“There has to be a way!” Niobe exclaimed. “We can’t just give up the world to Satan, even if it is twenty years away.”
She checked quickly with the other Incarnations, but none of them had an answer. At last she went to the person most concerned: her granddaughter Luna.
Luna took it in stride. She was a truly beautiful woman now, despite the distortion of her hair color. “My father told me that something like this might come up,” she said. “He left a message for that occasion.”
“My son anticipated this?” Niobe demanded, surprised.
“He was a most accomplished Magician,” Luna reminded her. “Perhaps the best of his generation—and he spent the last thirty years of his life researching this very problem. He used to apologize to me for his neglect—but he really didn’t neglect me. We were very close.”
As Niobe and her son had not been. But that was ancient history. “What is the message?”
Luna fetched a small blue topaz, a pretty but not truly precious stone. She set in on a small shelf before a white screen and turned on a special light. The stone fluoresced, sending a pattern of blue shadows across the screen.
“It’s a magic stress on the molecules of the topaz,” Luna explained. “I just need to get it in focus and find the right angle; most of the facets are nonsense, but the right one will display the message. The Magician set it up that way so that no one would accidentally read the message before it was time. Premature divulgence would alert Satan, you see.” She turned the stone, and the pattern on the screen changed.
She turned it again, and suddenly several lines of fuzzy print appeared on the screen. “Ah—there it is! Now for the focus.” She moved the light, and gradually the print clarified; in a moment it would become legible. Then something rolled across the shelf and collided with the topaz. The stone slid out of position, and the image was lost.
“The demon’s toe!” Niobe exclaimed. She brought out the vial and dumped the remaining holy water on it. The thing vanished in a puff of smoke.
Luna recovered the stone. “Good thing the creature didn’t hurt it,” she said. She set it in place, and refocused the beam of light.
Only blank blue showed on the screen. Surprised, Luna turned it to a new facet, but no pattern showed. “It’s been erased!” she exclaimed in dismay. “The magic is gone!”
“The demon did it!” Niobe cried. “Its mere evil touch canceled the good magic!”
And we wondered what one toe could do! Atropos thought, chagrined.
Niobe exchanged a stricken glance with her granddaughter. Now they had lost the vital message!
“Is there any backup stone?” Niobe asked after a moment.
“No. None for this occasion. The Magician didn’t want it to be obvious—”
“That’s what I thought,” Niobe said heavily. “Satan must have known or suspected about the stone and given his demon a secondary instruction to erase it when it had the chance. Now it has done so.”
“Now it has done so,” Luna agreed.
“So now only the Magician knows the message.”
“And he is dead.”
Niobe embraced the young woman, and they both cried the tears of hopelessness.
Then Niobe straightened, lifting her chin. “But I am an Incarnation! I can go to my son in Purgatory and ask him directly!”
“Yes!’ Luna cried, her gray eyes lighting. “My father did not know you would become Fate again! He focused on me.”
They embraced and cried again, this time with renewed hope. Then Niobe rode a thread back to Purgatory to seek her son.
But when she checked the computer for the specific location of his soul, she received another shock.
MAGICIAN KAFTAN’S SOUL IS NO LONGER IN PURGATORY, the screen said.
“You mean his penance is finished? He has gone on to Heaven already?”
NO. AN ERROR IN HIS CLASSIFICATION WAS DISCOVERED. HIS DAUGHTER HAD BORROWED SOME OF HIS BURDEN OF EVIL. SHE IS DESTINED FOR HEAVEN, BUT HIS TRUE BALANCE WAS NEGATIVE.
Why would Luna have done a thing like that? Niobe wondered. But she had a more immediate problem. “Negative? Then—”
YOUR SON IS NOW IN HELL.
Niobe stared at the screen in horror. She was sure this was the real information, as she had taken steps to se that none of Satan’s illusions interfered this time.
The only person who knew how to nullify Satan’s victory—was in Satan’s power.
—15—
MAZE SQUARED
Back at the Abode, they hashed it over. “We know there is a solution,” Niobe said. “We just don’t know what it is.”
“And chances are, we won’t find it on our own,” Atropos said. “Maybe, if we were all experienced, we’d know it, but by the time we get experienced enough to know, it’ll be too late.”
“We’re still in Satan’s trap,” Clotho agreed.
“Not entirely,” Niobe said. “If all three of us were new, that might be true; but I did have thirty-eight prior years of experience. I know Satan’s power is not complete. There has to be something he’s hiding from us.”
“The solution!” Clotho exclaimed wryly.
“Too bad we can’t go to Hell and ask the Magician what his message was,” Atropos said.
Niobe pounced on that. “Maybe we can! Incarnations have special powers!”
They checked with Thanatos, who confirmed it. “I have been there,” he said. “But only in spirit. The physical body has to be left behind. All the things there are spirits, but they seem solid, as they do in Purgatory. But Satan wouldn’t let you visit anyone there.”
“But then how did you go there?”
“I was invited on a tour.”
Oh. She knew about that sort of thing. Still—
“Can he stop a mother from visiting her son?” she asked.
