Demons of the Dancing Gods

Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER

ENCOUNTER ON A LONELY ROAD

The road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.

—The Books of Rules, CVI, Introduction

IF HE HAD TO GO TO HELL, WELL, IT WAS BETTER TO GO

dressed in expensive clothes, drinking good wine, and smoking

a fine cigar.

The small figure walking slowly down the road was hardly

visible in the darkness, and any who might have come along

would probably not even see, let alone notice, him. He stopped

for a moment, as if trying to get his bearings from the stars,

and sighed. Well, he thought to himself, the clothes weren't

bad for being nondescript, and the wine was long gone, but he

did have one last cigar. He took it out, sniffed it, bit off the

end, and stood there for a moment, as if hesitant to light and

consume this one last vestige of wealth. Finally he lighted it,

simply by making a few small signs in the air and pointing his

finger at the tip. A pale yellow beam emanated from the finger,

and the cigar glowed. Such pranks were really pretty petty for

a master sorcerer, but he had always enjoyed them, taking an

almost childlike pleasure in their simplicity and basic utility.

He found a rock and sat down to enjoy the smoke, looking

out at the bleak landscape before him, invisible in the darkness

of the new moon to his eyes, but not to his other, paranormal

senses.

The darkness was in itself a living thing to him, a thing that

he sensed, touched, caressed, and tried to befriend. He found

it indifferent to him, interested instead in its own lowly subjects

—the lizards, the snakes, the tiny voles, and other crea-

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tures that inhabited the desolation and knew it as home. For

these and all the nameless citizens of its domain, the night was

life itself, allowing them access to food and water under cooling

temperatures, sheltered from greater enemies by the cool, caring

dark.

The road seemed empty, lonely, desolate as the landscape

itself, a track forlorn and forgotten in the shelter of deep night;

but as he sat there, nursing the last cigar, he extended his senses

and saw that this road was different, this road was for those

with beyond normal senses and training. This road was inhabited,

used in the night; as he let himself go, he could hear the

groans and lamentations of those who used it now in the depths

of night.

Even he could not see them, not now, but he could hear

them, hear the crack of the whip and the cries of hopelessness

and despair from those who moved slowly, mournfully, down

that lonely road.

For in the dark, at the time of the new moon, he knew—

perhaps he alone knew—that this road had a dark and de-

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Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods

spairing purpose beyond its utility to the travelers of day and

full moon.

They were walking, crawling, along that lonely road, he

knew, going toward a destination they dreaded yet had richly

earned.

The month's quota of damned souls was a bumper crop,

judging from the sounds.

One night, he knew, he'd be there, reduced to the same

level as all the rest, walking or crawling down that road himself.

One night, he, too, would be brought as low as the lowest of

those now moving down that road, paying a due bill he had

willingly run up. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would be this night,

if his tongue and quick mind failed him for once. He was

willing to go, he tried to convince himself, but not yet, not

just yet. He had surrendered much to travel that road one day,

not the least of which was his honor, and he certainly was loath

to pay without at least attaining the goal for which he'd sold

his soul.

The cigar was almost finished now, but he continued to

nurse it along almost to the point of burning his fingers, as if

the end of the cigar would also be the end of his hopes, his

dreams, his life, and his power. For the first time, in the dark,

JACK L. CHALKER 3

with the sounds of the damned filling his bargained soul to its

core, he had doubts and fears about his course and his own

well-being. Was the great goal worth this sort of ultimate price?

Did it really matter one way or the other what he did or didn't

do, or was he, like the cigar, a momentary brilliance turned to

ash and of no more consequence than that in the scheme of

things?

He got up, dropped the stub, and crushed it angrily with

his right foot. Such melancholy was for fools and failures, he

scolded himself. He had not failed yet, and in his setbacks he

had learned a great deal. Now was not the time for self-deprecation,

self-doubt, and inner fears to consume him—no,

that was what they would want, not merely his enemies but his

unhuman allies as well. They, his allies, were the cause of

this, for they dealt in such matters, traded in doubt and fear,

sowed the seeds of turmoil inside you, and, in that way, they

fed and grew stronger.

He began to walk along the dark, lonely road in the wastes,

conscious now of being among the milling throng of the damned

on their way to perdition, and conscious, too, that they knew

he was there, a living, breathing man of power. He could feel

their envy, their hatred of him for still cheating what they now

faced; he could feel, too, the pity in many of them, not merely

for their own sorry fates but for him as well.

Turn back, he could hear them crying. Do not walk this

path with us, as we have walked. You still live! For you, there

is still time...

Still time... Until his corpse rotted as theirs now did, until

his cold and silent soul received their summons, there was

always time. Time to set things right. Time not to repent, nor

turn back—never!—but time, instead, to complete the work.

