Songs of the Dancing Gods

The concept of being eaten alive forever hadn’t lingered far from Mia’s consciousness. She was off like a shot.

The Kauri, it was true, had no offense at all, but they were by no means helpless. In addition to Marge’s bag of illusory magic tricks, they were very light and very, very fast when they needed to be, and had a flight instinct second to none. There were some birds and tiny fairies, like pixies, that could match them in speed, but for both speed and distance they were virtually unequaled.

Mia rose, caught a fast current, and made six or seven miles from the military camp to the hotel roof in no more than seven minutes, a sprint that, she suddenly realized, meant she’d made something like sixty miles an hour! And she’d done it without really thinking at all!

Incredibly impressed with herself, she was equally amazed to find that Joe had beaten her.

“It’s the collar,” he said. “Probably slowed you down a bit. And, yeah, I’m impressed, too. I never knew she could do that. And we’re not even breathing particularly hard!” He looked around and frowned. “But where is Marge?”

They waited worriedly for several minutes. Finally, the real Kauri arrived, but not from the direction of camp, flying low.

“Sorry, but I figured I’d give ’em something to chase in the wrong direction. They’re pretty slow, relatively speaking. I had actually to slow down so I wouldn’t lose ’em until I was ready to.”

“What were they?” Joe asked, looking around at the sky.

“Nazga. All leathery wings and teeth and hard as a rock. Not too bright on their own, though, and one of ’em had riders. Odds were they were just told to patrol for flying intruders as a routine thing.”

“I’m not so sure about that other gathering now,” Joe said worriedly. “They’ll have a lot more security there than at the camp, and it’s possible they may be warned about us.”

“Aw, I doubt if those flying stomachs will bother warning anybody. They have enough trouble remembering their own names,” Marge replied. “But, you’re right. They’ll have a lot more security. I’m still game, though, if you are.”

Joe sat back on the rooftop and sighed. Mia looked at him and couldn’t get over how naturally feminine the moves and manner of the big macho man were as a Kauri. The fact that it was still his methodical fighting man’s mind speaking actually just gave his form real strength.

In fact, except for the slight difference in accent and choice of words, Joe, as a Kauri, seemed just like Marge.

“All right,” he said at last. “But we don’t push it. If we can’t get near, then we can’t get near. Understood?”

They both nodded.

“And, in any event,” he reminded them, “we’d better be back well before dawn.”

Mia looked at the horizon. “But where do we look for them?” she asked.

“We follow the road, of course,” he answered. “If they’ve got it blocked north, then it’s got to lead where they don’t want anyone going.”

They hadn’t flown on long before Mia said, “There’s a slight fog of some kind. You can see all right, but it’s like a thin, dark film over everything.”

“That’s been there since we entered this vile land,” Marge responded. “It’s just that you hadn’t had anything to contrast it with before. Now it’s getting more dense.”

“What is it?” Mia asked, curious.

“It is evil,” Marge told her. “It is the cloak of pure evil.” The Kauri felt no heat or cold, but Mia still felt a very real chill go through her. “It seems to come from the northwest,” she noted.

“Yes,” Joe agreed. “From Hypboreya.”

They passed over some military roadblocks, Joe noting that all the guards were Bentar. Clearly, if you got this far, you weren’t just going to be turned around with a warning. If you were lucky, the creatures from the dark side of faerie would kill you.

Beyond the roadblocks they flew low to the ground, hoping to avoid any faster and more efficient flying sentinels. Marge, who had all the experience in this sort of thing, took the lead, as the road and ground rose sharply in a series of switchbacks leading up the side of the great plateau. On a tiny ledge, Marge settled and the other two joined her.

“Well,” she said, “there it is.”

Below them were possibly the darkest forces in the service of Hypboreya, lined up as if for inspection, more immobile than any such armed force could possibly be. An army of the living dead.

“They look in a lot better shape than that crew Sugasto had around him the last time I had a run-in with him,” Marge commented.

“Those were reanimated corpses,” Joe reminded her. “Their value is as much psychological as anything, as you proved. Even a Kauri can kick their face in. I would doubt if they could handle the reanimation without a real expert sorcerer in the immediate neighborhood to keep them moving and direct their every action. These people below us are corpses, in a way, but they’re not dead. These are people whose souls he’s stolen and got bottled up somewhere, but whose bodies keep on. No souls, but with the rest of their brains keeping their bodies going, maybe even some of their skills, just no way to use them. They don’t think, but they can obey even complex commands.”

Mia was appalled. “There are thousands of them! Both men and women, too! Even children in some of those brigades! How monstrous!”

Joe nodded. “That’s why they’re so confident. They can probably send small numbers of these, mixed by age and sex, into various parts of Marquewood and maybe beyond. They’d have to be fed, of course, but they wouldn’t care what they ate. And, for whatever reason, their masters could send them anywhere, to do just about anything. There, Mia, is the step below slaves, doing whatever they’re told, knowing nothing, feeling nothing.”

“It’s the sickest thing I ever saw!” Marge commented. “It’s turning people into—robots. Machines.”

“Will they do that to their whole army?” Mia asked, sickened. “Those boys…”

“No, I doubt it,” Joe reassured her. “For one thing, a power like this is unique. The power to do this is also the power to pull the swaps. If you had that kind of power, would you let all your underlings know it? Who would you trust? Even Sugasto has to sleep sometime, have guards, servants. How would he know who to trust? Uh-uh. The Master of Dead would die himself before he’d let that secret out to anybody.”

“Except the Dark Baron,” Marge reminded him. “Remember, Boquillas pulled that trick, too, back on Earth.”

“Yeah, but only with help. He has no real power of his own, remember. I don’t know if Sugasto told him, or if he simply figured it out after seeing it done. He’s that smart. And, remember, he had a way so that even Dacaro, who was working the thing for him, couldn’t figure it out himself, and Ruddygore said the Baron purged his mind of the mechanism to prevent it getting out. So, it’s Sugasto. That means our Master of the Dead did all that handiwork himself down there. Others can control and work them, of course, but only he can make a zombie.”

“That’s what your old body is or was like then,” Marge noted.

He nodded. “But he’ll need more than animation, more than programming, and more than just a good actor to pull off his scheme. The government knew we weren’t coming back and was glad to get rid of us, I think. They couldn’t oppose our return, but they’d assassinate both if they had the slightest suspicion they were being had.”

“But what are they doing here!” Mia asked him.

Joe pointed to a small compound just beyond the lines of zombies. “There. That’s the reason. This whole force is a bodyguard for whoever’s in there. Dollars to doughnuts that’s Sugasto in there with his commanders, and that the vast majority of these poor people were created on the spot, maybe over the last couple of days.”

“Then those crates near the building there—see them?” Mia pointed. “They are commercial wine crates— but there is not much wine grown in Valisandra. Even I know that.”

Marge gave a slight gasp. “That’s because those bottles have no wine in them. They’re the souls of these