DG5 - Horrors of the Dancing Gods

by Chalker, Jack L

  "It's kind of a neat place," Irving put in. "I always loved it when the old man sent me down here for a while each year."

  Marge looked at the crowded harbor and town area and shook her head in wonder. "Just where is he in all this? And what's he doing?"

  "Up the boardwalk a bit, down at the end of that far pier there," Irving said, pointing well off to their left as they came in toward the dock. "This is the jumping-off point for the Mystic Islands, remember. Folks like to go out and see them and all the strange stuff without actually risking landing. With a good, fast vessel like Macore's you can get out there in about an hour, sail down the strip of islands for an hour and point out the main sights, then get on back. The tourists pay big money for that kind of thing."

  "Three-hour tours of the islands," Marge muttered. "And I suppose his boat's called the Minnow?"

  "Yeah, it is! How'd you know that?"

  She sighed. "I'm afraid Macore's become too predictable. That's probably why he had to retire."

  Making their way from the main dock over to the tourist boat pier wasn't very difficult, although Irving felt uncomfortable doing it. It wasn't as if he were actually doing anything, but watching all those female heads turn and follow him with their eyes and expressions as he walked self-consciously by, making him feel like a piece of meat or maybe an ice cream cone they all wanted to lick, was a bit unnerving. One thing about Irving—he was never going to be inconspicuous.

  It was much easier to see where the boat had left from than to find it; clearly a tour was on, as the slip was empty. There was, however, a kiosk where you could buy tickets just in front of the slip, and as they approached, there came the sudden sounds of an unseen ghostly chorus.

  "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

  A tale of a fateful trip.

  That started from this tropic port

  Aboard this tiny ship . ."

  "How's he doing that?" Marge asked, conscious that the last thing you would find in Husaquahr was electricity.

  "Some sort of spell," Poquah responded with a weary sigh. "I believe the Master procured it for him, but he still had to pay a good deal for it. Not as much as he has to pay to ensure that his batteries keep being charged on those infernal Earth devices, but those at least are for him alone."

  "I'm surprised the Council let him keep them," Marge commented, knowing that Poquah was referring to Macore's battery-powered television and videotape recorder, which he used so that he could view his complete collection of Gilligan's Island tapes. "They are a dangerous anachronism here."

  "So long as they remain private, it is all right," Poquah assured her. "Also, Macore appears to have convinced a majority of the Council that maintaining them is the only certain defense against zombies."

  "There is definitely a grain of truth in that," Marge acknowledged. "I always did wonder who the true audience for that show was until I saw its effect on the Army of the Dead."

  "There's the boat coming now!" Irving shouted, and they looked where he was pointing.

  The boat was a medium-sized sailing vessel, rather sleek and trim and nicely kept up and in some ways a bit too elaborate for the kind of work it was being asked to do.

  "Oh, Uncle Macore lives aboard," Irving told them. "The tourists pretty much stay above, and his own pretty nice place is below."

  There were a half dozen or so tourist types aboard, clearly from wealthier merchant families in the City-States from their look and dress. The rest were crew members, with a greater number required for this boat than for the original television Minnow, and they were very, very different.

  "Good grief! His whole crew is water nymphs!" Marge exclaimed.

  At that moment a smaller boat crossed right in front of the Minnow and one exotic-looking crewwoman let out an unnaturally loud series of whoop! whoop! whoop! sounds that scared not only the small boat but half the harbor as well.

  "Well, nymphs and sirens," Poquah noted dryly.

  A few moments later gray shapes rose on one side of the boat and began bumping and nudging it toward its berth as all sails were taken in. That close in, all boats of any size allowed the pilot whales to bring them safely to a halt in the right spot.

  Two buxom water nymphs threw out lines, and then one jumped to the dock and began tying off the boat. Water nymphs generally looked like all the other kinds of nymphs but tended to come in a variety of sizes and colors and seemed somewhat translucent. The nearest two were an azure blue nymph and a creamy white one, the first with green hair and the second with silver locks. The siren, another type of nymph, was a fiery red color and much larger than the average nymph, and it seemed as if there were at least one more somewhere in the back.

