Plot
A young peasant named Diermot is employed as a beater for the king's hunting party. One night the king receives a note from a messenger, requesting his services to help quell a rebellion in the remote village of Turnvale. As the king's party departs, Diermot’s pony follows them, unwittingly carrying him to the battle. When the party arrives at Turnvale they are not confronted by a peasant revolt. Instead they find a band of man-eating Skorl, led by a enchantress named Selena, the titular temptress. The king's men are defeated and the king is killed. In the process, Diermot is thrown from his saddle and is knocked unconscious. The Skorl take Diermot prisoner and imprison him in the local dungeon.
With help from a peasant named Ratpouch, Diermot manages to escape from the dungeon and visits Luthern, the blacksmith. Luthern reveals that a girl named Goewin who runs a herb shop has recently disappeared. Diermot discovers that she had been arrested by the Skorl. With help from Ratpouch, Diermot breaks into the house of Taidgh, the magician, where he creates a potion which disguises him as Selena. He enters the mansion where Goewin is being held and orders the Skorl to free her. Not long after, a man named Mallin gives Diermot a book wrapped in cloth to take to a man named Markus. In the process of delivering the book, Diermot sees a notice stating that whoever returns the book to its rightful owner will be rewarded. Diermot delivers the book to a man named Toby, who rewards him with a statuette. Toby reveals that the dragon can help Diermot defeat Selena, but that he will need an infusion made of three herbs to wake the dragon up, which Goewin then makes for Diermot.
Diermot enters the dragon's cave and wakes him up. The dragon agrees to help Diermot, revealing that Turnvale was the domain of a demon long before humans came to the area. This demon should have died along with his breed long ago, but did not perish because it was able to feed on man's greed and ambition in order to survive. The demon was driven out by the great Gethryn, but Selena's meddling with evil has reawakened the demon, and it controls her mortal form. The dragon possesses the Eye of Gethryn, an enchanted stone left by Gethryn at the time of his death. The stone contains the power to defeat the demon, and the dragon then gives the stone to Diermot. A Skorl named Wayne, who turns against Selena, sneaks Diermot into Selena's castle in a barrel. Diermot slays Selena with the Eye of Gethryn, freeing Turnvale from her tyranny.
Read more about this topic: Lure Of The Temptress
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)