun set and shadows began to shimmer and then blend into the landscape, he was proved correct.

You needed faerie sight to see them, but Irving's cultivation of some magical powers in his own right had given him that ability, which his two companions had as a matter of course. It was not, however, an unmixed blessing, particularly in this case.

It began with what seemed like the wind, although there was no wind, a great, deep roar of misery, a cosmic sigh of regret, coming, it seemed, from all places at once. Then, slowly, they began to arrive and resolve themselves in the total darkness.

People… long chains of people, male and female, all linked together by spell threads so deep and dense that they seemed jet black. All were nude, and in spite of a deathly pale cast to their skins and a hollow, hopeless series of expressions that were hard to look at, they seemed in the main no older than Irving and in excellent shape. It was easy to see, though, that they were not what they appeared; although they seemed to be regular humans of a number of human racial types, the bodies were actually entirely faerie.

"Human souls," Poquah explained, shaking his head.

Marge was aghast. In all the time she'd been on this world, she'd never seen anything like it. "But — they look so healthy!"

"In a sense they are. This is the true faerie component of humanity," the Imir told her. "Everyone comes out his ideal and ageless self, of course. However, these will soon change, as this material is both malleable and corruptible. It is raw material on its way to the foundry to be reshaped to their new masters' whims."

"Then they're on their way to Hell? Via boat?"

"Perhaps. Some will go there, some won't. Don't think of Hell as a place of eternal punishment. It is not, except in the sense that it is totally removed from all that is Heaven. These people are now at the eternal mercy of Hell and its rulers. In a sense, going the other way is the same thing, but it is generally felt that God and the angels are much better to work under than Satan and the demons. Just don't think of it as necessarily eternal punishment. These people are being sent where their souls' owners wish, to be used for those owners' purposes."

A mysterious tall, dark figure nearby overheard the explanation and came over toward them. It wore a dark robe and hood, and only the glow of two beady red eyes and a larger glow below showed any features at all.

"Hello, brothers and sister," the creature greeted them in a deep but convivial voice that sounded so silky smooth, it reminded Marge of a Texas politician. "Couldn't help overhearing your explanation, there, friend, and you're pretty much on the mark." A black arm went up and took something from the mouth, and as the glow swept down with it, they could see that the mysterious larger object was a very large, fat, and somewhat smelly cigar. "Nimrod's the name. Louie B. Nimrod. That's my string over there." He pointed to a long and typically unhappy lot, and they could now see the nearly absolute black of the spell against the night that linked them to the demon.

"You're taking them to Hell?" Marge asked uneasily. "I thought if you were supposed to go there, you just went."

"Oh, my, no! I'm taking them to Yuggoth, of course. I assume that's why you and everybody else are here. I mean, this boat don't go to Hell, little lady. You're right to some extent about not needing some of this in the more routine operations, but you always got to collect 'em. Even the enemy collects. They generally got an easier collection job than we do, of course. Damn fools actually want to go with them. They don't know the eternity of total boredom that awaits them up there."

"Your reputation for what happens to them after they go with you does not include boredom in general, I'll give you that," Marge commented dryly.

"Oh, it's not nearly that bad. I mean, we're not talking circles of punishment and fiery pits and all that rubbish. Why would we? That would put us in the business of punishing the enemies of our enemy, wouldn't it? That lake of fire business is if we lose, and we've not lost by a long shot. We're at war. These are soldiers. They became soldiers the moment they enlisted in our cause when still alive, and they're even more useful now that they've gone through their enlistment incentives and bonuses."

"Enlistment incen— oh!" Marge suddenly realized that the demon was talking about whatever these people got from demons like Nimrod while still alive. It took a little mental gymnastics to switch points of view here. "So what do they do for you now?"

'Well, now that they're totally ours, they go to work. Privates all, of course. Pretty rare to get instant officer material from the living, although it does happen. These are mostly support troops in the making. We'll put 'em in and train 'em on Yuggoth in the basics. Sort of the ditchdiggers, heavy laborers, that kind of thing. We'll evaluate, test, observe, and the most promising ones will eventually get promoted, while the rest will stay down doing the crap work that always has to be done by somebody. And of course we'll be checking for special skills and aptitudes to develop."

"Is this normal, though?" Poquah asked him. "So many off to Yuggoth instead of to Hell?"

