Jack Chalker - Songs of the Dancing Gods

The other two heads started objecting and tearing into the sorcerer, who soon stopped struggling. The center head coiled, like a spring, then let go, tossing Sugasto high in the air, the heads jockeying for position as he came down.

“I’ve got him!”

“No you haven’t! I’ve got him!”

But he went right down the center head’s gullet, and that head suddenly had an incredibly pleased look about its grisly self.

“No fair! You cheated!” the right head complained.

“Yes, you were the one who threw him up, and you knew how hard and how far,” the left head commiserated.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” the center head huffed. “Regurgitate him so you can have a second shot?”

“After all this time in this crazy world,” Marge commented, “I thought I’d seen it all and couldn’t be surprised by anything anymore.” She shook her head in wonder. “Boy, was I wrong about that!”

Marge and Tiana turned from this argument to Macore, who was standing below before an audience of the living dead.

“Macore! How did you do it?” Tiana called to him.

He shrugged sheepishly. “I dunno. I made a run for it when the buildings started shaking, then decided to see if I could at least save some of the tapes. There they were, all staring at this busted television. When I came in, they turned on me. Surrounded by zombies, there was nothing else I could think to do, so I started singing, and they followed me out! Somehow, in their dim brains, I think they think I’m Gilligan!”

Out on the ice, Ruddygore approached the gorgon. “I always wondered what happened to you,” he said to no head in particular.

“Oh, Gastorix called us from the High Mounts of Ris,” the center head responded.

“We knew it was a doomed cause, but he was such a nice old fellow,” the left head added.

“Played a positively delightful harp, too,” the right head put in.

“Boys, that was three thousand years ago. You’ve been locked in that long. Things have changed.”

The heads looked around. “Not all that much,” the center head said.

“Still looks wizard eat wizard to me,” the right head agreed.

“Same old story,” the left head sighed. “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy turns into hideous monster and eats her.”

Ruddygore stopped for a moment, thinking about it. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it isn’t all that different after all,” he agreed. “Uh—but we have fewer and lesser types to contend with these days. What else is likely to come out of that meltdown? You and I know that in the old days you wouldn’t have been able to nab someone of Sugasto’s stature that easily.”

The gorgon heads turned and looked back at the mist.

“Cooling down already,” the center head said.

“Yes, indeed,” the other two heads agreed in unison.

“Oh, I suspect you’ll have quite an assemblage of demons, wicked fairies, that sort of thing stalking around,” the center head told him, “if, of course, they can figure out how to get out of there before being swallowed back up. Most of them, though, were re-absorbed, what with everyone all crushing up to get out all at once.”

“Not everyone is able to throw their weight around the way we can,” the right head pointed out.

Ruddygore sighed. “Well, boys, the Lakes are that way and the River still flows. I’m over at Terindell now, right on the river. Let me know if you need anything, but I’ve still got a bit of the aftermath to deal with here. We’ve ended an entire epic today, and it’s been a while since anyone did that. You know how many loose ends those leave.”

“Oh, indeed, yes,” the right head agreed.

The left head looked at the figures of soldiers and the rest still well away on the ice. “Can we eat them? After all this time, we’re starved!.”

“Well, the Bentar are all yours, and any fellows with the black and gold uniforms. Let the rest be. They’re mostly innocent victims.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” the three heads cried together, and they sank beneath the ice once more, to come up, it was suspected, somewhere beyond the still fleeing forces.

Throckmorton P. Ruddygore sighed and made his way over to the porch area.

“Ruddygore! Are you okay?” Marge called.

“No!” he snorted. “When I fell on that ice I think I skinned my knee. Hurts like hell! Tore a perfectly good robe, too!”

“You’ll live.” She laughed.

He stopped halfway up the side, and Tiana gave him a mighty hand to assist him to the top.

“Good heavens! Is that Tiana in there?”

“I am afraid so,” Tiana replied. “Boquillas decided to be me, and, well, planned on me teaching her how.”

“Yes, I see.” He looked down. “Macore! Will you stop playing with those poor unfortunates?”

“I can’t!” the thief wailed. “They won’t let me stop recounting the stories!”

Ruddygore laughed. “Let’s leave him there awhile. I’m certain we can extricate him later, but it’s about time he got what he deserved with that mania of his.” He looked around. “Where is Joe?”

Tiana’s face fell. “I think you had better hear the story from the start,” he said.

“Yes, indeed. Tell you what—I’m going to soak this knee in that thermal bath over there. You can tell me while I do so.”

Marge slipped away from them and walked back in through the now deserted and litter-strewn royal entry hall, then out to the crater. It and the lava tree were still there, although the sorcerer’s tower still tottered precipitously, and there were cracks all over and chunks of rock here and there. It was already beginning to give the place something of the look of a ruin.

“It’s all right, Joe,” she said in a conversational tone. “There’s nobody here but me.”

The purplish trunk of the lava tree seemed suddenly to expand slightly, and from it emerged a small fairy form. “I had a hunch you’d get it,” the figure now under the lava tree said. “I was hoping Tiana wouldn’t.”

“Well, she’s not much happier than you are at the moment, you know,” the Kauri pointed out. “Either one of you would be better off and happier as the other.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joe said. “Those damned Rules! You always have a way out, but when I stood there on that wall, surrounded, seeing those silver-tipped piles and bolts, I knew that there was only one way open, just what the Rules required. I looked at them, then I looked back at this tree, and I figured, hell, a tree’s a tree, and it would free me of Boquillas’ power and give me some freedom of action. It was surrender, die, or this. As much as I didn’t want this, I have to tell you I would have taken death easily, even oblivion, except mat it would have left my enemies victorious and Tiana in their hands. I remembered what we’d discussed about sacrifice and unhappy endings and all that. If this was to be the end of our great battles, then it was also somebody else’s beginning, too. I hadn’t taken Irving out of the mean streets of the inner city to have him grow up under Boquillas’ or Sugasto’s vision of Husaquahr. If that meant this, then it was a price I had to pay.”

“Hey! It’s not so awful!” Marge responded. “I think you made a pretty good Kauri.”

“Well, it’s okay, but I didn’t want a career out of it. Even so, Kauris fly, and very well, and can interact with regular society to a degree. Maybe I could take that. But wood nymphs—hell, I can’t even figure out how to get off here! I could slide down, I guess, but even if I found some solid rock to stand on down there I’d never make it back up the outer wall. That’s why I’ve been here all this time. I’m stuck!”