The River Of Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Changed. In some ways greatly changed. In others still the same. We will all dine together tomorrow evening. At that time we will do the last things that must be done, and then I have a job for you. All of you, in fact.”

  “So soon?”

  “Time does not wait. Already the Dark Baron’s forces strike camp. In ten days, perhaps a little more, they will be at the River of Sorrows to the south with nothing to stop them. In four weeks or so, we will know where he is going and, therefore, the best point to make our stand. There will be a great battle. I have no time to waste, nor do any of you.”

  “Four weeks...” Houma repeated. “You mean we’re that close to a fight?”

  “Closer. You see, I have a far different but no less vital task for you. There is a possibility, at least, that the outcome of that battle and perhaps the war turns on your mission. Now go with Poquah. Relax. Those of you who are again humans, enjoy it. Tomorrow those of you who need it will be outfitted and equipped, select horses, and the like. At dinner tomorrow you will know your task. The morning after that, you will be riding far from here. Some of you may not return again.”

  Chapter IX

  All The

  Ingredients For A Quest

  Magic swords for quests must be named.

  - XVU, 167, 2©

  Ruddygore looked Marge over keenly as she entered the room and he liked what he saw. “You have progressed beyond my wildest hopes,” he told her.

  “I had a good teacher,” Marge replied. “No fan of yours, though.”

  The sorcerer chuckled. “I daresay not. Think of us as members of the same family who went in different directions’ Both were of equal potential and inclined, say, to, painting pictures but one saw the old school as outdated and uninteresting and became an abstractionist and cubist; the other painter saw all that newfangled abstract stuff as nonsense and painted realistic portraits. Neither of them could discuss the other without each one’s philosophies of art getting in the way. But even though they disagreed on the nature of art, they saw in each other a sincere belief in art itself. That’s roughly the analogy between Huspeth and me.”

  “But she said she would be with you if the Baron reached Terindell, I remember.”

  He gave a soft smile and nodded. “Indeed. We disagree on just about everything concerning our own, ah, art, and we can’t say three civil words to each other without getting into a fighting and clawing match. Just like our realist and our cubist. But both of those painters would be on the same barricade fighting together the forces of those who would wish to bum all pretty pictures. You see?”

  She smiled and relaxed. “Now that you put it that way...”

  “I had hoped she would see you as I did the potential there. Tell me can you perceive and read auras?”

  “I can see them sort of. You’re a fuzzy purple and yellow pattern. But I can’t really tell much from them.”

  “That comes with experience. You’re already much further along than I would have expected. Enough to be considered an adept, at least, at the lower levels. If you wish, as time goes on, I can add to your knowledge and instruction.”

  “I’d like that,” she told him. “I find the whole thing fascinating. But sooner or later I’m going to have to learn to read to go anywhere.”

  “There are ways around just about everything here,” he assured her. “If you have the will, the way will open. But nothing’s for free. Not even the training you’ve had so far.

  And Huspeth’s developmental pattern for you contains a number of potential future problems, too.”

  Her eyebrows rose, and she waited for him to continue.

  “First of all, have you looked at yourself really looked at yourself in the past few days?”

  “In the pond. Why?”

  He pulled himself out of his chair and beckoned her to follow him back into the lab. Again he pulled out the full length mirror. “Look there and tell me what you see,” he said softly.

  “A well stacked Peter Pan,” she responded dryly; except for her obviously feminine, well proportioned figure, she did have very much the Peter Pan look, even to the hair, particularly in the clothing Huspeth had given her.

  “Nothing else?”

  She looked hard. “The ears look a little funny,” she decided.

  He nodded. “Slightly pointed and angled back against the head. That and the streak in your hair. They are marks of the fairy folk. In order to get as much into you as the time allowed, Huspeth took some shortcuts, I’m afraid. To sensitize you to magic, she infused into you a measure of fairy blood, and it tells. The more you use this new magic art, the more dominant that fairy strain, that changeling strain, will become and it will show.”

