With a Tangled Skein (22 page)

The leviathan drew near. Its huge snout broke the surface of the grass. The thing was big enough to swallow them whole, raft and all!

"They say that music has charms to soothe the savage breast," Pacian said. "That is most often misquoted as 'savage beast.' It just may be worth a try, rather than futile force."

Niobe liked the way his mind worked, but the leviathan terrified her. Already its ponderous jaws were cranking open. "You mean-sing it a song?"

"Sounds silly, I know-but it's harmless, at least. I have sung to the animals on the farm with some success. We can always try to fight, as a last resort. Have you any idea what it might like?"

Doing requests, for a monster? Niobe found her mind largely blank. "I-maybe a round-"

He nodded agreement. He faced the leviathan as if about to deliver a speech. He sang, crudely but adequately:

"Have you seen the ghost of Tom? Round white bones with the flesh all gone! 0-0-0-0-0-0-O! Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on!"

Niobe started to laugh, hysterically. To sing a Halloween song to a monster!

The leviathan paused in place. The jaws stopped opening. It was listening, and like some animals, it could not focus its attention on two things at once.

"Have you seen the ghost of Tom?" Pacian sang, with greater volume and confidence. This time Niobe picked up on it, repeating the first line as Pacian continued with the second line, for it was indeed a round. It worked out rather prettily, despite the macabre and foolish words.

They went through it three times, and the leviathan did not move. Whether it liked the song was uncertain; perhaps mere curiosity held it. But that was certainly preferable to an attack.

When they stopped, the jaws slowly resumed motion. Quickly Pacian started another song, one long beloved in his culture:

"0 Danny-Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen and down the mountainside ..."

Niobe joined in, making the harmony. She had not sung like this since her mortal days, and had almost forgotten how grand it was.

"The summer's gone, and all the leaves are falling ..."

Pacian turned while singing, and reached to take her hand.

"'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide."

And Niobe was transfixed as the song abruptly expanded to magnificent sound. He had the magic! The same phantom orchestra that Cedric had had when he sang. The same phenomenal magnification of the music!

Of course! This, too, ran in the family! Not in every member, for her son did not have it. But here and there. She had never guessed! No wonder Pace could pacify animals!

The leviathan was aware of it too. Slowly, now, its jaws subsided, no longer menacing the raft. They had indeed found a way to soothe the beast.

But Niobe's attention was only partly on that. She had thought she would never love again, after Cedric. Now, suddenly, amazingly, she knew it was possible. The prophecy had not been based on what she knew, but on what she would discover.

They finished the song, and the internal music faded. The leviathan did not resume its aggression, but Niobe now had need of more music. She clung to Pacian's hand, and started a song.

"In the gloaming, 0 my darling, when the lights are dim and low ..."

He joined the song and the music rose in them and surrounded them.

"Will you think of me, and love me, as you did once long ago?"

Even as she sang, Niobe felt the love expanding from her long-isolated heart, encompassing her being. The beginning of her love for Cedric had come with the magic music. She had not seized upon it, then, and so had wasted much of the scant time they had had together. She was much older, and perhaps wiser now-and she found herself entering into it as into a primeval sea, gladly giving herself to its tide. 0 my darling . . .

When the song ended and the music faded again, the leviathan was satisfied. It backed off slowly and turned about, and swam away.

"It seems we have navigated the crisis," Pacian said. "Now we can go to meet Mother Nature." He reached for the oars.

Niobe put her hand on his arm again. "Pace-do we need to?" He considered, then laughed. Then he drew her in to him, and they kissed. The grand music encompassed them. They reversed course and returned to her Abode, and then to the realm of the mortals. As they landed back in his house, he said: "I don't think I'm going to be lonely anymore. But let's not act precipitously."

"This is very sudden," she agreed. "We can afford time to be sure it's real." But she already knew it was.

He nodded. "And if it is-" "Then I will retire on schedule, to become mortal-and be your wife."

"Fulfilling the prophecy," he agreed.

She left him without further comment. The moment she was alone, a babble broke out among her Aspects. Did you feel that music? He's a rare one! If that's what your first love was like, no wonder you waited for his like! We'll have to locate your successor, whatshername. Lisa.

When's the wedding?

"Enough, you hens!" Niobe exploded. "It's tentative!"

Lachesis snorted. As tentative as a pregnancy, girl! Indeed, all that developed over the course of the following months was certainty. Niobe visited Pacian several times, and each time it was as if another layer of love was added. "I do love you. Pace," she said. "I must marry you."

"I thought I would never be whole again, after I lost Blanche," he said. "But it is no denigration of her to confess that now I love you as I did her. When I was a child I adored you hopelessly; now I am a man I have reason to live again. It is as if you were saved for the time in my life when I would most need you." He paused. "Is that coincidence?"

