Jack Chalker: Songs of the Dancing Gods

She watched him come from her heights, from her shadows, but then she had lost sight of him in the gathering gloom. And so she summoned the wind, and whispered softly to it in the silence.

“Bring him to me,” she commanded, as the wind whipped around her and played with the folds of her cloak. “Find him and bring him to me.”

The cold wind wailed a reply, then crept down into the hollows and sped across the barren hills of Mazra-dum searching for the one tiny figure below in the wastes and finding him, as a chill wind always could.

The tiny, gray-clad traveler on the weary roan horse looked even smaller against the majestic background of the badlands landscape, a place of rounded mounds cut into the land—end colored in dull candy stripes of all the various shades of rust and decay and where even the thin ribbon of water that snaked through its bottommost canyons was not clear or even mineral brown, but rather a milky, alkaline, and poisonous chalk white.

Here and there, the traveler and his long-suffering steed passed dull and slowly dissolving skeletons of many an animal who had attempted this place before and failed or, in desperation, had sipped from the white death that was at least something that moved in this place. The traveler pulled his cowl up to protect against the chill wind whose eerie moans and shrieks seemed like the trapped and hopeless cries of the lost souls who had never made it through the route he now attempted.

Now the trail hit a point where one could go either way, but there was no way to tell from the ground, hard as steel, which was the right way and which was the wrong, if there was such, and he stopped a moment, his face coming up from its weary downward cast. Eyes far older than the years of the traveler scanned the choices; the face was weathered and lined and covered with a full beard that obviously had just grown rather than been cultivated and had, for its trouble, been ignored by its wearer. The beard, like the tangled, shoulder-length hair revealed when the cowl slipped back, had been black once, but it was now tinged with gray bought by hard experience, not comfortable old age.

The man frowned, unable to decide which trail led to somewhere fruitful and also unable to decide at this point if it made much difference which route he chose. Yet he had not lost hope of attaining his goals; the eyes still burned with a fire only fanaticism brought, and the soul was still fueled by a singleness of purpose that said, success or death!

The sun was but an hour from the horizon; already the shadows grew long and the wind bolder, the temperature dropping fast under brilliantly clear skies. The horse seemed suddenly nervous and made a nervous sound as the wind came around and seemed to be speaking to its master.

“Which way? Which way? We know the way. We know the way …”

“The way to what?” he asked, rather sardonically, but without fear, his voice breaking the silence and echoing here and there, although he did not shout over the wind, speaking as he was to it—or what was within it.

“The way, the way… The way to safety, to warmth and comfort, to clean water and lush green fields …”

“You’ll not buy me that cheap,” he retorted. “Think you that I would be out here in this miserable place for lack of such things? I am the richest thief in Husaquahr! All those things were not enough!”

“To safety, to safety,,… Where neither man nor god will find you…”

He drew himself up straight in the saddle, pride dispelling his weariness of body and spirit. “I am the greatest thief in the history of Husaquahr!” he retorted in a regal tone. “I fear neither man nor god, having stolen from both, and never caught!” That was not quite true, he knew, but if one spit into the wind, better it blow back praise than cold spittle.

“A quest, a quest…He is under a geas and embarked upon a quest… ”

“No geas, not for such as I,” he told the wind. “I quest as I steal, not for others, but for my own pleasure and interests.”

“We can lead you there, lead you there… ” the wind asserted. “ The wind goes everywhere and sees all things… The wind can find who or what you seek …”

“Persistent, nagging spirit! You are not even powerful enough to know in advance that I am on a quest, let alone for what it is that I seek! I, who have stolen the sacred jewels from the navels of gods themselves and plucked the rings from demons’ noses, will not be taken in by the likes of you! Now, be gone or be silent!”

“Who can silence the wind?” the wind mocked. “ Who can banish it when it wants to caress? The wind which grinds the very rock to dust, which gives strength and power to fire or blows it out as only the wind chooses, who stirs the water and cools it and uses it to batter the shore? Who are you to command the wind?” it mocked in its screaming, eerie voice.

“Well, someone commands you” he responded. “You speak as a cat but you obey like a dog. Whose big-mouthed puppy are you?”

“Follow the wind,” it responded. “ Follow the wind to that which you seek.”

He thought a moment, seeming almost amused by all this despite the grim setting. “All right, then—lead on. I might as well be somewhere before dark.” But he reached under his woolen robe to his tunic and touched his blade just to make certain it was ready.

It wasn’t difficult to tell the way, although it was the opposite of following just about anything else. You just headed the one direction that the wind was not, in this case to the left and up a bit, away from the deadly little white river.

It was near dark when he came to her, but she was not hard to find for all that. She sat there, crouching before a welcome fire, a delicate and mysterious figure in azure robes. His horse started a bit upon seeing her, but the traveler calmed him, then slid off the saddle and approached the lady at the fire.

She looked up at his approach, and he was struck by her dark beauty almost at once, as he’d suspected he would be. He was not certain how much of that beauty was real, but the fire was, and that was enough for the moment.

“Come, good sir, and be warmed by my fire,” she invited, in a soft, very sexy voice.

He seemed quite relaxed. “I thank you, Madam. It feels good after the chill your pet sent to me upon the sunset.”

She was puzzled by him, and by his casual manner, as if he knew not only her own secrets but all the secrets of the world. He was a small but very strong-looking man, with a big hawk nose and small, almost beady little black eyes that seemed to reflect the dancing flames perfectly.

“You do not seem at all curious about me, or how I came to be here,” she noted.

He sighed wearily. “Well, Madam, if you be here alone in this accursed place, then I take you to be either an enchantress or dead or of the world usually unseen—or perhaps all of them together. Whichever, you build a mighty good fire.”

That drew from her a bemused smile, and perhaps a hint of wariness in her eyes, for clearly this was no lost and innocent pilgrim, nor did he fit the mold of great hero or wandering adventurer. “Are you then a sorcerer who walks the land without fear?”

He chuckled. “As I told your blowhard puppy, I am—I was a thief. The greatest in all the land. That does not mean, of course, that I am without skills in the magical arts, but they are of a specialized sort. One cannot last long in my line of work without being able to beat all the systems, as it were.”