Titans of Chaos Read online

  The sirens had found me.

  Weightless again. Wind from below. The green clouds of forest below jumped up eagerly toward me.

  Colin, black wings folded around him, dropped like a thunderbolt out from the glare of the sun.

  One strong arm went around my waist. He cupped his dark wings, and the world spun slowly around me, and the forest receded.

  Colin, his face black with wrath, reached up and the sky folded and rippled around his hand. I did not see, my eyes could not focus on, what it was he did next.

  But then he had a woman in a Greek toga by one ankle. A lyre was falling from her wildly clawing hands. Colin contemptuously let go of the ankle and let her drop.

  He did not say anything, did not pause to wonder about it. He just flung her away as if she were garbage.

  With a long, hideous wail, she fell away from us, growing smaller and smaller. I closed my eyes and clutched Colin with both arms, burying my head in his chest.

  "Are you hurt?" he said, masculine anger still throbbing in his voice.

  "My wings are reduced... crushed... I don't know if I can fly..."

  "I'll carry you, Amelia."

  "Are you hurt?"

  "No. Red ink. But the magic ring just went kaput. I think we're visible___Hey. What is that... ?"

  Colin had changed course and was now spiraling down toward a wide round clearing in the middle of the forest.

  Slabs of fitted stone formed the circular foundations of a ruined building. Grass grew in the cracks between the stones. Rusted stumps of pipe protracted up from an underground space in one or two places. There was a circle of toadstools, bright and gay with spots of yellow and purple, making an outer circle exactly concentric with the circular rim of the grassy stones.

  In the very center of the circle of grassy stones, a sleek, black, rocket-ship-shaped guitar was visible, unharmed, unscratched.

  This looked like the selfsame guitar that had been slung over the saddle of the Amazonian horse shot to pieces and blown to smithereens before my eyes. How could it have survived... ?

  Who had brought it here?

  Colin said, "What is that?"

  I said, "I bought it for you. A guitar. It was meant to be a surprise."

  He laughed an odd laugh, and folded his wings, swooping down.

  "Colin, what the hell are you doing? Up! Go up! Get us out of here!"

  "Oh, come on, Amelia. Don't be silly. What could be the matter? I want to see this guitar you bought for me."

  I was looking right at his eyes when it happened. His pupils shrank, contracting in a moment to tiny pinpoints, as if he were staring into a blinding light.

  "Colin! This is magic! I am ordering you, as the leader, I am ordering you to get us out of here!"

  "Oh... now you're just being pushy. Please, Amelia. Don't be so paranoid. That guitar is mine, isn't it? It looks cool."

  "Colin! Wake up! Listen to me, for the love of God!"

  "I am awake, Amelia," he said in a voice of maddening calm. "I can hear you just fine."

  "Away! Fly us away!"

  "I am not just going to go off and leave a nice present you bought for me. I want to see it. It looks nice. Very nice. So very nice."

  I slapped him across the face. He just smiled at me, placid, his eyes going all blank, his smile empty and idiotic.

  His feet touched down, and he folded his wings. We were on the ground, in the center of the grass-grown circle of Stones, in the center of the ring of toadstools.

  Colin said in a sleepy voice, 'Why did you slap me, Amelia? That wasn't very nice. All I wanted to do was I.."

  I looked in the higher dimensions. Rising up from the guitar were webs upon webs. They were all around us, strands and nets of magic. They were winding more and more tightly around Colin and me, glistening ruddily.

  This was magic: Quentin's paradigm. It neither automatically trumped my paradigm, nor did mine automatically trump it. Was there something I could do?

  I reached into the nearest cluster of moral imperatives and... twisted... something, curving the morality-strand back inward on itself to form an infinitely recurring loop.

  In effect, I hoped to do to the woven web of moral obligations what I had done to the nanotech virus Dr. Fell had injected in me. I thought that if I gave the moral obligations free will, they might not be able to be used as an enchantment or as a snare.

  For a moment, it seemed as if the webs might wake up and loosen us.

  But then a slim and beautiful woman, dark-haired and ivory-skinned, stepped out from a tree, her footstep as soft and shy as a doe stepping. Her corona was a wreath of living leaves. Her gown was green.

