Titans of Chaos

He was next to the guitar I had bought him. My higher senses were not working, but I am surethat black guitar was the center of a snake's nest of magical strands and ropes.

What had ever possessed me to buy that dumb thing in the first place? Maybe my wits had beendulled by magic and adverse fate. How can you beat a foe who can make you stupid?

The woman he had struck against the tree, the first one, rose to her feet, unhurt. There was nosign of blood on her. She said, "Your authority over dream, abnormal, abortive, unclean, do I,Oenone, reave from you, just recompense for wicked deeds both done and dreamt. Dark powersof Dreaming, begone. You cannot overmatch, dream-shadows, these gentle hands which oncerefused to heal the traitor Paris, and wove, instead of bridal veil, the silken noose to hang mefrom a yew-wood tree: Lord Trismegistus me uprooted from unsacred grave; me power overDarkness gave!"

She stepped daintily forward and tapped Colin's kneeling body with her wand. He cried out, agreat, horrible, strangled cry, and fell prone.

I blinked. I saw something glittering in the trees above. It was lit up with usefulness.

My upper senses were coming back. I tried to look in the other dimensions aside from the normalthree. I could not, not yet. In a moment or two, the nymphs might realize that, by turning offColin's powers, they had turned off their ability to stop mine.

But none of them was looking toward me. The woman who had blinded him now rose up, brokenbones healed and whole, unharmed, her coiffure and gown unmussed, unwrinkled, untorn. Shetapped Colin's motionless, screaming body with her wand, saying, "Murderer, who had sent oursisters down into the eternal sleep of death, a lesser sleep I put on you. Move not, stir not, speaknot, but wait in all helplessness, awaiting the knife stroke which shall sever your false throat."

Colin's screaming stopped. I could see his body, fallen along the grass-covered stones, facingaway from me.

Suddenly, I could see through the surfaces of objects.

I saw, in the distance, "through" the trees, a rout of wild maenads were pelting down the slope,ululating. "Ite Bacchai! Ite Bacchai!"

And, downslope from us, not far from the highway, I saw the "flat"-seeming shapes of lithe andcalm-faced women in black skintight armor, bent low over the manes of their artificialsuper-steeds, moving in a well-ordered column, silent and rapid. There were scouts ahead of themain column, and flanking riders left and right.