“He’d already been a demigod,” Tiana reminded her defiantly through her tears. “And he hated it.”
Boquillas sighed. “Well, when Plan A goes a little off, you have to improvise a bit.” She reached out and touched the slave ring in Tiana’s nose in the same two-fingered manner Joe had used. “You’re mine, now, and you’re all I’ve got, so you’re going to have to do, my dear. A bit of a letdown for me, but a considerable come-up for you. He’s gone, so you’ll have to replace him. Same script, just different parts, that’s all. At least you won’t blow it by killing yourself, too. The little bit I just added there compels obedience. You’re my property now, all legal and proper, and you cannot act against my interests.”
It killed Tiana to call Boquillas by any term of respect, but she had no choice. “Then, Mistress, you will restore me to my old body and rule as Joe?”
“No, no. Joe had no magical powers. Never did. Were I inside him, the whole Council, with Ruddygore leading the pack, couldn’t give me what I need, and that cursed sword would never accept me in any event, which would queer everything. No, my dear, it’s obvious. I shall still become Tiana; now it is you who will become Joe.”
“I? Joe? Mistress, it would be obscene!”
Boquillas grinned. “I know. That’s why I like it. At least you’re easier to do. That protective spell Sugasto gave you includes what I call a soul-puller mechanism. My own powers aren’t up to creating one, but since he’s kindly provided one, it should be simple. We’ll still need Sugasto to complete the process with me, of course. Until he returns, you shall attend me as my slave and not leave my side, and you shall begin telling me those details I need to know. And stop that confounded blubbering! You’re going to have to learn to be a man, not a swishy wimp!”
Tiana obeyed, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Joe was dead, and, no matter who she was, she loved him. Even now, knowing the truth, her memory fully restored, she knew that she’d remain this way forever if she could only have him back.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out, not at all. Joe was gone, she was a helpless captive of the powers of Darkness, the chief villain immune to harm or malignant sorcery herself by virtue of tying her fate to the survival of the world. This just wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.
But hadn’t Joe been magnificent in that final fight! If love meant anything, if sacrifice meant anything, and if evil could be that sloppy, there had to be same way, somehow, to stop this foul plan.
“I don’t believe it!”
Macore nodded sadly. “I saw it myself, from my perch in the tower room. He went out fighting like the greatest heroes of old, and when hundreds of them surrounded him, he got a bunch more by hurling the sword and then jumped in. Even the villains will tell stories of that great fighter to their grandchildren!”
“I thought—somehow, this time, I had that feeling, but I thought it would be me,” Marge said, feeling empty inside and fighting back tears.
Neither Macore nor Marge were caught yet and there was a question as to whether or not anyone even suspected they were there. Everybody had gone after Joe and Mia, as Joe had predicted, should one side be exposed.
Macore had spent the better part of the day asleep under one of the already made-up beds in the royal tower; Marge had used her own resources to do the same. Neither had abandoned his or her friends, although both felt as if they had. When it was clear that the other two had been caught, they retreated to the empty part of the palace and decided that there was no chance of their doing anything in the way of a rescue until nightfall. Macore had heard the commotion and wound up with a windowseat on the great fight and sacrifice. Marge had already been out somewhere and only now got the details.
“So what do we do now?” Macore asked her. “Joe’s dead, which means Mia’s enslaved to somebody, probably the Baron, and beyond being just plucked out. We’d have to kill the Baron to free her now. There’s nobody left now capable of destroying the bodies, either. And, to top it all off, I can’t get my gear back because I’d have to fight off dozens of enraged zombies!”
“There’s got to be something we can do for her,” Marge told the little thief. “If I know Boquillas, he’s vamping right now, picking her brains to get all the details he can. She still knows an awful lot about palace routine, palace personalities, and Tiana’s own habits and quirks. Maybe enough.” She started thinking furiously. “Where’s his sword?”
