The River Of Dancing Gods

by Jack L. Chalker

  “We should build a small fire. I doubt if it will attract much attention, but it might make anything that lives out there think twice about us, not to mention keeping us from stumbling in the dark and drowning in the pool. It’s gonna be mighty dark here soon.”

  “Good idea,” Grogha said. “I think we can use some of this dead stuff in the thicket and maybe spare a couple of frame boards from the pack mule.”

  “Or you could use the wood in the gray pack in the middle there, as I intended when I bought it,” Macore said laconically.

  They all glared at him, but they had their fire going before darkness fell, as it did with amazing suddenness.

  Grogha proved a pretty good field cook, considering the limited makings he had to work with. After cleaning up and putting everything away. Marge looked at the packs, and the mule. “Do you think I should put a spell on them just in case?” she asked.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” Joe responded. “Go ahead.

  Be kinda hard to protect us, though, so we’ll have to stand turns at watch.”

  “Yeah, but how will we know when to change watch?”

  Houma asked worriedly. “No town clocks in sight.”

  “Candles,” Macore said. “Actually, I can’t take credit for this. The merchant suggested them.” He got them out of the pack and lighted one in the fire. “They take two hours to burn down. Simple, huh?”

  “Good enough for me,” Joe told him. “Who’s first?”

  “Me,” Marge said. “I’d like a little time more or less to myself.”

  They started to protest, since none of them had even thought of her for the duty, but she silenced them, and they knew better than to press it.

  Another hour or so was spent sitting around, talking about nothing in particular and watching the spectacular stars that appeared in the desert sky, then most were ready for bed. Marge helped them get their bedrolls settled, and Joe suggested a semicircular arrangement around the fire. Within two hours, all were asleep except her.

  She first made the spell on the mule pack removed, of course, from the mule and on the all important saddlebag, finding it easier and easier. Like writing her name with a pencil, she thought, pleased. Dacaro had told her that the more she practiced any magic, the easier it would all become.

  It was deathly quiet, without any sort of breeze, and the air had not cooled off much at all. Idly, she started practicing some of the simple exercises Dacaro had taught her. So simple... She could draw faces with the spell light, twirl it around like a lasso, and hurl the energies where she willed, at least within her line of sight.

  She pointed her finger at the ground from a standing position and traced a pattern. Once the pattern, in light blue, was established, her index finger became a stylus, allowing her to carve shallow designs in the rock itself.

  The world is pure mathematics. Know the proportions and the relationships of any given thing and you have the potential of doing anything with it. That was the key, Dacaro had said.

  And when you can look at a tree. a rock, a bush, or a person and see the pattern in their auras, then you will take the final step to sorcery.

  She concentrated on a nearby bush. Pattern... pattern . . .find the pattern...

  And, to her surprise, she saw it. Thin, impossibly complex spiderwebs of white plasma. She turned to the fire, which was getting dangerously low. There was still a lot of combustible material there, but it had not caught for some reason. She concentrated on the fire and the unbumed wood and saw, after a while, the magenta pattern of the fire and the white of the wood. Tie one to the other, she thought, and maybe ...

  She found an end on the magenta strand and another on the white and willed them to move, move toward each other, touching, combining...

  The fire suddenly roared up, looking like a Roman candle, and she laughed aloud in delight. Suddenly conscious that she might wake someone, she stopped and willed the fire back to normal levels. It went obediently, as she knew it would. She had the pattern. Still, she could make it dance, rise up and down, gyrate until the wood was completely burned, anyway.

  She turned to the water and saw its golden weave. In a sense, it was simpler than the fire pattern, which was in turn simpler than that for the wood or the bush. So simple to ripple it, or cause a small eddy...

  Suddenly she tensed, sensing something else where she looked. There was certainly something other than water there, something alive. It was not close, but it was down there, somewhere. She could feel it, knew it with absolute certainty.

