Songs of the Dancing Gods (43 page)

They were passing the inside tower windows; outside, the inner courtyard glowed with the ever-present fire of the liquid rock. Oh Joe! Joe! I’d join you now, if I could, and end this eternal torture!

And somewhere, deep within her mind, came a voice, a thought, that she wasn’t certain was hers or from some other, perhaps supernatural, origin.

“Bring her to my dying place,” it said. “Bring her there and it will end.”

Even compared to abject slavery, it was the worst evening Tiana ever spent. With Joe gone, nothing seemed to mean much anymore, but she might have been able to learn to live with it, sooner or later, if not for the fact that she was now in Joe’s remaining body and almost umbilically attached to the body of her birth and the one in which she craved to live again.

Boquillas had dressed fit to kill, with about everything in the feminine arsenal of Husaquahr, including makeup, jewelry, and heels, which she negotiated quite well, but which made her tower over everyone else and even somewhat dominate his own large body. He had been given a rather deluxe loincloth, some sandals, and, most painfully of all, Joe’s swordbelt and scabbard, minus the sword. It didn’t really matter; the spell prevented him from using the sword anyway, although he had to wonder. That sword always had a curious fairylike life of its own, as if it were some sort of creature that fed upon those it killed. Joe had often spoken as if he had no control over it and that when it was in his hand, he seemed a mere observer.

Tiana had to wonder if the sword would respond to him in this body. If it did, would it be bound by this spell? Or, in fact, was that a moot point? Suppose he could kill Boquillas with the sword. What then? The volcano blows, the battle resumes, and that’s it.

It would present one hell of a moral dilemma. Risk the destruction of the world or at best its enslavement by powers from a forgotten age; or allow Esmilio Boquillas to paint Tiana, not Boquillas, as the tyrant goddess?

And then, again, could he do it? Could he, in effect, destroy his own body?

He didn’t particularly like being a man. Oh, there was nothing horrible about it, but it wasn’t as much fun. It didn’t feel right, and men carried such different mental baggage, such different interests and outlooks. He’d been a man during one of the early were episodes, just to see what it was like, and definitely decided that, at least for Tiana, girls had more fun. Hell, just look at how boring he dressed!

Dinner was a rather uncomfortable affair, with Boquillas constantly twitting him and making comments about the Tiana body as well, but the food was damned good. One of the serving slaves, who might or might not have been the one from the previous day who had listened so kindly, poured the wine and whispered in his ear, “Get her to the pit. If she dies there, we can stop the action.”

Tiana stiffened. So he wasn’t crazy. Who, then, was behind this?

With a start he realized that it had to be Marge. No mention had been made of either Marge or Macore since their capture, and it was another of Boquillas’ lapses not to have asked about it when, as a slave, Tiana would have had to tell.

Marge was a Kauri. The goddess of Kauris, she’d said, lived in a volcano! In a volcano! Of course!

“Uh—Tiana?” The name stuck in his mouth and was hard to get out.

“Yes, Joe, darling?”

“Could I—could we—after eating, I mean—go down there for just a minute? I would like, just once, while I am still thinking straight, to see where he died.”

Boquillas thought about it. “It wouldn’t do any good, you know. You cannot do yourself any harm.”

“No tricks. We were together a very long time, though.”

“Hmmm … If I did, would you lie with me tonight? Would you lie there and pretend that you are Joe and that I am Tiana? Do it with me and make me believe it?”

“I—I don’t know if I could. I can try.”

“All right, let’s try. If I’m pleased, we’ll go down in the morning. If not, well, then, we’ll see, won’t we?”

“No. Let me at least say good-bye to him before I can do any thing new.”

Boquillas gave that wicked smile. “Joe, darling, we’ve got to start training you properly. In all cases, from how on, what I want comes first. There are no exceptions.”

“All right,” he sighed. “But bring me much stronger drink than this! I’ll need quite a lot to forget who and what I was and who and what you are!”

It was fortunate that hangover cures were easier for witches than even love potions, because he needed one badly the next morning. He’d gotten himself so sloshed he could hardly remember the night, and he knew he didn’t want to remember any more than he did.

