Read Online Vengeance of the Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker - Free Book Online
Authors: Jack L. Chalker
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worst part is, I can no longer even get over there to stop him..
She was a creature of the night and the fairy light and she loved it. She had been across the length and breadth of Husaquahr, and she had been the consort of kings and wizards, rogues, thieves, pirates, and mercenaries, and had to a degree shared their adventures. For one so tiny and delicate, she was a creature of great power, both known and unknown to mortals and other fairies.
She did not choose this life or this existence. It was forced upon her, as it was forced upon her sisters who were born to it. But she had not been born to it; she was a changeling, a human who had become a fairy when taken to the land where faerie power still held sway, and while she was totally what she now was, she was also the one she had been.
She was four feet ten inches tall, with a skin that was a soft burnt orange. She was humanoid, but not human.
Her fingers, far too long for a woman's, ended in clawlike nails; so, too, her toes, and all digits both fingers and toes were webbed. She had a cute, sensuous face with enormous, sad, dark eyes and a playful, sensuous mouth, flanked by short, thick, blue-black hair shaped something like a pageboy with bangs over her forehead. From either side of her head protruded erect, shell-like pointed ears.
Her body matched her face, and was both sensuous and perfectly proportioned.
But the most striking feature was the wings, sinister and batlike but somehow less threatening in deep crimson than in demonic black, although from the back the wings were a deep purple. They were not merely attached to her but seemed almost woven into and between her arms and body, so that, if an arm moved out or forward, the Page 34 Chalker, Jack L - Vengeance of the Dancing Gods 46 JACK L. CHALKER 47 VENGEANCE OF THE DANCING GODS membranes fluttered and acted something like a natural cape, when not extended for flight.
She was of the race of Kauri, an all-female race with a very special place in the interrelated and complementary nationhood of faerie, a race numbering only a bit over three hundred, one of the most ancient and most primal of faerie types. They all looked exactly alike, but by a faerie sense of reading what was truly important about an individual as easily as humans might notice superficial surface features and blemishes, they all knew just who each was at all times.
To the Kauri, the whole world was magic and they alone were born just to enjoy it. In the sanctuary of their home at Mohr Jerahl, they flew and played tag and acted like small, uninhibited children without any self-control, having not a care in the world. Part of their job was removing from men, both human and otherwise, the heaviest emotional burdens inside the men's souls. They took it within themselves and fed off it, but they also acquired in this way more than they could consume. To cleanse themselves fully, they had to return quite often to Mohr Jerahl, where the Earth Mother who bore them lived in the heart of volcanic fires and could cleanse in those fires the stains they had removed from the souls of others.
Marge had often reflected how ironic it was that her Kauri powers grew enormously the more of that guilt and fear and loneliness she ate, yet the less fun it was when she had too much. She had returned to Mohr Jerahl only the previous night from a trip to the north, where she had participated in an ancient and colorful barbarian rite. When a chief or warlord married, there were three days of celebration, feasting, dancing, and all the rest, but on the wedding eve it was traditional for a Kauri to visit and service the groom, to take away that which might harm the relationship and make his soul pure for the wedding.
While this involved, among other things, incredible sex, the Kauri even took away the guilt. Nor was there much in this case—there was a male race which was the counterpart of the Kauri, the Zamir, and they,
She was a creature of the night and the fairy light and she loved it. She had been across the length and breadth of Husaquahr, and she had been the consort of kings and wizards, rogues, thieves, pirates, and mercenaries, and had to a degree shared their adventures. For one so tiny and delicate, she was a creature of great power, both known and unknown to mortals and other fairies.
She did not choose this life or this existence. It was forced upon her, as it was forced upon her sisters who were born to it. But she had not been born to it; she was a changeling, a human who had become a fairy when taken to the land where faerie power still held sway, and while she was totally what she now was, she was also the one she had been.
She was four feet ten inches tall, with a skin that was a soft burnt orange. She was humanoid, but not human.
Her fingers, far too long for a woman's, ended in clawlike nails; so, too, her toes, and all digits both fingers and toes were webbed. She had a cute, sensuous face with enormous, sad, dark eyes and a playful, sensuous mouth, flanked by short, thick, blue-black hair shaped something like a pageboy with bangs over her forehead. From either side of her head protruded erect, shell-like pointed ears.
Her body matched her face, and was both sensuous and perfectly proportioned.
But the most striking feature was the wings, sinister and batlike but somehow less threatening in deep crimson than in demonic black, although from the back the wings were a deep purple. They were not merely attached to her but seemed almost woven into and between her arms and body, so that, if an arm moved out or forward, the Page 34 Chalker, Jack L - Vengeance of the Dancing Gods 46 JACK L. CHALKER 47 VENGEANCE OF THE DANCING GODS membranes fluttered and acted something like a natural cape, when not extended for flight.
She was of the race of Kauri, an all-female race with a very special place in the interrelated and complementary nationhood of faerie, a race numbering only a bit over three hundred, one of the most ancient and most primal of faerie types. They all looked exactly alike, but by a faerie sense of reading what was truly important about an individual as easily as humans might notice superficial surface features and blemishes, they all knew just who each was at all times.
To the Kauri, the whole world was magic and they alone were born just to enjoy it. In the sanctuary of their home at Mohr Jerahl, they flew and played tag and acted like small, uninhibited children without any self-control, having not a care in the world. Part of their job was removing from men, both human and otherwise, the heaviest emotional burdens inside the men's souls. They took it within themselves and fed off it, but they also acquired in this way more than they could consume. To cleanse themselves fully, they had to return quite often to Mohr Jerahl, where the Earth Mother who bore them lived in the heart of volcanic fires and could cleanse in those fires the stains they had removed from the souls of others.
Marge had often reflected how ironic it was that her Kauri powers grew enormously the more of that guilt and fear and loneliness she ate, yet the less fun it was when she had too much. She had returned to Mohr Jerahl only the previous night from a trip to the north, where she had participated in an ancient and colorful barbarian rite. When a chief or warlord married, there were three days of celebration, feasting, dancing, and all the rest, but on the wedding eve it was traditional for a Kauri to visit and service the groom, to take away that which might harm the relationship and make his soul pure for the wedding.
While this involved, among other things, incredible sex, the Kauri even took away the guilt. Nor was there much in this case—there was a male race which was the counterpart of the Kauri, the Zamir, and they,
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