Songs of the Dancing Gods

“Forget it. You heard what the man said. No use pushing our luck.”

“But there is one night of the full moon left, Master! The longest, just about all night! If one of us could somehow be next to that creature at moonrise…”

“Hmmm… I see what you mean. It might carry us and our supplies a pretty fair distance by dawn.”

“Then you will give me permission to do it?”

He looked around. “There’s got to be thousands of lonely men on this base. I’m not gonna leave you here for hours and hours just on the off chance you might get in there. Too dangerous.”

“Master, I am but your property, your tool. It is my function to try this if it is possible.”

“No, if anybody tries it, it should be me. I can bluff my way around for a while if this pass is any good, and I weigh more than twice what you weigh, so more could be carried.”

“Master, someone must get everything together and ready. I cannot leave without you. They would notice. Your safe conduct is nothing for me. And if I left carrying your sword, if I could, it would be noticed. But if you left, they would hardly remember the slave you came in with. I am the only one. And as you will change, too, probably to Kauri, you will be able to fly as well. But you must remember to wrap all things iron securely and only what we need and what the two of you together could lift.”

He frowned. Damn it, it did seem worth a try, and since they wouldn’t really be stealing anything, nothing would be missed. And, so long as she was not caught and managed to get away, two big “ifs,” even if it proved impractical, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.

“You really think you can do it?”

“Master, the worst that happens is that I get caught and must be a tearful slave who lost her way. Otherwise, I shall simply become one of these men, or a Bentar, or something similar and nothing is lost. Yes, I believe I can do it.”

“All right, then. Let’s test out this safe conduct and go see the pegasus. If you can give everybody around the slip and hide nearby, it’s on. Otherwise, you get on your horse, which will be left there, and you come out with me.”

She nodded.

When you act like you have nothing to fear, it’s amazing how easily you can move around restricted areas. They were stared at, now and again, but they reached the area where the flying horses—or, as they discovered when they got there, more properly flying horse—were kept before anybody even tentatively asked for their authorization.

Joe whipped out the safe conduct, and the man who made the challenge blanched and lost all his belligerence. Sugasto was right about one brag: his army was scared stiff of him.

The pegasus was grazing, much like any other horse, the huge wings folded up and at its sides. Joe stared and stared at it and couldn’t for the life of him figure out how something this large could fly without a jet engine, but he’d had much the same feeling about Kauris, too. Not that the pegasus was a big animal; disregarding the wings it was actually a bit smaller than it looked when flying, perhaps more like a circus pony, complete with hairy hooves, although the legs looked impossibly thin, so thin that it was almost easier to believe it could fly than to believe it could stand up for long on them. Incredibly, aside from a long rope tied around its neck on one end and to a post on the other, there was no apparent stable or pen for it, and there seemed nobody around to ask.

“You really think you can do this?” he asked her, worried.

“Yes, Master, I do. There are plenty of shadowy places near the buildings there, and tall grass and rocks.”

“Like as not the guy’ll come back and fly it away. Then what?”

“Then I will return to you as something else.”

They walked away from the pegasus and toward the shadows from the nearest building, which appeared to be some kind of livery supply or maintenance shed. In a moment, they were in back of it and out of possible sight against the back of a hill. After a minute or so, he knew they’d not been seen.

He stood there a moment, looking at her. She was hairless and naked and plain-looking, a hairless little eunuch…

He grabbed her suddenly, and kissed her the way neither he nor any other man had ever kissed her before, the kind of kiss you know only in your dreams. Suddenly, he released her, whispered, “Don’t fail me,” and walked back out into the open, leaving her standing there, totally speechless.

She would never fail him, she knew. She would die for him first.

* * *

“You left her where to do what?” Marge almost shouted at him. “How could you? Her life versus maybe two weeks time?”

“It was her idea. She came up with it and she just about pleaded to do it.”

“With maybe twenty thousand horny guys around and Sugasto, for Christ’s sake! Not to mention the Bentar!”

“I know, I know.”

“Yeah? You ever thought that, if she actually does make the change, she’s gonna need almost a runway to take off in, galloping the whole way? And when she gets up there in the dark she’s gonna have some big, leather-winged goons just waiting to pounce? You think a horse can fly like a Kauri?”

“No, I hadn’t thought about some of those things, and thanks for giving me more things to worry about,” he responded.

“Then why in hell did you let her do it?”

He stared at his old friend and comrade. “Because I thought she could,” he said simply.

She stared at him. “Holy cats! You’re in love with her! Oh, great! What an odd couple you two make!”

He sighed. “You’ve been a fairy too long, Marge. You don’t plan these things. Since we left Terindell, she’s been a whole different person. And, no, I know what you’re thinking—it’s not the kinky bondage stuff. I’d do away with that in a minute if the Rules allowed it. It’s beyond that sort of crap. Throw it away. Ignore the slave thing. She’s been a partner, tough, has more guts than any man of any status I ever met, as smart as anybody I know, and in just a short week she’s become my indispensable left arm. She’s got all the qualities I loved in Ti, only more so, but without the qualities that kept us apart. I don’t know another person who wouldn’t have been destroyed by what’s been done to her, yet the more she was stripped of everything, the stronger she’s grown. The laws, the Rules, and the sorcerers took everything people think they desire from her, stripping her down to her core, and that core’s proved already to be somebody remarkable. ”

She stared at him. “Boy, you got it bad.” Still, she had to admit, he had a real point. That girl was beginning to look like somebody who, were it not for the slave business, would take Husaquahr by the tail and shake it.

The odd thing was, had she not been a slave, she probably would never have revealed or even known how good she was. She’d be somebody’s wife, or maybe a political manipulator or something like that, depending on where she was, but she’d never have been forced to test herself and would never have been willing to take the kind of chances she took. When you had nothing, not even your dignity, you also had nothing to lose. With no inhibitions even possible, and with her brains and resourcefulness, Marge thought, she was probably more dangerous than anybody, even Joe in a rage.

“She’s not gonna look any better, either,” Marge pointed out.

He shrugged. “I married my first wife because she had the most stunning looks of any woman I’d ever seen. She had the soul of a viper—if she has a soul at all. With Ti, it was not only her looks but her education, her background, her breeding—all the stuff neither I nor my first wife had. I may be slow and ignorant, but even I eventually learn. I guess it was because everybody always prejudged me by my looks. This is a primo lesson in how unimportant that crap really is. Boquillas was one of the best-looking, dashing, charismatic men I ever met. Sugasto was kind of a pretty boy, too, when we first met him. It’s what’s behind the face and eyes that count.”

“Well, okay, Lover Boy, we’ll talk more about this some other time,” the Kauri said at last. “If she’s that