The gorgon heads turned and looked back at the mist.
“Cooling down already,” the center head said.
“Yes, indeed,” the other two heads agreed in unison.
“Oh, I suspect you’ll have quite an assemblage of demons, wicked fairies, that sort of thing stalking around,” the center head told him, “if, of course, they can figure out how to get out of there before being swallowed back up. Most of them, though, were re-absorbed, what with everyone all crushing up to get out all at once.”
“Not everyone is able to throw their weight around the way we can,” the right head pointed out.
Ruddygore sighed. “Well, boys, the Lakes are that way and the River still flows. I’m over at Terindell now, right on the river. Let me know if you need anything, but I’ve still got a bit of the aftermath to deal with here. We’ve ended an entire epic today, and it’s been a while since anyone did that. You know how many loose ends those leave.”
“Oh, indeed, yes,” the right head agreed.
The left head looked at the figures of soldiers and the rest still well away on the ice. “Can we eat them? After all this time, we’re starved!.”
“Well, the Bentar are all yours, and any fellows with the black and gold uniforms. Let the rest be. They’re mostly innocent victims.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” the three heads cried together, and they sank beneath the ice once more, to come up, it was suspected, somewhere beyond the still fleeing forces.
Throckmorton P. Ruddygore sighed and made his way over to the porch area.
“Ruddygore! Are you okay?” Marge called.
“No!” he snorted. “When I fell on that ice I think I skinned my knee. Hurts like hell! Tore a perfectly good robe, too!”
“You’ll live.” She laughed.
He stopped halfway up the side, and Tiana gave him a mighty hand to assist him to the top.
“Good heavens! Is that Tiana in there?”
“I am afraid so,” Tiana replied. “Boquillas decided to be me, and, well, planned on me teaching her how.”
“Yes, I see.” He looked down. “Macore! Will you stop playing with those poor unfortunates?”
“I can’t!” the thief wailed. “They won’t let me stop recounting the stories!”
Ruddygore laughed. “Let’s leave him there awhile. I’m certain we can extricate him later, but it’s about time he got what he deserved with that mania of his.” He looked around. “Where is Joe?”
Tiana’s face fell. “I think you had better hear the story from the start,” he said.
“Yes, indeed. Tell you what—I’m going to soak this knee in that thermal bath over there. You can tell me while I do so.”
Marge slipped away from them and walked back in through the now deserted and litter-strewn royal entry hall, then out to the crater. It and the lava tree were still there, although the sorcerer’s tower still tottered precipitously, and there were cracks all over and chunks of rock here and there. It was already beginning to give the place something of the look of a ruin.
“It’s all right, Joe,” she said in a conversational tone. “There’s nobody here but me.”
The purplish trunk of the lava tree seemed suddenly to expand slightly, and from it emerged a small fairy form. “I had a hunch you’d get it,” the figure now under the lava tree said. “I was hoping Tiana wouldn’t.”
“Well, she’s not much happier than you are at the moment, you know,” the Kauri pointed out. “Either one of you would be better off and happier as the other.”
“Yeah, I know,” Joe said. “Those damned Rules! You always have a way out, but when I stood there on that wall, surrounded, seeing those silver-tipped piles and bolts, I knew that there was only one way open, just what the Rules required. I looked at them, then I looked back at this tree, and I figured, hell, a tree’s a tree, and it would free me of Boquillas’ power and give me some freedom of action. It was surrender, die, or this. As much as I didn’t want this, I have to tell you I would have taken death easily, even oblivion, except mat it would have left my enemies victorious and Tiana in their hands. I remembered what we’d discussed about sacrifice and unhappy endings and all that. If this was to be the end of our great battles, then it was also somebody else’s beginning, too. I hadn’t taken Irving out of the mean streets of the inner city to have him grow up under Boquillas’ or Sugasto’s vision of Husaquahr. If that meant this, then it was a price I had to pay.”
“Hey! It’s not so awful!” Marge responded. “I think you made a pretty good Kauri.”
