Jack Chalker - Songs of the Dancing Gods

“That will pass,” Boquillas assured him. “Over time, the Rules will settle. You may always wish you were me, but you’ll be you, as you are, and you’ll operate normally like that, even naturally, as you became a dancer and a slave. And I, too, will assume the Rules regarding the blood royal, with which, of course, I was already comfortable, having been born into it.”

“Why go through all that?” Sugasto grumbled. “Why not just stick a good hypnotic spell on him right now and be done with it?”

“Patience! Patience! Dear Suggy!” She had a good four or five inches in height on him now, and it felt rather neat. “For one thing, at this moment, and for the first time outside that puny body, we have a relatively ‘clean’ Tiana in that body, unsullied by any spells other than the one I just put on and can thus factor out. I want to see how it moves, how it talks, how it thinks. The words he chooses, the manner of managing a large, muscular body. Those things will fade after a while as the old male mercenary prince pattern re-emerges and takes command. True, I could make him think he’s Joe now and be a fair critic, but there are things even we are not aware of in our movements and actions. Little things. The major stuff can come later. There’s no rush. But this education is priceless.”

“Why didn’t you just put her in that body of yours, then, and observe?” Sugasto asked her. “Then you’d have an exact model.”

“True, true, and I considered it, but I know the Rules all too well. Put her back in here and everything would return full almost immediately. Symmetry would be restored. I don’t know her capabilities yet, and I won’t risk losing our only other original. I can’t explain it, but something just told me that if I put her in this body things would go wrong. Call it—women’s intuition.”

Sugasto shrugged. “I never understood women and I doubt if you do, either, for all your playacting at being one. But, as one with the Power myself, I’ve also learned that you don’t easily ignore such feelings. Very well. But if anything happens to him, anything, I’ll stick you in that damned slave body there, and you’ll lick my feet and kiss my ass for a thousand years!” With that, he stalked out.

“He’s always so cross when he’s tired,” Boquillas commented, seemingly unconcerned.

“It sounds to me as if you have to take as much care of me as you do of yourself,” Tiana noted. “Your death threat against the world does not mean much if you are still alive, but in that body.”

“Anything worthwhile involves risk. My! But you’re the swishiest barbarian I’ve ever seen! Come, we should dress before doing much else, and I’m starved. We don’t feed these bodies right.” She walked out, and suddenly Tiana almost jerked forward, as if on a chain, and had to double-time it to catch up.

“Another of your ideas?” he asked.

“Just a part of the spell, dear. We’re such a devoted couple now that we can’t even bear to let each other out of our sight.”

“That is going to be a lot of fun in the ladies’ room,” Tiana commented, and Boquillas laughed a very un-Tiana laugh.

They were passing the inside tower windows; outside, the inner courtyard glowed with the ever-present fire of the liquid rock. Oh Joe! Joe! I’d join you now, if I could, and end this eternal torture!

And somewhere, deep within her mind, came a voice, a thought, that she wasn’t certain was hers or from some other, perhaps supernatural, origin.

“Bring her to my dying place,” it said. “ Bring her there and it will end.”

Even compared to abject slavery, it was the worst evening Tiana ever spent. With Joe gone, nothing seemed to mean much anymore, but she might have been able to learn to live with it, sooner or later, if not for the fact that she was now in Joe’s remaining body and almost umbilically attached to the body of her birth and the one in which she craved to live again.

Boquillas had dressed fit to kill, with about everything in the feminine arsenal of Husaquahr, including makeup, jewelry, and heels, which she negotiated quite well, but which made her tower over everyone else and even somewhat dominate his own large body. He had been given a rather deluxe loincloth, some sandals, and, most painfully of all, Joe’s swordbelt and scabbard, minus the sword. It didn’t really matter; the spell prevented him from using the sword anyway, although he had to wonder. That sword always had a curious fairylike life of its own, as if it were some sort of creature that fed upon those it killed. Joe had often spoken as if he had no control over it and that when it was in his hand, he seemed a mere observer.

Tiana had to wonder if the sword would respond to him in this body. If it did, would it be bound by this spell? Or, in fact, was that a moot point? Suppose he could kill Boquillas with the sword. What then? The volcano blows, the battle resumes, and that’s it.

It would present one hell of a moral dilemma. Risk the destruction of the world or at best its enslavement by powers from a forgotten age; or allow Esmilio Boquillas to paint Tiana, not Boquillas, as the tyrant goddess?

And then, again, could he do it? Could he, in effect, destroy his own body?

He didn’t particularly like being a man. Oh, there was nothing horrible about it, but it wasn’t as much fun. It didn’t feel right, and men carried such different mental baggage, such different interests and outlooks. He’d been a man during one of the early were episodes, just to see what it was like, and definitely decided that, at least for Tiana, girls had more fun. Hell, just look at how boring he dressed!

Dinner was a rather uncomfortable affair, with Boquillas constantly twitting him and making comments about the Tiana body as well, but the food was damned good. One of the serving slaves, who might or might not have been the one from the previous day who had listened so kindly, poured the wine and whispered in his ear, “Get her to the pit. If she dies there, we can stop the action.”

Tiana stiffened. So he wasn’t crazy. Who, then, was behind this?

With a start he realized that it had to be Marge. No mention had been made of either Marge or Macore since their capture, and it was another of Boquillas’ lapses not to have asked about it when, as a slave, Tiana would have had to tell.

Marge was a Kauri. The goddess of Kauris, she’d said, lived in a volcano! In a volcano! Of course!

“Uh—Tiana?” The name stuck in his mouth and was hard to get out.

“Yes, Joe, darling?”

“Could I—could we—after eating, I mean—go down there for just a minute? I would like, just once, while I am still thinking straight, to see where he died.”

Boquillas thought about it. “It wouldn’t do any good, you know. You cannot do yourself any harm.”

“No tricks. We were together a very long time, though.”

“Hmmm… If I did, would you lie with me tonight? Would you lie there and pretend that you are Joe and that I am Tiana? Do it with me and make me believe it?”

“I—I don’t know if I could. I can try.”

“All right, let’s try. If I’m pleased, we’ll go down in the morning. If not, well, then, we’ll see, won’t we?”

“No. Let me at least say good-bye to him before I can do any thing new.”

Boquillas gave that wicked smile. “Joe, darling, we’ve got to start training you properly. In all cases, from how on, what I want comes first. There are no exceptions.”

“All right,” he sighed. “But bring me much stronger drink than this! I’ll need quite a lot to forget who and what I was and who and what you are!”