“Yes, girl, but even you must remember that, if you have to relieve yourself, it must go in the sack here,” the thief put in, already starting to cut his own blocks. “It’ll be as warm as ours. Once it’s cold, and that won’t take long, then we can dump it. We won’t have to carry our crap, at least.”
The great sword Irving cut through the ice as if it were butter, and soon Joe was trimming a block into two smaller, lighter, slabs with flat faces.
“We might well not need these,” the thief admitted, tying his own blocks on, “but we can’t chance it unless we have to. If we lose the blocks, or they splinter, or prove too cumbersome, then we’ll have to experiment. By that time the soles of our boots will be at ice temperature, anyway.”
Joe finished, and practiced a little walking. It was stiff, but he felt comfortable. He went over and helped Mia prepare his pack, then, after putting it on, they put together her harness and checked out progressively smaller rectangles of ice until she proclaimed that it was okay. What she could manage wasn’t huge, but it would do.
She slipped off the harness for a moment and started doing some of her stretching exercises. Joe watched her, then went over to her. “Mia,” he said gently “we’ve explained what’s in there, just below the top. You know that nobody’s ever been known to cross this thing and come out anything but a hideous monster.”
“Yes, Master. I know. But we will make it.”
“There are a couple of things I want to say before we go in there, just in case we don’t. The first is, if, somehow, I don’t make it, and you do, and Macore does as well, let him touch the ring and then finish what we set out to do. Understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“If not, avoid anyone touching it and try and do it anyway if you can.”
“I will, Master.”
“Don’t let anything stop you, not even regard for me. No matter what you feel, remember those living dead back there and your own slavery and the way the slaves were back at that camp and think of all Husaquahr under those people—and all in Tiana’s name and mine. I swear I’ll die before I let them do that. Will you swear it, too?”
“I will, Master.”
“In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that I’ll sacrifice any life, including ours, to stop them, I want you to know something. I know you are just my slave, and that you were never my wife, and that you’re Mia, not Ti. But I want you to know, truthfully, that, as yourself, just as you are, and here and now, I love you more than I’ve loved any other woman.” And then he grabbed her and held her and gave her another of those kisses, only even deeper and more passionate than before.
Marge descended. “Break it up, you two!” she said sharply. “The posse’s hot on my tail and tryin’ to head us off at the pass!”
The pair broke, reluctantly, and quickly helped each other with their packs.
“Okay, gang! Let’s do it!” Macore shouted. All of them took deep breaths, paused a moment, then stepped into the Devastation.
The first thing that hit them was that the Devastation was neither desolate nor even quite quiet.
“It sounds as if you were really way, way, aways, and yet…” Marge said, fascinated.
“It sounds like Sorrow’s Gorge,” Joe completed. “My god! How long has this been here? Thousands of years, perhaps?”
Marge nodded. “And yet, somehow, you get the feeling that even the freezing didn’t so much stop the battle as freeze it. It’s as if the last second of that battle was being played, over and over again, like some broken record.”
“That was my impression when I was in here earlier,” Ma-core admitted. “I think the soundtrack changes a bit as we go, though. I think we are hearing the battle, or what was happening here on each spot, at that fatal moment back then. Kind of gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”
“I hear it, too, Master,” Mia told Joe. “The sounds of armor and horses and men yelling and screaming and even the sounds of magic. You could almost see the whole thing in your mind from those sounds.”
“Well, we’d better get a different part of the program,” Marge noted, shaking herself out of it. “We’ve got a very long way to go, and, right now I bet, there’s at least a couple of Hypboreyan women’s guards cutting out ice blocks not far behind us.”
“Oh, don’t worry so much,” Joe told her. “We can take care of them in a fight.”
“Oh, really? And what good is even a great sword like yours against a crossbow? What’s next? Bare hands against automatic rifles?” Marge began walking, looking down at what to her was an incredible kaleidoscope of colors glowing just below the snow. “Huh! Why do I feel that under this snow is the dance floor from Saturday Night Fever?”
