I tried to get up, but the poison had made all my limbs go cold. I could not rise.
I felt a motion in the air near me. I sensed a looming presence.
A kiss. Someone kissed me.
Colin whispered in my ear, 'Wake, sleeping beauty.'
Warmth and motion began to filter through to me. Pins and needles stung my limbs.
And wings and tendrils and flukes and songs. I was fourth-dimensional again. Still too weak to get up, but it was something.
I whispered, 'Colin! Cure my eyes! I can't see!'
He kissed my eyelids.
Quentin called out one last time, a cry of horror, and was silent. I felt Colin leave my side in a rush of motion. I reached after him, and felt fur and bat-wing leather slide away from my fingertips.
There was a horrid scream: 'AMELIA WINDROSE! AMELIA!'
Colin was not calling for me; this was his battle cry.
Trismegistus said, 'Oh, come now. Puh-leese.'
I heard a dull thump as Colin hit the floor.
Light. The smallest trickle of my vision had returned.
And the brightest objects in time or space or hyperspace around me were the icebergs of fate. I selected the quietly menacing one, the decree of Mavors.
I sent off a tendril to wake the fate, a second one to turn its webs of magic inward on themselves, and a third one to send a message to the fate-thing. Help me. I woke you up. I am your mother.
Help me.
I was not trying to dissolve this particular fate. I wanted to augment it.
'Ah, where was I?' fluttered the floating tones of Trismegistus. 'Ah, yes, brutal murder. Oops.
The blond one is getting up again. Hey-here is an idea! Why don't I kill them first, and then cast the spell to abolish any lingering souls or ghosts? Better idea? Much better.'
I blinked. I could only see shadows, but I saw the shadow of the slim figure, winged hat and winged shoes, raising his revolver toward me.
There were lumps on the grass and on the deck to his left and right. My friends? One of them was wriggling and writhing. Being eaten by a snake?
I heard the revolver hammer click.
Nothing happened. No bullet.
Click. Again, nothing.
Click, click, click.
'Hmph! That's odd. I didn't think revolvers could jam! I wonder what is wrong with it.'
I blinked. My vision cleared a moment, blurred, cleared.
The huge stained-glass window behind Trismegistus formed a frame with him at the center. There was a shadow darkening the glass. Then the glass went black.
Then the ramming prow of a black ship entered. Shards of glass and powder exploded in each direction, and the hull boards protested, bent, snapped, broke inward.
The sea came in.
The whole huge cabin space, where all these lawns and gardens stood, canted to one side. The place where I lay was still dry, but the boards sloped down to a spreading lake of seawater.
The noise was terrible; boards groaned and creaked; waters roared and thundered.
A pair of metal gauntlets, each finger huge as a tree trunk, reached in through the gap made by the ram-ship and pulled an acre of hull away.
I heard the voice of Mulciber, amplified over a loudspeaker, say, 'The Master of Cold Iron says for the guns not to fire, so they won't, eh? Mavors, tell your men to use steel.'
Slithering shadows, thin and pantherlike, poured quickly from the black deck. Laestrygonians. I did not see what they were armed with, and I could not make out how many there were. They were fast.
Trismegistus was faster. I don't know what he had in his hand. A knife? But he turned into a blur and cut the throats of a dozen Laestrygonians, then two dozen. Anyone who tried to