  “You’re telling me, then, that the more magic I use, the less human I’ll become. Is that it?”

  He nodded.

  “But she never told “

  “I know. You think of Huspeth as a kind and powerful teacher. But the philosophical differences with her run a lot deeper than you suspect. She idolizes the fairy folk. Always has. With that bent, she has come, wrongly, to believe that humans are the source of the world’s corruption the gate through which Hell must work. In a sense, she thought she was giving you a gift that would guard you from corruption later. There’s no undoing it, either. There isn’t time, for one thing, and also, those qualities will be more than useful. But the more of fairy you become, the more those restrictions applying to fairies will also apply, and things you wouldn’t think twice about could be dangerous.”

  Marge looked worried. “Like what?”

  “Well, for one thing, even now I would stay away from iron of any kind. There’s no natural iron in Husaquahr, by the way, but some of the mercenaries from other lands have iron weapons. The dwarves, whose power derives from their ability alone in faerie to handle iron, always have access to it. Magic swords, too, often have an iron alloy in them. Right now iron will bum and make you a little sick. If you progress, it could kill you with a touch.”

  She whistled low. “Any other nasty little things like that?”

  “The nineteen volumes of Rules covering basic faerie powers and limitations are a bit much to go into now. Let’s say r that the general restrictions will be self evident; the specifics can be boiled down to an old Rule that applies to folks like Huspeth and me, too the more on the magic side you are, the more vulnerable you are to magic as well. Just keep it in mind if you’re tempted, or need to use any powers you might have.”

  “Not much chance of that,” she assured him. “Most of my powers are chemical, not signs and spells. We didn’t have much time to get into that.”

  “More will come to you, with the temptation to use it, as time goes on,” he cautioned. “Just remember what I say.”

  They walked back out into his library. “Say what would happen if I did change all the way over to fairy?” she asked.

  “Would I wind up looking like Poquah or something?”

  He chuckled. “Oh, no. Actually, it’s pretty hard to say. But the nonhuman blood would force out the human all the way, eventually. No matter what you became, you’d lose your mortality to age and time.”

  “That sounds like a good deal.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. The difference between the fairies and us is that our mystical part, our souls, is hidden from each other and often from ourselves. With the fairies, what you appear is what you are. Thus, humans may die and yet not die. There are other planes and other paths. If a fairy dies, though, it is gone.”

  She considered that, but decided that the concept was too abstract for her right now. This was a new world and a new life and she wanted to get started in it.

  “Let us go to the banquet hall,” Ruddygore said. “It’s time you met the rest of the Company at least that part of it that is human. Afterward, I’ll tell you what this was all about.”

  Joe was stunned at the change in Marge’s appearance, and she at his, but both still felt inside themselves a certain comfort and kinship
with each other that they did not share with the people of Husaquahr. They hardly knew each other, it was true, but both knew where New York and Paris were, and the best Polish jokes and why one shouldn’t tell them. They were from the same world; the others knew it not.

  They had a fine meal with the convivial Ruddygore as host.

  He talked between mouthfuls of this and that and practically everything except what he had in mind for them. Joe, at least, couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that the condemned were eating a last hearty meal.

  Finally all was cleared away, and only Ruddygore appeared to be still capable of eating anything. He passed around cigars, which were mostly declined, then settled back in his big chair and looked them over.

  “Well, we’ve all had a nice evening,” he began, “and now it’s time for business. I trust that there was something here for everyone. I made it heavily vegetarian, I’m afraid, to accommodate the lady here.”

  “No problem,” Macore responded. “I’m gonna have trouble eating chicken ever again, and I’d guess the rest of ‘em have the same kind of problems.”

  The sorcerer nodded. “That’s what I figured. You’ll work into it, though. Ah, as you know, the two animal members of our company did not join us, but Poquah is briefing them as we sit and they have been well tended.” He looked at each face in turn. “Are you ready to go to work now?”

