Songs of the Dancing Gods (2 page)

If you’d like to renew your acquaintance with this saga, go back and find your copies of the previous Dancing Gods books and do so. If you don’t have them, you’ll be able to get along with just this summary, but you should still go back and find those first three books, stocked by any good, intelligent, competent bookseller.

It has been five years for my own dreams to come and sort themselves out into coherency, for time is different there than here, but now I have it. When we left, everything looked bright, everything set, and what hadn’t been resolved before was clearly working its way to the end. Joe and Tiana, not looking as they did when they reigned, were free to travel and enjoy life and show the new land to Irving. Macore had some minor mental problems due to his sudden exposure to our culture, but, once back home, he’d straighten out. The saga was drawing to a close.

Alas, the Books of Rules covered more volumes than the Tax Code; not even a Ruddygore could remember them all. Still, he should have remembered, that most basic of Rules governing the ultimate battle between good and evil, for it was one that had saved all of their necks at one time or another.

Those who are familiar with the past adventures of our band may find the going here a bit more serious, a bit more adult, than past volumes, perhaps because that, too, is a Rule for sagas that are continued by tellers of tales who inevitably, alas, grow older themselves. But, bear with it; Destiny’s threads are interwoven, and one can not weave a tale until all the threads are in place. Our tale begins in madness, and descends into humiliation, debauchery, and degradation, yet all leads to a climax of pure, unabashed lunacy. All beings whose deeds might alter or affect the course of history, regardless of side or motive, who are faced with absolute defeat and impending doom, must always be provided with at least one way out. -The Books of Rules, III, 351.5

CHAPTER I

ENCOUNTER ON A LONELY ROAD

Epic quests for which circumstances set no deadline shall take at least seven (7) years, although exceptions may be made in rare circumstances if the quest just seems like seven years. —The Books of Rules, XV, 251, 331(c)

SHE WATCHED HIM COME FROM HER HEIGHTS, FROM HER SHADOWS, but then she had lost sight of him in the gathering gloom. And so she summoned the wind, and whispered softly to it in the silence.

“Bring him to me,” she commanded, as the wind whipped around her and played with the folds of her cloak. “Find him and bring him to me.”

The cold wind wailed a reply, then crept down into the hollows and sped across the barren hills of Mazra-dum searching for the one tiny figure below in the wastes and finding him, as a chill wind always could.

The tiny, gray-clad traveler on the weary roan horse looked even smaller against the majestic background of the badlands landscape, a place of rounded mounds cut into the land -end colored in dull candy stripes of all the various shades of rust and decay and where even the thin ribbon of water that snaked through its bottommost canyons was not clear or even mineral brown, but rather a milky, alkaline, and poisonous chalk white.

Here and there, the traveler and his long-suffering steed passed dull and slowly dissolving skeletons of many an animal who had attempted this place before and failed or, in desperation, had sipped from the white death that was at least something that moved in this place. The traveler pulled his cowl up to protect against the chill wind whose eerie moans and shrieks seemed like the trapped and hopeless cries of the lost souls who had never made it through the route he now attempted.

Now the trail hit a point where one could go either way, but there was no way to tell from the ground, hard as steel, which was the right way and which was the wrong, if there was such, and he stopped a moment, his face coming up from its weary downward cast. Eyes far older than the years of the traveler scanned the choices; the face was weathered and lined and covered with a full beard that obviously had just grown rather than been cultivated and had, for its trouble, been ignored by its wearer. The beard, like the tangled, shoulder-length hair revealed when the cowl slipped back, had been black once, but it was now tinged with gray bought by hard experience, not comfortable old age.

The man frowned, unable to decide which trail led to somewhere fruitful and also unable to decide at this point if it made much difference which route he chose. Yet he had not lost hope of attaining his goals; the eyes still burned with a fire only fanaticism brought, and the soul was still fueled by a singleness of purpose that said, success or death!