  She stood at the edge of the pool and made a decision. It was a huge job to work the room preservation spell over the mouth of the underground water hole, and took her quite some time, but she made it doubly strong and extra tight, blue bands forming a virtual net over the opening.

  Whatever was down there might be able to break it, but at least the thing would have a hard time, if indeed it was a threat at all. But she somehow knew it was a threat, something ancient and repulsive that fed on those who used the water hole. Not us, she decided determinedly. Not without a fight.

  She went back over to a rock near her bedroll and sat, feeling suddenly tired and a bit drained. Parts of her face hurt too much sun, she decided, now taking its toll. She looked over and saw that the candle had burned out. How long she had been watching she didn’t know, but she was certainly ready for sleep now. As gently as possible, she shook Joe awake.

  He yawned and groaned. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “But there’s something living at the bottom of that pond. Something nasty,” she told him. “I put a protection spell over the whole thing. Whether it will try and come out I don’t know. If it does, I don’t know either whether or not the spell will hold it, but keep an eye on it.”

  “I will,” he assured her. “You get some sleep.”

  She needed no urging.

  It was still dark on Houma’s watch when there was a sudden roar from the pond that awakened them all and startled the horses as well. A roar and a lot of splashing. They were quickly on their feet, adrenaline racing, and Joe pulled a burning ember from the fire to use as a torch, grabbing his sword in the other hand.

  They approached the fuming water cautiously, not knowing that to expect. What they saw in the water was a sort of facea huge, incredibly old, demonic face, full of hatred. It exuded a sense of terror none of them had ever known before, but the hatred was only partly directed at them. It was straining, struggling against the surface of the pond, and Marge understood that, at least for the moment, the spell was holding.

  She felt a nuzzle at her back and almost jumped a foot, but then realized it was Dacaro. She understood what he meant immediately and quickly jumped upon his back.

  “Dacaro! What is it?”

  “I have no idea,” he replied, “but it’s sure a good idea you put that spell there. It’s not going to hold, though. You can see it unraveling around the edges. This thing isn’t very bright, but it has a hell of a lot of sheer power. Ask Joe if he can stick his sword into the water and hit the face. Let’s see if iron does anything.”

  “Joe! Can you stab it without losing your sword or falling in?” she called.

  “We’ll see!” he shouted back, revolted by that hideous face, yet unable to tear his eyes from it. The sword hummed and glowed in his hand. He poised, waiting for the face, which filled most of the pool, to get a part of itself in a no miss spot against the edge, then plunged the blade into the water and quickly withdrew it.

  The face roared its pain and hatred, but only redoubled its efforts to break its bonds.

  “Well, scratch that,” Dacaro told her. “I really doubted it was that easy, anyway. This is going to test us both, woman.”

  He thought furiously for a moment. “Okay, we’ll try something, but it’s damned complicated. I’ll feed it to you slowly, and you do it as I tell you. Got it?”

  “I’m ready.” She looked at the men near the pool. “Hey!

  Everyone get back! We�
�re going to try some sorcery on it!

  Keep your weapons ready, though! Be prepared to strike, but not until I tell you!”

  Slowly, cautiously, the four men backed off, giving both Marge and Dacaro a clear field.

  “Here goes,” Dacaro said and began feeding the spell to her. It was enormously complex, far beyond her ability to understand or comprehend, at least at her level. She had begun mastering arithmetic, she realized, upon seeing this thing; now Dacaro was feeding her incomprehensible calculus. She had no choice but to follow through.

  The energy field that formed like a wall in front of them was of all the primary colors and perhaps a hundred shades.

  She had never seen anything like it, nor did she have any chance to appreciate it, but she could feel its awesome power.

  “Joe!” she called, relaying Dacaro’s orders. “We’re going to let that thing come out! When it does, it will run headlong into the damnedest spell you ever saw, like a net that will close on it. When you hear me yell again, get in on the side and hack that whole damned head off behind the face! Understand?”

