The last time Marge had seen the boy, he'd been literally that. Nothing so marked the dramatic passage of time in anyone's experience than seeing a child at one stage and then not seeing the same one again until long afterward.
Although young, the person who rose and stood facing her was hardly a child anymore. Irving was in fact pushing six feet tall with no absolute assurance that he'd stop growing. He was a handsome young man, too, with a finely honed muscular brown body that would have been the envy of almost any of his contemporaries and a finely featured angular face that seemed quite exotic-looking, blending the sharpest and most distinctive features of his Native American father and his African-American mother. Still, for all his lack of European ancestry, there was something of the Greco-Roman god in him, some kind of ancient ideal in deep, dark bronze, yet it was also clear by his looks that they had been attained by nature, not by any of Ruddygore's tricks.
Holy cow! Marge thought, a bit awed by the sight. He wasn't just a good-looking guy, he was gorgeous! She felt a little odd in a way she had nearly forgotten. She hadn't felt this way about the sight of a man since ... since she'd been human.
"Irv, this is an old friend of your father's who was originally from your world. Marge, meet Irv," Ruddygore said.
"I don't remember seeing anyone who looked like you when I was growing up back on Earth," Irving noted, his voice already deep and rich yet with no trace of an accent at all.
"I've changed a bit since I got here," Marge assured him, sounding both nervous and a bit skittish. What was getting into her?
"It seems to happen pretty regularly," Irv commented a bit sourly. "After all, how many other people do you know whose fathers are wood nymphs?"
"I—well, nobody, of course." Damn! What was wrong with her? "It wasn't really his fault, though. It was that or die."
"We've been through this, Irving," Ruddygore commented patiently. "Until you are in a spot where you would have to make that choice for yourself or for someone else you care about—which I devoutly hope you won't have to ever do—you cannot sit in judgment on others. And by doing what he did instead of taking death or surrender, he also was able to dispatch one of the most dangerous and evil people I have known and make it possible to foil a plot to take over the whole world. I'd say it would have taken a lot more courage to do what he did than not to do it and let evil win."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't there," Irving responded petulantly. Damn it, this is Joe's kid! Marge told herself, and got back some self-control. She was fascinated by his reaction in spite of the problems she was having. "I was," she managed, "and Ruddygore is right. I can promise you that."
"Yeah, well, it's what some of my tutors here have said. Dad won the war, but he blew the peace. Seems to me that if you have the guts to make that kind of decision, you should have the guts to learn to live with it, too."
"What ... ?" Marge was totally confused at this attitude.
"Joe never told him," Ruddygore explained. "And didn't stay around very long afterward, either. Irving found out on his own. Somebody on my own staff slipped; still, we'd have to have told him sooner or later, anyway."
"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 shou
ld 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?"
"Oh, yes. That's the one thing about evil places. If you actually want to go there, there's always a way open to do so. The problem is never finding evil, it's getting away from it."
"All right, assuming we can get there in reasonable order, what then?" she pressed, feeling uncomfortably the leader of this mess. Damn it! 1 was drafted—they don't draft generals!
"Once you're off, I'll know where your first landfall will be and I will arrange for you to be met. Still, remember, once you're inside, you cannot trust anyone or anything on Yuggoth. The good people there are the ones who wouldn't stab you in the back for no reason at all, just if they had something to gain by it. Still, the agents we can use for this are primarily changelings like yourself, although of a darker nature. People whose absolute fanatic and uncompromisable lust for the McGuffin has taken them across the Sea of Dreams to Yuggoth but not completely to their goals. They will help you because you will facilitate them in attaining what they most desire. In general, you can trust them to get you there, but not once you get there or are clear to the goal. And if it looks like some other player can help them if they betray you, they'll have no hesitation in doing so."
"Sounds chummy," Marge noted glumly.
"You will be unable to find the McGuffin on your own; its concealed hiding place is known only to the King. He has agreed that if any of our representatives get to him, he will make that location known to them."
"Why not just tell us outright so that we may head straight for it?" Poquah asked, frowning.
