John Wright - Titans of Chaos

Victor closed the door behind him. "Narcolepsy. I stimulated the pons area of the brain and activated his sleep cycle."

Vanity looked a little miffed that Victor had acted without waiting for orders, but she didn't say anything aside from, "Can you fix him?"

"Let me look." And the azure beam played over the young man's face for many minutes. "Leader, I have been instructed, programmed, in a science called cryptognosis, which involves the manipulation of the nervous system on a fine structural level. There is nothing physically wrong with his brain. If it is a spell, anything from Quentin's paradigm, I should have been unable to undo it."

Vanity said, "Should have been?"

Victor said, 'The proper stimulation sequences are occurring, but the synapses in certain brain areas will not fire. I can detect the microvoltage changes on the dendrites, which should trigger corresponding actions in the axons, but nothing happens. There are no proteins that would attenuate the signals in operation."

"Amelia, report."

I said, "Something is lowering the utility, the usefulness of his brain cells to him. I see moral connections running into the past and future. There is a confusion of time-energy. There is something, some awareness, which is in the future, that reacts to changes in Mr. Finklestein here.

Its interior nature is watchful and stern, but it has no free will. Its moral stance, um, changed, when Victor negated all the magic in the patient. I don't know what I am looking at. It could be natural. It could be artificial."

"Can you do your monad thing?"

I reached into the man's nervous system and straightened what I could. "Leader, I don't see a change. It is like it is something he's doing to himself, maybe? If he's not really hurt, could it be hypnosis? He has free will; he is just not using it."

Quentin said, 'This sounds like it is up my alley, Leader. An enchantment, something that bound his will. Maybe he ran into a bad elf in the swamp? I suggest we retire to the graveyard across the street and let me try something. I know the formulae to summon and command the Great King and President called Zagam. He will appear at first in the form of a bull with gryphon's wings. He has the power to make fools witty. I need but a drop of blood from the patient."

I reached into a cabinet one floor down and several yards up the corridor. Quentin looked startled when my hand turned red and vanished and reappeared. "Sterile lancet?" I offered. "This is a hospital, you know."

Vanity unbuttoned her sea-coat and pulled her necklace out from her sweater. She was sweating.

It had been cool outside, but the air in this small dim room was hot and close. "Let me see if I can get a more magical set of laws of nature working here, to help you out."

"You know," I said doubtfully, "if we mess up something here, it could be bad. I mean, we're trying to do neurosurgery on this guy without anyone's permission, and..."

No one was listening. They were all staring at Vanity's bosom. I mean, it is large and round and nicely shaped, but...

Oh. There was a face in the middle of the green stone around her neck. That was what the boys were staring at.

Vanity said, "Who are you?"

A fair soft voice seemed to have spoken, although it did not speak. It was like we were remembering words, not hearing words. A queenly face in the dim depth of the green stone had answered wordlessly: "Andromeda am I, the queen of Ethiopia's daughter, prideful Cassiopeia. In all the devastated lands from Philistia to Lebanon, none save the fairest could be found to sate the monster, and so to pay my mother's guilt, with modest piety, uncomplaining, with daughterish obedience, I chained myself to the sacrificial sea-rock, to save the human lands from horrid Typhon's brood." Her eyes turned toward Victor as she spoke this. "Great Perseus me succored, who slew Medusa, cousin of the Graeae." Now she looked at Quentin. "And after life and death, Olympian Lord Terminus, All-highest, he who guards the boundary stone, opened the boundaries of starry night for me, had my figure placed within the heavens, a guide to mariners. The Phaeacians befriended my folk in times past, the mariners of Phoenicia and Tyre. I watch your silver ships even as Bran watches Cassiterides, the island of Tin. Ask of me, Daughter of Arete."

"Can you make the room here hold the laws of nature that will let Quentin cast his magic?"

The woman's voice hung in our memories, as if she had spoken: "There is no magic, only mysteries explained, and mysteries unexplained."

Quentin muttered, "See? As I've always said."

Vanity seemed at a loss. "Well-can you help us some other way?"

"I will bestow what grace is mine to give, for any demoiselle who suffers chains is mine, and any savior who breaks those chains, and you are both at once, Phaeacian. The young man is chained, but he is not one of mine: On your oath to harm him not, I will perform."

We all agreed.

In our memories, we heard her words: "Phobetor, Nightmare-prince, this room is yours: I gift it you."

The room did not change shape, nor did the moonlight falling in through the grille of the window darken, but something like that should have happened, because a strange dreamlike sensation crept over me, a sense that I could not move, or that the objects around me were alive, silently chuckling, merely holding into the familiar shapes of floor and bed out of a watchful malice.

Colin said, "Hey. I can see his dreams. He is dreaming right now."

Vanity said, "Colin, Amelia is freaking out. I think your dreamworld is bad for her. Can you do something?"

He pulled his eyes away from the figure on the bed. "Um. Like what, Red Leader?"

The man on the bed opened his eyes. It was horrible, like looking at a zombie. His mouth was open, and his voice came out, but I did not see any tongue or teeth. The lips did not move. It was like the real Mortimer was crouched below the bed, speaking up through a tube shoved through the back of a corpse. Nothing looked wrong, but it was horrible for the same reason dreams are horrible, when you dream about an empty white room with an empty wooden chair in it, and cannot remember why that terrifies you.

Colin was holding me by the shoulders, and Victor was standing behind me with his arm around my waist. Funny. I didn't remember them reaching for me.

"Amelia," said Colin. "Calm down. You have nothing to be afraid of. By the authority vested in me as a Prince of Chaos, son of Morpheus, I invite you into my realm, um, this whole room, the land on which it stands and the sky above, and all the rights, rents, and privileges appertaining thereto. There. Did anything happen?"

I said in a calm, slow voice: "His eyes are open. He's talking. Can't you hear him?"

"Amelia, stop screaming. Um." Colin shrugged. "Leader, what's going on?"

Vanity spoke up, "Ask her what the voice said."

I said, "I can hear you, Vanity. Mortimer is talking. He says he saw her bathing. The girl was naked. It was freezing winter, and the snow was on the sedge and swamp-grass, but she laughed and sported in the pool like it was a bath. Her dogs were blind, no eyes in the sockets, and white and pale as death. She set her dogs on him."