Fugitives of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  Apparently there are four more planets in the dream world than there are here, and he can get better results if he takes their motions into account, too. Anyway, tonight is the night."

  Victor said, "In what way? The night for what?"

  Argh! Victor is so slow sometimes. I said, "Vesuvius erupts tonight."

  Colin gave me an odd look. "No. Not at all. The attack is coming tonight. We are going to be attacked.

  What is all this about Vesuvius?"

  Colin is slower.

  1.

  Vanity was with Quentin in the cabin when we arrived. Quentin was seated cross-legged on the floor, wearing a dark opera cape of rich material. It was an article of clothing I had not seen before; I assume it was a Paris acquisition. He had his tarot cards spread out in a half-circle before him, along with two candles, his white staff, a wineglass, a steak knife.

  Vanity was seated on the couch. She had gathered some of her clothes and mine, and was moving things from a pile on her left to a pile on her right. Some of the boys' clothes were there, too, as well as some of the camping gear, scuba gear, and climbing gear we had brought along, or bought along the way.

  The first thing she said was, "I'll bet it's the ring. Hand it over, Colin."

  Colin, at the door, said, "The precious? Our birthday present!? I gave it to this German chick I found sleeping in the middle of a circle of fire___Kidding! Just kidding! Here it is. I knew the damn thing was bugged when you gave it to me. Good old expendable Colin!"

  He pulled it off his finger and tossed it across the air to Vanity.

  Victor followed Colin into the room. "Why did you think the ring was bugged?"

  Colin said, "Because I was listening when Quentin explained how magic works. In order for the Olympians to curse someone, that someone has to do something wrong. Well, stealing a ring is wrong.

  Mr. Glum stole it from Mrs. Wren; he said that to Amelia, right?"

  Quentin looked up from his cards. "Right and wrong have nothing to do with it. It has to do with obligations being kept or violated. It has to do with rules being broken or not broken. Being in debt.

  Owing a favor. Any rule. The rules don't have to be fair; they just have to be rules. For example: in Amelia's story, Sam the Drayman got cursed with amnesia by Corns. I assume the rule Sam broke is that mortals are not supposed to look at gods."

  Vanity (who was, I assume, still annoyed at how Sam had been treated) said sharply, "When was that a rule? Who made that a rule? Where are these rules written?"

  Quentin looked a little puzzled, as if he had never thought of those questions before. "I don't know. But the sanctity of the gods is well established in literature. Paris, by asking the three goddesses to strip for him, committed an offense that cursed and destroyed his home city of Troy. Actaeon was turned into a stag and eaten by his own hounds for gazing at Artemis bathing. Moses could only look at the rear of God. There are other examples."

  Colin flopped down on the divan next to Vanity and picked up a peach-colored satin bra from the pile, and looked at it speculatively. "Maybe God just had a real nice butt, and wasn't too happy about his face. You know."

  Quentin put the ring on a piece of paper on the floor in front of him, and began inscribing, with compass and straightedge, a pentacle around the ring on the paper. I saw his tongue protruding a little from the corner of his mouth.

  Quentin said to Colin in a mild tone, "Maybe you should not talk about things you know nothing about, Colin."

  "Yeah, well, then I'd never get to say anything, would I?" Colin said.

  Vanity snatched the bra out of his hands. "That's what we all pray for."

  Colin dropped his voice into an intimate tone: "At night? In your nighties? On your knees? You're praying for me to do what again?"

  Victor stiffly sat in the chair opposite them. "I know what she was praying for, Colin. If I could have prayed and gotten God to come walk into the dorm and shut you up at lights out, I might not be the atheist I am today."

  Quentin looked up from his diagram. "Is that all it would take to turn you from a skeptic into a pious man, Victor? I agree that it would have been a miracle of Biblical proportions to get Colin to settle after dark.

  But I always thought you would not believe in any superior beings, even if you saw them."

