Songs of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER 4 ON CHANGES AND UNCHANGES

The road to Terindell kept getting creepier and creepier as they went.

The road was in excellent shape, and obviously was well maintained, but the landscape quickly became a jungle, with huge trees rising almost too high to see the tops of them, so close together that they tended to block out much of the light and form almost a rooflike canopy over them.

“So this is home sweet home?” Irving asked, looking nervously around. He could believe zombies or almost anything in this place.

“Marquewood’s a huge country, one of the largest in Husaquahr,” Tiana told him. “There are rolling hills and beautiful glades and mountains and river valleys and just about anything you can think of. It’s just that this area, for the next twenty-five miles or so, is swamp and rain forest.”

“Yeah, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d be on this route,” Joe said a bit nervously. “I’m never gonna be really thrilled with this region again.”

Tiana dropped back and said to Irv, in a low tone, “It was elsewhere in this region that Sugasto had an encampment. Our souls were snatched from our bodies and taken here and stored there. The changeling Marge was a key to them finding us, but there was no way to tell who was who.”

“Yeah, you told me that. Around here!”

“Farther south, but the same sort of place. What he’d never tell you was that he was placed in the body of a wood nymph and bound by her Rules. It took powerful magic much later to restore him.”

Irv suppressed a loud laugh. “Dad? A girl?”

“Worse. A wood nymph. They are compulsive hussies with the brains of a banana peel. There’s no real memory of our time in the bottles, but he still has nightmares about his time as a nymph. Don’t rub it in.”

Irving felt a shiver creep up his spine. “Man! I hope that don’t happen to me! I don’t never wanna be no girl!”

She stared at him. “Why not? I happen to like it just fine.”

“Yeah? Would you like to be a man instead? Really?”

“No! I like it the way I am!”

“See?”

“What’re you two whispering about?” Joe asked, turning.

“I just filled him in on why you really want to get even with Sugasto,” she told him. At his expression, she added, “He had a right to know.”

Joe shrugged, but he was clearly angry at her for doing it. He was just realistic enough to know that you couldn’t undo something once done.

Irving thought it would be a good idea to change the subject.

“Hey—back there you said you was Dad’s mistress and slave, even. You’re his wife, ain’t you? Why the other line?”

“Not only under the Rules, but under the law, we’re not married anymore,” she explained. “We just consider ourselves married. The one who married him is different from me. Officially, legally, and under the Rules, I’m somebody else. So is he, for that matter. That dizzy nymph ran off in his old body and this one, which looks the way he originally looked, was actually a magical transformation. Under the Rules, I’m of the underclass—the class of the masses, like the people in those towns, and serfs, and slaves. I was not married within my class in proper fashion, but instead I am a dancer who dances before crowds for money. That places me in the same category as a trained animal who performs in the square for coppers for its owner. An animal has no rights at all, let alone the right to marry. An animal can only be wild or owned.”

“Yeah, but—slave! You ain’t no animal! You’re just a person bein’ treated like an animal!”

“Joe has explained to me how terrible that idea is to you, which is one reason we never brought it up, but it is like the thing we discussed about women’s dress here. This is not only a different world, it exists stuck in a different, earlier time and way of thinking.”

“But keepin’ slaves is wrong! It’s evil!”

“There is a lot of evil in both our worlds, some practiced by very good people. You must learn to think differently. There will be no revolutions here to change things like this. Not ever. Things can only become worse. Now that you know, you should be aware that I will be telling everyone here that I am Joe’s slave. It is vital to me that I do so. Being someone’s property is the only protection I have here.”

“Come again?”

“Otherwise, you see, I am nothing at all, without status or position of any sort, and, therefore, anyone could do anything with and to me that they felt like. As his slave, I am protected under law and the Rules because of his property rights.”

This kind of thinking made Irv dizzy. Still, it suddenly occurred to him that this put her indiscretions of the night before in this new light. “But, if he gets mad at you or somethin’ he could sell you or even just give you away!”

“That is so,” she admitted, “but we are married in our own minds, and I think I know him better than that.”

“Couldn’t he just give you your freedom?”

“No, that’s not permitted. If he freed me, renounced me, or sent me away, I would still be without status and unable to be anything other than I am. I can only survive as someone’s property. It is the only way I get some measure of independence.”

“Come again?”

“He is my owner, not my puppeteer. I am as independent as I can get away with.”

This was too much for the boy. If they weren’t married anymore, then she wasn’t cheating on him last night, and, likewise, he could have all the flings he wanted and not be cheating on her. But he still didn’t like it. Slavery was evil; when it was the good guys who kept slaves, what did it take to be a bad guy? He had been with them many months now, and he was only discovering what they already knew.

“What was that bit about a nose ring?” he asked her.