The demon took another puff and then replied, waving his cigar for emphasis like a prop. "See, we don't have to enlist most folks. They volunteer, whether here or on Earth. We don't even bother with them. These, though, are ones I had to enlist. Ones with a real possibility of going the enemy's way. These are the ones we really prize, since they're generally the most useful to us and have the most potential to harm the enemy. We always keep our bargains to the letter, so now they all get their chance before being sent down. It's not always easy, I don't mind telling you! I mean, we don't even bother with the usual types — murderers, rapists, torturers, politicians, lawyers, TV evangelists, that sort. These, now — revolutionaries, wide-eyed save-the-world types, bleeding hearts, guilt trippers — these people all had the best of intentions, the noblest and most self-sacrificing of motives. That's where I come in. My firm, Azaroth, Beelzebub, Zarnath, and Smith, P.A., is one of the top recruiting firms in Husaquahr. Why, in independent surveys by I. M. Power, four out of five of our clients rated us tops in delivering what we say, and our collection rate is among the best in the business. You won't catch ABZS clients haunting houses and stalking graveyards, no, indeed!"

"It is nice to see someone happy in his work," Marge whispered.

Another, larger demon noticed them and came over. "You been puffin' yourself up again, Louie? If you're that good, how come you're workin' the poor side of the street instead of Earth?"

"Seniority, that's all, and you know it!" Nimrod snapped back.

"Seniority, my ass!" the newcomer snapped. "You really want to know, folks? Because we're threatened with a two-front war, that's why! We need every soul in creation to build the dikes in Yuggoth or we're gonna get drowned, that's what!"

Nimrod sounded genuinely shocked. "Blasphemy! Can't nobody beat Hell!"

"Not one on one," the newcomer agreed. "But if we have to fight on two fronts, and if our ancient enemy is willing to turn its back on Husaquahr like usual, then we'll be stuck right in the middle. These souls aren't goin' to no backwater, folks! They're headed for the new front lines!"

"Pardon me," Poquah said with his usual quiet authority, "but do I understand that there is someone attacking your people on Yuggoth?"

"You heard me right, friend," the second demon said, nodding. "Somebody woke up the Ancient Ones from their long sleep and is preparing to let them through. The only common enemy we and you know who have is threatening to get loose. If they break out, half the dark forces will turn traitor just because they see the power, and since we're the ones who'll most get it in the neck over here, Old Sweetness and Light won't intervene until it's probably too late. He'd rather see this whole universe fall than help us. Makes you wonder how they can love a guy like that. And they wonder why we rebelled!"

Marge had a sudden eerie realization of just what the demons and the Imir were talking about. God! God from the opposing point of view…

"They didn't tell me anything about this," Nimrod sniffed. "This was supposed to be a milk run! They promised!"

"Yeah, well, you know what promises are worth," the other demon commented. "Buck up! You might have a chance to lead these miserable souls into battle against the greatest threat we can think of. Think of the glory!"

"Think of the hurt," Nimrod grumped.

The older demon turned from his companion in disgust and sniffed contemptuously. "How come you folks are heading toward Yuggoth?" he asked, apparently no more than curious. "Not too many faerie of your lineage go near the place, and that boy over there — he's red meat."

"Do not underestimate the boy," Poquah warned. "He is working out a destiny under the Rules. As for us, we have been asked to go down and see exactly what you were just speaking about. I am the chief adept and majordomo for Master Ruddygore, and the lady here is a long veteran of his service. The boy is under his general protection."

"Ruddygore, huh? I heard of him. Does he think he's gonna get a progress report from you or what? It's a lot tougher to get out of there than in."

"So we have heard, but do not underestimate our patron, either," the Imir responded smoothly. 'We are under the seal and protection of His Majesty the King who sits upon the Throne of Horror. We should not be considered at risk in any event, I should think. Our job is to see how great the danger and its nature and to see if there is anything the powers of the Council might do to aid in keeping the Ancient Ones where they are. No return, no report."

"Yeah, well, good luck. Yuggoth ain't no place to fool around." He turned, and his eyes blazed. "Hey! I think the boat's comin' in!"

Sure enough, off in the distance there came a tremendous roar that canceled out the sound of wind and waves. It was a massive, powerful, pulsating sound, very regular and very controlled. It had been pulsing fairly fast, but now, as it approached them and the dock, the beat slowed appreciably, and all eyes, even those of the damned, turned in silent anticipation toward the pitch-dark sea. While not disturbing, the sound was certainly like nothing else any of them might ever have heard.