  At the wheel aft of the mainsail was a small, wiry figure dressed only in a pair of shorts but wearing an oversized sailor's cap. His skin was tanned so dark that it seemed as if he were of some other, more tropical race, and his long, unkempt hair and equally messy full beard were gray going fast toward white.

  Marge felt shock at the appearance of the captain. She remembered Macore as an eternally young little man with coal black hair and catlike movements. Somehow, sometime since she'd last seen him, the little retired master thief had grown old.

  The tourists were no sooner off the ship than Macore spotted his visitors standing there on the dock and bounded toward them with some semblance of his old energy. "Irv! Poquah! Good to see you!" he called out cheerily, coming down to greet them. He stopped, frowned, and looked at the colorful winged faerie between them. "Marge? That you?'

  "Hi, Macore. I hadn't realized it, but it seems to have been a long time," she said with a smile.

  He grinned. "Well, I'm fifty-seven now, and that's really all right with me. I mean, ninety-five percent of all the people in my old profession would be either in jail or executed by now!"

  The idea of a fifty-seven-year-old Macore, let alone the sight in front of her, brought home the different world in which she now existed as even the sight of a grown-up Irving couldn't have done. It was a graphic example of why faerie were always taught that interacting with humans was fine but they should never form attachments or get to know them all that well. There was a phrase for it, universal among the fairy folk of all sorts but one she'd never really thought much about until this moment

  They pass . . . We endure.

  She laughed at his still-flippant attitude, though, and his apparent high spirits. "I'm glad you seem pleased to see us, but you don't seem all that surprised," she noted.

  His expression grew a bit more serious. "I kind of expected something of this sort. Not sure who all would be in the Company, but it was kind of inevitable. Come on aboard and I'll have the girls find us some nice, cool drinks and comfortable seats."

  "I see you have an all-female faerie crew," Marge noted.

  He grinned in mock-evil fashion. "Hey, if I'm ever cracked up during one of these tours, I sure as hell don't want to be stuck on some deserted island for years with some dork professor who can invent anything except a way off, a mate too dumb to make fire, and a bunch of people who refuse to accept their fate. Uh uh. You pick who you want to crash with, and I'll pick who and what I want to crash with."

  Marge was startled as they came aboard and all the faerie crew turned as one, sighed, and said, "Hi, Irving!"

  "Hello, girls," he responded, a bit resigned but clearly impatient with the attitude they expressed.

  Still, Macore was as good as his word, and soon they were all sitting on comfortable deck furniture or pads, relaxing, and the drinks were actually chilled. With a cold drink and a warm breeze near sunset, things were just about perfect.

  "The cold drinks are a little secret shared by a few regulars here," he explained. "There's a cold current out there, and you can drag through it, and whatever bottles you have get cold and stay that way in the coolers here. Most folks here don't have a real taste for cold drinks, but I figured you still did."

  "It's been a long time, but yeah," Marge agree
d. As a Kauri she did not eat, at least in the way humans and animals did, but virtually all faerie still had to drink and had a real appreciation for flavored waters and good wines and beers.

  "You said you were not surprised to see us," Poquah prodded after a while.

  Macore nodded. "I figured it out when Joe and that weird halfling girl came through a few weeks back. Talk about somebody nearly impossible to recognize!"

  "Who? The halfling girl? You knew her?'

  "No, no! I mean Joe, of course. Frankly, unless you talk for a while, you'd be hard pressed to tell her—er, him—er whatever—from any old garden variety wood nymph except maybe a lot spunkier. Um, sorry, Irv."

  "No problem," Irving responded. "We aren't exactly close, remember, in the usual ways, and we aren't close by blood, either, at this point, considering that she runs tree sap in her veins."

