Fugitives of Chaos Read online

  "Boggin."

  "Well, whoever did it, the long-lived ones won't carry us without some clear sign that you won't talk.

  Look. I'll just tie it loosely. It's not going to hurt you, or choke you. It's a symbol. It's only symbolic.

  Well… ? The others are going to be waiting for us. We are being chased, you know."

  "Okay. Okay, fine. But you don't tell anyone, anyone, that I let you do this."

  I put the blindfold back in place. Quentin moved around behind me, reached up over my shoulders. I felt soft fabric come up toward my mouth, touch my lips.

  The gag was just for show. He draped a strip of fabric—maybe it was his scarf—over my mouth and tied it in back of my head. It would not actually stop me from talking, any more than the veil of a harem girl would have. But it would remind me not to talk.

  He said, "Ready? Don't talk." He stooped and swept me off my feet. He held me very close to his chest, a husband carrying a bride over the threshold. His arms were much stronger than those a boy his height should have. I had my arms around his neck.

  I spoke through the so-called gag. "Uh, Quentin, can I ask you a question before we take off?"

  His left hand relaxed, and he dropped my feet to the ground again. I felt the stones and leaves under my boots.

  He said, "What is it?"

  I said, "Why me? I thought you would have jumped at the chance to pick up Vanity and fly around with her."

  He straightened his right arm, and I was standing upright again. "I did not want to have to blindfold her.

  She would have thought I was being kinky, or something. Here, hold still. I am going to have to make this more realistic-looking. Open wide."

  This time he put a wad of silk fabric, maybe it was his pocket handkerchief, into my mouth, and tucked the scarf between my teeth. That tickled my throat, and I coughed, and I put up my hands to adjust the gag, but he grabbed my arms.

  "Stop that." His voice sounded alarmed. "There is one of them standing next to me. If they think you are about to give them away, they kill me. This is serious business, Amelia! I am trying to get them to break the laws of nature for me. Those laws have police. These are like Mafia people. Do you understand? We were a mile up in the air and halfway there when you spoke before. They don't like it when you talk and attract attention. I don't like it. Now hold still. I can adjust the gag, but you can't touch it while they are watching. Put your hands behind you or something. This has to look real. Okay? Be careful."

  Seething with indignation, I put my hands down while he fussed with the scarf and loosened it. I sort of had to bite down to keep the thing from falling out.

  I was certainly not putting my hands anywhere but tightly around him while he picked me up through the air, though, spirits or no spirits. Did he think I was crazy?

  He was probably lying about the "Mafia" spirits. Gags and blindfolds? I was lucky he didn't have a pair of handcuffs on him. I saw how much more rudely Victor had hauled Vanity than Colin when he had picked her up. Boggin had gotten all turned on and aroused after flying with me.

  I think it is just a thing with men who go up in the air with women. Aren't stewardesses supposed to be really risque and wild? That was the reason.

  He muttered, "Now, remember, you are supposed to be the sensible one. / would not fool around with your experiments if you were trying your powers, Amelia."

  Oho. Not exactly a fair comment. Criticize the girl when she's gagged and cannot answer back.

  He picked me up again, hefted me in his arms, held me close to his chest. Beneath the blindfold, I closed my eyes. I put my head against his shoulder and tried to snuggle as close to him as I could. I did not like not being allowed to see, not being allowed to talk. It made me feel too helpless. What was odd was that even young little Quentin, when he held me, seemed in my imagination to grow into something strong, and masculine. It was so strange. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

  Colin's voice broke the silence. "Jesus H. Christ! Quentin! Oh my God! You are the man!"

  I started to kick and put my hands up toward the gag, but then I stopped. We might still be twenty feet up in the air. I could not yank off the blindfold until Quentin gave me permission.

  Quentin shifted his grip. With an easy strength, he put me on my feet. I could feel a slanted surface under my boots. Was it safe to talk yet? I waved my hand behind me toward him, and made a mmph! noise.

