DG5 - Horrors of the Dancing Gods

by Chalker, Jack L

  She seemed oblivious to him, to the rain, to much of anything, so he swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and wandered over toward her in what he hoped seemed a casual and natural manner.

  She was aware of him, though; as he approached and got very close, she began slowly to edge her way aft and toward an interior hatch.

  "I—I'm sorry if I scared you!" he called to her. "I didn't mean any harm!"

  She hesitated a moment, and he could see the fear and uncertainty in her eyes but then she bolted into the open doorway and was gone. He resisted the impulse to follow her. He'd made the first move; now it was up to her if she wanted to follow up with him. He was smart enough to realize that any kind of forced persistence would send exactly the wrong message.

  He was actually a bit surprised at her action, though; he wasn't used to women not being instantly friendly and attracted to him, even if his own spells kept him from fully understanding why. It was still a matter of ego in a sense, and there was a bit of a nagging letdown that the first girl he'd ever found attractive in any way was somehow immune to the charm all the ones he couldn't care less about found irresistible.

  Still, what must she think of anyone with passage on this ship? If she was the prize for some terrible bargain, now being sent to evil as Poquah had surmised, then what did she think he and his faerie companions might be?

  She didn't show up for breakfast during the early morning period, so he prepared to go through his exercises, jog a few times around the main deck, and then lounge around in the hot sun on the afterdeck, figuring that he would at least be accessible to anybody during that whole period.

  There was seldom anyone on deck—or almost anywhere else on the ship—who was awake and active during this daylight period, with the mornings being particularly deserted. He had that weird feeling of being watched again but no longer even bothered to try to catch whoever or whatever was spying. Let them catch him!

  This morning, though, the second time around the deck area, he felt something go in his upper calf and suddenly came up with a really strong muscle spasm that collapsed him onto the deck for a moment in sheer agony. Trying to put some kind of pressure on it while massaging the leg helped a little, and the intensity of the spasm diminished, but he was through running for the time being, that was for sure.

  Gingerly, he tried to stand up, using the rail as a support, in one way happy that nobody had seen him go down like that and in another way wishing that there were a few concerned passersby to help him to his feet. Yow! He hadn't had a charley horse like that in ages!

  It wasn't comfortable to walk on, but it was manageable to a degree. The blood flow had been screwed up and there was probably slight bruising from the spasm, but in his experience the only thing that would help now would be a good massage. He made his way carefully to a bench and for the first time saw messages posted on a board just above it. Funny—he hadn't really noticed the board before.

  Many were the usual—black masses every night at midnight in the chapel, a promo for a book on the scenic ruins of Arkham available in the gift shop, another flier for pterodactyl tours of Mount Doom, that sort of thing. One item, however, just block printing on a small index card tucked in a corner, caught his eye.

  "Massage," it read. "Day or night. Agamemnon Garfia, days, Alestair Crowley IV, nights. Cabin 33, float deck. No appointment necessary, charge to ship's account."

  That was fairly far down, on the deck where you boarded, and inside, so it was entirely possible that it was some kind of trap. Still, Poquah had said with some confidence that they wouldn't bother to trap anybody here, not on their way to Yuggoth, and certainly nobody had been anything but nice or at worst noncommittal to him since they'd come aboard. Why not? The leg didn't feel much better, and if he got somebody good to work on it now, he might well be jogging again by the next morning.

  Aware that he could still be doing something terribly stupid, he nonetheless made his way down to the float deck and sought out cabin thirty-three, an inside cabin down the center hall. It wasn't nearly as pleasant down there as it was topside; you could feel far more of the motion of the ship, and you could also hear the moaning and groaning of the lost souls piled up in cargo below.

  Cabin thirty-three looked pretty much like all the others from the outside, but like several others in the center passageway leading aft to the purser's station, it had a small plaque by the door noting that it was not a passenger cabin at all but something more official. Some said "Chief Engineer" or "Medical" or "Clergy"—best to avoid that one!—but this one just said "Please Enter." Hesitating yet another moment and wondering if he was being a fool, he took a deep breath, turned the knob, and pulled open the door, almost ready to run for it should the sight that was about to meet his eyes so horrify him that he needed to escape.

  But there was no horrible visage, no fangs, no coffins; just a larger than expected area with two roomettes, each with a standard massage table, a bunch of towels, a small dressing room and closet area, and another door. It was dark, but the smell was of liniments, not incense, and he'd seen this sort of place at Terindell. If it was a trap, it was a good one.

  "Get undressed and lie facedown on the table one to your right," a think, heavily accented man's voice called from somewhere beyond the inner door. "I'll be with you in just a moment."

  Well, a loincloth wasn't much in the way of clothes, simple to remove and hang up, and he hadn't used sandals since coming aboard, so it was pretty easy to do as requested and lie flat.

  The door opened, and a black-robed figure emerged, its face swathed in a cowl and an unnatural mistiness that made it nearly impossible to see any features. He wasn't a big man, if indeed he was a man, but he came in and stood right there, and two arms that looked surprising strong and muscular for one who appeared so slight emerged from the sleeves, reaching for the liniments. He stepped up on a platform that pulled out from the side of the table to give him the requisite height and position and started to work.

  "You are too tense!" the masseur snapped. "Relax! I am not going to eat you or bite you. I am going to make you feel better!" His voice lost its harsh tone. "I know how this ship can spook some folks, but that is a very different category than what we do here. I do exactly what you are here for me to do, so please relax or I cannot do it."

  He was so friendly in his tone and so natural that Irving did relax, feeling the liniments go on and then feeling the strong hands and surprisingly supple long fingers work on his body.

  "Unh! You got a knot in that calf worse than a rock!" the little man said. "You are a runner?'

  "Yes."

  "Well, don't do it for about a day. Let it relax. I will give you a potion that will help heal it in a hurry. Don't sleep on your side, either. You let me at it now, use the balm as needed, and get some good rest, and you will be back running very quickly."

  The little man was very good, and Irving found himself, relaxing more and more, although attempts to shift and see the masseur's face were totally unsuccessful.

  "You are Mister Garfia?"

  "I was once. I suppose I still am, yes. You saw my card, then?"

  "Yes, up top."

  "We tend to stick the cards where those who need us most might notice them," the man told him. "We provide a full range of services that people need on this ship and beyond, but we aren't for everybody. You would be surprised, though, what we can tell just by such contact as this. For example, I can tell you her name."

  Irving suddenly stiffened and started to turn, but strong hands forced him back to the proper massage position. "What?"

  "She is Lame Ngamuku. Her mother was supposed to be a sacrifice to a volcano god, but her father loved her and made a sacrificial bargain. Spare the mother, and upon their sixteenth birthdays, any daughters would be given to the spirit world. Of course, this had the practical effect of giving her daughter to the demon in charge there, and although they tried to remain childless, it didn't work. The demon, a fellow named Zakaputi, wanted his def
erred pay. Quite a story, eh?"

  "But how do you know all this? Or that she is what I am curious about?"

  "I feel it. I get the questions from you, and of course the answers are pretty easy in this Case because she's here and we crew all know the stories. It's one of the few joys we get, swapping these stories. You want to hear the rest of it?"

  "I—I suppose." If it's true.

  "Oh, it's true, all right. I know what you're thinking. Anyway, you can almost figure out the rest between the fairy tales you know and the Rules and stuff. They loved their kid; she was beautiful. Came the approaching sixteenth birthday and they tried hard to figure out how not to go through with the deal, but where do you hide from a good, honest demon? Particularly when the whole kingdom knows the story and isn't too thrilled with the idea of lava coming through the nation's capital, if you get the idea. So they searched for a top sorcerer to figure a way out and found an old fellow named Lothar who's been running that region for some time with a showy associate. Anyway, Lothar tells 'em the obvious—the one thing Hell values most is a promise. A contract is a contract. You expect Hell to honor its contracts, and it expects you to do the same. Period. They knew what they were saying and doing back then, and they were stuck with it. She would have to be given over. The old boy was clever, though—devilishly clever, if I do say so myself. He worked out a spell that he felt was so secure, it would at least save the girl's life while also preserving the kingdom. A curse, as it were, that was so strong and so complicated and so outrageous that this Zakaputi fellow couldn't get around it. Blew his cork on the volcano, too, but couldn't do much to the capital because she had been given over."

  "What did this Lothar do?" Irving asked, fascinated:

  "Ah, that would be telling. Let's just say that she was duly presented but was no longer fit for sacrifice in the volcano. Zakaputi got so mad, he wanted to wipe everything out anyway, but he got stopped. Rules are Rules, and a bargain's a bargain. Best he could manage was to curse the parents to turn into living statues, take Larae, and send her off to Yuggoth in hopes that somebody there would be able to break Lothar's curse. I personally doubt if he ever expects to see her again, but he knows that once she's in Yuggoth and stuck as she is, all sorts of bad things will just kind of naturally happen, anyway. That's the way things are. So she got the geas to come here, to catch the ship, to go to Yuggoth, and present herself somehow in the Court of Chaos at the Dantean Gate. Of course, no time limit was put on her, so she can be there until she's an old crone and not show up. I don't think he really cares that much, you see."

  "Then—what he's done is throw her to the mercy of whatever captures or enslaves her. That's not fair!"

  "Of course it's not fair. To her, anyway. To everybody else it's fair. I'll tell you this, though, kid. If you keep thinking about her and looking at her, you'll eventually be attracted to her real bad no matter what your own spells are. Your spells will be weakened by Yuggoth, and any spells of Hell will be strengthened. That's why you find her so much more interesting today than before. Don't fall for it! Remember, you guys are headed for the Range of Fire and the Usurpers, not the Dantean Gate. You get involved with her, you'll be pulled the wrong way. No way around that. Her geas will screw up your luck. And you'll find you won't ever be able to get what you want from her, either."