Still, Boquillas seemed in very high spirits. “Come, my love, now that your head is clear and your stomach is settled, we will go down and honor your request.”

It was startling to see how Boquillas had changed just between night and morning. He hadn’t had a truly accurate idea of how he looked and acted as Tiana—who did have that kind of self-image?—but the sorcerer’s look and manner were far less exaggerated and more natural, the sort of way the original Tiana would do something, and her speech was changing as well, taking on more of Tiana’s own speech patterns and even gaining a hint of the accent acquired by spending so much time growing up on Earth. Was he really that revealing, in spite of efforts to hide it, or was Boquillas really that good?

“I’d intended to go down there today, anyway,” she told him. “The empty scabbard must be addressed, and we have an acid test to make while you are still relatively unencumbered. Come.”

They walked down the stairs, across the lobby area, and into the left courtyard ring. At the first arch they went through, with him preceding her, and then down the steps to the narrow walkway around the boiling pit.

Both of them stopped suddenly at the sounds of Gilligan’s Island and stared at that second level. “Hasn’t Sugasto blown that thing to smithereens yet?” Boquillas said, irritated.

“Perhaps he’s experimenting, now that he’s got the situation,” Tiana suggested. “I would say he is probably quite concerned that something exists that can negate his best spell.”

“You may be right. If he goes on too long, though, I will want to trigger this volcano just to stop that moronic nonsense.”

They walked around to almost the very spot where Joe had stood on the wall, taking on all comers. About twenty feet away, the sword Irving still stuck out halfway in blood-stained rock, although someone had at least cut free and hauled away the impaled bodies during the night.

Tiana went over and looked down at the bubbling mass. It looked like cooking pudding or an asphalt mixer and smelled of rotten eggs and worse. Only clever design kept that odor from permeating the palace—most of the time.

Joe’s body was part of that now, burned, melted, to become one with the rock, the fluids boiled away in a flash.

He turned away, feeling sick.

“Listen,” Boquillas said, “what is done is done. You are Joe now. You are all that is left of him. I did not want him dead, remember. We should never have been standing here like this, now. Cooperate with me. Become Joe willingly and accept me as I am. Help me to pull this off. You saw Sugasto’s horrid vision, all those soulless bodies, shaved and mutilated slaves, police-state brutality. I don’t want that. I would not want to be the goddess of a world like that. We need not be lovers, but we do not have to be enemies.”

“Empty talk, empty promises,” he responded. “Your slick tongue and fast mind have gotten you through everything, yet you still stand here, short of your ambitions. Against your talk, there is the certainty that Joe, the real Joe, jumped from here into that, rather than aid you. I cannot stop you from using me, from using magic, potions, whatever. But I can never surrender willingly, for to do that would be to spit on Joe’s grave and call his sacrifice a lie. I would never do that. I could not.”

She sighed. “Then we do it the hard way. In the end, it does not matter. It just means that instead of enjoying the benefits of being consort to a god, you will instead wind up sooner or later cleaning her toilets.”

“There is no dishonor in being a slave,” he said softly. “It is necessary work.”

High above, from the window of the empty room, Macore and Marge looked down on the pair, and the little thief frowned. “You think you can get her in there?”

“If she’d just lean a little more against that low wall I bet I could deliver a sudden, flying kick.”

“Yeah, from the front. She’ll see you and stop you with a spell.”

“It’s a risk I have to take. There is no other way.”

Macore looked out, gasped, and suddenly grabbed Marge’s arm. “Look! Maybe there is!”

Marge stared down at the scene and gasped herself. The pair stood there on the walk, facing away from the pit, and could not see it.

Slowly, carefully, but absolutely, a great golden limb of the lava tree was moving, almost like an excruciatingly slow tentacle, extending with every little movement. A new branch sprang out at its tip and seemed, as they watched, to grow smaller branches, almost like …

“Like a hand,” Marge breathed.

“But it’s too short and too slow!” Macore said. “There’s no way it can reach her before they move!”

“Maybe, maybe,” she breathed. “Oh, remember it’s iron!”

Down on the courtyard, Boquillas sighed. “Well, try and get the sword, anyway. You cannot use it on me, and even if it tries on its own, I can numb your arm in plenty of time. Go ahead-call it. Call it the way he used to call it.”

