He did not try to see or make contact with Ruddygore, who was just standing there for a while like a joyous Santa having the time of his life, but went up and flew in the bedroom's open window.
The two women were still there, listening to the commotion but not yet fully understanding it.
Joe suddenly realized he couldn't communicate directly with either one. Or—could he? Tiana had the power, she might barely be able to make him out in the fairy speech.
"Ti!" he cried, going right up to her. "Dacaro's gone and Ruddygore's here, but the Baron's escaped!"
She looked at him strangely for a moment, then seemed to hear. "Okay. If I get it, the Baron's escaped but we won. Come on, Mahalo! If he goes anywhere he'll head for that exit-laden basement of yours!"
There were people screaming and running all about, but they ignored them and pushed their way through, to be ignored in turn. The cellar door was definitely ajar, and first Mahalo, who was the larger, and then Tiana made it, Joe flying right on top.
Joe looked over and saw the reclining priest, but no Poquah. He must have left to get to Ruddygore. There was, however, someone in the Baron's small office, rummaging around for something.
Tiana walked boldly to the open door and saw Boquillas just sitting there in his office chair in front of his computer looking dazed and confused. It was unlike him, but she knew he wouldn't go quietly.
"You're done. Baron," she said. "We've taken you again."
He looked up at her and seemed very confused and disoriented, and then he got up and looked at the pair of crossed sabers mounted on the wall. In a single motion he grabbed one and wrenched it free of its mount.
Joe had been ignored and did a fast survey of the office. He found that Irving was in fact still in its scabbard by the side of Boquillas's desk.
"Irving! To the woman and fight as if it were me!" he commanded.
The sword suddenly shot from its scabbard and went right through the computer terminal. It caught them all by surprise, but Tiana grabbed it by reflex and felt its heft and balance. "All right. Baron, this was meant to be," she said. "I will step outside, but not stand aside."
The Baron stared at her a moment, then reached up and took the other saber down, so that he had one in each hand. He then walked tiredly out of the office and faced the woman with the broadsword. "I will leave now," he said woodenly.
Tiana did not have the size and strength she was used to, but Irving was not merely a broadsword but a semi-living creature with a mind and powers of its own. It could not help her strength, but it needed little skill or direction to be effective, for it was forged with dwarf magic in the fires under the mountains.
She thought about that. "Baron, if you will throw one of those sabers down at my feet I will give you a fair fight. Otherwise, I kill you where you stand."
"Ti! No!" Joe screamed. "He's a monster with nothing more to lose! Kill him now!" He ached to be the one with the sword instead of her. He owed Boquillas one.
The Baron knelt down and slid the saber over to Tiana. She reached down, picked it up, then put down Irving.
The Baron did not take advantage of her at this, and let her start the fight.
There was the sudden clang of steel against steel, but the Baron seemed to be fighting without any will or reserve left. In seconds, Tiana had pressed him to the wall and then methodically disarmed him, although she was unused to her new body and he had by far the advantage in size and reach. He stared at her, showing no fear, only resignation. "You must kill me," he told her, sounding very tired indeed.
Tiana paused a moment, then lowered her saber and shook her head. "I cannot kill this poor, miserable wretch like this." She half turned away from him in disgust. "Let Ruddygore deal with him."
At that moment a shot rang out and reverberated through the cellar. She was shocked and stunned for a moment, then turned to see the Baron slowly sinking to the floor, a bloody wound in his chest. She looked over near the stairs and saw Mahalo McMahon there, holding one of the rifles abandoned by the pixilated guards. She looked a little shocked and stunned herself. "I—I couldn't help it. I saw it there and was covering you, and you turned away and he made a move for the sword and I just—shot, that's all." She dropped the rifle and seemed to be more than a little bit in shock herself.
Poquah suddenly came down the stairs in a rush. "You must all get out of here quickly!" he shouted. "The audience has become a mob and they have set fire to the mansion! Stand away from the far wall and Marge will set off a charge that will blow the old door off, spells and all!"
