The River Of Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

He grinned. “Oh, yes. Come. Time to get up, get something into you, and get ready to begin. We’re almost there now.”

  She yawned, stretched, got up, and looked casually out the windows of the lounge. It was still dark right around them, but off in the distance day seemed to be slowly breaking.

  Joe was already up and he nodded to her as she went back to the food table. It had changed somehow during the night and was now filled with pastries, cheese, crackers, brown bread, and condiments that made up a solid European style breakfast.

  The pitchers and flagons, she found, were filled with various kinds of fruit juices and there was a large pot of coffee.

  Suddenly conscious of her hunger, she started in.

  “No eggs or sausage or nothin’,” Joe grumped. “A man’s got to have something solid in him to start a day.”

  Ruddygore laughed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to this sort of thing, both of you. Everything’s a bit more primitive in Husaquahr, and without refrigeration your American style breakfasts just aren’t practical. I wouldn’t complain too much, though. There are times when you’ll wish you had a breakfast like this.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Marge assured him. “I never was much for the breakfast stuff, anyway.”

  Ruddygore looked at her with a satisfied expression. “You seem a lot more chipper today,” he noted.

  She nodded and sipped at the coffee, which was strong and bitter, but still what she needed to complete the waking up process. “I woke up and you’re both still here. That’s enough.”

  Joe wandered over to the windows and looked forward.

  “Funny, I can see the dawn over there, but it’s still dark as pitch right overhead.”

  “That’s because it’s never dawn on the Sea,” the sorcerer told him. “What you’re seeing is not dawn but the edge of the Sea of Dreams. You’ll know we’re out of it when we come into full light, although I’ve arranged for a bit of a fog. It wouldn’t do to be seen putting in, you know.”

  Marge went over and looked out at the approaching sky.

  “How long?”

  “An hour, maybe less,” the sorcerer replied. “It’s actually quite close, but particularly in this area we’re going against the current.”

  Joe scratched and stretched. “I could use a shower.”

  “Me, too,” Marge seconded, feeling just how grubby she’d let herself become. It was the first time in a long time that she cared about it one way or the other.

  “Sorry. No facilities on the boat,” Ruddygore told them.

  “You’ve seen the pitiful little Johns and they’re more modem than you’ll likely see again. There’s little for showering at the castle, either, I fear, but I’m sure I could arrange for a bath.

  Just hold on until we get there.”

  Marge looked back out at the approaching division in the sky, then turned toward the sorcerer. “How long from when we land until we get to this castle of yours?” she asked him.

  “I seem to remember last night you said it was way up near the source of this big river.”

  “Indeed it is,” Ruddygore told her, “but that won’t bother us. The Sea of Dreams contacts all points in all universes. We will land within walking distance of the castle, I assure you.

  I could arrange even now for us to be met, but I think the walk will do us all good and you’ll get a look at the land.” He turned and gestured toward the food table. “In the meantime, let us eat, drink, and be merry.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause tomorrow we die,” Joe responded grumpily.

  Clearly he was very much out of his element and most uncomfortable about it.

  “We’ve broken through!” Marge called to them, and both men came to join her at the window. The darkness was gone totally gone, with no sign fore or aft that it had ever been.

  They were now in a dense, white fog that obscured everything.

  Somewhere up there, though, was a bright point of light that had to be a sun, and that cheered both of the newcomers.

  They heard the beat slow, heard oars being shipped, and realized now that they were drifting with a far different kind of current from that of the Sea of Dreams. There was no mistaking the feeling that the boat was coming in to dock.

  They went outside on deck, and Marge in particular was cheered to find it comfortably warm, although the dense fog threatened to soak them through. She walked forward, around the pilothouse, and the two men followed. Neither Joe nor Marge could resist looking in the pilothouse, but there was nothing to be seen. Whoever or whatever the captain of this ghostly ferry was, he, she, or it was definitely not visible in the daylight, although the large wooden wheel moved with a deliberateness that said that something, someone, was there.