  Victor said, "Define 'believe.' If the Martians of Mr. H. G. Wells landed in their tripods tonight, and started wiping out things with their heat ray, I would believe in superior nonhuman beings. They would exist. But I would not bend knee to them, nor to any other creature, superior or not, no matter what his threats."

  "What if he were morally superior?"

  "Then he would not be the bloodthirsty maniac described in the Jewish folk tales, would he?"

  Colin gestured at Quentin with an airy wave of the hand. "Well, well, when did Big Q become a Christian? Is this the same fellow who woke me up at four thirty in the morning last May Day to go comb dew off of a hawthorn tree with a sickle he had me steal from Mr. Glum's shed? I don't remember that from the Common Book."

  Quentin was frowning down at his piece of paper, tracing a line along a ruler. He spoke absentmindedly, without looking up: "I am not one or the other. I go where the True Science leads me. I doubt either neopagan or Christian would admit this, but the two traditions are the same, one growing from the other.

  The myth of Christ is the same as the fable of Adonis, except that the Christian tales have the stern moral flavor and intellectual depth that the Neoplatonists, Stoics, and the late Roman writers added to them. All tales are one grand tale."

  He straightened up from where he had been hunched over the ring. "Let me attempt a demonstration.

  Amelia, if you will shut off the lights… ? No one talk; the spirits and aery humors released by your breath, not to mention the ambient charge on any names, words, or symbols you might express, will disturb the pattern of influences I am trying to establish. If Amelia starts to talk, somebody kiss her."

  "I am on it!" said Colin, beginning to get up.

  "Never you mind," said Victor.

  I had walked in the front door with the rest of them, and had not yet taken a seat. As it chanced, I was standing near where Victor sat at his ease.

  I stood there, blinking, caught between hope and wonder, doubting my ears. What had Victor just said?

  Victor reached up from where he sat and, without asking, without even the slightest qualm, took me by the hand and steered me over in front of him. He put both his hands on my hips and pulled me down to sit on his knee.

  I think Victor said something like, "Carry on," or maybe Colin made a wry comment, but I could not hear anything clearly. My heart was pounding in my ears, and I was afraid to turn around, as if maybe Victor would vanish if I turned to look at him, or it would all fade into a dream. Or, worse, he'd look at me as if I were his sister.

  But he kept his hands on my hips. Firm, strong hands. I could feel how warm they were.

  I sat there feeling pleased and foolish, wondering if I should lean back against him, if I dared. I missed what happened next, because I wasn't paying attention.

  There was a noise like the chime of a bell, and I was not sure where it came from. Vanity waved her hand at Quentin and slapped herself on the neck. Bugs. Something was listening.

  I had the impression that Quentin had just asked a question. Something or someone in the room answered him, because a shy, unearthly voice murmured very softly: "I am the hate of the voiceless wound; I am the blood which is not allayed; I am the silence of the broken word; I am the trust betrayed.

  Erichtho laid her curse on Echidna's son, and took the ghost of his leg away; all other wounds of his knew how to close; the knowledge was lost; what was marred was to be marred for forever and a day."

  Vanity slapped herself on the neck again, looking worried.

  I looked into the higher dimensions and saw bundles of moral energy issuing to and from the ring. At right angles to all other right angles was a figure
surrounded by the laws of nature of the dream continuum. It seemed to be a corpse, taller than a human being, clad all in bronze armor, and resting in a strange coffin, which was shaped in the form of a hollow brass horse.

  Quentin said, " Ave et Vale"

  The figure in the armor turned and looked at me, as if he could see my eyes, despite that I was looking from another dimension; he started to raise a gauntlet toward me, as if to speak, but at that same moment, the hollow brass horse came to life, and galloped away, with the corpse rattling and banging back and forth in the hollow vessel of its chest. It sounds perhaps comical to think of a man rattling around in a horse's hollow chest, but there was something so horrible, and so helpless, and so sad about it all, that I turned my higher eyes away before I could see more.

  Quentin said, "Demonstration over. You guys can talk again."

  I was aware only of a sinking sensation. I had missed my opportunity.

