Songs of the Dancing Gods (24 page)

If the steak was representative of the future, though, he might well go vegetarian himself, he thought, a sour taste in his throat.

Marge was waiting for them when they got back.

“It did look pretty hairy out there,” she admitted. “I’m really tempted to try and see what’s going on up there.”

“You watch it!” he cautioned. “You don’t know what’s around here, including things that might fly and eat Kauris for dinner.”

“I’ve always been able to take care of myself,” she replied confidently. “You worry about yourself. Still, I noticed this evening that this might not be a bad time for a few days’ break.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I’d say the moon will be completely full sometime tomorrow evening.”

The curse! He’d been so preoccupied that, even though he was usually very good about it, he hadn’t given it much thought.

He started thinking hard. “You know, it is tempting, in light of that, to see just what’s what. You keep away from the dangerous parts tonight, but maybe tomorrow night we’ll be able to work something out.”

“What’re you thinkin’ of?”

“Taking a few risks. The fight today made me realize that Gorodo was right: I have been soft, not in the body, but in the mind.”

She shrugged. “Okay. It seems like we’re gettin’ nowhere fast doin’ what we been doin’, anyway.”

She left, and he knew she’d not be nearly as cautious as he wanted her to be, but, as she said, she had proven herself capable before. ‘

There also had to be a way to speed this up, somehow; she was right about that. It would be possible to hug the river almost to the Golden Lakes district. The River of Dancing Gods wasn’t all that navigable that far north, with lots of falls and cataracts, but he actually considered something like a canoe, finally rejecting it as making him too vulnerable. And, of course, horses would be harder to come by the farther in they went. Still, there just had to be a way to make better time. They were barely inside enemy territory, and he was impatient, and there was still such a long way to go.

He had to wonder, though: if this was the sorry state that Valisandra was reduced to, then what in hell must Hypboreya be like?

CHAPTER 8

ZOMBIE JAMBOREE

All important matters of evil sorcery shall be done at midnight whenever possible. —The Books of Rules, XIX, 12(a)

“ARE YOU REALLY A SLAVE? A REAL SLAVE?”

Mia looked up at the young soldier who was gawking at her and thought, No, of course not. I’m naked and hairless and wearing this ring in my nose just to make a fashion statement. But, aloud, she replied, “Yes, my lord.”

“My lord,” several of the young soldiers responded, giggling, and the boy said, “I ain’t never been called no ‘lord’ before.”

“My lord, since all people are above me in status, you are as worthy of respect as a prince or king. There is no difference to a slave.”

“You mean—you got to do what we say?”

“My lord, all people are my superiors, but I have but one master.”

These weren’t actually bad kids, she thought to herself, somewhat surprised. They were quite typical of the kind of young men you’d find anywhere in a city or an army. Young men from typical peasant and worker backgrounds who were probably away from home for the first time in their lives. It was in some ways a disturbing concept for her. You always thought of the “enemy” as something mean and nasty, an evil force composed of evil men. Instead, they were very much normal folks, just as on the “good” side, who were either in the service of evil or the tools of it, with no more choice in the matter than she had. Nothing more brought home what a waste wars truly were.

“How’d you get this way?” one of them asked. Being from the poorer classes, they had never really seen a slave up close before. “You do something really bad?”

“My lords, my crime was to have been born too poor and to have fallen into evil company. The only proper way to make a slave is if it actually makes things better for that one.”

“That ain’t the way the Hypboreyans do it,” one of them remarked. “They breed “em.”

She found that idea most unpleasant to think about.

“So what d’ya do?” another one asked.

“My lords, I attend to my master. I do all the little things so that he need not bother himself about them. Anything he wants or needs, I try and do.”

“I got a want and need I could use somebody for,” one of the boys muttered to the chuckles of the others.

“And,” she added, “I dance.”

“Yeah? Will you dance for us?”

“I would need my master’s permission. Wait, and I will ask him.”

She ran up to the room, where Joe was lying down, feeling the effects of the day’s activities all of a sudden. “Master, some of the young soldiers wish me to dance for them. I should like to do so.”

He looked at her. “I’m not gonna be there to bail you out this time.”

“I feel I can take care of myself with those boys.”

He didn’t like it, but Marge had predicted to him that, sooner or later, Mia would ask just such a thing, and had promised to watch out for the dancer if things got out of hand.

“Okay, but if this goes bad and you come back all beat up, don’t expect sympathy.”

“Oh, thank you, Master!” she cried, then hunted for and found her castanets and rushed back down again. It wasn’t just her need to dance, which was strong enough that it stopped just short of a compulsion, but also something she didn’t quite understand on a conscious level, but which Marge did.

The liveryman had predicted that few soldiers would be in town, and he’d been right. There were only eight boys, the members of a squad that had escaped rigorous field training by drawing some kind of cleanup detail.

They went to the edge of town, at the livery stable, where there was a fair amount of room and good torch lighting. Above, on a nearby roof, unseen to them, Marge landed and perched to watch and watch out for her companion. She understood well the real reason Mia wanted to dance for these strangers, the reason Mia wanted what heretofore she had shunned.

The slave had examined herself in the bathhouse mirror, and had seen someone reflected back so different and strange-looking that she hardly recognized it. The shaving had chipped away a central core of her ego, as, of course, it was designed to do. Mia’s dancer’s body was lean and trim, but her breasts were quite small and rock hard; in spite of a perfect curve at the pelvis, she was very much of a neuter as those things went, particularly in a world where bare breasts were common. Shorn of her long hair, the neuter effect was reinforced, particularly in her eyes.