“He means a small ring that would be inserted through my nose, of course,” she told him. “Each nation has its own unique alloy for making them, all done by fairy folk, of course. In addition, it carries a spell which identifies the owner and all previous owners. They’re usually not worn unless ownership is transferred—sort of a bill of sale, as it were. You notice how the guardsman barely questioned the two of you but went to some length to determine I really was of Marquewood?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Because I had no ring, he wanted to make certain that Joe wasn’t smuggling me in. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but I’m very glad he was so easy on us. A stickler for the law might well have confiscated me!”

“You gonna get one of them rings put in?”

“I’d rather not,” she replied honestly, “but I think I’ll have to. I don’t want to take a risk like that again. I tried not to think about getting one, since the idea of having something in my nose sends chills through me, but, all of a sudden, I keep thinking about all the nasty possibilities without one. Without Joe around, I have nothing to prove that I am his. Slavers could steal me and sell me to anyone with impunity! And the law would back them up!”

They rode in silence for a while, and that wasn’t much better, since he wasn’t getting things sorted out at all, and the lack of conversation made the dark, junglelike swamp even darker and more menacing. Aside from the noise of the horses moving along the road, all other sounds came from the dense forest, and those noises included strange hoots, weird screeches, growls, grunts, and other sounds hard on the nerves, made all the worse because you couldn’t see what was making them.

He noticed that Tiana wasn’t anxious to get her run in around here, either.

“Let’s pick up the pace a little,” Joe suggested. “I’d like to be out of here before dark.”

This was good for a while, but horses couldn’t be pushed forever without some water and breaks. As the afternoon went on, the low light that filtered down angled lower, causing a sinister, creeping dark to pervade slowly, the hot, humid air as still as death. It was also nearly impossible to tell what time it was; they didn’t seem to have watches in this world, either, and under this jungle canopy it was nearly impossible to tell where the sun was in the sky. In these latitudes, the sun went down like a stone somewhere around six-thirty.

“What happens if we don’t make it out of this mess by dark?” Irving asked nervously.

“It’s too damp to find anything useful as a torch,” Joe replied, frowning and looking around. “We’ll be blind as bats once the sun sets if we don’t clear it, and the only thing I’d rather not do than spend a night here is ride blind. We’re just gonna have to push the horses and hope.”

But within another twenty minutes, it seemed to grow darker still, and from the tops of the great trees there came a rushing noise as some strong winds picked up, and then there was the sound of thunder.

So dense was the canopy that for quite some time no rain fell on them, although the air was so thick and heavy it made them wet just riding through it. Finally, though, it filled the upper reaches and began running off, not as rain but more like the buckets of giants being emptied on top of them. They were forced to stop, not only because of their own problems but because it was dangerous for the horses, and they could only find as dry a place as they could up against some big trunks, hold the horses, and wait it out.

The storm itself was over in perhaps half an hour, perhaps less, but the runoff continued for almost as long as the rain made its way down below. By the time they were through, they were in a muddy, wet steambath. Worse, they had lost an hour and it would be slow going for a while from this point as well.

“What do we do now?” Irving asked his father miserably.

“Well, all those in favor of camping here, in ankle-deep water and smelly swamp, have a seat. I’m for pressing on. We may not make it out, but the closer we are to out the better; at least, it’ll give things time to dry. There’s not a prayer I Ve got anything dry to put on, either, so I’m gonna shock you all and go bare-ass on a wet horse blanket and hang this loincloth on the side to dry as we ride. Irv, I’d suggest you do the same with your leather, since, when that stuff dries, it’s gonna cut right into you.”

“But—suppose we meet somebody on the trail?” the boy responded, embarrassed.

“Have we met anybody yet? And we’re not likely to meet anybody, either, at least not anybody who’s here for honest purposes. We’re more than halfway, I’m pretty sure, and only nuts like us would start in on this route after sunup.”

Ti was busy wringing out her hair, almost to no avail, but she commented, seeing the boy’s nervousness, “Come, come! I have seen much worse than you and lived!”

The leather thongs were already starting to irritate his skin, so he knew he had no choice, and finally stripped. Seems like this place is hell bent on gettin’ everybody stark naked, he thought sourly.

The horse blanket was also soaked through and felt like a wooly sponge, but there was no getting rid of it. Bare-assed and truly bareback on a horse was an open invitation to saddle sores, as he’d learned early on in his experience here. Until Husaquahr, he’d never been on a horse that moved unless you stuck a quarter in the slot first, but his father had been a good teacher and he a quick learner. It no longer even hurt like hell to get off anymore.

The problem really was, it didn’t seem to get any dryer as they went on slowly through the muck that had been the road and was still better than what was on either side of it. Instead, the rain forest took on an even more eerie cast, with fog forming just above the ground and thickening as they went. Irving couldn’t help noticing that his father was still wearing the sword that was the boy’s namesake, and in a position where it could be easily drawn while mounted.

