The River Of Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  Within the first couple of hours the temperature had dropped considerably, and they all were feeling chilled. Although there was no snow evident in the pass, it was all around not too far above them.

  “We’re going to have to buy some warmer clothes for this place, if we don’t freeze to death right here,” Joe muttered.

  “Near naked’s all right for the hot stuff, but it’s nothin’ to be in a snowstorm.”

  The others, who were dressed better than he but not for this, could only nod in agreement. Making matters worse, the sun was already low enough to be masked by the surrounding mountains. Marge shivered and called to Macore, “How much longer to this town of yours? Will we make it before nightfall?”

  “Hard to say,” the little thief called back. “Remember, I never came in this way before. But I do know that it’s in a glacial valley just below this pass on the other side. It will be touch and go between us and night, but we’ll have to do what we can.”

  It was early evening, and there were flecks of snow in the air when they finally made the summit of the pass and could look out to the other side. There was little sun left, but it was still light enough for them to see, and the village just below was as Macore had promised.

  Kidim was set inside a U shaped glacial valley carved out long ago. The valley was almost a bowl set in the mountain, not terribly deep but about a mile and a half wide. Its water was glacial melt, which formed a formidable lake in about half the depression; but while it was fed by mountain snows, it overflowed away from the village part of the bowl, over in an imposing, tall waterfall that dropped into another bowl-like lake several hundred feet below. That lower lake was in turn the source of the River Sik incredibly, navigable from that point all the way down to the River of the Sad Virgin and eventually to the great Dancing Gods itself. The lower pool was fed not only from the waterfall but also from countless rivulets and small streams, some gushing right out of the mountain.

  Kidim, however, was above all that, in the best defensive position. It reminded Marge of nothing so much as a Swiss village, the kind they used for the Olympics or bobsled runs.

  It was a town of perhaps seven or eight thousand living in elaborately painted and decorated clapboard and gingerbread style houses, and it was alight with life.

  Joe looked around. “Not bad. They could hold that pass back there with a relatively small force; nobody would be safe charging up here from down there. It’s almost a perfect natural fortress.”

  Macore nodded. “And those walls are heavily fortified. They can close it off in a moment and withstand a tremendously long siege. It is said, too, that caves in the mountain itself, known only to the townspeople, are stocked with food and weaponsand even offer escape routes. Their treasures are stored somewhere back there, which makes them so hard to get at.”

  Cold and miserable, they anxiously headed for the town gates, the pillars of which were carved out of the natural granite.

  The gates were open. Although there were guards atop the walls looking down on them, there was no challenge or attempt to stop them.

  The town was busy at dusk. Sidewalk cafes were filled, and from the various brightly lighted buildings that so resembled chalets could be heard the sounds of entertainment, eating, dining, and general merrymaking.

  “Now this is more like it!” Marge exclaimed. “I’d begun to give up on High Pothique!”

  “It varies widely,” Macore responded. “This little City State is extremely rich and fat. But it gets that way because of its position here. Anyone who wants the valued raw materials of High Pothique’s interior deals through here. Anybody wanting to sell anything to the remote tribes and nomads of the interior has to go through here. This is a classic case of geographic greed in action!”

  First they found the stables and, for a very high charge, got the horses and mule taken care of and the supplies stored in a bonded and guarded storage area. It was clear from the almost ten grains they were charged, though, that Kidim knew it had travelers where it wanted them.

  At Macore’s urging, they decided they would splurge for this one night, staying in the highest class inn actually called a hotel in the town. Each would have a separate bed this night a soft, down filled, luxurious one with silken sheets and fine wool blankets. Again they took two rooms, using the same arrangement as before.

  They skipped the hotel dining room, though it looked a bit too posh for such burned and unwashed travelers as they and opted instead for a small, friendly restaurant down the street. The food was wonderful, the wine choice, and when Macore got the bill and told them what it was, they could only wonder what the hotel dining room would have cost.

  Afterward, since they wanted to walk off their stuffed feelings, Macore counted out some money to each of them so they could wander about and perhaps pick up some warmer clothing.

  They walked around together for a while, but Marge got interested in a clothing store with exotic fashions, Macore wanted to check out some old haunts, and that left three. Grogha and Houma were soon at home in a bar with the promise of live female fairies performing erotic, unnatural acts on stage, and that left Joe.

  He wandered down the street, stopped in a clothing store for men, and finally found a wool jacket and high top, furlined boots that would be good in mountain country. Feeling wanner and much, much poorer, he just ambled around for a bit. He was feeling lonely again, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  A young woman she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or a few months older approached him coyly. She looked too clean and well dressed to be a prostitute, but here one never knew.

  “Sir?” she whispered conspiratorially.

  Well, maybe they were clean and well dressed here. “Yes?”

  “Sir you look like a gentleman. Would you care to seduce and abandon me tonight?”

  He chuckled over the phrasing. “Sed how much?”

  She looked shocked. “I’m not a common whore!” she snapped. “I would not dream of charging!”

