Tiana had to wonder if the sword would respond to him in this body. If it did, would it be bound by this spell? Or, in fact, was that a moot point? Suppose he could kill Boquillas with the sword. What then? The volcano blows, the battle resumes, and that’s it.
It would present one hell of a moral dilemma. Risk the destruction of the world or at best its enslavement by powers from a forgotten age; or allow Esmilio Boquillas to paint Tiana, not Boquillas, as the tyrant goddess?
And then, again, could he do it? Could he, in effect, destroy his own body?
He didn’t particularly like being a man. Oh, there was nothing horrible about it, but it wasn’t as much fun. It didn’t feel right, and men carried such different mental baggage, such different interests and outlooks. He’d been a man during one of the early were episodes, just to see what it was like, and definitely decided that, at least for Tiana, girls had more fun. Hell, just look at how boring he dressed!
Dinner was a rather uncomfortable affair, with Boquillas constantly twitting him and making comments about the Tiana body as well, but the food was damned good. One of the serving slaves, who might or might not have been the one from the previous day who had listened so kindly, poured the wine and whispered in his ear, “Get her to the pit. If she dies there, we can stop the action.”
Tiana stiffened. So he wasn’t crazy. Who, then, was behind this?
With a start he realized that it had to be Marge. No mention had been made of either Marge or Macore since their capture, and it was another of Boquillas’ lapses not to have asked about it when, as a slave, Tiana would have had to tell.
Marge was a Kauri. The goddess of Kauris, she’d said, lived in a volcano! In a volcano! Of course!
“Uh—Tiana?” The name stuck in his mouth and was hard to get out.
“Yes, Joe, darling?”
“Could I—could we—after eating, I mean—go down there for just a minute? I would like, just once, while I am still thinking straight, to see where he died.”
Boquillas thought about it. “It wouldn’t do any good, you know. You cannot do yourself any harm.”
“No tricks. We were together a very long time, though.”
“Hmmm… If I did, would you lie with me tonight? Would you lie there and pretend that you are Joe and that I am Tiana? Do it with me and make me believe it?”
“I—I don’t know if I could. I can try.”
“All right, let’s try. If I’m pleased, we’ll go down in the morning. If not, well, then, we’ll see, won’t we?”
“No. Let me at least say good-bye to him before I can do any thing new.”
Boquillas gave that wicked smile. “Joe, darling, we’ve got to start training you properly. In all cases, from how on, what I want comes first. There are no exceptions.”
“All right,” he sighed. “But bring me much stronger drink than this! I’ll need quite a lot to forget who and what I was and who and what you are!”
It was fortunate that hangover cures were easier for witches than even love potions, because he needed one badly the next morning. He’d gotten himself so sloshed he could hardly remember the night, and he knew he didn’t want to remember any more than he did.
Still, Boquillas seemed in very high spirits. “Come, my love, now that your head is clear and your stomach is settled, we will go down and honor your request.”
It was startling to see how Boquillas had changed just between night and morning. He hadn’t had a truly accurate idea of how he looked and acted as Tiana—who did have that kind of self-image?—but the sorcerer’s look and manner were far less exaggerated and more natural, the sort of way the original Tiana would do something, and her speech was changing as well, taking on more of Tiana’s own speech patterns and even gaining a hint of the accent acquired by spending so much time growing up on Earth. Was he really that revealing, in spite of efforts to hide it, or was Boquillas really that good?
“I’d intended to go down there today, anyway,” she told him. “The empty scabbard must be addressed, and we have an acid test to make while you are still relatively unencumbered. Come.”
They walked down the stairs, across the lobby area, and into the left courtyard ring. At the first arch they went through, with him preceding her, and then down the steps to the narrow walkway around the boiling pit.
Both of them stopped suddenly at the sounds of Gilligan’s Island and stared at that second level. “Hasn’t Sugasto blown that thing to smithereens yet?” Boquillas said, irritated.
“Perhaps he’s experimenting, now that he’s got the situation,” Tiana suggested. “I would say he is probably quite concerned that something exists that can negate his best spell.”
“You may be right. If he goes on too long, though, I will want to trigger this volcano just to stop that moronic nonsense.”
They walked around to almost the very spot where Joe had stood on the wall, taking on all comers. About twenty feet away, the sword Irving still stuck out halfway in blood-stained rock, although someone had at least cut free and hauled away the impaled bodies during the night.
Tiana went over and looked down at the bubbling mass. It looked like cooking pudding or an asphalt mixer and smelled of rotten eggs and worse. Only clever design kept that odor from permeating the palace—most of the time.
Joe’s body was part of that now, burned, melted, to become one with the rock, the fluids boiled away in a flash.
He turned away, feeling sick.
“Listen,” Boquillas said, “what is done is done. You are Joe now. You are all that is left of him. I did not want him dead, remember. We should never have been standing here like this, now. Cooperate with me. Become Joe willingly and accept me as I am. Help me to pull this off. You saw Sugasto’s horrid vision, all those soulless bodies, shaved and mutilated slaves, police-state brutality. I don’t want that. I would not want to be the goddess of a world like that. We need not be lovers, but we do not have to be enemies.”
“Empty talk, empty promises,” he responded. “Your slick tongue and fast mind have gotten you through everything, yet you still stand here, short of your ambitions. Against your talk, there is the certainty that Joe, the real Joe, jumped from here into that, rather than aid you. I cannot stop you from using me, from using magic, potions, whatever. But I can never surrender willingly, for to do that would be to spit on Joe’s grave and call his sacrifice a lie. I would never do that. I could not.”
She sighed. “Then we do it the hard way. In the end, it does not matter. It just means that instead of enjoying the benefits of being consort to a god, you will instead wind up sooner or later cleaning her toilets.”
“There is no dishonor in being a slave,” he said softly. “It is necessary work.”
High above, from the window of the empty room, Macore and Marge looked down on the pair, and the little thief frowned. “You think you can get her in there?”
“If she’d just lean a little more against that low wall I bet I could deliver a sudden, flying kick.”
“Yeah, from the front. She’ll see you and stop you with a spell.”