"Hove. Hove… Hove… Hove…"

"Well, it explains the name," Marge commented, trying to keep some semblance of humor and not think too much about what an idiotic thing she was doing even thinking of setting foot on that ship.

For a while there was nothing apparent, but then, out of the gloom, they spotted some lights approaching, lights that grew larger and brighter as they approached the dock.

There were shouts from out in the water, a sudden sense of huge black things suddenly letting go, and a settling of the boat into the water. What those things were they couldn't see; not even faerie sight helped with it except to show the nearly impossible massive shapes that were dark even against the pitch black of the night and that reflected not a thing, hovering up and over the boat, which was now and possibly for the first time floating in the water.

It was a large craft, a hundred meters or more in length, and shaped like an extended oval, with tapered black outer skin going from a thick base that sat in the water up at least three stories to a large enclosed bridge.

As it slid slowly up along one side of the dock and lines shot out from it and from shore to tie it off, Irving commented, "That's some ship!"

Marge nodded, gaping along with Irving. It was a lot more than she had expected but also a lot more menacing for all that.

There was a loud, hollow sound like the noise a million lost souls might make in torment, and from this came an eerie-sounding male voice that sent shivers up their spines.

"The H.P. Lines hovecraft Eibon is now in port. Embarkation for Red Bluffs, Yuggoth, will be precisely one hour before dawn. All those needing passage must have checked in with the ticketing office prior to boarding and turn their documentation over to the purser. Boarding will be possible in one hour. We would reconsider if we were you."

"Cheery," Marge noted. "They don't seem to be anxious for new business, anyway."

"Considering the state of humankind, I suspect they get all the business they can handle as it is," Poquah responded with all seriousness. He turned to keep an eye on Irving, who, as a living, warm-blooded mortal was probably the one in most danger here. The boy was reading some pamphlet he had picked up at the ticket kiosk, which had just opened.

"What is that you are looking at, Irving?" Poquah asked, curious.

The boy showed him the face of the brochure, which contained a drawing of the bow of the ship flanked by a lot of dark shapes around which them was very prominent tiding.

"Hmmmm… Journey to Yuggoth by HP Hovecraft. Rather standard-looking brochure. Any information of interest?"

"Not particularly. Not terribly encouraging, though, either. Sort of says that they wouldn't go if they were us and then describes a bunch of scary stuff." He looked up and toward the boat, which was in the process of off-loading goods and passengers. The odd thing was that although there were again hints of black against black movement, you couldn't see any of the crew or longshoremen at all.

The nature of the cargo also was impossible to determine, but for more conventional reasons: it was all more or less in large boxes, crates, or containerlike rectangular shapes that fitted into or onto the backs of waiting wagons and wagon frames. While some of the smaller boxes did seem to resemble coffins, overall there didn't seem to be much unusual there.

The passengers, however, were something else again. Since they had been warned that nobody who went into Yuggoth tended to be able to leave it, it was something of a surprise to see that traffic did indeed go both ways, after all. These passengers, however, were probably not ones who had gone in before or at least gone in looking like they did now.

"Holy smoke!" Irving exclaimed. 'What are they?"

"They" were several very distinctive-looking women of supernatural endowments with exotic and erotic faces. They were certainly faerie; their skins were deep crimsons and purples and even had streaks of black, their hair was deep purple and thick, tumbling sensuously over shoulders and breasts, and they were wearing shiny form-fitting leather pants and incredibly high heels. They were certainly fliers; the wings on their backs, though, were sleek and stylized batlike appendages.

Marge gasped at the sight of them and felt instant and nearly uncontrollable anger and revulsion. Poquah was ready and restrained her gently.

"Succubi," she spat, saying the word as if it were the vilest of poisons.

Irving seemed impervious to her tone and obvious loathing. "Yeah? I've read about them but never seen them. Funny, except for the colors and the wings and maybe a little more height, they don't look all that different from you."

She spun around angrily. "Don't say that! Don't ever say that!"

