Fugitives of Chaos Read online

  I could hear the ocean. Through the loophole, I could smell salt spray.

  The latch for the door was just inside that missing brick. From the setup, it would take at least two people to open the door from the outside: one to stick his hand into the missing brick to reach the latch, one to pull on the door. Any defenders inside could just smash the incoming hand with a rock, or chop it off with a sword, I suppose.

  Next to the door was a white stone, clvds imp et rex, l. jov anno xxi. What the hell did that mean?

  Vanity worked the latch. She had to put her shoulder to it, and strain. The door groaned and opened.

  Out she crawled.

  The outer surface of the secret door was shaped like a rock, one of several rocks, which had slipped from a waist-high shelf of stone. Behind this shelf and above it was a cliff, which reached perhaps ten feet above our heads.

  In the other direction was a drop to the rocks and the roaring foam. We stood among the sea cliffs. Like a giant staircase, the limestone cliffs formed shelves, one below the next, in crooked piles tumbling toward the sea.

  Vanity found some handholds and footholds in a little chimney indented into the cliff behind us. She climbed up about less than a dozen. There was grass and a few stunted trees there, their branches naked of leaves.

  Up we climbed.

  The Kissing Well was less than a stone's throw away from us. We had traveled from the Northeastern to the Southwestern border of the estate in less than ten minutes.

  Vanity announced, "It's okay to talk. We've lost him."

  Colin looked to the West, staring at the moonlit waves. "Can we see a show of hands here? Who is confused besides me? Where the hell are we?"

  Vanity said, "There were no prints showing Mrs. Wren going into the burial mound. No footprints. I knew there had to be a secret passage she had come in by!"

  I said, "I think Vanity created the tunnel. I think she bent reality and wished it into existence."

  Vanity said, "Then how did Mrs. Wren get into the burial mound? I saw her come out."

  Colin said, "This is going to sound like Victor, but, how could Vanity have created a tunnel? Did she make the plants and the bushes? There was a Roman inscription on the wall, and the remains of a fire."

  Victor said, "You are assuming newly created objects lack details. Since Amelia has not yet postulated a mechanism for the creation, we are not in a position to assess the likelihood of the hypothesis."

  Quentin, of all people, said, "It is not an hypothesis. It is an article of faith. An hypothesis can be proved or disproved by evidence. The faith that Vanity can create a detailed object involves the assumption that she could create any evidence needed to support the object. If she can create a tunnel, why not books and blueprints showing the tunnel existed, or even people who remember building it?"

  Vanity held up her hand. "Stop. I am the Dark Mistress now, and I order us all to stop jabbering about the philosophy of science! I am also turning control back over to Amelia, since I do not know what the hell to do next."

  I said, "If you can turn control over to me, I can turn it back over to Victor."

  Victor looked annoyed. "Fine. I order you to lead us. After you tell us what is going on, I'll be happy to serve as second-in-command, and take over if you get killed."

  It was the matter-of-fact way he said that, that made us all pause and look at each other, and remember what a serious business we were involved in.

  I bit my lip. "Okay, fine. Here is my thinking so far: We can't just run away. Since they have powers like Quentin's or Vanity's, they could just find us again, by magic. The moment Boggin knew we were making a break, he sent his people to guard the borders and, if he is smart, to guard the green table in his office, the big green table in a warehouse somewhere that he stole from Mestor…"

  Vanity said, "Who is Mestor?"

  "… Drinkwater. And Boggin would protect the safe in the Great Hall."

  Colin chimed in, "Or booby-trap it."

  "Since each power has one that cancels out another, he would put Mr. Glum to the South, to stop me; Dr. Fell to the North, to stop Quentin; Mrs. Wren to the West, and Miss Daw to the East. Since Wren left her position to go help Fell when they discovered we were up North, here, West, is the safest spot.

  And we do not need to go East, because Victor got his powers back anyway, including some he did not have before."

  Victor shook his head. "Don't overestimate me."

  I said, "You beat Dr. Fell!"