The fog grew thicker, as did the silence of the land, with only the drip, drip, drip of water making its way down to join its whole at the base of the great trees. What sunlight remained created only a grim, ghostly gray, and it seemed that it was getting darker and darker with each passing minute.

Joe had given up any idea of getting out before full darkness; now he was looking at every place that gave any potential for both safety and protection. Cursing himself for not allowing for any variables and maybe waiting until morning for this passage, he spotted an area that might just have to do.

“We’ll have to camp there,” he told them, gesturing to an area on a slight rise about twenty feet off the right side of the road. “The trees are close enough to give us some protection for our backs, and there’s fallen logs and thick wood shavings all over. It’s not much, but it’s the best I’ve seen since we took this road and I don’t expect any better if we keep on. On the other hand, I’d rather be there than in the swamp.”

Tiana looked it over. “This is almost like a fairy circle,” she noted. “Are we certain we’re not going to camp in the middle of trouble?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s suddenly almost dark as pitch, and I don’t think we have much choice.” He couldn’t explain it to them or to himself, but this place felt right, felt, somehow, safe and secure. It was a mystery, and he didn’t plan to trust the feeling absolutely, but he knew this was the right place.

When the darkness fell, it fell. There was no light at all, anywhere. Irving had thought he’d seen darkness out on the trail under cloudy or moonless skies, but this was the darkness of a cellar, or maybe the grave. Tiana tried the flint, but there was nothing around dry enough to set afire, and the brief sparks, hardly noticeable in other circumstances, briefly lit the scene like flashes of lightning on a dark night.

“We’re lucky it’s midsummer here,” Joe said, trying to sound optimistic. “That means we’ve only got eleven hours of this instead of thirteen. Now if I can find the pack—ah! Anybody want some soggy, half-stale bread and some warmed wine?”

They managed to eat something, although none of them had a lot of appetite. Nerves made it nearly impossible to sleep, either, although Joe suggested a guard rotation, but being wide awake and seeing nothing but darkness while sitting in back of logs against great trees and on soaked wood chips wasn’t exactly thrilling. It seemed, somehow, even risky to be talking, but there wasn’t much else to do. Even so, they all found themselves whispering, although none could really say why.

“Hey, I been here a pretty long time now,” Irving said, trying to make some conversation, “and mostly it’s been gettin’ the horses, goin’ off into that plains area and campin’ out and learnin’ how to ride and doin’ a litde huntin’ and fishin’ and all, but how come it ain’t ’til we’re in this pesthole that this slave bit comes up?”

“It’s the Rules again, kicking in, most likely,” Joe replied as they huddled together. “They can be pretty cruel sometimes. And tremendously inconvenient.”

“I’m sure of it,” Tiana agreed. “This body was not even fully defined, I think, when I became it. I was from the upper classes; I thought in those terms, even when I didn’t realize it. It never occurred to me that I would drop in class or could. But almost from the start, everybody kept commenting on how I had an athlete’s body, then a dancer’s body. I’m native to here; the Rules bind me always. Even I began thinking of athletic dancing, idly fantasizing as a dancing girl, that kind of thing. I was defined by that. Slowly, the Rules under which I had unconsciously lived slipped away as no longer relevant; the Rules that replaced them were the ones I and others defined without even thinking about it.”

“That don’t seem fair.”

“It’s not,” Joe agreed, “but it’s only a kind of legal thing of what we both already knew from Earth. People always looked at me, particularly in the east, and they started defining me. At first they thought I was Hispanic, and when I told them I was a full-blooded native American, the real jokes began. I was called ‘Chief,’ talked to in mock-Tonto, everything. That’s one reason I grew up tough. I had to take it or fight. I fought. That’s why I wound up driving a truck instead of getting a decent education and maybe going on to college. I always thought I would be some kind of sports superstar. Jim Thorpe, a full-blooded native American who was also born in Pennsylvania, was a sports superstar and my big hero. But I never really worked at it and I got passed over. Wound up doing some bare-knuckle boxing at truck stops and doing repairs of big rigs. Everybody remembers those dumb cowboy movies and figures, hey, he’s an Indian. He’s got muscles and all that but no real brains. Pretty soon, you find yourself thinking that way, too.”

“You mean like the way white folks looked at me back home. First they saw black, and then they saw kid, and all of a sudden there was some kinda wall between us, even if we was friendly. Only the black kids, they saw the high cheeks and straight black hair and they started callin’ me ‘Geronimo’ and stuff like that. It was like nobody could see me in here.”