“Put a little of your inborn fairy warmth on those spots and you’ll do a dance, all right,” Joe told her.
“Hey! Take it easy! I have to do three steps to your two, remember, and I wasn’t built for forty mile hikes. I was never built for forty mile hikes. Ai yi yi! How do I get myself into these things?”
“You’ve had more rest than any of us,” he pointed out. “And probably a better meal, too.”
Macore looked around. “I just wish we could erase these tracks in the snow. We’re not gonna be real hard to track.”
Joe looked at Marge. “You just remember that, no matter what, you’ve got to suppress that panic reaction of yours. No flying and no running.”
At that moment there was a sudden pop.’ near them and from the lighted ground under the snow quickly came a ghostly visage of a skeletallike horror mounted on a nightmare steed, rushing toward them, only the head and torso of the rider and the head and neck of the steed visible. It was transparent, but it screamed a ghastly scream and came toward them—and was gone.
“What was that!” Joe asked.
Marge stood stock still. “See? I didn’t panic. I was too petrified. At least Husaquahr’s now got a space program.”
“Huh?”
“My heart’s in orbit.”
“What was it, Master?” Mia asked. “It was—horrible.”
“Oh, yeah,” Macore said calmly, “I forgot to mention those. They happen every once in a while. I don’t think they’re anything to worry about, just something being liberated briefly because of the settling in the ice or whatever.”
“Uh—Macore. Anything else you forgot to mention?” Marge asked dryly.
“Uh—not that I can think of. Say! This boring walk needs some livening up. Anybody want me to sing the entire Gilligan’s Island theme song, complete with the end verse everybody forgets?”
“No,” Joe and Marge responded in unison.
“Okay, okay. Sheesh! Everybody’s turning into a critic on this damned world!”
They walked some more in silence. The cold was really getting to Joe in spite of the borrowed furs and fur lining stuffed in his boots. They couldn’t really cover their faces very well, and, although there was no wind, it really did begin to bother him, and possibly Macore as well.
Equally troubling were the occasional manifestations that arose suddenly, each preceded by a cracking sound. They kept telling themselves and one another that they’d get used to it, but the farther in they went, the more horrible and gruesome the apparitions became. You just didn’t get used to it; you merely dreaded the next crack!.
“Jeez! Weren’t there any good guys in this fight?” Marge asked.
“Probably. Almost certainly,” Joe responded. “My best guess is that we’re either on a lightly defended part of the field or we’re inside the battle lines of one side. What’s more interesting is that we haven’t seen any human apparitions. Lots of dark fairy types, and some mean-looking monsters that might be fairy or mortal, a practical difference only to them, but no people.”
“I also wonder just how long ago this battle was,” Macore commented. “I mean, it’s ancient enough to have passed into legend, and I Ve yet to recognize any creature as something I’ve met, but the armor and the weaponry and things like saddles and
such look very up to date. In fact, a lot of it looks better than what we have now.”
“Some races might have died out right here,” Marge noted. “Others might well have been transformed or scattered to the four comers of the world by any power strong enough to do this. As for the men, their souls might well be long gone and only their bodies remaining locked in the ice. We fairies, on the other hand, don’t have that luxury. I think that what we’re seeing are actual fairy souls, ancient ones, freed of their husks, unable to dissipate, rising in the cracks into the air and then dispersing to the air before a new husk can form. It’s pretty depressing, if you’re fairy.”
Joe sighed. “The only thing I can say is that everything I’ve seen so far is something I don’t mind having dissipated. I keep thinking that we might not have it right, though. I keep remembering Quasa’s tale of seeing the one-time humans turned into a collection of bestiary after being in here. I know there’s even supposed to be frozen spells in this crap, but that wouldn’t explain that sort of stuff. Nobody throws spells that give the enemy goat heads or fish tails.”
