Songs of the Dancing Gods

“I know. But unless you can find out how in the hell they swap minds and souls so effortlessly and have somebody there to do it, it doesn’t do anybody any damned good anyway. But, alive, it can do horrible damage.”

Joe thought about it. He was uneasy enough at anybody else doing it, but he didn’t want this job at all. “Doesn’t it seem stupid to send up the only guy they can get all the details from to make their Joe real?”

“Ordinarily, yes, but I suspect you’re going to be more of a target here than in there. Also, you have certain advantages.

There are few guns here, and no silver bullets, to my knowledge. As a were, without silver in your bloodstream, you’re essentially immortal. That’s a rather good edge in a fight. You’re resourceful, and you’re used to working in the enemy backfield. As a barbarian with a face as yet unknown to the enemy, you won’t be out of place in a militaristic state girding for conquest. And, frankly, you above all others have at least some stake in saving your adopted country from, essentially, yourself.”

“What about Tiana?”

“That’s up to you. She has many of the same advantages as you. She’s still tough, she’s as smart as she ever was—don’t ever forget that!—and she’ll do her duty. I think, in fact, she above all should have the right to be there.”

“Have you told her yet? I assume you talked to her.”

“I did, I didn’t tell her, and she won’t remember we talked.”

Joe started. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing much, I assure you. She is the way she is for the same reason that you became fully and completely Joey the wood nymph, not due to my sorcery. I gave her some protections. She will no longer answer to Tiana. That’s an essential one, I think. She will answer to Ti, or any other name you want to give her, but if you call ‘Tiana,’ she will not respond. Since no one but Boquillas knows what the two of you now look like, it is a safety precaution. I might suggest a total name change if you can keep it straight. You, too, at least temporarily.”

“It’s her body, damn it! Why didn’t you tell her of this, or at the same time as me?”

“Because she would be incapable of making an honest decision on it, and because slaves do not discuss matters of import with their betters. They tune them out. You tell her, as master to slave, but she cannot be here as a coequal, even in this.”

“If I take her, and they capture us both, they’ll have everything they need,” he pointed out.

“That is not exactly true. She has a very strong memory of a slave she once knew, the daughter of a dirt poor serf who wound up a palace maid. I built on the memory, fusing it with a bit of imagination and other histories I know to give her a complete background from birth to now. She’s protected better than you in some ways.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Tell me true—do you still love her?”

“I—sort of. Not in the way I used to. I know that sounds terrible, but it hasn’t been quite the same since, well, she went from being a mermaid to this current body. But I do care for and about her, a lot.”

“Don’t blame yourself for that. Tiana did it when she used the Lamp to wish you back.”

“Huh?”

“The mermaid’s spell. Men who make love to mermaids always consider it to be the greatest emotional and sexual experience they ever had. When she wished you back, when she was a mermaid, she wished you’d return as the perfect mermaid lover and make love to her. She thought it would insure your fidelity. It did—but no longer to her.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” Joe breathed. “And I been thinking I was a dirty skunk!”

“Does that make it easier?”

“It does and it doesn’t. Damn, Ruddygore! This means I can never really be totally satisfied by any woman ever again!”

“Everything has its price.”

“Easy for you to say! And while I’m at it, I’ve got another problem along those lines.” Quickly he told the sorcerer about his encounter with the wood nymphs.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” the sorcerer told him. “There didn’t seem much point in bringing it up, since at the time I could do nothing about it. When I had Boquillas/Mahalo under my spell I tried to get the mechanism, but he had cleverly laid the same sort of mental traps in himself as I use. The moment I demanded it, the formula and its concepts erased. Dacaro wasn’t much more help. He performed them, sometimes, but it was far too complex for him to understand, let alone remember. He only said that it was strikingly different every single time, as if each switch required its own independent spell. I’ve worked and worked on it and I can’t understand how it’s even possible.”

“So I’ve got to watch out for silver and iron.”

“No, it’s more complex than that. Iron is only a threat if it kills at the same time both body and soul. Silver is fatal to the body; it will release the soul which will form its husk. Then you would be vulnerable to iron alone. The were curse goes when the body goes. In effect, the odds are that you’re as close to unkillable as anything short of angel or demon.”

“Great. So I’m an almost immortal guy who can never be lucky in love again, but if I do get potted with silver or burned to a crisp, I become a wood nymph.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Ruddygore admitted. “I wouldn’t take it all that hard. Fairies are immune from the Lamp. You knew that. If we’d brought you and the Lamp together early enough, we might have stopped it before your soul completely transformed, but by the time we did, it was already totally changed, and, of course, we also did it from a slight distance. The Lamp was faced with a dilemma and it did what it could. It formed the old ‘you’ as modified by Tiana’s wish around the fairy core.”

“Isn’t there any way to unmodify it?”

“Fairy flesh? I sincerely doubt it. Even if your soul was removed by whatever trick Sugasto uses, it would still be fairy. But is it so horrible? Marge seems to enjoy it.”

“Marge is not a brainless bimbo living in a tree!”

“Well, I can’t do much about the tree, or the bimbo part whatever that is, but Tiana’s wish at least insured that you won’t turn brainless. She also wished your mind restored with all of its memories. The Lamp’s magic supercedes the Rules of Husaquahr. That is why it is so dangerous.”

“Wait a second. You’re saying that even if my body were destroyed, I’d still have my memories, who I was and what I was, and be as smart as I ever was?”

“I guarantee it. In fact, even now, you’re a very rare breed indeed. You’re a hybrid. Your invocation of fairy sight shows that. The wood nymph is one of the most common creatures of faerie, and all will consider you one of them, since they see the inside first. If you really reach, you’ve probably got all the powers a wood nymph has, although there are, admittedly, fewer of those than with some races and the majority of those powers I’m sure you’d rather not invoke. Still, you should never reject something in the arsenal.”

Joe sighed. “Yeah, and the only one I can think of that might be useful isn’t gonna be much good in the Cold Wastes. No trees.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

He looked at Ruddygore. “All right. Against all my instincts and better judgment, I’ll try. But I have a very bad feeling about this one, and the last one was something of a disaster. Most of all, I hate leaving Irving, but he’s not ready by a long shot to get into this sort of thing and, in a bad situation, he’d be a club over my head.”

“I agree. But if he’s in Gorodo’s capable hands and learning how to be as great a fighter as his father, I think he’ll be okay.”

“Gorodo! Oh, he’ll love Gorodo! On that son of a bitch’s final exam, I got turned into a horse!”

“Oh, that Circe’s a setup. Didn’t you ever figure that out? Everybody winds up a horse or cow or pig or something. If you can’t face that kind of problem and still make it back, then you’re not going to make it in this world as a mercenary, are you?”

“Well I’d be damned!”

“Not before Judgment Day, if you’re cautious and lucky.”