“Uh-huh,” Tiana responded. “Only there there’s at least a chance of breaking out of it. Here, once, even for a short time, you get that in your or other folks’ heads, the Rules grab you and define you and you’re stuck. It seems to be human nature that everybody tries to define and pigeonhole everybody else. Here, though, once you’re defined, even incorrectly, that’s it. I started doing the exercises to get in shape, then the dance stuff, and it just started coming naturally to me. The erotic part I guess was my fault, for fantasies at the wrong time. Each time I was defined a little more and a little more. When we started the dances for money, that finished it. I was defined. People who do that are slaves. Slaves have more Rules. Today, without even realizing I’d changed, I found myself thinking like a slave. The responses I gave the guardsman just came naturally to me. When I was explaining the situation to you earlier, I was really also explaining it to me. I know, we had the Rules read to us, but they were abstract and didn’t cover the half of it.”

“You mean you’re gettin’ to like it?” the boy asked, still confused.

“No, I never have to like it, but accepting it is something else again. I have to accept it or go crazy or kill myself, because I’ve got no choice but to be that way.”

Irving thought about it a bit. “Am / gonna be trapped by them Rules?”

“Eventually,” Joe told him. “Not right off. That’s part of the idea of taking you to be trained at Terindell as I was. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Ruddygore wasn’t just providing me with training; the training and my success at it defined me, so by the time I finally was put under the Rules they only made me what I already had become. You think about that if things get tough. There are male slaves here, too. Here, nobody will be prejudiced because of your looks or color. They’ll think you look downright exotic. Because so much is always the same here, differences are admired, even envied, not looked down on. Right now you’re still a clean slate to the Rules, and you even have some resistance because of that to magic—but I wouldn’t count too much on that in a pinch. But if you wind up a loser here, you’ll have done it to yourself.”

Tiana yawned in spite of herself. “Some of us should get some sleep,” she told the others. “I think I might be able to drift off now.”

“I slept the latest; I’ll take the first watch,” Joe told them. “When I get too tired, I’ll awaken the one of you who goes to sleep first. That second one does the same for the third. It’s the best system I can think of.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna be able to sleep all night_,” Irving muttered as Tiana settled down beside him. “But I’ll try.”

The fact was, he almost beat her into slumber.

Joe didn’t fed all that tired, but if it was boring to sit around staring at nothingness with two others, it was much more boring to do it alone. Still, he prayed for a deathly boring night.

Some leader I’ve become! he thought sourly. I’m as scared of this place and this darkness as they are. Worse, he’d gotten them into this partly out of emotion. He hadn’t stayed alive this long by letting two people get on horses and ride out of camp while he slept. He knew she’d gone and probably where and for what and where the extra money had come from. The thing was, he hadn’t stopped her, although he easily could have, and he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t, particularly after the kid had gone after her. Now Irving knew, too, and was keeping a Big Secret from Dad. The worst thing was, considering his real mother, he probably was getting a very weird idea of women. Some father he was!

And now here he was, sticking the kid in this kind of danger, just because he couldn’t bring himself to leave Tiana free in that town for a night.

Not that he was a great shining example of fidelity, either. She, at least, could tell herself it was the Rules, and maybe be right. She was not the same woman he had married and was becoming less so as time passed. He was the poor dumb Injun who wound up marrying the highly educated and cultured princess like some fairy tale and it had really fed his ego. Now he was the same poor dumb Injun with a dancing whore for a slave and mistress.

He didn’t blame her for that. It was nobody’s fault, as she said, and even this beat the boring hell out of being reigning gods. The thing was, he’d reached the heights of society and acceptance and found out that it was less fun than driving a truck. Now he found himself wondering if he’d married her for love or lust, the same as he had the first time, or just because.some of her blue blood and education might rub off on him and cause all those other educated blue-blooded males to turn green-with envy.

It still wasn’t fair to her, though. He had to give it up; he was strangling as ruler and lived again only when they had to go into action. She, on the other hand, had given it up for his sake. He was back where he wanted to be, but she was lower than her worst nightmares because of him.

He knew well how absolute those Rules were when they all kicked in, too. He’d never been aware of them as a barbarian, a warrior, but when he’d been dumped in that wood nymph’s body, he’d slowly become a wood nymph—at one and the same time becoming two hundred percent seductive fairy female and forgetting his knowledge, his experience, his common sense, just to go with the flow emotion. Joe de Oro had literally ceased to exist; it took a wish from that most powerful of magic things, the Lamp of Lakash, ancient product of that third world beyond even this one, the Land of the Djinn, where only magic, no natural law at all, applied. But for mat, he wouldn’t really exist; there’d just be some sexy, curvaceous, light green, barely thinking bimbo living inside a tree and thinking about nothing but seducing all and sundry until Judgment Day.

Irving had been forced to grow up too soon; maybe it was time he did, too. He couldn’t really help Ti, but he owed her, and particularly he owed her protection, loyalty, and a very loose leash.

