Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  I said angrily, "I thought my parents sent me into the cursed world in order to do this! To find you four, and set about freeing mankind from Lust and Death and War and all the other gods they worship! So was it all for nothing?"

  Victor said in a voice as calm and gentle as ever I was to hear him use, "Reality consists of scarcity: No tool is of unlimited use, no good supercedes all other goods, no power is so powerful as to overwhelm all else; otherwise the universe would long ago have been reduced to that one power, with that one tool to that one good."

  "What's that mean?" I said to him. Maybe I shouted it.

  "It means nothing is perfect. Every rule has exceptions. Every atom in motion has a swerve."

  I said tearfully, "It means I will never get away from Boggin?" To Quentin I said, "Why didn't it work?"

  Quentin said, 'The wording of the oath. You would never do anything to make him ashamed. If you undo his spell, on which his whole reputation and honor depend-he took quite a risk in letting us at large-then he will be shamed indeed. I cannot undo the moral obligation, because the very act of unweaving the obligation is shameful. It is almost as if you took a second oath not to break the oath."

  Vanity looked worried. She whispered something to Colin. Colin took me by the elbow and lowered his lips to my ear. "Amelia, don't you even think about trying to sneak away from us, to lead Boggin away. I am not going to let that happen. I want you too much."

  Well, that gave me something to think about. The conclusions I came to were not so pleasant.

  Why wasn't Victor here, keeping Colin away? I turned my head. Victor was standing, simply standing, in the prow of the ship, looking out into the snowy darkness, the surging waves, his face thoughtful.

  As if he had already resigned himself to the idea that I would run away.

  The Bubble Bath

  The magnificent Hotel del Coronado looks out upon the blue Pacific across beaches as tawny-white and perfect as no beach in Europe can be. It is summer here, in Southern California, eternal summer. The sea breeze is always cool and crisp and fresh, and the palm trees are always as green, and know no wintertime.

  When ancient poets dreamed of mansions on Olympos, in the aether high above the storms and snows of Earth, they sang of untroubled climes and unchanging seasons, not knowing that the paradise they feigned was here on the West Coast of the New World.

  The hotel itself is roofed in sun-baked red tile, topped with cupolas and adorned with quaint architectural flourishes. A dozen white dormer windows peer out from under the frowning brow of a titanic conical dome. Inside, the furniture and decor are stately and Victorian, but here and there are traces of Spanish ornament.

  The windows here are nothing like the windows I knew in Wales, broad sheets of shining glass, taller than a man and as wide as an embrace, admitting torrents of southern sun when shut, and the warmest zephyrs when opened wide. The western wall of the room here was more glass than stone, and a second sun shone in the reflections of the pale white floor.

  It is worth every penny to stay in a place like this, even if you are counting near to your last penny. Warm days drift by while you walk warm sands, wearing as near to nothing as the law allows, and your limbs turn golden-brown; even being alone is not so much a hardship as it might seem, if you are paid up in your hotel suite through the end of the month, and you are young, healthy, blond, beautiful, and wearing a bikini.

  One difficult side effect of being alone, healthy, blond, and young I had not entirely foreseen was the men: Men who want to buy you drinks, buy you food, take you to do their odd style of hopping rock-and-roll dances, and even ask you to shows. It is profoundly amazing how many men, of what age and range of types, will pursue you: men Who certainly have granddaughters older than you will smile avuncular smiles while their eyes devour you with un-grandfatherly hunger; boys too young to be out by themselves will strut and posture for you, saying the stupidest things imaginable; crazed men with staring eyes, quiet men with eyeglasses; cheerful or morose men; bald or vain or desperate; men you would never tell the time of day to.

  It is amazing how well the worst ones think of themselves, and how little the best ones do.

  Some are so bold, it defies belief. More than one man at a cafe table, during the moment when his date stepped away, would send a drink to my table, and catch my eye, and smile. The most bold was this tall and dark-haired chap with arrogant eyes, who asked me for my phone number while a pouting brunette in a tank top was clinging to his arm, listening. What do such men think I would think of them? That I am eager to be courted by cads? It was at times like these I wished that Victor were near, or even Colin.