  “Not particularly,” the portly Grogha replied honestly. “But that don’t mean we won’t.”

  “Fair enough. First, let me tell you what is going on. The Dark Baron has raised an army of at least ten thousand from a dozen or more races and, now that the floods have subsided, they are preparing to move northward.”

  Macore whistled. “Ten thousand!”

  “And growing more by the day. Valisandra, Marquewood, and Leander are preparing a master conference to decide strategy. We still don’t know which way they are going to move, or how, but there’s a battle, possibly decisive, in the works about a month or two from now.”

  “You mean we’re enlisted?” Houma said.

  “Drafted, you mean,” Grogha put in grumpily.

  “Well, we can certainly use all hands at the right time,”

  Ruddygore admitted. “If we fail to hold them this time, the next battle will be right outside those walls there. But I don’t propose that you all trot off and join the army. Not right now, anyway. There is a side errand that must be run, and it is of vital importance. If anything, it must be completed before the decisive battle, so time is also of the essence.” He looked at them, “Anybody ever been to High Pothique?”

  “I have,” Macore told him. “Cruddy place. Not a real country at all. Just a lot of small holdings. Why?”

  “In Starmount, just beyond the Vale of Kashogi, a thing of great value has just been discovered, something believed lost to Husaquahr for all time and better left lost. But now that it’s been found, it must be returned to its rightful owner. If the Baron gets his slimy hands on it, he may win a major objective of his war without firing an arrow or raising a sword. It is nothing less than the Lakash Lamp.”

  “Long ago, in the ancient fires that birthed the world, a greater demon cheated on the laws agreed upon to govern the world,” Ruddygore told them. “It was not so much a cheat, really, as a shortcut, a solution to a problem that the demon found no other way to solve. In order to establish certain of the laws of magic, it was necessary to have a safety valve, a wild card, an exception to those very laws. And so, out of those early fires was fashioned the Lamp of Lakash, named for its demon creator.

  “To make certain that such a dangerous thing as the Lamp would never fall into the hands of one fully prepared to use it, the Lamp was not left in the world but transferred, taken to the other Earth whence Joe and Marge have come. There, up until roughly two thousand years ago, it remained occasionally falling into the hands of a person who used it and causing a great many stories and legends about evil genies and magic lamps. But then new rules were placed upon both Heaven and Hell, and all matter which had been displaced from one world to the other was instantly returned to its world of origin, the Lamp included. Thus, the Lamp came to Husaquahr.

  “It went through many owners here, but all were eventually trapped and defeated by its curses and limitations. Still, attention was drawn to it, and it came into the hands of my predecessor, Jorgasnovara of Astaroth. When it came time for him to pass on to the next level, he left the Lamp in my care, here in Terindell, where I’d already set up shop. And here it remained for a very long time until, eventually, an error was made. An inevitable error, considering the time involved, I suppose, but an error all the same.

  “There was an adept at that time named Sugasto a very talented adept, who was on his way to becoming a great sorcerer someday. Sugasto was so good that I was blinded somewhat to his great character faults and, as a result, I stupidly told him one day of the Lamp’s existence. He was seduced by its potential, particularly since it could be wielded only by mortals using magical arts and were he to attain full wizard status, he could not directly use it. He begged me to show it to him, but I refused again and again, regretting I’d ever brought it up.

  Jorgasnovara, after all, only told me about it some weeks after he died. But somehow, Sugasto found out where the Lamp was. It took him several months, but it had become an obsession with him.

  “I said he was good at the Art and he was. Very good.

  To get at it, he undid spells that would have defeated some very good sorcerers and he stole the Lamp while I was away on the other Earth plane. Knowing that I would sense the undoing of those spells and hurry back, he ran from here, ran south and west. We pursued, of course, and nearly caught him near Stormhold but he fooled us by going up into High Pothique, and there vanished forever from our knowledge. All we knew was that the Lamp was no longer in mortal hands and we could not sense or trace where it was. That was more than two centuries ago.