He had started to doze in his musings in spite of himself, but something suddenly stirred him awake. His hand went automatically to his sword, but he did hot draw it or wake the others, not yet. It might just be nerves or a figment of a dream.

It might be, but it wasn’t.

There was definitely something out there. Many somethings. He heard the horses stir nervously and, slowly, he withdrew the great sword from its scabbard. The great sword had a life of its own and, awakened by being drawn, pulsed with energy, as if eager to be put to use. He felt its power, as if arm and sword were one, and he was never quite sure who was boss.

Well, they weren’t firesprites or they’d light up the night; and they weren’t banshees, because they weren’t howling, but that only left a few million other possibilities. He feared zombies the most’; you had to hack zombies to pieces and, even then, get away from the pieces. Damn him for thinking with his emotions and not sorting out this business with Tiana when no harm could be done! How dare he put Irving in such danger?

Filled with rage at himself, he stood to face his attackers.

Suddenly he made out a figure, about the size of a small child, over to his right. It was odd, but he wasn’t actually seeing the creature; rather, he was seeing a kind of glowing soft, green outline of it. It looked, somehow, familiar, as if he’d seen it somewhere before, but he couldn’t place where or when.

Now, suddenly, he could see other figures in front of him— two, three, no, four of them, all nearly identical as only fairies might be, yet, somehow, he could sense a very slight difference in each one.

Wood nymphs! They were being surrounded by wood nymphs! And that was why this spot had attracted him, had somehow sent a signal that it was safe. The great sword in his hand changed its humming pitch to sound much like a disappointed, metallic Bronx cheer. There were things to fear from wood nymphs, but the most threatening was dying of exhaustion.

He sheathed the sword, literally feeling its irritation, and stepped forward to meet them halfway. He didn’t want his son to meet a bunch of wood nymphs in their usual full heat right now. Still, he found going to them and meeting with them more unnerving than fighting a horde of homicidal zombies. The sight of them brought back memories he’d been trying to forget, and it unsettled him that he could not only see their fairy auras even now but also tell them apart, something virtually no human could do. As he drew close he could make out their full form and detail, although he was still not seeing in a normal sense. They stared at him, wide-eyed, looking less their insatiably lustful selves at the sight of a naked human male than completely confused.

“What manner of fairy are you, who has the husk of a human man and handles iron, yet glows inside with the aura of our Sisterhood?” one asked in that cute, sexy, seductive voice they all had.

He stopped. “I—what?”

“What kind of sorcery puts a wood nymph in the body of a big, handsome, human hunk?” another asked.

“I’m a man, not a wood nymph,” he retorted, not knowing why he suddenly felt so cold in the damp heat.

“Your soul and aura are as ours,” a third maintained. “It burns through the oversized husk.”

“This husk is my body.”

“The soul is hid real good,” the first one agreed, “ ’cept’n it’s plain to us. Were you changed by some sorcery or did somebody make you f’get your real self?”

“I was born like this. The Master of the Dead took my soul once and put it in the body of a wood nymph, but the most powerful magic of all wished me back in my original body,” he told them. “I really don’t like to discuss it.”

“Oh, I see,” the first nymph replied. “Your soul was in a husk of the Sisterhood, and it didn’t get put back the same way. You were a human who became a fairy, not by nature or Rule or birth, but it happened. You were fairy. You are fairy. No mere magic or sorcery, no matter how strong, can change a fairy soul, only hide it like the leaves hide the ground.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that, deep down, I’m still a wood nymph? I don’t feel like a wood nymph. I feel like my old self. I bleed, I bruise, I handle iron, I like girls, and I don’t want any time in the grass with any man.”

“The flesh magic protects and shelters you,” she replied. “The magic is real strong, too. It made you a body like your old one and gave you all that you knowed ’n’ felt ’n’ should feel. But it couldn’t change the fairy soul inside. Your flesh makes you look ’n’ think ’n’ act like a mortal man, but only to mortals. You get turned on by us?”

He didn’t want to hear any more of this, but he had to, and he had to answer honestly. “No. Not a bit.” And come to think of it, Irving had his tongue hanging out for those water nymphs on the ferry, but he’d felt nothing at all. These living refugees from a Playboy cartoon would turn on almost anybody, but, somehow, to him, it would be like, well…

Like kissing your sister.

“Are you telling me this is all a fake? That I’m not really a human man?”

“Oh, no. The magic is real strong, strongest I ever seen, and I been around a couple thousand years. You’ll live your life as you are. But when the flesh is gone, your soul will still be of us. Only if iron stabs your fairy heart would you really die—and forever.”

Although it was close to his worst nightmares, he knew, somehow, that it was true. He was Joe de Oro; nothing had changed about that. And he would be Joe, in every way, until death. But when death came, he would not pass on, or be reincarnated, or whatever happened to human souls; instead, he would be one of these once again, forever until Judgment Day.

