Songs of the Dancing Gods

but it was no longer a place neither understood nor abnormally feared, if one respected its own unique Rules and powers.

No longer feeling the threat of pursuit, and with Macore leading a careful and meticulous examination of what was and was not possible within the eerie area, they actually grew confident enough to try a few things that made life much easier. The blocks of ice proved unnecessary in the end, although one still had to be very careful, and that alone improved both men’s speed and comfort. Still, by sunrise, exhaustion was setting in. First it was Marge, already ill-suited for this journey and always having to force herself to work by day, then Mia, who’d had a full previous day, much of it strenuous, and Macore, who had earlier gone into the Devastation with his tests. Joe understood perfectly; he was going by force of will alone, determined that he would at least be the last to be seen failing.

“We aren’t going to make it.” Macore sighed wearily. “We’re just too all in, and we’re—what? Halfway, maybe, or a little more?”

“We can’t exactly do much else but press on,” Joe pointed out. “If we’re on target, to our right and left this goes on for fifty to a hundred miles, and it’s at least twenty back and maybe that forward.”

“Then we’re going to have to figure out some way to get some rest in here,” the thief responded.

“What do you suggest? Spread blankets and nod off?” the mercenary asked. “Lie on a blanket and you’ll draw Technicolor after a while, no matter what. Lie down in the snow and you might not, but the cold will transfer in through these furs and freeze our sweat.”

Macore stopped, knelt down, and examined the snow. “Maybe not. It’s very dry, powdery stuff, and there’s absolutely no wind in here. I suggest we take turns. One of the girls and one of us. We might get frostbite or worse, but if one each of us is up, we can watch over the sleepers, both for signs of freezing or any magic buildups. A blanket roll can act as a pillow, keeping the head up and our breath heading upward. I think it’s possible. On the other hand, it’s got to be possible. Otherwise we’re gonna drop one by one and get the full treatment anyway.”

“I can keep myself awake,” Joe told him, although he wasn’t all that sure he really could. “You take it first, Macore.”

“I will stay up with you, Master. I, too, can remain awake,” Mia insisted.

He shook his head. “No, Mia. I want one of the two of us at least to be in some kind of shape, and Marge is going to be a lot easier forcing herself to stay up now than in midday. Most of all, I trust you totally to keep me out of trouble while I’m out, so I might actually be able to rest; I’m not sure I’d trust Macore.”

It was a tough watch, although not particularly a boring one, as Mia would turn or shift, threatening to breathe down on the ice, only to have to be turned back, and Macore proved a fitful sleeper. Time and again there would be magical agitation starting, causing either Joe or Marge to have to make adjustments. In between, the two guardians had nothing to do but talk.

“Well,” Marge sighed, “here we are again, in the middle of it. It seems as if we keep doing it, theme and variation, over and over again. Same old challenges, same old enemies.”

He nodded. “When we started off, it felt like old times, but it’s grown old quickly,” he told her. “I’m tired, Marge. Tired of being pushed around by forces over which I have no control, tired of being the only guy who can fight this or that villain, tired of playing the game. Sooner or later, my luck’s got to run out. The worst part is, I’m almost afraid that it won’t.”

“Huh?”

He gave a long, mournful sigh. “I keep thinking of what Sugasto said about Ruddygore—that the old man was maybe thee oldest living sorcerer, that he’d been playing the game so long that he was playing it on automatic, just to keep playing, with nothing but temporary objectives. Pushing pawns around the board like us, doing it again and again. Maybe Ruddygore loves the game for its own sake, but I don’t. I know evil is always around and all that, but we small few can’t be the only ones who can fight it. We can’t be. Most heroes and heroines in the stories and legends get no more than three shots and they’re gone, happily-ever-aftering or riding off into the sunset. We just seem to be going on and on and on.”

“I know what you mean,” she admitted to him. “I’ve been doing this to relieve the routine imposed on me, but it gets riskier and riskier each time, and I have more to lose. It would be nice just to have a break. A real long break to relax and smell the flowers and maybe see a little of this big world without having always to run for it or fake it. Even Macore—the old Macore would never have gotten so hung up on this stupid Gilligan’s Island thing. He may have gone nuts over it, but it wouldn’t have been his whole life or the focus of his dreams. I just wonder if we haven’t shot our wad. The Rules tend to follow the story and legend requirements pretty well here. Usually, after great adventures, the grand epics go, there comes a time, almost always at the end of the third book, when the supervillain is vanquished, taken out. Forget that happily-ever-after stuff, though; that’s fairy tales for kids, and even the Grimm tales really were grim until Walt Disney rewrote them.”

“What are you getting at?” he asked her, feeling a bit uneasy.

“I think we’re stuck, doing this over and over again, until we take the bastards out. And I mean out. Then it’ll be some new class of villains to be set against some new set of heroes. There’s really no end of it until we die or they do.”

“Could be,” he admitted. “But—how the hell are we gonna take out a world-class sorcerer like Sugasto? And the Baron just keeps slipping away more and more. We had him in our hands, under our complete control, and let him slip away.”

“That’s the point. It was supposed to happen then. If we’d taken the Baron completely out, then and there, no matter what plots Ruddygore came up with, it would have been over for us. Sugasto is Ruddygore’s problem. He picked the S.O.B. to be an adept and then exiled him in the Lamp, rather than kill him in a wizard’s duel; then, when he needed the Lamp, Sugasto was loosed again. The Baron’s ours.”

“You ever think maybe he let the Baron go? That is, made it possible?”

“Huh? Why?”

“To keep us in. To keep from having to go against Sugasto with a green crew. And, most important, because I am the only one the Rules will allow to meet this threat. I’m not going to make that mistake again, though. If I ever have another crack at the Baron, it’s him or me.”

“You’ll get that crack. You’ll both keep getting at each other until one of you goes. That’s the system. The trouble is, even if we get him, it’s not necessarily happy-ending time.”

“What do you mean?”

“From King Arthur to Bilbo Baggins, when the ultimate evil in a world is vanquished, it’s after the good guys have given all they can. Even the ones that pull through have had it. They always seem to wind up sleeping beneath a hill, like Barbarossa, or sailing off into the mists toward some Old Heroes Retirement Haven, whether they’re human or fairy. They Ve done their bit, they’re tired and worn, and they just want out. Isn’t that what you were saying?”

He nodded. “Sort of. I don’t necessarily want out of life, though—I’ve got a son, after all, and somebody I love. I just want out of the game.”

She nodded. “I just wish I could shake the feeling I’ve had since Ruddygore’s place that the buy-out is pretty damned heavy.”

“You’re Little Miss Gloom and Doom this morning, aren’t you? Now I’m really not looking forward to this!”

The system did work, and when the sun was nearly overhead, they awoke the sleepers, detailed their own problems in watching over them, then tried it themselves. By dusk, all of them had at least some decent sleep and without real incident, although Mia had to admit quietly to Joe that it was well that she was a slave devoted to her master; otherwise, she would have killed Macore long before he got to recounting Episode Forty-One.

Although all of them still felt tired and physically wrecked, they made the other side shortly before dawn the next morning, to find that they were less than three miles south of the palace complex. Shrouded in clouds and mist, it was an imposing place, less a palace than a true island with a massive building at its center. It rose, black and forbidding, out of the ice, a massive volcanic cinder cone, with hissing fumaroles and geysers occasionally shooting from its flanks. It wasn’t all that much above the ice pack—perhaps twenty or thirty feet—but it was a clear oasis.