The River Of Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  Again Marge thought about it. Freedom. Independence. Adventure. What were the alternatives? Nothing exciting. She suspected, too, that this was what Ruddygore had intended, no matter what the doubts of Huspeth. He didn’t seem to do anything randomly except eat. Still, there were some doubts ... “You say the way is hard. What do you mean?”

  Huspeth considered her reply. “For one thing, the longer thou dost remain virginal, the greater thy powers will grow.

  They will not vanish when thou dost submit, but they will never increase beyond that point. Dost thou, young and beautiful, consider that too great a price?”

  “No,” Marge responded quickly. “My life recently has been pretty full of that. Until I can hold my own with the respect of men, I can withhold myself. At least, I think I can.”

  Huspeth nodded. “No man may enter the Glen Dinig, not even Bakadur and his precious Council. Thy testing will come much later and far from here, when thou wilt need thy skills the most. But come! The night is young! Let us begin!”

  Huspeth was human once more, but still the figure of angelic beauty. Only those catlike glowing eyes remained, although such perfection was in itself inhuman. She walked over to Marge, unhooked the halter and bead skirt, and threw them into the fire. “To begin, thou must return to the beginning,” the witch said.

  She reached down on the ground and picked up a gourd that had been hollowed and hardened into a drinking vessel. “Drink of this completely and do it now,” she instructed Marge, who took it, sniffed at it hesitantly, first cautiously tasted, then drank the whole contents. It was a sweet drink that seemed honey based, but as it went down, she could feel a tingling begin, first deep within, then slowly outward until her entire body seemed covered with tiny little electric pricklings. Her mind, too, was slightly numbed by it. She was wide awake, but content to stand there, not really thinking at all.

  “Thou art an empty vessel into which I will pour great truths,” Huspeth almost chanted. “Come! Stand before the fire.”

  In a trance. Marge moved as instructed and waited patiently, aware but unable to do much of anything.

  Huspeth positioned herself opposite the fire and raised her hands. The fire seemed to grow brighter and leap up to her, like a thing alive.

  “Listen well,” the witch began. “In the dawn of creation were Adam and Eve created in the Garden, and of the sons thou knowest, but of the daughters of the first time thou knowest not. While the sons did quarrel and kill, the daughters did reject those ways and sought to recommune with the Creator. One found special favor of the Creator, and it is she who is at the root of our order. Look! Look into the flames and behold Eden as it was!”

  Marge looked. In the flames she saw that which had been so needlessly lost, a garden of impossible beauty; a magic garden that was beyond any earthly experience because it was created in true and absolute perfection. To see such total peace and such absolute beauty and perfection fairly tore at her mind, but within her, too, was a great sadness that such a place had been lost forever.

  “Feel thy sins, thy doubts, thy fears, leaving thee,” Huspeth intoned. “Feel them being drawn out when thou art faced with the vision of the one perfect Garden. Peel them as they fall into the flames and are so consumed. Feel thy past consumed, thy guilt consumed, all consumed and gone in cleansing flames.

  Thou art the daughter of perfection incarnate. Thou art but one step from the Garden, a daughter of Eve, free of all save the one sin that denies thee entrance.”

  As Huspeth spoke. Marge felt something drain from her, r pour out from every part of her mind and body. Heavy, dark feelings, things which she had lived with so long that she had never even known they were there. Things from the dark corners where no human looked and where all things of Hell and darkness dwelt. And as each poured out, unseen yet as tangible as tumors excised from the body by a surgeon, she felt an increasing lightness, a total sense of well being.

  “Thou daughter of Eve, dost thou accept they wedding to the First and Perfect One and acknowledge her primacy?”

  “I do, I do,” Marge responded, meaning it.

  “Then, thou daughter of Eve, closest to perfection, linked to thy world and ours, know now the curse of our holy order.

  Know that, having seen perfection, thou canst never attain it, nor can any whom thou dost know or love. For only in knowing what was forever lost canst thou know how truly cursed is all humankind.”