It was the most unsettling certainty of a hereafter he could have imagined.

This was something to take up with Ruddygore, if they ever got there.

Unfortunately, it also explained some of his own changes since returning here. His sudden liking for the outdoors and outdoor living, for one thing. His strange, unsettling dreams, for another, and his otherwise uncharacteristic lapses in selfcontrol such as the one that got them stuck here now. If Ti wasn’t Tiana anymore, he wasn’t—quite—Joe, either.

Still, he felt anger at finding out this way, in the middle of nowhere, in a situation still fraught with dangers. “Who other than wood nymphs could tell this about me?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Of course, any of the Sisterhood right off. You can’t hide from your own. Any other fairy could see it, if they was lookin’ for it, but most wouldn’t. Most times folks see what they expect to see, not what’s there. Same as fairy sight. You could see like we see if you knowed you could and really wanted to.”

He tried to dampen his emotions as best he could, though, become Joe the Barbarian. There was nothing at all he could do about this now, and, at least, he was no longer ignorant of it. The fairy soul might panic at this news, but Joe would accept it as something to be dealt with later and, for now, something to be used. If wood nymphs saw him as one of their own, then they were potential allies. Not in a fight—wood nymphs were totally passive, as he well knew—but that wasn’t what he needed right now. And this head nymph, while no Einstein, talked smarter than any other one he’d known. Maybe if you lived long enough you had time to learn something. Or, possibly, the clan leaders were always a bit smarter. Although he’d been one of them, he’d, never lived among them, and he was totally ignorant of their ways when they were among one another. No matter now.

“All right—sisters—can you help us with some information?”

The nymph leader shrugged. “Maybe. We don’t go far from our trees, you know.”

“What’s in this neighborhood that we have to worry about? ”

“Nothin” much right ’round here,” she told him. “But there’s hundreds of them walkin’ dead all holed up at the edge of the forest, run by some witches workin’ for the Master of the Dead. We dunno what they’re doin’ here. There’s lotsa firesprites up another coupl’ve miles, but they don’t come near here and they sleep days. ’Round here there’s just the usual snakes ’n’ lizards ’n’ stuff like that.”

“How do you know about the sprites and coven and zombies if you never go far from this spot?” he asked, genuinely curious.

She shrugged. “Oh, we heard it through the great vines.”

He let that one pass. Some things it was better not to know.

“Can you do me a favor, then? As one of you to another? Keep a watch out tonight for anything that might harm us and awaken me if it draws near before sunup?”

“Yeah, sure. But can’t you wake up the young one, there? It’s been a real long time for most of us.”

He stiffened. “That young one’s my son, and he’s still not ready for the likes of you yet.”

That seemed to amaze them. “Your kid,” one breathed, almost in awe. “Ain’t none of us ever had a kid. The only time one of us is born is When one of us dies, and ain’t none of us ever died yet. Wow…”

“Will you do it, then? And keep out of his sight if he wakes up?”

The leader sighed. “Oh, well, what the hell. Sure.”

He bid them a good-night, then realized he was well away from the glade and it was still pitch dark. Something in him didn’t want to admit to them he couldn’t see out here, but what was that they’d said about having fairy sight if he really believed in it?

He let his mind go and stared into the darkness, and he found that it was oddly easy. How many times could he have used this, if only he’d known and believed in its existence? But he’d spent nights when his mind continually refused to admit what they had now told him was true, and now he knew.

The scene came alive. Not with normal sight, but truly alive, magically so. He was seeing not reflected light but the auras of a forest teeming with life. Each tree, each weed, had its own unique pattern. About ten feet from where he stood, two forms blazed brightly.

He walked confidently back and lay down beside them. Now that he knew the truth, it really wasn’t that hard to deal with. If a nymph could walk off in his old barbarian body and become mortal, then he could eventually find a way to fix his own unique problem. In the meantime, use it, and try not to get killed or stabbed through the heart with iron, two things he was earnestly trying to avoid in any case. Don’t fight it, use it.

In the midst of a dank rain forest, naked and undefended against all sorts of things that lurked, he had his best sleep in months.

When Ti awakened it was false dawn. The sun still hadn’t come up, but there was some light from its reflections from over the horizon, and the forbidding scene around them was dimly glowing. It was sufficient to keep from breaking your neck, but it was kind of eerie, with wisps of ground fog about and a deathly silence.

She looked down at Joe. Why hadn’t he awakened her? Irving didn’t look as if he’d been up for hours, so Joe had simply decided to go to sleep. She didn’t like the thought that they’d been undefended, without guards, through that night, but, on the other hand, they seemed to have lucked out. Still, it disturbed her.

