Horrors of the Dancing Gods

that.

At least the demon Mysteroth, in his disguise as the proprietor of the shop, felt certain of it.

He chuckled in fact at what was awaiting the poor kid, who would find that the thing worked exactly as promised and that the only one it wouldn't work on was the only one the kid really wanted. It was really one of those perfectly delicious little spells, at that.

Walking up the street, Irving spotted a woman coming the other way. She was fairly ordinary-looking and he normally would never have given her a second glance, but now he decided to test out his high-priced power.

He stared at her and willed that she feel the attraction.

It was as if a thunderbolt had struck her. From virtually not noticing him at all except as an obstacle to avoid while walking, she suddenly gasped, smiled the dreamiest of smiles, and could not take her eyes off him.

He felt the power and the control, and it was really strange — he felt it there. He felt it in his loins, which were giving off strange sensations and also undergoing involuntary stiffening as he watched.

He was suddenly a little scared and said to her, 'Forget it. You did not see me at any time, nor will you ever think of or remember me,' and sent that with an additional bolt of mental force.

She seemed to almost shrivel, shook her head in sudden puzzlement, and started to walk on some more, a very concerned, confused look on her face.

His own new sensations weren't so easily controlled, and it worried him. Not that he wanted to do anything with that strange woman, but it also struck him with sudden force that he really didn't know how to do it, at least not all the rules and procedures and things a woman would expect. He wanted to be able to do it right, to do it perfectly, if he could.

He needed a teacher.

A COMPLICATION IN THE RULES

Native guides can be neither fully hired, nor fully trusted.

— Rules. XXIII, p. 104(d)

IT HAD BEEN A STRANGE AND DIFFICULT NIGHT FOR Irving. Dreams of a kind he'd never really known before came vividly to his head and remained with him when he awoke. It wasn't merely that they were sexual fantasies, which he at least had understood before on a more academic level; it was the nature of them. They were ugly — not him at all: domination fantasies, extreme power trips, scenarios detailing vignettes where he treated women in ways he'd never treat them in real life or even want to, or so he thought.

And they were turning him on physically, a process that wasn't nearly as comfortable or pleasurable as he'd imagined but was making him feel like a tense and tightly coiled spring demanding release as if from some great pain or agony.

He was getting all at once what almost everybody else got in stages through adolescence; the brain chemicals and bodily sensations that by his age would normally be under some kind of control were all rushing in upon him in a single night. He awoke drenched with sweat, stiff as a board, and scared to death.

The worst part was, there was a little bit of him thinking — always thinking but in this case following the flow of sensations in his body — reminding him, as it were, that unlike most men, he actually did possess the power to accomplish in real life what his dreams demanded and his conscience recoiled at doing. How the hell could he turn this off now that it was on? How could he possibly with stand the temptation to use his strange powers to fulfill those fantasies even though he'd hate himself for doing it?

Who could he turn to for help? Not Poquah, certainly. If the Imir knew that he'd squandered so much on this, there was no limit on the spells and curses that might come down upon him. But who else was there? Marge? Hell, she looked a lot like the kind of girl his dreams could easily accommodate, and she was built for it. She was a creature of sex; how could she possibly help him control or overcome it?

Larae — no, that would be even worse. It was a good thing for now that they were off later this very morning, or else they might well wind up alone again, and then who knew what would happen? And yet those people were the only ones he knew and could fully trust in all this bizarre land. He'd been naive enough to get himself into this mess, but he wasn't so naive that he believed for a moment that anyone in this city would help him, even the magic shop proprietor, without the payment of even larger sums than he'd paid to get into this fix. That was how bargains with demons worked, didn't they?

Somehow he'd have to deal with it. Somehow he'd have to learn control, at least to a degree. Otherwise he would turn into a monster, a rapist, or something equally suitable to Yuggoth but not to anywhere else or to his soul.

He got up, although it was still before dawn, and walked out onto the small balcony, forgetting he was stark naked. It wouldn't matter, anyway; there was nobody below or directly across at that point in the morning, and he just needed some air, some cool sea breeze, to comfort him and let him get a grip. It wasn't a lot of good, though. This was the tropics, and the weather was strictly hot, hotter, and hottest.

More comfortable in the predawn heat was Marge, who flew now over the city, heading toward the hotel, intent on getting some sleep before she'd have to be mused for the move to the new ship. She wouldn't be in any great shape during daylight, but she could manage by force of will the couple of hours needed for the move if she turned in a bit early.

Marge, too, was disturbed and not sure exactly why. She'd tried to contact the Earth Mother to draw strength and wisdom while in this place, and it hadn't worked, at least not in the way it always had. Oh, she still felt the link, and there was comfort in that, but it seemed distant, far away, and direct mental communication appeared to be impossible, as if she were too distant to make out any of the words. It had been a long time since she'd been cut off from such contact, and it made her uncomfortable, all the more so because she felt stronger and more powerful than she ever had before. In fact, she felt tremendous.

She banked around toward the hotel window and then suddenly realized that Irving was standing naked on the little balcony outside the window. She wondered why he was up but also noted that the kid was really a sexy hunk, far more than his father had ever been. Funny, she hadn't really noticed that or thought about it before.

It didn't take much to see what his problem was, either. In faerie sight, one quite literally burned when one had this kind of lust, and this kid was worse than any sixteen-year-old boy she'd ever seen.

Wait a minute! He shouldn't burn like that! He's got a spell…

And it was clearly still there, too. Either the kid had burst right through it, so strong were his impulses and drives, or he'd been playing a little magic trick himself. She wondered why Poquah hadn't noticed it but then realized that he wouldn't see it in Irving — those of the nymph family would be the ones with that sort of sight.

She hesitated to disturb the kid, but there were still a number of potential threats able to fly around these parts, and Irving was frankly standing between her and security. She decided to come in via the direct approach to give him time to either duck discreetly back in or at least be prepared for company.

Irving did start when he saw Marge coming in, but not because she was out there. Rather, she didn't look, well, right for some reason. All those shimmering reds and stuff seemed dulled out, and it was almost as if she were somebody or something different Still, he didn't fear what he saw and allowed the flying creature to approach until he was able to see quite clearly that it was Marge.

Or, rather, opaquely. Frankly, there seemed to be two Marges there, one the old one and the other a larger, differently colored variation that seemed somehow darker.

Marge settled down next to him and said, 'You got it bad, kid. I can tell. You can't