Trapped

The enforcer had no time to duck. His reflexes were good enough to shield his face with one arm, but that simply meant the lamp stuck sharp spikes instead of anything softer. Smash. The alcohol on his skin combined with flame and lamp oil to ignite with a gusty whoosh: a blue halo burst around his head and shoulders.

Beside me, the Caryatid murmured, 'Pretty!'

Though the fire was searing hot, Hump didn't let it faze him. A man of blazing determination. Even Impervia was taken aback by his stubbornness — she stared in surprise a dangerous half-second, giving Hump time to get closer. Nothing separated the two of them now except the bar-top itself. Hump threw himself forward onto the counter, his hands streaked with fire, the spikes on his arms slanting toward Impervia as if they were hungry for blood. In the cramped space behind the bar, she didn't have room to dodge. Spikes and flames came straight for her. Nothing to do but tuck tight, arms in front of her head, the defensive tortoise position of a boxer who can't do anything but ride out a flurry of hits…

Then suddenly, everything stopped. The world froze as motionless as a painting. Hump in mid-lunge, spikes less than a hand's breadth from spearing their target. Flames around him snuffing out as if smothered. Impervia frozen too, like a bug in invisible amber. The Caryatid leaning forward, her mouth open slightly. Dee-James suspended a short distance off the floor — he'd been rolling off the table, preparing to run elsewhere. Even I was struck inert, not paralyzed but simply trapped, as if the air around me had turned rock-solid. It held me encased, no wiggle room at all. Breathing was like sucking wind through a woolen blanket.

Behind me, from The Buxom Bull's front door, somebody crooned, 'Quiet now… everyone quiet. Hush-a, hush-a, all fall still.'

It was a woman's voice, lilting softly as if singing a baby to sleep. I couldn't turn my head to look, but I guessed we'd found our mystery sorceress.

10: SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON

She walked forward, ‹TIP›, ‹TIP›, ‹TIP›: as if she were up on her toes, trying to make as little noise as possible. The shy tread of a mousy person… but when she came into view, there was nothing shy or mousy about her.

She was the most beautiful woman I'd seen in my life.

I mean this literally — she was an exact double of my cousin Hafsah at age eighteen, and teenaged Hafsah was the most exquisite woman I've ever known. The last time I saw Hafsah she was still quite lovely, though approaching forty and uninterested in the draconian regimen required to preserve great beauty into middle age; but at eighteen, Hafsah was monumentally breathtaking… and I was a moonstruck ten-year-old whom she spent time with because my puppy love amused her. Sweet indulgent Hafsah was the pinnacle of feminine beauty and I would never meet anyone who could make my heart pound so fast.

We are all prisoners of our ten-year-old selves.

Now that I'd reached thirty-five, one could wonder why my tastes hadn't matured… especially since I knew eighteen-year-olds were not the amazingly sophisticated creatures I once believed them to be. But the woman tiptoeing into The Buxom Bull was living proof I hadn't outgrown my boyish infatuation; I saw her as Hafsah, the teenaged Hafsah, and that meant my beautiful cousin still had a smiling stranglehold on my psyche.

What am I talking about? Sorcery: a well-known spell called Kaylan's Chameleon of Craving. (Mage Kaylan was superb at research but a lowbrow hack when it came to naming his enchantments.) In scientific terms, the spell must have been caused by nanites in my brain stimulating whatever set of neurons encoded my ideal of feminine beauty. I saw what the nanites told me to see — the woman most guaranteed to arouse me.

Creating such an illusion had to be a complex neural process, but the result was utterly simple: when Kaylan's Chameleon was cast on a woman, every man viewed that woman as the embodiment of his personal lust. If a man was entranced by breasts, he saw mammaries of his favorite size, shape, and degree of gravitational impossibility. If he adored auburn hair hanging creamy smooth down to the ankles, that's what he saw… and what he felt too, if he ran his fingers through the tresses. If a man didn't pant after women, he saw another man… or a child, or a high-heeled shoe. And if a man dreamt of his cousin Hafsah (or his sister, his mother, or that nanny who used to spank him), Kaylan's Chameleon could be a real eye-opener.

Despite its vagaries, the Chameleon was one of the most popular spells in the world — a sure moneymaker for any sorcerer who endured the ritual to acquire it. Lots of rich women paid cartloads of gold to become artificially dazzling… including a number of girls at Feliss Academy. It was a popular first-menses gift from doting grandparents: the bestowal of Ultimate Beauty.

Or at least a hint thereof.

The extent of Kaylan's Chameleon depended on the power of the caster. When a bazaar-class sorcerer muddled through the spell, it might enchant only the woman's eyes, or her hands, or her navel. There was nothing wrong with a pair of eyes men couldn't stop pining for, but a mediocre mage had no control over which part of the subject's anatomy would become irresistible. A woman who paid her life's savings often felt cheated when all she got was a particularly winsome elbow. (Though I've heard of men who would crawl over hot coals to fondle such a thing.)

Even first-rate sorcerers had trouble enchanting a woman's whole body; they considered the spell a success if it charmed a meaningful subregion, like the face, torso, or legs. The Chameleon-bewitched girls at Feliss Academy almost all had this partial level of ensorcellment… and let me tell you, it had its drawbacks. I'm reminded of a warm lazy day outside the dorm when a blonde fifteen-year-old named Ilsa sunned herself in a meager bikini; it was most disconcerting to see the sharply marked 'tan-line' at her waist where the pale Nordic skin of her upper body changed to the dark complexion of my cousin Hafsah, shapely brown down to the calves, then abruptly white again at the ankles. One boy who saw her ran screaming across the courtyard and vomited in the hollyhocks. Heaven knows what he saw.

