John Wright - Titans of Chaos

The only thing that was different was that the guitar got dumped down the hole with the real Colin.

The two fighting maenads were trampled and stabbed by their impatient sisters. Beautiful, screaming women, faces flushed with wine, eyes stark with madness, now stabbed Colin's prone form. A score of spears transfixed his flesh.

Or tried to. The tuxedo jacket ripped beneath the impact of the ivy-wreathed spearheads, but a jarring report, the clang of metal against metal, sang in the air as the spearheads skittered from the body, or snapped in two.

In that same moment, a dozen more maenads, ignoring Colin, jumped clean over him and over the women savaging him, and fell upon me. I could raise no hand to defend myself; my voice was drowned in screams, my powers were...

On. My powers were on. I could see hyperspace.

I moved my body slightly and let the spears and truncheons fall "through" the space my body occupied without touching me.

I saw Colin rising to his feet. He did not stand up as a man does, by bending his legs and putting his weight beneath: No, he merely rose up like a flagpole being hauled erect. The bloody-nailed maenads fell backwards, wary, their faces pale with anger.

The spears had torn both fabric and flesh, revealing an integument of metallic gold beneath. His face was wounded, and the flesh of his cheeks hung limply from this white bony substance beneath: but Colin's eyes were calm with a terrible calm. He put his hands to the flesh of his face.

There was a hiss of noise, and the plasticlike flesh of his cheeks once more hid the bone structure beneath.

I did not see what passed from Colin to the women, or how the molecular engines entered the maenad bloodstreams, but I saw the effect. The wild women sank to the ground. Weapons dropped from limp fingers, and the women, no longer maddened, smiled empty smiles at each other, heavily sedated.

"The dream-lord robs the bacchants of their dreams of hate!" called Oenone in a voice of mingled fear and wonder. "Unmake his charm, O sisters mine, ere it is too late!"

The five nymphs pointed their wands at Colin, who stood in his torn tuxedo, hands casually in his pockets. They called out secret names and words of power. Whatever the nymphs had been expecting to happen, did not happen. Colin did not even bother to smile.

At this same time, a hole opened in the ground directly below me. I did not fall into it, only because my weight was no longer distributed into Earth's time-space.

Far below, I saw a buried river, some huge sewer main with concrete banks. In the middle of the river, directly below me, was the Argent Nautilus,

Vanity rose up into view. She was wrapped in a chain-mail jerkin. Her expression was thoughtful.

She levitated into a position above and somewhat behind Colin.

With a shrill noise of hate, the white-faced bacchants darted their spears at the hovering girl, or threw their metal truncheons. The metal objects slowed, and came to rest hanging in a circle in the air near her.

She made a gesture: And the spears and truncheons tilted left and right, points outward, forming the pattern of a pentagram in the air, with herself in the midmost A final spear she took in hand, one that had pierced Colin's torn face. Vanity laid the spearshaft across her knee and strained.

The wood snapped in two.

Vanity spoke, and a voice that was not hers came from her mouth: "The power of the bacchants breaks. This demonstration involves the moral principle of balance, or quid pro quo. The essential nature of the wounds just now inflicted, I admix to the humors released into the air by the blood thus spilled. A sympathetic and contagious connection is formed to those who made the wounds.

Clearly this assault has dissolved the wards that might otherwise deflect the returning, or responsive counterinfluence. Any questions... ?"

Utter silence had fallen across the maenads.

The nymphs raised their willow wands. Oenone said, 'This is a sorceress! Sisters! Chant the counterspell, and infuse the furious spirits once again into the maenads!"

Vanity waved her broken spearshaft negligently toward Oenone. "I call these maenads killers-of-trees, despoilers of the sacred forests where happy meliads and tree-nymphs dwell. The vengeance I set in motion defends the nymphic race. Any nymph who hinders me admits she wishes no defense; I therefore step inside her ward. Speak, if you consent. Otherwise, your silence is consent. I, Eidotheia, friend of homeless Menelaus, by virtue of the kind act by which I found the hero his home, here now complete my demonstration. Maenads! The true name of the father of salmons is Gwion."

The whole army of maenads simply toppled: They fell on their faces and began flopping and writhing like fish out of water. With arched backs and hands held to their sides, the maenads rolled and kicked and shuddered, mouths gaping. It would have been funny, had they not been choking to death in air.

The form of Vanity turned pale, her flesh becoming porcelain. Above her and behind her stood a shadow with the features of Quentin, which had become visible when he spoke his name.

Apparently it was a part of spell-weaving; the nymphs had been announcing their own names as well.

All five nymphs now raised their willow wands and pointed them toward Vanity's body hanging in midair. Leaves of many colors and flower petals swirled up from the ground and made dancing spirals around the nymphs, circling high and low.

Quentin now began to grow. Inky shadows, despite that it was day, were streaming in billows out of Vanity's chain mail, and the lengthening shadow swirled around her form without weight, like the hem of a long cloak in a high wind.

The eyes of the nymphs were glittering with fear. The shadowy image of Quentin's face was smiling introspec-tively: the smile of the Sphinx of Memphis. His eyes, black lids over ebony orbs, were partly closed.

At that same moment in time, the first two of the Amazon outriders came suddenly and swiftly into the glade, their steeds loping with silent speed across the grass.

Both riders, in one smooth motion, chambered a different type of round and shot.

I bent the world-path of the bullet aimed toward Quentin into the chest of Ethemea. Her magic failed as the silver bullet struck her; there was a flash of azure light in her gaping chest wound, and her soul did not survive the scuttling of the vessel she was occupying.

The other bullet struck Colin. Colin tilted slightly, and more flesh was shaken from his damaged face, but otherwise there was no result. For some reason, the anti-psychic shell had no effect whatsoever.

A third eye opened on Colin's forehead. Blue, metallic, glittering with dazzling power, it sent out a beam that played across the four remaining nymphs. Two of them screamed and tried to jump back into the trees from which they had come. But it seemed as if that pesky law of nature, which says that two solids cannot occupy the same space at the same time, was being enforced, for once.