Songs of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER 12 THE MALICE FROM THE PALACE

After a while they began to tell the warning signs of strain under the ice well in advance; they began to anticipate and avoid trouble, and became more confident of acting within the Devastation.

It continued to be a very dangerous place, of course, intolerant of all false moves, but it was no longer a place neither understood nor abnormally feared, if one respected its own unique Rules and powers.

No longer feeling the threat of pursuit, and with Macore leading a careful and meticulous examination of what was and was not possible within the eerie area, they actually grew confident enough to try a few things that made life much easier. The blocks of ice proved unnecessary in the end, although one still had to be very careful, and that alone improved both men’s speed and comfort. Still, by sunrise, exhaustion was setting in. First it was Marge, already ill-suited for this journey and always having to force herself to work by day, then Mia, who’d had a full previous day, much of it strenuous, and Macore, who had earlier gone into the Devastation with his tests. Joe understood perfectly; he was going by force of will alone, determined that he would at least be the last to be seen failing.

“We aren’t going to make it.” Macore sighed wearily. “We’re just too all in, and we’re—what? Halfway, maybe, or a little more?”

“We can’t exactly do much else but press on,” Joe pointed out. “If we’re on target, to our right and left this goes on for fifty to a hundred miles, and it’s at least twenty back and maybe that forward.”

“Then we’re going to have to figure out some way to get some rest in here,” the thief responded.

“What do you suggest? Spread blankets and nod off?” the mercenary asked. “Lie on a blanket and you’ll draw Technicolor after a while, no matter what. Lie down in the snow and you might not, but the cold will transfer in through these furs and freeze our sweat.”

Macore stopped, knelt down, and examined the snow. “Maybe not. It’s very dry, powdery stuff, and there’s absolutely no wind in here. I suggest we take turns. One of the girls and one of us. We might get frostbite or worse, but if one each of us is up, we can watch over the sleepers, both for signs of freezing or any magic buildups. A blanket roll can act as a pillow, keeping the head up and our breath heading upward. I think it’s possible. On the other hand, it’s got to be possible. Otherwise we’re gonna drop one by one and get the full treatment anyway.”

“I can keep myself awake,” Joe told him, although he wasn’t all that sure he really could. “You take it first, Macore.”

“I will stay up with you, Master. I, too, can remain awake,” Mia insisted.

He shook his head. “No, Mia. I want one of the two of us at least to be in some kind of shape, and Marge is going to be a lot easier forcing herself to stay up now than in midday. Most of all, I trust you totally to keep me out of trouble while I’m out, so I might actually be able to rest; I’m not sure I’d trust Macore.”

It was a tough watch, although not particularly a boring one, as Mia would turn or shift, threatening to breathe down on the ice, only to have to be turned back, and Macore proved a fitful sleeper. Time and again there would be magical agitation starting, causing either Joe or Marge to have to make adjustments. In between, the two guardians had nothing to do but talk.

“Well,” Marge sighed, “here we are again, in the middle of it. It seems as if we keep doing it, theme and variation, over and over again. Same old challenges, same old enemies.”

He nodded. “When we started off, it felt like old times, but it’s grown old quickly,” he told her. “I’m tired, Marge. Tired of being pushed around by forces over which I have no control, tired of being the only guy who can fight this or that villain, tired of playing the game. Sooner or later, my luck’s got to run out. The worst part is, I’m almost afraid that it won’t.”

“Huh?”

He gave a long, mournful sigh. “I keep thinking of what Sugasto said about Ruddygore—that the old man was maybe thee oldest living sorcerer, that he’d been playing the game so long that he was playing it on automatic, just to keep playing, with nothing but temporary objectives. Pushing pawns around the board like us, doing it again and again. Maybe Ruddygore loves the game for its own sake, but I don’t. I know evil is always around and all that, but we small few can’t be the only ones who can fight it. We can’t be. Most heroes and heroines in the stories and legends get no more than three shots and they’re gone, happily-ever-aftering or riding off into the sunset. We just seem to be going on and on and on.”

“I know what you mean,” she admitted to him. “I’ve been doing this to relieve the routine imposed on me, but it gets riskier and riskier each time, and I have more to lose. It would be nice just to have a break. A real long break to relax and smell the flowers and maybe see a little of this big world without having always to run for it or fake it. Even Macore—the old Macore would never have gotten so hung up on this stupid Gilligan’s Island thing. He may have gone nuts over it, but it wouldn’t have been his whole life or the focus of his dreams. I just wonder if we haven’t shot our wad. The Rules tend to follow the story and legend requirements pretty well here. Usually, after great adventures, the grand epics go, there comes a time, almost always at the end of the third book, when the supervillain is vanquished, taken out. Forget that happily-ever-after stuff, though; that’s fairy tales for kids, and even the Grimm tales really were grim until Walt Disney rewrote them.”