“Fairy blood was probably stronger then, like the magic,” Marge guessed. “There are fairies even today with goatlike heads, and others with fishlike tails. Suppose you were standing right on one of those openings when the fairy spirit rose? The instinctive thing would be to find cover, to find a temporary husk. If pieces of those souls had time to get to mortal flesh, they might produce that sort of thing.”
“The odds of being on top of one of these cracks when it goes is pretty slim,” Macore responded, thinking. “But if you added heat, you might get a whole bunch in full strength at once balding for the flesh. What do you bet that they peed themselves into monsters?”
After walking for what seemed like hours, at least, although there was no reliable way to tell time, they broke for a rest. The bag was well used, and they knew it would be a total discard by the time they were done, and the block of ice for a seat was barely big enough for Joe, with Macore almost sitting on his lap. The little thief looked up at the big man, grinned, and said, “Daddy.”
“You be good or I’ll throw you off!” Joe threatened.. Marge and Mia sat wearily in the snow, knowing that their body heat, at least, would not transfer without action on their part, and action was the last thing either of them wanted.
Mia looked back at their tracks. “Do you think they are still following us, Master?” she asked nervously.
“If they haven’t peed their own selves into oblivion or worse by now, yeah,” Macore answered before Joe could. “Most of ’em are kind of bored and not real energetic, but that Quasa is a tough, hard-nosed bitch who would pursue you to the City-States and beyond, if you forgot to fill out a form.”
Joe looked around. “If there was any kind of cover I’d almost be tempted to wait for them. If they do catch up, Mia and I will handle them, understand? Just stay behind us and don’t make yourselves targets.”
“But the crossbows!” Marge objected. “And you don’t dare run at them in here!”
“Don’t have to,” he told her. “It might be a little bloody and painful, but all the bolts I saw in there were wood or bronze-tipped.”
“Whatever you do, don’t bleed on the snow!” Macore warned. “Blood’s warm.”
“I’ll try not to, if it’s necessary. But if one of them goes down, it could be hairy.”
“We may find out after all,” Marge said. “If that’s not two figures of flesh and blood coming, I don’t know what they can be.”
Joe sighed tiredly and got up. “And it was always my experience that women seemed to be always going to the bathroom. Bad luck.”
“Perhaps not, Master,” Mia responded, getting up as well and pulling her knife from the pack, then walking slowly away from him. “I, for one, would rather meet these two than an assemblage of those horrors we’ve been seeing.”
Marge used her extraordinary vision. “Crossbows for sure. I doubt if there’s much hope of you not taking one in the chest, Joe.”
“Just remember where not to bleed!” Macore emphasized helpfully.
“And watch out for a chain reaction,” Marge warned. “If you get one of them and she falls and bleeds, it’s sure as hell gonna raise something.”
The two women stopped about twenty or twenty-five yards from them, crossbows now at the ready. They weren’t going to allow themselves to get close enough in to take a sword or knife.
“You’re coming back!” Quasa told them in a firm, businesslike tone. “All four of you. I don’t know where you came from, nymph, but you can’t fly here and you sure as hell can’t run.”
“Nymph! I’m a Kauri, you little broom-ridin’ boot-lickin’ daughter of a bitch!”
Joe drew his sword, which hummed in excitement of having its own feast. Below, the colored lights seemed to change and shift, as if reacting to the sword.
“Your crossbows won’t save you,” Joe told them flatly. “They’ll cause us a little pain, but that’s the way it goes. Your plan to amputate a part of me wouldn’t have worked, either. It would have come back. The only thing you could have done to me physically was make my hair fall out, and I kind of like my hair.”
Quasa seemed confused about the reply. Never before had she had someone in this position, where she could drop them with one well-placed shot but they couldn’t possibly get to her, when they didn’t surrender.
“What do you think you are? Demons? Sorcerers? You have no protective spells. I can see the spells you have. And the bitch is a slave. That’s plain to see!”