  "I'm sorry I didn't make this clear before. All I was do-ing was intercepting and copying the information packages Dr. Fell was sending out to control his nanites, and using his nanites to produce certain preprogrammed effects. During the fight, I had the creature Amelia put in my bloodstream operating to block his attempts to invade my nervous system. Since my security firewall was a living entity with free will, Fell wasn't able to come up with an attack combination. The creature was also the one who enabled me to intercept Fell's control codes, since it originally was made from him, and was tapped into his frequencies and ciphers. In effect, I had Fell's codebook in my hands during the fight. I would not be able to defeat another Cyclopes."

  Vanity said, "But you remember at least as much of your powers as we had before they erased our brains, right? All Amelia meant was that we don't need to go East."

  I hugged myself. It was feeling colder. "We can pause here to see if Colin can remember how to turn his powers on. Then we go straight to the Great Hall and try to break into that safe.

  "I tried to blackmail ap Cymru into giving us plane tickets to Rome; it did not work, but he may have gotten them anyway. I have a key in my pocket that opens a bus locker in Waterside Street in Abertwyi.

  He also said he would get us passports and ID papers. We'll take the ID, but the airplane tickets are just a red herring. While they are looking for us in Rome, we take a boat out to sea. Once we are far away, we have Vanity call her magic boat, which can bring us anywhere in the world in one day. More than one world. There are other dimensions, or something."

  Quentin said, "We can't steal a boat. It would make us vulnerable to a curse. We have to be careful about that."

  Victor said, "I can borrow Lily's motorboat."

  Vanity said, "I have a magic boat? When did I get a magic boat? What does it look like?"

  Colin said, "Blackmail… who? Are we talking about Taffy? Boggin's henchman? The guy who hangs out here and does not seem to have a job, except for giving cigarettes and porn magazines to minors?"

  I nodded. "He is actually a she, a goddess named Lav-erna, the queen of all fraud. She works for Lord Hermes, Trismegistus, who leads one of the factions of the Olympians, who fought a civil war, but were helping our side, except that I had a dream from your dad—I mean Morpheus—telling me we couldn't trust him. He was in our common room during the meeting of…"

  Colin interrupted. "Does Victor, even with his normal memory back, does he know any of this backstory stuff you are telling us now?"

  Victor shook his head.

  Colin wagged a finger in my face. "No more talk about quitting as leader, then. Okay? If you try to resign again, I'll mutiny. Now, then! How do I get my powers back? What am I supposed to be able to do again?"

  I said, "Write love letters. And I saw you jump nearly thirty feet straight up once. And maybe anything else you want. Your power works on desire. You wish it; it happens."

  He closed his eyes, tilted back his head, spread his hands. "I wish I had my powers!"

  We all looked at him.

  He opened one eye. "Is something supposed to happen?"

  I said, "I don't know!"

  He closed his eye again. "I wish for a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich!" He held his hand up.

  He wiggled his fingers. His hand stayed empty, of course.

  He opened his eyes. "Is this like one of those monkey's paw things, where my Aunt Petunia is going to die in a plane crash and leave me the money to buy a bacon, lettuce, and tom
ato sandwich?"

  I said, "I think it has to be something you really, really want."

  He closed his eyes again, spread his legs, and put his arms out as if he were ready to catch a sandbag or something about to be dropped on him. "Marilyn Monroe, as she was when she appeared in Seven Year Itch, naked from her bubble-bath, lonely, horny, and needing the warmth and comfort of an Irish schoolboy half her age! One, two, three… go! And she has her own birth control."

  Quentin said, "You're not Irish."

  Colin muttered, "I sure as hell am not English, thank God!"

  "You are a monster from beyond space and time, shape-changed to look human."

  "That just shows how little you know about the Irish, laddie. We're all monsters from beyond space and time. Besides, with a name like Colin…"

  "You made that name up!"

  Colin opened his eyes and put his hands on his hips. He turned away from Quentin and glowered at me.

  "Where's my Marilyn?"

  Vanity said, "Maybe you have to throw a gold pin in the well, or something."

  Victor said sardonically, "Marilyn Monroe died in 1962. Isn't that exactly the monkey's paw kind of thing you were trying to avoid?"