  “The captain and deck crew are nice folks,” Ruddygore told them, “but rather sensitive about being seen. Among other things, unlike the rowing crew, they can and occasionally do go ashore, and what the passengers don’t know about them can’t someday be betrayed to an enemy.”

  Marge took a last look back at the apparently empty wheelhouse and shivered slightly despite the damp warmth. She wondered idly if Ruddygore was being completely honest and straightforward with them. Not that it made any difference right now. They were totally in his hands and at his mercy.

  Somewhere aft, a loud bell clanged four times, and again some of the oars came down as the boat performed a steering maneuver. There was a sudden lurch, then a great bump that went the length of the boat, and abruptly the oars shipped again and the boat came to a complete stop.

  “Well, we’re home!” Ruddygore announced cheerfully.

  “Follow me.” With that he made his way down one of the side stairways.

  Joe looked out at the all encompassing fog and shook his head. “Some home,” he muttered to himself, but followed the other two.

  They walked across the ribbed metal car deck and saw that there was a smooth area beyond the boat. Ruddygore stepped off onto it unhesitatingly, and after a moment. Marge and Joe did likewise.

  The fog began to fade only a few paces from the boat, and before they’d gone fifty yards it had completely vanished, revealing an unexpectedly beautiful scene.

  They were in a small wooded area beside a large river, the woods following and hugging the river itself, which seemed to be a thousand yards or more wide and whose other shore was apparently dense forest.

  But ahead was cleared land, gently rolling and lushly green with tall, unmowed grasses. Everywhere, too, were wildflowers by the thousands, of countless colors and shapes and varieties, sticking up through the deep green grass. Insects, many very familiar looking, buzzed and twitted to and fro; here and there small birds circled, dipped, or landed and hopped around in the grass.

  Beyond was a hill, not very high, really. Beyond it was a bluff dominating the scene, and on top of the bluff was a castle of the kind both newcomers had seen only in picture books.

  “Just like Disneyland,” Joe muttered.

  “Colder, draftier, but a lot bigger and more useful,” Ruddygore responded. “That is Terindell. My home.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Marge told him. “Even more beautiful than you described last night.”

  Ruddygore led the way along a path that seemed well worn, leading through the lush fields to the castle in an indirect, meandering fashion. It was not paved, but was dry and solid black earth and rock and proved no problem.

  “The path is circuitous mostly because of erosion,” the sorcerer explained. “As you might guess from the richness of the vegetation, this region gets a lot of rain, and a straight path would have worn its way into a crevasse by now.”

  “I don’t mind,” Marge assured him. “It’s so beautiful here, and I never felt better in my life.”

  Joe looked back dubiously. “Where’s the boat?”

  “Oh, it’s not here,” Ruddygore replied. “It never quite makes the whole trip either way. You might as well forget that boat, Joe. You’ll never see it again.”

  The w
alk up to the castle took the better part of an hour, but it was time well spent in just enjoying life and feeling good.

  Marge was like a kid again, laughing and smelling flowers and chasing butterflies; even Joe seemed to be affected with a sense of well being after a while. He didn’t join in, but at least he laughed along with her.

  Shortly before reaching the castle itself, the path intersected the main road leading up to it. It was a dirt and gravel road and not used very much, judging by the lack of real impressions in it, but it was well maintained.

  As their elevation increased, they could look down and see the panorama that was Ruddygore’s normal view.

  “The river we just came from, back there, is the Rossignol,” the sorcerer told them. “A gentle river that sings sweet, sad songs, but is a grand old lady in her own right. Over there, now, you can see her child, and the child of many other rivers great and small. The River of Dancing Gods.”

