[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]Sugasto." Ruddygore sighed.
They the sorcerer, Macore, Marge, and Tiana sat in Sugasto's old banquet room,
sampling his wares. Since Ruddygore seemed unconcerned about the top of the
tower felling down, they were at least less nervous about it themselves.
"You mean I am stuck like this," Tiana said.
"Well, not exactly, but there are few options. I can't fool around with that
body, since I helped design it, as it were, with bound demons. The theory of
the switching spell is easy enough to divine; the problem is that each and
every individual is different. Thus, you need complementary mathematics to
switch anyone that is unique to each individual. The question we have no
answer for is, how did Sugasto and the Baron figure out the unique
complementary equation for each and every individual they switched, therein
detaching both soul and consciousness and placing it elsewhere? I don't know.
Reattaching on other than a random basis provides the same problem for the
host.
Thanks to Sugasto's easy lifting addendum, I know your code, and, of course, I
know the codes for your slave body and for Mahalo McMahon, whom we had to care
for after she was stuck in the Baron's wrecked body. We used the Lamp to cure
Ma-halo she's the High Priest of an Amazon cult in the southern jungles right
now and apparently loving every minute of it."
"You could use the Lamp on me, then."
"No." Ruddygore sighed. "I'm afraid not. You see, after Macore stole it the
last time from a vault I would have said was the most secure in the whole of
the universes, I realized that as long as it was accessible and known, it
would be a magnet that could never be properly secured, as handy and seductive
as its power was. I couldn't destroy it it was of djinn manufacture-but I sent
it flinging, out into space. I have no idea where it is now. Mars, possibly,
if it hit anything."
Tiana sighed. "Then this is it?"
"That body gets you back an undisputed royal exalted position," he reminded
her.
"You were sort of deified, you know. We could easily sell you as Joe and Tiana
merged, a single godhead, both male and female in one, and you could help
provide stability to this land in these days of aftermath. The alternatives
are that I can return you to the slave body from whence you were plucked,
since I
know that one, or to the empty shell previously used by the Baron, McMahon's
body. It's not a bad body, but I have no idea of what you'd wind up as. You
saw what the hormone levels in that body did even to such a staid fellow as
Esmilio
Boquillas. Most likely, whoever gets it will become a very sexy witch."
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"What do you mean, 'whoever gets it'?" Marge asked.
"Well, we have all those zombies thousands upon thousands of them. Not the
reanimated dead, they collapsed with Sugasto's death, but the ones whose souls
were taken and stored. Those souls are mostly stored here and almost all
survived the quake. Alas, they are coded by a private spell, so there is no
way of ever telling who's what. There could be faerie in there, as well as
countless men, women, and children. We can put the souls back in the bodies,
but we can't tell whose soul is which, so it's going to be totally random. You
are by no means alone in your predicament, Tiana, and at least you have
choices. But we'll use every body we have, I'm sure, saving, of course, the
slaves for last. It'll be a mammoth job as it is."
"I do not like being a man, even though I like men," Tiana replied. "It is
different relating to them as a woman, instead of being one of them. I enjoyed
being a woman, always have. I do not believe even the Rules cover this sort of
thing, although, goodness knows, they cover almost everything else. Oh, I know
the hormones will act, I will get used to it, more comfortable with it, but I
am positive that the Baron was wrong. I think my own sense of who and what I
am would keep me a woman trapped in a man's body no matter how much time
passed.
Joe, whom I saw as a Kauri, would be a much better woman than I will ever be a
man.''
Marge said nothing.
"I agree," he said. "And since nobody voluntarily wishes to be a slave I'm
hoping, with some of the damage done in the quake making us a wee bit short on
living souls, that we can eliminate restoring the slave bodies you want the
McMahon body, then."
"I do," he said, "but you and I know full well that in spite of all this I am
going to remain just as I am."
Marge was so shocked she fell off her stool. "What?"
"Ruddygore said it. My return, now, as this, would stabilize first Marquewood
and then the other regions. With my authority, I could insure that poor,
suffering Valisandra and even Hypboreya gets the aid and assistance they need
from the south to rebuild more stable and perhaps kinder governments. It is
difficult to explain, Marge, but I was born of royal blood, and raised with a
sense of duty and obligation. As a witch, I would be just another witch,
counting for little, able to do very little. I would be happy within myself,
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