The place was something like a basic, small social club; it had a bar, a couple of tables, and one fireplace was being used to cook things on spits. Two slaves were in there, both males, one tending the cooking fire and the other wiping down the bar, both with rings in their noses, both as naked and hairless as Mia. They both turned and looked up at them. At a table, one of three, two of the toughest-looking women he'd seen since that truck stop in Wyoming ten years back looked at him in sheer amazement. Both were wearing fur-trimmed black uniforms and matching leather boots.
"Where the hell did you come from, Bub?" one asked in the kind of voice that matched her butch appearance exactly.
He hadn't expected women officers.
"I was dropped off by courier nazga quite a ways from here, back toward the mountains, this morning," he replied, trying to match their tough tone. "I've been freezing and getting bit since."
"Nobody told us that anybody was coming," she noted suspiciously.
"Nobody said to me that there was anybody here other than that there was some army personnel," he responded. "And I see that there are."
"We don't exactly get many people up here, you know." She got up, looking very irritated. "I think you ought to see security."
"Fine with me," he replied. "Can I leave my stuff here? The slave can help out yours. Just let me get some papers out."
"Sure, go ahead." She turned to the two slaves behind the counter. "You two better hadn't burn my dinner! I'll be back as soon as I can."
"It will be done, Mistress," one responded in a rather gentle tenor.
"It better be, or you'll sleep outside with the dogs tonight!"
Joe had just thawed enough to start feeling his bites when she led him outside again and down to the last small building in the settlement.
"Was this always a settlement or was it built for the army?" he asked, mostly trying to make conversation.
"I neither know nor care," she responded frostily. "In there."
He walked in after her and found himself in a smaller log house arranged into rooms like an office. Inside were two more women in the same uniforms as the first, looking as tough and weathered as the others. Were there no men here? he wondered.
"What have we here?" asked one of the security officers, a comparatively small woman with a loud, nasal soprano. She looked him over. "Where did he come from?" she asked the woman who'd brought him.
"Came waltzing into the club with a slave as if he owned the place," his guide replied. "Female slave, too."
"Go on back to dinner," the officer told the guide. "We'll handle this from this point." The guide clicked her heels together, turned, and left.
"So," said the security officer, "want to tell me what you're doing out here at the end of nowhere?''
"No," he responded.
She was almost as surprised as by his initial appearance. "No?"
"I have the same ultimate boss you do," he told her, removing the safe conduct and handing it over. "Don't worry—I am authorized to tell you that what I'm supposed to do has nothing at all to do with this place."
She handed the safe conduct back. "This means little when you're out of any beaten path and in a restricted military zone.''
He shrugged. "What am I gonna do?" he asked her sarcastically. "Launch an all-out attack? Me and my slave? Spy on you? Tell them about the Ultimate Weapon you've got here? Steal your dogs?"
"Could be. The only reason for this outpost is to prevent people from going any farther, particularly out on the ice beyond this point,'' she told him. "If the reason you're here has nothing to do with us, I assume that's your objective. That makes you our primary mission right now."
He sighed. "Mind if I sit?"
"At the moment, stand."
"All right, all right. Yesterday I was invited to lunch by and with the Master of the Dead himself at an army camp just north of the Marquewood border. And you know exactly what I mean by 'invited.' "
"All right. Get to the point.''
"It seems I impressed him on some other business, or maybe I pissed him off. Hard to say, but, since I'm still here, it was probably the former. For some reason he's convinced that enemies, perhaps spies, might get to the summer palace by land. I don't know what's going on out there and I don't want to know. He asked me if I would soothe his nerves by attempting ah undetected overland trek to the palace and, if I made it, attempt to gain entry without their security and spells knowing. I have something of a reputation for doing what people believe is impossible along those lines. A nazga was told to divert north of the mountains miles from here and drop me off. If you want to check you can go up there and see where it came in and we landed. Nazgas make their marks on the land. I gather for some reason they didn't want to fly me closer in."
"I'll bet," she commented, and his spirit felt better. She was actually buying this crap!
"There wasn't much cold-weather gear that far south, so I was told I could get some here, since any spy would come equipped."
"So why didn't he put this in an order to us?"
He smiled dryly. "You obviously haven't met the Master of the Dead if you have to ask that.''
"Perhaps. But, by definition, even his lapses aren't his fault. Why should I believe you?"
"Logic. Do I sound insane? No? That leaves me as either a spy or who I say I am, and I have to ask you, now, would a spy walk in here with a story like this and no cold-weather gear, leaving his slave with your people?"
"Maybe. If he were clever enough."
"Uh-huh. And even if I made it, how am I going to get back? How am I going to get messages out? The only way I have is via the palace and the Master of the Dead himself. Considering that, even if I were a spy, I wouldn't exactly be much of a threat, now would I?"
"Could be," she admitted. "But maybe not. We have one spy in custody right now from up around that area where you said you came from. He fell into the hands of the gnomes and is quite mad. The few who get away from the gnomes are always mad. Usually we have to bribe them to get people back at all; this one went so crazy the gnomes actually begged us to take him."
"You're sure he was a spy?''
