"You were the one Satan slated for early demise, Niobe. Your husband asked the Professor about your bad visions, and the Prof, who is a pretty fair magician, investigated. He was grooming the young man to assume a chair at the college and wanted to be sure the background was stable. He discovered the plot and informed your husband. Cedric never hesitated; he went in your place."
Again, Niobe was stunned. She remembered her visions of dread. "He went—for me?"
"It seems that you are destined to be a real thorn in Satan's side. None of us can know the details, of course, not even Satan, but he moved to eliminate you. Satan has terrible power, and he is subtle and methodical; we other Incarnations did not realize. Almost before we knew, it was done. The envoy of Hell was loosed—but Cedric took the shot intended for you."
"How—?"
"The assassin was a hunter possessed temporarily by a demon spirit. The demon's orders were to shoot the mortal who was singing at a particular oak tree, with a baby. Satan presumed that would be you. That was the loophole."
"It would have been!" Niobe agreed faintly. "If Cedric had not—"
"He loved you," Gaea agreed. "And he knew that Satan wanted you dead. So he saved you and balked Satan at one stroke. Seldom has a nobler deed been done."
"But if I—"
"You cannot make a mockery of your husband's gallant sacrifice," Gaea said. "You must accept the gift he gave you, and do what he has enabled you to do."
"I—but I don't know what—"
"That is what we may not tell you, though it is little enough we know ourselves. But it is enough for you to know, now, that Satan himself regards you as a dangerous enemy, and surely he is correct. Live—and you will discover your destiny in due course."
Niobe realized that her quest had come to nothing. Cedric had already done for her what she had thought to do for him. She had no choice, now, but to accept.
She stumbled out of the glade, through the thickly growing saplings, and emerged—beside the water oak near her home. The hamadryad recognized her and waved.
"Oh, Cedric!" Niobe exclaimed. "I was the deer to be shot—and how great was your love for me! Now I must let you die!"
Then she lifted her tear-streaked face to the sky. "But I will avenge you, Cedric!" she swore. "Somehow I will make Satan pay!"
She sank down beside the tree, and cried against its trunk, while the dryad wrung her hands. O Cedric!
Chapter 4 - CLOTHO
The following days were unpleasant, despite the griefabatement spells she was using. They merely dulled the cutting edge of her sorrow, but did not—could not— should not!—provide happiness in its stead. They enabled her to function in a superficially normal manner, but below, in a cavernous depth of despair, the agony remained. There was only so much that magic could do.
Niobe went to the Prof and asked why he had not told her what Cedric had done. "Because he forbade me," the man replied sadly. "I hoped—by interceding with Death, you might—but—"
"The murder was willed by Satan," she said. "It was too late. One of us was doomed."
"He insisted that you be saved," the Prof said. "1, selfish as I am, wanted him for the college. He had so much potential! But he—and evidently Satan!—believed that you were more important, and I could not refute that case."
"He was the one with all the promise," she agreed. "Cedric was worth two of me. I have no idea what I can do to justify my survival. But for his sake I will carry on, raise our son, and seek my retribution against Satan. If the Prince of Evil suspected that I would cause him trouble, he has surely guaranteed that I will do so now!" But once more she was overtaken by tears. She felt so desolate! Her marriage to Cedric had been, to a large extent, promise—the promise of his maturity. The promise of the life they would have together as two adults. They had just begun to taste that joy—and now it was gone.
She went to the hospital in the city, where the doctor still labored to hold life in Cedric. "Let him go," she said. "I love him. I will not let him suffer longer." And she kissed her husband's unresponsive lips, and wet his face with her tears, and turned away. "May you have joy in Heaven, my bonnie boy," she whispered. "May I join you there—when my business here is done."
She went to Cousin Pacian's parents' farm, where Junior had been boarded for several days. Junior saw her— and burst into tears. She picked him up, in tears again herself, and held him close.
"But he was doing so well!" Pacian protested. "He was having a good time here, honest!"
