John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

“Oh, and she had this thing that looks like a big celery stalk in her hand, a wand about two feet long, twined with ivy and with a pinecone at the top.

“Naturally, the first thing I say is ‘Help me,’ and she drifts over, giggling, and stares down at me. Me, strapped down to this rack, with no pants on.

“She says, ‘This is one of them, isn’t it? I’ve never seen one before. It looks like one of us, doesn’t it? They can do that when they want to.’

“And now she turns and makes a tsk-tsk gesture at Dr. Fell, and she says—well, never mind what she says. She jokes about whether or not he has been molesting me sexually, which didn’t seem very funny to me.

“ ‘You are allowed on the estate under a safe-conduct to attend the meeting, not to go frolicking about. You know the rules,’ he says. She says back in sort of an unsteady giggly singsong voice, ‘Oh I don’t go when Orpheus is there. You know how he feels about us.’

“It was actually funny, but he tells her off in that same dry monotone he uses on us when he tells us off in class. I mean, the same tone of voice he might use on Colin for getting an assignment wrong, the same condescending phrases. ‘I am very disappointed… perhaps had you been thinking, you might have considered…’ like she was a schoolgirl. He was mad because she was supposed to act like a human around us, or where any witnesses might see, and she talks back, and he gets all cold and nasty, and she laughs and sways back and forth. He says to her, ‘Our obligation while we are guests here on the Promethean world is not to interfere with the creatures of Prometheus. Besides, Mulciber has annexed this domain, and we do not want to run afoul of his machines. You know how he feels about killing men.’

“At this point she says Boggin wants to see him right away, something very important, another one of us has gotten away or something. It made me have a moment of hope, because, you know, I thought one of you was coming to save me. But the moment Fell is out of the room, she turned to me with this sly look on her face, and I realize it was just a trick to get him out of the room.

“I ask her again to let me up, and she says, ‘Serve my master and be his man, and I will let you go.’

“I asked her if she could stop Dr. Fell’s potion from erasing my memory. She looks a little puzzled, and then mad, once I explain what’s going on. Her cheeks get even redder than the drink made them, and her eyes get even brighter, her hair more wild.

“She says, ‘Swear, and if you don’t remember tomorrow, all the better. The Master really doesn’t want you to obey him, you know. If you disobey him, that is just as good.’

“At that point I knew that I had better die rather than swear.

“But I say, ‘Tell me something about him, so I can decide. Does Dionysus have any other agents working here? What do you know about the situation at this school?’

“She actually looked a little nervous or flustered at that point. ‘You things are dangerous, even all tied up. How did you know my Master’s name?’

“I tell her I will trade her question for question.

“I am really proud that I had the nerve to say that, and calmly, too, since all I wanted to do was beg her for help and cry like a girl. I was so full of fear that my stomach hurt like someone had kicked it.

“So she says, ‘Sure, why not? You’re not going to remember anything tomorrow anyway.’

“So she tells me what she knows about the school. Lord Terminus sent an expedition to recover certain hostages from the Four Houses of Chaos. He was on the brink of a civil war with his own children at that time, but it hadn’t broken out yet, and so, in order to placate them, four or five of his sons sent different agents along as part of the expedition.

“As it turned out, when Lord Terminus dies suddenly, the expedition has no place to go and no one to report to, and the various people from the various factions are suddenly terrified and suspicious of each other.

“But they find they have to work together, because each of the little orphans from Chaos has a different type of magic, a different version of the universe they draw upon for their power.

“Four types of magic, and each type has one other type it trumps, one it is trumped by, and one to which it is equal and opposite.

“The Athanatoi of Cosmos are descended from the Titans of Chaos. The lesser gods and goddesses, their powers also fall into the same four types. Except for the Phaeacians and the Olympians, who command two new powers created by Saturn and Rhea.

“I am a fallen spirit, a son of Phorcys. My power (Lamia tells me) is theurgy, the study and command of immaterial essences. A very potent power indeed and, in her opinion, the noblest and greatest of the four.

“Just by good fortune, Dr. Fell is here to stop me. He is a cyclopean, an atomist. One who commands matter. Whenever his power and the power of my house come into conflict, his will always prevail.

“I asked her who were the other houses and who stopped who, but she says, oh no, it is her turn now. How did I know she worked for Dionysus?

“I told her I read minds, and she says, ‘You lie to me, little boy, and we had an agreement. You are now in debt to me, and my power can touch you now.’

“She takes one of the combs out of her hair and jabs me in the neck with it. The tines are so sharp I almost don’t even feel anything. She puts her head down and starts licking at the blood dripping from my neck.

“There are bloodstains around her mouth at this point, a little trickle running down her neck. She throws back her head and moans, and strokes her own throat with her fingertips.

“She says, ‘For my first charm, I call upon your blood to tell me the truth of how you knew the name of the Vine God, Anacreon, Lord Vintner. I look into your blood, and I see your soul. I taste it, and I know. You did not read my mind, you read a book. Why has Boggin been teaching you about us? What kind of fool is he?’

“I said, ‘I call upon your oath to gag your spell. If my blood answers a second question without your answer to a second one of mine, then your promise to me is broken, and I am released.’

“She took out one of her hair needles and stabbed me in the arm with it. It was a pipette and she sucked at it like a straw. But the taste of my blood must have annoyed her now, for she spat it into my face. It stung my eyes.

“ ‘Ask your question, boy, little boy, clever little boy.’

“I repeated it. ‘Who were the Houses in Chaos? Whose power stopped whom?’

“She said, ‘The Dark rule the dreams and Nightmares of Old Night; Cimmeria their land, Morpheus their king; the Fallen rage in darkest Dis, weeping for lost Elysium, and the lost virtue, which, forsaken, lost them all and everything. The Lost fall through the Abyss, silent and serene as rain, Typhon is their eldest, but the Lost will suffer no one’s reign; the Telchine are their serfs on Earth, Ialysus their golden isle, rich with treasures wonderful and fine. The Unknown live beyond all things, in a Fortress Incomprehensible of uncountable sides and unimaginable design, and, prelapsarian, still laws recall that Uranus knew before his fall.’

“Now she climbed up atop me on the gurney, and began lapping at the wound in my neck like a dog.

“ ‘Oh, now I see,’ she says, ‘Boggin taught you all what you needed to know. He taught the Telchine boy physics and Newtonian mechanics, and taught you poems and myths and lore, taught music to wild prince of Night and Dreams, showed the Prelapsarian girl the strange secrets of strange Einstein, where math proves nothing is just where or what it seems. He has been forging you as a weapon for his own use, then. Right under everyone’s nose, right in the light where they should be the least blind. So the old puff of cold wind just gave you the paradigms you needed. And maybe he thought no one would mind.’