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 with 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
