Songs of the Dancing Gods

excruciatingly slow tentacle, extending with every little movement. A new branch sprang out at its tip and seemed, as they watched, to grow smaller branches, almost like…

“Like a hand,” Marge breathed.

“But it’s too short and too slow!” Macore said. “There’s no way it can reach her before they move!”

“Maybe, maybe,” she breathed. “Oh, remember it’s iron!”

Down on the courtyard, Boquillas sighed. “Well, try and get the sword, anyway. You cannot use it on me, and even if it tries on its own, I can numb your arm in plenty of time. Go ahead-call it. Call it the way he used to call it.”

“All right, “Tiana said wearily. Even if the sword responded, even if it flew to his hand, could he in fact will it to cut off the neck of his birth body?

The “hand” on the lava tree turned, lining up perfectly. There was the sword in the rock, then Tiana’s stately body, then the “hand,” all in a row. Just a tiny fraction more to the left…

Tiana held out his hand. “Irving! To me!” he called.

The sword remained in the rock.

“Irving! To me!” he tried again, and again the sword stayed put.

And then came a soft, sexy, deep female voice, as if from a great distance, and echoing all up and down the pit. “Irving! To me! “it said.

Boquillas, startled, turned slightly to her right and said, “Wha—?”

The sword flew from the rock like a rocket, striking Boquillas with tremendous force right in the chest, bowling her over on its unstoppable way to the limb. She was knocked back against the wall, stunned, and for a moment seemed to totter, but not fall back.

The sword struck the handlike end of the limb, crackling when it touched, but the limb pushed back with tremendous force, directing the sword, blade first, exactly back in the direction from which it had come at the moment Boquillas tried to straighten up. The great sword struck and penetrated right below the neck, knocking her slightly forward.

At that moment, Tiana suddenly felt all constraints lifted and acted almost without thinking, the emotions at Joe’s loss and the hatred for Boquillas overwhelming any and all other thoughts but one.

“I will never fail you, Master. ”

With enormous strength, he seized the screaming Boquillas, lifted up that huge female body, and tossed it into the pit below.

“Yippee!” Macore cried from the window.

“Son of a bitch!” Marge swore. “I think she tore one of the strings loose on the way down! I gotta fly!” She leaped out, then down directly into the lava.

Tiana stood there, looking down at that same lava, and began shaking like a leaf, and then started to cry.

Macore suddenly felt the whole building start to shake a bit, and things began dancing around of their own accord. Good grief! he thought, suddenly panicking. Earthquake! I gotta get out in the open! Com’on, Marge!

Tiana was suddenly aware of the shaking as well, and looked around curiously, drained of emotion. Boquillas was dead. Really dead. And now someone else would inherit Husaquahr as a result.

He looked back down at the lava pool, oblivious of the shaking, oblivious of the cornices beginning to crack, of the crash as television, VCR, and stacks of videotapes went flying, leaving packs of suddenly enraged zombies loose.

The lava level was falling in the crater!

Tiana was still confused, stunned, and somewhat in shock by what had happened. Had the sword flown and killed Boquillas? What was that woman’s voice? Marge? What had they rigged up?

It no longer mattered. Clearly, no matter what else happened, nothing was going to matter for anybody in this palace before long, and that included him. Oddly, that didn’t disturb him, but he was seized with a sudden urge to see just what was happening out at the Devastation, and just what would emerge from that horrible place.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the earthquake stopped. He turned again and saw, or thought he saw, the lava level stabilizing. Not really rising—it had lost a good fifteen or twenty feet— but it no longer seemed to be draining out.

Marge came shooting out of it, then landed on the wall. “Close call!” she exclaimed, sounding winded. “I got it tied off, but not before one tube flooded and blew. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen, but I think the majority of them are still in the deep freeze. No guarantees about the closest point, though.”

He looked at her, shaking his head. “Marge, I think we better get away from here anyway. Now that it’s stopped shaking, Sugasto is going to be fit to be tied.”

“Whoops! Forgot about him! Head for the royal side. Pick up a weapon if you can. Meet you on the garden porch!”

Tiana nodded. “At least we don’t have to listen to Gilligan’s Island anymore!”

“Yeah. Poor Macore. Watch out for the zombies!” And she was off.

He looked around, then made a run for the far stairs. There was pandemonium all over the place, and things were still falling and crumbling from the after-effects of the quake. Soldiers, Ben-tar, everybody was running all over the place, and nobody was paying the least bit of attention to him.

He looked back briefly across the center courtyard and saw why everybody was going his way. The topmost part of the main tower was cracked clean through, and seemed almost to be leaning precipitously. Even the gargoyles were leaving their perches there, flying around aimlessly and screeching obscenities.

He didn’t see Marge on the porch, but the whole place was a mob scene as it was, and he couldn’t blame her. At the moment, it was everybody for him or her or itself, and the safest place to be was out there, on the ice.

Suddenly there was the sound of doom, like horrible drums from the depths of the earth, beating an awful time. It seemed not to be coming from the Devastation, which now had its own jet of furious steam, but from behind, from the direction away from the battlefield. Kicking away some panicky people, Tiana climbed up on the wall and looked out, trying to see what was making the eerie, rhythmic sounds. And when he did see, he knew indeed that this was all some horrible nightmare, that he’d gone totally and completely insane.

Either that, or a Danish naval coast guard icebreaker was coming toward the palace, propelled by the furious slashing of massive oars sticking out of holes cut in the hull.

“It’s Ruddygore!” Marge shouted in the air above Tiana with undisguised glee.

Sure enough, there was the huge sorcerer, resplendent in his Grand Master’s robes, sitting in something like a throne right at the bow.

The ship stopped, and the entire thronelike chair rose into the air and deposited itself, and the sorcerer, gently onto the ice.

Throckmorton P. Ruddygore looked over at the smoking area of the Devastation and muttered, “Oh, my! This might well be ugly!” Then he got up and began walking regally over the snow and ice toward the black island and its palace.

The fleeing castle personnel, whether human, Bentar, or something else, soldier and slave alike, gave way before him, keeping a fearful distance. Tiana suddenly found himself alone atop the wall.

Ruddygore spotted him. “Hello! Where’s Sugasto?”

“Haven’t seen him since last night,” Tiana called back.

“Ruddygore!” Marge screamed, practically flying into him and bowling him over. “Late, as usual!”

“Not at all,” the sorcerer replied. “Until either the bodies were destroyed or Boquillas died, or both, I was powerless to alter events. Even I couldn’t do them in, you see. But now, now that the Baron is ashes, it’s no longer your business to close this affair, but mine. Mine—and Sugasto’s.”

“He’s the new young gun, Pard,” she responded. “You think you can take him?”