  "Yeah, well, anyway, we at least got to talkin' a little bit of old times," the ex-thief continued, "and suddenly it's questions about Yuggoth, of all places. I don't even like to say the word, let alone think about actually going there! And a wood nymph and a baffling girl by themselves? It was nuts. I wouldn't send the old Joe there with a legion of troops, let alone those two!"

  "Have you been there yourself?" Marge asked him.

  He shivered. "Once. Briefly. And I've been close to it now and again. I don't have any great ambitions to go farther, let alone get shipwrecked on or near the place. Unless you use one of the ships specially made for the passage, there's nothing around that whole damned continent except things to snare you and enchant or kill you: sirens, harpies, witches, sea hags, Circes, and all sorts of things, not to mention sea monsters and all the rest. It's nearly impossible to get there on your own safely except through blind luck. The place breeds those things!"

  "But they went?"

  He nodded. "I guess so. They had a little money, and it was probably enough for the hovecraft."

  "You mean hovercraft?" Marge asked him.

  He shrugged. "They all call it a hovecraft around here, that's all I know. Spooky ship, I'll tell you that. Takes folks in on occasions, but very few come back. They wanted me to go with 'em—at least Joe did. I got the impression that the halfling didn't want anybody else around. That and common sense was why I refused any offers of helping them out beyond what little I did here. I think, though, that they were between the rock and the hard place themselves. At least, not five days after the two of them left, the others showed up hunting them."

  "Others?" Poquah was suddenly curious.

  Macore nodded. "Real nasties, too. Couldn't tell much about them. They came at night in shiny black armor, the interior of the visors jet black. I don't know why, but I had the idea of big, man-sized insects on horseback. They sure weren't human, but they weren't any faerie I'd ever seen before, either."

  "And they were after Joe?'

  "Actually, they were after the halfling, but I got the impression that Joe was on the short list of folks to get even with. I'll tell you this—you don't say no to guys like that. At least you don't do it twice. I could only hope that by being vague and not volunteering information I might buy 'em a little time."

  "And did you?' Marge wanted to know.

  "Hard to say. I think they already knew more than me, even about the two of them tryin' to make for Yuggoth. There was this magic ring from her late father that said to go there and get something."

  "We know that part. But how could they possibly think they had a chance to do it? Even Ruddygore thinks that our chances are only so-so in alliance and cooperation with the King of Horror himself. These two wouldn't have nearly that, and what they're after is a secret from most everybody except the King," Marge told him, pretty well relating Ruddygore's take.

  "Could be," the old man admitted. "Still, seems to me that you got at least as much chance if you have a map."

  "A map! They've got a map to the McGuffin?" Marge was suddenly excited. "Where did they get it? How? Even Ruddygore doesn't have that information."

  "They got it all right, because that's what I did for them. Broke the damnedest encryption spell I ever saw. Damned near got me, too. I was rusty, but I still got through it. There's never been a thief like me!"

  "Stop patting yourself on the back so much and tell me about the halfling," Marge responded, shaking her head. "What's her story?"

  Macore shrugged, then told them all pretty much what Alvi had told to Joe, plus Joe's account of her rescue. He also described the halfling in a way that made her seem far more of a monster than she really was. "Pretty face, though. Really pretty."

  "You believe she was truthful?" Poquah probed.

  "Leading Joe along, you mean? Naw. She wasn't that kind, and I can usually tell 'em. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure she's almost driven to try this crazy thing on Yuggoth."

  "A curse, you mean?" Marge asked him. "You saw it?'

  "Uh uh. With as much crap as most halflings have, you couldn't tell a curse from a beauty treatment, and you know t. Too much crazy magic on those one-of-a-kinds. No, what set my nose twitching was how determined she was in spite of the fact that I got the strong idea she wasn't at all unhappy just the way she was. Hell, Joe has more drive to find that thing and use it than she seemed to have. You spend your whole life hiding out, a virtual prisoner, denying what you are—and, like, she's never been anything but what she is, so she's got no comparisons—and then you come out like this, and the world doesn't end and the mobs don't grab torches and chase you. You even find a friend with tons of experience. See what I mean?"

