Demons of the Dancing Gods (12 page)

The squat, middle-aged man with a light beard and no mustache

was Jeklir the grainer; the pudgy, middle-aged woman

with him was his wife Asarak; and the teen-ager with them

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who looked every bit their progeny was their son Takgis.

"So you're from Sachalin," Joe noted. "On your way home

from a trip?"

"Going on one, rather," Jeklir responded. "Time to visit the

wife's relatives in Mobadan, at least for a week or two."

Joe's eyebrows raised a bit. "I would think this would be

your busy season. I came through a good bit of farmland, and

it looked as if the harvest was just coming up."

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Jeklir's eyes darted nervously at the crowd around the inn.

"Um, usually you would be right, barbarian, but ordinarily

merchants would welcome a convention, not close up shop and

leave as it dawned, if you get my meaning."

Joe did. "I guess the ones coming will be a pretty scary

group, if what we've seen is any indication. My—partner—

and I ran into some unlucky thieves this past morning who had

run afoul of a sorcerer."

"You have no idea," Asarak assured him. "Every time this

convention comes to a town, horrible things happen. Be just

a trifle slow with the ale, and they turn you into who knows

what; and the adepts—they're the worst, practicing spells on

all the honest people with abandon. If you're going into the

city, you watch your step, young man. They pour love potions

in the punch, make people bark like dogs, and worse, just for

the fun of it. The authorities can't do a thing, either."

"I'm surprised anybody will have them, if what you say is

true," Joe noted between bites of the first really good, solid

food in a week.

"What choice do they have?" Jeklir responded. "I mean,

it's always sponsored by a master sorcerer, and if your local

sorcerer decides to host it, what can anybody, even the government,

do?"

Joe nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, I can see that. But you

mean the whole town will be closed up?"

"Oh, no. First of all, the government can't close, so all

those people have to stay and they have to have their services.

The hotels can't close—they're booked. And the bars, restaurants,

and shows will be open, of course. Many of the owners

will keep a low profile and send their families out of town,

but they hire a lot of farmers and contract for a lot of serf labor

to be out front. There are always the ones who do so good they

get special favors, too, and some of it can be put right after,

JACK L. CHALKER

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particularly the stuff done by the adepts. That doesn't help the

embarrassment and degradation while it's happening to you,

though."

Joe understood. Like all conventioneers, these magical ones

would let their inhibitions down and have a totally good time—

for them. In the process, they'd drive the town nuts, but there

was always a cleanup crew of powerful sorcerers around to fix

things. He wondered how long it took and whether everything

ever got fixed, but he suspected that, within the confines of

the host town or city, anyway, things were under more careful

watch than they seemed to be. In the end, it was mental anguish

applied to ordinary people that was the real price—but the

rewards, too, were great. Few groups had conventions this

large, and while some might get stuck a hundred times with

phony money or gems that vanished, others found overly generous

rewards. It really meant millions to the city, too.

Not, however, for a grain merchant. Joe couldn't blame the

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family for getting out for a while.

He finished his meal and settled his accounts. But after

saying luck and farewell to the temporary refugee family, he

still hadn't caught sight of Marge and he began to grow a little

worried. He found the innkeeper and asked if he'd seen her.

"The sexy fairy lady? Yeah, I seen her. Don't worry. She'll

be back down in a little while, like she has been."

Joe stared at the man. "Like she has been?"

Quickly and a little bit nervously, the innkeeper described

Marge's activities of the past couple of hours. Joe was incredulous

and more than a little hurt. He stalked outside to the

stable area, got the horse and the mule, saddled them, and reset

the packs, brooding all the time.

Marge came out of the inn entrance and spotted him, then

walked over to him with a very light and sassy manner. She

stopped short, though, about ten feet from him, and the smile

faded as she sensed his emotional turmoil. She instantly understood

the problem, but couldn't really sympathize all that much.

"Well? What did you expect?" she asked him. "You just kept

lying there, snoring like mad."

"Yeah, but..." he tried lamely. "It's so... cheap."

"It's not that," she told him, stepping more into the light

and putting out her hand. He looked at it and saw two large

and obviously very valuable rings on her fingers. He saw, too,

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that she wore a very expensive-looking gold necklace. In her

left hand she held a small velvet case. "I found out a lot of

things already tonight, and one of them is that you must give

a gift to a Kauri or she owns your soul. The first man practically

fell all over himself finding something to give me."

"Well, at least you'll always be able to buy what you need,"

he grumped.

"Oh, Joe—it's just in my nature. It's one of the things I

do."

"Yeah, but—so many?"

She shrugged and got on the mule. "It was like eating peanuts.

Once I got started, I just couldn't stop."

He sighed and mounted his horse. "Well, you ought to have

real fun in convention city up ahead."

"I intend to," she told him. "But don't be so damned sanctimonious

about it all. I heard Houma and Grogha talking in

little-kid whispers about the virgins of Kidim. It didn't matter

when it was you men against scared, defenseless girls, now

did it?"

"But that was different!" he protested.

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"How?"

"Well, um, the damned town deserved it, that's all. They

staked you out for the dragon, remember!"