“What are you getting at?” he asked her, feeling a bit uneasy.

“I think we’re stuck, doing this over and over again, until we take the bastards out. And I mean out. Then it’ll be some new class of villains to be set against some new set of heroes. There’s really no end of it until we die or they do.”

“Could be,” he admitted. “But—how the hell are we gonna take out a world-class sorcerer like Sugasto? And the Baron just keeps slipping away more and more. We had him in our hands, under our complete control, and let him slip away.”

“That’s the point. It was supposed to happen then. If we’d taken the Baron completely out, then and there, no matter what plots Ruddygore came up with, it would have been over for us. Sugasto is Ruddygore’s problem. He picked the S.O.B. to be an adept and then exiled him in the Lamp, rather than kill him in a wizard’s duel; then, when he needed the Lamp, Sugasto was loosed again. The Baron’s ours.”

“You ever think maybe he let the Baron go? That is, made it possible?”

“Huh? Why?”

“To keep us in. To keep from having to go against Sugasto with a green crew. And, most important, because I am the only one the Rules will allow to meet this threat. I’m not going to make that mistake again, though. If I ever have another crack at the Baron, it’s him or me.”

“You’ll get that crack. You’ll both keep getting at each other until one of you goes. That’s the system. The trouble is, even if we get him, it’s not necessarily happy-ending time.”

“What do you mean?”

“From King Arthur to Bilbo Baggins, when the ultimate evil in a world is vanquished, it’s after the good guys have given all they can. Even the ones that pull through have had it. They always seem to wind up sleeping beneath a hill, like Barbarossa, or sailing off into the mists toward some Old Heroes Retirement Haven, whether they’re human or fairy. They Ve done their bit, they’re tired and worn, and they just want out. Isn’t that what you were saying?”

He nodded. “Sort of. I don’t necessarily want out of life, though—I’ve got a son, after all, and somebody I love. I just want out of the game.”

She nodded. “I just wish I could shake the feeling I’ve had since Ruddygore’s place that the buy-out is pretty damned heavy.”

“You’re Little Miss Gloom and Doom this morning, aren’t you? Now I’m really not looking forward to this!”

The system did work, and when the sun was nearly overhead, they awoke the sleepers, detailed their own problems in watching over them, then tried it themselves. By dusk, all of them had at least some decent sleep and without real incident, although Mia had to admit quietly to Joe that it was well that she was a slave devoted to her master; otherwise, she would have killed Macore long before he got to recounting Episode Forty-One.

Although all of them still felt tired and physically wrecked, they made the other side shortly before dawn the next morning, to find that they were less than three miles south of the palace complex. Shrouded in clouds and mist, it was an imposing place, less a palace than a true island with a massive building at its center. It rose, black and forbidding, out of the ice, a massive volcanic cinder cone, with hissing fumaroles and geysers occasionally shooting from its flanks. It wasn’t all that much above the ice pack—perhaps twenty or thirty feet—but it was a clear oasis.

“Odd. I always thought of volcanoes as two miles high and snow-capped,” Marge remarked. “Still, Hawaii is a bunch of volcanoes and much of it seems fairly low. That’s because you’re only seeing the top of the volcano; the other couple of miles are underwater. It might be that much of that is really under the ice.”

Macore nodded. “I keep wondering about its relation to the Devastation. It’s so close, yet its great heat stops at the ice. It’s as if all the heat that was removed from that great inland sea to freeze it was somehow stored up here.”

Joe pointed through the mists of dawn at towers rising from the fog-shrouded island. “Well, there’s the palace. Tons of magic in there. God! You try it with fairy sight and all you get is night time again!”

Mia looked around. “I am more curious as to why there are no guards, Master, or terrible traps.”

Macore shrugged it off. “Nobody,” he said, “is supposed to get this far. When you build a fortified wall and fill it with every defense imaginable, you don’t also stick alarms and forts all over the inside. We’ve bypassed their impregnable defensive rings, which, I’ve no doubt, are nearly that. But the Rules always provide a blind spot. Don’t get cocky, though! Joe’s right—that place is black as pitch on the magical level. It’ll have its own internal security staff and gimmicks. Trip one and it’ll bring the full powers of both sword and sorcery down on us with nowhere to escape.” He looked at the place. “I wonder where they’d put my video gear?”

“Gear second, Macore,” Joe told him. “The bodies first. If we don’t get the bodies, the rest, your gear, our necks, won’t matter. The odds are, too, that those bodies will be inhabited by somebody and those bodies will have the capabilities we had, so they’ll be excellent fighting machines and well-guarded to boot. Once we finish them, then we’ll try for your gear.”

“Uh-uh. You do your business, I do mine. Once you do in those bodies, all hell will literally break loose, and I’ll have no chance. Once we’re inside, we’re no longer a company. You three go your way, I’ll go mine. If I can help, I will, but that’s as far as it goes.”

