“You really don’t have to go just for us, you know.”
“For you? Don’t forget, I’m the one who had that zombie horde sicced on me, and had to ignore that bastard’s sniggering laugh. It seems like we’re gonna have to endure that damned Baron to Judgment, but maybe we can send Sugasto straight to Hell!”
“Glad to have you as always. All we lack is Macore, but he’s off somewhere searching for Gilligan’s Island.”
“Oh, no! I always used to warn my students that TV could rot innocent minds, but I never really thought it went that far!” She paused. “Where’s Ti now?”
“In Terdiera with one of Santa’s elves getting together initial supplies and such for the trip. It’s going to be a long journey and much of it could be ugly. We don’t know what a Sugasto administration might be like, but I can guess.”
She nodded. “We’ve heard all sorts of rumors. A lot of bad fairy folk have gravitated to him, not to mention people, and he’s got a near lock on the dwarf kings, being able to blockade their trade if they don’t play ball with him, as well as gnomes, trolls, you name it. And, of course, he’s got two-thirds of the witches and warlocks in Creation with him and who knows how many overambitious magicians with real or imagined grudges. When a land comes under the control of evil here, it even takes on an evil life of its own. It’s in the Rules, I think. This won’t be any picnic, and you’re the only sword arm we’ve got.”
“Don’t you think I know it,” he told her. “Come on—I’m going to introduce Irving to Gorodo.”
“Oh, joy. He’ll just love that,” she responded, following him out.
Love, joy, awe, and all the other such descriptives did not begin to describe Irving’s first reaction to Gorodo. Abject terror, perhaps, was closest.
For one thing, someone who is nine feet tall, about five hundred pounds of pure muscle, and also has nine-inch fangs and a body covered with blue fur wasn’t exactly anybody’s idea of a teddy bear.
Joe was never sure just what Gorodo was; a member of the troll family, most likely, but in all his travels he’d never seen another like him. There were all sorts of stories about Ruddy-gore’s Master Armorer, most contradictory, all totally unbelievable, and all admitted to by the huge creature, but he remained the meanest, solidest enigma in Marquewood.
A long, taloned finger pointed at Joe. “You’ve really let yourself go to seed since I last had you,” the creature rumbled in a voice so deep it seemed to shake the ground. “You oughta let me get you back in real shape.”
Irving looked up at his father nervously and said, “I think maybe being a farmhand’s a real neat idea…”
“Nonsense!” the blue giant roared. “Ain’t nothin’ free in this world, boy, or the next, neither! No pain, no gain! But you stick with me a few months and really work at it and I’ll have you able to outrun and outfight anybody here. You stick with it, and there’s no place in Husaquahr you’ll fear to go and no enemy you won’t vanquish, and all the turd-wallowers will rum and wish they was you!”
“His bark’s worse than his bite, right?” Irving whispered hopefully.
“No, they’re about the same, son,” his father replied. “But he’s right. You’ve seen Ti. You want to be a male version of her?”
“Hell, no! Ain’t no way this boy’s gonna be no slave!”
“Well, there’s the only insurance you have right there. You know I’ve got to go away for a while, and why you can’t come with me. Imagine armies of him, only not on your side but out to get you. You want to be free and independent in this world, there’s the price of admission.”
“You plucked me outa Philly for this?”
Joe thought of the neighborhood, the gangs with their cocaine runners and needles and the rest, the number of potentially good kids living in squalor and dead in their teens, born and raised to lose. “Yes, son, I did.”
“Your father survived me and all I threw at him and came out a real man” Gorodo said. “Then he went out and eventually married a princess and took over an empire, then threw it away when he decided it wasn’t no fun anymore. That’s the kind of freedom I give, boy! The kind most folks only dream about. Lion or antelope, boy, there ain’t but two kinds. Be a turnip— that’s easy! Or be the one what eats turnips for lunch!”
“This,” Irving breathed, “ain’t gonna be no fun at all.”
CHAPTER 6
DON’T IT MAKE MY BROWN EYES BLUE
Alchemy is the science of coming up with what one needs when one has foreclosed all other possibilities.
“I haven’t done this spell in, oh, seven, eight hundred years,” Ruddygore commented. “Had to look it up, in fact. The Rules allow more latitude than normal on how a slave is marked, with at least three dozen possibilities. However, the ring method is the only one recognized internationally and throughout Husaquahr, since it’s the only one with permanence. You see, once the ring is inserted and the spell given, it cannot be removed or altered by anyone—the Rules are quite strict on that.”
Joe frowned and looked at Ti, who had actually asked for this to be done prior to their journey. He didn’t like it, not a bit. “You sure about this?”
She nodded. “Master, it is the only way I can gain any real freedom, as odd as that may sound. It marks me instantly, not only as property, but as your property. It is the only security I may have.”
“She’s right,” the sorcerer assured him. “If she’d had this, she wouldn’t have had to have been accompanied into town to pick up things for you, tend to things, that sort of thing. Theft of a registered slave is punishable by reduction to slavery status yourself almost everywhere, and purchase of a stolen one the same. Nor can she be transferred to another without the owner’s consent and be bound to serve. You might as well just kidnap and imprison any lowborn. It’s not worth the risk when there’s so much easier stuff to lift, and she becomes nearly impossible to market.”
“Yeah, that’s true here, now, but when we get into Hypboreya, what will they care?”
“Oh, you’ll find that an evil regime is even more a stickler for law and order than a benign one, as a rule, since they trust no one and are inherently paranoid. Indeed, there’s nothing poor and oppressed people seem to like more than having slaves about. It’s a cruel streak in human nature, but, the fact is, no matter how poor, how miserable, and how oppressed you are, you can always point to a slave and say, ‘At least I’m not a slave.’ That attitude also serves the ruling regime’s interest, obviously, since no matter how much they lay on the people, there’s one lower rung. No, she’ll probably be safer than you, although, my dear, even the common folk will treat you like dirt.”
Joe shrugged. “Okay, then. Go ahead. What do we do?”
Ruddygore removed a small bronze-colored ring from a box. It looked quite ordinary, and had an opening which, with a bit of flexing, fit into her nose. “This will sting for just a moment,” the sorcerer warned her, grasping the ring between two fingers. He then shut his eyes a moment, and there was a surge of energy into the ring that went around it and into her nose. She flinched, then relaxed. Ruddygore opened his eyes, examined his work, nodded to himself, and then actually moved the ring around. There was no sign of a hole or joint, but it wasn’t in stiffly. You could turn it, as if she were born with it and with the proper hole inside her nose.