  Well, perhaps I was more carefree than a woman of proper decorum dares to be, because if the gentleman in question becomes too forward or insistent, you can reach out into the fourth dimension, find his governing monad, and jar it to bring his mind-body duality momentarily out of alignment. It might take only a moment for the human brain to recover from the dizziness, blindness, numbness, but in that moment, you can step half an inch sideways into a direction he cannot see.

  You might laugh if I said I often had the sensation of being watched, since a nubile girl frolicking along the beach wearing a mere wisp or two of skintight fabric, making eyes at the passing men, must surely expect to be watched. But this was different from the innocent hungers and lusts of mortal men; I would imagine cold eyes staring at me, puzzled but patient.

  It was a terrible life, the way I lived for that week, as lonely as my time chained in the jail had been, despite that there were crowds around me. But it was not without certain compensations, certain gratifications. It was warm.

  Warm days yield to warm nights, and you can shed your last scrap of clothing then, and spend lingering hours luxuriating in a near-to-scalding bathtub high in your private room, with all the huge wide windows open to the scent and sound of the sea, the soft, eternal crash and murmur of the waves. The freezing rains and fogs of Southern Wales seem no more than unhappy dreams.

  The bathroom in my suite was a palace in miniature: The tub was deep and wide, and the rim was paved all around with a marble so brown that it seemed gold. The steam trickled and played across the mirrors and fixtures of the bathroom, and the shining expanse of the cut-glass doors gleamed like a snowfield.

  With those doors open, I could see, across what seemed an acre of carpet and polished wood, the balcony doors of the suite, the wide windows, the moon and summer stars. Beneath the moon, the sands of the beach were as pale as ice; the sea was a shimmering tiger, striped with the reflections of harbor lights, and the noise of the sea waves from the dark waters was like its tiger-breathing, soft and huge.

  And bubbles. Lots of scented bubbles. Bath oil. The water was warm enough to gather beads of sweat across my nose and brow, and little breaths of steam from the waters tickled my neck, and my toes (which were resting on the huge ivory knobs of the spigots).

  It was a summer night, and I was bathing with the windows open, for the night wind was warm, and carried odors of the sea, the noise of traffic. It made me feel all the more warm and comfy, all pink and nude beneath my layer of scented bubbles, to think of those poor motorists, creeping from red light to red light, going about whatever business men go about, far from their homes.

  A cold breeze made me shiver. A drop fell from the steam-bedewed fixture above, and touched my nose. A cold drop. One that had turned to hail as it fell from the ceiling to the tub. s"

  Boreas, his huge reddish wings furling about him, was stepping in through the leftmost window.

  His hair hung loose and waving around his shoulders. His fierce eyes lingered along the little windows of transparent water gaps in the suds the cooler water had created. A mocking smile touched his lips.

  He wore little more than purple silk pantaloons. His calves and feet were bare. His chest was nude. I saw the slide of muscles beneath his fair ruddy skin along his shoulders and arms. His eyes were magnetic, drinking me in. And he had a very s
mall half smile beneath his mustache.

  I started to get up. Boreas leaned and yanked the towel off the rack and out of my reach, as well as my flannel bathrobe. He threw them both casually behind him and out the window.

  "Well, now, Miss Windrose, we have traveled far from Mare Boreum on Mars, but not so far, it seems, from Los Angeles, have we not?" he said, seating himself comfortably on the rim of the bath. He crossed his legs and folded his hands atop his knee. Very casual, very calm, very in-control.

  I shrank down, covering my breasts with one hand and arm, folding my hand between my crotch with the other.

  The last time I was in this position, it was Grendel Glum trying to rape me with his eyes.

  "Turn around," I said. "I'm naked."

  He looked skeptical, rubbed the back of his head with his hand, as if to massage an old bruise, but said nothing.

  For about the span of time it takes for a startled and badly frightened girl to slowly regain control of her breathing, he sat, staring down at my bubble-hidden body, saying nothing.

  Of course, that made it worse. I wondered if he was going to spank me again. He looked like he was in the mood.

