“So that’s it,” Joe breathed. “This is crazy. How can it float up there like a helium balloon on just plain old air?”
“Because it’s not a normal monster,” she responded. “It’s some sort of magical creature, a demon, perhaps, in the form of a hare. I was taught that true demons have no form. Their form is made for them by the ones who bring them into the world, and can be almost anything. Somebody, long ago, decided that the Xota people needed a god. Who knows? Perhaps one of their most powerful magicians once tried to control a demon, or accidentally let one in, and it took on the form of the common hares that might be all over these parts. If it were trapped here, this might be the result.”
“That’s all well and good, but how do we get this gasball demon out of the way? Got any spells for that?”
She thought a moment, then looked up at the cave ceiling.
“I can see where it is now that I know what I’m looking for.
Hmmm... Well, disguising ourselves as Xota is out. I don’t know how to do that one.” She unhooked her crossbow from her belt and loaded a bolt. “But I think I can shoot it.”
He whistled. “Man! If you miss or if you only wound the thing it will go nuts.”
She nodded. “Don’t I know it. But that’s a chance we have to take. I’m pretty sure it’s too big to get at us in here.”
“Yeah but it’s loud enough maybe to bring the neighbors at our backs,” he responded nervously. “Still, I don’t have any better idea.” He stopped a moment, thinking furiously. “Or do I?”
She turned to him. “Got something?”
‘“I doubt if an ordinary bolt would do it,” he told her. “But if we could shoot Irving...”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes. I think I could juryrig it so that we could shoot the sword. But it would be terribly unbalanced, and so heavy it might not make the distance.”
“I can always call it back to me,” he assured her, then caught her frown. “What’s wrong?”
“Joe I can’t touch that sword. You know that.”
“That’s all right. I’ve had training with the crossbow. Have I ever! Hand it to me hey! Uncock it first! Yeah. There.
Now stand back.”
He drew the sword and tried loading it in the simple crossbow. He failed several times, and Marge felt frustrated that she dared not reach out and show him how to adjust it; but finally, with her coaching, he managed to load it and cock it.
Still, it looked ridiculous and unwieldy. “I don’t think it’s going to work,” Marge said worriedly. “The bow just wasn’t designed for this.”
“All it has to do is give Irv a boost,” Joe assured her confidently. “This sword has a mind of its own. It won’t fail.” I hope, he added mentally. “Irving, speed true to your target and puncture it.”
The sword seemed to glow slightly and hummed in response.
Joe took a deep breath. “Well, here goes.”
He stepped out into the cavern, looked up, spotted the quivering ball above, and took aim. “Hey! Gasball! Come and get it!” he yelled.
The hare god roared and started its drop. At that moment Joe lifted the bow and shot the sword right at the descending mass. The sword flew from the crossbow and, as Joe had said, seemed to take on a life of its own, flying straight and true. It was helped by the fact that the hare god was descending toward it, and the sword struck and penetrated the flesh of the horrible creature.
There was a loud bang, like a cannon shot, that almost broke their eardrums, and they yelled in pain. Joe was sure he was deaf. All around the cavern, however, bits and chunks of flesh fell in a grisly rain.
Ears still numb and ringing, Joe stepped into the cavern again, shouted, “Irving! To me!” and held out his hand.
From somewhere far across the cavern, the great sword hummed and flew like iron to magnet right into his hand.
Their sense of hearing returned slowly. “It burst like a balloon!” Marge laughed.
He nodded and grinned. “Yeah. That’s all it really was. A big bag of air. Come on. That noise is bound to bring somebody curious. Let’s get to the altar.” They made it on the run.
The bodies of the gargoyle-like Xota were grisly even without their gaping wounds and injuries, and they smelled as all decomposing flesh did, but Marge and Joe went around the large bier of dead to the stone hare itself, carved into the solid rock.
Behind the bier were a lot of things, many of which looked quite valuable, but it was on the stone hare’s “lap” that they saw what had to be what they sought.