“Still out there in the center court. It seems to have a life of its own for real. It won’t let anybody pick it up. It’s stuck partway into the rocks itself and just won’t budge.”
“Excalibur,” she responded.
“Huh?”
“The Sword in the Stone—an old Earth legend about another such sword. It won’t budge until it accepts a new owner, and that’s the only one who’d have the right and ability to pull it out.”
“Who would that be?”
“Beats me. Irving, maybe. Poor kid. If it’s true, he’s not only gonna be stuck here with no dad, he’s gonna wind up the great mercenary Irving with his great sword Irving.” She sighed. “Normally I’d think that was humor; but under the circumstances, I don’t feel all that funny.”
“Neither do I. They almost certainly know how we got in here now, so I’m not at all sure how we get out,” the thief commented. “One thing’s for sure—we can’t do anything, not to help her, not to help ourselves, unless we have a lot more information. Even if we somehow get out of this, which looks unlikely, what’s the use, except temporarily to save our own necks? If there’s any information that we could take with us, that would make at least some of this trip meaningful. Right now, the only thing we’ve got is bad news and worse news, and one of those items is that the Baron was throwing spells right and left out that window.”
“Is that the bad or the worse?” she asked. “Wait a minute! I’m thinking!” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe there is a way. Suppose there’s some way for me to talk to Mia.”
“So what? You’re now the enemy, right? She couldn’t do anything against the Baron’s interests, and that would include helping you. At least she doesn’t have to volunteer information, or they’d be scouring this dump for us now.”
Marge nodded. “Sure. But doing something against a master’s interest is a knowing act. Suppose she didn’t know she was giving us information?”
“How you gonna do that? Your mind-tricks work only on guys, right? And both the Baron and Mia are girls.”
“No, for short periods I can make anyone see me as I wish, so long as I’m female in the illusion. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to move around on Earth, let alone move around this place. You know that. I have no power over women, it’s true, but if she thought she were talking to someone else, maybe unburdening herself, it might work.”
“Risky. If Boquillas has her powers back, it’s not gonna fool him or her or, what the hell, I’m getting dizzy with all this!”
“You work on an exit,” she told him, “and stay close to here and out of sight so I can find you again. I’m going to try something. It’s better than just sitting here.”
It wasn’t unusual to see the various female slaves who serviced the place at any point in the palace, day or night, and neither the human guards nor the Bentar gave a particularly small, very young-looking slave the slightest notice as she walked into the magician’s tower and scampered up the stairs.
Boquillas had kept Mia close to her, but there were times when the slave was alone and miserable on the living quarters floor, told to wait while her mistress went to tend to something or other.
The very young slave waited, pretending to clean something in the hall, men went over to Mia, who sat, looking miserable in one corner of a sitting parlor.
“You are new here,” the very young slave commented. “Do not take it so hard. After a while, you come to accept things, and you find it isn’t so bad.”
Mia looked up at her, her eyes still red, but all cried ou
t at this point. “It is for me. I was not bom a slave, but high, and the master whom I loved and served is now burned in the fire pit.”
“High?”
She nodded. “I did not know myself until today. It was hidden from me. Once I was a mighty ruler, Queen to the one who is gone. Now I am less than you, for I am to become him in a mad scheme of my new mistress. Yet I would remain this way forever if I could but bring him back.”
I knew it! Marge thought triumphantly. She is Tiana!
“That is very strange,” Marge responded. “You are to become the man who died today? How is that, if he is dead and his body burned?”
“There is another body above. Already my mistress commands me respond only to the name of Joe.”
Marge thought a moment, hoping to plant a thought. “But if you are put in this man’s body, you will no longer be a slave.”
“No. But I can do nothing or try nothing. To kill my mistress is to destroy the world.”
“What? How?”
“I do not know. Somehow, if she dies, the volcano goes off, melts the horrible place out there, and unleashes an evil worse than she.”
“When will you become him?”