  “Got ya!” Joe called back, too charged up to feel afraid right now.

  Quickly, Marge, using a Dacaro shortcut, removed the blue bands from the pool. “What if this doesn’t work?” she asked worriedly.

  “Then we run like hell,” the equine adept replied.

  Freed of the protection spell, the face roared up and out of the water and onto the rock.

  “I’ll be damned! It’s some kind of worm!” Grogha shouted.

  “Yuk! Look at that slime!”

  The demon worm was six feet out of the pool when it hit the new and more powerful shield. It reacted to the great net of force much as it had done to the blue pushing into it with a terrible rage.

  “Good... good...” Dacaro said, mostly to himself. “It really can’t see the spells, as I figured. It’s just so big and strong it’s used to pushing its way through anything.”

  Marge watched as the thing plunged directly into the net of force, which gave a bit in the middle, enveloping the evil face.

  “It’s giving way!” she called nervously.

  “No!” Dacaro shot back. “It’s designed to do that. Tell Joe to be ready.”

  She did, and Joe brought his sword up. Grogha and Houma also brought their bronze swords up, ready to tear into the demon worm from the other side.

  The face was now completely enclosed in a bulge in the magical netting, and Dacaro gave the word. “Now!” Marge shouted.

  Coming in behind both net and face, all three started swinging and hacking at the wormlike flesh in back. The face howled in rage, but seemed unable to understand what was happening to it, or where. Pieces of giant worm flew as they hacked away and finally severed it. The severing was so sudden that both Joe and Grogha almost fell into the mess and barely backed away.

  The remainder of the body flailed around for a moment, then slid with astonishing speed back into the pool. The head, apparently suspended in air to the human onlookers, continued to snarl and snap for a while.

  “We’ve won,” Dacaro told her. “Now do this.” He fed her a small set of instructions, and she translated them into a huge mental shove at the face in the net. It flew back, rolled, flopped a bit, then rolled again into the pool, where it sank rapidly.

  Again following Dacaro’s instructions. Marge pushed back the net, at one point having to shout Houma out of the way, then laid it, like a tabletop, across the width of the pool. Only after attaching it to the pattern of the bedrock did she relax and realize that she was sweating like mad. She felt suddenly very, very tired indeed. Before she knew it, she fell off the horse.

  Chapter XII

  All The

  Civilized Comforts

  Virgins are uniquely useful/or certain magicks, yet they have drawbacks beyond the obvious.

  - CX, Introduction

  When Marge awoke, she found herself on a makeshift litter being pulled by Dacaro. They were on the move again, that was for sure. A worried Joe rode an equally worried Posti behind the litter. When her eyes opened, he gave a shout that brought the party to a halt.

  Joe jumped down and went to her. “How do you feel?”

  “Lousy, but I’ll live,” she replied. She looked around. “What hit me? Where are we?”

  “You just keeled over,” he said. “Luckily for you, one of the bedrolls was underneath. I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  “I feel good enough to ride,” she told him, not sure if that was really the truth. “Untie me from this thing.”

  With Macore’s help, Joe did as instructed and lifted her to her feet.

  “Woosh! A little dizzy, and I have a couple of bruises in places I never had ‘em before, but I think I’m okay.” She looked around again. The tall mountains loomed ahead, not more than ten miles away. “So where’s the pool?”

  “Way, way back there,” Joe told her. “We talked it over and figured it was better to move with you this way than to risk another night with our slimy friend back there.”

  She nodded. “I agree with that. But didn’t you kill it?”

  He shook his head negatively. “I doubt it, and so does Dacaro. What brains the thing had weren’t in its head at all.

  It will probably nurse its wounds down there, regenerate a new face, and be ready for the next suckers.”

  She thought of that hideous face and shivered. “You know, up to now, I’ve believed in good and bad and in between, but that thing was true evil. Could you feel it?”

