Songs of the Dancing Gods

than her normal one to permit that.

And although her pierced earrings fell through the flesh to the floor, the ring still remained in her nose.

They hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed logical. Ruddygore said that, once in, nothing save death could remove ft.

Marge looked at it critically. “Huh! The only Kauri slave in all history! I hope that doesn’t set a precedent.”

“It won’t,” Joe responded, in a voice absolutely identical to Marge’s. “I think at least we’ll find that the ring has no effect.”

“You are right!” Mia said, delighted. “You are not my master or mistress or whatever it means for now.”

“Only temporarily,” Joe reminded her. “Jeez. The last time I was turned female I was embarrassed as hell. This just feels like a different suit of clothes. Maybe I’m finally getting able to handle almost anything.”

“I—I have never been of faerie before,” Mia commented. “It does not feel all that different. I wish I could keep these breasts, though.” She reached up and touched the back of her head. “And hair again!”

“You want different?” Joe responded. “Try a whole new set of muscles along your back you never had before.”

“Well, we can all sit in here and gab, or we can have a little fun,” Marge said. “Let me put out the light.” She went over and blew out the oil lamp.

“But it’s so dark—” Mia began, then stopped, her words ending with a gasp. It wasn’t dark. Everything was so clear, so sharp, so detailed! And the other two, they were softly glowing, a beautiful pastel reddish pink.

No, there was a difference, but very slight, in Joe’s glow, almost as if there was some green which the reddish glow did not quite mask.

“Been so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to see human,” Marge commented. “The main thing to remember, though, is to think only about those things that need thinking about, like where you’re goin’ and what you wanna do. Let the body do what it does naturally and don’t fight it. Guide, but let the body do the work.” She went over to the window. “Everybody ready?”

“But I have never flown before—on my own wings!”

“Just get up on the windowsill, look where you’re goin’ —that’s the important part—and kick off!” Marge said, disappearing out the window.

“Go ahead,” Joe urged her. “It’s just your mental conditioning getting in the way. I was the same way once myself.” He got her up on the windowsill, but she looked out and got really nervous.

Suddenly, Joe pushed her behind, and out she went. For a moment, she felt as if she were falling, but, suddenly, she felt the flap of the wings on her back and soared upward.

Marge was suddenly beside her. “Relax, let the wings do the work,” she cautioned. “Don’t even think about them. Justly.”

Now Joe was beside her, too, and they were up, up in the night sky, far over the town.

Once she learned to let go and relax, it became almost second nature to fly. It was wonderful, one of the greatest feelings she’d ever known!

The landscape spread out all around her, but it looked quite different, not only because of the aerial perspective but also because of additional sights and information she was now receiving. Somehow, she instantly knew where she was in relation to anything else she could see, and just exactly how far it was to any point from there. While it was clearly dark, everything was easily visible in great detail, and much that was not seen by human eyes was visible, too. The very air had slight, subtle coloration and texture, and tiny sparklies of varying colors moved along, saying exactly where the air was moving, and how fast.

Areas of forest and field and far-off mountains also had their own strange patterns. Complex patterns, mostly, like tiny spi-derweblike strings of every color, intensity, and hue, and in and around areas where nothing should be there were patches of various pastel blobs in a variety of sizes.

It was beautiful.

“Fairy sight,” Joe told her. “The strings are spells, magic and sorcery of some sort. The blobs are living things, creatures mostly of faerie. Although we’re a sort of soft red, in general watch out for the reds and yellows and whites. They tend to be on the darker side of faerie. The blues and greens tend to be almost always to the good, the rest sort of in-betweens. Don’t take them for granted, though. As the Kauri are reds, and not evil, so, too, are there exceptions to all the Rules.”

“The reason why they call the darkest magic black is that it is,” Marge told her. “And black strings and blobs blend in and can’t be so easily seen until it’s too late. If you ever see any sort of blackness and suspect it might have moved, ever so slightly, stay away! Don’t depend on fairy flesh or the were curse to save you—there are things far worse than death. Just imagine something eating you alive… forever.”

The point was well taken, although, in truth, as weres they were better protected than Marge.

“Let’s go over to the military encampment first,” Joe suggested. “It’s likely to have fewer defenses from ones like us than the other place where the bigwigs are, and I want to see just what the hell they’re training for.”

It was becoming easier by the moment. You just picked some sparklies that were going in the general direction you wanted and got into their flow. Only when you had no lifting aid from the air did you work at it, and it quickly was becoming automatic, even at that.

“Remember,” Marge warned, “we’re just about incapable of an offense, so, if you run into anything, fly or run like hell. If you can’t, let me handle it and go along with whatever I do, no matter how idiotic it looks to you. There are a few things only experience can tell you.”

From this height, you could see the military camp clearly, even at this distance. It was huge, with tents and temporary structures all over the place, some going all the way out to the horizon.

A lot of the Valisandran army was there, much of it bedding down for the night, but both Joe and Mia were struck by the enormous waves of feelings coming from the camp. Enormous waves of loneliness, unhappiness, even despair, and, over all, an atmosphere of terrible fear you could almost see. It was almost too much for Mia to handle, and she fought back tears. “Those poor guys,” she sympathized.

“Yeah, you really get the weight of the world as a Kauri.” Marge sighed. “After a while, though, you get to handle most anything. To me, that’s the biggest banquet hall I ever did see.”

“Yes, but how do you feed on it?” Mia asked, and, almost immediately, her body told her. “Ohhh…” she managed.

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t feel hungry right now,” Marge told her, “because I’ve had no problems getting energy around this place and you got what I got. Maybe tomorrow night. It just seems normal only you get a whole extra body kick to it and, instead of being tired at the end, you’re rarin’ to go.”

Joe ignored the interchange, far more interested in the lay of the land. “There’s the centaurs there. Big, mean-looking suckers, aren’t they? They’d be like mounted archers that could hit a target at a couple of hundred yards, I bet. And over there, off by themselves… Bentar! I knew those bastards would be here someplace!”

The Bentar were the fiercest race of fighting fairies, totally without mercy, conscience, or any moral sense at all. Their tall, grim visages were at once like a bird of prey and yet oddly reptilian, with mean eyes that reflected the light. You didn’t need fairy sight to know those were real sons of bitches down there.

“I don’t understand it,” Marge said, shaking her head. “It looks as if they’re assembling something the size of the Battle of Sorrow’s Gorge, yet where’s the heavy stuff? The big catapults and siege machines and all the rest and the second army on wheels with all the supplies?”

Joe thought it over. “The only reason you’d have something like this without those things is if you didn’t think you were going to need them,” he replied. “That’s not an army of conquest being assembled down there—it’s an army of occupation.”

Mia looked out over the assemblage and to the stars beyond, and, quite suddenly, a few of the stars winked out, then on again, then others did the same.

“Black shapes!” she warned. “Coming in fast from the plain! Flying!”

“Scatter!” Marge shouted. “Rendezvous back on the hotel roof!”