  Tears welled up inside Marge and spilled out as she realized the meaning of Huspeth’s words. To have known perfection and now to know that one might never attain it...

  “Gather you, daughters of Eve, about this place and time to see this child,” Huspeth commanded. And all around the fire Marge sensed but could not see a host of women, all of great power.

  “Do you approve this union?” the witch asked the unseen host.

  “We do, we do,” came a hundred whispers from the dark beyond the fire.

  “Who is our Holy Mother?”

  “Eve, who was first and created in perfection,” came the response from the unseen host.

  “Who is our enemy?”

  “Hell, who carried corruption to our Holy Mother’s bosom,” came the response. “Who is now the mother of this child?”

  “Eve, who was first created in perfection.”

  “Who shall her mother be among the daughters?”

  “Thou, who bringest her forward.”

  “Child dost thou accept this covenant and this sisterhood, now and forevermore? Wilt thou be my daughter in covenant?”

  “I will,” Marge responded.

  “She will. She will’.” the host echoed.

  “As a sign of this, child, place thy hand in mine!” With that the witch reached her hand directly into the flame.

  Marge was aware that this was a critical choice and that she was free to make it or not to make it. To put her hand in the fire...

  She reached forward, feeling the heat of the flames, and grasped the hand of Huspeth. There was a searing sensation, then a sharp pain, and she knew that a razor sharp cut had been made in her hand. Blood, not just hers but Huspeth’s, dripped from their clasped hands into the flames and hissed.

  “Witness the bonding of blood, you daughters,” Huspeth intoned. “Witness the act of trust in placing her hand in the flame. She is truly flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, and is bound over into our holy order and subject to all its strictures and commands.”

  “Let it be so,” the chorus intoned. The hands were unclasped and withdrawn, and Marge somehow had enough control to glance briefly at hers. It was unburned, but there was a cross like incision on the wrist which was just starting to clot.

  Slowly the fire died down to its original strength, and the sense of presences all around diminished and was gone. They were alone once more. Huspeth reached down and picked up a second gourd and walked over to her. “Drink and rest,” she instructed gently.

  Hardly aware of the pain in her wrist, Marge took the gourd and drank from it unthinkingly, then allowed herself to be led to a soft clump of grass in the small meadow, where she lay down and was soon fast asleep.

  Huspeth stood there a moment, then said, “Arise thou by moonlight.”

  Marge’s sleeping form did not stir, but from her body rose a mist like substance that congealed and solidified into a human form. It was the form of a girl child, perhaps six or seven, and it bore little resemblance to the sleeping woman as she now was, but a great deal of resemblance, had anyone there been able to know it, to the little child Marge herself had once been.

  Huspeth reached out her hand to the child and smiled, and the child spirit approached and took it, smiling back.

  “Didst thou see the pretty Garden, my daughter?” the witch asked.

  “Oh, yes. Mommy! It was so beautiful!”

  “Well, it’s not completely gone. Look around thee here, at this glade and this forest. See its beauty and its magic, for it is alive.”

  The little girl looked around
with a little girl’s eyes and a little girl’s mind and saw.

  The weeks sped by quickly, and Huspeth proved a good teacher indeed. Marge was aware that she was getting a lot of information indirectly, somehow, but she didn’t discover how.

  Still, she found many of her old fears and attitudes changing, and within her grew a new sense of self confidence.

  The forest and glade of the Glen Dinig, which had seemed so lonely and fearsome not long before, became a familiar friend in both day and darkness. It was certainly a magical wood, filled with wonders, yet its most magical quality was its utter peacefulness and tranquility. Not even the insects would bite. The deer and marmots and other natural inhabitants had no fear of her, nor she of them, although they were not tame.

  There was a balance, a perfect balance, and carnivores were not allowed.

  Much of the instruction was rote memory, since she had no means of recording or reading over anything, but Huspeth was a good teacher with a lot of aids for problems. The lessons ranged from the simple how, in fact, to prepare wondrous meals merely from what was around one, and all vegetarian, to the making of potions from the same plants and the recognition of them. There was magic, too not only in the potions but in how to sensitize oneself to the energies around one, and to sense the life energy in the trees and grasses, the blaze of a deer in full flight, even the furies of nature.

  One day there was a great thunderstorm with enormous bolts of lightning all around. Soaked completely, both of them stood in the middle of the glen, and Marge watched as Huspeth called down the bolts, directed them, and bent the terrible forces to her will. Training mind and will, Marge learned a little of wielding such natural power herself and found, later, that one who could deflect the lightning could deflect other things as well.

  There was physical training, too. The use and throw of the dagger, and how to conceal it while wearing only the flimsiest of garments. The sword and saber also had their uses, particularly when one could subtly influence the thrust or direction of an opponent’s blade.

  Her muscles were hardened and strengthened through long runs and severe exercise including the use of weights. She learned, too, to know her own body, to control its every movement and action. Aided by potions, her physical and mental control slowly jelled into almost absolute mastery. Even Huspeth was impressed. “Daughter,” she said, “thou art truly superior to most mortals thou wilt meet.”

  The training advanced, but it never let up. There were times when there was no sleep at all, and she learned to draw on the life energies around her to sustain her.

  Eventually, concealed by spells, they went forth out of the Glen Dinig to observe the ways of fairies and men. It took some getting used to, for at the start Marge was almost overwhelmed by the sense of corruption within all of them, but she learned their ways and their powers, their strengths and weaknesses, as best Huspeth could teach. And she felt more and more remote from them all.

  “That is because thou art becoming more than human,” the witch told her. “It will mark thee. But thou wilt never forget who thou art or whence thou hast come, 0 daughter.”

  Of Huspeth she learned only the very little the witch was willing to impart. She knew, though, that the witch was thousands of years old at the very least, that her power was as great as any on the Council, but that she had become so much more than human that she could no longer abide living in the world among the corruption she felt so dearly. For all that Huspeth had imparted to her. Marge knew that the power and wisdom her teacher contained were as an ocean to her thimbleful.

  One day, while out on their look at the world the witch had forsworn but to which Marge knew she would have to return too soon, they saw their first unicorns.

  They were fully as beautiful and as grand as legend had made them, far more than horses with curved, pointy horns.

  Their eyes, too, were very different almost human. And yet, looking at them. Marge felt a disturbance within the magnificent creatures that shouldn’t be there.

  The source of that was revealed rather quickly as a deer wandered out from the edge of a wood. The unicorn herd, perhaps ten or eleven, took off after the deer, cut it off from retreat, surrounded it, and began a cruel game of torture for the poor deer.

  Tiring, finally, of running the deer almost into exhaustion, sticking it with their horns, and allowing it an escape route only to block it and trip it up, the unicorns moved in and began eating the deer alive.

  “How disgusting!” Marge exclaimed. “Those magnificent animals!”

  “The way of the world, as it must be to balance nature. The unicorns are a relative to the horses, but they took a far different path. Their teeth are many and are sharp and pointed, as are the wolf’s. They play with the cruelty that children exhibit, for that is what they always are, but then they eat. They did not choose their way, nor did the wolf choose his; they just are. But, unlike their brethren, there is great magic within them. Shall we go down and see?”

  Marge hesitated. “Considering their eating habits, is it safe?”

  “For thee, perfectly. The virgin alone is one with the unicorn. All others they will flee from or, if need be, destroy.”

  They walked down to the herd, which had finished its grisly feeding and was now relaxing, some standing, some lying down as horses never did. The unicorns eyed the two women warily but did not flee.

  “Call one,” Huspeth prompted. “Go ahead.”

  Marge shrugged. “Ah, here, unicorn. Come here, unicorn.”