"Of course he was," Niobe agreed. "It's just that once he saw me, he realized how he missed me. It's a natural reaction." But what, she wondered bleakly, would be his reaction to the permanent loss of his father?
Indeed, once reassured. Junior returned to his play with Pace, and it was obvious that the two liked each other, the baby and the boy, though about twelve years separated them. It was more than kinship. "You are a truly wonderful family," she told them as she departed with Junior. "I can never thank you enough."
"Bring him back to visit soon," Pace said, hiding a tear of his own.
Niobe nullified the anti-lac spell and nursed Junior— but he quickly turned colicky and screamed in pain, and she realized that her grief for Cedric was in her blood and in her milk, poisoning her baby. She had to restore the spell and prepare a formula and return him to the bottle. She felt guilty doing it and less a mother, but perhaps it was for the best. Certainly she had no right to inflict her pain on him.
And I will cry—she sang to herself. I'll cry when the wetlands are dry. It had new meaning now; it was as if her own drying-up was an echo of the suffering of the forest wetlands when man interfered.
She attended Cedric's wake, and Niobe smiled dutifully, but she had no taste for festivity. The ghost did hover near the corpse, reluctant to depart before the burial, despite the burning candle and ritual eating of bread. No one could make it depart until Niobe herself faced it and tearfully demanded an accounting. Then the ghost floated to her, touched her wet cheeks, shook its head, kissed her with the touch of gossamer but also of music, and faded away. It seemed to be a message of reassurance, ironic in this circumstance.
Now it was over, and her life loomed bleak before her. Come live with me and be my love, she sang to herself, trying to remember the feeling of being with Cedric, but she could not. She knew, too well, that he was gone.
She set about fulfilling as much of Cedric's ambition as she could. She talked again with the Prof to see whether it was feasible to develop a spell to enable the deer to shoot back, but he said that such magic was beyond his ability. "The magician who accomplishes that will be a master," he said.
Cedric's death did accomplish something useful: the suspicion that the developer had done the deed turned out to be unfounded, but local sentiment was now so solidly against the project that all such plans were canceled. Perhaps Cedric had known that this would be a side effect of his sacrifice.
There was a death settlement on Cedric which left her economically comfortable for the time being, but she also returned to her weaving, producing fine tapestries for sale. She kept herself'busy—but though she had lived mostly alone for two years while Cedric was in college, this wasn't the same. That had been temporary; this was permanent. Now she knew he wasn't coming home, and that hurt constantly. It was a tunnel with no light at the end.
Increasingly she thought about her trip to Purgatory. She had met five Incarnations—entities she had hardly believed in before. She had seen some of their powers and realized that there had to be more that she had not seen. They had pleaded inability to do what she asked—but they had enormous abilities nevertheless. What did they do when they weren't talking with visiting mortals?
She had no life here on Earth, really. Even Junior would be better off with his cousin's family; she knew that. He was her baby; she loved him. But she had no illusions about the long-term life she could provide for him, alone.
She went to the water oak, set Junior down to play with the
hamadryad, and explored the region near it where she had emerged from Gaea's home. As she had expected, it was now merely brush. The magic was from the other end. She could not get to Purgatory this way.
Neither could she use the route she had used before. When she had had a living love to salvage, she had been able to face the prospect of incineration in a burning boat—but she had no love to salvage now. She needed to find another way.
But what did she have in mind to do there, once she got to Purgatory? Ride Death's pale horse? Zoom about the cosmos behind Chronos' traveling Hourglass? The fact was, Cedric was not in Purgatory, either; it would be just as lonely there as here on Earth.
She glanced at her baby, now asleep, lulled by the dryad's soundless lullaby. Of course she wasn't entirely lonely; she did have Junior. He was of Cedric's blood, and that was an enormous comfort. But—he was only a baby.