“It looks just like Aladdin’s Lamp in the old fairy tales,”
Marge noted. She bent over and picked it up. “I wonder if it currently has a genie? And, if so, how you get him or her?”
“Rub it right?” Joe suggested, remembering the stories.
“Yeah. Here. Let’s see.” She rubbed the Lamp and, almost immediately, from the spout flowed an ethereal shape that took form as a young man dressed in odd, baggy clothes.
He looked around and smiled.
“Well, I’ll be damned! Somebody finally got it!” he exclaimed.
“You’re the slave of the Lamp?” Marge asked. “This is the Lamp of Lakash?”
“Yes and yes,” the man responded.
“And who are you?”
“I am Sugasto,” he told her. “If that means anything to you after so long a time.”
“Sugasto! Ruddygore’s adept!” Marge cried. “So you didn’t die!”
He sighed. “Hardly. I made a very stupid wish on it for power and wealth and wound up having to travel to High Pothique to claim both. I got cornered by the Xota. They killed my horse, my companions, and their horses as well it was pretty absolute and they had me totally trapped. There was only one thing I could do, and that was to use the Lamp again.
I wished that I would be safe from harm from the Xota and got my wish, as you see. As the slave of the Lamp, I can not be harmed, because I’m basically a spirit, not solid at all. I just look that way. The second wish made me the genie, freeing a most unpleasant old woman who was immediately torn apart by the Xota. Of course, since they saw the old bag emerge from the Lamp and me flow into it, they knew it was magicand so they brought it to their all too real god. I’ve been stuck in this damned hole ever since.”
Marge thought a moment. “You’ve got to do whatever the possessor says, right?”
He nodded. “That’s about it. Not much I can do, though, being a spirit.”
“And I’m the possessor?”
“As of now. I can not tell a lie or fail to answer a questionto you.”
She hooked the Lamp on her belt. “Well, come on, then.
We have to get out of here and fast.”
“I go where the Lamp goes,” Sugasto noted. “I have no choice.”
They made their way across the cavern floor once more and around the narrow, winding entrance until they reached the cave mouth.
“Uh oh. It’s gotten to be daylight,” Joe muttered. “That’s bad. Even if the Xota didn’t hear all that commotion, they’re probably back now.”
Marge turned to Sugasto. “How about it? Can you reconnoiter for us?”
“I can.”
“Okay, do it. That’s not a wish, now. Just an order.”
“That’s the way you play the game,” he agreed and sped from the cave mouth out into the early morning. It didn’t take him long to return.
“Well?” Marge demanded.
“You’ve got troubles,” He sighed. “Half the Xota nation’s out there right now. There are forty or fifty directly above the cave, ready to pounce on whoever comes out, and maybe six or seven hundred staked out along the two miles from here to the road.”
She thought a moment. “We couldn’t wish both of us back to our camp, could we?”
“You could,” the genie replied, “if your camp’s not more than forty or fifty miles from here. I can check. It would have to be within my range from the Lamp.”
“It’s at t
he trail junction outside the Gate,” she told him.
“Go.”
In a flash he was off once more, and back within twenty or thirty seconds. “Yes, you can transport out. But as much as I would like you to overwish and free me, I don’t want to suffer the fate of my predecessor particularly not now that I’m out.
You’ve got a small army of black and silver uniforms not ten miles farther on. Maybe a hundred pretty tough looking soldiers. If you transport out, you’ll be a sandwich between the Xota and the soldiers who, I assume, are not your friends, considering the dead bodies around here.”
“You’re right about that,” Joe agreed. “We’ll fill you in on the political news later, though. Hmmm... What about sor eery? Anything we can do to trick those people conventionally?
You were supposed to be an adept of some kind.”
“I was pretty good,” Sugasto huffed with pride. “But I’m way out of practice, and in this form I can’t do anything, anyway.”
“I can carry out your spells,” Marge told him.
