“I know. The odds are we won’t get the chance anyway. We’re taking a journey through lands we don’t know, held by people we do know and who hate us as much as we hate them, toward a goal we really don’t want to reach, and even if we do would most likely put us in the hands of our worst enemies.” He paused. “You do not have to go, you know. I know you’re not supposed to make big decisions for yourself, but this is one you must make. You can remain here, in service of Castle Terindell, and look after Irving for me.”
“But you are going, regardless?”
“It was put to me in Ruddygore’s usual democratic fashion, which is basically, ‘You don’t have to do this, it’s your choice, but, remember, if you don’t, evil will win, millions will die, and it’ll be all your fault.’ Yes, I have to go.”
“Then I go.”
“You’re sure?”
She looked up at him. “If you go, and never return, then all of this was for nothing. If you go, and fail because I was not there when you needed me, it will be even worse. Perhaps this is why destiny has bound me to you. In the past, sometime, you have needed me before in such matters.”
“We’ll probably be killed. Or worse, caught by Sugasto.”
“Then we go opposing evil, and that has meaning. And we might just beat them, as before, which would make everything worth it.”
There was more of the old Tiana beneath this servile veneer than he’d thought or feared. It made him feel better.
“Okay, then. It means starting out again in just a couple of days. We have a long journey, and the clock is running, and we don’t know how long the clock runs.”
“This Sugasto is a coward at heart or he would not have stopped his war,” she noted. “There are only two bodies that will do. He will not risk them until he is very, very sure of them.”
“Good point,” he agreed. He looked over near the window. “What’s that on the floor?”
“A straw mat,” she responded. “It is for me to sleep on.”
“Bullshit! Blow out that oil lamp and come sleep in this big featherbed with me! Who knows when we’ll get the chance to be this luxurious again?”
She grinned happily and blew out the light.
Joe was walking across the great hall on his way outside when a firm soprano voice suddenly said, in English, in a solid West Texas accent, “Hi, sailor! New in town? Want to have a good time?”
He stopped dead, turned, and there, sitting on a fur-covered stool, was a creature of faerie. She was small, perhaps a bit over four feet in height, and quite sexy; almost a deep red variation of a nymph, to whom her sort were closely related, but with big, varicolored wings that seemed to catch any light and throw back a beauteous, changing, yet butterflylike appearance.
“Marge!” he shouted, and she ran to him and gave him a big hug. He hesitated to return it for a moment because of the wings, but she said, playfully, “You ought to know by now that these wings can’t be damaged by hugs!”
“What are you doing here?” he asked her, happy enough to see her in any event. “Did Ruddygore send for you?”
“No, he doesn’t have to. I’m kind of tuned in to you folks and I just sort of know when things are wrong and trouble’s brewing, and that always brings me like a wildcatter to oil. So, how are you?”
“Not good,” he replied honestly. “Everything’s going the wrong way, as usual.”
“Nasty job? I assume the Baron slipped the noose.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I’ve just been around here long enough now to figure things like that out. The moment they brought that bastard back here I knew we’d eventually be in for it.”
“Well, that’s part of it, but not the main job. And there are— well, complications.”
“C’mon. Tell Auntie Marge about them. She’s a very good confessor.”
Marge was a changeling, one of those very rare individuals who arrived in this world with just some long-unsuspected single gene or trace of ancient faerie in her that caused the Rules to change her outright to her ancestral race. A former English teacher in Texas who’d lost her job and wound up a battered wife, she’d been running away and contemplating suicide when Joe had picked her up as a hitchhiker on a lonely stretch of West Texas highway just before being picked up himself by Ruddy-gore. She had, in effect, unknowingly hitched a ride to Husaquahr, where she’d turned into what she was now: a Kauri, a flying fairy race with a rather unique function.
Like almost all members of the nymph family, the Kauri were natural, near compulsive seductresses, but, unlike most of the rest, who had some role in the management of one or another aspect of nature, the Kauri “weeded people” as they called it. Natural empaths, they could sense and were attracted to deep depression and other black moods in others, and, through seduction, they could take on and remove those heavy emotional loads, converting the energy into food. Because they had to absorb whatever came along, they tended to be the most intelligent of the nymph family, so Marge, in fact, had lost none of her memory or IQ; because part of their talents came in a sort of hypnotic hold over mortals, they could seem to look like any female the subject desired, so Marge had lost none of her personality and cunning. Like all nymphs, however, they were passive by nature, and rarely even able to defend themselves against an attack, although Marge had managed it, briefly, on one or two occasions. When you’re being grabbed by a rotting corpse, even instinct can sometimes be overcome.
And, alone among the nymph family, they could fly.
Joe told her about Ti, and what they had been asked to do.
She whistled. “Wow! That’s as mean a kick as this world’s thrown yet.”
“It’s like a pact with the devil, though,” he noted. “Don’t destroy the body and she’s still a slave but Sugasto wins. Destroy the body, and she’s lower than nothing forever. They’re not going to pull any more soul snatches with her even if they find out about her; being as she is would suit them just fine.”
’ “There’s still more, though, isn’t there? I can tell, remember. Your emotions are an open book here.”
“All right,” he sighed. “You alone would understand my problem. But I don’t want anyone else knowing, not even Ti.”
“My race always keeps its secrets.”
“Use your fairy sight. Look inside me, down to my soul, and look very hard for something unusual.”
“I can no more see a human soul than you can.”
“That’s what I mean. Look and don’t just see what you expect to see.”
She looked, and, for a moment, frowned, then saw it and gave a slight gasp. “You went fairy! I’ll be damned! Even the Lamp can’t change a fairy soul!”
He nodded. “So you have the package. Mum on that last part. Not only is it damned embarrassing to me, considering, but I don’t want any enemy finding it out and getting ideas. Silver, the right sorcery, and burning could do it. And,” he added hesitantly, “I particularly don’t want Irving to ever know, I just don’t think he could handle it.”
Marge sighed. “Man, you’re taking so much baggage on this trip you’re half whipped before you start! It’s a good thing I showed up when I did. No wonder you’ve been sending out those distress vibes!”
“Where we’re going to wind up it’s pretty cold,” he warned her. “You sure you’re up to that? You’ve never been in that kind of weather before.”
She shrugged. “We’re a hot race; plenty of warmth to spare. Just keep that dwarf-forged steel sword of yours away and I’ll be fine.”