  Quentin plucked at the play-knot. I pushed at the gag with my tongue, but instead of falling off, it suddenly changed shape, becoming thicker, and blocked my mouth for real. The blindfold suddenly seemed snug, and more opaque.

  I could feel Quentin pluck at the knot for a moment. I did not have time to start panicking, because Quentin made a slight snort of disgust, or surprise, and he tapped his staff on the ground. The gag and the blindfold relaxed. I spit out the gag and, hooking a finger through the top of my blindfold, I pulled the whole assembly, scarf, goggles, and all, down around my neck.

  I said to Colin, "You did that on purpose!"

  He gave me a half grin. "What? Don't I wish! I didn't talk Big Q into trussing you up like Lois Lane."

  Quentin said, "It actually was part of the spell. She had to make a sacrifice to please the spirits. A little embarrassment, I suppose, is sacrifice enough."

  We were standing on the roof of the Great Hall.

  Vanity was standing a few feet away from Colin and Victor, holding her nose. Victor had no expression, but there was a small greenish stain trailing down his left side.

  I said, "What happened to you?"

  Vanity answered, "Colin gets airsick."

  Colin said, "It was the worst hour of my life."

  Vanity said, "It was less than two minutes, barfy boy."

  "Seemed like an hour."

  Vanity jerked her head suddenly to the left, pointed her finger to a spot in the sky.

  Before she could say anything, Quentin spread his arms, stepped into the middle of where we stood, and swung his stick in a wide circle. He was shorter than all of us, but he was standing on the peak of the roof a little way above us. We ducked, and the stick passed over our heads.

  I could not see it with my eyes, but with my higher sense I saw a circle of light traced by the path of the staff. It hung in the air, embracing all of us, and then spread slowly out, like a single ripple in a smooth pond. A hush seemed to fall across the night sky, the estate around us.

  Quentin said, "The aery ones can make the air quiet when I fly; I am using the same effect now. Vanity, is there anyone listening to us?"

  Vanity shook her head. She said, "It's like a pressure. It's moving East to West across the campus. I don't think they know where we are. Going that way." She pointed. "Back the way we had come."

  Victor said, "Maybe there was a bug of some sort on the stick Quentin broke. They could be going that way."

  I said, "Okay. Let's go in."

  1.

  After all the hubbub and hoopla getting here, getting in was easy. I had Vanity touch the big metal door on the roof. She gave me a thumbs-up; no one was watching or listening to it.

  It was padlocked, but Victor waved his hand over it, and the padlock jumped up and fell open. I made the door light and hauled it up and over.

  Vanity went first. She said, "Jump over the third stair."

  "What is it?"

  She just shrugged. "It is something that watches. Just skip over it."

  At the bottom of the stairs, Victor said, "Microwaves. Motion detectors, I think."

  I said, "None of this was here before. I think. Can you, I don't know, interfere with the signal without setting them off?"

  He said, "Maybe if I had a week to figure out the math. Can't you see through walls? Trace the wires and tell me where the switch is. If it is made of metal, I'll turn it to its 'off setting."

  I stood, eyes closed, with the building around me laid out like a blueprint. The wires were useful to someone, they glowed.

  I also saw
a webwork, like a spiderweb, of lines of moral force laid across the doorways and lintels.

  I said, "There is a box all the wires lead to in an office on the first floor."

  It took a while for Victor, blind, being led just by my voice, to direct a beam of magnetic force down through several floors to the control panel for the alarms. Vanity hopped back and forth, one foot to the other, giving out little yelps when we were about to trip something.

  I could not see the circuitry go dead, since I cannot see electron flows, but I saw the system become useless.

  I said to Quentin, "There is some sort of spell laid across all the doors. Can you break it?"

  He looked a little uncertain. He said, "Get me to the door with the safe in it. Vanity, I hope you'll tell me if I am about to set off an alarm or something."

  Victor said, "I will look for electronic signals. Amelia can look through the walls for traps."

  Colin said, "And I'll look for an opportunity to drop my pants. Hey! Has anyone noticed that I'm the only completely useless person here?"