He looked surprised. “Can you, indeed?” He thought a moment. “Still and all, this isn’t exactly a situation I can spell us out of. If I could, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
He had a point there. “That means the Lamp or nothing,”
Marge said, thinking furiously. “But I’ll have to get the wish exactly right.”
“And fast,” Joe noted. “They won’t wait all day without coming in to see if we got smashed by their god.” He had to chuckle. “Wonder what they’re gonna do for a religion when they find we popped him?”
“Quiet! I’m trying to think!” she snapped. She looked back up at the genie. “I don’t suppose they left us our horses.”
“Breakfast, I think,” Sugasto replied ruefully. “Sorry.”
She sighed. “Well, so much for that. Hmmm... Wait a minute. How compound can this wish be?”
“Not too much,” Sugasto told her. “One magical event, that’s it. You can’t wish yourself invincible, immortal, and rich all at the same time.”
“All right. But could I wish for a single solution to the problem of both armed forces?”
Sugasto thought that one over. “Maybe. Depends on how you put it.”
“I think I’ve got it. If not Joe, it will be your turn.”
“Go ahead,” he invited. “I’m a little uncomfortable around that thing.”
She held the Lamp tightly in both hands. “I wish that our entire Company would be rescued from all our enemies this day by a powerful force friendly to us.”
“Done!” Sugasto shouted.
Outside, there was a sudden, tremendous roaring sound.
Chapter XV
From The
Jaws Of Victory
Companies must break up before an objective can be truly secured.
- XXXIV, 319, 251(b)
Joe had no particular trust in wishing lamps, but he had to see what was going on out there regardless. Sword held at the ready, he approached the cave mouth from where he could see the plains of Starmount clearly. Marge came close behind him.
Just then a huge, dark shadow flew over the cave, and they heard another mighty roar and felt the heat of great flames not far away. Joe jumped back a bit. “Jeez! Did we get the Marines with napalm?” he wondered.
“No! We got Vercertorix!” Marge replied, pointing. Joe crept again to the cave mouth as a number of flaming bodies fell from atop the cave to the area just in front of them. Off in the distance, they saw the great form of the enormous dragon, wings spread, looking both noble and magnificent as it made pass after pass at the cave walls, occasionally bumping rock and starting landslides, but more often barbecueing the Xota with tremendous blasts of flame from its great mouth.
Some of the Xota, who were flying creatures themselves, took to the air and managed to get into a reasonable attack formation after the dragon had passed. Bows and spears at the ready, the Xota, perhaps fifty or sixty of them, waited almost suspended in midair for the great beast to turn once more and come swooping back in. The flying force could hardly hide themselves from the dragon, but they stood their ground and waited until they could almost feel the dragon’s breath before letting loose their weapons.
“The little bastards have guts, I’ll give ‘em that,” Joe muttered, fascinated. “It’s like pygmies against an armored tank.”
For a moment it almost seemed as if Vercertorix were going to fly directly into the formation, but at the last minute he 226 pulled up and beat several times with his massive wings. The Xota tried to get off their arrows and throw their spears, but the downdraft the dragon caused was so tremendous that their formation was suddenly broken, sending them tumbling. Vercertorix, who’d expected that and planned it, did a magnificent loop the loop in the air and came back again on the same tack, now letting loose his flaming breath at the broken Xota formation. It was no contest, and more small bodies fell burning from the sky.
“How can something that huge fly that gracefully?” Marge asked, awestruck.
Joe was more pragmatic. “I couldn’t care less just so long as the Xota don’t have a fair maiden to drag in front of him.”
The dragon made one more sweep of the terrain, scattering the last of the Xota and making sure that no major force remained, then came in for a pinpoint landing near the cave.
“Hey! My friends! Are you still alive in there?” they heard a familiar voice call to them. “If so, come out by all means!”
Even Sugasto was impressed. “There’s somebody riding that thing!”
“Algongua!” Marge cried. “It’s the Doc, Joe!” She was ready to run to him, but Joe put out a hand and restrained her.