There was no reasoning with him on that, and Joe was frozen stiff. Taking advantage of the clouds of steam and fog and the cover that the time just before dawn still gave, they moved toward the massive black region.

The moment they stepped onto it, they knew they were in a different realm. Surrounded by ice, the island, perhaps a half mile around, felt as warm and tropical as back home in a Marquewood summer. For the first time, Joe and Macore both felt the effects of painful frostbite on their faces. They forced themselves to ignore it as much as possible, and Joe, at least, knew that healing would be rapid, thanks to his were curse. He still had a bloody area in his coat and under it where the crossbow bolt had struck, but already there was no sign of a puncture at the skin.

“We’re gonna have to stash these furs,” Macore noted. “I’m starting toward ‘well done’ already, and they slow me down. I’d say we pick a spot in these rocks and try to conceal them. We may need them again, if we have to take the backdoor out of here.”

Everyone was surprised to discover that, under it all, Macore wore his gun-metal gray thiefs outfit. It was patched and well worn, but it looked like the old Macore once more.

“I stole it back, too,” he explained. “I wouldn’t feel exactly me without it, and it’s a bit of a walk to the nearest tailor’s.”

“I wish I’d thought of that,” Joe admitted. “It looks like I’m going to make my play wearing just a sword and swordbelt. I don’t even think the boots are a good idea. For one thing, they’re getting very soggy now that they’re warm and, for another, they’ll make noise and give little traction up here. Still, I’m gonna be pretty damned embarrassed if I get into a fight.” He looked at Mia and grinned. “Now we are a pair, aren’t we?”

Clothing secured, they began moving up the slope, quietly, low to the ground. Marge signaled a halt, then flexed and un-flexed her wings. “Stay here a couple of minutes,” she whispered. “Let me check out what’s” around.”

“Be careful!” Joe warned. “They see or detect you and it’s all over.”

She nodded, then rose into the air, circled around, and was gone into the mist. She was gone only a minute or two, then came back beside them. “Feels like a Turkish bath on the top there. From the humidity, I can guess the heat. Up top are formal gardens of some kind all organized around thermal pools. It’s very pretty, really. There’s some statues of various Hypbor-eyan gods in the gardens and I’d watch out for ’em. They all felt magically ‘hot,’ as it were. The gardens lead to the palace itself, first to a kind of porch with some fancy pools that seem built like Jacuzzis. Beyond those are arches that take you right inside the place.”

“Any guards?” Joe asked.

“Two bored-looking Bentar. Not like soldiers—just sort of wandering around like night watchmen. Careful, though. They have swords on, and, remember, only iron can hurt them. I’d steer clear if I could, though. The sounds of a swordfight this early will bring lots of folks running, and the Bentar can screech like mad if they’re hurt.”

Mia had her knife in her hand, but as they moved over the top and onto the gardens, she held it for a while in her teeth. The blade was an iron alloy; it would harm Bentar, but not easily.

The gardens truly were beautiful, a tropical Eden surrounded by the ice just beyond. Exotic trees and bushes were planted all over in a masterwork of royal gardening that obviously supplied the palace and also was in its own way a work of art.

If the gardens were Eden, then the statues placed here and there through them were Hell. Ugly, monstrous gods, on pedestals, each with its own small altar. Demonic figures, some reptilian, some ghastly distortions of the familiar, some with bat wings, and a few just indescribably loathsome. A statue for each main tribal god of any of the Hypboreyans, obviously, all gathered here for equal homage before the ruling family in a grotesque symbol of national unity.

Joe stared at one particularly vicious-looking doglike thing and thought, Now at least I know where the Hypboreyans get their sunny dispositions.

Still, Hypboreya was supposed to be a harsh land, requiring a particularly tough and ruthless breed to tame and keep tamed. Such people bred their own gods in their own images. They all felt what Marge had felt looking at the things. It was as if those grotesque miniatures were somehow alive, aware of them, and looking at them with malice. They gave them a wide berth.

There was the sudden sound of someone walking toward them from the direction of the palace, and they were immediately behind the hedges and in the bushes on both sides. Pretty soon a Bentar appeared, looking, as predicted, bored and sleepy. He was wearing a spiffier uniform than the regular troops, possibly a palace uniform, and wore a gold-encrusted sword and carried a bronze-tipped wooden pike, which he was using almost as an idle cane or walking stick. Joe’s hand went to Irving’s hilt, but he did not draw. One motion, he thought, directing that thought to the sword. There must be no unnecessary noise.

The guard walked past Joe, then stopped and looked a bit puzzled, his reptilian nostrils flaring. He turned, more curious than alarmed, away from the swordsman toward the opposite low hedgerow where Joe knew that Marge and perhaps Macore were. Joe did not wait; he drew and pounced with a single motion.