Tiana went over and checked the Baron. "He is still alive!" She looked around and saw the limp, naked body of Father O'Grady on the other side of the glass. "Mahalo! Snap out of it! You are no murderer yet! See if you can get O'Grady on his feet and help him when they blow up the door! Poquah! I will need help with the Baron!"
The Imir looked at the bloodstained form and frowned, as if debating whether to help the Baron or not, but finally he said, "You go help the other get the priest out. I will use a spell to levitate that carrion out after you."
At that moment there was a tremendous explosion inside the room in which Joe had been held captive and strung up. He flew to Poquah. "The snakes! There are venomous snakes in that room!"
The Imir ran over, threw the door open, and looked around. "They are there, but they are all dead. They could not survive their own mutated venom when Dacaro's influence was removed. Come! There is a hole in here that even our Master could fit through—but hurry! I can see smoke from here and it is getting very, very warm!"
The two women were able to get O'Grady to a more or less standing position, but he was definitely still not of this or any other world except perhaps his own. With one on each arm, they managed with several slips to get him into the room where hands from outside could help ease the women's burden.
Smoke now filled the cellar area, and flames began to be seen along the ceiling, helped by the sudden blowing open of the door. Poquah finished his spells and, very slowly, the Baron's limp form lifted a few inches off the floor and followed the Imir to the room and then to the door itself. Joe shot out into the open air, stopped, then turned to watch.
Ruddygore and a number of stern-faced men helped lift the Baron out the rest of the way just as the ceiling fell in with a crash and a roar. They barely made it back to the well area before the flames shot for a moment straight through the opening and into the light as if from a flamethrower.
The unfamiliar men took Boquillas's limp form and hustled it away with a speed and professionalism that was impressive; the rest stood there for a while, watching the old mansion go up like a flaming torch, until the heat, which grew hot enough to begin to ripple the paint on the generator trailers and melt the big satellite dish, became so great that they were forced to turn and walk back into the cool woods. Fire sirens sounded in the distance, but they would be useful only in keeping the conflagration to what it was already consuming and prevent, if they were lucky, a major forest fire.
Tiana, in fact, voiced that fear to Ruddygore, but he was unconcerned. "I managed a spell sufficient to keep the fire contained within its current boundaries, which will last until the inevitable rains rush in. I wouldn't worry so much. I personally wouldn't be upset if it consumed that entire stupid town, but I would not like to lose those redwoods."
The whole forest was a madhouse, with crowds ranging from the virtually undressed to the formally dressed running every which way in panic. Elder, Ministering Angel, Elect, technicians, special guests—all were the same now. The True Path was in ashes, and would not be followed again by any who were there or by any watching the initial broadcast.
Ruddygore's organization was quite prepared for them, although the agents had not known exactly what would happen until it did. A few small vans awaited the wizard's party, and they were guided through and quickly whisked away. There was even an ambulance to receive the Baron, although it had not been thought at the time that he might b
e the one to make use of it.
Even so, it took some wizard's spells and over an hour to clear the town and the county.
Chapter 17
Explanations And Resolutions
Evil monsters must be killed more than once. The more evil the monster, the more times it must die before it is sent to Hell or oblivion.
—Rules, XIV, 303(a)
"LET'S GO BACK TO THE ORACLE'S VERSE ONCE AGAIN and you'll see my thinking on all this," Throckmorton P. Ruddygore said, relaxing in a hotel suite in San Francisco and facing the company.
"The first three lines obviously meant Joe and Marge," he continued, sipping champagne between comments. "The thief part undoubtedly meant Macore, although I was hesitant to let an absolute greenhorn on Earth. He seems to have adapted well, though."
"If you consider a fanatic addiction to Gilligan 's Island adapting, then I guess you're right," Marge agreed.
