Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Will you pick? Or shall I?"

  I saw the iceberg-thing in our future stir. It began to orient itself, like a hound catching a scent, from one of us to another. It was coming closer. Death was soon and growing sooner.

  Victor said, "Don't answer. Ignore it."

  Vanity, her face half-crumbled with unshed tears, threw the cell phone away from her. It clattered off the boards and fell into a flower arrangement.

  The voice said, "That was just insane inanity, Vanity. What will you do if I choose you?"

  I heard Vanity scream, and saw her fall down. The wounds that Victor had stitched up were leaking again, as if Trismegistus had somehow left something behind in them, something Victor could not see or sense, waiting for some signal from him to rotate back into three-dimensional space.

  I could hear her gasping for breath. Hissing. The fate was close, but it did not strike. Trismegistus still was not killing us. He was talking, taunting. He still wanted something from us. What? What did he want?

  It got dimmer. I held my hand in front of my face. It was a blur in a blurry world.

  I said, "Victor, I'm scared." My voice was shaking.

  I could not see where Victor was standing, or what he was doing, but he said, "Don't show fear.

  You and I have to take care of the young ones, Amelia. You and I."

  It was the same thing he used to say to me, back when we were much younger. Back when I was Secunda.

  He said, "We're the only ones they can rely on. You and I. Forever."

  "What if we don't make it, Victor? What if this is it?"

  "Then I shall not have the opportunity to ask for your hand in marriage, Amelia. I would have preferred to wait till I had something of value to offer you. I have nothing but myself. We have always been together. We shall always be together."

  And then he said, in a voice as calm and unafraid as ever he used, "Amelia, my sweet, my brave Amelia, whether we live or die is unimportant. Don't pay it any mind. Concentrate on the task at hand."

  There are not many things a man can say to take a girl's mind off the impending prospect of death. But there is at least one.

  It made tears come to my eyes, which were already full of tears of pain. For some reason, though, things seemed to get brighter to me. Just a little. Maybe the laws of nature of Olympos had some soft spot in their heart for tears of love.

  That's when I saw them. They were so bright, even a half-blind girl could not miss them. Two more icebergs in the stream of time. Larger, much larger, than the fate that was choking Quentin.

  Coming closer. I squinted through the pain and tried to see their inner nature.

  One was cunning, clever, quick-witted, delighting in lies. The other was disciplined, fearless, steadfast, quiet with menace.

  The two fates contending over us. I could only venture a guess: The decree of Trismegistus that no one could outrun him. The other one? The decree of Mavors that no one could threaten our lives without summoning him. Or maybe this was an older, larger, more permanent fate. Perhaps this was the decree of Mavors that no one could overcome him in any feat of arms or battle.

  I said, "I can see them. The fates. I can wake them up, but they will still be trapped by their spells."

  Spells. I had interfered with the spell the nymphs had used to enchant Colin. How much did I need to interfere before Victor could zap one of them, make it go away? Maybe I could step in for Quentin, just for a moment.

  I reached out with a tendril of energy, pointing it toward the flow of time, extended...

  The voice of Trismegistus whispered in my ear, "Pale Amelia with her hair and heart of gold! The poker game is almost over now. Would you prefer to see, or fold? Just pick for me which one of you must die. I will spare the other four. What do I need four corpses for? The deal is real, and much too good for you to deny."

  I shouted back, "None of us will betray the others! We stand or fall together!"

  "Ahhhh! You will never imagine how grateful I am to hear you say that, filth of Chaos. With your own mouth you have said it; you are one in the eye of the law; which law I call and now convoke: Hear me!" ,

  My sight was almost gone, but in shadows and blurs, I saw what happened. A tiny dot swelled up in size, became a man cloaked in white, a wand of serpents in his hand, wings on his feet.

  Trismegistus was now inside with us. My words had somehow invited him in.

  With a flutter of his wand, he threw one serpent onto me; the other he threw onto Victor. Both snakes must have had the same paradigm Echidna used. The one on me became as large as an anaconda.