  Colin rolled his eyes and turned toward Victor. "I said, 'as she was in Seven Year Itch' ! That's the movie where her skirts blew up. She was alive during that scene."

  I said, "Maybe it works more like psychic phenomena and less like just wishing. The desire has to come from the core of your being."

  Colin said, "So… you're saying I should have wished for Catwoman?"

  I goggled at him. "Who?"

  "Supervillainess. Dresses all in skintight black leather. Wears heels. Carries a whip. Catwoman is ichiban

  . The hottest."

  Vanity pointed skyward, hopping and screaming. "Colin! Put your arms out! Here she comes! It's Julie Newmar! Catch her! Catch her!"

  Colin's head jerked up. Vanity leaned over, picked up a handful of snow, and dashed it into Colin's face when he brought his gaze back down.

  Colin smiled a nasty smile, picked up a double handful of snow, and started forward. Vanity squealed and danced around behind me, grabbing my shoulders. "Leader! Protect me!"

  I put my hand up. "Okay, children! Playtime is over. Colin, put that snowball down."

  "Down her cleavage, I will."

  "Drop it."

  "But she started it!"

  "You're a big strong Irishman, and she's English, so she gets to oppress you. Okay? We are in the middle of an escape attempt. I do not want to lose anyone this evening. Colin, I do not know how to turn on your powers. I am not even sure what they are. We only have the amount of time it will take Boggin to fly up to the North, look around, and come back. That's assuming he didn't set additional guards around the Great Hall."

  Quentin said, "He's at the burial mound."

  A cold sensation passed over my neck. I looked at Quentin with mingled horror and respect. "It is really eerie when you do that. How do you know?"

  Quentin said, "My friend told me. Every time Boggin moves, he has to tell the spirits in the air and wind where he is, so they know where to go to bring him news of what people are saying. So, every time he moves, he has to tell them all where he is going. This wand used to belong to Mrs. Wren. She used it to keep track of Boggin. Not all of her old spells are washed out of it. When my friend moved into the stick, the house wasn't empty."

  I said, "Could it be another trap? Could it be bugged, I mean? Booby-trapped? Or giving you false information?"

  Quentin said, "After the oath she swore to Romus? I doubt it. But it is possible. I can throw this stick into the ocean and pick up another one right now. You want me to? You are the leader. It is your decision."

  It was not an easy decision. On the one hand, knowing where Boggin was, was of utmost importance to us. On the other hand, the danger that Erichtho the Witch could still have some sort of power or mysterious connection leading back to her wand…

  I said to Quentin, "If this were a fairy tale, and you were a prince, what would you do?"

  He smiled. "I am a prince. My father is Proteus, remember?"

  "And?"

  "I'd pitch it into the sea."

  I said, "Throw it, then. But—wait a minute. See if you can remove the curse Mrs. Wren put on Colin.

  You might be able to unblock his memory. The magic paradigm trumps the psychic paradigm."

  Quentin nodded. "This involves a very brief demonstration."

  He walked in a circle around Colin, dragging the distaff, and made a circle in the snow about him. He bowed to the West and held up the distaff in both hands.

  "I call upon the guardians of the watchtowers of the West, the element of Water. I hold the power of the witch Erichtho in my hands, given to me from her, freely and without hurt. I hold here the curse she placed upon Pho-betor. Erichtho! I call you by your true name! The Guardians of the Towers of the West break your power in two! Hesperides, lave Phobetor in your wave, and let him emerge unhurt, washed clean, stainless, and forgiven! So Mote It Be!"

  And he cracked the distaff in half over his knee.

  He threw the two halves of the distaff spinning into the waters far below, calling out, "This gift I give to the Sons of Danu, who dwell in the waters of the West, in memory of promises kept."

  He reached over with his foot and rubbed out part of the line he had drawn in the snow around Colin.

  "The wall around you is broken. Be free."

  Colin clutched his head, rolling his eyes like a maddened horse, and doubled over, groaning.

  Quentin stepped forward, looking worried. Victor said, "Did it work? Are your memories coming back?"