The Bentar turned at the noise and reflexively put up the pike to ward off the inevitable blow, but the great sword sailed right through it, splintering the wood, and continued on through the guard’s neck. There was that distinctive electrical crackling of fairy death, then the body, its head almost but not quite severed from the neck, sank to the path.

“Macore! Mia!” Joe cried. “Quickly! Help me with the body and stuff. We have to get rid of it! Marge—keep a watch!”

The inside of a Bentar both looked and smelled more foul than the living exterior did, but Joe and Macore got it, as well as the pieces of the pike, and Joe dragged the body by the feet well into the trees and against the bushes. Mia wasn’t immediately to be seen, but there was too much to do to worry about her yet. There was no guarantee that the body wouldn’t be found before it decomposed, although fairy bodies tended to decompose in a matter of hours, but it was at least completely out of sight of any of the paths. It would have to do, as usual, Joe thought sourly.

Mia ran up to him, looking pleased with herself. “The other’s throat is cut and he is behind the hedges over there, Master,” she told Joe. “It is so simple when they expect nothing.”

Joe wasn’t sure if he was pleased or not, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, in any event. “Okay, let’s get up there and inside as quickly as we can,” he told them. “Marge, I’d ask you to fly up and peer in the windows up there, but I’d swear some of those gargoyles around the ledges just moved.”

“I saw ’em,” she told him. “I think they’re night guardians, though, and likely going to sleep now, as I should be in normal circumstances. Let me take some care and see what I can see while you move up.” Noting their looks of concern, she grinned.

“Relax. If worse comes to worse lean make them think I Yn the sexiest female gargoyle they ever laid eyes on.”

They moved up, bush by bush, hedge by hedge, toward the huge stone patio. It was hot, even the ground, making Marge’s prediction true.

“I can’t figure out where the zombies are,” Macore whispered, puzzled.

“Huh?”

“Well, why use Bentar for duty like that when you’re the Master of the Dead? This is the perfect place to program zombies to capture or kill anybody who doesn’t have the password of the day. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not going to complain,” Joe answered, but he admitted that he had wondered the same thing.

Marge came down and joined them again. “Most everybody’s still asleep, from the looks of it,” she told them. “There are two big towers—this one and the one opposite—and then a big, almost circular level in between, with guard walks on top and two, maybe three storeys below. You’ll never guess what’s in the middle of the circle.”

“A hole,” Joe responded. “What?”

“The crater. The opening to the lava. A bubbling, hissing lake of the stuff maybe twenty feet down below ground level. Right in the center is a single column of very hard, shiny-looking rock that comes up a little above ground level. And right in the center of it is growing this tree! A weird-looking type I’ve never seen or heard of before. It’s magic, all right.”

“Any sign of what we’re after?” Joe asked her.

“Uh-uh. This side looked strictly royal, anyway. I’d guess we came in on the wrong side. I couldn’t get much of a look into the opposite tower, but I’ll tell you that it’s the center for this darkness. It’s got to be the place.”

Joe nodded. “Any way to go around?” “Not that I saw. At the extremes of that circle I talked about, it actually juts out and away from the volcano on both sides. The drop looks sheer. Unless you want to go back down and onto the ice and around, you’re stuck going through the building.”

“The hell with the ice,” Joe told her. “We came to break in here, so we might as well do it.” And, with a cautious look around, they made their way up the stone stairs, past the two inviting-looking pools, and into the palace proper.

“Want to check out this tower just in case, Master?” Mia asked him.

“Uh-uh. We may blow it, but the other one looks most likely, and I’d hate to run into any watch here.” He looked at two inner arches, each seeming to angle away from the tower hall. “Ma-core, you and Marge take that route, Mia and I will take this one. If Marge is right, we’ll meet in a hall similar to this one on the other side. If we meet anyone or are discovered, though, they’ll come to only one pair, not both.”

Macore nodded. “Anything as vital as my gear would likely be in the magician’s tower as well.”

They went down their corridor, Joe with sword drawn, Mia with knife at the ready. Joe was still puzzled; by this point after dawn, this place should be crawling with servants—slaves, most likely, knowing these folks—and guards and maybe the living dead, so that, when the masters of the joint finally got up, they’d have breakfast prepared and everything cleaned and secured and ship-shape. Where in hell was everybody?

When they got closer to the outer part of the circle, there were arches and windows looking out on what would normally have been the inner courtyard. They crept to it, looked out, and saw the narrow stone walkway around the steaming, boiling pit whose, tremendous heat even Mia could feel; in the center was the strange tree. It grew out of the top of a needle of pure obsidian, somehow immune to the forces, churning around it; a massive trunk indicating great age, its bark an odd purplish color, its limbs spreading out almost all the way over the fire pit. The thick frondlike leaves appeared to be made of pure polished gold, catching the sulfurous fumes from the pit; from the limbs, under the leaves, the tree bore a pearlike fruit of shining, reflective silver.