  “Not exactly the approved way of summoning, but it works,”

  the witch noted as the nearest unicorn glanced up at the call, looked at both of them, and then trotted right over to Marge.

  Hesitantly, Marge put out her hand and petted the unicorn on the neck, as she would a horse. The skin was quite different from what she expected, with the feel and texture of velvet.

  The unicorn seemed to like her touch, though, and the skin certainly felt nice to her.

  “Mount him,” Huspeth told her. “Let him take you for a ride.”

  With her tremendous muscle tone and practiced athletic ability, she had no trouble jumping to the back of the beast, although there was nothing to hold onto but mane.

  Still, the beast started off at a trot and quickly accelerated.

  Marge found that, far from being uncomfortable or badly mounted, she seemed to merge with the unicorn, to become one with the creature, more and more so as it increased speed and sped around the great meadow.

  It was a magical and most wonderful transformation, with all of the unicorn’s enormous vitality and, yes, sexual energy flowing into and through every fiber of her being. It was a tremendously pleasurable, orgasmic experience that the unicorn gave, and so wonderful that it was Huspeth who had to bring it to an end.

  “Thou seest now why the unicorn and the virgin always go hand in hand in legend,” she said. “But beware, for just as thou dost take from it, so it takes from thee, and the energy it removes from thee takes many days to replenish, longer if thou hast not the will to stop it in time.”

  “I’ll remember,” Marge assured her teacher, still feeling as if she had received a lot more than she had given.

  “Now that the two of you are chosen, the unicorn Koriku is wed to thee so long as thou shall take no man. He will come upon the call of his name by your lips, no matter where thou art, to give pleasure or to rout thine enemies. His strength should be used sparingly, for there is always a cost, but it is there when needed. Beware, too, that Koriku, like thyself, is a mortal creature, and should he die while in thy service, thou, too, wilt die.”

  Marge shivered slightly at that. “I will remember.”

  The time flew by. In many ways Marge hoped it would never end. Huspeth was the wisest and most wonderful person she’d ever known, and she loved the witch who was the key to all things wonderful and magical as she had loved no other.

  But one day there was a cloud in Huspeth’s soul as she emerged from her hut, and a gre
at foreboding filled Marge as she saw it.

  “It has come time for the trivial that now becomes the paramount,” the witch said enigmatically. “Come, sit beside me, and I will tell thee of this world and its enemies.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Marge said nervously.

  “The forces of Hell are again on the march. Great battles are taking shape as we speak, and the war advances. The bulk of Marquewood between the River of Sorrows and the Rossignol itself is at stake. If it goes, then the enemy is at our front door, demanding entrance, and there will be few to stop them.”

  “Who is the enemy, my mother?”

  “The same who defiled lost Eden. This time he works, as always, through others, in the guise of armies and wars and philosophies and great promises. Many who march to his tune are willing, many more arc unknowing servants, but it makes no difference to him. The Dark Baron himself may be deluded, although he certainly knows for whom he fights, since the gates of Hell must be unlocked to create such a force. All the wizards and sorcerers of Husaquahr traffic to some degree with the demons of Hell, as thou well knowest. But such traffic, which I abhor in all cases, for it involves compromise with the ultimate evil, is the temptation to greater and greater evil. If Hell can wield such powers to the wizard’s tune, it can corrupt a wizard’s heart as well, and they have got themselves a master wizard totally on their side, self deluded and thoroughly corrupted by the enemy.”

  “Who, my mother? Which wizard is it?”

  Huspeth shook her head. “I know not at this time. Many of the chief demons of Hell were once the angelic agents charged with the making of our own world. Their power here is as great as in thine own world, and they know all the counters for our magic. The Baron’s identity is hidden from all of us, until discovered by other than magical means. But this continual cancer is nothing new to our world. It is an incurable disease that worms its way into every comer and must be continually fought. When it grows too large to control, as it seems it has now, it must be beaten down. The enemy can afford ten thousand defeats, but we can not have one.”