Free Horrors of the Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker

you had them? I mean, you're talking about doing three different things at once with your hands."
     
    "No problem. It was one of my kid's games I used to practice in my room. I'd play a kind of catch, bouncing a ball and alternately catching and tossing or dropping it hand to hand to hand to hand and so on. Found that on my top and bottom set I'm right-handed and with the middle pair the left works best. You figure that out. I never did. I guess it's just the way it's wired. I always wondered if I'd be good in a duel, but I never had the chance, 'cause nobody was supposed to even know about the other sets, right? And training me with those kinds of weapons wasn't on Daddy's list of priorities. I can do pretty fair with a bow, though, and I wanted to learn the rest."
     
    Joe considered it. "Well, I suppose I could teach you the basics, but it's years to get really good with any of them, you know."
     
    "So? If I can get some decent training up front, I'll get better. How long did you have to train to get to be expert?'
     
    Joe coughed, a bit embarrassed by the answer. "I didn't—much. A few months, really, with a good teacher. My edge was mostly the fact that I had a magic sword that knew more about the business than I did."
     
    "Yeah? Where'd you get one of those? And what happened to it?"
     
    "It was given to me by a powerful sorcerer, and where he got it from I have no idea. It—and me, too, I think—was to finish off the most evil sorcerer of our time, and it did. We did—but at the cost of me winding up as a wood nymph and the sword being consumed by volcanic fires. Since then I've been trying to get back to my old self somehow, and you can see the result. Heck, I often wonder if we were bound together, that sword and me, and if neither of us could live as we were without the other. It sure seemed like I lost something inside when it fell, impaling the body of the Dark Baron, Esmilio Boquillas, and consuming him as well."
     
    "Lost something? Like what?"
     
    "I don't know. I thought I knew, but I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't been wrong, that what I lost wasn't my big hero mode so much as my reason for being around at all. I mean, you're right, it's not all that bad being a wood nymph in Husaquahr if you were born one and raised one and that's all you ever were or were going to be. But it's pretty damned dull and limited if you've been other things and wind up one. I wasn't sure what I had of the old me left until that business in the woods back there. It stirred up something I thought was long dead."
     
    "If it did, then you must have wasted a lot the past few years."
     
    "Huh?"
     
    "Well, if you found that feeling of fun, of accomplishment, again, then it was there all the time, right? So maybe if you'd been looking for some adventure and people who needed help and helped them instead of moping around and feeling sorry for yourself and trying to undo what was done, you'd have had a happy few years. Well? I mean, it sure sounds like it."
     
    Joe thought it sounded like time to change the subject again. "Never mind about me. What makes you so bloodthirsty all of a sudden?'
     
    "Freedom. This. All my life I've been told what kind of horrible existence I'd have if I ever got discovered and was forced out into the world. Well, maybe I don't know much yet, but I do know that most folks don't give adamn if you don't bother them, not around here, and that what you really need to get along is both a skill or skills and a way to defend your own self and whatever you own. The sword, the bow, the whip—these are the things that give people the feeling of power over others around here. If I have them and know how to use them, maybe that'll give the others pause about making comments or worse about me. I also have faerie sight and some small abilities with minor spells as well as a fair amount of book learning. Put them all together and maybe I stay free."
     
    It was a real thought.
     
    "All right," Joe agreed,