I should have had the watch, all night if necessary. It was my duty to do so, and I have failed my master.

She caught herself with the thought and analyzed it. That wasn’t a thought she’d have ever had before. Joe was husband, lover, equal, or just plain Joe, but never her “master.” And yet, somehow, the thought, the attitude it represented, felt right. Intellectually, she still rebelled at the mind-set, but the mindset remained stubbornly there, none the less.

She went off a ways and relieved herself, then checked the horses, who all seemed well rested and even able to have munched on some of the vegetation. Joe’s loincloths were still damp, but they would do. Likewise, the horse blankets and gear were drying out, but would need to get out of here and into full sunlight to get right. In places like this there was always the danger of jungle rot on clothing.

Irving’s leather outfit wasn’t in very good shape as it was, and she decided that it was time he stopped being the tough guy and suffering with it and maybe trying one of his dad’s loincloths for a while. It would be oversized, but she could adjust it to protect his manly modesty.

The food was also not in good shape. She got a knife from Joe’s pack and trimmed off some of the mold that was already creeping in, keeping what was edible, and laying it out on a blanket, but, although she was quite hungry, she ate none of it.

Slaves eat last.

It was something she’d known, of course, but she’d never thought of that with herself as the slave. Defiantly, she reached out and picked up the stump of a carrot, as if to show that she was still in charge of her life, but, somehow, she just couldn’t bite into it.

So it had happened. After slowly building one step at a time over a period of months, she was now so thoroughly defined by the major Rules that all the minor ones just tumbled in at once, filling in the gaps.

She recalled an incident, forgotten until now, when she’d asked one of the maids at the palace if the girl, who was bright and intelligent, resented being a slave. “Oh, no, my lady,” she had responded. “It is much like being a housewife, only you don’t expect your husband to say thank you and, while you owe him your loyalty, you do not owe him fidelity. It all works out. There is nothing dishonorable about being a slave, and it is necessary work. I would certainly rather be living this way, in such a fine place, than as my mother did, living in a small place where meat was a luxury we rarely could afford and her dying of complications in the birth of her fifteenth child at age twenty-eight.”

It was a sobering thought, particularly when thinking of all those women at the town wells and small cafes.

There were other compensations. She would much rather be out in the world and in adventurous circumstances than being cooped up in a satin prison. And Ruddygore had estimated the physical age of her body at possibly fifteen, certainly no older than sixteen, which meant she had lost more than a decade in physical aging. Physically, at least, she was closer in age to Irving than to Joe.

“There is nothing dishonorable about being a slave, and it is necessary work…”

It would be hard, but that was the way she had to think, had to look at it. As she had told Irving, it wasn’t a matter of liking or not liking it, it was a matter of acceptance and adjustment. The only” alternative was to wage futile war against the reality arid dishonor herself by doing it badly as a result.

She went over and quietly nuzzled Joe awake. He came to with a sweet smile, stretched, looked around, and saw at once all the work she’d done. “Impressive.”

“You’re my master now, remember,” she said softly. “It’s part of my job.”

He looked at her strangely for a moment, then smiled. “That’s the biggest turn-on statement I can think of.”

At that moment, Irving stirred, spoiling the mood.

Joe sighed. “Well, it looks like the sun’s coming up and we shouldn’t have much trouble getting out of here this morning. You know, I had the oddest dream last night… “He looked around at the still forest, and let his mind run free for a moment; somehow, in the larger stand nearby, he sensed friendly presences. Or maybe not a dream, he added to himself.

“I should have taken the watch,” she said flatly. “That, too, is part of my job. If anything had happened to us last night it would have been my fault.”

“No,” he responded enigmatically, looking at the grove, “we were okay. Don’t ask how, but we were well defended.”

She wanted to get elaboration on that cryptic comment, but she sensed that she’d get no more out of him.

Irving arose in the same lethargic fashion characteristic of his father, and said, “Well, I guess we made it, huh?”

“Yeah, we made it,” Joe replied. “Let’s finish off what’s still edible and hit the road.”

They finished it off and tossed what was left into the brush, then packed up the last stuff to go. Ti had very little trouble talking Irving into the loincloth, and she managed to get it so that it stayed. It did look more like a giant diaper on him than the romantic he-man image it gave his father, but she didn’t make the comment, and Joe seemed to understand and kept his mouth shut, too.

They mounted up, and Joe took one last look around, then focused on the small grove and mentally said, “Thank you,” in their direction. And from them, although it might have been the wind in the trees, he thought he heard, “Any time. ”

If it wasn’t a dream, if it was real, then their information was reliable as well. The dangerous creatures of faerie were mostly of the night, at least around here, but if there was an outpost Sugasto’s people maintained with zombies protecting it, they were a threat any time. He wouldn’t feel reasonably secure until they passed the tollhouse at the edge of Grotom Wood.

