It was so damned simple. “We really blew it, didn’t we?”
“Well, things sort of grew of their own accord, remember, far beyond our own plans.”
Joe thought a moment. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Just producing the animated bodies wouldn’t do. It might impress the boondocks, but it certainly wouldn’t be accepted as the two of you in the palace and capital where they knew you so well. They’re going to have to walk like you, talk like you, act like you in every way. They’re going to have to know your Earth background, Tiana’s education, likes, dislikes, and do it flawlessly. There is now in Marquewood intensive research into just that sort of thing. But they can’t absorb it by magic, either. Any spells on your bodies would be immediately detected. By definition, demigods can’t have binding spells. We’ve got some time while they learn all there is to learn and then rehearse-, rehearse, rehearse until they are perfect. If they are not believed and accepted, they’ll be converted to figureheads and be unable to make the key changes needed.”
“You know where they are?”
“The area, yes. It’s deep inside enemy territory, Joe, as it would be, and quite secluded. Far up in the Cold Wastes of Hypboreya, where Sugasto goes to plot.”
“But if you know this, why not use the Lamp of Lakash? Irving’s never used it. He’s safe.”
“Well, first, because it wouldn’t work in this matter.”
“Why not?”
“Remember, its power is localized, which is why we can’t stop a war or solve all the world’s problems with the damned thing. To use the Lamp against those bodies we would have to take the Lamp close enough to them for it to work. And I am not about to risk getting the Lamp into Sugasto’s hands! Never! Even if I could.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I have become so fearful of it getting into the wrong hands since it was once stolen that it is now put even beyond my reach.”
Joe sighed. “I see. But, then—what exactly are you proposing?”
“Assassination. Find those bodies and kill them. Destroy them utterly so that they can never again be resurrected or used in this fashion, even on a local level.”
“Ruddygore—that body of me was your creation. I don’t give a damn about it. But you’re asking me to kill Tiana’s body, too.”
“Not just kill. Utterly destroy. Burning, acid, that sort of thing.”
“That’s the natural body of the woman I married. The woman whose mind and soul is now trapped in the body and mind-set of a slave.”
“I know. But unless you can find out how in the hell they swap minds and souls so effortlessly and have somebody there to do it, it doesn’t do anybody any damned good anyway. But, alive, it can do horrible damage.”
Joe thought about it. He was uneasy enough at anybody else doing it, but he didn’t want this job at all. “Doesn’t it seem stupid to send up the only guy they can get all the details from to make their Joe real?”
“Ordinarily, yes, but I suspect you’re going to be more of a target here than in there. Also, you have certain advantages.
There are few guns here, and no silver bullets, to my knowledge. As a were, without silver in your bloodstream, you’re essentially immortal. That’s a rather good edge in a fight. You’re resourceful, and you’re used to working in the enemy backfield. As a barbarian with a face as yet unknown to the enemy, you won’t be out of place in a militaristic state girding for conquest. And, frankly, you above all others have at least some stake in saving your adopted country from, essentially, yourself.”
“What about Tiana?”
“That’s up to you. She has many of the same advantages as you. She’s still tough, she’s as smart as she ever was—don’t ever forget that!—and she’ll do her duty. I think, in fact, she above all should have the right to be there.”
“Have you told her yet? I assume you talked to her.”
“I did, I didn’t tell her, and she won’t remember we talked.”
Joe started. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing much, I assure you. She is the way she is for the same reason that you became fully and completely Joey the wood nymph, not due to my sorcery. I gave her some protections. She will no longer answer to Tiana. That’s an essential one, I think. She will answer to Ti, or any other name you want to give her, but if you call ‘Tiana,’ she will not respond. Since no one but Boquillas knows what the two of you now look like, it is a safety precaution. I might suggest a total name change if you can keep it straight. You, too, at least temporarily.”
“It’s her body, damn it! Why didn’t you tell her of this, or at the same time as me?”
“Because she would be incapable of making an honest decision on it, and because slaves do not discuss matters of import with their betters. They tune them out. You tell her, as master to slave, but she cannot be here as a coequal, even in this.”
“If I take her, and they capture us both, they’ll have everything they need,” he pointed out.
“That is not exactly true. She has a very strong memory of a slave she once knew, the daughter of a dirt poor serf who wound up a palace maid. I built on the memory, fusing it with a bit of imagination and other histories I know to give her a complete background from birth to now. She’s protected better than you in some ways.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Tell me true—do you still love her?”
“I—sort of. Not in the way I used to. I know that sounds terrible, but it hasn’t been quite the same since, well, she went from being a mermaid to this current body. But I do care for and about her, a lot.”
“Don’t blame yourself for that. Tiana did it when she used the Lamp to wish you back.”
“Huh?”
“The mermaid’s spell. Men who make love to mermaids always consider it to be the greatest emotional and sexual experience they ever had. When she wished you back, when she was a mermaid, she wished you’d return as the perfect mermaid lover and make love to her. She thought it would insure your fidelity. It did—but no longer to her.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” Joe breathed. “And I been thinking I was a dirty skunk!”
“Does that make it easier?”
“It does and it doesn’t. Damn, Ruddygore! This means I can never really be totally satisfied by any woman ever again!”
“Everything has its price.”
“Easy for you to say! And while I’m at it, I’ve got another problem along those lines.” Quickly he told the sorcerer about his encounter with the wood nymphs.
“I’m afraid it’s true,” the sorcerer told him. “There didn’t seem much point in bringing it up, since at the time I could do nothing about it. When I had Boquillas/Mahalo under my spell I tried to get the mechanism, but he had cleverly laid the same sort of mental traps in himself as I use. The moment I demanded it, the formula and its concepts erased. Dacaro wasn’t much more help. He performed them, sometimes, but it was far too complex for him to understand, let alone remember. He only said that it was strikingly different every single time, as if each switch required its own independent spell. I’ve worked and worked on it and I can’t understand how it’s even possible.”