John Wright - Titans of Chaos

"Well, you're right about that," Colin said. "The fate that made it so Mortimer was touched in the head is gone. I don't know what you four did here on the boat at midnight, but just when the church-tower clock struck twelve, I flew up to his little barred window and did my hoodoo. Heck, once he was talking normal and stuff, I passed him my cell phone through the bars and let him call his brother Sam the Drayman. He was all crying and laughing so much, I thought it hadn't done anything, and he was still cuckoo, but..." He shrugged. "It worked on a small scale. We can undo fate."

Vanity smiled, and her white teeth showed. "And at least one man knows the gods are real. That won't overthrow them. But it is a start."

Victor raised a hand. "Now to save our lives. Everyone ready?"

Quentin took several sticks of colored chalk in his hand and threw them on the deck. In a moment, the snow was swept aside, and the boards were bright with circles and summoning triangles, pentagrams and stars-of-David, all written in and around with Latin and Greek script.

I was feeling a little light-headed and giggly, until Victor swept that azure beam from his third metallic eye across me and removed the alcohol from my bloodstream. He did not bother to sober up Vanity: She had already had Andromeda establish the Olympian laws of nature we needed.

At first our death was far away in the time-stream, but Quentin poked pins in a little wax doll of Victor, which did not hurt Victor in the slightest but sent out a signal that Victor was in danger.

His death grew close, curious, hoping for an opportunity to act. This was the curse slaying Lamia had created.

The warning-fate that Mavors had set up came alive within the time-stream, too. We took care of it first. Yes, we had debated the wisdom of having Mavors show up to save us each time we were in an auto accident, or fell down a flight of stairs or something, but in the end we decided we had to take care of ourselves without help.

That left only the death-fate, which closed in more rapidly once the Mavors counterfate was out of the way. Obviously it was more likely that we would die once no protector was around to save us.

The hard part for me was getting Victor to see the direction the death-fate was in: I took his head in my hands and pulled it up out of three-space, and pointed it in the time direction. His brain did not record any activity at that moment. I assume he was unable, by his very nature, to see what I saw. But the blue beam came out of his third eye all proper and normal, and dissolved the huge lump of time-energy.

The hardest part for Quentin was when a voice spoke to him from the cloud. With his hands shaking, he took the champagne bottle and poured himself two glasses. He cut himself with his athame, his witch's knife, and dropped a drop of blood into one.

"Here is the blood shed by she who has offended me," he said, his voice thick. "Here is my anger and my retribution, which I, Fallen and Archon of the Fallen, Master of the Art, have a right to claim. I drown you in the deep."

He tossed the wineglass into the sea.

He held up the other glass. "Here are the sins of Lamia against me. The pain and humiliation...

the... tears I cried. The sound of her hateful voice as she called me a child... and molestation...

ach! Here are her sins. Let the sea, let the great sea drink them, and may they forever be gone and be forgotten, as I forget them. I drown you in the deep."

The second glass twinkled in the gloom as it sailed over the railing and into the snowy sea air.

He said, "I forgive, I forgive, I forgive you."

Then he sat down and put his face in his hands. I think he was crying. Vanity sat next to him on the bench and put her arms around his shaking shoulders.

I said, "What just happened?"

Colin was standing very close behind me. "Didn't you feel it? Trismegistus used the fact that Victor here killed Lamia and her two pals, ap Cymru and what's-her-name, the Phaeacian, to power his curse against us. Necromancy. The winged bastard probably expected us to kill the bitches. There was a moral component, a vengeance involved. We killed Lamia, so fate could kill us. Big Q, our little Quentin here, just called their bluff and trumped their ace. He forgives Lamia, so her death has to forgive Victor. That's the way I figure it, anyway. Quentin was really shaken up by the time Lamia had him strapped to the table. Maybe he can get over it, now."

"Why is he crying?" I said. I was thinking that boys were not supposed to cry, but I did not say that. It would have sounded like such a stereotype. But I thought it.

Victor said, "Growing pains. Children hold grudges. Adults cannot."

I said to Colin, "I understand four parts of what we must do to unwind an Olympian fate. But what do you do? What did you do to save Mr. Finkelstein?"

He spread his hands. "You're the one person I cannot explain it to, Amelia."

"Try me."

"I turn myself into glass and remember the Real Me, a soul without a body, outside of time, eternal, enlightened, unstained. I think about how Fate has no power over Infinity. And I think of freedom. I am inspired by freedom: In my heart I sing of it. None of my brothers in the dream-universes can do what I do, for they have never been bound, and they do not hate prison half so much."

"I think I do understand." I smiled at him. Sometimes Colin seems sweet.

Victor interrupted the conversation. "Amelia's turn next. We have to get rid of the curse Boggin put on her; otherwise, he can find her whenever he wants."

It didn't work. I could give the frozen time more free will, and Victor could make it act in a neutral fashion, but the moral component would writhe and tangle, and slowly correct the fate back to what it had been.

Quentin said, "I am sorry. If I were more skilled, studied more deeply in the One True Art, perhaps-"

I said angrily, "I thought my parents sent me into the cursed world in order to do this! To find you four, and set about freeing mankind from Lust and Death and War and all the other gods they worship! So was it all for nothing?"

Victor said in a voice as calm and gentle as ever I was to hear him use, "Reality consists of scarcity: No tool is of unlimited use, no good supercedes all other goods, no power is so powerful as to overwhelm all else; otherwise the universe would long ago have been reduced to that one power, with that one tool to that one good."

"What's that mean?" I said to him. Maybe I shouted it.

"It means nothing is perfect. Every rule has exceptions. Every atom in motion has a swerve."

I said tearfully, "It means I will never get away from Boggin?" To Quentin I said, "Why didn't it work?"

Quentin said, 'The wording of the oath. You would never do anything to make him ashamed. If you undo his spell, on which his whole reputation and honor depend-he took quite a risk in letting us at large-then he will be shamed indeed. I cannot undo the moral obligation, because the very act of unweaving the obligation is shameful. It is almost as if you took a second oath not to break the oath."