Joe tried to use his inner self to sense what might be in the tree, whether nymph or demon or imprisoned god, but there was no sensation of any consciousness there. Yet, in fact, it was a living tree, although of what alien origins it was impossible to tell.

He seemed almost hypnotized by it, and Mia had to jolt him back to reality. “Hurry, Master! Before we are discovered!”

They went on, and were two-thirds of the way to the other tower, when Mia, who’d taken the lead, suddenly raised her hand for him to halt. “Listen, Master! Strange sounds from just below!”

Joe stopped, trying to tune out the rumbling and hissing from the fire pit, and he heard what Mia was hearing faintly, through the background—the song from Gilligan’s Island.

“Macore?” he mused. No, that wasn’t possible. First of all, it was coming from perhaps the floor above theirs, and, also, there were the voices, the background music…

The background music?

“There’s an arch out there,” he told her. “Keep a watch and out of sight. I’ve got to find out what’s going on up there.”

She didn’t approve, but didn’t have a say in the matter. A steep stone stair led up to the next level from each archway. Keeping close to the wall and hoping that nobody was looking out the other side, he went up, halted just before the top, then cautiously peered into a huge area and gasped.

Well, there was Macore’s equipment, all of it. The tiny television had been recharged or was getting some kind of magical charge its transformer could handle, as was the small portable video tape recorder. The room was full, almost densely packed, with dozens, maybe many dozens, of the same sort of soulless, brainless living dead they’d seen on the plateau what seemed ages before.

Here, then, was the entire missing zombie staff, standing there, motionless, transfixed, watching Gilligan’s Island.

He made his way back down to Mia and told her what he’d seen.

“But, Master—they have no souls or wills of their own! How can they possibly be watching a show!”

“I don’t have an explanation for that, and I don’t think I want an explanation for that,” he told her. “Maybe there’s some weird frequency in the thing that scrambles the spell. Maybe it’s just that the show has finally found its perfect audience.” He shook his head in wonder. “It’s enough for now to know where those creatures are and not have to worry about them. Let’s get going! People are going to start waking up and be all over here any time now, no matter what!”

Still, Joe was worried about just how easy it was to get in, and just how empty the passages were. True, here and there they had been required to flatten themselves to the wall or crouch behind something, or duck outside or in, but the place overall seemed ominously deserted, as if everything and everyone of importance had moved elsewhere, leaving nothing but a maintenance staff. That idea disturbed him more than a dozen sword-fights and magicians—that, after all they had gone through, they were too late or, almost as bad, were in the wrong place.

In the main hall of the second tower, Mia turned to him as if to say, “Now what?” and he motioned for her to go cautiously up the stairs.

The first tower level proved to be sleeping quarters, and in the halls were both Bentar guards and some female slaves going back and forth, all as naked and shorn as Mia. That gave her an idea.

“They won’t know one female slave from another, particularly the Bentar, Master,” she whispered. “Let me just see who’s here by pretending to be one of the staff.”

He nodded, figuring he could cover her, and also figuring that, at this point, they had little to lose. Again, he had to admire her guts, handing him her knife and simply walking brazenly down the hall. As she’d suspected, the Bentar gave her not a second glance, all humans probably looking alike to them, anyway, and if the handful of slaves there noticed a stranger they did not react. The odds were that there were a fair number of slaves here, if only to feed the egos of the masters, and quite often new ones would turn up these days.

Joe remained in the stairwell, nervous that someone would come down or come up, but Mia managed to make the circuit, looking as if she were on a real task for somebody, and come back before anyone did.

“All sleeping quarters, Master. They are simply cleaning up.

I do not like to say so, but this level does not look very used. At best, there was one or two rooms that appeared slept in.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m beginning to get a real sinking feeling about this. Let’s move up.”

The second tower level seemed deserted, but there were only a few doors on either side, so they made their way cautiously down on both sides, then opened the doors. One proved to be a sort of sorcerer’s laboratory, but with almost everything looking closed and put away, not used for some time. The other was some kind of meeting or briefing room. Joe was about to signal a move up again when there came the sounds of heavy boots ascending the stairs. He and Mia quickly ducked into the meeting room and shut the door, hoping that this wasn’t the morning guard showing up for a briefing right there.

The bright light of day pouring through the windows along the far wall made Joe suddenly realize how late it was getting. “We might have to hide in here most of the day,” he told her in a low tone. “Moving around until dusk is going to be more and more difficult, no matter how empty this place is.”

“Uh-Master?”

“Yes?”

“Do you notice that the room seems to be getting darker?”

He turned and tensed. Sure enough, in spite of the light from outside, it did seem to be getting significantly darker inside.

There was a sudden sound from above and in back of them, metallic yet not like a sword, and suddenly, from overhead, an enormous bright light shone down, the product of a candle set inside an assemblage of mirrors to form a basic spotlight aimed at the small stage in front.

Tense, sword drawn, Joe turned back to where that spotlight shone.