“Hey, Doc!” he called. “Won’t Marge cause problems?”
“I think not!” the hairy man called back. “Come and see!”
That was all they needed, and out they came. The dragon glanced over at them as they emerged, and looked a little dubiously at the woman but did not flee or yell.
“It worked! It worked!” Algongua exulted.
They came up beside the dragon and regarded the hairy man on its back. “What worked. Doc?” Joe asked.
“Therapy! We owe it all to you two, really. After six weeks of my treating him, it took only one look at the lovely lady here to cause a complete relapse. I was angry at the time, remember, but the more I thought about it, the more I was sure I’d been on the wrong track. You see, his fear stemmed from an encounter a few months ago with a powerful sorceress, young and beautiful looking, too. She caused him some great pain, and that set up his problem. It really wasn’t a tear of fair maidens at all that was just a symptom. It was a loss of self confidence! So, I reasoned, if I went with him and we eased into a battle, with me shouting encouragement and sharing the risk, it might restore him. And see? It worked!”
“Snarfle,” the dragon agreed, nodding.
Marge frowned. “But now I am confused. Did my wish cause this to happen or would it have happened, anyway, in which case I wasted it?”
“The Lamp is like that,” Sugasto told her. “It’s always a little perverse if it gets the chance. My guess is that reality was subtly altered with minimum perhaps no damage by your wish, which made this rescue possible, even inevitable. But we’ll never really know.”
Joe was more concerned with the reality of the dragon and the hairy scientist. “I thought you were the hermit, beyond battles and such.”
Doc shrugged. “Maybe that’s been my problem. I can divorce myself from the miserable world, but I can’t divorce my patients and studies from it. Oh, well, it was fun, anyway.”
“Marumph!” Vercertorix agreed.
Marge snapped her fingers. “I’d almost forgotten! This is only half the battle. A company of the Dark Baron’s soldiers is almost to our camp now. Poor Houma’s there with two very injured men!” She looked up at Algongua. “Can you stop them, too?”
The scientist thought a moment. “How about it, Vercertorix?
Wan
t to try some soldiers? The ones we saw on the way in?”
“Grausch!” the dragon responded, nodding slightly.
“All right. Why don’t you three hop on I think you can hang on here and we’ll drop you at your camp. Then we’ll take care of those soldiers.”
Marge turned to Sugasto. “Why not get back in the Lamp until we reach the camp?”
“Whatever you say,” he responded, sounding a little regretful and flowed back into the Lamp on her belt.
Algongua was fascinated. “A real genie! How about that!
So that’s what the old boy sent you for!”
“We’ll talk later,” Joe told him. “Give you the whole story.
Let’s get those soldiers first.”
They linked up, Marge grabbing Algongua and Joe grabbing Marge. It was pretty nerve racking when the dragon began to move and spread its massive wings, and even worse when the great head suddenly came up and they lifted, but in a matter of no more than two minutes they were level and headed at great speed toward Stannount Gateway.
In another minute, no more, the dragon reached the Gateway, circled once, and landed just down the trail from the junction camp. Joe and Marge wasted no time jumping off and getting away from the great beast, and Doc waited only long enough to assure Vercertorix clearance before taking off once again. Joe and Marge had to brace themselves to keep from being blown over by the backwash, but the dragon was soon up and out of sight.
They were less than half a mile from the camp and reached it quickly. Houma was both astonished and overjoyed to see them, and they were pleasantly surprised to find Macore sitting on a rock, smiling and waving to them.
“It will take more than a cracked skull to get me,” the little thief told them. “Now if it had been any place other than my head.. .”
Marge was bubbling over to tell Houma and Macore about their adventures and reassure them about the dragon, and she was halfway through before she suddenly stopped and said, alarmed, “How’s Grogha?”
Both the others’ faces fell. “He’s gone, lady,” Houma said sadly.
The River Of Dancing Gods Page 27