John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

There was a noise like the chime of a bell, and I was not sure where it came from. Vanity waved her hand at Quentin and slapped herself on the neck. Bugs. Something was listening.

I had the impression that Quentin had just asked a question. Something or someone in the room answered him, because a shy, unearthly voice murmured very softly: "I am the hate of the voiceless wound; I am the blood which is not allayed; I am the silence of the broken word; I am the trust betrayed.

Erichtho laid her curse on Echidna's son, and took the ghost of his leg away; all other wounds of his knew how to close; the knowledge was lost; what was marred was to be marred for forever and a day."

Vanity slapped herself on the neck again, looking worried.

I looked into the higher dimensions and saw bundles of moral energy issuing to and from the ring. At right angles to all other right angles was a figure surrounded by the laws of nature of the dream continuum. It seemed to be a corpse, taller than a human being, clad all in bronze armor, and resting in a strange coffin, which was shaped in the form of a hollow brass horse.

Quentin said, " Ave et Vale"

The figure in the armor turned and looked at me, as if he could see my eyes, despite that I was looking from another dimension; he started to raise a gauntlet toward me, as if to speak, but at that same moment, the hollow brass horse came to life, and galloped away, with the corpse rattling and banging back and forth in the hollow vessel of its chest. It sounds perhaps comical to think of a man rattling around in a horse's hollow chest, but there was something so horrible, and so helpless, and so sad about it all, that I turned my higher eyes away before I could see more.

Quentin said, "Demonstration over. You guys can talk again."

I was aware only of a sinking sensation. I had missed my opportunity.

Why hadn't I started to talk out of turn?

2.

There was a brief discussion. I described the spirit I saw, and Quentin gave the opinion that this was the ghost of the original owner of the ring. Who or what it was, he could not guess.

Vanity confirmed that the ghost had been the only thing looking at or aware of us—except when he said the name Echidna. Vanity said, "At the moment that name was spoken, something very old and very powerful turned and looked at us. It is coming now."

Even as she said those words, fat drops of rain began to spatter against the portholes of our cabin. In the distance, a swollen red sun, balanced between low clouds and the dark western horizon of the sea, was being blotted up by thunderheads.

Quentin looked worried, and ashamed. "Maybe there were more precautions I should have taken. Is this officially an emergency? I'd like Victor to be in charge."

There were four votes for aye. Colin had not raised his hand.

I said to him sharply, "Is there some other candidate you'd like to propose?" My tone, I suppose, was less polite than it should have been, because I thought he was angling for the position of leader himself.

Colin, slouched like a panther at rest over the arm of the divan, regarded me with a lazy, mocking stare:

"I just thought the Dark Mistress had done such a fine job before——-Are you canvassing for a vote for Vic, Amelia?

What are you offering? I'll make it unanimous, if I get to have the blonde in my lap next time around…

No? Fine. Who am I to break with tradition, though… ?" He raised his hand anyway.

Quentin said, "Leader, I'd like to do a reading on the influences from the middle air and the upper aether.

Unfortunately, I already know from Vanity that there are actually spirits of some sort, princes of the air and darkness, who react when I read, and go somewhere and do something to fetch the answers to my questions."

Victor said, "You are thinking it might attract more attention?"

"Well, if I were Boggin, and I had the winds at my command, I'd have them watching the princes of the middle air. Why should it be impossible for spirits to spy on each other?"

Victor said, "This is your area of expertise. Make a suggestion."

Quentin started gathering his cards up off the floor. "Leader, two days of reading one book does not make me an expert."

"But you have an idea."

"But I have an idea. We take Colin's ring; we have Amelia look along these ropes or webs she seems to be able to see, we have you denature them—demagnitize them, as you call it, not the whole ring, but just one after another—to isolate which strands represent which obligations or which sense impressions.

Colin can add back in any influences you drive out—adding 'energy,' as he calls it. With each strand, as we turn it off and turn it back on, Vanity tells us if anyone is watching us. I do a reading with my cards meanwhile. We see if we can fine-tune it. Fine-tune the ring. If we are really clever about it, we may be able to have the invisibility cast its influence all the way around me doing a reading. You see my idea?"

Colin said, "Whoever the people are you are getting your information from, turn them invisible, so that Bog-gin's spies can't see them doing whatever it is they do when they answer your questions. Right?"

"Right."

"What if I cannot turn on what Victor turns off?"

"Then the ring is broken and worthless to us, and we have destroyed a great treasure for no purpose."

Colin shrugged and nodded, and said to Victor, "Is there a downside to this, leader-man?"

Victor said, "If we attract the attention of Boggin or the other Olympians, the worst that will happen is they might send some force to protect us from the lethal attack which is coming. And, by hypothesis, they already have such a force in place, and already have us under some sort of observation that Vanity cannot detect; therefore we lose nothing by this. No. There is no downside, aside from the value of the ring itself, and the general risks, if any, associated with Quentin showing command-symbols to the electromagnetic entities he calls spirits."

Vanity said, "I don't see why it can work at all. Only the ring-bearer turns invisible. How do you project it onto someone else?"

Colin said, "Step on them."

"I'm serious."

Colin said, "So am I. That ring is thorough. When you wear it, nobody sees footprints you make in the water puddles in the girls' locker room, or sees the shower water deflected from your body. Nobody sees the water displacement when you slip naked into a crowded Jacuzzi. No one hears the noises you make when you bump into something. Now, if you pick something up, like an envelope full of money, a person who notices details, like Victor, or whose brain is hard to fool, will spot you."

Vanity said, "Were you really in the girls' locker room?"

Colin rolled his eyes. "What? Do you think I was staring at all the old wrinkled hags they have here on this trip—yeech! But you understand what the logic of the ring has to be? If the ring-bearer can make it so that you do not notice sound waves coming out of my mouth, I don't see (if you'll pardon that expression) why it can't mask someone who talks back to me. If you hear them, you'll know I'm around.

How is that different from all the other clues that I am around it is erasing, such as light photons bouncing off me? I don't go blind when I put this thing on, you know. I must be casting a shadow."

Victor said, "Let us try Quentin's experiment, then. He may be able to generate additional information, which may enable us to survive the coming attack."

I said, "But they are not bugging the ring, then? I wasn't sure I understood what the ghost of the first owner said."

Quentin held up the ring. "Mr. Glum had a right to this ring. It was a wergild. Mrs. Wren cursed his leg so that he could not fix it—haven't you seen Colin simply shrug off mortal wounds, broken wings, things like that? But her enchantments trumped his psionics. She did him wrong by doing that. In retaliation, Glum stole this. At a guess, it would seem, that in the spirit world, two wrongs do make a right. Shall we try my experiments? Ladies? Gentlemen?"