“Ta tata, ta tola, ta ta dah dah dah dee!” a sexy woman’s voice hummed playfully from the stage. From stage left, the spotlight caught just a leg, curved suggestively, and then, from behind, the woman stepped out.

The soul inside and the amount of time that had passed made the same body look far less like the old Mahalo McMahon; this was a gorgeous, sexy sex kitten, at once playful, sensuous, erotic as hell, and, for all that, dangerous. Then big brown eyes darted momentarily over in their direction, and just for a moment a wicked, playful smile came to her face, and Esmilio Boquillas shone through.

In a soft, sexy voice, she sang, “I enjoy bein’ a guy bein’ a girl like me.”

She looked down at the pair, and the smile broadened. “Sorry, but I do so like a good entrance.”

Joe didn’t wait, starting a spring right toward the stage, but she lifted up a hand and a series of yellow magic strings sprang from it and held both him and Mia fast. He couldn’t move forward. He stopped struggling and relaxed.

“You’ve got your powers back!” he said, amazed.

“A mere shadow of my former powers,” she responded, “but enough for the likes of the two of you.”

“How long have you known we were here?”

“Why, darling, I’ve been simply mad waiting for you to arrive! I knew the moment we discovered that the little thief had been captured over on the other side that you would have to follow. In fact, I’ve been waiting ages, ever since I let that little spy escape with the news that we had your old bodies here. Good old Ruddygore! I just knew he wouldn’t fail me!”

“It will be Judgment Day before Ruddygore helps you, and you know it!”

“Oh, but he has helped. More than I could ever have done on my own. In fact, I owe it all to him. First, his silly little ego that made him think he could control Boquillas like a puppet and that a Boquillas with enough foresight to have prepared this soul transfer as a last resort into this marvelous body wouldn’t also prepare defenses against the sort of control spells he’d use. Second, not realizing, as I would not have, that he’d done what the whole Council couldn’t, given me some power again on my own. More than enough with my mind to unravel his leashes.”

“How did you get those powers back?” Joe asked, testing occasionally die spell that kept him where he was and to no avail. “They said when the Council lifted somebody’s power it was impossible ever to get it back.”

“Oh, do struggle, my dears! The tighter you struggle, the tighter it holds.” She sat perched on the side of the stage, the smile on her lips impossible to erase.

“It is true, my old powers are gone,” she admitted. “But you’ve heard it said that there’s a little witchcraft in all us girls. I wouldn’t have believed it myself until I became one, but once I realized there was real power there after becoming one myself, I knew instantly how to use it. Mahalo McMahon, as it turned out, was better than that. She was high priestess of the Neo-Primitive Hawaiian Church or some such thing. I also realized that I had it only so long as I remained female. That was no hardship; I decided I liked being a girl! I liked particularly the way men looked at me, the way they’d get all silly and fall all over themselves just because I batted an eye at them or swiv-eled a hip. It was a whole new level of power and control. And because I again had some power and the knowledge of how to use it, I could walk without fear, which is what keeps most women down. As a man, I’d never had much use for sex, except as a tool in my work, as powerful as it was. I began to discover how much I’d missed over all that time, how much fun it was to be a real person. The Rules decided that I was a witch, which was fine, but, thank the fates, I didn’t have to be the Dark Baron or the Dark Anything anymore.”

“I’m glad to see you found your true calling,” Joe responded sourly. “The Wicked Bimbo of the North.”

She laughed. “I owe that to you and Ruddygore and the others, too,” she said. “All those years, all that enormous effort, all for the noblest of ends. Then I was exiled to Earth, and saw so many political and economic systems, all launched for noble purposes, and I saw homelessness, starvation, misery, and despair. Some worked better than others, but not a one of them really worked any better than our own systems here. In disgust, the demoted demons and I decided to wipe it all away, but you stopped that, and I’m so very happy you did, my darlings. For the first time, I’m totally honest, even with myself, and totally free of those hang-ups. Now, for the first time, I can look myself in the mirror and know that I’m doing what I do and choosing what I choose for no other reason than because being bad is so much more fun!”

She frowned, staring suddenly at Mia, who was staring back, furious at Boquillas. “Why darling, that suits you just wonderfully, looking like that! One of my little ideas that’s turned out so nicely. I never had much liking for women when I was a man and, now that I am a woman, I find I like other women even less than before. What a wonderful comeback, darling, and I had nothing to do with it! Ruddygore himself went to great lengths to insure you would sink to slavery.”

“I have always been a slave, you witch! You should know! You killed Tiana, my mistress!” Mia shouted.

For a moment Boquillas looked genuinely puzzled and confused, but then she stared at Mia, then at Joe, reading the small spells Ruddygore had woven, and broke into laughter. “Oh, my! That is amusing!” she managed after a bit. “My dears, I didn’t kill Tiana, let alone import some royal slave bimbo. How could I? You had the Lamp, which was the only way across at the time. Ruddygore wanted to insure that you would be lean, mean, and totally loyal and unwavering to the mission.

