“Look,” she told him, “I’m going to go into that volcano and see just what sort of trap is rigged down there. It’s possible we may be able to pull off all of it yet!”
She zoomed out the window, went up at some speed, curved, and dove straight down into the crater in front of the lava tree, even to Macore’s trained eyes nothing more than a reddish streak.
She was down quite some time, and he began to worry, but, eventually, the streak rose again, then angled and darted into the window. She looked very excited.
“Macore! I think I’ve got it! It’s a series of simple, unstable spells that would cause moderate explosions around the edges of the lava pool nearest the Devastation. It wouldn’t erupt as such, or I don’t think so, but, rather, flow out toward the frozen valley. It’s certainly bush-league spell stuff; Boquillas sure hasn’t got all those powers back. Probably put there by some sort of fairy in her employ or some demonic-type who still owes her. The spells, though, would be impossible for Sugasto to divine or reach without using the same sort of stuff, and he can’t take the chance that the act of doing just that wouldn’t set it off—and it might! It’s held to Boquillas by some very fragile magical threads. Break the threads, boom!”
“So where’s that get us? Can you defuse it?”
“If I knew what I was doing, I could, but the only people around here likely to have the knowledge wouldn’t be much better to deal with as winners than Boquillas. There’s a flaw, though, because of its primitiveness. If Boquillas were to fall into that pit, the strings would not detach, they’d simply become embedded in the new rock. Later on, somebody with better motives could get some fairy, immune to it like me, to go down there with exact directions and untie the damned thing.”
“Great. So all we have to do is to get Boquillas to stroll out there, where it’s hot enough to burn your feet, and somehow ward off any spells she might throw, and push her in. Easy.”
“Save the sarcasm. Now, look. The only way Boquillas can possibly pull this off is to convince Tiana, who will be Joe, that she’s Joe and that Boquillas is really Tiana. Get it?”
“No. I got as far as Tiana as Joe, then my head started spinning.”
“That sorcerous hypnosis, like what Ruddygore used, won’t be possible. The magicians of Marquewood would read it in a moment. You can’t have a demideity under an enchantment. Not right away. That means some kind of love potion. One that’ll make her so giddy that she’ll buy any kind of irrationality her so-called true love sells.”
“So?”
“So we let them go through with it. All the way. But when Ti’s in Joe’s old body, she’ll be a man. She might not feel totally at home, but her were experiences will have her adjust pretty quickly, like it or not. Macore, take it from me: there isn’t a love potion ever made, or a love spell ever woven, that a Kauri can’t manipulate, if the one who has it is a human mortal male. And if I can get through, then it’s Ti’s job to take a stroll with her love to see the lava tree. If Ti really loved Joe as much as I think she did, then we’re gonna drive a Texas-sized truck through Esmilio Boquillas!”
“Uh—yeah. I’ll take that. Sure,” the little thief muttered. “And all that’ll leave us with is Sugasto, currently one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world.”
“Don’t be such a grump! One thing at a time, damn it! Right now we just have to keep out of sight and undiscovered until tomorrow night.”
“Don’t they look nice? I’ve been putting them through exercises regularly and they are in tiptop shape.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Tiana looked at the two figures standing there in naked splendor before them. There she was—her body, just as it had always been. And there, too, was the Joe she’d met and loved, or the shell of him. Her heart ached just to see the shell.
A tall man dressed all in black robes entered and saw them. Boquillas turned and shouted, “Suggy! Baby!”
The Master of the Dead was in a foul mood and having none of it. “A bit sloppy as usual with that business, aren’t you, Boquillas? And what the hell is that with all my zombies shorted out by that—that abomination!”
“Oh, calm down. We’ve got Tiana and we’ve got me and you, so nothing’s really changed. By spring, Joe and Tiana will still be perfect to the last detail. As for the zombies—well, I didn’t cause it! I figured that, once you got here, you could figure out how to shut it off.”
“I’ll blast those machines to the bottommost pits of Hell from whence they obviously came,” he growled.
“Suggy! You have to stop worrying over unimportant things! After all, I look at the slave and what do I find but your own signature spell on her! You had them both in your hand! According to her, you had them to lunch!. And then you handed them safe conduct and patted them on the head and sent them on their way! None of this would have happened if you’d just fingered them then and there!”
“It’s that damned hair-shearing,” Sugasto grumbled. “Makes her look like a ten-year-old boy. Besides, who would have imagined that somebody that highborn could be reduced to this—and by her own people! As for the man, well, the beard threw me. You said he couldn’t grow one!”
“And you, who can grow mustaches on tomatoes with a wave of your finger, got taken by a beard! Well, never mind. We can blame each other for our errors or we can say the hell with it and resolve to make no more. There is too much at stake for us to fall out now.”
The Master of the Dead calmed down, seeing her logic. “All right. So when do you want to do this?”
She shrugged. “No time like the present. We may as well start in. It will take a fair amount of time before everything is nailed down straight, you know.”
“Well, all right. What do you want me to do with the bodies? I can’t get the slave ring out of that one, you know, and, as for yours, it would be almost wasted as a zombie.”
“Oh, preserve them, by all means. Particularly mine. It can be a zombie for the duration, until and unless we find someone suitable to stick in it. I’ve grown rather fond of it. As for the other…” She went over to Sugasto, who bent down slightly as she whispered, “There will come a time when we won’t need her anymore. Then you can move into Joe, and she can return to what she is and serve us.”
Sugasto nodded. “I like it. Very well.” He pointed to the body of the tall, muscular woman. “You! Come here!”
The body of Tiana the demigoddess moved, shuffling a bit, woodenly, more like a puppet than a real person, and stood, blankly staring, beside Boquillas.
“It’s a good thing the sound of that crap in the courtyard doesn’t reach up here or we’d have them down there, too!”
“Oh, I thought of that immediately,” Boquillas told him. “That’s why I put a cone of silence on this chamber.”
Tiana watched with horror as the Master of the Dead stood facing both women’s bodies, and placed one hand on Boquillas’ head, the other, with a reach, on her old, original head. It hurt to see that body as much as it hurt to see Joe’s; to be this close, to be in the same room, only a few feet away, with someone with the means to put her back, and know that she might as well have been on the moon…
There was no sound, no magical pyrotechnics, no sensation at all, yet, suddenly, Mahalo McMahon’s old body stiffened and the eyes glazed over, while, at the same time, the body of Tiana seemed to be filling up with life, animation, and motion.