  He was immediately suspicious in the extreme. It sounded like one of those too good to be true offers which they always were. Sure, honey. Go with you, then get waylaid by thugs, robbed, and maybe murdered.

  “Uh uh, honey. Not tonight,” he told her regretfully and walked on.

  He hadn’t gone another block when a totally different woman, perhaps even younger than the first, beckoned and made the same offer. Again he refused, although she almost pleaded with him.

  Finally he said, “All right what’s this all about? Why does every young girl in this town want to be seduced and abandoned tonight?”

  She looked a little apprehensive, then pulled him gently into an alleyway right off the street. “You have been propositioned before tonight?”

  He nodded.

  She sighed. “We’re all trying it on every stranger we meet.

  It is impossible to get anyone local to do it. They would insist on marriage or we’d be dishonored because it would be found out. But a stranger could do it and no one would know. Lots of girls have done it. What’s wrong with me?” She pouted almost like a small child.

  He stepped back a moment, still confused. “Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”

  “Of course!” she came back proudly. “Otherwise, what would be the point of this?”

  He coughed and swallowed back a snappy reply to that one.

  Only a virgin would make that kind of a comment. “What is it some kind of bet? Or maybe some magic spell?”

  “Oh, of course not! It’s the dragon!”

  That stopped him. “Dragon? What dragon?”

  “You are new here. Just a little over four weeks ago a dragon was spotted flying to and from a new eyrie in the high mountains just behind us. It’s been seen almost every night since, flying to and fro, probably establishing its nest. Once it does, it will hunt.” She looked up at him desperately, and there were actually tears in her eyes. “Don’t you see? Dragons are attracted to v
irgins!”

  He leaned back against the building wall, feeling the need for support, an expression of utter disbelief on his face. “Let me get this straight,” he said again. “There’s a dragon in the area?”

  She nodded. “First one in more than a century in these parts.”

  “And dragons eat virgins?”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  Well, everybody didn’t, but… “Are you trying to tell me that every virginal girl past puberty is sneaking out at night in this town and begging to be” He groped for a word she’d understand instead of the ten that came immediately to mind. “violated by every strange man she meets?”

  “Well, of course! Why else would we be doing this?”

  He broke into a big grin. “And about how many of you virgins are there?”

  “A couple hundred a month ago,” she told him. “Maybe half that now. It’s kind of hard to bring yourself to do it. But the Books of Rules state that the dragon could start hunting any time after establishing its eyrie, and that takes thirty days. So you see why...”

  He shook his head in wonder. A trucker’s paradise, he thought. As if you died and went to heaven... Not, he told himself, that he didn’t feel sorry for the poor girls. He understood their fears he thought. But a town full of willing virgins whose honor would force them never to tell? It was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard. Funny, too. He no longer felt very tired at all...

  ****

  It was quite late when Marge got back to the hotel room, and she was surprised to find none of the men there as yet.

  She sighed and shook her head. She felt really done in and about as grimy as she ever had.

  She spread out the garments she’d bought with almost all her money. They were practical ones, good for mountain work, but the fur was soft and fitted snugly about her. She couldn’t be certain what the fur was the term used by the saleswoman had been unfamiliar to her but she decided it was probably better not to know. Still, with these clothes, she’d be extremely warm; and with the small, pointed toe boots and tight fitting gloves, she’d look almost like an elf.

  Like an elf She wondered about that. Casually she un dressed and went to the full length mirror in the luxury room and looked at herself once more. Had she changed?

  The image looking back at her from the mirror was not really a familiar one, of course, but it had changed since she’d last examined it. Her ears, for example, which Ruddygore had noted were turning back and changing, had changed more. They were fully pointed now and sharply back on her head. Elflike ears that looked fine, even exotic, with her streaked hair but were definitely not human in the slightest. Her eyes, too, seemed huge, sad, and teardrop shaped, with unnaturally long lashes.

  They were beautiful, erotic eyes but they were not human eyes.

  She thought of the fairies on the boat two days earlier. They had all been male sort of, anyway but they had this sort of ear and something subtly similar about their faces. Not the eyes, though, or the general facial shape she was developing.

  It was not their kind that she was becoming.

  She went back to the clothes on the bed and just lay there for a few moments, fingering them. Suddenly she stopped and looked at her hands, then sat up and looked closer. There was no doubt about it. Some sort of webbing was growing from the points between each of the fingers. It was only a tiny extra mass of very thin skin now, perhaps an eighth of an inch from the base of the hand, but there it was. Her fingernails, too, seemed extra hard, somewhat silvery in appearance, and were taking on a different nature, perhaps more animal-like? She couldn’t decide.

  Before she could think on it further, though, there was an officious knock at the door. Acutely aware, suddenly, of her nakedness, she called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Concierge, madam,” came an equally officious reply. “You had asked at the desk if a bath could be arranged?”

  She frowned. “Yes but they told me it was too late in the day.”

  “A clerk checked with me, and I discovered that there was more than sufficient hot water. It won’t keep, so we thought you might wish to use it tonight.”