“You are Tiana, my sweet. You always have been.”

“No!” Mia wailed. “It is not true!”

But Joe almost instantly realized that it was true. So many more things made sense if it was, and there was no getting around the transportation problem that Boquillas so neatly pointed out. There was no way that a Mia could have fooled him so thoroughly and for so long those first few months back. And, before they returned, Ti could read quite well, even English. Ruddygore again, playing with and manipulating everyone as pawns in his grand game. The Rules had not reduced her to this; Ruddygore had created the conditions so that upon landing this result was inevitable.

It became suddenly obvious, the whole plot. Her intuitive skills with weapons, for example. And what was it to Ruddy-gore, who could mess with both their memories and perceptions, to give her the dance, maybe taken from some strippers he’d seen in San Francisco, or some of the basic skills, like mending and tailoring? Why a slave? Because, otherwise, she could not be pared down to the tough essentials to get her to this point, and certainly not to aid in the destruction of the way back.

And all that so that they could stand there, captive of their worst enemy?

The “Mia” personality, so nicely adjusted by Ruddygore’s spells, rebelled against the truth, but Boquillas was ready for that. “Let me simply disentangle those rather simple little spells that blinded you both. Won’t take a second, and it clears away all that messy stuff.”

Tiana stopped protesting and suddenly gasped. “Then it is true,” she said simply.

Boquillas smiled. “Of course it is. And you will be very, very helpful to me. You see, as our palace slave, in reality the role you were handed by Ruddygore’s fiction, compelled to obedience, you will be my closest advisor and critic. With you advising me, dressing me, prompting me, there will be no question in anyone’s mind that I am the one and only original Tiana. And after I am in control and beyond threat, you will continue to be there to serve me and do whatever I command, living life at its lowest while watching me live yours.”

“So you plan to be the one in Tiana’s body,” Joe said.

She nodded. “Of course. I can’t be you, since I’d lose what powers I have regained, and, as I said, I rather like being this way. In fact, I shall be sad to leave this body for the more, ah, statuesque proportions of Tiana, but we can’t have everything, can we?”

“I see. And what about me?”

She gave that wicked Boquillas smile once more. “But that’s so simple, Joey baby! It’s the most delicious part of all of it! We’ll just slip little old you back into that marvelous body you had, whose statues don’t do you justice, and you’ll be right there, unimpeachable, convincing, truly returned, reinforcing my own image, with your great sword living as absolute proof that it’s you. You’ll leave the decisions to me, of course, but you mostly did that when you were reigning with her anyway.”

“You bastard! What makes you think I’ll do anything of the sort?”

“Oh, Joey baby! As a man who was just taken in by the simplest little old spell in Creation, you really don’t think you have a choice, do you? If old Ruddypuss can convince you that this girl is not Tiana, how much simpler will it be to build a scenario in your mind that I am? And you’ll be much too lovesick to do more than forgive and accept whatever I decide to do. Why, you have to create love potions and charms just to get into Witchcraft 101. Besides, if all else fails, there’s always your son to hold you, isn’t there? There are all sorts of possibilities with the boy!”

He knew at once that Boquillas was right and that they’d all been had, even Ruddygore. Boquillas had understood that in the critical first week they returned unannounced, they’d be under a microscope by politicians, courtiers, and top-ranked sorcerers. Sugasto couldn’t exactly be around in the nearest closet to bail her out; with her powers still limited, she would at that point be as vulnerable as he would be. After consolidating power, though, and gathering it in, she’d be able progressively to eliminate anyone who might challenge, and Sugasto would take most of Husaquahr without even firing a shot.

Now that was a thought!

“You mean you’ll spend all the time in the great palace as a puppet, doing what Sugasto wants,” he noted. “You have changed, Boquillas. This plot is up to your usual standards, but it’s all so you can become somebody else’s stooge.”

She waved a hand, and many of the yellow bands of magic flowed back into her. He could move again—but not toward her. He could not touch her or make a move in her direction.

“Come over to the window. Yes, that’s it. Come here and look out and tell me what you see.”

He went to the window and looked. Just beyond the tower were other gardens, and, beyond them, the ice pack, and in the distance…

“The Devastation,” he said.

She nodded. “I think you understand some of it now, or you wouldn’t have been able to cross it. A brilliant stoke, by the way, that I admit I didn’t anticipate. You forget that I have the old bodies with many of your patterns. The moment you set foot on this ground, a standing spell informed me that you had arrived.”

“Yeah. So?”