But the woman in The Buxom Bull must have received her Chameleon from a stupendously powerful sorcerer — she was totally Hafsah from head to toe. And an exquisite head it was; a fine mouth-watering toe. Dark laughing eyes, demure yet kissable lips, softly rounded nose, chocolate brown hair that practically demanded you bury your face in it, and hips one could grab like a drowning man seizes a life preserver. She looked perfect and I knew she would feel perfect, whatever I kissed or nibbled.

That really pissed me off.

The falseness of her. Beneath her Chameleon glamour, she could be a scrawny twelve-year-old or a pock-marked crone of ninety; tall or short, dark or fair, and I'd never see the truth. I longed to ask the Caryatid what she saw — the Chameleon spell fooled only men, not women — but I couldn't speak a word with the air still solidified around me.

One last thing about the woman entering the room: she was dressed in an outfit Hafsah once wore to a formal family dinner (gold silk trousers of the style foreigners call 'harem pants,' a midriff-baring white shirt with a half-sleeved gold overjacket, assorted bangle-jangles and gold-mounted pearls), but in addition she wore something that clashed glaringly with the Hafsah persona: a billowing knee-length cape of crimson. Sorcerer's crimson. Hidden under the doppelganger of my cousin, there was indeed a sorceress.

The sorceress. Powerful enough to blast a hole through Death Hotel. Powerful enough to immobilize us all like bugs in a spider's web.

'Hello,' she said with a baby-soft version of Hafsah's voice. 'I'm called Dreamsinger: Sorcery-Lord of Spark.'

Uh-oh. Even more powerful than I thought.

Dreamsinger continued a few more steps: TIP, TIP, TIP. She wasn't actually walking on her toes, but each time she placed a foot, she did so with gingerly caution, as if fearful of making too much noise. Not the spit-in-your-eye brashness one expects from a Spark Lord. In fact, she stopped in the middle of the room and looked around as if she had no idea what to do next. Lost and dismayed. At last her gaze settled on the Caryatid; her face brightened.

'Sister!' she cooed. The Sorcery-Lord tip-tapped to the Caryatid and air-kissed her cheek. This wasn't just an empty gesture, the way unctuous people pretend to kiss while avoiding actual contact — Dreamsinger's lips pushed as close as possible to the Caryatid's face, but a hand's breadth of solidified atmosphere blocked the way. The Spark Lord kissed the invisible barrier fervently, once, twice, three times. 'Sister! Dear comrade on the Burdensome Path. Please tell me what's happening here.'

The Caryatid remained motionless. Dreamsinger waited a moment… then a moment longer… then raised her hand to her mouth in the embarrassed horror of a little girl realizing she's done something rude. 'You mean you can't just… but it's such a simple spell!' Dreamsinger leaned in close, her forehead pressed against the imprisoning air as she stared into the Caryatid's face. 'All you have to do is shrug it off. A tiny trivial shrug. Not the physical sort, but you know when you focus your mind, then flip the magic away?'

No response. The Caryatid looked as if she was straining to shrug/focus/flip, but the only result was a flush of effort turning her cheeks pink. Dreamsinger watched a moment more, then dropped her gaze. 'Well, ah, it can sometimes be difficult…'

Eyes still averted, the Spark Lord made a twiddly gesture with the last three fingers of her left hand. The Caryatid lurched forward, as if she'd suddenly regained her momentum from a minute before and was continuing her run toward Impervia. Dreamsinger waited politely (keeping her gaze elsewhere, pretending she didn't notice anything ungainly) until the Caryatid staggered to a halt. Then the Sorcery-Lord lifted her head and said, 'So, dear sister, you were going to explain…?'

The Caryatid curtsied low. My grandma Khadija (who'd been governor of Sheba for twenty-three years) had told me the Sparks hated people bowing or scraping—'They don't want deference, they want obedience.' But Dreamsinger waited placidly as the Caryatid held the curtsy for a full five seconds. Then the Caryatid rose and said, 'Milady, we… we're on a quest.'

Dreamsinger's eyes grew wide. 'Really? My brother says the only people who believe in quests are professors of literature. But he must have been teasing. My family likes to invent stories to see what I'll believe. They call me 'delightfully gullible.' '

She repeated the phrase in the singsong voice of a little girl who's heard the words frequently but doesn't quite understand them. Perhaps beneath her luscious exterior, Dreamsinger was far more child than woman. As I said, girls from affluent families often received Kaylan's Chameleon as a 'Welcome to puberty' gift; take away the sorcerous glamour, and the real Dreamsinger might only be eleven, with scrapes on her knees and a first-figure bra. One might ask why her family let her leave Spark Royal without an adult chaperon… but her freeze-the-room spell showed she could take care of herself. Perhaps it was standard practice for the High Lord to send his children on the prowl: GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD, AND INSTILL THE FEAR OF THE LORDS.

'I regret,' Dreamsinger said, 'I don't know much about Life. I have paid a great price to follow the Burdensome Path. A grave and awful price.' She looked to the Caryatid for sympathy. 'Studying day and night, learning to reprogram the world. This is the first time I've been outside Spark Royal since… dear me, I don't remember. Sorcery has jumbled my brain.'

She laughed: the artificial type of laugh one gives when feeling awkward, but not half so forced as the laugh the Caryatid gave in response. It's hard to sound