The rest of the scene was as dark as the clouds above. A winged shape swept across the waves toward us, and he could be glimpsed only when he passed through one of those curtains of moonlight. His eyes were visible like two sparks of green marsh gas, and when he opened his mouth to cry halloo, the tiny flame of his tongue was bright.
The deck was slightly larger in this version. Like 'finding' a space-worthy shape, Vanity found an undamaged version of her ship beneath the wrecked hull. Her ship was all ships.
Quentin said, 'The only reason why we let him go off alone was because of the ring. Why is he visible?'
Vanity said, 'He can't see us.'
Victor, whose eyes these days operated on more than one band of the spectrum, could pick him out. Victor opened his third eye and shot out a bright golden beam, painfully bright in the utter gloom.
Phobetor landed on the stern of the heaving boat and shrank into Colin, who was dressed in a dark sea-coat and sweater.
'You started drinking without me?' were his first words.
'Celebrating!' I said. The champagne had made my face hot, so I threw back my hood and let the snow drift into my hair. I gave him a big and happy smile. 'We were sure you'd succeed!'
'Well, you're right about that,' Colin said. 'The fate that made it so Mortimer was touched in the head is gone. I don't know what you four did here on the boat at midnight, but just when the church-tower clock struck twelve, I flew up to his little barred window and did my hoodoo. Heck, once he was talking normal and stuff, I passed him my cell phone through the bars and let him call his brother Sam the Drayman. He was all crying and laughing so much, I thought it hadn't done anything, and he was still cuckoo, but...' He shrugged. 'It worked on a small scale. We can undo fate.'
Vanity smiled, and her white teeth showed. 'And at least one man knows the gods are real. That won't overthrow them. But it is a start.'
Victor raised a hand. 'Now to save our lives. Everyone ready?'
Quentin took several sticks of colored chalk in his hand and threw them on the deck. In a moment, the snow was swept aside, and the boards were bright with circles and summoning triangles, pentagrams and stars-of-David, all written in and around with Latin and Greek script.
I was feeling a little light-headed and giggly, until Victor swept that azure beam from his third metallic eye across me and removed the alcohol from my bloodstream. He did not bother to sober up Vanity: She had already had Andromeda establish the Olympian laws of nature we needed.
At first our death was far away in the time-stream, but Quentin poked pins in a little wax doll of Victor, which did not hurt Victor in the slightest but sent out a signal that Victor was in danger.
His death grew close, curious, hoping for an opportunity to act. This was the curse slaying Lamia had created.
The warning-fate that Mavors had set up came alive within the time-stream, too. We took care of it first. Yes, we had debated the wisdom of having Mavors show up to save us each time we were in an auto accident, or fell down a flight of stairs or something, but in the end we decided we had to take care of ourselves without help.
That left only the death-fate, which closed in more rapidly once the Mavors counterfate was out of the way. Obviously it was more likely that we would die once no protector was around to save us.
The hard part for me was getting Victor to see the direction the death-fate was in: I took his head in my hands and pulled it up out of three-space, and pointed it in the time direction. His brain did not record any activity at that moment. I assume he was unable, by his very nature, to see what I saw. But the blue beam came out of his third eye all proper and normal, and dissolved the huge lump of time-energy.
The hardest part for Quentin was when a voice spoke to him from the cloud. With his hands shaking, he took the champagne bottle and poured himself two glasses. He cut himself with his athame, his witch's knife, and dropped a drop of blood into one.
'Here is the blood shed by she who has offended me,' he said, his voice thick. 'Here is my anger and my retribution, which I, Fallen and Archon of the Fallen, Master of the Art, have a right to claim. I drown you in the deep.'
He tossed the wineglass into the sea.
He held up the other glass. 'Here are the sins of Lamia against me. The pain and humiliation...
the... tears I cried. The sound of her hateful voice as she called me a child... and molestation...
ach! Here are her sins. Let the sea, let the great sea drink them, and may they forever be gone and be forgotten, as I forget them. I drown you in the deep.'
The second glass twinkled in the gloom as it sailed over the railing and into the snowy sea air.
He said, 'I forgive, I forgive, I forgive you.'