"What else could he be? He's too crazy now even to make enough sense to create a story, but there's no other reason for coming here—unless your story is true, or unless he was someone who heard that there were only women on rear picket duty and thought he was going to have a field day."
His eyebrows rose. "There are only women here?"
"Women and slaves to do the drudge work, and by law the slaves are all eunuchs. Why? You getting any ideas?"
"Nothing personal, but not along those lines," he assured her, trying to sound both safe and not insulting. "When the , Master of the Dead personally orders you to do something, you don't really think about much else.''
"Maybe," she responded a bit suspiciously.
' 'I 'd like to see that prisoner, though,'' he told her. "I'll leave my sword and stuff here. I just want to see what sort of person would come up here unauthorized. Having done a fair amount of spying in the south, I might have come across somebody that nervy."
She shrugged. "All he does is sit and sing this bizarre chant in some alien tongue. You can see him, but no tricks. All of us are experts with bow arid crossbow and some of us are fine swordswomen. Not to mention that we have our own means of magical protections and can have the forces of true Darkness down on this place like a shot."
"I'm not the enemy, damn it!" He unbuckled his sword and left it on her desk, then followed her back. "Besides, if you have anybody who can read the signatures of spells, have them check my slave. One of her spells is from the Master of the Dead himself."
There was a small back area to the cabin, and she took a large set of keys on a master ring from a safe, then unlocked the rear door. Inside was a narrow outer area just wide enough to stand and not be grabbed by anybody inside, then a small single cell with thick bars.
Inside a small figure sat, stripped naked so that even if
he could break out he'd freeze before getting very far. He was sitting on the bunk staring up at the ceiling in the semi-gloom and singing softly.
The man on the bunk looked over and saw Joe, and his eyes brightened. For a moment, Joe was afraid that his cover would be blown, but instead the little man yelled, "Skipper! YouVe come at last to rescue me! Take me back to the island, please*. Otherwise the cannibals will eat me!"
His beard and hair were long and unkempt, and his eyes were wild and distant, but Macore was still clearly recognizable.
Joe ignored the little thief. "What will you do with him?"
"Standing instructions. Anyone who comes here as a spy, after his value for information and interrogation is done, is to be enslaved by spell, castrated, and fitted with a nose ring. As you can plainly see, he's of no interrogation value in any event now."
"You can do that here?''
She nodded. "We are not merely a military unit, we are a coven. We would have done it during the last three days of the full moon but we're short one right now. We can handle the rest of it, but that insulation spell is tricky. Complicated spells are best done during Black Sabbaths, and so he's got a few more days until Sergeant Murrah returns from presiding over the Serpent Goddess Virgin Sacrifice and Bake Sale at Magash."
He gulped. "Uh, yeah."
"Do you know him?"
He nodded. "I do, and he's no spy. He was as mad as this long ago. He probably had some strange-looking gadgets as well, if the gnomes didn't take and destroy them."
"No, they gave those back, too. We sent them on to the palace by courier, not knowing what they might be, but they looked to me like sophisticated spying gear of some foreign manufacture."
Yeah, Taiwan, most likely, he thought. Aloud he said, "He worked for no government or master. At one time he was the greatest thief in all Husaquahr. Apparently one day he stole those things and looked into them and went mad. He's been wandering all over since, but this is the last place I thought he'd be."
"Skipper! You've got to spring your little buddy!" Macore cried plaintively.
They walked back outside, leaving Macore to scream about being deserted, and shut the door.
"Thank the Demon Rastoroth for that door!" the security woman muttered. "At least it keeps his ran tings in there!"
Joe scratched his chin through his beard and thought a moment. "You know, I might be able to use him."
"Sorry—the regulations are absolute," she told him. "If you stick around until we do the slave conversion, fine. Not otherwise."
"I don't want to delay all that long, but, what would be the harm? Consider—I 'm heading toward the palace, not away from it. If he got away, he'd freeze or die on the ice. But I'm betting that somewhere in that scrambled brain of his is still the greatest thief in Husaquahr, the man who actually burglarized the Lamp of Lakash from the vaults of the enemy sorcerer Ruddygore himself."
"Really? He did that?"
Joe nodded. "Uh-huh. I'm pretty sure he could walk out of there any time he wanted to, only without warm clothes and provisions, he's stuck. If he had them, though, he'd head straight for his obsession, which is that gear you sent. If we told him it was in the palace, I'd wager he could make it there."
"So? I thought the idea was to see if you could make it."
He nodded. "But I'm on my own initiative as to how. If I set this little fellow out, and follow him, then if he makes it, /make it. And what is his reward if he does? He's sent right back here, and by that time your thirteenth member will have returned. If he doesn't, well, case closed.''
"So? And what sort of route do you plan to take for this?"
He shrugged. "To go around is to invite tripping alarms.
You're not here to guard the castle; you're here to prevent anyone from going in a straight line toward it, across the pan of the map marked 'deadly and forbidden.' If there is a weak spot in the palace defenses, it's from that direction."
"And with good reason!" she responded. "You can't see it, but we can. What looks like plain ice is a seething cauldron of the strongest and most complex sorcery imaginable. And it's coming from who knows how far beneath the ice? Imagine what might lie down there? No one wants to liberate that."