“Tomorrow. When the Master of the Dead returns.”
Marge sighed. “I must go now. I would not like your mistress to find me here and know you have told anyone so much.”
“Yes, thank you. It helps to talk about such things to one who is as powerless as I, but I would not like you to suffer because of it.”
Marge got up and quickly walked down the stairs again, hoping she could maintain the slave illusion long enough-to get back in the clear.
So it was Tiana after all! That devil Ruddygore! Still, she stopped and looked out at the volcanic pit. No matter what had caused it, or what fed and maintained it, if it were for all intents and purposes no more than a volcano, she could go down into it. The Kauri cleansed themselves by lava swims in their native forest. There was always the risk of iron in that soup, of course, but if it were molten and liquid, and if she swam fast enough, it couldn’t get in to poison her.
She made her way back up to Macore, who waited anxiously in the shadows of the empty room.
“I’ve got more than enough! She was in such an emotional state I was able to draw out precisely what we needed,” she told the thief, proceeding to summarize the information.
Macore whistled. “Okay, now we know. That’s Tiana so we’re still in business, sort of.”
“I thought you were only interested in your precious tapes.”
“I am, I am,” he responded, irritated. “But if they have that kind of effect on zombies, any world ruled by these people will be a world where all tapes will be forbidden. I’ll never get to see them again!”
“Look,” she told him, “I’m going to go into that volcano and see just what sort of trap is rigged down there. It’s possible we may be able to pull off all of it yet!”
She zoomed out the window, went up at some speed, curved, and dove straight down into the crater in front of the lava tree, even to Macore’s trained eyes nothing more than a reddish streak.
She was down quite some time, and he began to worry, but, eventually, the streak rose again, then angled and darted into the window. She looked very excited.
“Macore! I think I’ve got it! It’s a series of simple, unstable spells that would cause moderate explosions around the edges of the lava pool nearest the Devastation. It wouldn’t erupt as such, or I don’t think so, but, rather, flow out toward the frozen valley. It’s certainly bush-league spell stuff; Boquillas sure hasn’t got all those powers back. Probably put there by some sort of fairy in her employ or some demonic-type who still owes her. The spells, though, would be impossible for Sugasto to divine or reach without using the same sort of stuff, and he can’t take the chance that the act of doing just that wouldn’t set it off—and it might! It’s held to Boquillas by some very fragile magical threads. Break the threads, boom!”
“So where’s that get us? Can you defuse it?”
“If I knew what I was doing, I could, but the only people around here likely to have the knowledge wouldn’t be much better to deal with as winners than Boquillas. There’s a flaw, though, because of its primitiveness. If Boquillas were to fall into that pit, the strings would not detach, they’d simply become embedded in the new rock. Later on, somebody with better motives could get some fairy, immune to it like me, to go down there with exact directions and untie the damned thing.”
“Great. So all we have to do is to get Boquillas to stroll out there, where it’s hot enough to burn your feet, and somehow ward off any spells she might throw, and push her in. Easy.”
“Save the sarcasm. Now, look. The only way Boquillas can possibly pull this off is to convince Tiana, who will be Joe, that she’s Joe and that Boquillas is really Tiana. Get it?”
“No. I got as far as Tiana as Joe, then my head started spinning.”
“That sorcerous hypnosis, like what Ruddygore used, won’t be possible. The magicians of Marquewood would read it in a moment. You can’t have a demideity under an enchantment. Not right away. That means some kind of love potion. One that’ll make her so giddy that she’ll buy any kind of irrationality her so-called true love sells.”
“So?”
“So we let them go through with it. All the way. But when Ti’s in Joe’s old body, she’ll be a man. She might not feel totally at home, but her were experiences will have her adjust pretty quickly, like it or not. Macore, take it from me: there isn’t a love potion ever made, or a love spell ever woven, that a Kauri can’t manipulate, if the one who has it is a human mortal male. And if I can get through, then it’s Ti’s job to take a stroll with her love to see the lava tree. If Ti really loved Joe as much as I think she did, then we’re gonna drive a Texas-sized truck through Esmilio Boquillas!”