  She did not come from behind the tree, but from inside it: For a moment, her form was a mist or invisible essence sliding between the substance of the bark. With her next quiet step, she was solid.

  I could see from her inner nature that she resided in a vessel, shaped like a woman, which was, at that moment, made for her, solidified out of thin air.

  In one hand she held a slender wand of willow. She tapped it on the ground, saying, "Phobetor, Prince of Night, my gentle sweet, look to me. Look, and be enchanted by, Oenone."

  His face turned toward her. His eyes were utterly blank at this point.

  I saw the strand of morality twisting, shaking, tossing. I reached more deeply into the energy knot involved, trying to liberate the core of the incoming power before...

  "Phobetor, you have slain Leucosia, our husband's wife, ending and therefore owing us a life. You now are owned by the nymphs of stream and tree..."

  Part of the strand began to uncurl. I shouted in triumph and alarm, calling out to Colin, begging him to wake up.

  Colin stirred and blinked. A tone of confusion and anger rang in his voice: "Amelia! What is happening to me-? Can you-?"

  The nymph said softly, "Arms of Phaethusa, you have slain our lord's wild lady, grim Chalcomede-why should your bloodstained hands undo our work, when hers are nerveless and forever still? Hands and arms! An equal balance must require that you do our lord's and not your lady's will."

  My arms tingled and fell numb, not merely my human arms in this dimension, but the energy-tendrils I was using in the other world to try to unwind the spell snaring us.

  My legs went numb as well. I collapsed heavily into Colin's arms. He turned and caught me.

  Colin's eyes were now bright and awake.

  My voice was working. "Drop me. Stop her!"

  The idiot dropped me. When I said "drop," of course, I had meant for him to lower me quickly but gently to the ground, not just to let my head bounce off the pavement. What a jerk.

  And he ran at her, his arms already beginning to turn into flame.

  She said, "Phobetor-I call you by your true name. Resume that shape you knew on Earth, mortal boy."

  His true shape snapped back into place, fires extinguished. He stumbled and slowed.

  The nymph smiled, and cooed in a voice like a dove: "Your magics desert you, mortal boy. No powers remain you to employ."

  He said, "Ah... but I still have the memory of my mother to inspire me. Funny things, memories.

  Here. Look."

  From somewhere, or perhaps from nowhere, Colin drew out his card. The little black playing card on which was sketched his father, Morpheus, and his unknown mother.

  Colin held the little card up before him, at arm's length, and advanced toward the nymph. Her eyes focused on the card. Then, either sensing magic, or fearing some trap, she held up her hand to shield her eyes and turned her head away.

  It was at that moment her eyes went blank. When she looked away from the card, not when she looked at it, her memory was interrupted.

  To her it must have seemed as if Colin had teleported. One moment he was in the middle of the glade; now he was next to her.

  She raised her wand and began to chant another curse. He put the card away, or made it disappear, and once again, her eyes went blank a moment.

  That moment was
enough. Colin closed the distance and now had his hands around her throat.

  With brutal force, Colin struck her head against the bole of the tree. There was a sickening sound.

  When she slumped away from the point of impact, bloodstains trailed behind her hair. Whether she was stunned or dead, I could not see.

  Four comely women stepped from the boles of four trees in the circle around us. Each was more beautiful than the last, soft-eyed, soft-voiced, folds of emerald gowns falling and flowing around long legs and trim ankles. Each was dark-haired, with skin as pale as parchment, eyebrows delicate dark streaks above eyes like glittering black amethysts, lips smiling red cupid's bows.

  Each had a willow wand in her slim-wristed and well-shaped hand.

  One pointed her wand at Colin, cooing in a voice mild yet clear as cool water: "Phobetor, I call you by your true name. Red blood drips from your woman-slaying hands and cries out for vengeance. How will you account for the death of Parthenope, the wounds of unloved Oenone?

  Those hands I, death-defying Cyane, now call upon to do our work; seize the girl, Phaethusa, rob her powers from her."

  Colin raised his hand. Reality hiccuped. My higher senses were dead. I could no longer see the magic boiling around us; there was nothing I could do to interfere.