"Well, for one thing, he doesn't want it known to others, and this decreases the chances of that happening," the sorcerer explained. "Second, if you can't make it to him, you can't make it there. And third, since you'll have native guides who also want the McGuffin—if they know, well, then, they won't need to be with you anymore, will they?"
Poquah was unconvinced. "But if we reach the King, assuming we do, and gain this information, won't the effect be the same?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I'm sure he'll have something in mind to guard against that. He always has the most arcane ideas for accomplishing things, but those things get done because nobody else can figure them out."
"How far will we have to go in this land before we reach His Majesty?" the Imir asked. "From the port city, that is."
"Yuggoth is roughly three thousand kilometers across by perhaps twenty-four hundred north-south. The King runs things from almost dead in the middle, atop some high mystical but natural formation called Castle Rock. That's where you must go."
"How big?" Marge was appalled. "Ruddy, that's something like fifteen hundred plus miles! That's longer than Texas is wide! And all filled with horrors and dark powers and creepy-crawlies, and all hands, tentacles, and whatnot against us! It can't be done!"
"Oh, I assure you that it can," the sorcerer told her. "Absolutely guaranteed. That is not to say that you will do it, but it is certainly possible with who and what you will have. What makes it more difficult than it is, is that this McGuffin must be in my hands—in my hands, not yours—in less than six months' time. If it is not, the fissures will be opened and the only option then will be a hasty escape for the powerful few. If the denizens of the muck beneath the Sea of Dreams actually make it through to reality, any reality, it is all over. If that happens, nothing, not even the McGuffm, will have the power to save us."
Chapter 5
Getting Up To Date
As a satisfactory motivator for actions of a Company, there must always be a McGuffin.
—Rules, Vol VIII p. 27(e)
"He certainly has been one for study, that's for certain," Poquah noted to Marge as they began their journey down the River of Dancing Gods to the sea and beyond in a private barge owned by Ruddygore. He was talking about young Irving, who seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on deck studying a particularly fat book.
Marge nodded. "That's one of the Rules, isn't it? I wonder if Ruddygore knows it's missing."
"Oh, it's of no consequence," the Imir assured her. "We have several dozen sets around."
She had managed to control her less than rational reaction to Irving, but he still set off a peculiar mixture of emotions inside her ranging from animal attraction to severe distaste. It wasn't a good mix, but she felt she had to try to at least forge some kind of friendly business relationship with him if he'd allow her to do so.
She walked over to him and looked over his shoulder at the book, which appeared to have th
ree parallel columns per page of markings resembling what would be left by a flock of wild birds in heat. This was not a language she related to any from back home.
"You can read that?" she asked, looking for an opening but also impressed in a very real sense. It was more than she could do after a lot longer there.
"It was tough at the start, but it's no big deal now," he responded. "There are a lot of words I still have trouble with, but you can usually figure them out by finding something inside that's familiar."
"Why so intent on this particular volume?' she asked him.
"It's the one on Yuggoth, of course," he said with a bit of impatience in his voice. `They got their own volume, believe it or not. I been trying to figure out what makes it so much worse than what anybody can meet here. I mean, we've got evil spirits, demons, zombies, vampires, and other kinds of things in the here and now, and ghosts are a dime a dozen. So what can be so special about this place?"
It was something she'd wondered about, too. "And do you know yet?"
"I think I'm getting the idea. Think of every horror movie, creepy story, you name it, that you ever heard. Put them all together. Now take out any good folks—that is, good races, good ghosts, good anything. That's Yuggoth. It's the place where bad dreams come from and where the bad guys go to learn how to be really bad."
"So how are we even supposed to survive this trip?" she asked him.
"Oh, I don't think they want to kill in Yuggoth. Too simple. They want to corrupt you, bring you over to their side. That's the real trick. Being good and honorable in Yuggoth? They can't even figure that out. They can't handle it. Giving in to temptation, to corruption—that's what they're after. Then it's payback time. That's gonna be a lot rougher than just fighting or sneaking around or something like that. No matter what, we've got to keep being the good guys."
She considered that. "I'm not so sure I like the sound of that. You can at least die and get out of it, but Poquah and me—we're already in as much of an afterlife as we get."
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