“All right, “Tiana said wearily. Even if the sword responded, even if it flew to his hand, could he in fact will it to cut off the neck of his birth body?

The “hand” on the lava tree turned, lining up perfectly. There was the sword in the rock, then Tiana’s stately body, then the “hand,” all in a row. Just a tiny fraction more to the left…

Tiana held out his hand. “Irving! To me!” he called.

The sword remained in the rock.

“Irving! To me!” he tried again, and again the sword stayed put.

And then came a soft, sexy, deep female voice, as if from a great distance, and echoing all up and down the pit. “Irving! To me! “it said.

Boquillas, startled, turned slightly to her right and said, “Wha—?”

The sword flew from the rock like a rocket, striking Boquillas with tremendous force right in the chest, bowling her over on its unstoppable way to the limb. She was knocked back against the wall, stunned, and for a moment seemed to totter, but not fall back.

The sword struck the handlike end of the limb, crackling when it touched, but the limb pushed back with tremendous force, directing the sword, blade first, exactly back in the direction from which it had come at the moment Boquillas tried to straighten up. The great sword struck and penetrated right below the neck, knocking her slightly forward.

At that moment, Tiana suddenly felt all constraints lifted and acted almost without thinking, the emotions at Joe’s loss and the hatred for Boquillas overwhelming any and all other thoughts but one.

“I will never fail you, Master. “

With enormous strength, he seized the screaming Boquillas, lifted up that huge female body, and tossed it into the pit below.

“Yippee!” Macore cried from the window.

“Son of a bitch!” Marge swore. “I think she tore one of the strings loose on the way down! I gotta fly!” She leaped out, then down directly into the lava.

Tiana stood there, looking down at that same lava, and began shaking like a leaf, and then started to cry.

Macore suddenly felt the whole building start to shake a bit, and things began dancing around of their own accord. Good grief! he thought, suddenly panicking. Earthquake! I gotta get out in the open! Com’on, Marge!

Tiana was suddenly aware of the shaking as well, and looked around curiously, drained of emotion. Boquillas was dead. Really dead. And now someone else would inherit Husaquahr as a result.

He looked back down at the lava pool, oblivious of the shaking, oblivious of the cornices beginning to crack, of the crash as television, VCR, and stacks of videotapes went flying, leaving packs of suddenly enraged zombies loose.

The lava level was falling in the crater!

Tiana was still confused, stunned, and somewhat in shock by what had happened. Had the sword flown and killed Boquillas? What was that woman’s voice? Marge? What had they rigged up?

It no longer mattered. Clearly, no matter what else happened, nothing was going to matter for anybody in this palace before long, and that included him. Oddly, that didn’t disturb him, but he was seized with a sudden urge to see just what was happening out at the Devastation, and just what would emerge from that horrible place.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the earthquake stopped. He turned again and saw, or thought he saw, the lava level stabilizing. Not really rising—it had lost a good fifteen or twenty feet— but it no longer seemed to be draining out.

Marge came shooting out of it, then landed on the wall. “Close call!” she exclaimed, sounding winded. “I got it tied off, but not before one tube flooded and blew. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen, but I think the majority of them are still in the deep freeze. No guarantees about the closest point, though.”

He looked at her, shaking his head. “Marge, I think we better get away from here anyway. Now that it’s stopped shaking, Sugasto is going to be fit to be tied.”

“Whoops! Forgot about him! Head for the royal side. Pick up a weapon if you can. Meet you on the garden porch!”

Tiana nodded. “At least we don’t have to listen to Gilligan’s Island anymore!”

“Yeah. Poor Macore. Watch out for the zombies!” And she was off.

He looked around, then made a run for the far stairs. There was pandemonium all over the place, and things were still falling and crumbling from the after-effects of the quake. Soldiers, Ben-tar, everybody was running all over the place, and nobody was paying the least bit of attention to him.

He looked back briefly across the center courtyard and saw why everybody was going his way. The topmost part of the main tower was cracked clean through, and seemed almost to be leaning precipitously. Even the gargoyles were leaving their perches there, flying around aimlessly and screeching obscenities.