  Another nymph spoke. Her voice was rippling music: "Heart and sense and soul, cruel Phobetor, you have devoted to ruthless murder. I, Apostate Ethemea the Proud, now make your eyes as blind as your black heart."

  Colin, though blind, still tried to attack. He ran toward the sound of the girl, his arms windmilling and wild.

  As he ran, the grass and leaves began to swirl around him, and the sun was blotted out by cloud.

  The air seemed to tremble; Colin's wrath was growing thick around him, becoming visible.

  He was fast on his feet, and he seemed not to need his eyes to sense where the girl stood. He grabbed the nymph who cursed him by one arm. He threw her to the stones with a violent cry. I heard bones break.

  A third nymph cooed: "Panic and wrath you unleash into the darkening air. Murderer, I, Lara, whose voice Lord Hermes grants me nevermore be stilled, bestow on you the calmness and grave-peace into which you have thrown the women you have killed."

  The swirl of leaves dropped and died. The sun came out.

  The fourth one said, "Such strength, oh muscles, oh nerves, you used against us, I, Sagaritis, hated of the dread goddesses, now take from you. I turn your limbs to stone."

  Colin staggered and fell to his knees."

  He was next to the guitar I had bought him. My higher senses were not working, but I am sure that black guitar was the center of a snake's nest of magical strands and ropes.

  What had ever possessed me to buy that dumb thing in the first place? Maybe my wits had been dulled by magic and adverse fate. How can you beat a foe who can make you stupid?

  The woman he had struck against the tree, the first one, rose to her feet, unhurt. There was no sign of blood on her. She said, "Your authority over dream, abnormal, abortive, unclean, do I, Oenone, reave from you, just recompense for wicked deeds both done and dreamt. Dark powers of Dreaming, begone. You cannot overmatch, dream-shadows, these gentle hands which once refused to heal the traitor Paris, and wove, instead of bridal veil, the silken noose to hang me from a yew-wood tree: Lord Trismegistus me uprooted from unsacred grave; me power over Darkness gave!"

  She stepped daintily forward and tapped Colin's kneeling body with her wand. He cried out, a great, horrible, strangled cry, and fell prone.

  I blinked. I saw something glittering in the trees above. It was lit up with usefulness.

  My upper senses were coming back. I tried to look in the other dimensions aside from the normal three. I could not, not yet. In a moment or two, the nymphs might realize that, by turning off Colin's powers, they had turned off their ability to stop mine.

  But none of them was looking toward me. The woman who had blinded him now rose up, broken bones healed and whole, unharmed, her coiffure and gown unmussed, unwrinkled, untorn. She tapped Colin's motionless, screaming body with her wand, saying, "Murderer, who had sent our sisters down into the eternal sleep of death, a lesser sleep I put on you. Move not, stir not, speak not, but wait in all helplessness, awaiting the knife stroke which shall sever your false throat."

  Colin's screaming stopped. I could see his body, fallen along the grass-covered stones, facing away from me.

  Suddenly, I could see through the surfaces of objects.

  I saw, in the distance, "through" the trees, a rout of wild maenads were pelting down the slope, ululating. "Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai!"

  And, downslope from us, not far from the highway, I saw the "flat"-seeming shapes of lithe and calm-faced women in black skintight armor, bent low over the manes of their artificial super-steeds, moving in a well-ordered column, silent and rapid. There were scouts ahead of the main column, and flanking riders left and right.

  If only I could get my tendrils on one of their rifles, I could shoot maenads and nymphs alike with bullets designed to cripple their particular powers. The distance was far, but was it too far? I pushed first one, then two energy-tendrils into four-space. And...

  The nymph standing over Colin smote him a second time with her wand, saying, "Powers used for evil deeds, this recompense we nymphs demand of you-serve now Ethemea, not Phobetor, and all the powers of Phaethusa undo."

  Stepping lightly over to me as she spoke, this nymph struck me in the face with the butt of her wand. It was shockingly painful. I tasted blood where my lip had been cut on my teeth.

  And I was three-dimensional again. Crushing pain pressed in where once my higher limbs had been. I could no longer even imagine the other directions.

