He pressed them back and got to the open door, but now they were between him and Mia—Tiana. “I’ll be back!” he shouted and ducked out the door.
Boquillas struggled to get up from the floor, feeling her jaw. “After him, you idiots!” she screamed. “I want him alive! Better to risk iron than me later!”
Joe undid the swordbelt and let it drop. He was naked and exposed, with just Irving in his hand, but it gave him total freedom of movement. The bronze swords of the Bentar had cut him in several places, but he was beyond feeling pain. He tried to head up the stairway, hoping at least to get to the bodies, but the stairwell was filled with troopers armed with swords, knives, maces, and other unpleasant stuff. He’d never make it up through that mob, damn it! He had to get clear, wait until he could think!
He bounded down the stairs, leaping the railings, and came eventually to the main entry hall. All the forces he hadn’t seen coming in seemed to be flowing out from all directions except the inner circle. Slash! Hack! Cut! Men and Bentar screamed, limbs flew. Although his body now bled from a hundred wounds, he was still on the go. He made the circle corridor and started to run, but, just past the first archway out to the crater, he faced a horde of men charging toward him. Turning back, he saw the others coming down the hall in a full rush.
He ducked back through the arch and down to the crater walk.
Man! It was hot! Even the stones around the narrow walkway burned his feet.
He started to run one way, then another, but soldiers of all kinds seemed to be popping out or blocking just about every exit he could see! The only possible exit was where those blank-eyed monsters were watching television, but he couldn’t get to that! He suddenly felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, trapped on the battlements with great forces all around and no bucket of water to throw.
Boquillas poked her head out of one of the upper tower windows. “You can’t win, Joe! Those human soldiers there—see their lances and bolts? Silver-coated, Joe! I know the secret of your longevity! Give it up! Give one of them the sword and surrender! This time there is no way out! Who knows, you might always escape from the tower, right?”
’He took his eyes off the closing forces for a moment and saw her up there, and suddenly from that tower window flew red and yellow magic strings, aimed right at him!
He jumped up on the side of the low crater wall, barely six inches thick, and watched the spells hit right where he’d been and explode with a big puff of smoke.
“Give it up, Joe, and come down from there!” Boquillas yelled to him. “There is no way out! There is no escape this time!”
He looked at all the forces around him, saw the silver tips, then saw that Boquillas was readying yet another bolt, while, behind him, the heat and terrible, almost choking sulfurous fumes rose from the bubbling and churning two-thousand-degree lava far below, and realized that Marge had been right, but that the Rules were often cruel.
Holding Irving almost like a javelin, he hurled it with full force into the mob of soldiers, where it penetrated and speared two Bentar and one human soldier before it came to rest.
Then, as Boquillas’ new spell left her hands, he took a deep breath, and jumped backward into the pit.
Not trusting his sudden horrible scream of anguish, cut off in midsound, they all rushed to the edge of the pit and looked down.
There was nothing there. Nothing, and no one, except the bubbling, hissing lava.
CHAPTER 13
THE END OF THE WORLD BLUES
No conclusion of an epic saga is complete without a wizard’s battle.
The small ring in Tiana’s nose suddenly crackled a bit, and she felt an irritating, slightly painful tingling there that soon passed.
Boquillas stared out the window at the sight she’d just witnessed, unable really to believe it. “He’s dead,” she muttered, amazed to her core. “He really killed himself.”
“Noooo!” Tiana cried, even though she knew from the reaction in her nose ring that it was true, and tears began flowing down her face.
Boquillas sighed, turned away from the window, and came back to Tiana. “Somehow,” the sorceress said, almost to herself, “I never thought he was the martyr type. Stupid! I would have made him a demigod.”
“He’d already been a demigod,” Tiana reminded her defiantly through her tears. “And he hated it.”
Boquillas sighed. “Well, when Plan A goes a little off, you have to improvise a bit.” She reached out and touched the slave ring in Tiana’s nose in the same two-fingered manner Joe had used. “You’re mine, now, and you’re all I’ve got, so you’re going to have to do, my dear. A bit of a letdown for me, but a considerable come-up for you. He’s gone, so you’ll have to replace him. Same script, just different parts, that’s all. At least you won’t blow it by killing yourself, too. The little bit I just added there compels obedience. You’re my property now, all legal and proper, and you cannot act against my interests.”
It killed Tiana to call Boquillas by any term of respect, but she had no choice. “Then, Mistress, you will restore me to my old body and rule as Joe?”
“No, no. Joe had no magical powers. Never did. Were I inside him, the whole Council, with Ruddygore leading the pack, couldn’t give me what I need, and that cursed sword would never accept me in any event, which would queer everything. No, my dear, it’s obvious. I shall still become Tiana; now it is you who will become Joe.”
“I? Joe? Mistress, it would be obscene!”
Boquillas grinned. “I know. That’s why I like it. At least you’re easier to do. That protective spell Sugasto gave you includes what I call a soul-puller mechanism. My own powers aren’t up to creating one, but since he’s kindly provided one, it should be simple. We’ll still need Sugasto to complete the process with me, of course. Until he returns, you shall attend me as my slave and not leave my side, and you shall begin telling me those details I need to know. And stop that confounded blubbering! You’re going to have to learn to be a man, not a swishy wimp!”
Tiana obeyed, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Joe was dead, and, no matter who she was, she loved him. Even now, knowing the truth, her memory fully restored, she knew that she’d remain this way forever if she could only have him back.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work out, not at all. Joe was gone, she was a helpless captive of the powers of Darkness, the chief villain immune to harm or malignant sorcery herself by virtue of tying her fate to the survival of the world. This just wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.
But hadn’t Joe been magnificent in that final fight! If love meant anything, if sacrifice meant anything, and if evil could be that sloppy, there had to be same way, somehow, to stop this foul plan.
“I don’t believe it!”
Macore nodded sadly. “I saw it myself, from my perch in the tower room. He went out fighting like the greatest heroes of old, and when hundreds of them surrounded him, he got a bunch more by hurling the sword and then jumped in. Even the villains will tell stories of that great fighter to their grandchildren!”
“I thought—somehow, this time, I had that feeling, but I thought it would be me,” Marge said, feeling empty inside and fighting back tears.
Neither Macore nor Marge were caught yet and there was a question as to whether or not anyone even suspected they were there. Everybody had gone after Joe and Mia, as Joe had predicted, should one side be exposed.