“Well, it’s okay, but I didn’t want a career out of it. Even so, Kauris fly, and very well, and can interact with regular society to a degree. Maybe I could take that. But wood nymphs—hell, I can’t even figure out how to get off here! I could slide down, I guess, but even if I found some solid rock to stand on down there I’d never make it back up the outer wall. That’s why I’ve been here all this time. I’m stuck!”
Marge smiled. “Well, let me see if I can find a rope or something and fly it out to you. Then I’ll fill you in on all you missed. Ruddygore’s here.”
“Yeah? Well, unless he’s broken the secret code, that doesn’t do me much good at all.”
“I fear the secret of such effortless soul-switching died with Boquillas and Sugasto.” Ruddygore sighed.
They—the sorcerer, Macore, Marge, and Tiana—sat in Sugasto’s old banquet room, sampling his wares. Since Ruddygore seemed unconcerned about the top of the tower felling down, they were at least less nervous about it themselves.
“You mean I am stuck like this,” Tiana said.
“Well, not exactly, but there are few options. I can’t fool around with that body, since I helped design it, as it were, with bound demons. The theory of the switching spell is easy enough to divine; the problem is that each and every individual is different. Thus, you need complementary mathematics to switch anyone that is unique to each individual. The question we have no answer for is, how did Sugasto and the Baron figure out the unique complementary equation for each and every individual they switched, therein detaching both soul and consciousness and placing it elsewhere? I don’t know. Reattaching on other than a random basis provides the same problem for the host.
Thanks to Sugasto’s easy lifting addendum, I know your code, and, of course, I know the codes for your slave body and for Mahalo McMahon, whom we had to care for after she was stuck in the Baron’s wrecked body. We used the Lamp to cure Ma-halo—she’s the High Priest of an Amazon cult in the southern jungles right now and apparently loving every minute of it.”
“You could use the Lamp on me, then.”
“No.” Ruddygore sighed. “I’m afraid not. You see, after Macore stole it the last time from a vault I would have said was the most secure in the whole of the universes, I realized that as long as it was accessible and known, it would be a magnet that could never be properly secured, as handy and seductive as its power was. I couldn’t destroy it—it was of djinn manufacture-but I sent it flinging, out into space. I have no idea where it is now. Mars, possibly, if it hit anything.”
Tiana sighed. “Then this is it?”
“That body gets you back an undisputed royal exalted position,” he reminded her. “You were sort of deified, you know. We could easily sell you as Joe and Tiana merged, a single godhead, both male and female in one, and you could help provide stability to this land in these days of aftermath. The alternatives are that I can return you to the slave body from whence you were plucked, since I know that one, or to the empty shell previously used by the Baron, McMahon’s body. It’s not a bad body, but I have no idea of what you’d wind up as. You saw what the hormone levels in that body did even to such a staid fellow as Esmilio Boquillas. Most likely, whoever gets it will become a very sexy witch.”
“What do you mean, ‘whoever gets it’?” Marge asked.
“Well, we have all those zombies—thousands upon thousands of them. Not the reanimated dead, they collapsed with Sugasto�
�s death, but the ones whose souls were taken and stored. Those souls are mostly stored here and almost all survived the quake. Alas, they are coded by a private spell, so there is no way of ever telling who’s what. There could be faerie in there, as well as countless men, women, and children. We can put the souls back in the bodies, but we can’t tell whose soul is which, so it’s going to be totally random. You are by no means alone in your predicament, Tiana, and at least you have choices. But we’ll use every body we have, I’m sure, saving, of course, the slaves for last. It’ll be a mammoth job as it is.”
“I do not like being a man, even though I like men,” Tiana replied. “It is different relating to them as a woman, instead of being one of them. I enjoyed being a woman, always have. I do not believe even the Rules cover this sort of thing, although, goodness knows, they cover almost everything else. Oh, I know the hormones will act, I will get used to it, more comfortable with it, but I am positive that the Baron was wrong. I think my own sense of who and what I am would keep me a woman trapped in a man’s body no matter how much time passed. Joe, whom I saw as a Kauri, would be a much better woman than I will ever be a man.”