In point of fact, though, the Succubi and the Kauri were two sides of the same coin, the yin and yang of a single species. The Kauri could purge or cleanse men of their guilt and burdens through erotic sex and thus performed a service; the Succubi used precisely the same techniques to suck out a man's soul and leave only corruption. Both indeed had precisely the same powers and worked them in much the same way; it was the purpose and limits on those uses that differentiated the good from the evil ones.

The Succubi got into waiting coaches with blinds drawn and roared off, but Marge wasn't off the hook yet. The next group off the boat was a small number of faerie males of much the same stripe. They had muscles on their muscles and the tightest of rear ends; their faces were totally masculine yet erotic, sensual, a male version of the Succubi, and the male organs showing through very tight pants almost as if they were naked were, um, impossible. They, too, were fliers, with wings that were far more pronounced as batlike but that when folded formed a kind of sexy and attractive cloak

"Incubi, the male version," Poquah told Irving. "Neither of the two sexes appears as you are seeing them to their victims, although they do much the same. Instead, they appear as the perfect dream combination, male or female, that the subject most desires or would desire if fantasies were reality. Even with faerie sight they are difficult to resist. Without it they are next to impossible to defend against, since they are the subject's sexual fantasy incarnate. Except for being too good to be true, most mortals would not even recognize them as faerie, let alone as a threat. They're not too common here, though, since any faerie race can see them for what they are and there is no power over us."

They were, however, the beginnings of a parade of very scary sorts, most of whom seemed somehow not quite so frightening in this context. There were vampires and ghouls and beasties and things that went bump in the night and all sorts of scary creatures, as well as a number of quite ordinary-looking people who seemed physically out of place but not the least bit uncomfortable.

"Those are the most dangerous of all," Marge noted quite seriously to Irving. "They look and act just like everybody else, and they're friendly and trustworthy types you'd never look twice at. The vampires and ghouls can go after one or two at a time, but these people can corrupt or destroy whole nations, races, and ways of life, often with no more than a word, or a gesture, or simply a refusal to act. I'd rather deal with a vampire or a ghoul any old day."

Had the Dark Baron once been a passenger like these? She wondered about that. Had he seen the misery and poverty around him here and found nobody but defenders of the system around his own people? He'd been a good man once; they all attested to that. In that sense he, more than anyone else, had been the epitome of the phrase "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." That and the curse of the true intellectual searching for meaning and order in a universe that had little of them. Just one creeping thought, one blasphemous doubt, might well be enough for somebody like him. "If God permits such suffering and misery, perhaps the Devil is right"

In the end the Baron had betrayed both Heaven and Hell, and where his soul had gone was anybody's guess.

All of a sudden it was as if it were yesterday, but with that additional element of doubt. If Joe could somehow survive, in some form, the fall into that lava, then why not the Baron as well?

No, no! That way lay madness.

"You are suddenly disturbed," Poquah noted. "Second thoughts?"

"Tenth thoughts," she responded. "Never mind. Just seeing this dark bunch of villains and knowing where we're headed now kind of brings up all sorts of dark thoughts out of the dim corners of the mind — ones better left where they are, I think. Forget it."

Poquah nodded. "I know what you mean. Wait here and keep an eye on the boy. I'm going to see if the Master did indeed arrange for our passage. I almost hope that somehow he did not."

While Poquah made his way warily through the throngs of the damned toward the ticketing kiosk, Marge went over to Irving, who was simply sitting on the ground, half- reclined, looking at the assembled multitudes with a blank sort of expression.

"Worried?" she asked him.

He shook his head negatively. "Not yet. Maybe when we really get into it, but not now. Sort of neat to see all those white folks in chains. Kind of poetic justice. The rest? Well, I've seen their type before. Ruddygore deals with demons, you know, and I've had some contacts myself. You got to be careful and you can't trust 'em but so far, but overall they're not nearly as scary for what they are as for what they can do to you if you let them."

"Yeah? Well, most kids your age tend to think they're both invulnerable and immortal. The ones who survive to grow up learn different. The rest learn right away."

