Titans of Chaos

He said, "I forgive, I forgive, I forgive you."

Then he sat down and put his face in his hands. I think he was crying. Vanity sat next to him onthe bench and put her arms around his shaking shoulders.

I said, "What just happened?"

Colin was standing very close behind me. "Didn't you feel it? Trismegistus used the fact thatVictor here killed Lamia and her two pals, ap Cymru and what's-her-name, the Phaeacian, topower his curse against us. Necromancy. The winged bastard probably expected us to kill thebitches. There was a moral component, a vengeance involved. We killed Lamia, so fate could killus. Big Q, our little Quentin here, just called their bluff and trumped their ace. He forgives Lamia,so her death has to forgive Victor. That's the way I figure it, anyway. Quentin was really shakenup by the time Lamia had him strapped to the table. Maybe he can get over it, now."

"Why is he crying?" I said. I was thinking that boys were not supposed to cry, but I did not saythat. It would have sounded like such a stereotype. But I thought it.

Victor said, "Growing pains. Children hold grudges. Adults cannot."

I said to Colin, "I understand four parts of what we must do to unwind an Olympian fate. Butwhat do you do? What did you do to save Mr. Finkelstein?"

He spread his hands. "You're the one person I cannot explain it to, Amelia."

"Try me."

"I turn myself into glass and remember the Real Me, a soul without a body, outside of time,eternal, enlightened, unstained. I think about how Fate has no power over Infinity. And I think offreedom. I am inspired by freedom: In my heart I sing of it. None of my brothers in thedream-universes can do what I do, for they have never been bound, and they do not hate prisonhalf so much."

"I think I do understand." I smiled at him. Sometimes Colin seems sweet.

Victor interrupted the conversation. "Amelia's turn next. We have to get rid of the curse Bogginput on her; otherwise, he can find her whenever he wants."

It didn't work. I could give the frozen time more free will, and Victor could make it act in aneutral fashion, but the moral component would writhe and tangle, and slowly correct the fateback to what it had been.

Quentin said, "I am sorry. If I were more skilled, studied more deeply in the One True Art,perhaps-"

I said angrily, "I thought my parents sent me into the cursed world in order to do this! To find youfour, and set about freeing mankind from Lust and Death and War and all the other gods theyworship! So was it all for nothing?"