  Vanity said, "Quiet, puke boy. We've noticed it for years."

  Victor hushed them both.

  We set off down the gloomy corridor. Our way was lit only by what moonlight there was leaking in through the windows.

  Soon we were in front of the door to the second-floor corner office.

  I told Victor where the wires were running to the door. He said, "I can see them." He pointed his finger, disarmed the alarms. With a click, the door unlocked.

  I said, "The spell looks like a big red spiderweb to me. It is right over the door, and it goes through the walls and floor."

  Quentin took a deep breath and said, "Okay. Let me try something."

  He lightly touched his staff to the handle of the door, and spoke: " Annon edhellenf edro hi ammen!

  Fennas no-gothrim, lasto beth lammen!"

  Nothing happened,

  Colin said, "Break the stick over your knee and throw it at the doors. It looked cool when you did that before."

  Vanity squinted at Quentin. "Was that from a made-up language?"

  "Better than most real languages," muttered Quentin under his breath. Then he said, "That would have worked if these had been dwarf doors. Well. Let me try something else." He knelt, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and wrote some angular-looking Viking letters on the little strip of floor that showed between the edge of the carpet and the threshold of the door.

  He stood, raised his wand, touched the tip to his chest, and spoke: "Nine nights I hung upon the wind-torn tree, my own spear through my own heart, myself a sacrifice to myself, high on the tree whose roots none know! None came to aid me, none gave me drink. I saw the runes below me. Crying out, I seized on them."

  He pointed to one of the marks he'd made on the ground with his wand. "Three great runes burn in my hand. A fourth and greater one I know. If a man fastens chains and gyves to my limbs, I sing the song to set me free; locks spring apart, fetters jump open, my hands and feet know liberty."

  He raised the wand and tapped the door.

  The door trembled in the frame.

  Vanity said, "Did it work? The door was listening to him."

  I said, "No. I can still see the spiderweb across it."

  Colin said, "Maybe Vanity can just wish a secret passage into being, and we can go into the room that way."

  Quentin said over his shoulder, "That's not the problem. The door is not really locked; it is just going to let off an alarm or a curse if we open it unlawfully. The windows and floorboards are the same way. The act of going into the room is what is prohibited. If this had been a locked door, something keeping us prisoner, that last rune would have worked. Well. Maybe I can make the magic think magic is wicked.

  Let me try something else…"

  Again he tapped a chalk letter with his wand-tip. "Nine great runes burn in my hand. A tenth and greater one I know. When witch-hags ride the wild wind at night, such spell I know as to daze and confound them, that they will not find their own doorposts again, or return to don their day-shapes."

  When he raised the wand to touch the door this time, the stick in his hand jumped backwards in his grip, striking Quentin a nasty knock across the elbow—he had put his arm up to guard his face—and went spinning end over end down the corridor. It clattered loudly to the carpet.

  "Ow, ow, ow," muttered Quentin, holding his arm.

  "Is it broken?" asked Colin.

  "If it were broken, I would be crying like a girl, not saying, 'Ow, ow, ow.'"

  "Well," said Colin. "Let me go fetch your wand. At least it will give me something to do."

  "Don't bother. Apsu! To me!" And the invisible stagehand snatched up the stick and tossed it back to him.

  "Great trick," said Colin, looking more downcast than ever.

  Quentin said to the door, " Mellon!"

  A noise came from the door, a creak of wood.

  Vanity said, "What's that noise?"

  Quentin said, "It is laughing at me. Apparently, I am not exactly a friend."

  I asked, "What it? What is laughing?"

  He said, "An undead dryad. They chopped her up and planed her into boards. I cannot break the spell, because I don't have any influences to back me up. I am a trespasser. The moral order of the universe is not on my side."

  Colin said, "Tell the door that it's our stuff in there. Stolen property. Belongs to us."

  "In effect, I just tried that. Whoever put up the door was not the one who stole the goods. If they are stolen."

  I said, "They might have been surrendered in a war. Or they might simply belong to Boggin."