She pointed a slender arm decked with jewels out at the far-off phenomenon. “They’re still there, you know. The battle in full cry. Not just the souls, everything, perfectly preserved. Now, what do you think would happen if this volcano we’re sitting on, a complementary phenomenon to the Devastation you might have guessed, went off? The flow would only reach the edges of the Devastation in most spots, but imagine the heat that would be given off—and the whole frozen valley would warm in proportion. On this world, it would be like the loosing of thousands of hydrogen bombs would be on Earth; An evil that even Hell fears would be loosed once more upon this world.”

“Is that what you want? Still trying to bring about the final war between good and evil?”

“Oh, darling, of course not! Not anymore. I’ve outgrown that, as I told you! But if it’s not me, then it’s them. Sugasto is so conventional, you see. Power-crazed, yes, but his vision is so boring. You see, there is one way to restore all my powers. Only one way. The entire Council, which now includes dear Suggy, would have to reverse their combined spells. Even though not really on it anymore, it would require Ruddygore as well. With my powers” back, in that situation, I would be both temporal and spiritual ruler. My powers would be near absolute. Did you see the tree in the middle of the lava pit?”

He nodded, sickened at her ambitions. “I saw it.”

“It is one of the trees, the original trees, from the Origin of Humanity. Sugasto and the others believe it is the Tree of Knowledge which condemned humanity, as do others, but it is not. It is the Tree of Life. Eat of it, and nothing at all may harm you. With my powers and that fruit, I’ll be a true goddess. I shall walk about my world, worshiped as the one who is truly divine. My reign shall be forever!”

He felt a cold chill. “How do you know which tree it is, or if it’s really one of those?”

“Because, dear one, I’ve done my homework. It is what that battle was about out there. Two Powers, perhaps beyond anything we know, battling to become a third face, not Heaven, not Hell, but beyond and beside it, equal to both. That’s why they got together to stop them, lest one side win and truly become a god.” She shrugged. “I think even supreme beings have Rules, too.”

“There’s only one hole in your grand design,” Joe argued. “Why would Ruddygore and the Council restore your powers? I think they’d rather die first.”

“Indeed? Ruddygore, perhaps, but he knows that, if that were to happen, I’d be freed of the need for him. The others? Die for principle? How amusing you are! The only reason Ruddygore has remained so long is that he has never found a worthy successor, and he won’t. But, you see, he has no choice, and neither will Sugasto. They will all do my bidding, since to toy with me or cast obedience spells upon me or try to do away with me is genocide! I have it rigged, you see—carefully placed mechanisms deep beneath this place, where even I at this point cannot find them. They will blow, this place will blow, the volcano will blow. The heat will melt the Devastation, and the world as we know it will end. Given a choice of that, or restoring me and being allowed to pass on, which do you think your old sorcerer will choose?”

“Aren’t you afraid Sugasto will stop you? He might not be too pleased at this himself.”

“Sugasto, at least, already knows that I’ve wired the place. Right now he thinks we’re partners, destined to be a new god and goddess. He doesn’t think much of women, you know. His own male ego, which I perfectly understand, blinds him to the possibilities.”

Joe turned away from the windows, feeling a cold chill, and saw that heavily armed, mean-looking Bentar now filled the room.

A way out, he kept thinking. The Rules require I have a way out!

He turned back to Boquillas. “Can you answer me one simple question?”

“Of course, darling! A wife to be should have no secrets from her husband!”

“Why are all the zombies gathered around watching Gilligan’s Island?”

She chuckled and shrugged. “Beats me. I, of course, recharged the batteries with a spell to see what someone had on those tapes. I was astonished when I saw what was on them, of course, and, even more, I was absolutely stunned to discover that it seemed to draw every zombie in the palace like a magnet. So far, I haven’t worked out an effective method for turning it off. The spell provides continuous power, and, so far, the zombies will do nothing except prevent anyone from shutting it down. It is a fascinating thing, is it hot? Sugasto will have to take care of it when he returns tomorrow. Inconvenient, but little else. It’s even handy to have something to block Sugasto’s powers a bit. I suspect it’s some broadcast frequency interference that’s acting like a drug to them, but it may be that a zombie retains just barely enough intelligence that it simply entrances them.”

Joe hoped the technical explanation was right. Although he wasn’t feeling all that smart right now, he’d watched the show in the old days now and then himself and found it occasionally funny. He didn’t want to think about what that might say should the second explanation be true.

“Take his sword and lock him in the tower room!” Boquillas ordered the Bentar. “And watch him! He can be tricky and quite resourceful. The one who lets him escape shall feel my anger! The girl I will keep here. She has much to tell me.”

The lead Bentar reached for the sword, then withdrew. “My lady, we cannot take that sword! It’s iron! And so, too, is the belt lined with it!”

Boquillas sighed. “Details, details. Oh, very well.” She withdrew the rest of her spells from him, then walked over to him and began playfully undoing the belt. This is it! he thought.

Joe struck the sorceress with a strong blow, knocking her senseless halfway across the room, then had Irving in his hand in moments. Mia—Tiana—struggled against her magical bonds, still in force, but could not help him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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