  Why hadn't I started to talk out of turn?

  2.

  There was a brief discussion. I described the spirit I saw, and Quentin gave the opinion that this was the ghost of the original owner of the ring. Who or what it was, he could not guess.

  Vanity confirmed that the ghost had been the only thing looking at or aware of us—except when he said the name Echidna. Vanity said, "At the moment that name was spoken, something very old and very powerful turned and looked at us. It is coming now."

  Even as she said those words, fat drops of rain began to spatter against the portholes of our cabin. In the distance, a swollen red sun, balanced between low clouds and the dark western horizon of the sea, was being blotted up by thunderheads.

  Quentin looked worried, and ashamed. "Maybe there were more precautions I should have taken. Is this officially an emergency? I'd like Victor to be in charge."

  There were four votes for aye. Colin had not raised his hand.

  I said to him sharply, "Is there some other candidate you'd like to propose?" My tone, I suppose, was less polite than it should have been, because I thought he was angling for the position of leader himself.

  Colin, slouched like a panther at rest over the arm of the divan, regarded me with a lazy, mocking stare:

  "I just thought the Dark Mistress had done such a fine job before——-Are you canvassing for a vote for Vic, Amelia?

  What are you offering? I'll make it unanimous, if I get to have the blonde in my lap next time around…

  No? Fine. Who am I to break with tradition, though… ?" He raised his hand anyway.

  Quentin said, "Leader, I'd like to do a reading on the influences from the middle air and the upper aether.

  Unfortunately, I already know from Vanity that there are actually spirits of some sort, princes of the air and darkness, who react when I read, and go somewhere and do something to fetch the answers to my questions."

  Victor said, "You are thinking it might attract more attention?"

  "Well, if I were Boggin, and I had the winds at my command, I'd have them watching the princes of the middle air. Why should it be impossible for spirits to spy on each other?"

  Victor said, "This is your area of expertise. Make a suggestion."

  Quentin started gathering his cards up off the floor. "Leader, two days of reading one book does not make me an expert."

  "But you have an idea."

  "But I have an idea. We take Colin's ring; we have Amelia look along these ropes or webs she seems to be able to see, we have you denature them—demagnitize them, as you call it, not the whole ring, but just one after another—to isolate which strands represent which obligations or which sense impressions.

  Colin can add back in any influences you drive out—adding 'energy,' as he calls it. With each strand, as we turn it off and turn it back on, Vanity tells us if anyone is watching us. I do a reading with my cards meanwhile. We see if we can fine-tune it. Fine-tune the ring. If we are really clever about it, we may be able to have the invisibility cast its influence all the way around me doing a reading. You see my idea?"

  Colin said, "Whoever the people are you are getting your information from, turn them invisible, so that Bog-gin's spies can't see them doing whatever it is they do when they answer your questions. Right?"

  "Right."

  "What if I cannot turn on what Victor turns off?"

  "Then the ring is broken and worthless to us, and we have destroyed a great treasure for no purpose."

  Colin shrugged and nodded, and said to Victor, "Is there a downside to this, leader-man?"

  Victor said, "If we attract the attention of Boggin or the other Olympians, the worst that will happen is they might send some force to protect us from the lethal attack which is coming. And, by hypothesis, they already have such a force in place, and already have us under some sort of observation that Vanity cannot detect; therefore we lose nothing by this. No. There is no downside, aside from the value of the ring itself, and the general risks, if any, associated with Quentin showing command-symbols to the electromagnetic entities he calls spirits."

  Vanity said, "I don't see why it can work at all. Only the ring-bearer turns invisible. How do you project it onto someone else?"

  Colin said, "Step on them."

  "I'm serious."

  Colin said, "So am I. That ring is thorough. When you wear it, nobody sees footprints you make in the water puddles in the girls' locker room, or sees the shower water deflected from your body. Nobody sees the water displacement when you slip naked into a crowded Jacuzzi. No one hears the noises you make when you bump into something. Now, if you pick something up, like an envelope full of money, a person who notices details, like Victor, or whose brain is hard to fool, will spot you."

