Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Vanity shrieked, "Oh no!"

  A voice came from Quentin's walking stick. "Milady, my master bade me speak this word once death has silenced him..."

  Vanity snapped, "He's not dead yet! Shut up!"

  "... He says that, if he perishes still trapped within this false world of matter, the Lord of the Dead will claim his soul and prevent his resurrection; nonetheless, he bids you keep his memory in you, and he promises your memory in him will soften the torments of hell to which he will be taken."

  "Shut up!" screamed Vanity. "He's not dead!" She whirled to face Victor. "You fixed me. Fix him!"

  Victor said, "He is suffering a software degradation. The electromagnetic envelope where he stores his memory is disintegrating."

  I said, "Victor, what can you do?"

  Victor turned to me. "For now, nothing. The mission takes priority. Vanity, see if you can get this platform we are riding to dodge; try to lose our pursuer. Amelia, keep an eye on Trismegistus; inform me of his movements. Colin, prevent Trismegistus from approaching through the fourth dimension. You can stop him from using Amelia's paradigm; if he has to come through physical space, Vanity can keep slamming doors in his face. I will sweep for bugs."

  I said, "Leader, we can't win without Quentin. Not against the god of magic. We need a magician."

  Victor said, "All we need to do is open our lead. Trismegistus had to introduce a chaos storm into the environment to prevent Vanity from using her powers to escape; if he does that again, I can quell it, or turn the storm against him. Logically, he would not have risked doing that if he had some other way to overtake a Phaeacian. Therefore we should be able to outdistance him. If we can hold him off long enough! We'll see about Quentin as soon as we have time."

  Vanity stood for a moment, her lip trembling, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Then she nodded at Victor, turned, and knelt on the platform. A hatch hidden beneath the boards opened beneath her fingers. Beneath was a control panel, black with dozens of buttons.

  She pushed one. A shunt opened in the shaft, and we were kicked to one side. Our fall was now at an angle. A steel door slid into place behind us. The stone around her neck flared green; we passed another threshold, and another door fell to. Again her stone flared.

  She was leaving an alternating pattern of different laws of nature behind us. In one stretch of corridor, kinetic energy was directly proportional to speed; in another, it was inverse; in a third, it was inverse cubed. Another section of the corridor behind us turned black as she lowered the speed of light in that segment to five kilometers per hour; if Trismegistus tried to pass through that area at any faster a speed, he would be outside of our frame of reference, unable to affect us.

  It was certainly the cleverest thing I ever saw Vanity do.

  Clever, but in vain. It was not working.

  I said to Colin, "He's skipping out of the plenum. He's just going around the barriers Vanity is setting up. Can you get him?"

  Colin looked behind us and saw nothing but dwindling concentric squares as we fell past deck after deck. He said, "I don't see him."

  I said, "Look with your heart. Follow my finger. Can you see the direction I'm pointing? There."

  Because I could see the slender spindle-shape of the fourth-dimensional being, sliding from dream to dream, parallel to the ship, but in a space skew to our space.

  "I see him now. Tiny little thing, isn't he?" Colin made a grabbing gesture with his hand, like a man slapping a fly. "Got 'em. Ow! It stung me."

  Colin's eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell to the deck. Mist began trickling out of his mouth and nose.

  "Colin!" I knelt and put my arms around him. "Oh, dear God, Colin!"

  Blue light stabbed out of Victor's eye and bathed Colin. "An electromagnetic field is disintegrating him. I've stopped the field, but I cannot stop the effect," said Victor. "Put the ring of Gyges back on him."

  I said, "The ring's broken. Maybe I can try to fix it. Who had it last?"

  Colin groaned muddily. "It's all going away."

  "What?" I said.

  "The dream of the world. All going away..."

  Victor said, "It's on his finger."

  Foolish of me. There it was. It had a controlling monad, just like a living being. The monad had been forced out of alignment by an Amazonian azure ray, and the internal nature of the ring had turned into something materialistic, dull, and inert.

  I twisted the monad back into shape, but the internal nature of the ring did not change. Mending the break in a glass after the water had run out.

  "Nothing's happening," I said.

  Victor said, "Can you reproduce the effect Miss Daw used to propel you out of the fourth dimension? I've neutralized all energy flows in this area; he should not be able to track us, either by magic or by electronics-"

  "Wait! I see something!"

  "Report."

  "It's the corpse. The giant whatever-it-is inside the hollow horse coffin. The genie in the ring, do you know who I mean?"

  Victor said, "The icon representing the ring of Gyges."

  "He says there is an object in our future. No one can defeat the God of Speed in a race; no one can outrun him. It's fate."

  Vanity said, "Don't listen to him! He's lying! Don't believe it."

  I looked at Vanity. She was kneeling, cradling Quentin in her arms. Quentin stirred and moaned feebly. He was not dead.

  She said, "Dead people work for the bad guy, remember? The guy with the keys to the underworld?"

  Victor said, "Amelia, what were the four steps needed for us to undo an Olympian decree of fate?"

  I said, "It is complex, but I can sum it up: Each of us has a part to play. First, I am supposed to give the destiny enough free will to allow it to be changed.

  "Second, a destiny is a curse. It uses sympathy and contagion to organize the spirits of the universe to want a certain outcome. To annul that requires magic: Quentin's paradigm.

  "Third, a destiny is fixed and inescapable, as dispassionate as a law of nature. That's you. I think you take away the free will I give the destiny-force, so that it acts according to a mechanistic cause and effect.

  "I was told that finally, a psychic event of a type and kind unknown must take place at the final step to make it permanent. Unknown to my people! My sister Circe has a blind spot, because of her paradigm: She didn't know what Colin's role was supposed to be." I swallowed. "I volun-teered, you know. It was to get that message through that I came into this world, and suffered all this, and met you."

  Vanity cut in impatiently, "Do we need that last part? Do we care if it is permanent or not, at this point? If we just temporarily made it possible to outrun Trismegistus, then we could outrun him, right?"

  I said to Victor, "There was one thing more: Time-space must be arranged to permit the laws of nature under which these four events may take place. That sounds like a Vanity thing to me."

  Victor said to me, "How close is he to overtaking us?"

  I looked back. I saw the fourth-dimensional shape of Trismegistus, but he was not behind us, not anymore. He was ahead of us.

  I saw an explosion in the fourth dimension, another clash caused by the violent intersection of two mutually contradictory laws of nature. Trismegistus had seized the segment of dream-space through which our elevator shaft was running, and shoved it into the middle of downtown Los Angeles, back on the material plane, Earth. All our running: We had run in a circle, like some wounded game creature.

  A flux of crooked morality strands, charged and infused with magic, was issuing contradictory orders to the matter and energy in the area. Nothing knew what the laws of nature were any longer; it was another dream-storm, exploding like a bomb beneath our feet.

  At the same time, the line of energy I was using to probe him stiffened with a force of some unknown purport. One of his serpents reared up from his wand, opened its fanged mouth. Musical tension, similar to a siren song, flickered from the snake-mouth, flashed backwards along the strand, a
nd struck me in the face. Musical snake venom in my eyes.

  There was a sensation of fire in my eyes, pain. My eyes were filled with tears, but I could still see.

  Dimly.

  It was getting dimmer. I was going blind.

  I screamed, "Vanity, get us out of here! He's ahead of us!"

  Victor said, "Belay that, Vanity. Create the laws of nature needed to dispel a destiny. There is no point in running."

  I was thrown to the ground as the platform came to an abrupt halt. Things to me were half-lit, monochromatic. We were in a green house. The deck to either side of us was spread with wide lawns and jeweled statues, and ornamental gardens in terraces climbed up the sloping wooden hull. The portholes here were like the windows of a cathedral: a massive rose-window at one end, hazed in rainbows, stained-glass arches marching like sentries away from it.

  The green stone around Vanity's neck flickered and went dim. Vanity said, "We are surrounded by chaos, Leader! I cannot back us out of here."

  Victor issued a weft of magnetic force that carried him over to the nearest stained-glass window.

  Without flinching, he shoved his arm through the window, cutting himself badly on the shards. A black fluid squirted from his veins, falling into whatever cloudscape or seascape was beyond the window. I could not see the scene clearly. It was something that billowed.

  A beam swept from his eye and ignited the black substance. A bluish flame started up and began to get brighter through the window.

  Victor said, "I can try to stabilize the immediate area. Do you have the laws of nature we want?"

  Vanity said, "I wished for what you told me to wish for. Is Quentin going to be okay?"

  A voice came out of my cell phone. It came out of Vanity's pocket and Quentin's and Colin's coat as well, where they kept their cell phones. I assume Victor could simply hear it.

  "Checkmate," came the light, quick, playful voice of Trismegistus.

  He continued: "The laws of nature that allow one to unweave a destiny are the same ones, the exact same ones, that allow destinies to be sewn up in the first place. The air of Olympos, so to speak. Our home field advantage. The laws least favorable to Chaos and your powers. A dead zone. Apt expression, eh? Very apt?

  "For all this, all this, foolish children, has been ordained by fate. Once fate is set, it must come to pass, soon or late. I had hoped merely to decree your death while I lay at leisure, eating grapes, but your exertions against my incompetent wives and clumsy paramours- in escaping them, your deaths were not escaped, and were in nowise less inevitable, but it was taking long, so very long! I am not the god of patience, but of speed! So now I must run you down myself. It is ended: Now I speak. I decree your deaths, and war, horrific war, to overwhelm the world!

  "So I proclaim, Tachys Hermes Trismegistus Chrysor-rapis, Diactoros, and Klepsiphron, Polytropos, and Argeiphontes! Swift messenger thrice-greatest of the golden wand I am, messenger of death, guide of souls to hell, thief-prince and many-turning: at whose behest even the wisest, all-seeing, perish! To bring the message of inescapable fate is in my jurisdiction: For I am Mechaniotes the contriver; this I contrive. I am the soul-thief Psychopompos: These steal I."

  Even though Trismegistus was outside the ship, what he did next involved a huge section of time-space, and I saw it. Even with my eyesight growing dim, I saw it.

  It was the same thing I had seen Mavors do on Mars. Forces flowed into the future and established something there, a cold shape like ice, freezing the energies of time into one rigidity.

  It was the destiny of our deaths.

  He said, "A life for a life, I demand, by the death of Laverna, of Lamia, of Eurymedusa: your blood to wash her blood from your hand."

  A web of moral obligations, many-stranded, complex, dazzling, now wound around the iceberg of energy.

  "To deviate from my decree, I do not allow: Time has no will, for Saturn is in Tartarus."

  I saw the azure dazzle of cryptognostic particles stream from his eyepatch-but into time, not into space-and negate the free will he had just created. The iceberg of time-energy became as cold and implacable as inanimate matter: a law of nature, from which there was no appeal, no mercy.

  Then he threw back his head (I saw it through the walls of the ship) and chanted: Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia,

  Lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,

  The luck-bringing messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare,

  The rich-tressed nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus!

  Born with the dawning, at midday he played on the lyre,

  And in the evening he stole the cattle of far-darting Apollo....

  As swiftly are all his many-turning contrivances accomplished!

  My sight was failing. Perhaps this was due to blindness; perhaps it was the side effect of Colin's paradigm. Whatever Trismegistus did to set the destiny in place, I could not look at it.

  Victor paid not the least attention to the voice. He said to me, "Amelia, can you look through time with some new sense of yours and find this destiny waiting in our future? Can you locate the destiny-influencing thing?"

  I tried to describe what I had just seen. My words meant nothing to him. In his paradigm, time is not a continuum, but an absolute.

  He said, "Perhaps I can negate the electromagnetic entities from Quentin's paradigm. You said you saw what you call morality involved? Which direction is it?"

  I said, "It is in the time direction."

  "Time is not a dimension," he said, puzzled.

  "Victor! I'm going blind. I am losing my sight on all levels. I can't see anything."

  The azure light from his eye swept over my face once or twice, with no effect.

  Victor turned the beam on Quentin. Quentin shivered, made a gasping noise, like a child might make who cries out during a nightmare.

  The voice from the cell phone said, 'The god of speech will not deny you now to speak your epitaph, oh no! Choose your bons mots carefully. No one will remember your dying words, but me-but then again, since I will be the only being in Cosmos or Chaos to survive the upcoming Apocalypse, no one will recall anything at all, and what I deem to be, real or dream, shall be reality."

  Quentin opened his eyes, looking pale and dazed.

  Victor said to him, "Cast spells on Colin. We need him to fix Amelia."

  Vanity said, 'The loudmouth can't get in, I'll bet, to this area of space. If the laws of nature are so solid, all he can do is talk."

  The chuckle floated from the cell phones. 'To decree is to talk. What god need do more?"

  Victor said, "Ignore him."

  The voice of Trismegistus slithered from the cell phones again, "Oho! Now is that wise, my wind-up Telchine bot-boy? You don't know what I want; you don't know what I can offer."

  Quentin, still lying prone, raised his head, bleary-eyed. He lifted a trembling hand and pointed it at Colin.

  The voice from the cell phones said, "Whoops! What's this? A fallen felon spirit thinks now to weave a spoken spell? Do tell! But what if the crafty god of craft, with tragic magic causes a twisted mystic gaff? You can't enchant if you can't chant! Your cantrip might trip! I am an Olympian. This is my decree."

  Quentin opened his mouth, but then a series of convulsions shook him; he vomited dryly, his stomach bringing up nothing.

  But even with my vision going dim, I saw it. I saw the decree Trismegistus made. It was like a flare of light, bright beyond brightness. It was in the time-direction. The flow of time changed its nature, became useful rather than neutral, and became entangled in a whirlpool of knotted strands of magic. It was a solid block of ice formed in the river of time. It was a fate.

  This one was nearer than the death-fate. It was immediate, happening now.

  It was within my grasp. I had seen the process several times now, and I knew how to start unwinding fate. I did not know how to finish, but...

  I knew, at least in part, how to do the work of Chaos.

  So wi
th an energy-tendril I touched the fate choking Quentin, pulled part of its nature into a higher dimension, rotated it, replaced it. This rotation acted like a mirror, and the fate became self-aware. It woke up.

  It was awake, but not free. The web of magic strands around it forced it to act. I was not sure what it was doing, but, somehow, this thing was making Quentin choke.

  I shouted to Victor and told him what I saw.

  I said, "We need Quentin to do the next component of the destiny unweaving spell. How do we save him? How do we save Quentin?"

  Victor said, "The enemy must be using the Olympian power to affect us, because the laws of nature here in this space we are in are blocking his other powers from working. Mount Olympos must be likewise defended from external attack. All we need to do is outwait him."

  Quentin coughed and heaved again. How much could random chance do, once it was no longer random? Make all the air molecules in someone's throat forget their Brownian motions for a moment, and create a partial vacuum?

  The azure beam from Victor's eye flickered across Quentin's throat. There was no change. Quentin hacked and spat and could not speak.

  I said, "It is not a magical, nor a material effect. We need to have Quentin zap the magic away from the destiny cursing him before you can force cause and effect back into place."

  At that moment, steam started to come up out of Colin. His solid body was becoming more and more dreamlike and insubstantial.

  Vanity whispered in horror, "Oh my God, he's fading."

  The voice over the cell phones called, light and quick and gay: "Oh, Vanity Fair, my Vanity Fair, my ripe young peach with a pert derriere! I will make you a bargain; I will make you a deal. I only need for one of them to die. If you do not decide, then I will."

  Vanity yanked the cell phone out of her pocket and stared at it. "What?"

  "To start the war with Chaos, the war to end all All. I only need one death. The treaty will break, Olympos will fall, and down will come Heaven, and Cosmos, and all. But you might live, and your fine beau. Just let Hades take Colin to the world below. You get to pick which one of you will die.