Horrors of the Dancing Gods (24 page)

"What did this Lothar do?" Irving asked, fascinated:

"Ah,
that
would be telling. Let's just say that she was duly presented but was no longer fit for sacrifice in the volcano. Zakaputi got so mad, he wanted to wipe everything out anyway, but he got stopped. Rules are Rules, and a bargain's a bargain. Best he could manage was to curse the parents to turn into living statues, take Larae, and send her off to Yuggoth in hopes that somebody there would be able to break Lothar's curse. I personally doubt if he ever expects to see her again, but he knows that once she's in Yuggoth and stuck as she is, all sorts of bad things will just kind of naturally happen, anyway. That's the way things are. So she got the geas to come here, to catch the ship, to go to Yuggoth, and present herself somehow in the Court of Chaos at the Dantean Gate. Of course, no time limit was put on her, so she can be there until she's an old crone and not show up. I don't think he really cares that much, you see."

"Then—what he's done is throw her to the mercy of whatever captures or enslaves her. That's not
fair!"

"Of
course
it's
not fair. To her, anyway. To everybody else it's fair. I'll tell you this, though, kid. If you keep thinking about her and looking at her, you'll eventually be attracted to her real bad no matter
what
your own spells are. Your spells will be weakened by Yuggoth, and any spells of Hell will be strengthened. That's why you find her so much more interesting today than before. Don't fall for it! Remember, you guys are headed for the Range of Fire and the Usurpers,
not
the Dantean Gate. You get involved with her, you'll be pulled the wrong way. No way around that. Her
geas
will screw up your luck. And you'll find you won't ever be able to get what you want from her, either."

"You mean that no matter what, she's stuck? That there's
nothing
I can do to help her? I can't accept that."

"Oh, you can help her, but only at cost to yourself. And if she
doesn't
get to the gate, you can never have any life with her. No happily ever after. Her curse will see to that. Anything nasty enough to screw up a full-blown
demon, a
volcano god, no less, is more than a match for
you.
You've been warned." The strong hands stopped the massage.

He considered the last part. "Is that what this is all about? Did you or somebody give me the cramp just to send me this message?'

There was silence, although he was certain that the other had not gone anywhere and he'd heard no sounds of movement. Suddenly he rolled over and looked around.

The room was
empty.

He sat up, got down off the table, and went out and retrieved and put on his loincloth. There was no sign of Garfia either in the two rooms or in the anteroom, and when he tried the side door, it was locked tighter than a drum.

So it
had
been a setup! They'd seen him try to contact her this day, figured or known his interest, and given him the cramp where they did just so he'd see the card and come on down.

Keep off the
grass.
This property is condemned. Bought and paid for.

Well, he didn't believe in bought-and-paid-for people. He never had and never would. If they'd thought to frighten him with this story, they had made a mistake, because all this did was make him more determined to help her somehow. There
had
to be a way even if all the details were true.

Poquah would never agree to anything of this nature even if he heard the story himself. Marge might be a better ally here and maybe somebody who could even do more to help him
contact the girl.

No matter what they said, this was personal now.

A SENSE OF THE FAMILIAR

Destiny shall always draw the hapless to the hopeless.

—
Rules, Vol. XVII, p. 1350)

MARGE LISTENED TO THE WHOLE ACCOUNT WITH A mixture of fascination and skepticism. Unlike Irving, who'd stuck pretty well to days and had one view of this strange craft, Marge had slept by day and seen the majority of passengers and crew by night, when they were most powerful and in their full glory. She had the strong feeling that if the other two had seen a fraction of what she had seen by night, they wouldn't sleep much then, either.

She had, however, seen the girl in question briefly, here and there, either just after dark or in the predawn, and knew that she at least was neither a fantasy nor some creature of faerie. That girl in fact had the most incredibly complex set of spells on her that Marge, who'd seen a lot, could ever imagine seeing, let alone figuring out. It made Irving's set of enchantments seem feeble and childlike in comparison; the girl's twisted mass of varicolored spaghetti strands of curse and spell was definitely in Ruddygore territory.

She walked over to where Irving said he'd gotten his cramp and read the bulletin board. The board was still there—although Marge hadn't really recalled noticing it before, either—but Irving frowned and searched frantically in the gloom for the small card. There wasn't even a space where it might have been removed.

"It
was
here! Right there! Somebody's messed these all up!" he maintained.

"Don't worry about it," Marge told him. "I believe you. I didn't expect to find it; I've already looked at cabin thirty-three. Need I say that it has no tables and not even the slightest scent of liniment? It's a
storeroom and packed pretty solid at that."

"I
was
there! I
did
have this talk!" he insisted.

She nodded. "I believe you. The basic layout was right—one big and two small rooms—and I don't see any way you could have known about the connecting door without having been there. Never forget that we're dealing not with flesh and blood here but rather with principalities and powers of the air, sorcerers and creatures of very powerful magic. With the pain and this roundabout way of talking to you, they got their point across."

"Were they telling the truth, though? About her, I mean."

