Now they were on their way down, but there were few clouds in sight on this side of the mountains. Instead, there was a vast sea of blackness below, broken only here and there by solitary lights whose origins could not be guessed. From that height it wasn't unlikely that they were seeing eighty or a hundred miles, but if there was any city or town over there, it certainly was hiding itself well.
It didn't appear that much weather of any sort made it over the mountain wall; all below, as far as the eye could see, was one vast desert.
Larae's adrenaline and excitement had worn off, and she drifted off to sleep after a while, her head sinking over onto Irving's shoulder. For some reason it bothered him, as if it weren't right somehow now that he knew she wasn't all a she, but another part of him was torn by his respect for her. He really liked her in spite of it all, and it wasn't as if her situation were her own fault. With a very light sigh, he lifted his arm and put it around her.
Damn it! I know what I would wish for if I had that thing, he thought in frustration, and it wasn't a true-blue boyfriend.
It could be worse, he supposed. She could still have kept her old form down there, but with that demon adding teeth. Whoa! He had a sick feeling just thinking about that one. If he was going to start thinking like that, maybe it was time for him to take a nap, too.
Marge looked at them and smiled. They did make a great couple, except for that one little detail that shouldn't matter but did. She'd been brought up too much one way, and Irving in another. Still, wouldn't that be the final nail in Joe's coffin if he saw this and knew all the facts!
She went over to Poquah and gestured toward them. "Any hope for her?'
"Difficult to say," he replied. "I do believe she is correct in that her initial situation is tied up in both a bargain and a curse. With the Lamp, which was a product of the djinn universe, it would not be a factor, but the McGuffin is within the Rules and was fashioned by artisans of our own space-time continuum. Remove the curse, and the original bargain is back in force and she becomes a sacrifice and property of the demon. You cannot wish away the bargain; that was sealed in blood with Hell on their continuum. I am not even certain she can very much change the way she is right now. The moment the wish is made and the original Lothar curse dissolves, Hell will enforce it, even if it is for mere nanoseconds. About the only thing that might be lifted is the geas, since that was imposed, not a part of the original bargain, and in our continuum."
"So they're stuck?"
"Well, she certainly is. Irving is still the same as always and has other options."
"But you can see the attraction."
"Yes, just looking at them, one can see many threads of common destiny linking one to the other. Of course, this isn't a fatal disease, since such threads are broken all the time by divorce, death, infidelities, and even plots, abductions, accidents—well, you know. His nature, fortified by his own views of his father and his father's condition and reactions, though, makes it almost inconceivable that he could find happiness in what would be essentially a homosexual relationship. She could, but not Irving. It simply isn't in him."
She nodded. "And it's eating him alive." She sighed. "I guess there's always wishes to change some things, huh?"
"Not for the likes of them," the Imir commented, "unless of course we can solve that Hell's bargain conundrum. Master Ruddygore is actually pretty good at that sort of thing, but there are many such that have no answer. I want no one thinking of this as a wish-at-a-time reward system. First of all, we haven't gotten it yet, and second, if we had it, we don't really know how to use it. It is supposed to be rather tricky. I have been given one wish, one statement carefully crafted by Master Ruddygore, and that is the only one allowable."
She looked at him with a knowing smile. I wonder how you are going to enforce that, considering it's not you but most likely Irving or even Larae who'll set hands on it, if anyone does.
She got up and went over to a window and looked out. Although it was very dark inside the car, by her own night vision and faerie sight she saw her reflection in the glass, and she didn't like what she saw at all.
She was taller, thicker built, and more of a sexual bombshell than ever. She was also taking on a golden glow, and the reds in her skin were beginning to darken uniformly. She was far more than halfway across the line from Kauri to Succubus; it was almost impossible to see her old self anymore. It was something that should have angered and repelled her as the sight of such creatures always had before, but ...
It didn't.
She began to wonder if she could even try a legitimate tryst with Irving, whether she dared do so. The very idea she still had reservations about that provided some encouragement, but it didn't answer the question. Would Irving help her, or would she harm him irreparably?
She stood there, studying that reflection, wondering how she could solve this problem, or, worse, if she really wanted to.
Shortly before midnight they reached the other station. It wasn't much different from the one they'd left, except it had no zombies, no jungle, no old houses, no ... well, not much of anything, period.
The welcoming committee consisted of one very large, very tall fat guy who spoke and was dressed like something out of the Arabian Nights and had that method of speaking where you could virtually see the exclamation marks.
"Welcome! Welcome, effendis! Please accept my humble greetings to you all on getting this far! Come! Come! I am Ali ben Hazzard, your host for this next and final leg of your journey! Please! Come this way! We have tents over here, and sweet teas and fine coffees,, and a way to relax and get some sleep!"
They all looked at Thebes. "Is this guy legit?" Marge asked him.