  I drew a shaking breath, and forced out in a calm voice, "What do you want, Headmaster Boggin?"

  A tiny wisp of wet hair had put a tail to the corner of my mouth. I dared not raise either hand to brush the hair away. Boreas idly reached down, touched my cheek, and put the hair out of my mouth.

  It was almost shocking, how casually he did that, as if I were his daughter. Or a pet. Someone he had the right to touch.

  I said, "Aren't you going to say anything?"

  He said, "Miss Windrose, you must have known that your promise to me could lead me back to you. Surely you have had, in that space of time, composed some sort of speech or manifesto to deliver to me. You must have imagined a scene or confrontation something like this, perhaps practicing in front of a mirror what you would say to me. I assume you invented more than, 'What do you want, Headmaster,' or "turn around.'"

  "Okay," I said, "how about this: I want to know what the real reason is for all this. Tell me why you were keeping the talismans on the school grounds. Where we could find them. Keys to wake our powers back up. Did you want us to escape, for some reason?"

  He leaned back slightly and crossed his arms. "Where are the others?"

  I said, "You first."

  "Are we going to trade question for question?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "You promise to answer one of mine for each of yours I answer?"

  I shook my head. "No promises. You can ask, and, if it suits me, I'll answer. But you answer first.

  Why were the talismans kept where we could get them?"

  He said, "My dear Miss Windrose, what did you think I intended? Surely the matter is obvious."

  I said, "What is this, a gypsy fortune-teller reading? I tell you what my expectations are, so you can repeat them back to me? Just give me the answer."

  Boreas made a dismissive gesture. He said, "The matter is not obscure. There was no other safe place to keep the talismans. As originally designed by His Majesty, Lord Terminus, the boundaries and conditions of the school grounds would have suppressed the several functions of the talismans of Chaos. There was some decay over the years. What Terminus intended as a temporary encampment, I was required to treat as a fortress, and the facilities were not, as one might say, all that one might expect. And where else could I put them? If I threw them in the sea, milord Pelagaeus would recover them; no Olympian would have permitted me to turn them over to another Olympian for safekeeping, because of the temptation, if one of them had the key to open a power of Chaos, to take the chaoticist as well. While the talismans were in my hands, there was little incentive for other Olympians to abduct you."

  "And why did they exist there to begin with?"

  "Emissaries from Chaos sent them, or they were possessions you had on you when you were taken."

  I said, "And what about our education? Lamia thought you were training us in our powers, that you intended to use us in the wars."

  "My dear, I hope you are not bringing up an entirely new issue, while my curiosity remains unsatisfied. Where are your companions?"

  I said, "Why else would you teach us everything we needed to know to use our powers correctly?"

  He frowned.

  Boreas leaned, dipped one finger idly in the water.

  Steam stopped rising from the tub. The water turned cold. It was no longer comfortable.

  I yelped, started to get up, remembered I was naked, and shrank back down again.

  It was not icy, but it was no longer warm and inviting. He did not make it numbing, or painful, or coated with ice. Not yet.

  "Miss Windrose, I do not wish to pressure you unduly, and yet, in all honesty (if that phrase has any meaning, under the circumstances), I would be remiss in my duties, not to mention personally placed in a very awkward position, if the material universe were to come to a bloody and abrupt end, merely because I was too gentle-hearted to do what it was necessary to do in order to maintain our security. I can make myself be a rather harsh and cruel man, even a barbarian, should circumstances warrant. I leave it to you to determine-yes, that is the word, determine-whether events shall progress in a civilized or in an uncouth fashion. I am, indeed, a terrible person, Miss Windrose. I trust you have not forgotten the messages, written in the language of pain, which I caused to be written on the bodies of Grendel Glum and Mestor the Atlantean, whom you knew by the name Dr. Drinkwater?"

  While he spoke, he pushed his hand more deeply beneath the water, and it grew colder and colder.

  I was staring at his hand in horror. His knuckles, his wrist, his forearm were now below the water level. The suds in that section of the tub were wilting and dying; the water was taking on the crystal clarity only truly cold water can display. I was huddled up against the far side of the tub, as far as the confined space would allow.