He couldn’t help thinking about his old enemy. “I wonder why Sugasto stopped?” he asked aloud. “Nobody was able to hold him off for long, he had an endless supply of new recruits from among his own victims, and he had enormous power.”

Ti shrugged. “Possibly he had something more important to attend to first,” she suggested. “Or, perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he still doesn’t feel he’s a match for Ruddygore. Who knows? It is enough for me that he did stop.”

They came upon the old tollhouse, now a roofless stone ruin encrusted in moss, lichen, and creeping vines, looking like some sinister gateway to Hell, and almost immediately the countryside started to change its character and things brightened considerably. Now there were rolling hills and fields with farms and forests that looked more charming than threatening. To Joe, it felt like home.

By midmorning they reached Hotsphar, a small town built on a thermal region, with hot springs and hissing holes in the ground the locals used for everything from cooking to bathing. The idea of a hot bath in one of the small bathhouses was irresistible, particularly when it cost only a few coppers. They were running pretty low on money, but they no longer had that far to go.

They had the place almost to themselves. “The nearby wood still frightens many good folk in these troubled times,” the proprietress explained. “And, of course, it’s the off-season.”

The bath in the crystal clear water of the hot springs was wonderful, and the thermal-heated sauna not only relaxed but did a nice job of drying out the clothing and blankets. Ti was methodical in getting them washed and even combing their hair. After, she was even able to borrow some scissors and thread and make a decent loincloth for Irving. She was quite pleased with her handiwork and the praise it invoked.

The change that had come over her was remarkable, Joe thought. She not only had completely stopped nagging and complaining about things, but she actually was doing a lot of stuff on her own initiative that, not long before, she would have thought beneath her. She was solicitous, cheerful, and even deferential. That last was hard to get used to, since it went a little against his grain, but he went with the flow. He felt rotten about feeling the way he did, but, the fact was, he liked it. He just kept telling himself that, if the situation had been reversed, with him the slave and she the mistress, she would have liked it, too.

They blew the last of their money on a hot meal and some basic snacklike provisions. It was now nearly certain that they would get to their destination by nightfall. Joe was anxious to see Ruddygore again, in any event. The master sorcerer would know the situation on Sugasto and maybe have a job or two for him. He also had another little matter to take up with him in private.

In the very late afternoon, they passed the trail to the upper ferry and reached the bridge over the Rossignol, a major tributary of the Dancing Gods, at Terdiera. Beyond, overlooking both the town and the confluence of the two rivers, could be seen the massive spires of Castle Terindell.

It was a troll bridge, of course, and Joe suddenly realized that they were flat broke, and that even the town was across the river from them.

Irving stared fearfully at the trolls, who seemed to be all big, glaring eyes and sharklike teeth, sort of like Muppets from Hell, but the lead troll recognized Joe.

“Ah! You are prepaid, barbarian, and your company,” he growled. “Lord Ruddygore’s cadet came down three days ago. Until you showed up, we thought we’d gotten a freebie.”

They were delighted to hear it, but puzzled- “You say they came down and paid three days ago? But they didn’t even know we were coming!”

“Obviously they did,” the troll responded. “They know most everything hereabouts before anybody else does.”

The town looked pretty much as he remembered it, but they didn’t linger there, instead heading straight on up the one additional mile or so to the castle on the point. Joe couldn’t help but think back many years ago to the first time he and Marge had come through these huge outer walls and gates and across the drawbridges. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

Like most castles of the region, Terindell was actually a series of buildings, one inside the other, and the interior contained a hollow, rectangular courtyard. Tiny brownies tended to the elaborate gardens that encircled the open area, and elf grooms appeared to help them down and take their horses.

Irving was awestruck by it all, gaping at all and sundry, but unable to say a word. They walked up to the main entrance as the sun set. Before they could knock, the huge wooden door opened, revealing a slender, dangerous-looking fairy dressed in a gray robe with golden tassels. He was nearly six feet tall, and there was something at once cold and menacing about him. That was the mark of the Imir, one of the few warrior races that the faerie had.

“Hello, Poquah,” Joe greeted the creature.

“Jeez! Mister Spock!” Irving muttered under his breath. “What next?”

“You’re late!” the Imir snapped. “It’s about time you showed up!”

“I didn’t know we had an appointment.”

“Humans!” the Imir sniffed. “You probably still think you just got the idea to come here. You were summoned!.”

“What’s the rush?”

“Oh, nothing much,” the Imir responded a bit sarcastically. “Only that the Dark Baron slipped our leash and is free once again and that, perhaps not coincidentally, Sugasto seems to be getting his act together once more.”

Joe shook his head in wonder and returned a wry smile. “Back to normal,” he sighed. “Nice to see you, too, Poquah.”