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Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods

, Within the hour he had passed through the slow-moving

throng and stood at a point in the road where, in the light of

day, it went through a narrow pass and emerged in greener,

more beauteous regions beyond. Any who dared this path on

a night so dark would still pass through to that other side,

oblivious to that which lay before them, only slightly out of

phase with the world they knew. But he—he was a sorcerer

and he saw the many plains in his mind's eye and in the magical

energies that flowed through all the world.

The colors of the valley's magic were crimson and lavender,

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the colors of its district prince, and they flowed along the road

with its great traffic of once-human misery, flowed with a

curious and subtle beauty to the head of the pass, then seemed

to pause a moment before beginning a swirl in the air before

him, as if, somehow, these great colors were some sort of

liquid, here reaching a great drain.

And, in fact, it was so, for through him passed the souls of

the damned, screaming in terror, unable not to press forward,

reaching the great swirling mass of magical energy and falling

in, their cries and pleas for a mercy now forever denied them

cut terribly short as they were sucked down the great outlet

from the real world in which they had forged their fate to Hell

itself.

Not that Hell was actually so terrible. He had visited there

on two occasions and found it more a place of curious fascination

than the abject horror of the old tales and mystic religions.

Yet it was still an unhappy place, fueled with hatred

and revenge, its most terrible punishment a constantly available

vision of the glory and beauty of absolute perfection that could

always be seen but never experienced. They walked in Hell,

always avoiding the vision, their eyes averting from it as men's

eyes averted from the sun; yet they were always aware it was

there, a place of indescribable joy and beauty that was held

tantalizingly before them, just out of reach—always out of

reach. It was this vision that had been denied him on his visits,

for no living being was permitted to see such a sight as Paradise,

lest, it was said, he be consumed in the light and desire nothing

else. This did not really bother him; everybody in his past

whom he knew, liked, or admired was in Hell anyway, along

with all the other interesting people.

The swirl was changing now, becoming more irregular, as

if disturbed by some great power or form arising within it,

going, as it were, against the flow of the thing. It was less a

drain now than a spiral. He saw the four arms of the turning

swirl break from the main mass and fly upward above it, then

form in a diamond. The light of these four shapes was no

longer nebulous, but instead took on the form of wraithlike

faces, demon faces, looking down upon him with cold interest.

Now from the center of the magical mass shot two more bright

lights, out and up into the diamond-shaped phalanx of faces,

JACK L. CHALKER 5

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Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods

the demonic captain and the equally demonic sergeant of the

guard.

Finally, out of the mass, so large it almost was the mass,

walked a vaguely humanoid form. The creature was terrible to

behold, one who had once been a creature of near perfection,

an angel, distorted by hatred and an unquenchable thirst for

revenge into a vaguely manlike thing that oozed the rot of longdead

corpses and whose face, twisted in an expression of permanent

hatred, was set off by two huge pupilless eyes glowing

a bright red.

The creature was dressed in royal robes of lavender, set off

by a crimson cape, boots, and gloves. It halted in front of him

and looked down menacingly. He bowed low and said, "How

is my lord Prince Hiccarph?"

The demon prince gave a bull-like snort. "You really blew

it, didn't you. Baron Asshole?"

"We blew it," he responded calmly. "Despite that cursed

dragon and the very considerable powers of Ruddy gore, it was

the lack of the Lamp that did us in. We had it in our grasp—

and, in your august presence, a brainless hulk and a slip of a

halfling girl stole it right out from under your nose. All that

when one wish would have carried the day and the war for us.

You can't make me take all the credit, not this time."

"I can make you take whatever I wish," the demon prince

hissed. "You're mine. Baron. I own you, not merely when you

get here but right now. I think this fact bears reminding."

He smiled. "If that is true, my lord, and I am your abject

slave, then the fault is truly yours for the loss, for you chose

the instrument and you played its string."

"You are an impudent bastard," Hiccarph commented, his

tone softening. "Perhaps that's why I like you. Perhaps that is

why I just don't strike you down and take you with me tonight."

Inwardly, the Baron relaxed a bit at the comment. Still

time... still time... Aloud, he asked, "Have you determined

why those two were able to ignore your powers? At first I

thought it was the Lamp, but I soon realized that the magic

Lamp of the djinn would have little authority over you."

"I have done much research on the matter," the demon prince

told him, "and still I have not the answer that is true. Dozens

of explanations have occurred to me, but which one is the right

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one? Unless I know the exact means by which Ruddygore

accomplished this, I can take no measures to counter it. We

know very little about them, after all; and, if I peer too deeply

into it from my side, it will certainly alert his Majesty, and I

would prefer he in particular learn nothing of our little project,

at least not yet, for understandable reasons. Since they worked

so well for Ruddygore, though, it is likely he will continue to

use them, and in that we might ultimately learn the secret

through your offices. Remember, Baron, that we are in a sense

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Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing Gods