  The nymph Ethemea looked down at me, not smiling, not frowning; she did not gloat, but neither did any trace of sympathy mar the perfect coolness of her gaze.

  I was vermin to her. She looked like a farmwife looking at a rat in a trap, or some vixen that had been killing her chickens.

  I lay there helpless, numb, motionless, waiting for death. I could still speak, but what would I have said?

  The voice of Lamia now issued from the crystal marble hovering overhead: "Slay the dream-prince instantly! Why do you delay? Pierce his flesh with pitiless steel knives!"

  The nymph Ethemea turned away from me and said in a voice as soft as falling snow, "We have witnessed in this place what curses, what weaknesses, cling thick and black to any who offend the laws of gods and men."

  One of the nymphs-the one who had robbed Colin of his power, and called herself Cyane-spoke next, saying, "The crime of murder would render us vulnerable to the curses of that chaoticist whom you have not yet caught, nor yet discovered: Eidotheia, whom we have cause to fear."

  Lamia said, "Fear more to disobey! Take up your athames, and slay!"

  A third nymph, Lara, said softly, "Lord Trismegistus, swift guide of souls to Hell, and father of lies, promised me freedom from the Path of Sighs, and swore my soul would not in that Dark House dwell, if only I would forget all honor, and worship his body with feigned love and true concupiscence. Him alone, my husband is, to him alone, fealty and obedience I owe. What cause have we to obey cruel Lamia, who rejoices in blood and woe?"

  Lamia's voice said, 'Tools, was I not dead as well, and did not Trismegistus steal my soul from destined torments waiting me in Hell, to be his concubine and unwilling mate? All this is being done at his bidding. Why do you hesitate?"

  The nymph Sagaritis, the one who had paralyzed Colin, said, "He never bade us kill and slay, never bade us murders do; bloody deeds were not his way-who wills this deed; our Lord... or you?"

  Lamia said, "I waste no further breath: Maenads are here, and far more tractable to my will. Let the glorious and gory deeds be done by them who are not so nice and so fastidious as you!"

  The nymphs, smiling cryptically, inclined their heads and stepped smoothly to the left and right, making way.

  The storm of no
ise and fury approached down the slope. With my unaided eyes, I saw, between the toppling tree boles, women in torn dresses, or panther skins, or nude, running in huge long-legged strides through the trees, ivy-wreathed spears and truncheons of iron in their slim hands.

  Many of them struck the ground with their spearheads as they ran, and wine bubbled up from rents in the earth those massive blows made. Some of the women who ran on all fours tore the ground with their fingernails, pulling up rocks and boulders; gushes of white milk fountained up from the soil in those places. A rolling wash of muddy wine and dirty milk was rippling and tumbling down the slope with the women, staining their bare calves and thighs.

  And I wondered where Mavors was, with all his troops: troops destined to rescue us when death loomed. And yet I knew: I had seen the explosion through time-space that had snarled the dream-paths his Atlanteans were using, and sent the ships and giants tumbling into confusion.

  Mavors was not coming.

  I whispered. "Echidna. Come. Can you hear me? Please come."

  Even though my voice had barely breathed that name, the nymph who had struck me, Ethemea, who was standing twelve or so feet away, turned and said in a voice like music: 'The creatures of dream cannot hear, unhoused souls, save for what we, souls in vessels, care to have them hear."

  I shouted to her: "The maenads want to kill us all, kill everything. They plan to have the world end. When I die, my father in Chaos, Helios, will destroy the material universe. The Olympians are fighting each other, and they can't stop what's coming. Do you want to live?"

  She smiled an eerie smile. "My Lord husband, Trismegistus, is the Psychopomp. No matter what sins I do on Earth, when this Flesh is dead, the guide who leads souls to underworld will lead me to no other place but to his marriage bed."

  I said, "Don't you understand? There won't be any Heaven or Hell, no Earth, no underworld, no nothing! Trismegistus will die, too!"

  Ethemea smiled thinly. "Perhaps you overestimate the powers Chaos wields. Trismegistus knows your art as well as his own. Your death may not lead to the universal apocalypse you say. His plans are deep and subtle___But, too late for any further talk! The maenads come to tear and slay."