  Vanity said, "Were you really in the girls' locker room?"

  Colin rolled his eyes. "What? Do you think I was staring at all the old wrinkled hags they have here on this trip—yeech! But you understand what the logic of the ring has to be? If the ring-bearer can make it so that you do not notice sound waves coming out of my mouth, I don't see (if you'll pardon that expression) why it can't mask someone who talks back to me. If you hear them, you'll know I'm around.

  How is that different from all the other clues that I am around it is erasing, such as light photons bouncing off me? I don't go blind when I put this thing on, you know. I must be casting a shadow."

  Victor said, "Let us try Quentin's experiment, then. He may be able to generate additional information, which may enable us to survive the coming attack."

  I said, "But they are not bugging the ring, then? I wasn't sure I understood what the ghost of the first owner said."

  Quentin held up the ring. "Mr. Glum had a right to this ring. It was a wergild. Mrs. Wren cursed his leg so that he could not fix it—haven't you seen Colin simply shrug off mortal wounds, broken wings, things like that? But her enchantments trumped his psionics. She did him wrong by doing that. In retaliation, Glum stole this. At a guess, it would seem, that in the spirit world, two wrongs do make a right. Shall we try my experiments? Ladies? Gentlemen?"

  Unfortunately, that meant I had to get up off of Victor's lap.

  3.

  The storm grew. The Queen Elizabeth II was so mighty a ship, her draft so huge, that she did not even slacken her speed when fifty-meter waves began to pound against her side, and gale-force winds blew nearly solid sheets of screaming rain across her decks. The captain informed the passengers that the hatches to the deck were being chocked, and no one would be permitted up on deck till the storm blew over. But within our stately cabin, there was no roll, no pitch, no sensation of motion. The vessel was simply too large for any storm to disturb her serenity.

  But it was loud. Even through the decks and bulkheads, we could hear the sound, the outrageous sound of it, as if a voice of infinite strength and endless hate screamed and roared and yelled one long insane yell, never pausing for breath.

  Our cabin portals were black circles. They might have been windows looking into an airless coffin, for all the light they shed.
There was no sign of my far horizon, my horizon as wide as the sea. It was as if the portholes had been bricked over.

  4.

  We spent two hours investigating what turned out to be a dead end. After about forty tries, we knew twoscore ways to cast a spell to read the stars which could easily be detected by someone with Vanity's power.

  At the end of that time, Quentin had covered about threescore sheets of paper with pentacles and hexagrams and septagons and octograms, and had burnt out his last wax candle. He looked up at Victor and said, 'That is about all I can do. If there was anyone bugging the stars, they heard us talking to them, and they know what we asked."

  You would think, after all that, we would have gotten forty astrological charts' worth of information. But apparently, for real magicians, consulting the stars was a business as complex as the radar, radar-beam deception and counterdeception, radar-jamming, jam-breaking, and anti-jam breaking techniques of the electronic espionage of World War II.

  "Here is what we now know," Quentin summarized his results: "The attacker is coming by sea, coming from a dark place where the stars never shine, and of which the stars know nothing. It is not the Olympians. It is someone who intends to kill one or more of us. It is not a Maenad—which might be significant, if Lamia is no longer traveling with the Maenads. It is definitely a female or females."

  Colin said, "Or a guy in drag."

  "Well, yes. Or an effete male. It is someone older than the established universe, or, at least, older than the stars, since the stars know no birthdate or nativity constellation for the attacker or attackers. She intends to kill many people, including any humans around us. She or they is carrying a talisman of great power with her. I should say 'she or they,' I suppose, since it could be a band of women, for example, amazons or something."

  Quentin had written this all out on a little steno note-

  book he was using to write down lessons from his dream grimoire. Now he flipped the pages shut with a sigh. "And, if our stars are being bugged, they know we know. The stars are also betting on the other side, and they give us about sixteen-to-one odds."