  "You mean that no matter what, she's stuck? That there's nothing I can do to help her? I can't accept that."

  "Oh, you can help her, but only at cost to yourself. And if she doesn't get to the gate, you can never have any life with her. No happily ever after. Her curse will see to that. Anything nasty enough to screw up a full-blown demon, a volcano god, no less, is more than a match for you. You've been warned." The strong hands stopped the massage.

  He considered the last part. "Is that what this is all about? Did you or somebody give me the cramp just to send me this message?'

  There was silence, although he was certain that the other had not gone anywhere and he'd heard no sounds of movement. Suddenly he rolled over and looked around.

  The room was empty.

  He sat up, got down off the table, and went out and retrieved and put on his loincloth. There was no sign of Garfia either in the two rooms or in the anteroom, and when he tried the side door, it was locked tighter than a drum.

  So it had been a setup! They'd seen him try to contact her this day, figured or known his interest, and given him the cramp where they did just so he'd see the card and come on down.

  Keep off the grass. This property is condemned. Bought and paid for.

  Well, he didn't believe in bought-and-paid-for people. He never had and never would. If they'd thought to frighten him with this story, they had made a mistake, because all this did was make him more determined to help her somehow. There had to be a way even if all the details were true.

  Poquah would never agree to anything of this nature even if he heard the story himself. Marge might be a better ally here and maybe somebody who could even do more to help him contact the girl.

  No matter what they said, this was personal now.

  A SENSE OF THE FAMILIAR

  Destiny shall always draw the hapless to the hopeless.

  —Rules, Vol. XVII, p. 1350)

  MARGE LISTENED TO THE WHOLE ACCOUNT WITH A mixture of fascination and skepticism. Unlike Irving, who'd stuck pretty well to days and had one view of this strange craft, Marge had slept by day and seen the majority of passengers and crew by night, when they were most powerful and in their full glory. She had the strong feeling that if the other two had seen a fraction of what she had seen by night, they wouldn't sleep much then, either.

  She had, however, seen the girl in question briefly, here and there, either just after dark or in the predawn, and knew that she at least was neither a fantasy nor some creature of faerie. That girl in fact had the most incredibly complex set of spells on her that Marge, who'd seen a lot, could ever imagine seeing, let alone figuring out. It made Irving's set of enchantments seem feeble and childlike in comparison; the girl's twisted mass of varicolored spaghetti strands of curse and spell was definitely in Ruddygore territory.

  She walked over to where Irving said he'd gotten his cramp and read the bulletin board. The board was still there—although Marge hadn't really recalled noticing it before, either—but Irving frowned and searched frantically in the gloom for the small card. There wasn't even a space where it might have been removed.

  "It was here! Right there! Somebody's messed these all up!" he maintained.

  "Don't worry about it," Marge told him. "I believe you. I didn't expect to find it; I've already looked at cabin thirty-three. Need I say that it has no tables and not even the slightest scent of liniment? It's a storeroom and packed pretty solid at that."

  "I was there! I did have this talk!" he insisted.

  She nodded. "I believe you. The basic layout was right—one big and two small rooms—and I don't see any way you could have known about the connecting door without having been there. Never forget that we're dealing not with flesh and blood here but rather with principalities and powers of the air, sorcerers and creatures of very powerful magic. With the pain and this roundabout way of talking to you, they got their point across."

  "Were they telling the truth, though? About her, I mean."

  Marge shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. Probably. At least, they told you all the truth they wanted you to know and no more. That's the way these people work. Never do things directly when you can be sneaky, never tell a lie that isn't wrapped in truth, and never tell everything—or anything—that you don't think is necessary to serve your ends. Now, the question is their motive in all this."

  "Huh? What do you mean?"

  "Well, if they just want us to lay off the girl, there are a lot of ways to handle that. Even by their own account, she's theirs and under their complete control. Just lock her in an unassigned cabin for that matter. Put a sleep spell on her until we dock and the three of us are safely away. You see what I mean?"
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  "Yeah, but I don't see where it goes."

  Marge smiled. "Well, then, either they are actually trying to lure you to take the girl, or, just as possible, if we had her along, there's a way we could help her that they couldn't control."

  "Yeah, but why would they want me to help her? That doesn't make sense."

  "It does with all those curses and magical chains she bears. Who knows what they do? Who knows what's buried there? If they control her, even without her knowledge or will, she might well be Hell's own agent sent along with us to represent their interests. We'd never take a demon along, but an innocent girl? You see?"

  Irving was skeptical. "Maybe, but would they take a chance on somebody like that? I think maybe it's the McGuffin. If we can get hold of it, we can break her curses and maybe even free her parents, right?"

  "Who knows? We're only supposed to get the thing, remember; we aren't supposed to use it. I seem to remember Ruddygore being very firm that this thing's more dangerous to the wisher than the Lamp, and that was risky enough, believe me."