Mia needed to know if she was still a woman in the eyes of others.

. She started slow, but quickly picked up the pace, using the castanets to give not merely rhythm to her moves but emphasis to her major ones, and she held the onlookers spellbound. Marge too, was fascinated. That girl could dance!

The whistles, claps and very male reactions from the small group of soldiers was just what Mia needed, and she reveled in it. Marge, reading the emotions of the group, understood Joe’s reluctance to allow this, but she also read Mia’s supercharged emotional state. The way she was dancing right into them, charging them up, made Marge realize that, this time, she didn’t want Joe to rescue her, nor Marge, either. She finished right at the entrance to the stables with a big finish and ducked inside. Easy enough to get away at that point when they ran after her, but she did not come out.

All of the soldier boys would wind up being punished for being late checking back into their camp.

Mia was in fact bruised and sore the next morning, but she didn’t seem to mind it a bit. Joe was somewhat concerned; but, apparently, however she’d come by them, it hadn’t been against her will or her wishes. He could have forced her to tell him, of course, but he decided he’d rather not ask, not only to preserve what dignity she still had but also because he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

In spite of some soreness and stiffness, Mia was in an extremely upbeat, confident mood, possibly as good as he’d ever seen her. And, why not? The previous day had been a banner one for her. She’d proved herself more than capable in the fight with the thieves, and, later on, she’d proven herself in the only other area that was important or even relevant to her. She had nothing left to prove to herself, and that made her spirit soar.

“It’s a good thing we’re laying over, though,” Joe commented, looking at some of those bruises. “You wouldn’t be much good in a fight or on a horse at this point.”

“I can do anything you demand of me, Master,” she responded. “You know, if you do not mind, I may remain like this even after we return. Not having to wash or fool with that hair makes things much easier.”

He shrugged. “If you like it, great.” He wasn’t going to press her on it. “Uh—tonight is the first full moon, you know.”

She stopped. “I had not thought of that, Master. What shall we do about it? We should not become each other. It would not be right, nor fair, at this time.”

“Yeah. Disregarding the slave part, I don’t want those bruises. But, I have an idea if you don’t mind skipping some sleep tonight. I’ve done it before and it wasn’t so awful, and it might give us a way to find out what the hell is going on around here. This is too close to the border. I wouldn’t like to be stuck up north and discover that everything’s happening down here.”

“What do you have in mind, Master?” He reached down and pulled a crumpled blanket away. Marge was asleep under it.

“I’m going to give instructions that our room is not to be entered or touched today,” he told her. “That’ll keep Marge from having nasty interruptions.”

“I can do the clean and make up, Master. I used to be a maid, you remember.”

“Good.” He looked down at the sleeping Marge. “How would you like to fly?”

It felt kind of silly and looked sillier, all three of them there sitting on the floor, Mia to the left of Marge and holding her left hand, and Joe to the right of the Kauri, holding her right hand.

The curse of the were was a curse of the blood; by blood was it transmitted and by blood was it carried and held. Almost all of such curses were specific to some animal or demonic form, but there was a very rare form in which the last part of the curse’s spell had somehow been miswritten or garbled when first applied. Upon the nights of the full moon, such a one was transformed until either morning or moonset. But, since only half the curse was truly operable, at this mystic moment, both Joe and Tiana would turn into the nearest living animal, and remain that way until either moonset or dawn, whichever came first.

Although the faerie were neither human nor animal in the scientific sense, they qualified under the curse, as Joe had discovered more than once.

“It’s getting pretty boring,” Joe said grumpily, “and it’s pretty dark out there. Are you sure about this night, Marge?”

“I’m sure. Moonrise is a little late tonight. Any time now.”

“I truly hope so, my lady,” Mia sighed. “I am sitting on a particularly painful bruise.”

“Don’t worry about that. Weres are particularly fast healers,” Marge noted. “I remember hearing about one who had his head chopped through with an ax. The ax went through and . came out bloody, but aside from a scar that faded in a few days and a bad sore throat, he was no worse for wear. Scared the bejezus out of everybody and made a legend.”

“Did he get away?” Joe asked, not having heard that one.

“No. Somebody found an ornamental pole with a silver tip. Drove it right through him, poor guy.”

Joe was about to say something as soon as he could think what it was, when, suddenly, as the moon cleared the horizon opposite the window, it happened.

Joe felt a sudden dizziness and blurring of vision and thought, then a series of strange sensations as parts of him seemed to grow or contract or do other such things.

And, on the floor of the room, now sat three absolutely identical Kauris, holding hands. So identical were they, in fact, that not even another Kauri could tell them apart, save that Mia’s collar hung loosely around her neck. She let go of Marge and shook her wrists, and the two bracelets fell to the floor, then did the same with the anklets. Her collar, however, would have to remain uncomfortably on. Her head just wasn’t sufficiently smaller than her normal one to permit that.

And although her pierced earrings fell through the flesh to the floor, the ring still remained in her nose.

They hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed logical. Ruddygore said that, once in, nothing save death could remove ft.

Marge looked at it critically. “Huh! The only Kauri slave in all history! I hope that doesn’t set a precedent.”

“It won’t,” Joe responded, in a voice absolutely identical to Marge’s. “I think at least we’ll find that the ring has no effect.”

“You are right!” Mia said, delighted. “You are not my master or mistress or whatever it means for now.”

“Only temporarily,” Joe reminded her. “Jeez. The last time I was turned female I was embarrassed as hell. This just feels like a different suit of clothes. Maybe I’m finally getting able to handle almost anything.”