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.
Will you pick? Or shall I?'
I saw the iceberg-thing in our future stir. It began to orient itself, like a hound catching a scent, from one of us to another. It was coming closer. Death was soon and growing sooner.
Victor said, 'Don't answer. Ignore it.'
Vanity, her face half-crumbled with unshed tears, threw the cell phone away from her. It clattered off the boards and fell into a flower arrangement.
The voice said, 'That was just insane inanity, Vanity. What will you do if I choose you?'
I heard Vanity scream, and saw her fall down. The wounds that Victor had stitched up were leaking again, as if Trismegistus had somehow left something behind in them, something Victor could not see or sense, waiting for some signal from him to rotate back into three-dimensional space.
I could hear her gasping for breath. Hissing. The fate was close, but it did not strike. Trismegistus still was not killing us. He was talking, taunting. He still wanted something from us. What? What did he want?
It got dimmer. I held my hand in front of my face. It was a blur in a blurry world.
I said, 'Victor, I'm scared.' My voice was shaking.
I could not see where Victor was standing, or what he was doing, but he said, 'Don't show fear.
You and I have to take care of the young ones, Amelia. You and I.'
It was the same thing he used to say to me, back when we were much younger. Back when I was Secunda.
He said, 'We're the only ones they can rely on. You and I. Forever.'
'What if we don't make it, Victor? What if this is it?'
'Then I shall not have the opportunity to ask for your hand in marriage, Amelia. I would have preferred to wait till I had something of value to offer you. I have nothing but myself. We have always been together. We shall always be together.'
And then he said, in a voice as calm and unafraid as ever he used, 'Amelia, my sweet, my brave Amelia, whether we live or die is unimportant. Don't pay it any mind. Concentrate on the task at hand.'
There are not many things a man can say to take a girl's mind off the impending prospect of death. But there is at least one.
It made tears come to my eyes, which were already full of tears of pain. For some reason, though, things seemed to get brighter to me. Just a little. Maybe the laws of nature of Olympos had some soft spot in their heart for tears of love.
That's when I saw them. They were so bright, even a half-blind girl could not miss them. Two more icebergs in the stream of time. Larger, much larger, than the fate that was choking Quentin.
Coming closer. I squinted through the pain and tried to see their inner nature.
One was cunning, clever, quick-witted, delighting in lies. The other was disciplined, fearless, steadfast, quiet with menace.
The two fates contending over us. I could only venture a guess: The decree of Trismegistus that no one could outrun him. The other one? The decree of Mavors that no one could threaten our lives without summoning him. Or maybe this was an older, larger, more permanent fate. Perhaps this was the decree of Mavors that no one could overcome him in any feat of arms or battle.