The sun was but an hour from the horizon; already the shadows grew long and the wind bolder, the temperature dropping fast under brilliantly clear skies. The horse seemed suddenly nervous and made a nervous sound as the wind came around and seemed to be speaking to its master.

“Which way? Which way? We know the way. We know the way…”

“The way to what?” he asked, rather sardonically, but without fear, his voice breaking the silence and echoing here and there, although he did not shout over the wind, speaking as he was to it—or what was within it.

“The way, the way … The way to safety, to warmth and comfort, to clean water and lush green fields…”

“You’ll not buy me that cheap,” he retorted. “Think you that I would be out here in this miserable place for lack of such things? I am the richest thief in Husaquahr! All those things were not enough!”

“To safety, to safety,,… Where neither man nor god will find you…”

He drew himself up straight in the saddle, pride dispelling his weariness of body and spirit. “I am the greatest thief in the history of Husaquahr!” he retorted in a regal tone. “I fear neither man nor god, having stolen from both, and never caught!” That was not quite true, he knew, but if one spit into the wind, better it blow back praise than cold spittle.

“A quest, a quest…He is under a geas and embarked upon a quest… “

“No geas, not for such as I,” he told the wind. “I quest as I steal, not for others, but for my own pleasure and interests.”

“We can lead you there, lead you there … ” the wind asserted. “The wind goes everywhere and sees all things… The wind can find who or what you seek…”

“Persistent, nagging spirit! You are not even powerful enough to know in advance that I am on a quest, let alone for what it is that I seek! I, who have stolen the sacred jewels from the navels of gods themselves and plucked the rings from demons’ noses, will not be taken in by the likes of you! Now, be gone or be silent!”

“Who can silence the wind?” the wind mocked. “Who can banish it when it wants to caress? The wind which grinds the very rock to dust, which gives strength and power to fire or blows it out as only the wind chooses, who stirs the water and cools it and uses it to batter the shore? Who are you to command the wind?” it mocked in its screaming, eerie voice.

“Well, someone commands you” he responded. “You speak as a cat but you obey like a dog. Whose big-mouthed puppy are you?”

“Follow the wind,” it responded. “Follow the wind to that which you seek.”

He thought a moment, seeming almost amused by all this despite the grim setting. “All right, then—lead on. I might as well be somewhere before dark.” But he reached under his woolen robe to his tunic and touched his blade just to make certain it was ready.

It wasn’t difficult to tell the way, although it was the opposite of following just about anything else. You just headed the one direction that the wind was not, in this case to the left and up a bit, away from the deadly little white river.

It was near dark when he came to her, but she was not hard to find for all that. She sat there, crouching before a welcome fire, a delicate and mysterious figure in azure robes. His horse started a bit upon seeing her, but the traveler calmed him, then slid off the saddle and approached the lady at the fire.

She looked up at his approach, and he was struck by her dark beauty almost at once, as he’d suspected he would be. He was not certain how much of that beauty was real, but the fire was, and that was enough for the moment.

“Come, good sir, and be warmed by my fire,” she invited, in a soft, very sexy voice.

He seemed quite relaxed. “I thank you, Madam. It feels good after the chill your pet sent to me upon the sunset.”

She was puzzled by him, and by his casual manner, as if he knew not only her own secrets but all the secrets of the world. He was a small but very strong-looking man, with a big hawk nose and small, almost beady little black eyes that seemed to reflect the dancing flames perfectly.

“You do not seem at all curious about me, or how I came to be here,” she noted.

He sighed wearily. “Well, Madam, if you be here alone in this accursed place, then I take you to be either an enchantress or dead or of the world usually unseen—or perhaps all of them together. Whichever, you build a mighty good fire.”

That drew from her a bemused smile, and perhaps a hint of wariness in her eyes, for clearly this was no lost and innocent pilgrim, nor did he fit the mold of great hero or wandering adventurer. “Are you then a sorcerer who walks the land without fear?”

