Songs of the Dancing Gods

CHAPTER 14 SWAN SONG FOR HEROES

That is not dead
which can eternal lie;
And in strange eons,
even death may die.

—The Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred

Serpentine heads from the three-headed gorgon loomed nightmarishly over the suddenly very small, frail figure of Ruddygore. One of the heads licked its chops with a horrendous forked tongue and made to go down for the figure. Suddenly, it stopped, its eyes wide.

“Why, it can’t be!” the left head exclaimed. It swooped down and examined Ruddygore almost like a specimen in a jar. The right head followed.

“It is! It is!” the right head cried. “Look! It’s young Muloch, all grown up and become a real sorcerer!”

“No!” the middle head exclaimed. “And yet—yes, you just might be right!”

The heads jerked around in rare unison until three sets of flaming, flaring nostrils were right in front of Ruddygore as he struggled to his feet.

“Hello, boys!” he managed. “Good to see you! It’s Ruddy-gore these days.”

Sugasto stood, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. “Destroy him! Eat him!” he screamed.

“Who’s that boorish little prick?” the left head roared.

“He’s very loud,” the center head noted.

“And most uncivil,” the right head chimed in.

“An old student of mine who got ambitious,” Ruddygore told it or them. “The sort who wonders too early why he should be taking lessons from an old fart when he knows, or thinks he knows, more than his teacher.”

“Can we eat him?” the right head asked.

“Oooh! Let’s!” the left head responded.

The center head looked at Ruddygore, who turned up his arms in an exaggerated “I-don’t-care” shrug.

“All right, lads! At him, then!” the center head cried.

Sugasto unfroze and started running for the palace and solid ground.

“Oh, what fun!” the left head said.

“Yes, it’s always much more fun when they run!” the right agreed.

Sugasto made it to the black, warm earth and scrambled up, the gorgon not far behind him. He reached the top not far from Marge and Tiana, and suddenly froze again.

Legions of blank-eyed zombies blocked his path.

Macore was singing the Gilligan’s Island song to them from the wall. He pointed. “There he is! There’s the one who broke it! Com’on, little buddies! At ’em!”

Sugasto stared and raised his hand. “Back! Back! I am the Master of the Dead! Obey me!”

But they continued to stare vacantly, blocking his way up, and, from behind him the center head of the gorgon came down and seized him in its jaws, then lifted him, screaming, by its mouth.

The other two heads started objecting and tearing into the sorcerer, who soon stopped struggling. The center head coiled, like a spring, then let go, tossing Sugasto high in the air, the heads jockeying for position as he came down.

“I’ve got him!”

“No you haven’t! I’ve got him!”

But he went right down the center head’s gullet, and that head suddenly had an incredibly pleased look about its grisly self.

“No fair! You cheated!” the right head complained.

“Yes, you were the one who threw him up, and you knew how hard and how far,” the left head commiserated.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” the center head huffed. “Regurgitate him so you can have a second shot?”

“After all this time in this crazy world,” Marge commented, “I thought I’d seen it all and couldn’t be surprised by anything anymore.” She shook her head in wonder. “Boy, was I wrong about that!”

Marge and Tiana turned from this argument to Macore, who was standing below before an audience of the living dead.

“Macore! How did you do it?” Tiana called to him.

He shrugged sheepishly. “I dunno. I made a run for it when the buildings started shaking, then decided to see if I could at least save some of the tapes. There they were, all staring at this busted television. When I came in, they turned on me. Surrounded by zombies, there was nothing else I could think to do, so I started singing, and they followed me out! Somehow, in their dim brains, I think they think I’m Gilligan!”

Out on the ice, Ruddygore approached the gorgon. “I always wondered what happened to you,” he said to no head in particular.

“Oh, Gastorix called us from the High Mounts of Ris,” the center head responded.

“We knew it was a doomed cause, but he was such a nice old fellow,” the left head added.

“Played a positively delightful harp, too,” the right head put in.

“Boys, that was three thousand years ago. You’ve been locked in that long. Things have changed.”

The heads looked around. “Not all that much,” the center head said.

“Still looks wizard eat wizard to me,” the right head agreed.

“Same old story,” the left head sighed. “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy turns into hideous monster and eats her.”

Ruddygore stopped for a moment, thinking about it. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it isn’t all that different after all,” he agreed. “Uh—but we have fewer and lesser types to contend with these days. What else is likely to come out of that meltdown? You and I know that in the old days you wouldn’t have been able to nab someone of Sugasto’s stature that easily.”

The gorgon heads turned and looked back at the mist.

“Cooling down already,” the center head said.

“Yes, indeed,” the other two heads agreed in unison.

“Oh, I suspect you’ll have quite an assemblage of demons, wicked fairies, that sort of thing stalking around,” the center head told him, “if, of course, they can figure out how to get out of there before being swallowed back up. Most of them, though, were re-absorbed, what with everyone all crushing up to get out all at once.”

“Not everyone is able to throw their weight around the way we can,” the right head pointed out.