Increasingly, as the days passed, another emotion rose in her—her need to be avenged on the true perpetrator of this outrage: Satan. She wanted to find some specific way to implement her vow. The Incarnation of Evil had sought to kill her, and instead had destroyed her happiness. She knew that if she had been the one to die, Cedric's fists would have sought the hide of the one responsible, though Hell barred the way. Instead he had chosen to save her. Could she do less for her husband than he would have done for her?
But how could she do it? She was only a mortal woman, caring for her baby, while Satan was the ultimate bastion of evil. She had no way to reach him, and no way to prevail if she could reach him. It was ludicrous to believe she could punish Satan—yet that was her vow and her need. Mars would have understood!
She continued to ponder, for this need was restoring some purpose to her existence. Obviously Satan was neither all-knowing nor all-powerful, for he had muffed the job on her. Also, she must have some power he feared, for otherwise he would not have tried to snuff her out.
What could Satan have feared about her? Surely he did not try to kill a person without reason. He had to be a very busy entity, seeing to all the wrongdoing in the world, constantly waging his war against God and the other Incarnations. She had not thought of interfering in Satan's designs before and was hardly a threat to him. She was not smart like Cedric or magical like the Prof; she had no great muscles, only her beauty and skill with tapestries. Yet he had sought her demise—now she knew her visions had been the first suggestion of that evil—and the other Incarnations seemed to agree that Satan had reason.
So she did have some power—if only she could ascertain what it was. Power enough to make Satan notice! What could it be? And why should the Incarnations refuse to tell her of it? She knew they were not in league with the Prince of Evil! It seemed to make no sense.
And Cedric—why had he not simply saved her from death? Surely he had not been required to go in her stead! He could have told her of the plot against her, and they could have gone far away until the danger was past. Cedric had had free will and had loved life; it just didn't make sense for him to seek death.
But it had to make sense! Cedric had been an extraordinarily intelligent young man, with a clear notion of his destiny. He had talked with the Prof and, instead of telling her, he had sworn the Prof to secrecy.
The Prof! He had to know why! But she knew he would not tell her. Why?
For days she mulled it over, debating with herself. She knew she was not nearly as smart as Cedric had been, but she was sure she could solve this riddle if she kept at it. It was like a code puzzle, with the letters of a sentence changed to other letters so that it seemed to be gibberish. But the underlying pattern remained, and bit by bit the letters could be corrected until the original sentence was restored. She had a number of hints, if only she could understand their application.
Bit by bit, she pieced it together. Satan feared her—so she must be more than mortal. The Incarnations knew of her, and Chronos knew her personally; he had called her Clotho. She had almost forgotten that, but now in her deliberations it came back. Chronos had also seemed to have a personal interest in her welfare; Lachesis had remarked on it, and certainly he had gone out of his way to help her. He had jumped her ahead half an hour so that he could explain things to Mars, who had then agreed. Yes, Chronos had known her—but the others had not. How could that be? Didn't the Incarnations work together? Well, presumably each focused mostly on his-her speciality; Chronos might know people the others didn't. Yet Lachesis had acted as if it were more than that. She had shimmered and changed into a young, lovely form, then back, and Chronos had nodded. He had confirmed— what?
Also, Lachesis had called Chronos "my backward friend." That had obviously not been an insult. What did it mean? Chronos was not backward, either physically or magically; his power had been as great as any. In fact, Gaea had called him a nefarious time-traveler.
But backward also meant to travel in reverse, as in a person walking backward. Yet Chronos was not fixed on the past; he seemed rather to know something of the future.
And then it came to her: Chronos, the Incarnation of Time, could travel backward in time! He could know the future, having been there and back. In fact he could have come originally from the future!
He could have seen Niobe there first—then recognized her here in the present. He had known her as Clotho. But who was Clotho? The name did have a certain familiarity.
She concentrated, focusing on it—and placed it. The Incarnation of Fate had three aspects: Clotho, who spun the threads of life; Lachesis, who measured them; and Atropos, who cut them.
