Jack Chalker - Horrors of the Dancing Gods

Clearly many, if not most, had once been human or faerie and had paid a price for crossing over to this third side, a price they were now too insane even to realize they had paid. Perhaps they had seen what no mind could conceive; perhaps it was a rite of initiation. The fact remained, they saw a great many creatures as they went those few miles in, and at no point did they see anything remotely familiar.

Because of their nature and their insanity, however, those creatures did not keep order and discipline well, as predicted. Only one group, in fact, seemed to maintain any semblance of military bearing as it marched past, and those looked like a cross between trolls and minor demons. They did, however, have a good snappy march and could be heard singing as they passed nearby.

"Now Sauron had no friend

To help him in the end;

Not even an orc or a slave.

It was dirty Fordo Baggins

What kicked his little wagon

And laid poor Sauron in his grave!"

"Haven't they got the wrong mythology?" Marge whispered to Poquah.

He shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps they changed sides. Perhaps all such denizens of the Sea of Dreams think they're going to emerge victorious."

"Not much farther now," she told them. "Just up here. I don't see or hear much in front of us, so maybe they'll only have a token guard on the place."

"Don't bet on it," the Imir responded. "This is the one place they know we must come. Irving, you cannot hesitate. You know the words. The moment you have the McGuffin in your hands, you must say them no matter what happens, no matter who pops out, no matter who gets threatened or killed. It is our only hope."

Irving nodded in the darkness, although he was feeling less and less sure of himself on this.

They reached the edge of the meadow, well within sight of their goal, and Marge put a finger to her lips for absolute silence, then pointed.

Even in the darkness it was easy to see the area. The Tree of Knowledge gave off its faerie glow, and all of them had faerie sight; beyond, they could see the outcrop, and Irving saw something more.

"Right there," Irving whispered very quietly. "In the hillside in back of the flat rock, there's some kind of recess with something in it. I bet that's it."

Both Marge and Poquah looked and saw absolutely nothing.

"Suppose I just let it get a little light and then I sneak around and get it," Irving suggested in the same low whisper.

"I see it, too," Larae told them. "Why don't I try it from the other side at the same time. One of us might get to it even if the other is caught."

Irving nodded. "Poquah, you cover Larae. You might be able to get a shot in. Marge can cover me. She's sensitized to the place and can warn me."

"We may have a little complication," Marge whispered, pointing first over to one side of the altar and then to the other. There, deep in the shadows, were two creatures, both armed, one a fair bit larger than the other but both indistinct in the limited real light and giving off only very faint auras.

"Is either one—?" the Imir started, but Marge shook her head to tell him no.

"If the entity is here, I can't sense it at the moment, but it won't take it long once they know we've arrived."

"Well, we should be able to take both of them out pretty quietly," Poquah said confidently. "Still, watch carefully for others."

"It's gonna start getting light any time now," Larae noted. "Let's get moving and get in position."

Irving was nervous seeing the Imir and Larae go off and vanish in the woods, but he knew that it was now or never and that there was no other choice. He found Larae's bravery to be incredible, too, and he only wished he felt as confident or even as foolishly courageous. Instead, all he wanted to do was pee in his codpiece, and he made every effort not to as he moved forward with Marge.

He frankly wouldn't have trusted Marge with Larae, particularly in this setting, but something deep down told him that Marge would never, never harm him. It was a feeling he had to go with.

Marge was trying to get some sort of fix on the guards, who seemed well concealed. Neither was male; she got no sense of reaction from either of them.

As they drew closer on their end, to within perhaps five meters of the nearest guard and nine or ten from the McGuffin's cubbyhole in the rock, she had a sinking feeling, one that was confirmed as the sky began to lighten and they could finally get something of a decent normal-light view of the scene in the light of false dawn.

Irving saw what Marge saw and had the same thoughts she'd already considered.

The figure was definitely a wood nymph, or, more accurately, it had begun as one. The face, arms, upper torso were all still clearly the same, but instead of being inside a tree, she was a tree, at least in a sense. Instead of two legs extending from the hips, there was a single green stalk the width of both thighs going down deep into the ground. The creature clearly had some serpentlike mobility, but only within about the three-meter range the roots would allow.

She was also pregnant, obesely so, with an enormously distended abdomen.

Irving felt he had to risk a whisper. "That can't possibly be my dad, can it? I mean, you can't get that pregnant in a few weeks, can you?"

"Not normally you can't," she responded, "but we don't know what black magic and Rules apply here. At the moment I'm concerned with the fact that she's got a light but sharp-looking blade in each hand."

"Yeah, well, I guess she's still easier to handle than the one on Larae's side," Irving noted, gesturing.

It wasn't as easy to see the other creature from, this angle, but you could see enough to realize that while fundamentally the same as the wood nymph now, it had not begun as a wood nymph but rather as something else.

Poquah, who had a much better view from the opposite side, was appalled. The figure, while "planted," had three sets of arms, each with a full-blown sword, and three sets of breasts, and she seemed to be almost three times as pregnant as the other. Both the Imir and Lame examined the guardians, and both determined that pregnant or not, if both extended themselves on their stalks to the fullest, they could cover the entire altar area. Short of killing them both, the only way through, using the original plan, would be to somehow lop off all their limbs, and that didn't seem too likely a possibility.

"This is what became of Irving's changed father and the girl he was with, isn't it?" Lame whispered. "The description is too close."

Poquah nodded. "I am afraid so. And I think that Irving knows it, too. They are enchanted, of course, or cursed, or something similar. That means they won't recognize us in all likelihood and will kill us, even Irving, if they can. Not good."

"I wonder if one of us could get up behind them," she said. "I can virtually see the bird-thing from here. If I can just come in from the rocks, I might be able to reach down and grab it and still be just out of their range."

"A diversion, then. Good. Go. I will give you five minutes to get into position. Then you do it or I at least will die. Give me your spear. You won't need it now."

He saw that she had removed literally everything, and for the first time he could see her as she really was and as she had been cursed. It was quite the most bizarre thing he'd seen of its kind, and, most unusual of all, it didn't look cooked up by magic. If someone from Mars were to see that body and not understand anything about how the human body was constructed or know of the specifics of the sexes, that person might accept it as "normal."

The leather straps and such had cut into her and chafed; for the first time she felt totally free and took a minute or two before starting off to get full circulation back. Then, taking only the sling but no stones for it in one hand, she eased off to the forest wall at the rock face.