  The one on Victor simply grew and kept growing, while Victor pelted it with chemicals, explosives, and energies of various types. It was larger than a freight train when it rolled over him. I did not see what happened to Victor, but his azure light winked out. I think it swallowed him whole.

  I was wrapped in a crushing grip. The tendril of energy I was reaching with began to flicker and fade.

  I granted it free will, that part of me, that tendril. It yanked free and fell away from me, spinning off into the abyss.

  Two hot needles of pain found my neck.

  Poison. Music shaped as a liquid. Siren song floated in my veins. I collapsed into three dimensions.

  No breathing. Bones broken.

  As if from a far, far distance, I heard Trismegistus chant: "Primus, Secunda, Tertia, Quartinus, Quentin: by your names of your youth and childhood I call; Victor Invictus Triumph, Amelia Armstrong Windrose, Vanity Bonfire Fair, Colin Iblis mac FirBolg, Quentin Nemo: by the names you named yourselves for you; Damnameneus, Phaethusa, Nausicaa, Phobetor, Eidotheia, and by your names innermost and true, I call, I call, I call to you. Perish now, thou demons foul, who are so fickle and so difficult to kill. Your ghosts nowhere shall abide; you shall perish utterly, and every part of you shall die; it is the Psychopomp who speaks: This is my will. I raise my wand; I now decree..."

  My last trickle of vision faded to utter black.

  I heard Quentin's voice. "I am in nowise bound by any curse of yours, you who have not named me." His voice sounded strange, so strange. But the curse choking him must have failed.

  That meant Victor, somewhere, somehow, was alive, if he restored the normal chain of cause and effect. If the snake was a creature from Colin's paradigm, it was equal and opposite to Victor; it was one against which he had a fighting chance.

  The voice of Trismegistus floated like a leaf in the breeze, twinkling and chuckling. "I am the Father of Lies; I know my children. That was a lie. Spirits! I have named him truly! Can he prove otherwise?"

  Quentin said, "The name I told my enemies when I was young, Nemo, 'no-one,' is not the name I told myself to myself. In the ring of stones, beneath the moon, with blood I drew myself from mine own vein, I anointed me. That name is my true name, my inner name, my soul name, and you do not know it."

  "Do you think you can riddle and argue, debate and expound, with the Prince of Lawyers? You slew Galenthias, my cat: I call on you to render up your life for that. A life pays for a life; that is the rule; you knew and disobeyed."

  "You admit that spell is gone from me; and if from me, then from all those whom your words have bound together in one destiny-"

  "Oh, this grows tiresome."

  A gunshot rang out.

  Quentin laughed. It was a sick, forced, hollow laugh, but he still laughed. "It needs to be silver to hurt me. You have damaged my vessel, which is merely made of clay."

  Trismegistus said wearily, "Ophion, get him."

  The snake relaxed its grip and I was free. I could not extend anything into overspace, and I still could not see.

  Quentin cried out in terror.

  I tried to get up, but the poison had made all my limbs go cold. I could not rise.

  I felt a motion in the air near me. I sensed a looming presence.

  A kiss. Someone kissed me.

  Colin whispered in my ear, "Wake, sleeping beauty."

  Warmth and motion began t
o filter through to me. Pins and needles stung my limbs.

  And wings and tendrils and flukes and songs. I was fourth-dimensional again. Still too weak to get up, but it was something.

  I whispered, "Colin! Cure my eyes! I can't see!"

  He kissed my eyelids.

  Quentin called out one last time, a cry of horror, and was silent. I felt Colin leave my side in a rush of motion. I reached after him, and felt fur and bat-wing leather slide away from my fingertips.

  There was a horrid scream: "AMELIA WINDROSE! AMELIA!"

  Colin was not calling for me; this was his battle cry.

  Trismegistus said, "Oh, come now. Puh-leese."

  I heard a dull thump as Colin hit the floor.

  Light. The smallest trickle of my vision had returned.

  And the brightest objects in time or space or hyperspace around me were the icebergs of fate. I selected the quietly menacing one, the decree of Mavors.

  I sent off a tendril to wake the fate, a second one to turn its webs of magic inward on themselves, and a third one to send a message to the fate-thing. Help me. I woke you up. I am your mother.

  Help me.

  I was not trying to dissolve this particular fate. I wanted to augment it.

  "Ah, where was I?" fluttered the floating tones of Trismegistus. "Ah, yes, brutal murder. Oops.

  The blond one is getting up again. Hey-here is an idea! Why don't I kill them first, and then cast the spell to abolish any lingering souls or ghosts? Better idea? Much better."

  I blinked. I could only see shadows, but I saw the shadow of the slim figure, winged hat and winged shoes, raising his revolver toward me.

  There were lumps on the grass and on the deck to his left and right. My friends? One of them was wriggling and writhing. Being eaten by a snake?

  I heard the revolver hammer click.

  Nothing happened. No bullet.

  Click. Again, nothing.

  Click, click, click.

  "Hmph! That's odd. I didn't think revolvers could jam! I wonder what is wrong with it."

  I blinked. My vision cleared a moment, blurred, cleared.

  The huge stained-glass window behind Trismegistus formed a frame with him at the center. There was a shadow darkening the glass. Then the glass went black.

  Then the ramming prow of a black ship entered. Shards of glass and powder exploded in each direction, and the hull boards protested, bent, snapped, broke inward.

  The sea came in.

  The whole huge cabin space, where all these lawns and gardens stood, canted to one side. The place where I lay was still dry, but the boards sloped down to a spreading lake of seawater.

  The noise was terrible; boards groaned and creaked; waters roared and thundered.

  A pair of metal gauntlets, each finger huge as a tree trunk, reached in through the gap made by the ram-ship and pulled an acre of hull away.

  I heard the voice of Mulciber, amplified over a loudspeaker, say, "The Master of Cold Iron says for the guns not to fire, so they won't, eh? Mavors, tell your men to use steel."

  Slithering shadows, thin and pantherlike, poured quickly from the black deck. Laestrygonians. I did not see what they were armed with, and I could not make out how many there were. They were fast.

  Trismegistus was faster. I don't know what he had in his hand. A knife? But he turned into a blur and cut the throats of a dozen Laestrygonians, then two dozen. Anyone who tried to run away from him, it became a race, and he won.

  A giant gauntlet, which I saw only as a passing storm cloud, reached into the cabin space and caught the mile-long serpent by the neck.

  The other snake, the anaconda-size one, swelled up to something the size of a skyscraper lying on its side. But a squad of Laestrygonians swarmed over it, and blood gushed up from the snake where they were. It thrashed and fell still.

  Trismegistus made a noise like a steam whistle, a high-pitched peacock scream. "You sucker! You slew my snakes! Ophion and Serpentine! You are a dead man, Mavors! You, too, lumpity-hump!"

  I saw him dimly, a pale shadow with a wing-blur around him, standing in midair.

  I saw a silhouette standing on the deck of the black ship, with seawaters rushing in through the broken hull to either side. Even though I could not make out the details, the upright posture, the air of calm command, could not be mistaken.

  Mavors said in a flat tone, "Last chance to surrender, Trismegistus. Come quietly."

  Trismegistus laughed. "I can circle the equator five laps in the time it takes you to throw your spear at me. Oh, I am sure you could beat me, if I stood still long enough for you to snail on up and poke me. But why should I?"

  "Here's why."

  Mavors unslung a shield from his back and held it up, and yanked off a cover or cloak he had thrown over it. At least, I assume it was a shield. It was round. I could not make out what was on the shield, but it was something that wiggled like a spider.

  Mavors said, his words marching out without inflection, 'The other members of your group sold you out. Lady Wisdom asked for amnesty. She's the one who made me promise I'd ask you to give up peacefully. Remember her? Tritogenia? She's the one who carries the shield of the Medusa. She lent it to me so I could get you. Even you can't run faster than you can see."

  The shadows representing the Laestrygonians all suddenly stood stock-still. Frozen in place.

  The pale shadow representing Trismegistus turned all dark and grainy in my vision the moment Mavors held up the shield. He fell out of the air. When he crashed to the deck, I recognized the noise. Stone. Trismegistus had been turned to stone.