Marge said nothing.
“I agree,” he said. “And since nobody voluntarily wishes to be a slave—I’m hoping, with some of the damage done in the quake making us a wee bit short on living souls, that we can eliminate restoring the slave bodies—you want the McMahon body, then.”
“I do,” he said, “but you and I know full well that in spite of all this I am going to remain just as I am.”
Marge was so shocked she fell off her stool. “What?”
“Ruddygore said it. My return, now, as this, would stabilize first Marquewood and then the other regions. With my authority, I could insure that poor, suffering Valisandra and even Hypboreya gets the aid and assistance they need from the south to rebuild more stable and perhaps kinder governments. It is difficult to explain, Marge, but I was born of royal blood, and raised with a sense of duty and obligation. As a witch, I would be just another witch, counting for little, able to do very little. I would be happy within myself, but miserable at the things I would see that needed doing, that I could have done had I led instead of quit. I would honestly have been content to have remained Mia, slave to Joe, had that been an option, but it is not. Joe’s sacrifice made victory possible. Now I, too, must sacrifice, in the name and interest of all those people who have no choices, and perhaps also to be an example and help those poor unfortunates who are going to revive as strangers, in the wrong bodies, perhaps the wrong sex, possibly the wrong age. I have to do it. It is my duty, and it is a big job I know I can do.” Ruddygore nodded. “I understand perfectly. For all these long years I have been looking for the one to whom I could hand over this heavy burden of mine, which I inherited but did not foresee, and pass on. I am quite weary of this life, I assure you. But look at what has arisen instead—the Boquillases and Sugastos and that hollow-souled Council.”
Marge stared at him. “Were you really around when mat battle was fought, as that creature said?”
“I am that old, anyway,” he admitted. “I was much too young then, though, for such things; a mere junior adept. My master, the sorcerer Gastorix, whose power was so great that mine is but a pale shadow in comparison, was one of the guardians of the Eden Trees, which were placed here after that unpleasantness long before. I was way junior; he despaired that I would ever make sorcerer at all! His own prize pupil, whose name I will not even mention this close to the event, rebelled against him as well, and assembled a great multitude to seize first this tree, then the others, and become gods themselves. To gain allies to stop him, Gastorix had to promise many fairy and human chiefs that they would get to taste of the fruit. They marched off, and we never heard the details, although I always suspected that this place was the result. Since then, the Hypboreyans moved in and worshiped the tree as the one giving knowledge of good and evil, the source of torment and the strength of the devil, which is why they wound up such an unpleasant folk with even less pleasant gods. And now only we knew what it really is.”
“Boquillas knew,” Tiana commented. “She boasted of it.”
Ruddygore nodded. “Yes, he would. He was the only other one who could have known. Back then, he wasn’t even an adept, still trying to decide if he would go the royal line or attempt to become a sorcerer, being one of the most rare ones with both lines in his veins. So long as he worked for Hell, though, he was forbidden anywhere near here. When he betrayed Hell as well, he felt free to move.”
The sorcerer looked over at Macore. “And what of you?”
The little thief shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing’s much fun anymore. Stealing’s too easy, I already got a fortune, and the thrill is gone. I been thinking maybe I oughta pack it in.” Seeing their suddenly stricken looks he added, “No! No! I’m not gonna kill myself or anything like that! Relax! I mean take my money and go down south. Find somebody who loves little guys and looks like Mary Ann, or maybe Mahalo McMahon or somebody equally nice, and enjoy life for a change. With my money, even with my looks, attracting the girls won’t be a problem, but attracting the right one will.”
“And what will you do otherwise?” Tiana asked him.
“I thought maybe I’d have myself a big boat. Go out in the southern ocean, fish, laze around. Maybe give tours of the islands if I get bored.”
Marge looked over at him. “Uh-huh. And how long an island tour?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Oh, maybe three hours.”