Marge shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. Probably. At least, they told you all the truth they wanted you to know and no more. That's the way these people work. Never do things directly when you can be sneaky, never tell a lie that isn't wrapped in truth, and never tell everything—or
anything—
that you don't think is necessary to serve your ends. Now, the question is their motive in all this."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Well, if they just want us to lay off the girl, there are a lot of ways to handle that. Even by their own account, she's theirs and under their complete control. Just lock her in an unassigned cabin for that matter. Put a sleep spell on her until we dock and the three of us are safely away. You see what I mean?"

"Yeah, but I don't see where it goes."

Marge smiled. "Well, then, either they are actually
trying
to lure you to take the girl, or, just as possible, if we had her along, there's a way we
could
help her that they couldn't control."

"Yeah, but why would they want me to help her? That doesn't make sense."

"It does with all those curses and magical chains she bears. Who knows what they do? Who knows what's buried there? If they control her, even without her knowledge or will, she might well be Hell's own agent sent along with us to represent their interests. We'd never take a demon along, but an innocent girl? You see?"

Irving was skeptical. "Maybe, but would they take a chance on somebody like that? I think maybe it's the McGuffin. If we can get hold of it, we can break her curses and maybe even free her parents, right?"

"Who knows? We're only supposed to
get
the thing, remember; we aren't supposed to
use
it. I seem to remember Ruddygore being very firm that this thing's more dangerous to the wisher than the Lamp, and
that
was risky enough, believe me."

"Well, I still think we ought to help her, damn it!" the boy cried. "We can't just leave her when we
might
help."

Marge sighed. "I seem to remember that this is what got Joe going in this same direction. If I didn't know better, I'd say somebody on high has a one-track mind and not much imagination. Okay, I'll see what I can do. There's not a lot of time left, you know. We've already passed the other ship on this line heading back to Husaquahr, which means we're more than halfway there. That'll get us in at worst the day after tomorrow—or, more accurately, the night after tomorrow night, probably an hour after sunset. That doesn't leave us a lot of leeway, and we have to contact her and see if she
wants
to be helped before we can do anything else."

He was shocked. "Of
course
she
wants
to be helped! Why wouldn't she?"

"If she's guilt-ridden for what happened to her parents, or maybe just flipped out by it all and resigned, or maybe not as pure and clean as we thought—there's lots of reasons. She might even just not believe that there is any hope at all and refuse in order to spare us part of her curse."

"And what about Poquah? If we get involved with her, he's gonna throw a fit."

"Let him. He's a warrior and a sorcerer, and his lot is sneaky by instinct. Maybe it's time he put a little of those old skills to work as well as the new. But why bother him until we can speak with her? And if we can't, it's kind of out of our hands."

"We
got
to get to her, then! One of us! We just
got
to!"

Marge sighed. "I'm a sucker for this kind of thing myself, and it always causes problems. Oh, well ... I just wish they told us what kind of a curse that fellow Lothar came up with that could even screw up a demon."

As it turned out, it
was
Marge who had the next chance at contact with the strange girl, and she was glad it was she and not Irving who did. It was pretty easy to see how the kid could be pretty intimidating, but a faerie, a female, and one of unknown but beautiful appearance did engender more curiosity than threat.

Truth to tell, though, Marge was pretty damned happy to see Irving acting like a normal teenage human being. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

It was just before dawn again, as before, but because he'd stayed up so late with Marge the night before and had been so excited, Irving hadn't arisen when he'd intended, and Marge was on her own.

She suspected that the girl came up every morning before dawn, and she could understand why. This ship with all its dangers was probably least dangerous at this very time, when all the possible mischief from the dark had been done and denizens were going to their rest lest the sun strike them but before the kraken and the ghouls and demons of the day began their less threatening but still intimidating shifts. It had to lift the spirits of somebody as stuck as the girl was just to watch the magnificence of the sun break over the horizon, filling the world with warmth, light, and glory.

Marge flew up and settled down comfortably on a bulkhead just behind and above the girl, who was staring out at the sea, watching the first small streaks appear signaling first false, then true dawn.

"It's the best part of the day, isn't it?" she said casually, conversationally, as if speaking to a friend.

The girl jumped, whirled around, then spotted the Kauri with her butterfly wings perched sexily above. "Oh! I did not see you!"

"I'm sorry I startled you. I kinda like this myself, to tell the truth. I'm stuck as basically a night creature, and this ship's pretty damned depressing most of the time. I think if I hear that Tiliki Li Revue one more time, I'll blow this thing up."

"You—you're not one of
them?"

"Not hardly. Or at least not exactly. Faerie is faerie, and mostly we're neutral. We sit around and do our own things and watch you folks do your own things and shake our heads. Some take sides, mostly on the dark side. More immediate power even if you face oblivion when the Final Judgment comes, if and when it ever does. The Kauri take no sides in the affairs of mortals or in the Heaven versus Hell battle, but occasionally individuals like me do. I like to think I'm on the good side, but mostly I'm doin' favors for old friends, like now."

"I—I'm one of
them.
Not that I wish to be or that I had any choice, but sometimes fate does that to people. At the moment my soul is still my own; it is only my body that they own. How long I can keep that is the question I ask myself."

"I got to admit, you have more spells and curses on you than I ever saw before on anybody. Still, you're heading in the right direction, if you can believe it, if you want any crack at getting rid of that shit."