  Even this far north, there was no comparing the great river with its tributary. It flowed, shimmering golden in the sunlight, a broad, wide, powerful river. Although here it was not much wider than the Rossignol, they could see where the two rivers joined, and where they seemingly flowed along together in the same bed off into the distance, the dark of the Rossignol seemingly resisting the mix with its golden master. But when they joined, the River of Dancing Gods grew enormously, already a mile or more from bank to bank, a great river indeed, with more than a thousand miles left to grow in power and strength even more.

  “The other side of the Dancing Gods is Hypboreya, a very different son of country,” Ruddygore told them. “Across the Rossignol is Marquewood, a republic that is even now threatened on its southern border by the forces of the Dark Baron.

  This little spot of Terindell is but a small finger of Valisandra pointing southwest.”

  After a last, long look at the stunningly beautiful scene, they regretfully continued around the castle and up to its great outer gate with its massive wooden doors.

  Somewhere inside, a trumpet blared briefly, echoing through the inner courtyard, and a great gong sounded three times. At the third gong stroke, the huge doors opened inward, revealing, to the newcomers’ surprise, a moat. The inner castle was still a good forty feet beyond. Now from the inner castle, the drawbridge lowered slowly on rusting hinges with a clatter of chains and a moaning of protesting timbers.

  “Wow. Just like Robin Hood,” Joe muttered, a bit awestruck in spite of himself.

  The drawbridge hit with a clang, and, allowing Ruddygore to lead the way, they entered the inner castle.

  The entire castle was more a complex than a single building and complex was the word. The outer wall, including small guard towers and turrets, was thick enough to have almost an avenue along its protected top; inside, it presented a complex of ledges connected by elaborate stairways, all made out of granite. Beyond this was the moat an ugly affair, oily on the surface and smelling as stagnant as it must be.

  The inner castle was a second, thicker shell that definitely had rooms throughout. How many it was impossible to tell, but from the positioning of the windows they could see that there were at least four floors. It was perhaps a hundred feet thick.

  Inside this structure was a broad, green courtyard, well kept and maintained, with decorative shrubbery and flower beds; it was broken by a series of blocky stone buildings of various sizes.

  They stopped at the edge of the courtyard, and Ruddygore beamed with pride. “Terindell was built more than six centuries ago,” he told them. “It has a grand and glorious history, since its position here commanded the heights overlooking the two great rivers and their junction and, therefore, what commerce and use the rivers made possible. It is quite a fortress, and its location is still vital; but so long as it is mine and I am here, it is safe from the kind of violence it was built to withstand.”

  “They’d have a tough time getting anybody out of here who didn’t want to go,” Joe agreed. “They’d have to surround you and starve you out, most likely, and that would put their backs to the river in case you wanted out.”

  Ruddygore looked surprised at his new recruit. “You seem to understand the military factors of my world very well for someone from such a technological culture as your own. Do you have any experience in this sort of thing?”

  “Naw. It just seemed logical, is all,” the former trucker replied.

  “Hmmm...” Ruddygore muttered to himself. “Remind me never to confuse ignorance and stupidity again.” He cleared his throat and regained command of the conversation. “Staff quarters are in the inner ring, as we call it. I also do a bit of teaching here, and those students also stay there. Inside here we have the central kitchen, then the adjoining banquet hall.

  The two storey, blocky L shaped building over there contains my library, laboratories, and quarters. Come we’ll go there first.”

  He led the way across the courtyard. For the first time the two newcomers noticed others in the vast castle complex. Smoke was coming from the great chimney that abutted the kitchen, and from inside could be heard talking and the sounds of hard work. Around the courtyard, a few small boys were caring for flower groupings or trimming bushes. No, Marge saw, not small boys. About the size of nine or ten year olds and dressed in green leotards and jerkins, but definitely not boys. One, at least, had a graying beard, and there was something odd, almost inhuman, about their wiry bowleggedness, oversized hands and feet, and disproportionately enormous and slightly pointed ears.

  Ruddygore caught her thoughts.

  “Elves,” he told her. “Nice, pleasant folk. Nobody better for landscaping and grounds maintenance work.”