“Uh—yeah. I’ll take that. Sure,” the little thief muttered. “And all that’ll leave us with is Sugasto, currently one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world.”
“Don’t be such a grump! One thing at a time, damn it! Right now we just have to keep out of sight and undiscovered until tomorrow night.”
“Don’t they look nice? I’ve been putting them through exercises regularly and they are in tiptop shape.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Tiana looked at the two figures standing there in naked splendor before them. There she was—her body, just as it had always been. And there, too, was the Joe she’d met and loved, or the shell of him. Her heart ached just to see the shell.
A tall man dressed all in black robes entered and saw them. Boquillas turned and shouted, “Suggy! Baby!”
The Master of the Dead was in a foul mood and having none of it. “A bit sloppy as usual with that business, aren’t you, Boquillas? And what the hell is that with all my zombies shorted out by that—that abomination!”
“Oh, calm down. We’ve got Tiana and we’ve got me and you, so nothing’s really changed. By spring, Joe and Tiana will still be perfect to the last detail. As for the zombies—well, I didn’t cause it! I figured that, once you got here, you could figure out how to shut it off.”
“I’ll blast those machines to the bottommost pits of Hell from whence they obviously came,” he growled.
“Suggy! You have to stop worrying over unimportant things! After all, I look at the slave and what do I find but your own signature spell on her! You had them both in your hand! According to her, you had them to lunch!. And then you handed them safe conduct and patted them on the head and sent them on their way! None of this would have happened if you’d just fingered them then and there!”
“It’s that damned hair-shearing,” Sugasto grumbled. “Makes her look like a ten-year-old boy. Besides, who would have imagined that somebody that highborn could be reduced to this—and by her own people! As for the man, well, the beard threw me. You said he couldn’t grow one!”
“And you, who can grow mustaches on tomatoes with a wave of your finger, got taken
by a beard! Well, never mind. We can blame each other for our errors or we can say the hell with it and resolve to make no more. There is too much at stake for us to fall out now.”
The Master of the Dead calmed down, seeing her logic. “All right. So when do you want to do this?”
She shrugged. “No time like the present. We may as well start in. It will take a fair amount of time before everything is nailed down straight, you know.”
“Well, all right. What do you want me to do with the bodies? I can’t get the slave ring out of that one, you know, and, as for yours, it would be almost wasted as a zombie.”
“Oh, preserve them, by all means. Particularly mine. It can be a zombie for the duration, until and unless we find someone suitable to stick in it. I’ve grown rather fond of it. As for the other…” She went over to Sugasto, who bent down slightly as she whispered, “There will come a time when we won’t need her anymore. Then you can move into Joe, and she can return to what she is and serve us.”
Sugasto nodded. “I like it. Very well.” He pointed to the body of the tall, muscular woman. “You! Come here!”
The body of Tiana the demigoddess moved, shuffling a bit, woodenly, more like a puppet than a real person, and stood, blankly staring, beside Boquillas.
“It’s a good thing the sound of that crap in the courtyard doesn’t reach up here or we’d have them down there, too!”
“Oh, I thought of that immediately,” Boquillas told him. “That’s why I put a cone of silence on this chamber.”
Tiana watched with horror as the Master of the Dead stood facing both women’s bodies, and placed one hand on Boquillas’ head, the other, with a reach, on her old, original head. It hurt to see that body as much as it hurt to see Joe’s; to be this close, to be in the same room, only a few feet away, with someone with the means to put her back, and know that she might as well have been on the moon…
There was no sound, no magical pyrotechnics, no sensation at all, yet, suddenly, Mahalo McMahon’s old body stiffened and the eyes glazed over, while, at the same time, the body of Tiana seemed to be filling up with life, animation, and motion.
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