He didn't like the sound of it, but it was pretty much as he suspected. "Has anyone to your knowledge tried to cross it while you've been here?"
"No, but I've seen some of the results of the few who got back out. Whoever or whatever is imprisoned there is powerful beyond our imagination, and was frozen and trapped there by powers even greater.''
"I've heard the legends. A fierce battle frozen in progress."
"That's right. We draw additional power for our coven from it, but we try and reject it. You can feel it coming, trying to seize control. Even our demon master appears to fear and respect it. It is why we do nothing in the Arts unless we are complete."
Which at least saves me from your witchcraft, he thought.
"You said you've seen people who were out there?"
She nodded. "Only you cannot call them 'people' anymore. Most are madder than that one back there, but with reason. I saw one with a goat's head, a woman's breasts, a fish tail, and the legs of a great bird. Some others were worse."
' 'That's just from walking on it? "
"From melting even a small amount. So much is buried there, in such chaos, that any heat, any digging, anything that disturbs and melts what is below, is liberated but undirected. It is miles away before it starts, and always we feel it here. It goes almost to the palace itself—over fifty miles. It cannot be crossed."
Joe felt very uneasy. "Well, that's what I was sent to do. I realize that now. All the more reason to give me the prisoner as well. Unless you absolutely need another slave around here, and the little guy isn't good for much except stealing stuff. Besides,
you keep him, you won't make him sane. You'll still have to put up with that stuff."
"Not if we cut out his tongue as well as the other," she responded, but clearly she was thinking it over. "You are really going to try it through the forbidden area?"
"I'm afraid that's the job. From what you say, maybe the Master of the Dead didn't like me, after all."
"I would say so, too.'' She looked at him and sighed. "What a waste," she muttered, almost to herself.
She was so adamant and clearly so fearful of the place that he couldn't help harboring similar thoughts himself. For the first time, he began to doubt if he would ever see his son again.
Chapter 11
Dancing In The Dark
Any Company which shall survive to reach the Ultimate Obstacle to the attainment of their Quest shall be able to secure what they need to complete the Quest. However, successful completion is not guaranteed, and there are no warranties, expressed or implied, in these Rules.
-The Books of Rules, XV, 304(a)
"Macore!"
The sleeping figure in the cell snored, paused in midsnore for a moment, then turned over but kept sleeping.
"Macore!" came a louder, more insistent whisper. "Wake up, damn it!"
The snore turned into a sort of piglike grunting, and the little thief muttered, "Huh? What?''
"Over here at the window."
Sleepily he made his way up, grabbing his woolen blanket around him to ward off the chill of the night, and got to the window, standing then on tiptoes to see what was what. "Mary Ann?" he asked tentatively.
"No, you idiot! It's Marge! You remember Marge, don't you?"
He grew suddenly suspicious. "Yes, but I've been fooled before. There was a fellow in here today who reminded me of Joe, too. You might just be a dream sequence."
She floated up so that her face was framed in the window. "Dream sequence my ass! That was Joe, under heavy disguise."
"Well, if this is real, what the hell are you doing here?" He shivered. "Damn! It's too cold to be a dream."
"Ruddygore sent us on a quest to the palace out there on the ice. The same palace where they sent your tapes and video e
quipment."
He was suddenly very wide awake, but not quite following. "Ruddygore is interested in Gilligan's Island!''
"Afraid not. But your quest, at the moment, and ours come together. And if we do ours, Ruddygore will energize your equipment. Understand?"
"He wouldn't do it before. He's still mad because I beat his system on his vaults. That's why I had to suffer like this!"
"He didn't need something from you then."
"Good point,'' he admitted.
"Macore, how did you wind up here?"
"The gnomes tried playing all sorts of tricks on my head, but all they got were my memories of Gilligan's Island episodes. Exposure to this magically transformed them from gnomes into a band of hostile critics. They tossed me out to these people."
"No, no, I mean, what are you doing up here in the middle of nowhere to begin with?''
"I got a tip," he told her. "They said that up here was this vast sea full of magic with a tropical island in the middle of it. Nobody mentioned that the sea was frozen. Naturally, I had to find out, you see."
"Naturally," she responded, not really seeing at all. "Well, part of what you heard is true. That sea of ice is filled with incomprehensible magic. On the other side there is a volcanic island, with a great palace in the middle of it."
"That must be some powerful sorcerer," he noted.
"The Master of the Dead, Sugasto, lives there sometimes. And it's likely that's where the Dark Baron is as well."
He thought about it a moment. "Hold it! You're telling me that you want to cross a place of unbelievable magical powers so you can get to where the Dark Baron and the Master of the Dead are? And they say I'm crazy!"
"Yeah, well, after looking the place over, I can go along with you on that, but it has to be done, if it's possible. Surrounded by ice, patrolled in the clean areas by Bentar on nazgas, on the ground by an army of the dead, and by magical spells, the only way to reach it undetected is across that mean area. It's so powerful in and of itself that there's no way they'll fly across it or put anybody in it or maintain any sort of spell of their own in that area."
Songs Of The Dancing Gods Page 25