  Even as they followed the sorcerer, both Joe and Marge could hardly keep from staring at the little men busily at work.

  They reached Ruddygore’s building and headquarters and were met at the door by a tall, exotic, and, again, not quite human creature. He was close to six feet and stood ramrod straight, but he was oddly elongated. Joe thought of him as a four foot six man stretched somehow to that height. His face, too, was incredibly lean and thin, his ears large, thin, and sharply pointed. His skin was yellowish, and his eyes, black orbs set in deep red where white should be, darted this way and that like those of some beast of prey sizing up its victims.

  He was dressed in the same sort of jerkin and leotards as the elves, but his were a muddy brown. He wore no shoes; both hands and feet were long and had lengthy, eagle like talons instead of nails. His jet black hair was cropped very short, but a shock of it rose up and drooped slightly over his forehead.

  He was a formidable and fearsome sight, that was for sure.

  “Welcome back, sir,” the creature said in the stiff, emotionless tones of a butler or other professional servant. He neither looked nor sounded as if he were genuinely glad to see Ruddygore or anybody else. “Did you have a pleasant and successful trip?”

  “Yes, yes, indeed,” Ruddygore replied and started to go in.

  He was suddenly aware of his two guests’ hesitancy, stopped, turned, and beckoned them in. “Please come in. Poquahwell, I won’t say he doesn’t bite, but he certainly doesn’t bite friends.”

  Poquah gave what was probably meant as a disarming grin, but he showed an awful lot of sharp, pointy teeth and what looked like a black, forked tongue. The effect was more intimidating than it was hopefully meant to be.

  Giving the creature something of a wide berth, they entered and found themselves in a large, two storey open room completely lined by bookshelves going from floor to ceiling. The floor was covered with thick carpeting with elaborate designs in gold and silver against a burnt orange background. Around a central fireplace were four large, overstuffed chairs. The fireplace itself was reinforced with brick and stone and had a funnel like cap a few feet from the top that sucked up smoke and took it out the roof.

  “My quick reference library,” the sorcerer told them with pride. “The bulk of the books are in storage rooms below the castle itself. The whole h
ill is really a man made honeycomb of chambers.”

  They looked around the great library, and one thing immediately struck Marge, at least. “Very impressive,” she told him. “I see all sorts of sizes and bindings on books on three of the walls but all the books on that far wall look the same, with that red binding.”

  Ruddygore looked over at the wall and nodded. “Indeed, you’re right in that they are related. You’ll find a set of those in every town center, in every main city, and in the home of everyone wealthy enough to buy them or with any interest in the magical arts. Those, my dear, are the Books of Rules. Five hundred and thirty seven leather bound volumes with every little Rule that makes this place tick.”

  Poquah cleared his throat behind them. Marge jumped, not having heard him move at all. “Pardon, sir,” the creature said, “but it is now five hundred and thirty eight. A new one came in while you were away.”

  Ruddygore threw up his hands and looked to heaven. “By all the gods and demons and the Creator! This Council is the worst batch we ever had! No wonder the world is going to hell!” He let out a big sigh, then motioned to Joe and Marge.

  “Have a seat, you two, and I will try to explain this idiocy to you. Poquah, can you see about some cold ale for us and then rejoin us here? You’re going to be involved in this, too, you know.”

  The creature bowed. “At once.” He was gone so quickly they could hardly realize he had left.

  Taking comfortable seats in the padded chairs, the two recruits waited for Ruddygore to begin.

  “First of all,” he said, “you have to remember what I told each of you in our different conversations last night. How this world was pure chaos, and how the angels in charge created order out of it.”

  They both nodded, each realizing now that the other had been given the same information.

  “All right,” the sorcerer went on, “What they did, they did just to stabilize the place. They delivered the Laws. Needless to say, those Laws are complex and involved, and you could no more make sense of them than you could make sense of esoteric particle physics. But they’re the operating Rules for the place. You follow me so far?”