He took a step toward the women, and Mia, to one side and presenting a separate target, started in, as well.
“But not even a sorcerer can see blood curses,” he replied. “And even mercenaries and slaves can be werewolves.” He’d long ago given up any idea of explaining the concept of just a were.
“Werewolves! You’re bluffing!” But she didn’t sound so confident, and actually retreated a step.
“So you can’t kill us, you see,” Joe kept on. “But we can kill you with these weapons. You’re the ones who can’t run or hide, not us. Better be sure before you shoot that thing. Blood’s warm. You see the Devastation gathering around us? It senses battle, it senses death. Who knows what we’ll raise by our fighting? Perhaps you’ll have a pig’s head and a duck’s feet. How’s that for explaining to superiors?”
“Stay back!” the other woman screamed. “We’ll shoot!”
Joe and Mia kept their advances. Ten yards. Eight. Six. “We are already reconciled to that,” he said.
The other woman, frightened and confused, raised her crossbow and trained it at Joe.
“No! Shiza! Don’t!” Quasa screamed, but it was too late. Shiza fired her bolt.
It struck him with tremendous force right in his chest, the force of it almost bowling him over backward. It was only with an extreme will and the fact that he was wearing two flattened oversized ice blocks on his feet that kept him up at all. Even so, he bent over backward so much he was afraid he was going to touch the ground, and he did brush the snow slightly.
But, boy! That hurt like hell!
He straightened back up, looked down at the bolt buried deep in his chest, grabbed it with his left hand so Irving could remain in his right, and, gritting his teeth, he pulled the bloody thing out and away. It hurt more to remove the damned thing than it did to be shot by it.
“Man! Is that ever the worst case of heartburn I ever had!” Satisfied that the bloody thing had cooled, he threw it well away and continued forward.
It was too much for Shiza. She panicked, dropping the crossbow, then turned, kicked off the ice blocks on her own boots, and began running.
The display of color under them suddenly shifted and started chasing her. Puffs of electriclike energy bolts in a variety of colors seemed to come out of the snow, and the whole mess seemed to take on a life of its own. Joe, and even Quasa, stood frozen, watching what was going to happen.
The intensity of spe
lls under the fleeing woman and following her was now blindingly bright and throbbing with energy. Even Marge watched with growing fascination. “I was right!” she muttered. “They’re fighting themselves below to get out to that body.”
Suddenly the place where the woman was now about thirty yards back erupted in the most complex pattern of magical strings any of them had ever seen, completely enveloping the woman. There was a crackling and suddenly the full volume sounds of fierce battle cries.
Where the woman had been caught by the forces below, there was now a mass of writhing, seething flesh in rapid motion under the furs, as the desperate fairy souls beneath struggled to get some sort of container, both to live and to prevent dissipation.
She was not one thing, or two, or five, but a hundred things, all competing inside her flesh for some sort of home. First an equine head, then one of some great lizard; a face, fleshy and fattened, had broadened lips, fangs, two broad noses and three eyes as well as a curly horn in the center.
The huge mouth opened, and it sounded as if she had the voice of hundreds, all speaking at once, and all speaking something different. But as none of them would yield, the flesh split, and from it came a horde of terrible, insane apparitions, all screaming in death agonies, then… gone.
“That,” said Joe, “is why it doesn’t really pay in the end to be one of the bad guys.”
Quasa turned and faced him and put down her crossbow. She tried a nervous chuckle. “All right. You win. I won’t bother you anymore. Honest I won’t. I’ll just walk home now, very slowly…”
The wound in his chest still smarted and would for some time, but there was no more blood, and it was becoming a persistent ache, like a bruise that went right through him. He smiled back at the security officer. “I don’t think so,” he told her.
“I’ll come with you, then, as your prisoner,” she suggested.
Songs of the Dancing Gods dg-4 Page 28