  Irving shifted. Until then he'd been taking no real part and showing very little apparent interest. Now, though, he said, "But somebody is chasing her, right? Those things in armor, the manlike insects? And somebody tried to capture her when her father was killed. I don't know, but if I had that kind of situation, I think maybe I'd want to change into something more comfortable myself."

  "Good point," Marge agreed, a bit surprised at the boy's sophisticated reasoning. Maybe she had underestimated him. "But who was her father? And mother, for that mater? What are these creatures that seem so bold but nobody seems to be able to identify? Who wants her, and obviously alive? As a halfling, the laws of the human world here wouldn't allow her to inherit. She's classed as faerie whether any faerie will accept her or not. It doesn't make any sense." She sighed. "If only we knew her real father! But even she didn't know that."

  "There is one possibility," Poquah commented. "An enchantment. An enchantment so comprehensive that it can be broken only by beating overwhelming odds and gaining what is most unlikely. A halfling could easily hide that."

  "Huh? You mean she's really not a halfling? But what good would that do? I mean, if you can't break it without the McGuffin, then it's the same as real, and they obviously don't want her to get to that thing," Marge pointed out.

  "True," the Imir agreed. "However, you overlook the obvious possibility of a truly perfect enchantment Someone, perhaps only one person, knows. This one also is the only one who either knows how to break the enchantment or has the means, often a physical object, with which to do so. He, she, it, whatever, needs the girl at a certain age when the enchantment can be broken. Whoever, whatever, the enchantment hides may have great power, or great authority, or great wealth and knowledge, or be the key to gaining it. I wish we had her at Terindell. We might well be able to at least find out the meaning of it all. Now she's out there somewhere, with Joe her only friend, walking straight into the most dangerous place in the world, pursued by a legion. I would say that we have little time to lose on this."

  Macore looked at them and shook his head in wonder. "So you three are going after them, after all?"

  "Close enough," Poquah replied. "We will go after the McGuffm. They are headed toward the same goal, so it is one and the same thing. In my hands, the McGuffin may get safely to Ruddygore. In his hands, it will solve the problems and mysteries that vex us all."

  "We kinda hoped you'd come with us for old time
's sake," Marge told him. "Off one last time into the great adventure. Isn't it tempting?'

  Macore looked around at his nymph crew and boat and tropical port and then fingered his gray-white whiskers. "No, it's not. It might have been once upon a time. Might even have been irresistible. The thing is, Marge, I'm not like you. I'm not like any of the rest of you, which should be pretty clear if you just think about it."

  "Huh? What do you mean?"

  "Marge—you, Joe, Poquah—you're faerie. You don't age. Time has only local meaning to you, as in morning, noon, night, or next week. Irv's a big, strong lad, and he's not faerie, that's true, but he's only in his teens and about primed to make a name for himself. Either that or he'll die, but I don't think you will, Irv. I think there's too much in the way of smarts in your blood and bone for that. So, what do we have? Faerie, a sorcerer who's beyond any of us, a kid out to carve a reputation for himself in the manner of Husaquahrian legends—and then you've got me. I'm old. I'm old and mortal, and I'm not getting any younger. I have aches in my joints whenever the weather's changing, my eyes don't see clearly the way they once did, and things that were once easy for me come hard. The talent's still there, and my brain almost always says, `Macore, you're still twenty years old and the world's greatest thief,' but then my body interrupts and says, 'No, you ain't, either. You're an old fart, and your adventure days are past.' And that's the way it is. I'm lucky I can do it enjoyably and comfortably, but I'm falling apart. I can see the darkness at the end coming even though I can hardly believe it's me in this situation, and I can't figure for the life of me how it all went so fast. But the only thing I got left is my soul, if it's worth much these days and if it doesn't have too many second mortgages on it. I ain't sure what comes after the dark I can see, but I sure don't want to hurry it."