He chuckled. “As I told your blowhard puppy, I am—I was a thief. The greatest in all the land. That does not mean, of course, that I am without skills in the magical arts, but they are of a specialized sort. One cannot last long in my line of work without being able to beat all the systems, as it were.”

“And yet you do not fear me? Or is it, rather, the thrill of danger that propels your life and gives you energy and meaning?”

“That last is true for ordinary thieves,” he admitted readily, “and once, when I was young and did not know how very good I was, it was true for me. No longer. I have outgrown fear because it is a weakness that interferes with thought at the time one needs it most. I do not fear you, Madam, because I have already looked into the faces of horror far worse than even the undead can comprehend and it reams the soul of such inclinations. Nor is it that I have a choice. Better to sit here in the fire’s warm glow and speak with you than to wonder where or what you might be in the darkness. No, I cannot afford to fear you. Let us say, rather, that I respect your potential.”

That brought a slight smile to her lips. “Are you escaping, then, the pursuit of your latest escapade? Or are you, rather, going between here and there?”

“One is always going between here and there,” he responded lightly. “I have been on a quest for a very long time; a quest for a kind of magic that no one else can or will offer me and which is beyond my power to steal. It is quite frustrating, particularly for a master thief, to discover that there is something that you want and need that is beyond the power of the greatest thief to steal. I, who can beg, buy, borrow, or steal most anything any mind can imagine in this world, cannot have this one thing, so I must go searching for one who can supply it.”

“What is such a thing as that?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“I have been to the Other World and found it a world where magicks far greater than any dreamed of in Husaquahr are taken for granted even by the poorest folk, who buy miracles at a discount and never even think twice about it. Their magical devices are beyond number in kind and abilities and do things even the greatest of our sorcerers would find impossible to imagine. I have such devices, brought back with me from that expedition, but I soon discovered that they are not sufficient in and of themselves. The sorcerers of that Other World dispense their miracles on the cheap, but they retain the ultimate power, in that the magical spells required for their devices to work their miracles are transitory and need frequent or constant renewal.

There one merely pays gold and the spells leap from the walls into the devices, but here there is no such thing. In my ignorance, I believed that the devices I have would retain their spells even away from such sources, but even mere the sorcerers of the Other World are clever. The devices ultimately consume and devour the magical energy themselves, over time and use, and I can get no more here. Only a very few of our greatest sorcerers could even synthesize such things and they will not. I search for one who can and will.”

“These must be devices of great power for you to come so far and surrender so much to gain their powers,” she noted.

He sighed once more. “They deliver something of insubstantial value, really. The images of a great epic quest, possibly the greatest epic produced by the poets of the civilization of the Other World. It is long and magnificent, each act a work of unparalleled brilliance, mixing humor and pathos to a degree unknown here by our finest poets and bards. Once any mind capable of appreciating its genius beholds it, that mind cannot rest until it beholds the saga once more. The saga is there, as if the actors come out and perform their great play only for you and at your command, but beyond my power to view. Such frustration has driven me near madness. I must see it again, and it is there, yet beyond my sight!”

She seemed genuinely fascinated. “Go, tend to your mount, make camp here for the night, and when you are ready you must tell me of this great saga,” she said softly.

Whether witch, ghost, or creature, he was delighted to have an opportunity after brooding alone upon it for so long to talk of his great passion with someone new and eager to listen. Next to himself, it was the subject he loved to talk upon most of all. And, like the subject of himself, it was a subject almost nobody else wanted to hear him speak about.

She seemed very patient and understanding, even interested, and he was so very, very lonely. He knew not if she be nymph or goddess, demon or sorceress, but she was something right now that he needed very, very badly; the one thing he could not even steal in these trackless wastes.

She was an audience.

The wind which had been constantly swirling and twisting and screaming through the wastelands paused as well; the very air seemed impossibly frozen, the night still, yet oddly expectant. Although incredibly weary, his voice echoed from the dark walls unseen beyond the firelight with the strength and vigor of youth as the very experience brought forth his last reserves of energy, saved for just such an occasion as this.