"I don't think I'm invulnerable, but I don't underestimate myself, either. This is my trial. I don't have to go. I could hang back, and then I'd be just another human in Husaquahr, apprenticed to somebody for a regular job, pushing a pencil or a plow, living and dying a nobody just like most folks. One thing Ruddygore taught me that was important was that some folks — not all, but maybe most — come to some point in their lives, some time and place where they have to decide. They either take a risk, maybe even a superrisk, or they don't. If they don't, they're meaningless to destiny. Most folks don't. They either don't have the guts, or they talk themselves out of it or whatever and spend the rest of their lives tellin' everybody else and themselves what they coulda been. Or they take the risk. A fair number of the ones that do take that risk lose, that's true, but at least they took the risk. They went for it. And a fair number don't lose. A fair number win, too. They're the ones that change history, run things, influence the world, make a difference. That time's come a little earlier here than it does for most folks, or maybe not. Maybe if I'd stayed back in Philly, I'd be on the streets now, either dodging gangs or in one, dealin' dope or bein' shot by tops or rival gangs or who knows? It wasn't a good place where I was. I remember that."

"Do you miss Earth, though?'

He nodded. "Sometimes. Maybe a lot. I also miss my mom. She wasn't all that much, but she was my mother. But that was a bad neighborhood. I wasn't even ten, and I'd lost two friends in shootings. One was coming home from school and just got in the wrong place. The other was sittin' on the front steps one hot night gettin' some air, and a bullet just came and blew him away. You saw the cokeheads and winos and all sorts, and you saw the gangs with their big man leader of the month — usually dead after that. I couldn't even blame 'em. They didn't see any future; they just grabbed whatever present they could. So maybe I'd already be dead or in jail or something. Well, okay. I'm sixteen, and I've had a lot of education here and a lot of training. I'm not the greatest swordsman or archer or knife fighter in the world, but I'm fair at 'em. I'm definitely not a world-class sorcerer, but I know more than most folks. I'm a big guy now, and I'm in pretty decent shape. Now's my time. Now I have to decide to go or stay."

"Well, you are going after your father, such as he or she now is," Marge noted.

"That's not it. Kinda hard to get choked up about somebody you barely knew and don't really remember and who hid from you all this time. The only thing I can say is that he made his own decision at a key time and changed history. He saved the world, and it cost him. But he couldn't follow through. He couldn't save himself, too. I don't know if I'd be any better, but I kind of hope I would. It isn't a question of living up to my dad. It's a question of proving to myself and the world that I'm better than him."

"Do you really hate him that much?"

He shook his head sadly. "No, no. I don't hate him. It's impossible to hate a stranger, the same as it's impossible to love one. To me this Joe is just another common wood nymph."

This was the area where she and Irving had always hit a wall, going round and round, and it was where she was determined to somehow break through. They would need total trust and confidence in the days and weeks ahead, and whatever barriers could be dissolved ahead of time, she knew, should be gotten rid of.

"Deep down inside that form is the same person who loved you, talked about nobody but you, and came for you when he could," she pointed out.

"Yeah? Are you really the same person you were back in the real world, or are you just kidding yourself? Would anybody really recognize the old you inside? Do you ever feel the same, act the same? Do you even really remember what it was like to be human?"

"Listen, kid," she responded, more than a little angry at his tone. "No, I'm not the same person, and neither will you be in another five or ten years if you live that long. But I remember who I was and where I came from, don't kid yourself. And your old man — well, he's a damn fool for what he did this last time, I admit that, but I can understand it, too. When you go from a cross between Geronimo and Conan the Barbarian to a tree nymph, you lose all sense of yourself. No matter what they say, guys like that don't have a sense of women as equals, and they see themselves as some kind of macho studs. It's pride, it's honor, it's everything. It's wrong, but it's their culture and they didn't ask to be born into it. You want to know what his problem is? He's ashamed to be seen. He'd rather be dead, but he can't die, not even like I can die. He considers himself the same as dead, though, and that's why he's hiding out from everybody he knows and loves. It doesn't matter what we think; he can't really see that part, can't accept it. It's the craziest kind of male logic, which I should pass on to you, but he ran away because he loves you so much, he didn't want you to see him this way. Get it?"

"Maybe. Maybe if I had known him better before, I could understand it better," Irving responded seriously. "Sure, I can figure out the line of thought, but it doesn't help me at all, and it can't be taken back. He can't even turn around and give me a father, not now. There's just no bond there on my part, anyway, even if he somehow got changed back and came up looking every bit the macho man on a white horse. The crazy thing is, he did everything right here for so long, then he lost it at the end. I'm not gonna let that happen to me. I'll die first."

"Huh? What in hell are you talking about?"