"Oh, yes. He manages the prepaid expeditions to and from here," the little man assured them. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, um, hasn't anybody told him that for a guy named Ali ben something who talks and dresses like that, he's not an Arab or a Persian? That in fact he's a Mongolian, or so it seems?"
"Oh, yes, that. He knows. He just hopes you will not notice. I think there probably was an Ali ben Hazzard many, many years and a number of owners ago. He is actually an improvement over the last one I knew here. He was a snake man with a nasty complexion and big reptilian eyes and all the rest. Made it next to impossible to believe anything he said. He kept saying everything with a forked tongue."
Marge let that one pass.
Hazzard's setup, virtually invisible from the air, was actually quite elaborate. Big tents, thick rugs, and silken coverings, all the comforts of a nomadic home.
There was good stuff there, too: not just the teas and coffees promised but wines as well, and sweet rolls and a savory stew that ben Hazzard assured them had nothing more sinister in it than Iamb.
"I didn't think there was anybody this straight and up and up on this whole continent," Marge commented to Thebes.
The little man gave his Lorre-like chuckle. "Oh, he is one of those who is more or less the dishonest side of Yuggoth, really. You see, he offers absolutely safe and honest service at an incredibly exorbitant price."
"What's dishonest about that?"
"Why, I would think that it is obvious. What is a criminal enterprise? It is there to supply those things, regardless of cost, that society has deemed illegal or immoral but that the people want anyway. Here, everybody cheats, so you pay through the nose for honesty. It is that simple."
Marge shook her head as if to clear it. "Yeah. Simple as calculus. Never mind."
Ali ben Hazzard was a good host, and after they had eaten and drunk their fill, he took them to a large trough where there was actually tepid water for washing off, then showed them their small tent. It was big enough for them all but wasn't exactly built for privacy.
"It is too late to make the journey tonight, so rest!" their effusive host told them. "Tomorrow you will rise, eat, and have a fairly easy day on your own, and then we shall set off after an early dinner while we still have some sun but the shadows begin to cool."
"We're not going to travel tomorrow during the day?" Irving asked.
He chuckled. "You must be joking, young sir. It is about as cold as it gets right about now and will remain this way until about dawn! Within an hour, the temperature will climb several degrees an hour and will not begin to decline until the sun is very low. At midday this desert is hot enough to fry brains!"
Thebes nodded to confirm this. "It is probably about thirty now—ninety-two or so Fahrenheit. Tomorrow, forty-five, even fifty is not unheard of, and fifty-five is common farther inland. Is that not so, friend Ali?"
"Indeed it is, effendi! Not for nothing is the Great Rift often called the Worse Than Death Valley! So sleep!"
And after a while they did. After the discomforts of the ship's deck and its eternal wetness and hard sacks, the rugs and silk over sand were a blessed relief.
Marge, of course, did not sleep but wandered outside. The heat made no difference to her; she felt neither cold nor warmth in any measure, and once you've jumped into liquid lava a few times, the kinds of temperatures bandied about for this desert didn't seem all that big a deal.
She was simply trying to decide .what to do.
It took a couple of hours, with late half-moon rising well in the sky, before events made her decision for her.
Someone stirred, then slipped as silently as possible out of the tent, probably too troubled to sleep or perhaps just overtired. Marge was surprised to see that it was Larae.
A thought suddenly struck Marge, and she found it quickly maturing into an irresistible impulse, and she'd been faerie too long to resist one of those.
She went up behind Lame as the girl stood not far from the tent, looking at the moon. Suddenly she heard someone and turned and saw not Marge but Irving there. Only it wasn't Irving, not exactly. It was some kind of dream Irving, some idealized Irving from her own mind and fantasies ...
Although very real, the cleansing eventually would lead Larae back to sleep, in which she'd have more peaceful dreams and awake refreshed, unsure of any true action but remembering it as a kind of fantasy pleasure.
Larae had certainly been in need of it, and Marge was quite pleased that she'd been able to control it and limit it to the old ways. Not long ago she could have gone a week or more before feeding again from a load of guilt like that, but after this she was still hungry. She might be able to restrain herself, pace things, if Irving didn't present an opportunity, but Marge knew she'd find it next to impossible not to follow through if Irving should walk out of the tent at some point the way Larae had.
It was worse than she'd thought. She was becoming insatiable ...
Within twenty minutes a disturbed-looking Irving came outside to look at the moon.
The heat of the day fully lived up to its billing, and the current Ali ben Hazzard still lived up to his effusive hospitality, although Poquah found himself paying for all sorts of extras that might well have been considered essentials. Guaranteed wholesome food, for example, was horrendous; no guarantee, well, that was pretty cheap, but you use those grungy pots over there. Water? No problem! Oh, you want a cup! Well, that's different!