  Victor said, "We are forgetting the principle of what you call the table of oppositions. Magicians don't stop spells, you said. They stop psionic effects. Materialism stops magic."

  His forehead opened. His metal eye rotated into view. Azure sparks, and then a beam, lanced from his eye and played back and forth across the door.

  Quentin backed away nervously.

  Victor, said, 'There is a magnetic anomaly. But there cannot be any mind, or intention, or purpose watching this door, since only complex living mechanisms have minds, and there is insufficient complexity here for that. I see nothing but wood, and wood is carbon atoms strung together. I do not see anything that could cause the magnetic anomaly. Whatever has no cause cannot exist."

  Victor put his hand out and pushed the door open.

  2.

  I stepped in. I said, "Quentin, do you have the disc?"

  Quentin pulled out the CD.

  I said, "Victor, please tell me the disc player you got from that Lilac woman is still in working order after your duel with Dr. Fell?"

  Victor gave me an odd look. "Her name is Lily. I haven't checked the player. I don't know if it works.

  Give me the disc, Quentin."

  Colin said, "What is supposed to happen?"

  I said, "The last time I was here, Miss Daw played music. One of the objects in the safe reacted to the music, and sent out an energy. Call it light. That light allowed me to see in a direction I normally cannot see, and to reach a part of my body… God, you guys don't remember any of that, do you?"

  Victor said, "I remember." To the others, he said, "She thinks she is four-dimensional. That is the model she uses to explain her supernatural effects, like psychokinesis, clairvoyance, and shape-change."

  I wasn't going to argue the point. I said, "Play the music."

  One of Mozart's violin concertos floated from the tiny speakers on the little square machine. I saw space shiver and flatten.

  Like a crystal goblet vibrating in sympathy to a perfect note, the sphere in the safe rang. It gave off the substance of hyperspace, a material thicker than reality, which, at once, was light, music, thought, interval, time, probability, certainty___

  I could see the squat safe, drawn like a thick line around the other flat objects it encircled. Extending above and below it in the "red" and "blue" directions, I saw the hemispheres of t
he hypersphere.

  Victor handed me the disc player, and I kept my hand on the button. When I stopped it, the hypersphere continued to ring and echo for a moment, and, during that moment, I could act.

  I put my hand "over" the line and into the safe. I could touch the surface—one of the many surfaces of its hypersurface—of the sphere with my fingers, but I could not budge it from its location.

  I pulled my hand back down into three-space.

  I pushed the play button again; space flattened; the flatness set the sphere to ringing; I pushed pause and reached again. I tried to pick up the other objects in the safe: a book, a photo, a vial of fluid, a necklace.

  Nothing moved. It was as if they were frozen in ice.

  Vanity said, "Gosh, that looked weird."

  I glanced at her. "What did you see?"

  She said, "Your hand got small. Not like it was shrinking, but like it was receding down a tunnel. You know."

  "Parallax," Victor said.

  "Yeah. Parallax. But the wall of that metal cabinet thing. Still looked like it was closer, even though the hand, your hand, in front of it, looked farther away. Um. And it turned red."

  "Doppler shift," said Victor.

  Quentin said, "Your hand turned ghostly. I saw a red light, too. But it wasn't exactly what Vanity just described."

  Victor said, "Chaos. Our brains are each programmed to interpret it according to a mutually exclusive metaphor."

  Colin said, "No. I saw. Her hand woke up. This dream, this false world we are all in, it gave way. Look, you are all logical people. If the safe was real, could she put her hand through it, into it, without leaving a hole? No. The safe is an illusion. It is only there because we think it is there."

  Victor said, "I cannot seem to penetrate the safe wall with my magnetics. I cannot manipulate the lock."

  He turned. "If your theory is correct, Colin, you could open the safe just by willing it to open."

  Quentin muttered, "It is not a theory. Not disprovable. Article of faith."

  Colin frowned, looked determined, strode forward with a quick and steady step, plunged his hand down as if to brush the substance of the safe aside like mist…