Trapped

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 doppelgänger 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."