All three of them paused at that. Who would know? Clotho thought.
“Gaea,” Niobe said. “The Green Mother understands everything about human nature and then some.”
They went to Gaea. “Satan cannot stop you, in this instance,” she said. “But he will not help you. This represents a conflict between Incarnations, and your chance of success would be half.”
“But I can do it?” Niobe asked.
“You can cut off your foot, too, but you might not want to.” Gaea smiled coldly.
“If I do this—if I go to Hell—I stand to win the salvation of man—or at least enable my granddaughter to. What do I stand to lose?”
“Your soul,” Gaea said grimly.
“But I’m an Incarnation! Satan can’t touch my soul!”
Gaea shook her head. “You must put your soul on the line to gain entry to Hell. If you win your objective, you keep your soul. But if you fail, your soul is forfeit. Hell is not child’s play, Lachesis!”
Niobe sighed. “It certainly isn’t!”
Well, that lets that out, Atropos thought. A good soul locked in Hell—
“How do I set it up?” Niobe asked.
Don’t do it, Lachesis! Clotho thought.
What shall it profit a woman to win the whole world, if she lose her own soul? Atropos thought.
“That’s figurative; this is literal,” Niobe said. “The whole world is on the line, this time.”
“You must choose a referee,” Gaea said. “To ensure fairness in the proceedings. Otherwise Satan will cheat.”
Niobe considered. “How about Mars? He knows how to supervise war—and this is really a battle in the war between Good and Evil.”
Gaea nodded. “Excellent choice. Go to him and ask.”
“Thank you, Ge.”
“Every Incarnation must sooner or later confront Satan,” Gaea said. “You did it long ago, in the Void. Now you are doing it again—but the locale is not neutral and the stakes are higher. We shall be watching—but none of us will be able to assist you, once you enter Hell.”
“I know.” This was, among other things, confirmation that Gaea had recognized her, the
day of the excursion into the model Hell, and had kept her secret.
“You will leave your body and your two other Aspects behind. If you fail, they will have to choose your replacement—with no soul to exchange. That body will die.”
A heavy penalty indeed! Yet, added to the loss of the world, did it matter? She had to make the effort!
“Farewell,” Gaea said. “You are a fine woman, Lachesis.”
Niobe slid her thread to Mars’ castle. This time he was at home. Quickly she explained the situation. “You have courage,” Mars said gruffly. “I trust you know that Hell is no picnic.”
“I know, but I must go. Will you serve?”
“I will serve. But I can guarantee only that the terms are honored. I cannot help you or advise you in any way. Once you enter Hell, you are on your own.”
“But—I have no idea what to expect there!”
“As referee, it is my job to help arrange what to expect,” Mars said. He raised his red sword, and it flashed. “Satan!”
Satan appeared. “What the Hell do you want Mars? A war?”
“Both,” Mars agreed, unperturbed. “Lachesis wishes to visit her son, the Magician Kaftan. You may not deny her that.”
Satan turned on Niobe. “So you learned of that, you meddling female! But it will cost you your soul.”
“The one offer you cannot turn down,” Niobe agreed.
“No,” Mars said. “She is not buying the visit with her soul. She is putting up her soul as the stake for the game. That is a different matter.”
“A different matter,” Satan agreed reluctantly. “A technicality.”
Already the referee was functioning. That was some technicality!
“We must select the format,” Mars said.
“Aerial combat while mounted on firedrakes,” Satan said.
“Competitive tapestry weaving,” Niobe retorted.
Atropos laughed in her mind.
“Perhaps a compromise,” Mars said, smiling grimly. “An event that combines elements of both monsters and threads, illusion and reality. A demon-infested maze.”
Satan considered. “Could be. Those are fun.”
Niobe also considered. A maze was a bit like a tapestry, with passages instead of threads. Demons were monsters—but should not be able to hurt her. If, as it seemed, she had to navigate some sort of challenge course in Hell to reach her son, this might be the best type for her. But— “Threads? Illusion?”
“An illusion-maze is less challenging, physically,” Mars said. “But more challenging, intellectually.”
Niobe knew herself to be no genius, but she did have a flair with the weaving of intricate threads. “That sounds good,” she agreed tentatively.
“No way,” Satan said.
“Superimposed on a physical maze,” Mars said. “Shall we say, one hundred illusions of your choice—and one hundred reality-threads for her? With some of the properties of her normal threads, so she can travel expeditiously—”
“Limited,” Satan said. “I don’t want her traveling all over Hell.”
“Limited,” Mars agreed. “The maze so constituted that the best course can be traversed by fewer than fifty threads, the worst by more than one hundred fifty threads, but centered on one hundred?”
“A fifty-fifty chance,” Satan agreed. “But I set up the maze, and choose all the configurations.”
“And I verify the balance and call the fouls,” Mars said. “I will inspect the maze before she enters, and there will be no changes after she enters.”
“Done,” Satan said.
They looked at Niobe. She wasn’t sure she trusted what those two males might agree was fair. But she knew Mars would not betray her, and it seemed to be the best compromise she could get. “Very well.”
They cleared the remaining details. Then Niobe sat back in a chair, waited a moment, and stood—and left her body behind. She was in spirit form!
She turned and reached out to touch her physical hand. As she did so, she felt the other two Aspects. Give ‘em Hell, girl! Atropos thought. Find your son! Clotho thought. Both sent the emotion of support and best wishes.
I shall! she replied.
She turned again. Satan stood directly before her, while Mars watched from the side. “Come to Me, fool!” Satan said, and laughed.
She stepped into him—and discovered he was a kind of door. She passed through it and found herself in Hell.
Hell was a crystalline place. Bright hexagonal facets surrounded her, red and green and blue—all colors, each facet her own height. She stood on another, the same size.
She turned to look back the way she had come. There was only another facet there, highly polished, so that she saw her own reflection clearly.
She looked exactly as she had in life, in her physical body: a nondescript, middle-aged woman whose once-flowing buckwheat-honey hair was now cut to a less-flattering length, and the honey seemed soiled. Her dress was a drab gray, and not well-fitted. That last wasn’t really carelessness; if the dress fitted better, it would show up the inadequacies other present figure all too clearly. Ah, for the flesh of youth! She could understand how the old senators had found the lure of renewed youth to be irresistible.
The irony was, she had kept her youthful appearance for an extra thirty-eight years, and then given it up. And would do so again, for Pacian. And would have given everything up, for Cedric. She had understood Clotho exactly, when the girl had yielded “everything!” to Samurai. When a woman loved a man—
But now she had to find her son. She checked her left hand: it clasped a handful of measured threads. She was not Lachesis any more; she could not travel to the ends of the world. She was merely Niobe, and every thread she used would be one thread lost. She had to use them well; though the worst-case route through the maze would require over 150 threads, she had only 100. Her mission and her soul would be forfeit if she used them all without finding her son.
Well, this was a puzzle, certainly. She reached out to rap a knuckle on a blue facet. The sound rang, setting up a sympathetic tintinnabulation throughout the region. It was a rather pretty sound, but it didn’t get her through the maze.
She saw that one hexagon was not a facet, but an open space. She stepped through it, onto the golden floor tile there—
Her foot passed right through the floor. There was nothing there. With a scream she fell down past several hexagonal levels, until she fetched up against another golden tile. She was unhurt—but in a hole, literally.
There was a puff of vapor at her hand. She looked— and saw the remains of one of her threads curling as it dissolved into smoke. That fall had not hurt her physically, for a spirit could not be injured that way, but it had cost her a thread. That was one of the details of this game. Now she had ninety-nine threads left, and she had exposed the first illusion.
She tapped the surfaces about her. All were solid. She was in a nether chamber with no ready exit. The slick facets offered no purchase for her fingers; she could not climb out.
She sighed. She tucked her threads carefully into a pocket, saving out one. She flung that upward.
Now she sailed up, following the thread’s course, much as she did as an Aspect of Fate. In a moment she was back at her original level, facing the golden floor panel. An illusion—but she had expended two of her precious threads in making the discovery and recovery. Two for one; Satan had gained one on her.
She looked at the golden tile. It still looked real. She would not be fooled again by it, of course, so in that sense it had been expended—but how much better it would have been to identify it without falling through it! Then she would have been one ahead, having expended no threads to identify one of the hundred illusions.
She felt at the edge of the illusion. She found a small ledge; part of the golden tile was real. She could walk on that to get through. There had to be a way through the maze; that was part of the deal. She had only to move carefully, to avoid falling for any more tricks.
But she
could not get through without using close to fifty of her threads. That meant that she couldn’t simply close her eyes and feel her way the full length of it. There would be illusions she had to penetrate before trusting her body to them, and climbs she had to make regardless of illusion. She could not hoard her threads; she would not get through that way.
She completed her circuit of the golden illusion and entered a new chamber. This one had a solid floor—but no other exit. She looked up and saw a high green ledge, out of reach. Evidently that was the route. Not an illusion, just one of the thread-requiring avenues.
She brought out another thread and flung it at the ledge. In a moment she slid up it, landing neatly on the green. Good enough.
Except that it turned out to be a dead end.
She sighed again. She had been suckered into using another thread, unnecessarily.
She squatted, touching the edge of the ledge. It was glassy smooth. She stood and scraped the sole of one shoe across it. Then she tested it with her finger again.
Yes—there was faint scratching. The material was not super-hard. It could be abraded.
She scuffed it some more, then lay down. She nudged her legs over the edge, sidewise. She spread her fingers against the roughened surface. The slope beyond the edge was not vertical; there were no perfect right angles in this place, just the obtuse angles of the hexagons. Her body was sliding down at about a forty-five-degree angle—she wasn’t sure what it was for a hexagon, but that was what it felt like. Maybe fifty degrees. Her fingers had some purchase on the roughened level face.
When enough of her body was on the sloping face, it swung down. Her fingers were unable to hold; she slid off the surface and dropped to the floor beneath. But it was not as long a fall as the one she had suffered before, and she was better prepared for it. She landed neatly on her feet.
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