  She smiled. A bath! A real bath! “Hold on, let me get something on,” she called back and quickly got back into her dirty jerkin. Picking up the new clothes and a large towel, she walked to the door and opened it. Only then did she think how trusting she had been how she had only his word that he was the concierge.

  But he was the concierge. She had seen him at his desk in the lobby. “Follow me, please, madam,” the little man said, and she followed him down the hall, down to the lobby level, and then below. The bathhouse was small not even the wellto do took many baths in Husaquahr, it seemed but surprisingly modem. The sunken tub was steaming with clear, hot water brought in from coal fired tanks that also provided some heat for the main floor, and there was a large bar of soap, a full supply of bath linen, and even a white towel robe, imprinted with the symbol of the hotel.

  “I will see that no one disturbs you, madam,” the concierge assured her. “When finished, please stop by my desk in the lobby and let me know, so that we may drain the tub.”

  “I’ll do that,” she promised him, eager for the water. “And thanks!”

  He left and shut the door behind him. She quickly laid out all her stuff, got undressed, and slipped into the tub. The water was quite hot, but that didn’t matter at all. It wasn’t too hot, and the warmth penetrated her body, eased her bruises and muscle tension, and just felt absolutely wonderful.

  It was in the wee hours of the morning, after the last bar had closed, that Joe returned to the hotel. He felt tremendous, despite the long day, but he was really tired now. All he wanted was sleep.

  He knocked on the door of the room, softly, just to warn Marge of his impending entrance, but then didn’t hesitate to open the door and walk in.

  He stood there for a moment, puzzled. She wasn’t there.

  The oil lamps were still on, and there were signs that she’d been lying on top of the bed at one time but that was all.

  Idly wondering if the Rules also specified boy virgins, he looked around for a clue. He dismissed his thought about the boy virgins in a minute. That wouldn’t make sense. She had that celibacy thing. He stopped and thought a moment. Everything was closed now, he knew, so there was no place she could have gone to, except maybe to the wall to look at the night view but that was unlikely. She’d had a hard day, and even her potions weren’t a hundred percent effective. She’d been tired and achy when they’d first hit town, and she’d said after dinner that she was going to get some mountain clothes and then try for a bath and go to bed.

  He snapped his fingers. A bath! Sure! He looked around, saw that the big towel was missing, and nodded to himself.

  Then he stopped for a moment, puzzled. A bath at three in the morning? This wasn’t like back home, where one just went into the bathroom...

  He turned and walked back down to the lobby. He didn’t immediately check with the desk, but saw a pictograph indicating baths on a floor below. The desk clerk and the concierge watched him but did not say or do anything as he went down the stairs.

  He checked both the small bathrooms. Nothing in the first, but the second showed signs that somebody had used it recently.

  He went over and tested the water temperature of the bath.

  Cool, like the other but the other had been clear. This was soapy and still messed up. He glanced anxiously around, then found in a small pile her old clothes and the new ones she must have bought. Only the towel had been used.

  Knowing now that something was terribly wrong, he bounded back up the stairs to the lobby and approached the night clerk first. The clerk smiled and looked up at the big man, nodding.

  “Yes?”

  “The woman who checked in with me do you know where she is?”

  The clerk shrugged. “Sorry. I haven’t been on very long.

  Try the concierge.”

  Joe went over to the little man at the
concierge’s desk, who also looked up expectantly. Joe noticed he seemed abnormally nervous and couldn’t quite sit still.

  “The young woman who checked in with me,” Joe repeated.

  “Have you seen her tonight?”

  The concierge frowned and pretended to look thoughtful.

  “Young woman? Sir, we have many. I can’t be expected to remember everyone.”

  “Streaked hair, big eyes, pointy ears,” Joe responded, getting a little steamed up.

  The man seemed to think hard again, and was about to speak when Joe added, “She took a bath tonight downstairs.”

  Sensing that he couldn’t conceal obvious facts without sounding worse, the concierge brightened. “Ah, yes! But I do remember her! She went down to the baths hours ago. Why, is something wrong!”

  “She’s missing, that’s what. You been here all night?”

  “Except for a couple of calls, yes.”

  “Do you remember her coming back up from the baths?”

  The concierge thought a moment more. Sweat was breaking out on his brow. “Uh yes, I believe I do.”

  Joe reached out, temper flaring, and literally picked the little man out of his chair with one hand. “Liar! You forgot to remove her clothes! They’re still down there! What have you done with her?” With one mighty move, he pulled the man across his desk so that they were face to face, all the while keeping him suspended off the floor by the grip on his clothing.

  The concierge, deathly afraid and sweating like mad, yelled, “Codoary! Help me!”

  With an angry shove, Joe threw the concierge halfway across the lobby, where he struck a stuffed chair and toppled over.

  In the same moment the big man whirled, his face a fury, to see, not just the desk clerk, but two other men, all with swords, coming at him.

  In an instant his great sword leaped to his right hand and hummed brightly. “I hope none of you got any fairy blood,” he growled at them, “‘cause I got to leave one of you alive to torture!”