  They all nodded. “Something from the dawn of the world,”

  Macore said. “Some terrible force in that form. Maybe it once thought, but now it’s nothing but pure hatred and rage.”

  “And appetite,” Grogha added.

  “That, too,” Macore agreed. “You want to try riding now?”

  She nodded. “I’ll manage. But help me up on Dacaro. He may have some spell that can relieve me.”

  They helped her up, then disassembled the litter and’packed it on the long suffering mule.

  “Glad to find you back among the living,” Dacaro told her.

  “So am I,” she responded honestly. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “That spell. It was far too complex and draining for a novice but it was necessary. It took all your reserve. Hurt much?”

  “A lot of bruises. I feel as if I had been run over by a truck.”

  “Didn’t you say you had a witch’s kit? Isn’t there something you could brew up for yourself?”

  She felt foolish. “Sure there is. Damn. I almost completely forgot. Uh, if we have any water.”

  “The water from the pool was all right in the morning,”

  he told her. “The canteen’s full.”

  “How long was I out?”

  He thought a moment. “Hard to say. Several hours. It’s past midday. But better whip up your witchery before we push on again.”

  She called out to the others, and they obliged, watching as she mixed certain herbs together from her kit, then brewed them into a tea and drank it all, even eating the mixture.

  “Taste good?” Grogha wanted to know.

  “Terrible,” she told him. “But I can already feel it starting to work.” She folded up her kit and put it on her belt. “Let’s get moving.”

  Back on the trail, Dacaro explained to her his correct guess about the nature of the evil worm. “It was all rage and hate,”

  he said. “When I saw how it simply tried to bully its way through your spell, I knew it was pure emotion. Its sensory apparatus was all in its head, while its brain was protected back in the tail someplace. But it seemed to have no way of telling anything without the information that head provided and it just pushed on straight ahead. I gambled it wouldn’t even know where it was being chopped and I won. Once the head was severed, it was blind, deaf, and dumb.”

  “I think I’ve had enough of monsters for a while,” she remarked. She suddenly had a thought. “Uh Dacaro. T
hat big spell took a lot out of me, right?”

  “Yes. All you had, really.”

  “And it’s being replaced slowly out of faerie?”

  “Um, yes. I was wondering when you’d think of that.”

  “Have I changed?”

  “A little,” he answered honestly. “But it will be gradual in any event.”

  “Will it be enough? To push me over the edge, that is?”

  “I can’t say. The external changes first, though, that much I know. But you won’t be beyond mortality until your wings grow out, so you can at least tell from that.”

  She thought about it. “Wings. You mean like those the little fairies had on the boat?”

  “Perhaps. There are lots of wings. I don’t expect you to shrink much, since that would have been among the first things to notice. So the wings would have to be different they have to support a different mass. Why? Having second thoughts?

  Nervous?”

  “Nervous? Yeah. Because I don’t know what to expect, what price I’m paying. Sort of like selling your soul to the devil. At the time you don’t even realize it’s gone, but when the time comes, you sure miss it.”

  “Perhaps, when this is over, you can talk with some of the fairies,” he suggested. “But, regardless, you either stop or go on.”

  “It’s not that much of a choice, really. Like last night. It was me or nobody.”

  “I think I might have done it differently through Macore. He has the sense of the art, but absolutely no knowledge or training. It might have killed him, but I could have done it.”

  She sighed. “Some choice. But that’s not the only factor, Magic’s my edge. It’s what I do here. If I give it up, I might as well open a stall and sell potions.”

  “Suit yourself. I wouldn’t get so worked up about this changeling business, anyway. We’ll probably all die in this mission.”

  She chuckled. “Optimistic, aren’t you?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The pass through the mountains showed clearly now. The slope was steep, but gentle enough for horses and perhaps a wagon team if need be. The pass itself was quite wide, although it looked to be a very slow and relaxed climb of a couple of thousand feet, at least. They started up and were soon surrounded by high mountain walls.