"Well, if it wasn't an addictive thing, I suppose it wouldn't have run that long. At any rate, it was clear that the thief, Macore, had to go under something—it appeared to be underground, though it turned out to be under the porch and up through a trapdoor, but that difference was minor. I could not, of course, understand the 'pickled fish' reference, and thought it might refer to Tiana, particularly since conditions barring her were removed by that body switch, so I raised no objections to her going, despite the obvious inconvenience."
"I, too, thought it was me, although I did not like the reference to being 'pickled,'" Tiana agreed.
The wizard nodded and wolfed down a croissant. "This left me with a few questions that needed to be resolved here—the pixie business, for example. The real problem was that we had to give a treasure freely to the villains and Macore had to sneak it in. What sort of treasure? It seemed obvious from the fact that the word 'wish' was used three times in the verse that it had to be the Lamp. I, of course, was more hesitant to have Macore transport it here, particularly with the risk that it would fall into the Baron's hands—one chance at it and he might have been able to wish his powers back—but clearly its presence was mandated. I told Macore to inform no one except Poquah that it was even here, and to use it or otherwise risk it only if he felt the meaning of the verse was perfectly clear in his own mind."
"You put a lot of trust in Macore, considering the vault episode," Joe noted.
"But that was at least part of it! His explanation of how he solved all of the fatal traps of my vaults, which no one, not even the Baron, had been able to do, convinced me that no one else could adequately solve the riddle of the verse and put it all together. He is rather— limited—in many things, but in the solution of real puzzles with genuine dangers he is a genius. He looked everything over, assembled all his information, put it against the basic puzzle—the verse—and the true puzzle—how to stop the Baron and Dacaro—and he did it! The use of our pixie friend here to type that extra sentence, that very clever and direct wish, into Dacaro's script while it was still in the typewriter was absolute genius."
"Just where is Macore, anyway?" Marge asked. "We haven't seen him since the night we all went into the house."
"After waiting and planting the Lamp, masking it in a metallic box that looked like it connected to all that other apparatus inside the lectern, he got away and fast. Poquah had arranged for memories of him to be erased from Joe and Tiana, so it was unlikely that the Baron or Dacaro knew he was part of the group. If they'd seen him, they might have put two and two together. If they'd caught him, there was no way to keep him from being forced to spill the whole plot. As soon as he was out, we got him well away, although he really did want to be in on things at the end. I understand he is enjoying Disneyland enormously. If he's not in jail, he will join us later, when we fly back to Texas for our return voyage."
"How'd he get past those dogs?" Joe asked. "They just about lived under that porch."
"But they were still just dogs. Macore is a professional thief. He runs into guard dogs all the time. I don't know the exact method, and whether he used a spell or drugs or a combination, but anyone who couldn't be stopped by the traps in my vault would hardly be concerned with four Dobermans."
"What I can't figure out is how you got there," Marge said. "I mean, didn't the wish Macore made bar you from crossing?"
"It did indeed—only I didn't come that way. Think back to the hotel in Marahbar, and remember that, after you all left to come on the voyage here, Macore lingered a few moments. I had already prearranged this with Jinner, who was in the Lamp, so I simply made a wish and changed places with Jinner. At that point I resided not in Husaquahr but in the land of the djinn. I traveled nowhere, including across the Sea of Dreams. The land of the djinn is contiguous only with the location of the Lamp. Thus, the Lamp crossed, not me, and when Dacaro made his unintended wish, having had his own quota of wishes fulfilled, he both freed and replaced me. I was here, but I had not violated the barrier. Before we return, with the aid of associates here and in my own way, I will deal with Mr. Dacaro."
"I understand you're some kind of wizard and all that,"
Mahalo McMahon interjected. "You gonna kill him or turn him into a toad or what?"
"I think everyone is better off not knowing," he responded carefully. "It is a most unpleasant business, you understand, for he's a rascal but no worse than many in Husaquahr—or here, for that matter. He cannot, how- ever, be left on Earth with his power, nor can I trust him under any conditions back home, which is almost certainly a real mess right now. I can only assure you that you will never see or hear from him again unless you wind up in Hell."