Irving and Larae both slept very late and awoke quite close to each other. It was very strange how he felt this morning, the boy thought, but damn it, she seemed somehow ten times more attractive than before—and he'd been attracted to her since his first glimpse of her back on the big boat.
But it was wrong, damn it! He couldn't get around that. He couldn't do what he really wanted to do with her, even though somewhere in the back of his mind was a nearly perfect sensation that somehow they'd done exactly that, impossible though it was. They could be friends, but how could they truly be lovers?
Larae felt no such reservations even though she had exactly the same sensations and vague half memories that must have come out of dream but still seemed so real. She would try very hard to break down that conflict within him; it had bothered her only culturally before, and somehow it troubled her not a bit now. Still, if this mad expedition somehow succeeded, she knew that one way or another she'd get her hands on that thing they were seeking long enough for just one wish. One wish she'd thought of that would solve it all.
They had a midday siesta, then a substantial dinner with the sun perhaps ten degrees above the horizon. Finally it was time to move.
Irving looked around. "I don't see much in the way of camels or horses," he noted. "What are we supposed to do? Walk?"
Ali ben Hazzard looked at him with those almond eyes and grinned. "Of course not, effendi! How would we ever get anywhere with mere camels in conditions like this?" He removed what seemed to be a panpipe from a pocket in the folds of his robe and blew a series of notes on it
Three broad Persian-style rugs approached and braked to a stop.
"Ohmigod!" Irving exclaimed.
"Very good models, effendi, among the best!" Ali assured them. "Now, I want each of you to get a bit of practice before we go. I would not want to lose you out there in the middle of nowhere!"
"Flying carpets?' Marge yawned. "Fascinating. No handholds, though, I note. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not too sure about the rest of you."
"Oh, you will need them as well, madam!" ben Hazzard assured her. "I do not think that anyone flies this fast. Your destination is more than a thousand kilometers that way!" he noted, pointing to the south and slightly west. "If all goes well, we will make it, with one brief stop, in about eleven hours. Now, come! It does take a bit of practice, you know, and if you fall off and survive, we will lose time. We do not want to be aloft in daylight!"
It appeared that flying carpets weren't quite as easy to handle as in the old tales, that was for sure. For one thing, the speed was quite good, but balance was the key, and that meant lying pretty well flat and making certain that anything you did was balanced by what someone else did.
The first carpet was to have the "mechanics," along with some freight. After some balance tests, a couple of the vacuous fairies were shifted to ben Hazzard's carpet.
Irving, Larae, Poquah, and Marge were on the second, or middle, carpet, arranged pretty much to balance out the weight. Again, some small boxes and such were placed in the center, along with a supply kit. The general rule was, no matter what you did, you held on to the carpet, and you never stood up.
Ben Hazzard himself, along with Thebes and the leftover "mechanics," made up the third and final carpet, along with probably the most freight.
The first carpet seemed to have kegs rather than boxes, and a hopeful Thebes asked what the kegs contained.
"A yellowish dye, effendi! I have an order for it, and it is quite rare! Very difficult to get! You need to go into the dark jungles and find a particular giant insect, a member of the tick family but one which feeds on certain very large plants rather than animals. It is very lazy, and it simply lies on the plant and drains its juices slowly over time. Inside its stomach, the interaction of plant and tick juices can, if the tick is removed and cut open, result in a very good dye! Different plants produce different colors, but those are yellow, one of the rarest colors!"
It was still not quite dark, but Marge, hearing this outrageous explanation, shook her head and wondered just how little inhibition of any sort she had left. It was so very, very tempting ...
"How do we go to the bathroom?" Irving asked ben Hazzard.
"If you cannot hold it until the break, use the container in the back. Yes! That squared wooden one there! Just remember how fast you are going and always be the last one to the rear of the carpet, eh?"
Irving looked at it and sighed. "Yeah, okay. So I guess it's time now, huh?"
They got on their carpets, lay down, got one more set of cautions from ben Hazzard, and then it was time. The caravan master played a series of notes on his pipes, and slowly, ever so slowly, the carpets rose up into the air until they were lined up in the light of the setting sun about thirty feet above the desert in the order ben Hazzard had determined.
"Ready?" the man wi
th the panpipes called. "All right, then! We go! Hold on!"
He played a few notes, and slowly the first carpet, then the second, and finally the third moved out in a direct line toward the south-southwest, accelerating as they did so, the wind picking up and blowing against them as they went faster and faster.
Marge couldn't stand it anymore. Not at all worried and stuck like glue to the front of the carpet, she sat up and pointed.
"Okay, everybody. Follow the mellow tick woad!"
If any of them got it, they didn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction.
CASTLE ROCK
Always be respectful to the King of Horror or you will be eaten alive by lawyer birds.
—Rules, Vol. RIR, xiv, advice in Preface
DG5 - Horrors of the Dancing Gods Page 28