"See, I was going real good into this magic and sorcery business until a year or so ago. That's when I stopped reading all that crap they've piled on and paid attention not to the Rules so much as to the Laws."

"The what? They're mostly the basics of gravity, ballistics, the bare-bones sciences, aren't they?"

"Most are. But there's one tiny section, and one only, that makes the rest of little or no importance. That's why I stopped much work on it and just started preparing as best I could for the first test."

"What do you mean, Irving? There's something in the Laws about people?"

He smiled and nodded. "It's the system. Like I told you — everybody gets choices, and they either take a chance or forget it. On Earth that's maybe a small number of people to begin with. Here it's everybody. Every human, every mortal, that is. That includes you, too, even if you're a changeling and all faerie now. Same with Joe. It doesn't stop if going past mortal is part of the thing. See, everybody keeps being handed those risk and reward steps. Sometimes it's early, sometimes late, but everybody gets a crack. If you pass on the first one, you may get another, but probably not. You stop being important. You become a slave to the Rules and live out your life, and that's that. If you take it, you might win or lose. If you lose and live, you'll get another crack sometime. If you die, well, that's the breaks. But if you win, you know what happens? You get another monkey wrench thrown into your existence. And another. Finally, if you beat them all, you win the prize. Only if you give up do you lose for good unless you get killed."

"Yes? And what's the prize?"

"Power. Power is everything here. Power is everything on Earth, too, but it's more spread around and not as clear-cut. Every time you get crapped on and fight your way out here, more knowledge and power come to you. Finally there's top status. Ruddygore. Demigod of the Kauris. You name it. Whatever you want that's at the top, you can have. But only if you keep fighting, keep battling back. If you give up, then you're a goner. Look at Dad. High school dropout, failed marriage, failed father, but once he got here, he kept at it and became a hero, a barbarian warrior, a king, and a confident and experienced power to be feared and respected. When he stood there with that lava, he knew what would happen, but he took the risk. He got a body he hated but also kept his mind and gained nearly absolute immortality. He came that close to godhood of a sort, and what did he do? Gave up and ran. That's not going to happen to me. I'm either gonna have Ruddygore's job or I'm gonna be killed getting there. I've spent the last year, year and a half testing myself. Facing demons, challenging myself, getting prepared. Now, here we go. Poquah is my wisdom; you are my experience. And you might well not be done, either. Macore's finished, that's for sure, but you came. There's some kind of thread. Something that binds you, and Poquah, and maybe my father, and even Macore if he'd decided to go one last time, and it leads out there. It leads somewhere. You can't see it, or Poquah, either, because nobody can see their own destiny, but I can, because even though mine is undoubtedly tangled up in yours at the moment, it's not the same."

"You can actually see this thread?"

"In you and Poquah, yes, and it's the same, so I know I'm right. It went from Macore as well, but it will break free of him when we leave without him. Most faerie don't have a thread of destiny; all is sameness. You reach the end of that thread, and who knows what's there waiting?"

"Hold it!" she said, considering the implications. "If you're right, and this thing exists, and that's the system, then what's out there, where this thread leads, is something bigger and nastier and more complex and threatening than any of the massive number of horrors and ancient enemies I've already faced. And Joe — he's had more than me by far."

Irving nodded. "I think so. I'm not sure about dear old Dad; I don't think he's got it in him anymore. But maybe I'm wrong. You got to figure, though, that if what you say is true, then this is the big one. You win, it's over, and you get the prize. Maybe not me, but you. Marge, you're either gonna win this one, or…"

"Or Poquah, your dad, and I are going to cease to exist," she finished, swallowing hard.

"Hovecraft Eibon now ready for boarding at passenger convenience. Passengers only should board, please. Please ensure that you have your boarding pass before coming up the gangplank!"

Poquah was coming back toward them, a fistful of papers in one hand, and Marge had a sudden urge to flee, to launch herself into the night sky and get away from all this.

At the same time, she knew she wouldn't do it. Damn his hide! Ruddygore left few options when he had a job to do, and she'd never be able to live contentedly if she watched Poquah and Irving sail away without her.

She sighed. "Once more into the breach, dear friends," she said softly to herself.

Irving got up and walked toward Poquah. "Here we go," he said simply.

Marge wished she were as ignorant of what this world could deliver as he was, to be able to almost look forward to this trip.