  Colin straightened up, brushing his hands through his hair. "Naw. Just joking around. But that was a damn impressive ceremony, Big Q. Thanks for trying, at least."

  Vanity said softly to me, "Permission to whack him with a snowball again, O my Queen?"

  "Denied." I raised my voice. "Next step. We fly to the Great Hall. We have two fliers in the group and three walkers. Which one of you two boys can carry two people?"

  Quentin, who was rather short, looked up at Victor. Quentin pointed at Victor. "Him."

  Victor said, "I should take the two lightest people."

  Quentin snorted and said, "I'm not carrying Colin."

  Victor said, "Amelia? Colin? How much do you each weigh?"

  Quentin suddenly got a funny look on his face. He said, "Amelia. I have to carry Amelia."

  Vanity looked at him oddly.

  He said, "There are reasons which are hard to explain. According to the signs, she flew with me before.

  The sympathies might be more favorable if I do not introduce any novel parameters into the demonstration."

  I said, "Vanity, if you sense anyone watching us, break off. If we get scattered, we'll… meet back here, at the Kissing Well. Okay?"

  Quentin said, "It will take me a moment to prepare."

  Victor said, "Should I wait?"

  Quentin looked at me. "Leader makes the call."

  I said, "Let me think. If you meet Miss Daw, Colin can stop her, if he can make himself want to. Fell and Victor are at least evenly matched; so are Grendel and Colin."

  Vanity said, "Who is Grendel?"

  "Mr. Glum's first name. He's planning on kidnapping you and marrying you, so be careful of him. If you meet Mrs. Wren, Victor can neutralize her magic. Um. The same goes for me and Quentin running into anybody. We are either going to be equal to or be able to trump any paradigm we come across. I do not know how Olympians and Phaeacians fit into the chart, though. You guys take off; Quentin and I will join you."

  Quentin said, "I have to make a preparatory lemma. I'm going uphill to that grove of trees. Follow me when I call."

  He walked away from the Kissing Well to where some clumps of trees clung to the grass that broke through the rocky soil. As he approached the grove, he put out his hand.

  A long stick of pale wood came felling out of t
he grove toward him. It was as if an unseen stagehand, hidden just beyond the tree, had tossed him a prop. He caught the stick and walked into the trees.

  We waited a moment or two, until Quentin called out that he was ready. I waved at the others to take off.

  Victor, without any further ado, put one arm around Colin's waist, and told him to loop his belt through the chain links of his jerkin. But Victor simply picked up Vanity and hoisted her over his shoulder, like Tarzan picking up Jane, so her head was dangling down his back and her bottom was high in the air.

  With no noise and no fuss, the invisible chessmaster picked up his Victor piece and swept him off the board and out of sight.

  I climbed the rocky slope and entered the small grove of trees. There was no visible sign that Quentin had done anything in particular; no cut-open goats or candles floating in midair or anything like that. If he had made any scratches on the ground or the trees, it was too dim, in the moonlight, with the twigs and branches overhead, to see.

  He said, "Um, Amelia, I hope you won't get mad, but…"

  I pulled off my scarf and handed it to him. "You have to blindfold me. I've been through this before."

  I had my aviatrix cap (which I take along on all my es-cape attempts) folded into a bulky wad in my outer coat pocket. I put it on and began tucking my hair up.

  He wrapped the scarf fabric around my head, and I donned the goggles atop them.

  He said, "Now open your mouth."

  I hooked a thumb under the blindfold and goggles and raised one corner to turn and give him a cold, one-eyed stare.

  "Why exactly am I opening my mouth?"

  He said, "I thought you said we did this before… ?"

  "Blindfold, yes. Gagged, absolutely not. I cannot go a week around here without someone trying to tie me up. Why the hell do you need me with a scarf in my mouth to fly?"

  He pointed at the trees. Or maybe he was pointing at unseen things in the air around us. "The long-lived ones say you tried to talk last time. They don't trust you to keep your mouth shut."

  "What if I promise?"

  He cocked his head, looking thoughtful. "Um, Amelia. Rumor has been set against you. Someone has been spreading the story that you are an oath-breaker."