That seemed definite enough. "I still do not understand why you just did not have someone make the wishes and come out at the start of all this," Tiana commented.
"I couldn't afford to. Oh, Macore and Poquah had instructions to get me out of there if things went sour, but otherwise I was better off hidden. If I were on Earth, Dacaro would have known it, would have felt the power. And, so long as they had the demon prince Astaroth with them, I could not have defeated them, and this time I had no place to run."
"What about the Baron?" Joe asked.
"The Baron suffered enormous damage to his spinal column and had a great loss of blood, some internally. He's being kept alive now only on a life-support machine at a private hospital under my control. He has never regained consciousness and may not."
"Then why not just pull the plug and be done with him?" Tiana wanted to know.
"There are some questions I wish to ask him. Most particularly I wish to ask him just what spell he worked out that enabled Dacaro so quickly and efficiently to remove souls from bodies and imprison them, or switch them around. It is a routine task for any competent sorcerer, but it involves demons and much ceremony and preparation and usually takes several hours. He not only did it in what appears to be minutes, but did it without the aid of a demon or any ritual, almost like changing coats. It was something Boquillas did not work out here— clearly this was the price our friend Sugasto, the Master of the Dead, got for going after you—but something his fine mind had worked out while still in Husaquahr. Sugasto apparently was given access to the Baron's private files of proprietary spells, of which this is the most sophisticated, and he is using them."
"Even if the Baron regains consciousness, why should he tell you?" Tiana wanted to know. "He seemed only to want to die after this defeat. He hardly fought me at all, although he is a skilled swordsman and might well have won. He has no reason to tell you."
"It's very doubtful he ever will be able to tell, but if he can, there are things that might be offered. If he dies, his torment in Hell will far exceed anything the usual evil one would get, for he failed Hell over and over again. If I have the formula, there is a way out. You remember, Joe, what happened to your mind when you became a wood nymph?"
"I've been told," he responded irritatedly. "I don't remember it for sure."
"Oh, I see!" Tiana exclaimed. "You can offer to use his own process to place him in the b
ody of such a nymph. Eventually, perhaps quickly, his entire memory and personality would be suppressed and he would become the creature of instinct Joe almost did. But he would put off punishment until Judgment, if he was lucky and found a nice tree, and he could argue his own case then based on his idealism."
"Very good," Ruddygore replied, nodding. "It is a price I believe he would be willing to pay. And if I know the process, I can make things very uncomfortable for Sugasto,"
"I—I guess I shouldn't have shot him," Mahalo said sadly. "I'm real sorry, but, like, it seemed like the only thing to do at the time."
"So when do we go home?" Marge asked the wizard. "And who all goes?"
Ruddygore looked around the room. "Ms. McMahon— is it your wish to go with us? I promise you that, once over, you may never return, and it's not the romantic place you might think. It's full of war and death and it has no televisions, transistor radios, electric lights, central heating, or air conditioning; and I'm afraid it's going to be even more of a mess, now that Sugasto's had a month without me to consolidate his position. It will not be an easy road, and, as Marge can attest, you cannot even tell now what might happen to you or what you might become."
"I been thinking a lot about that," the former cult priestess said, "and I got to admit it's kind of scary. But then I think of what I done with my life here and what's been goin' on. I mean, I never was much good at school and I dropped out when I was real young and became a hippie. I've never really had any other life. I'm still a hippie when everybody I knew or was close to is over forty, in jail, or a has-been hippie in a time of tanning booths and polyester suits. I don't know if this place you come from is really better or worse or not, but, you see, it's different. When going's better than staying, it's better to go, I guess."
"Fair enough. We owe you that much, I think. And we owe you more than that. Gimlet. In fact, we owe the whole game to you."
"Well, it ain't Brooklyn, but if you gois is like most of da folks dere, I think I'll get along okay."
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