  The picture I had in my imagination was me, nude, inside a solid block of tub-shaped ice, being carried on his shoulder back to the school.

  He pulled his hand back, smiled unpleasantly. The water dripping down his forearm turned white and formed a little glove of frost, which he shook contemptuously to the floor tiles.

  "Are you threatening me?" I said, trying to sound stern.

  He swallowed a snort. Apparently I did not do stern that well. "Ah... Not in so many words, Miss Windrose: But to a person of even limited intelligence, I deem the implication would be clear. One might be tempted to say, 'painfully clear'; but, in order to avoid disproportionate drollery let us simply say, pellucid. Surely the matter is... ah... pellucid to you, Miss Windrose?"

  "You are going to rape and torture me if I don't talk."

  A slight tension pulled at the corners of his mouth. Embarrassment? Humor? Temptation?"

  "Ahem. I had not been planning on any acts of rape. Such things generally turn out badly. Ask my wife. But I compliment you on the fecundity and liveliness of your imagination. I will be disaccommodated if you allow things to degenerate to the more brutal state to which they might devolve. Please consider answering my question."

  "I left them. I knew you could follow me; I knew you could not follow them. So they are safe."

  "You must have arranged some system of rendezvous, or exchange of messages? Dropboxes, letters to the Times signed in code, colored smoke signals, that sort of thing... ?"

  "You and your people can erase memories. Why not read minds? I thought it would be safer if I didn't leave myself any way to reach them."

  "But they can reach you, one supposes?"

  "I promised Colin I would have sex with him."

  "Hphfnah? I mean, I beg your pardon... ?" Disgust, and even anger, broke in his voice. The noise he made was like the snort a large black bull makes when a younger bull comes nosing around his harem. The contemptuous blow of a bull lowering its head to gore an insolent opponent.

  "It is like my promise to you. An oath. Colin and Qu
entin can use it to find me."

  "Miss Windrose, sometimes I just wonder what on Earth goes on in that head of yours. Did you actually promise an amorous liaison with... Oh, it boggles the mind! With Mr. mac FirBolg?"

  "What's so wrong about that?"

  "What's so wrong? What's so wrong? Did I really teach you so poorly, Miss Windrose? Have you no sense of propriety, no sense of pride, no sense of self-esteem? Have you no sense? What about taste? Have you no taste?"

  I looked at him with my eyes half-closed. "You don't think he's good enough for me."

  "I assume, with the natural perversity of teenagers, this will merely recommend him to your favor.

  But, as a mental exercise, envision a delicate and graceful rose, the fairest bloom of the fairest spring. Now picture a slug dropped on it, leaving a trail of ooze. I am aghast."

  "Do you not like Colin so much?" I said, my voice light and airy.

  "Mr. mac FirBolg has no capacity to apply himself, and, were he not graced with dangerous supernatural powers, would have no doubt found a satisfactory life as a fast-food-restaurant clerk, or a heroin salesman. But you, you, Miss Windrose, whether born a princess or goddess, common or mortal, you could make of your world what you will of it. You are much too fine a creature for a dull-eyed sluggard like Mr. mac FirBolg. What of your Mr. Triumph?"

  "Victor... ?"

  "Of course, Victor. That he is the only fit man for you, a blind monkey could perceive from half a mile off on a foggy day."

  "I really think my private life is none of your damn business, if you don't mind my saying so, Headmaster."

  He spread his hands, and "Your promise is a nullity in any case. Promises of marital favors are meaningless outside of marriage, which is a sacred institution. The Great Queen Hera Basilissa established the rules of the universe along these lines, and the rules of magic follow them."

  I snapped, "We've gotten a bit off the topic, and you owe me at least three questions! I have a turn coming as well, you know!"

  "Not true at all, Miss Windrose! I have been keeping a careful, that is as much as to say, an exact count of questions. Yours, of course, have been remarkably unimaginative, consisting of inquires such as, 'What's so wrong about that?' and 'Do you not like Colin?' and, a brief question, thus: