Horrors of the Dancing Gods (46 page)

"I wish I was the god of this whole world and all living things within it!" Joel Thebes shouted. "Bow down and prostrate yourself before me
—now!"

For a moment the entire world seemed to pause, then Marge stepped out behind Irving. "I don't feel like bowing down to him," she noted, as much puzzled as relieved. "Do you?"

"Not a bit."

Thebes gaped, his face changing from a look of godlike power to the sort of horror no one should ever have glimpsed. He looked at the statue in his arms, turned it around, studied it as if it were some new species of creature, and finally read off something stamped on the roughhewn base.

"USA. 1941!" he read in total disbelief. "No! It can't be! USA! 1941! It can't be! It's not only a fake, it's
the
fake!" And with that he screamed with such terror that it echoed throughout the valley and caused even those who could not remember such things to pause and shudder for just a moment.

Irving ran to Thebes, barely paying him any attention, and helped a shaking Larae to her feet. "I am all right," she assured him. "I just feel very stupid."

Thebes sank down, staring vacantly at the black bird idol and the inscription and otherwise not moving at all.

"Don't worry about it," Irving sighed. "We've lost. I don't see how it's possible with everybody assuring us that the McGuffin wasn't gotten, but it was. It's a phony. A fake. Your wish wouldn't have done a
damned thing."

A strange, eerie, yet commanding voice, an inhuman voice, said, "I assure you that it is as much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else here. And in this case, at least, as much of a relief. I certainly didn't go through all that I have endured to bow down ultimately to
that!"

The troll-like soldiers appeared from all points of the forest, swords and bows at the ready. They were not particularly menacing, but they made it very clear that there was no escape. It was also clear that the one thing they feared and no other was the entity who spoke to them all now and who was in every sense their master.

It was a large creature, perhaps three meters high and in perfect proportion for its size. It had a hideous demonic face, blazing red eyes, and dark sickly purple skin that seemed somewhat reptilian. The mouth was permanently twisted into an insane smile that barely disguised the rows of sharp teeth within, and from its head grew two huge, grotesquely curled, and oversized ram's horns. From the waist it was covered with dense purple hair that made it almost seem as if it were wearing bizarre pants, down to thick legs that ended in granite hooves. It was a satyrlike creature but one from a nymph's nightmares. The arms and hands were huge and powerful and ended in razor-sharp claws a good seventy-five millimeters long. But what struck Marge was the genitalia, which were overly large even in proportion to the gigantic body.

"Where
did
you
come from?" Marge asked him.

"You would not believe," the creature responded. "However, in the immediate term I have been not very far from right here. You have no idea of my power, but you will. Not even I ever dreamed of such power, and it is only the beginning. You may try your wiles on me all you like, Succubus, but you should be aware that I am not like other creatures in this world and I will drain any energy I deem irritating. Don't worry, though. I have plans for you—for
all
of you. That's what all this has been about. I left the McGuffin right there, where it was, and ordered that none be allowed to approach it, since I knew that if anyone did take it, you wouldn't come. And you
had
to come. It isn't perfect justice without you all."

"Justice? What in hell are you?" Marge screamed at him. "Who are
you
to speak of justice?"

The entity shrugged. "Revenge, then. Justice for one is always revenge for another, in any event, is it not?" The sinister eyes went over them all.

"Ah! Poquah! I had so
hoped
you would be along. It would not be complete without you," the creature said. "And you, little Irving, all grown up! And Marge—shorn of all that diabetic-inducing happy fairy nonsense and more gorgeous than ever. And a bonus!" He looked at Larae. "My heavens! That
is
a creative job there! I didn't know there was that much creativity left in all of Hell! There certainly wasn't when
I
was dealing with them. Why, such a combination might well be quite amusing. Makes cross-dressing seem rather passé, doesn't it? Perhaps we'll make you a true matched set. Give Irving here a groin more like the one Marge has. Like father, like son, eh?"

Irving started to rush the creature and to hell with the consequences, but even as the soldiers brought up their weapons, the entity held up a hand casually and Irving found himself unable to push any farther forward.

The entity looked down and gave the boy a hideous smile. "Well, you're close enough now. I will think on the rest. It will be sufficient, I believe, for now to simply have your own father, such as
she
now
is,
cut off the one you were born with. Don't worry; you won't bleed to death. I'll see that it's quite clean."

"Who
are
you, you bastard?" Irving cried.

The creature paused, frowned, then gave that strange smile once more. "Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot to reintroduce myself, didn't I? We all seem to change so
much
these days. This used to be such a
static
place! I am Esmilio Boquillas, of course. Who else
could
I be?"

"You can't be the Dark Baron," Marge said at last. "He fell into a lake of lava, stabbed through the heart by a great sword whose destiny was to do just that."

"Precisely. Hurt like hell, too, but only for an instant," the creature replied. "You, however, leave out part of the story. Before I
fell into that lava lake, surrounding a tree very much like that one over there, Joe here fell in as well. Fell in and was not consumed but instead was transformed. If Holmes survived the falls, why not Moriarty, eh? Even then I had more power in my little finger than any
of you and more than sufficient power to have preserved my faerie soul."

"Come to think of it, you
do
look like Boquillas' soul would look," Marge agreed.

"I was forced into this form, for, you see, I was trapped, awakening in the Sea of Dreams itself. It took an incredible amount of nonstop salesmanship to talk the entities trapped
there
into aiding me."

"How did
you get out, you monster?" Poquah challenged him.
"Not even the alternate gods of that place can escape!"

"Not individually, no, but first of all, I was not a god. It's not nearly so much on the overhead, and I do match the mathematics of this world. The trick was to have them influence their vast and mostly hidden followers here—hidden until now—to become aware of me and to bring me through. In a sense, you can say I was
prayed
back into real existence. My soul was incorporeal, my faerie self was in flux, and it flowed into the vessel that they used for their prayers. This is a personification of a statue of a child-servant of Shub Niggurah, the Goat with a Thousand Young. It is quite imposing, is it not? Ah, I can see that you are impressed."

"What is
with
you, Boquillas? It's bad enough you won't stay dead, but you started off as a handsome, charming SOB who at least cared about people, who justified what he did as a rebellion against the system here and for the betterment of most." Marge felt she had nothing to lose, so why not say it all? "Now the only thing that's left is the SOB part."

"I finally learned the truth," Boquillas responded. "That it's all for nothing. That
everything
is, in the end, totally meaningless. That pleasure and power are the only things that matter, and then only because you should have what you will. Think of it! I have beaten all of you! I have beaten Hell itself! There is
nothing
I cannot do or have!"

"You haven't won a damned thing except a little petty revenge," Irving spat at him. "You're
nothing,
Boquillas. You're lower than whale shit, and
that's
on the bottom of the ocean! What
have
you accomplished? Revenge on a bunch of people who beat you at your own game several times when they couldn't have beaten a
competent
sorcerer even once? So you can be a big monster around here until those things you made the deal with show up. Then you're right down there lickin' their boots just like you would be if you'd stuck with Hell. And if you
don't
bring 'em through, Hell and the Council will just quarantine you here and eventually gang up and crush you unless the little creatures you betray around here get you first. You got
nothin',
Baron! Nothin' that means anything at all! You're
still
a loser! You'll always
be
one! That's
your
destiny. Troublemaker, misery maker, but endgame loser! And somewhere around there's the real black bird, 'cause there's
got
to be. Somebody—maybe Ruddygore or Lothar or somebody—is gonna get hold of it, and then you are
really
toast There ain't
no way
of gettin' around it. You got
nothin'!"

"Perhaps, the Baron responded coldly. "But I have all of you."

That
was a heck of a lot harder to argue with, Irving had to admit to himself.

"Now, I believe we will start with a bit of fun," Boquillas said almost to himself. "While the rest of you watch, I shall allow Joseph here to emasculate the son. Then a rather simple spell, and we can load an entire functioning vagina into the space thus vacated, using the same creative model of a curse visited upon the lovely lady here, only, of course, reversed. Then everyone—friends, companions, father—can watch as I none too gently rape the new daughter right here, then let you roam the forest for a while, with an unbreakable desire only for women, with even the
thought
of a man repulsive. As you can probably surmise,
my
impregnations
always
take,
no matter what the condition of the mother or the time of the month, and they develop with astonishing speed. You can't go far. The birth pains will be excruciating, and then we will begin it all again. After that, we'll see to the lovely Marge here, who is not immune from the same sort of treatment, perhaps clipping her wings so she will stay around. And Poquah, I have a whole new mold for your faerie flesh, one that will keep you handy and in a cage nearby for years." He sighed. "Now, who am I leaving out? Ah, yes, the lady here with the wrong organ. I
could
restore you, I suppose, since that curse is tied to the authority of Hell, which touches not this wood, but this so
appeals
to me. It is so delightfully
perverse.
Hmmm ..."

Boquillas was obviously having an enormously good time and was in no hurry at all. Not that they could do anything about it. Still, he was itching to demonstrate his total power over them and understood that anticipation was often torture of the worst kind.

He suddenly threw out his left hand toward Larae, and bolts of pure energy so strong that they seemed almost solid struck her. Irving cried out but could do nothing.

One by one the layers of spell upon her were neutralized, vaporized, until only Lothar's key spell was left, the one that had made her not a woman. Now, without radically changing her body and by sheer force of will, making up and implementing the complex magical equations in his head as if they were a child's arithmetic, he refashioned her, tweaked her, emphasized every feminine line, move, and curve, exaggerated the form in much the same way Marge's was exaggerated, and then actually enlarged the male genitalia at the same level of exaggeration. The result was obscene, a photo composite, of the ultimate woman and one major flaw.

"There! There is your girlfriend, boy, for as long as I choose her to be that way, and that may be until tomorrow or until Armageddon! Behaviorally the dream sex object, crazy about the boys, unable even to be turned on by a woman, yet like that, naked, displayed to the world, and on the make. Let us call it perfecting an imaginative
concept." He turned back to Irving, whose expression of hatred was unbelievable, and bathed in it.

"All right, boy, it is your turn!" The clawed hand came out again, and Irving felt all the leather vanish, and every thing else as well, save the sword blade itself, which clanged to the ground.

"Come, altar boy!" Boquillas chuckled. "Approach now and lie down here on your back next to Daddy. Yes, that's right. Ah!"

Helpless, terrified, and close enough to the creature to smell its bad breath without being able to do a single thing, Irving lay there, naked and stretched out, watching as his father's nymph face
and torso turned toward him, sword in hand.

The blade! He couldn't dissolve the blade!