Horrors of the Dancing Gods

'Jeez! That's tough!' Marge said, genuinely sympathetic. 'But your dad's one of the good guys — or was. Honest. Sometimes people do stupid things because they think they're better than what they should do. This sounds like one of those.'

'I wouldn't know, now, would I?' Irving responded frostily.

Marge frowned. 'Wait a second! You feel that way about your father and yet you're still willing to risk your neck and worse to find him? Why?'

Irving gave a wry smile. 'It sure beats hanging around here.'

Things wouldn't get any better, and Ruddygore, realizing it, excused them as quickly as he could.

'If I thought I was wrong for this expedition before, I'm doubly sure now,' Marge told the sorcerer, relieved to be away. 'It starts with his effect on me. I–I can't explain it, but it's not what a Kauri should feel.'

Ruddygore nodded. 'Yes, we've noticed it ourselves. It keeps growing stronger as he gets older, too. The odd thing is, he's essentially unaware of it and certainly has no knowledge of how to use it.'

'You sure of that? That was a magic lab if I ever saw one back there.'

'Oh, I'm sure. He has the talent of a major shaman but never a world-class magician. He's unaware of it primarily because I've had him under a fixed spell since puberty, one of many minor ones you might have noticed. We couldn't contend with all the temptations in a place like this.'

'Oh, don't tell me he's gay! That would be too much!'

'No, he's not. At least I doubt it. He's nothing at all. He understands sex on an academic level, but absolutely nothing turns him on. Nothing. On a physical and emotional level it's still a mystery to him.'

'You can't keep him that way,' she noted. 'Sooner or later that lid'll have to come off, and then the more repression you've caused, the worse the reaction. I'd really hate to see somebody like him, with that kind of power, let loose without learning control and responsibility.'

'I agree, but there's little time for it. Besides, he'll be far too busy contending with other things to truly abuse it on this trip, and it may come in handy.'

She stared at him. 'That's what you want me for, isn't it? You want me to break him in, be both mother and play lover. I'm not sure I can do that, Ruddy. I'm not sure just which of us would be in control in that circumstance. I'm also not at all sure I like the big guy, no matter what his animal magnetism. That's one bitter and seething cauldron there. With that abnormal a background and his own resentment… I think he really blames his father for just about everything and wants revenge, not rescue. Frankly, he seems like one sick puppy to me.'

'Perhaps. I've done what I could. The thing is, though, this is another of those matters where I have to be cold. You, even he, can go for Joe. That's fine, and I won't be judgmental. I suspect Joe's already fallen into much worse than even anything Irving can do to him, and if not, then no matter what either feels at the moment, I think finally bringing the two together in full knowledge of who the other is would be healthy for both of them. From my stand point, though, I have to push all that to one side. The bottom line is that someone must bring me the Great McGuffin, period. I can solve the other problems if that occurs; if I do not get it, then everything else makes no difference. All that we know will cease to exist — Kauris, nymphs, and livings, too — and this world will be a pulsing cancer of pure evil.'

Outside their ancient and sacred small homeland, the Kauris were few and were spread across the length and breadth of the world, so they seldom encountered one another in their wanderings until their mandated pilgrimage to cleanse themselves in the psychic and very real fires of their Holy Mother. Even so, they were never truly alone, though they usually were reminded of this only on the rare occasions when they needed some kind of correction.

'Marge?'

She was startled. 'Yes, Holy Mother?'

'I didn't allow you to go over there to Terindell to beg off. I can smell the stink rising from fissures in Yuggoth even here. They cannot be permitted to widen and allow in that which must never take true physical form. Ruddygore's right in that regard: you let that happen and all our asses are grass.'

'I came only because it was your command, as you know I will go if that, too, is your command, but I would rather not.'

'You bet your little wing tips you'll go if I command you!' The Holy Mother was not simply a leader but a supernatural force. If she commanded a Kauri, any Kauri, to stand on her head and spout poetry, then that Kauri would be absolutely powerless to refuse, and Marge knew it. The fact that they were having a dialogue at all was most unusual for the Holy Mother and definitely suggested that this was a high-stakes game.

'I do not lack the courage, Holy One. Surely you know that after all this time. It is the boy. He has a power over me that I am hard-pressed to resist and has it without even knowing he does so. This kind of attraction is bad in most people, but it should not act at all upon faerie in general or Kauri in particular'

'But you controlled it.'

'True,' Marge admitted, 'but that was in an initial meeting, with Ruddygore present, and for a very short time. This would be day and night, constantly, and perhaps for months. It is not like the old Joe, even if he had also had this attraction. Joe was a genuinely interesting, likable man. This boy is cold and dark within; the attraction is unmerited, without reason, no more than a magical version of a love potion. Even as I feel the attraction, I find the man-boy behind it unlikable.'

She had once had a husband back on Earth who had been something like that. He was charming, sexy, handsome, with tremendous animal attraction and a mean soul, a man who cheated anyone who loved him, whose promises were worth less than spit, and who took out his frustrations at the world by hurting others and feeling pleasure and release by doing so. There was something in Irving de Oro's voice and something else in his eyes that had seemed very, very familiar.

'The boy was snatched from his mother and family and the world he knew, good or bad and brought here, where he was subsequently abandoned,' the Kauri goddess noted. 'He's been raised and educated in a household of strangers by people who do not understand families and the needs of growing boys and who think a kind word or a reward or a magic spell cures all. His father might — might — have saved him, by returning, by being honest, by raising the boy anyway and overseeing his development, and, most of all, by giving him the one thing he had little of back in his native world but expected more of here: love. His younger self came here because he sensed the loving and caring his father had for him in the mere act of coming for him. Then, at that tender age, he was abandoned and felt betrayed. He still feels betrayed. At heart he is still that little boy, looking for somebody to give him that kind of love.'

'Yeah, well, that might be true, but there's got to be some point at which you take responsibility for your own actions. My ex was beaten and abused growing up as well, but I knew men who also had been and who were determined that they would never be like that to others. Most poor people don't commit crimes, either. The majority of the people here are dirt-poor; but every time I hear poverty given as an excuse for evil, I have to laugh. I'm real sorry for Irving, but I didn't do it.'

'Well, there's no getting around it, honey. That brat's gonna decide the fate of all our asses, so you got the job. I will give you some armor against his charisma, and Ruddygore can give you the keys to his fetters. Do I have to command you to go?'

Marge sighed. 'No. I'll go on my own, but for the sake of you and my sisters and to rescue Joe if I can. Not because Irving needs an education.'

'Start from down here near where Macore lives,' Ruddygore instructed. 'It's quite a long sea journey, and you will be dependent on ports in the region anyway for passage. As you might suspect, there isn't a whole lot of traffic, at least of the commercial sort, between Yuggoth and the rest of Husaquahr, and it's not the sort of spot folks go for holidays. Try to talk Macore into coming along — I think he'll be his usual great asset. In any event, he's the last person on this continent to have seen and spoken with Joe.'

Marge, Poquah, and Irving all stood around, nodding at the instructions. Until then the boy hadn't evidenced much interest in getting to know Marge or the details of the trip, but now at least he seemed to realize that he couldn't just walk blindly off a cliff.

'I'd say it wouldn't be much on the usual shipping lanes,' Marge noted. 'Are you sure we can even get there in any reasonable time?'