"Even if that were a good excuse for the seduction of innocent

kids, which I doubt, it certainly wasn't true that first

night. You didn't know about it."

"But you were celibate theni A virgin witch!"

"And you weren't then and aren't now. The only difference

is that I'm not now, either. Deep down you're just like all

men, you know. It's okay when you do it, but women—uhuh.

And I'm even more of a threat—a woman who can control

the emotions of men. A woman in command, you might say.

No, Joe, don't pull that hurt act on me. Not until you can

explain to me why I'm an immoral prostitute while you're just

having a boy's night of fun out on the town." With that she

kicked the mule and started out onto the darkened road.

He waited a moment, not at all agreeing with her position

but unable at the moment to figure out why she was wrong,

then followed her.

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65

It took two more days' ride to reach the city, and during

that time he still hadn't really figured it out, but he'd partially

come to accept it. He did more or less understand why he took

it so personally, though. It was one thing for him, say, to meet

a woman he didn't know and have a fling in the hay, but Marge

was something else, somebody special and important to him.

People he knew and cared about just didn't do things like that.

Except, of course, once he'd known and cared about a very

special young woman, who'd even borne him a son, but now,

in another world and in another life, she was living with another

guy and probably griping about never getting any more alimony.

And he'd tried more than once to pick up truck-stop

waitresses and lady truckers, some of whom he knew very well

indeed, and sometimes he'd succeeded. In a sense, he realized,

he'd taken refuge in Marge's former self. She'd been safe,

dependable, nobody else's, even if not his.

But, irrational or not, he couldn't shake his sense of hurt

and perhaps jealousy, at least not yet, and he consistently refused

her advances as if, somehow, at least that could be preserved

between them. She would remain, then, somehow, his

partner and his friend and nothing more, in the same way that,

were she a male and a womanizer, he might accept but not

approve.

It was, damn it, just that she was so damned desirable...

Sachalin was truly deserving of the term city, rather than

the less important designation of town. It spread out for miles

along the shores of Lake Zahias, a lake so huge that it resembled

an ocean or, at least, one of the Great Lakes, and had tides.

The city was built up against a series of low hills that were,

perhaps, the moraines of the great glacier that carved and be-

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came Lake Zahias. Also deep, the lake actually made Sachalin

a major port, since at its southern end the River of Sorrows

began, winding its way through deep gorges to Lake Bragha,

then slowly between the mountain ranges to Lake Ogome, until

finally, as a great river, it reached the Dancing Gods itself. A

parallel canal had been built between Zahias and Bragha, but

two great falls prevented full access to the sea. Still, it was a

simple transfer of goods from ship to barge to ship to get

materials easily into the interior of Husaquahr, and this made

Sachalin a rich and important city indeed.

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DEMONS OF THE DANCING GODS

The volcanic soil from the Firehills covered hundreds of

square miles to the north and west of the city and lake, meaning

that a tremendous amount of food, principally grains, was sent

back down from the port all the way to the City-States and

beyond.

Sachalin was set only slightly inland from the port and the

white, sandy beaches, and it seemed to be constructed of uniformly

blocky buildings, two to six storeys high, built of some

white stone and masonry materials, topped with characteristic

red shingle roofs. Unlike most cities and towns in Husaquahr,

it was not walled, being far too large and sprawling for that,

but it did have big, open arches at its entrance that served a

strictly decorative function. The road led along the lakeshore

after that, where Marge and Joe could see countless fishing

vessels tied up in neat rows for the night, as well as occasional

yachts and luxury vessels. The heavy-goods commercial port

was north of the city, leaving the center for public beaches and

pleasure use and not spoiling the view.

They arrived in early evening. The city did not die after

dark as most towns did, but took on a whole new character.

Uniformed men of the watch, as they were called, walked every

street, lighting lamps with long lamplighter torches. The glass

containers for the streetlamps were irregular and often multicolored,

their bright flames inside producing not only more

than ample light but also colorful, dancing patterns against the

white stucco buildings. It was, in a sense, fairyland by engineering

rather than by magic, but it was no less effective.

Although neither Joe nor Marge could read the language,

the pictograms on the signs were easy enough to follow. When

they reached a broad park with beach on one side and town on

the other, the road formed a circle around a huge monument

to some very odd-looking creature. Leading into the circle from

town was a tremendously wide avenue, paved with tiny little

bricks and lined with trees the entire way. It seemed to have

a series of circles through town to the hills in back, each one

with a small park and monument in the middle, but far back,

against and seemingly either carved out of or sitting on a ledge

in the hills, was the great capitol building itself, looking less

like any capitol building they had seen than a huge, columnar,

Grecian-style temple to some ancient gods, bathed in great

lights.

They turned toward the capitol and started into the city

proper, following directions on the small map Ruddygore had

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sketched for them of the city center. The large buildings behind

the trees on either side seemed to be mostly banks and offices—

shipping brokers, the grain exchange, and other such institutions.

This was the financial heart of the city, it was clear.

"It's beautiful," Marge said, mostly to herself. "And everything's

so clean."

Joe understood what she meant. Even the best of towns

they'd seen in Husaquahr had been straight out of the Middle

Ages, with sanitation to match. Here, though, it looked as if