Marge and Ruddygore walked across the central courtyard in the darkness. The crater was refilling nicely, already up to perhaps ninety percent of its old level, and things were calming down, both there and out in the region of the Devastation.
Sitting on the crater wall, idly swinging a leg back and forth, was the figure of a nymph, four feet tall with dark green hair and exaggeratedly endowed as were all nymphs.
“Hello, Joe,” Ruddygore said. “How are you doing?”
“About as well as can be expected,” the nymph replied in that soft, sexy voice they all had variations of. “It’s still just sinking in, really. It’s hard enough to accept that all my old enemies are dead, even if I did have a hand in it. Accepting this will be a lot harder. Right now it’s okay—I mean, I’ve been a fairy before as a were and kept all my senses and personality and all that and adjusted pretty well, so it’s been good training— but when the sun’s up and it doesn’t go away, or when it’s a new moon and I’m still this way, well, after a while, it’s gonna be hard.”
“Oh, maybe not as hard as you think,” the sorcerer consoled. “You have few physical needs, and you have powers that will come to you over time and will help you when needed. You have your wisdom and your experience. Not only are you unique in having your full self to call upon, you’re also unique in a different way. Your first true tree was the lava tree. It accepted you, probably because of the genuineness of your sacrifice before it. You’re not limited to it or stuck up here, but you are now, with me, a guardian of it, and of its secret. Because you mated with it first, its juices flow within you. It’s as if you ate of it. You’re invulnerable, Joe. Even iron will not hurt you. That’s why the sword could be used and why you could throw it back. You can survive anything, just like this tree.”
The nymph frowned. “You mean I could have picked up Irving and swung it?”
“You could if you could have picked it up, which I doubt. It weighed pretty much the same if not more than you do.”
“There’s that. But that means I’m stuck this way forever.”
He nodded. “In a sense, you’re sort of a minor deity. Other nymphs will sense that, by the way. You can heal them and their trees and groves and lend them power. I think that’s a far better occupation in general than going around slicing people up.” “I never sliced anybody that didn’t deserve slicing!” Joe protested. “But, yeah, it was kinda getting old. But this will get old even faster. I mean, I grew up tough, in a culture
where the women had the kids and the guys worked three jobs to support ’em, fought hard, drank hard, drove hard. It’s not just the sex. It might be a kick to be an Amazon. But I’m a four-foot-tall, automatically sexy, pale green bimbo!”
Ruddygore thought a moment, scratching his chin through his beard. “Well, there are minor true deities that rule each of the races of faerie, like Marge’s Earth Mother. They have certain discretionary powers within their realm. Everyone’s a little male and female, opposites in one. The yin and yang, the Oriental philosophers call it. If I asked politely, I might get you shifted over into the male side.”
She looked up at him. “And what’s a male nymph?”
“A satyr.”
“Little guys with goat’s legs and horns who dance around playing these big wide flutes?”
“That’s them. Don’t knock those flutes. We had a real artist among satyrs a few years back. We fed him a lot of Earth tunes, had him record them, got a fellow on Earth to front for him, and sold two million copies of pan flute records on late night television.”
“No.” She sighed. “Maybe I’ll get desperate enough sooner or later to give it a try, but me dancing around with the chipmunks on goat’s feet is an even wilder wrongness than this. At least I look like something here that wasn’t put together by a committee.”
“Your real problem,” Ruddygore said, “isn’t your form or nature, it’s the fact that what you were destined to do is done; it’s over, and while you’re weary of all this and crave some stability, you also have suddenly been deprived of anything left to do.”
“That is pretty much it,” she admitted. “Things haven’t exactly wound up as I imagined them, with me and Ti riding off into the glorious sunset.”
“No, that’s fairy tales. Sagas, on the other hand, are never without cost, and the principals rarely wind up truly happy when the evil is defeated. The constellations are filled with the shapes of creatures and personalities of myths and legends from hundreds of cultures, most of whom, it is alleged, wound up there because they came to unhappy conclusions.”
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