Demons of the Dancing Gods (38 page)

any painkiller. Okay, maybe the iron wouldn't kill me, only

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DEMONS OF THE DANCING GODS

JACK L. CHALKER

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silver, but what good does that do? Even if I slip out of these

bindings by getting smaller, I still am no Macore."

"It's a chance, though. One we must take. This madman is

going to destroy the whole world. Our only hope is to get

Ruddygore in here before the Baron comes back. Otherwise

Ruddygore will have nowhere to hole up, no safe seat of magic.

The Baron and Kaladon will pick him off easily, even without

their demon."

Joe sighed. "Yeah. Thanks a lot. It seems that an awful lot

is hanging on very little here."

"That goes for both of us," she said glumly, looking at the

manacles.

CHAPTER 14

OF MICE AND MEN

Castle dungeons must be dark, damp, and infested.

—Rules, XVII, 114(d)

WITH NOTHING TO DO BUT HANG AROUND, THEY TALKED.

"Joe, do you think that even Ruddygore could take Boquillas

on? With his demon, I mean?"

"I don't know. Ruddygore seemed to think so, so we have

to go with that. I'm still trying to figure out how the Baron

could move several large armies all the way up there without

anybody noticing. At least that explains the squad we saw."

"And the missing and pirated boats. I wonder, though, if

he really can pull it off."

"He probably can, at least the military part of it. They aren't

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ready for him with massed armies this time and a couple of

weeks' notice on where he'll march. Oh, he'll do it, all right.

What he probably can't do is win the peace the way he thinks.

I wish that demon had brought him over some history books

along with that Marx and Hitler stuff."

"That's true. Lenin in particular was a well-meaning visionary

with real hopes for the future, but his system gave us

Stalin instead. And there were a bunch of Hitler's friends and

supporters who thought he was just a social reformer. By the

time they found out, it was too late. Boquillas isn't Hitler or

Stalin, but there's one around."

"Kaladon?" Joe mused. "I wonder if that's the plot."

"Maybe. Certainly he would be a better friend to demons

than Boquillas in the long run. Do you think Ruddygore knows

about Tiana's power?"

"I doubt it. If he did, he'd never have let her risk it all by

coming with us. Damn! So much depends on your getting out

of here! It's the Baron's only real mistake. That and bragging

about where the transmitters were hidden. If he wasn't just

putting us on. Anybody with his kind of mind can't be trusted

to say his own name right."

"Oh, I think he was telling the truth. As he said, he needs

to have them on and operating or it will tip everything off.

Let's just be thankful he didn't return a few minutes sooner

this morning, or we'd have no chance at all. He'd have discovered

two of me in that room, and that would have been it."

Joe sighed. "Yeah. But I still wish I knew how to pick

locks. How's that torch coming along?"

"Still going. I think it will last a while." Marge paused a

minute. "Say, do you hear something?"

He cocked his head. "Water dripping."

"No, a little scratch, scratch, scratch type of sound."

They both kept silent for a long while, and finally he heard

it, too. "What the hell is that?"

She thought a moment, then had it. "What else? Rats. Ugh!"

Suddenly it struck her. "Joe! Rats! Around here!"

"Big deal. So we'll get nibbled to death."

"No, no! If we're very, very lucky, we might be able to

attract them by biting off 'some of your cheese and letting it

drop to the floor!"

"My cheese? Why not yours? At least you can see."

"No, I mean at the proper time."

He finally got the idea. "Fine—if we had a watch or a view

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of the sun. I don't know if we've been here for ten minutes or

ten hours. The odds are just too slim. Besides, becoming a rat

might get me out of here and even upstairs, but I couldn't

activate the transmitters."

"You wouldn't have to. Just escape, find them, then wait

until dawn. When you turn back again, you can use them."

"No good." He sighed. "When I turn back again, I'll be

paralyzed and blind again, too, remember?"

She thought furiously. "Maybe not. At least, not paralyzed.

I looked you over. The paralysis is a simple spell analogous

to an injury. All your injuries faded, right? I think this will

wear off, too."

"And my eyes?"

"That's fifty-fifty. It looks like a transmutation spell there,

rather than an injury. If he'd just rendered your optic nerves

inoperable, that would be one thing, but he took no chances.

He changed the composition of your eyes. The curse isn't clear

enough to allow me to guess on that one."

"Oh, great. So we have to hope that you're right and that

I'll be able to move afterward. Uh-uh. Too risky. I'll try picking

the cell door lock. Just as likely to fail, but more of a chance

than the other way."

But as it turned out, he had little choice in the matter. After

a while the skittish rats grew bolder, first showing themselves,

then scampering about here and there, and finally checking out

the leavings that had dropped on the cell floor from the prisoners'

attempts to eat.

It seemed like an unpleasant eternity that they hung there,

but finally, when both had more or less lapsed into sleep,

sundown arrived.

The first Joe knew about it was when he was falling. Then

he hit the floor with a force that hurt. Dizzily he got up, opened

his eyes, and looked around. He was awfully low to the ground.

He turned on four legs and saw behind him a long, bare tail;

he knew for a fact that he had indeed changed into a rat.

He looked up at Marge, who seemed incredibly gigantic to

him, and saw that she was still sleeping. He decided to leave

her that way, since he'd be gone a very long time, anyway,

and she would take a lot of comfort from his absence, far more

so than from his presence.