  His own men, too. Mavors had petrified platoons of his own people, just to get the shot at Trismegistus. Cold bastard.

  Mulciber must have thought so, too, because he said, "As we agreed, you put that damn thing away now. I thought you were going to call out a warning, let us cover our eyes, eh?"

  Mavors did not say anything, but his silhouette seemed to be tense, ready. Perhaps he was weighing in his mind his chances against Mulciber. The giant golem Mulciber was in had turrets for sixteen-inch guns, loopholes for other weapons, decorating the crenellations of its massive epaulettes and chest plate.

  Mulciber said, "Come on, now. As we agreed. Sure, you can't be afraid of my little toy here, are you? Put away the shield, and I won't shoot you."

  A winged figure dropped from the sky and landed behind Mavors. I felt a cold breeze, as if a refrigerator door had just then opened.

  I heard Boggin's voice: "My lords, while duly acknowledging the presumption, indeed, I am tempted to say, the disrespect, which may, in some less generous minds, be attributed to my humble words, while lords as august as yourselves are debating the most efficient...efficacious?...

  way to betray each other, I feel it is my duty, as a loyal servant of the realm, ah, indeed, loyal to whomever will end up ruling the realm, my duty to mention, a fact which I hope has not escaped your lordships' notice, occupied, as you are, with matters of such import. May I remind my lords that the entire sidereal universe will be destroyed if my children, ah, if the children, are harmed?

  Might I suggest-although it is not, of course, my place to suggest-might I suggest a quick search of the bodies by medical teams? Yes?"

  Mavors said, "Boreas, be quiet. You are only here because you are not loyal to anyone here. A neutral third party."

  Mulciber added, in a voice heavy with irony, "Whom we both mistrust equally."

  Mavors covered up the shield and handed it over to Boggin.

  Boggin took the shield and slid it under one arm. "Sir- if I may-the children's safety is a paramount-"

  "You may not. Go."

  Boggin hesitated a moment. My eyesight was too blurred yet to see any expression.

  I saw his wings spread wide. There was a cold wind, and he was gone.

  The statue of Trismegistus wiggled. I saw it open and close its hand.

  Where the huge arm was extending inward through the broken hull wall, a peninsula of me
tal, there came a small motion. A hatch shaped as its thumbnail opened in the gauntlet of the golem.

  A bent and hunchbacked figure emerged, climbed down a set of rungs. He moved with a limping stride, crablike, over toward where the statue of Trismegistus lay on the boards.

  I saw him bend over the fallen figure.

  "Not dead," Mulciber said. "No escape for him that way. He's still in there."

  Mavors said, "Lady Tritogenia, before handing me her shield, warned me he could work his way out of the petrifaction, in time. A Chaos trick he learned."

  "Not in time. Now. He's already working his way out. What a freak he is."

  "You can contain him?"

  Mulciber crooked his head up at the figure on the black deck above. "I am the master of iron and steel, rock and stone. Stones don't move when I say they don't move. I can keep him bound. You need me to keep him in. I needed you to ensure victory. Deal's over now."

  Mavors said, "You assume I am going to let you keep the prisoner. I don't want to see him added to your side."

  "Shut up, Mavors. You're an idiot. You think I'd make deals with vermin like him? He killed our dad."

  "My dad. Mulciber, if you thought he could put the crown of heaven on you, and keep it from me, you might find a way to forgive him."

  "We going to fight now, eh? Is that the plan?"

  A man in the green-and-blue scale mail of an Atlantean stepped up behind me and raised his voice. "Sir! One of them is here! Alive!"

  Mavors said, "Petrified?"

  The man extended a hand to me. "Miss? Can you get up? Are you wounded?"

  I did not answer. The man shouted up toward Mavors, "Sir! This one is unconscious!"

  My eyes must have seemed closed to him. I merely had my eyelids open a crack, but in a direction he could not perceive. I was looking "past" my closed lids.

  Another man, standing in a different part of the cabin, said, "Sir! Two more over here! Wounded, but turned to stone. Not bleeding."

  A final man, standing near the mouth of the giant dead serpent, called out: "One over here, too, sir. Turned to stone. I think it is the Phaeacian girl."