"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.
It had taken Sugasto no more than thirty or forty seconds. No incantations, no nothing. That, perhaps, was the scariest thing of all.
At the same moment the Tiana body came fully to life, intelligence flooding the eyes and the movements becoming natural, the real Tiana felt her nose ring crackle once more. The body whose code the ring, had borne, McMahon's body, was now technically dead. Suddenly, she realized, for just a fleeting moment, she wasn't anyone's property at all.
With a kick from her runner's legs and a leap from her dancer's skills, Tiana made the doorway almost as her old body shouted, "Stop her, you idiot!"
Sugasto whirled. Even though Tiana was already out of sight, he did not give chase. Instead, he simply raised his right hand, cupping it slightly, then pulled it back, as if grabbing a ball and pulling it toward him.
In the hall, Tiana suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, suffering tremendous vertigo. Then, slowly, she felt as if she were rising, going up, out and away from her body, then floating back down the hall. Yes, she could see her body! See it just standing there!
The pull continued, and she went right through the stone wall and back into the sorcerer's room. Sugasto smiled, hand now toward her, and she felt herself moving, being guided by an unseen but irresistible force. Now she saw it! Joe's body, standing there, wooden, lifeless yet alive! Something was drawing her toward it, and it was swallowing her, merging with her. ...
She staggered, blinked, and shook her head which seemed full of cobwebs. She felt. . . different. Strange.
Sugasto chuckled. "You see, Boquillas? I wasn't the total fool when I first met them. She's always been mine any time I wanted her."
"What—?" Tiana managed, but the voice sounded low, deep, and hollow, alien to her. "You—you put me in Joe's body!" She didn't want to be in Joe's body—she wanted Joe in there.
"And in there you'll stay, until I say otherwise," the sorcerer told the new man. "And, remember, I can pull you out again at any moment, no matter where in Husaquahr you might be. And even as a soul, I can hold you and cause you unimaginable torment. Don't even think of moving until I tell you. You just saw what I can do!" He turned to the new Tiana. "You want to bind him temporarily with spells, or should I do it?"
"Eventually, yes," she told him. "We want him an objective critic of me and very well trained by the time we slip him the potions. Uh! This is such a different body! I think I'm taller, perhaps larger, than I was when I was a man! In heels, I'd be taller than he is!"
"So, what do you want to do, other than explore your new self?" the sorcerer asked her. "And, I assume, donning one of the outfits we had the slaves make up."
Boquillas turned to the new man. "All right—Joe. For the moment, we have to have an understanding. I've just thrown a spell on you, and I won't be careless enough again to remove it. You can move, you can walk and talk and get used to that body. But you cannot harm me, and you cannot harm anyone else, not even yourself. You could even make love to me, but you cannot harm me."
"I would sooner make love to a horse," he responded. "It would be obscene to make love to you. Incestuous. It would be like making love to myself."
"That will pass," Boquillas assured him. "Over time, the Rules will settle. You may always wish you were me, but you'll be you, as you are, and you'll operate normally like that, even naturally, as you became a dancer and a slave. And I, too, will assume the Rules regarding the blood royal, with which, of course, I was already comfortable, having been born into it."
"Why go through all that?" Sugasto grumbled. "Why not just stick a good hypnotic spell on him right now and be done with it?"
"Patience! Patience! Dear Suggy!" She had a good four or five inches in height on him now, and it felt rather neat. "For one thing, at this moment, and for the first time outside that puny body, we have a relatively 'clean' Tiana in that body, unsullied by any spells other than the one I just put on and can thus factor out. I want to see how it moves, how it talks, how it thinks. The words he chooses, the manner of managing a large, muscular body. Those things will fade after a while as the old male mercenary prince pattern re-emerges and takes command. True, I could make him think he's Joe now and be a fair critic, but there are things even we are not aware of in our movements and actions. Little things. The major stuff can come later. There's no rush. But this education is priceless."
"Why didn't you just put her in that body of yours, then, and observe?" Sugasto asked her. "Then you'd have an exact model."
"True, true, and I considered it, but I know the Rules all too well. Put her back in here and everything would return full almost immediately. Symmetry would be restored. I don't know her capabilities yet, and I won't risk losing our only other original. I can't explain it, but something just told me that if I put her in this body things would go wrong. Call it—women's intuition."
Sugasto shrugged. "I never understood women and I doubt if you do, either, for all your playacting at being one. But, as one with the Power myself, I've also learned that you don't easily ignore such feelings. Very well. But if anything happens to him, anything, I'll stick you in that damned slave body there, and you'll lick my feet and kiss my ass for a thousand years!" With that, he stalked out.
"He's always so cross when he's tired," Boquillas commented, seemingly unconcerned.
"It sounds to me as if you have to take as much care of me as you do of yourself,'' Tiana noted. ' 'Your death threat against the world does not mean much if you are still alive, but in that body."
"Anything worthwhile involves risk. My! But you're the swi
shiest barbarian I've ever seen! Come, we should dress before doing much else, and I'm starved. We don't feed these bodies right." She walked out, and suddenly Tiana almost jerked forward, as if on a chain, and had to double-time it to catch up.
"Another of your ideas?" he asked.
"Just a part of the spell, dear. We're such a devoted couple now that we can't even bear to let each other out of our sight."
"That is going to be a lot of fun in the ladies' room," Tiana commented, and Boquillas laughed a very un-Tiana laugh.
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, j
umped 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. . .
Songs Of The Dancing Gods Page 32