In rat form, he found it absurdly simple to get between the

bars and out into the corridor. His rat's eyes were quite good,

he discovered, although that stairway was one hell of a gigantic

obstacle.

It took him three hours, stretching and groaning and aching

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all the way, to manage the climb. He knew, somehow, that

there was a far better and easier way, but he decided that the

other rats might not take kindly to him, and probably couldn't

tell him where it was, anyway.

Once on the main floor, which was mostly dark now, with

only a few isolated torches left going, he made for the main

hall and discovered that, while the previous evening he'd been

short, now he was in a world where giants loomed.

Being four foot ten was a hell of a lot easier to live with

than being six inches off the floor.

Disgusted, he relaxed and let the rat in him dominate. He

began exploring, almost without thinking about it, and found

a long, tasseled bell rope at one side of the bookcases. Using

his handlike clawed feet, he tried several times and finally got

a grip, wondering where and what he might be ringing, and

started up.

It was a hairy task, and he fell several times, but eventually

he got the hang of it and made it to the top row of shelves.

Judging the distance as best he could, he made the leap, grabbed

a volume of the Books of Rules, and almost pulled it off the

shelf and himself with it. Fortunately, there were so many of

the things that they were very tightly shelved, and he managed

to pull himself up on top of the books and start to look behind

them.

It didn't take him long to find the small jewelry box, hidden

behind a row of the Rules; but after pushing several volumes

out from the back and having them fall and crash to the floor,

he waited nervously. He'd never really believed the place was

deserted; but when a reasonable time had passed, he decided

that it might be true.

He got behind the box now and started pushing it out with

his head, using his neck muscles. It was tough going, but finally

it reached the edge of the shelf, then dropped to the floor. It

somehow managed to miss the pile of books down there and

hit on a comer, coming open in the process. Among a lot of

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DEMONS Of THE DANCING GODS JACK L. CHALKER 211

junk spilling out, he spotted both the earring and the necklace.

Halfway home, he thought to himself.

It took him a lot longer to get up the guts to climb down,

but he finally decided on the rope approach in reverse, and it

worked, although he fell the last three feet to the floor. He was

by this time one battered and bruised rat.

He scampered over to the two small pieces of jewelry and,

taking them in his teeth one at a time, he arranged them in a

clear space, then settled down to wait until dawn. He was

determined that, no matter what, he was going to wake up with

those pieces near his head.

Marge heard sounds of somebody coming and moved her

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head to look. The torch was dying now, but it still gave off

enough light for her to see by. She was apprehensive about

those sounds, and she had no idea how long she had slept or

whether it was night or day. The figure moved with agonizing

slowness, closer and closer to the cell, and finally appeared.

"Joe!"

He grinned. "Yeah. You were right, kid. When I changed

back, I moved perfectly. I sent the signals with no trouble at

all. If there's anything out there, they're hearing it now. Just

to make sure, I gave as much information as I could into both

transmitters, along with the proper invitations."

"And your eyes?"

"I'm still blind," he told her. "That's what took me so long.

I damned near broke my fool neck coming down those stairs."

"You shouldn't have tried. You should be up top in case

Macore or somebody else comes. You can't get me out of

here, anyway. Even if you had sight and a key, there's too

much iron here for it to be safe, and besides, I'm still

paralyzed."

"I had to," he told her. "I couldn't just leave you here not

knowing. Don't worry, though. I can make it back up now.

Even blind, I can do it a hell of a lot easier than as a rat."

She laughed, and he quickly filled her in on the night's

work.

"Well, I'll go up now, for all the good it will do. Just stay

here and pray the message gets through before our mad Baron

returns."

"It will, Joe! It has to! After all this, we can't have failed

in the end!"

"Well, we'll see."

"Be careful!"

"I will. Just stay here until I come back."

"Ha, ha," she responded sarcastically.

He stumbled a couple of times, but made it to the top without

any real disasters. He felt lucky that the place was so small

and therefore fairly easy to remember. That didn't keep him

from stumbling and tripping over things he didn't quite remember,

but it helped him get around.

Flags fluttered in the mild breeze, and the army, more than

two thousand strong, now resplendent in full uniforms, waited

in the fields outside the tiny town of Terdiera. The town itself

seemed unnaturally quiet in the early morning sun, but it was

often so just before a battle. Although tense, the men-at-arms

appeared boldly confident. All had gone well up to this point.

The really dangerous part of sneaking in undetected and then

assembling was over. Through the night, supply barges had

shed their protective freighter's camouflage and offloaded all

that was needed. Unit after unit had turned from ordinary civilians

back into menacing military men.

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The Dark Baron himself had arrived an hour before dawn.

None had seen him arrive nor knew whence he'd come, but

now he was here, resplendent in his shining black and gold

armor atop his great black horse. With him, too, was his mysterious

and equally armored adjutant, known by reputation only

as the General. Few had ever seen his massive figure on its

white horse before, but now they watched as both rode forward

to inspect the field of battle.

The Baron looked out on the town. "I do not like this. It's

far too quiet. Not even a rooster crowed, nor has a dog barked."

The General nodded. "We've sealed off the bridge on the

Marquewood side, so they've no place to run to. The trolls

have been raising Cain all night, but they'll quiet down. Send

a patrol into the town and let's see what we're up against."

The Baron rode back and conferred with a leading officer.

Six soldiers drew swords and proceeded slowly forward, followed