Titans of Chaos

The internal nature of the obligation I could see: It affected everyone who used telephones,telegraphs, cars, other means of transport. Anyone who hired a lawyer, who made money, whotrafficked with merchants. Anyone who told a lie. They all owed something to... whom?

Whoever was behind this spell. An Olympian calling in a debt.

Into the middle of the effect, the strands that drew my gaze led. In the epicenter of that blister,deep in the dreamworld, was a small bubble of stable reality where the laws of Earth weremimicked.

There, I saw a black mountainside surrounded by clouds of twilight red. Here on a shelf of rock, ascore of columns stood in a circle, a temple with no roof.

On the altar-stone, kneeling, back straight, head down, buttocks on her heels, was a femininefigure wearing a red kimono. Her hair was black and straight, shining like India ink. The red silkfabric was decorated with images of butterflies and bats, blank-faced cherubs presenting lilies totiny skeletons. In a semicircle before her on the stone there gleamed a strand of crystal marbles,arranged in pairs. In one hand she held a knife, in the other an ivory drinking horn.

To her left stood the girl-form of ap Cymru: dark-haired and dark-eyed Laverna, goddess offraud. She was wearing a skintight black sheath of fabric and carrying a snake in; either hand.

One was lashing its tail in the air; the other was twining her wrist, a living bracelet.

Laverna's lips moved. My sense that detected inner meanings of things told me what their wordsmeant to convey, even though I did not hear them: Try again. If she is not asleep, then she isfleeing. We must come at them one at a time....

There was a third woman, standing to the other side. She was dressed in a folded garb of manypockets and pleated layers of cloth, intricate, with sea motifs of green and blue. Her hair was redas new blood. She wore a long veil of aquamarine. I saw only her eyes, which were emeraldssparkling with light.

The words from the woman in white were: No need. She looks at me now. I feel the pressure ofher gaze. She is outside of the plane of Earth, and alone. Another of my kind is also watchingher-the Princess Nausicaa. The two are apart.

When the woman in the red kimono raised her head and her loose hair parted, I saw it was Lamia.

I saw the raw and empty red sockets where her eyes had been. I knew now what the marbles inthe semicircle before her were: disembodied eyes.

The marbles twinkled and turned toward me.