  “But now, just recently, we have found the ending of that story. Piecing together legends and old documents and working with the Xota People, who’ve consented to talk to anybody human only in the last few years and then just slightly, an explorer and trader named Vaghast discovered that my wayward apprentice had fallen straight into the hands of the Xota, who were upon him before he could use the Lamp. I suspect that he was so reluctant to use the thing waste it, to his mind that he died of his own greed and lust for power. At any rate, the Xota sensed the tremendous power of the thing, even if they didn’t know what it was, and they put it in their god cave, a sacrificial place, and their own shamans placed protections upon it. Supposedly the cave is guarded by a horrible monster of unknown shape, size, and nature, held there by spells and bound to destroy all who would enter the cave.

  “We know the general location of the cave and we know now for certain that the Lamp is still there. Unfortunately, the Dark Baron knows this as well. I am quite certain that the Baron is one of the Council, and it was to the Council that all this was reported not two days ago. It’s a sure thing that even now some of his forces ride to the cave. We must beat them to it.”

  Macore whistled again. “That’s pretty wild and pretty hairy. First of all, last I heard, the Xota were still as nasty as ever, even if they did talk to this guy, and that high mountain country is theirs for sure. Even if they were friendly as pet dogs now, they’d still be savages when it comes to anybody disturbing their god cave.”

  Ruddygore nodded. “That’s true. They’ll be fairly noncommittal now, but once the first group to get there betrays its goal, they’ll be ferocious.”

  “I’m more concerned with that horrible monster part,” Houma put in. “So we fight or sneak our way through this hordeand once we go in, this thing just gobbles us up.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Ruddygore agreed. “But I didn’t form this Company for an easy job.”

  “All the while the Baron sends a small army,” Macore added. “Less and less do I like this.”

  “That is no
t a concern at least the army part,” the sorcerer assured him. “First of all, it’ s no mean trick to cross the Dancing Gods below the River Tasqom, particularly with a large force.

  Second, such a force would be set upon by Marquewood and would have a hard fight through Stormhold, only to have to climb and pass through the Vale. Not likely. No. He will send a small company, somewhat under cover. They won’t be pleasant folk, but they, too, will know they have to get there by stealth, not a fight.”

  “Okay, so that puts ‘em in the same shape as us,” Joe said.

  “It still don’t sound like a picnic.”

  “Neither was the Circean, and you managed,” Ruddygore noted. “You, Joe, and you, Marge, are particularly well prepared. Dacaro has a great deal of knowledge to aid you, should it be necessary, and Marge has the means to use that knowledge.”

  “Okay, so we won’t be completely disarmed,” Joe responded. “Still, the odds look pretty bleak.”

  “As bleak as escaping from Circe’s grasp and regaining humanity?” the wizard teased. “Joe all of you trust me a bit. We are not alone in this fight, you know. The Baron has the forces of Hell, but the other side is pretty effective, too.

  They told me that you were the one, Joe. They sent me over to get you. I did and at the time, I didn’t even know why.

  Frankly, I still don’t but I know you’re their choice. Your very survival the past few days proves it. You know you were very, very lucky, Joe. Lucky the Circean came along just when she did to save you from the water sprite. Lucky to have succeeded in your crazy scheme to steal the rod and escape.

  Well, Joe, there’s no such thing as luck. Not really. Good luck and bad luck are the terms we lesser ones give to angelic and demonic forces. For some reason, Joe, you have friends in high places. They’ll help you out.”

  Joe chuckled dryly. “Friends in high places. Guardian angels. Man! I sure ain’t no saint!”

  “There’s no way to understand them they are beyond us and very alien from anything we know or understand. But they’re real. It’s how they’ve operated the past two millennia.