Chronos had remembered her as an Aspect of Fate! She sat perfectly still, shocked at the implication. Herself—Niobe—as Fate? How was it possible? Yet it explained so much: the diffidence of the Incarnations and Satan's effort to eliminate her. As Fate she could indeed interfere with Satan! She wasn't sure how, but was sure she could. Those Incarnations had their special abilities!
Yet if that were so—if it could be so—why hadn't they told her? The question brought the answer: they hadn't known, except for Chronos—and they didn't want Satan to know. It might be that if they had told her, that would have changed it so that it wouldn't come true. A paradox.
But Satan had known! Or had he? Could Satan see the future? He was the Incarnation of Evil, not of Time; his foresight had to be relatively limited. More likely he had some crude divination, some indication that she was going to cause trouble for him, or at least had the potential. So he had struck at her. And the Prof, reading the same divination, or interpreting her visions—which suddenly fell into place in this connection!—had told Cedric, and Cedric had done what he had done.
But, again—why hadn't Cedric simply told her. so she could avoid it? Why had he died, then come to her as a ghost with his gesture of encouragement?
She wrestled that about and finally concluded that probably Satan's minion had been told to go out and kill and, if balked, would continue to try, again and again, until at last successful. Who could avoid a demon-spirit forever? Distance would not have balked it; it would have flown wherever they could have gone, taken over the body of someone there, and stalked them. That would have been a sustained horror, with only one ending. But once it completed its mission by making the kill, it was done and would be no more threat. Satan's minions did not survive beyond their missions. So Cedric had saved her by interposing himself, by abating the demon's imperative— with his life. Cedric had not told her, so that neither Satan nor the demon would know of the ruse. And so she would not scream and carry on and cry, forcing him to desist from his sacrifice. Now it was done, and it seemed that Satan was unable to attack her again. That one demon must have been all that the Prince of Evil could spare. Or perhaps he simply hadn't checked and didn't realize that she hadn't died.
It did seem to fit together. It did account for Cedric's action—and that was a perverse but considerable comfort to her. Cedric had acted to abate once and for all the threat to her so that she could fulfill her destiny—which was, apparently, to become an Aspec
t of Fate.
But how was she to do that? Again, she knew what the answer had to be. She would do it; Fate would do it— when the time was right. When, perhaps, she needed the skill of a mistress of weaving. Fate—the ultimate worker of thread! The ultimate weaver of tapestries.
All Niobe had to do was wait. She was probably safe as long as she did nothing to attract Satan's attention to her. Of course the Incarnations weren't talking; the fewer who knew a secret, the better it was kept.
But now she had some hope. She could not bring Cedric back, but she could tackle Satan. When she became Fate.
But what about Junior? Surely she couldn't take him to Purgatory! She would have to give him up.
If Cedric had lived, she realized, none of this would have been possible. Had he known that, too?
Perhaps he had tried to tell her at the wake: that he wanted her to do this, to assume the office, that this was part of his motive. O Cedric!
She could not turn it down, now.
She continued about her routine, her grief slowly easing. She took Junior daily to play with the hamadryad, for he really looked forward to it and seemed to be learning something, though she was uncertain what. She worked hard to complete her current tapestry, lest it be forever unfinished if she were called suddenly away. She took Junior to visit Cousin Pace, because now she knew that one day he would have to go there to stay. She did not want to part with him, but knew this would be necessary—and that it had better be done sooner rather than later, to make his emotional transition easier. She quietly put her finances in order, arranging for a trust fund that would pay a stipend to his guardian, so that he would be no financial burden on others.
Weeks went by. Almost, she began to doubt. Then a fat letter arrived. It was addressed to her—but inside was a ticket to a city on another continent, with another woman's name on it. One Daphne Morgan.
Niobe looked again at the envelope. It was definitely addressed to her. She looked for the return address and found none. The postmark was indecipherable. Evidently the wrong ticket had been inserted, but there was no way she could send this letter back.
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