She shook her head. "I am an Aspect of Pate-but my power is limited. Lachesis handles the disposition of the threads of life I spin-but her power too is limited. It was Satan's interference that caused me to lose my spouse, and you yours. Fate never planned those horrors, and now the Tapestry is healing."

"Yet the prophecy-"

She sighed. "Yes, there must be a deeper current of Fate, beyond our awareness, that the seers drew from. Maybe our manipulations of the Threads of Life are only to restore the pattern Satan sought to disrupt. It has made for a tangled skein!"

"Which our daughter-and granddaughter-will stand athwart," he agreed. "But for the moment, there is only our love."

They kissed, and there was music. He was right; their offspring might be destined for horrendous adventures, but at the moment love made all that beside the point.

In due course, as the time of her departure from office neared, Niobe made it a point to bid adieu to her friends, the other Incarnations. First she went to the Green Mother. This time she had no trouble reaching the domicile of Nature. "You knew, didn't you?" she charged the woman. "You arranged that challenge course!"

"Love is one of my Aspects," Gaea admitted. "I knew your heart and his. I only facilitated what was inevitable.''

"So we never even consulted you!"

"Not overtly."

"You are devious, Ge."

"Coming from Fate, that is indeed a compliment."

They embraced, and Niobe cried a little, and they parted. Gaea's face was serene-but when Niobe stepped outside the domicile, she discovered a gentle rain falling, and knew that Ge was crying too.

A few days later, in the course of routine business, she visited Thanatos. Fate worked most intimately with Chronos, but she also had considerable interaction with Thanatos, for the threads had to be terminated as well as started. "I am soon to return to mortality," she said. "I pray you do not come too soon for me or the man I love."

The death's-head smiled. "I will postpone it as long as your successor permits. Who is she to be?"

"I don't know. We are conducting a search, but no suitable prospect named Lisa has shown up."

"Will Lisa be as pretty as you?"

"Not quite. But you are sure to like her."

"I envy you, Clotho. You are able to step down voluntarily, returning to life. I will be assassinated by my successor, even as I assassinated my predecessor."

"Yet it was to Heaven you sent your predecessor, and to Heaven you will go."

"That is a comfort," he agreed.

She embraced him, not repulsed by his skeletal hands, and she kissed his grinning skull-face. His business was grim, but he was a decent person. He was not the same one she had first met, but the office had made him similar.

Her supply of yam ran low, and she made her monthly trip to the Void for more. She wondered, as she often did, whether this monthly cycle stood in lieu of the feminine cycle that had abated when she became immortal. There were, indeed, patterns she did not understand.

"So you are quitting, cutie," Satan said, appearing before her.

"Go to Hell," she told him shortly.

"You have been a delectable thorn in My side for too long," he continued blithely. "It will be an excellent riddance."

"Go damn yourself."

"I really will enjoy working over your successor, scrumptious."

She paused. "Why so positive. Lord of Flies? Can it be that you don't want me to go?"

He puffed smoke. "Of course I want you to go!" he said.

She nodded. "Because I am fated to produce a mortal child who will be a real pain in the tail for you."

He did not respond with the derogatory or cynical exclamation she expected. Instead he was oddly pensive. "There are currents of destiny that perhaps only God comprehends," he said. "Our glimpses of the future are fleeting and imperfect. I have taken a reading on your daughter and I see only a terrible storm perhaps forty years hence, and she is caught up in it-and so am I. I do not know the outcome."

Niobe suffered a chill. "And one may marry Death, the other Evil," she said, again recalling the prophecy.

"I am the Incarnation of Evil!" he said. "Why should I ever bind Myself to a mortal woman?"

"She is to be an Incarnation."

Satan turned and paced in air, his gaze downcast. He was almost handsome in that moment of reflection. "And what woman, whether mortal or Incarnation, would ever bind herself to Me?"

It was a serious question. "Only an evil one," Niobe said.

"Are you about to birth and raise an evil woman?"

"Of course not!"

"Of course not," he agreed. "For you are indeed a good woman, as well as a lovely one. She can only oppose Me. Yet the prophecy-"

He was genuinely disturbed! "Satan, what are you getting at?"

He faced her without any sign of cruelty or mockery. "Simply this: there is a tangle coming in your skein that neither of us understands. Never would I bind Myself to a good woman, nor would she to Me. Something very strange is brewing. Let us avoid the whole issue, and oppose each other on conventional grounds. Keep your present office, 0 lovely woman! Do not generate that child."

Niobe was astonished. "You are pleading with me to do you a favor-by abrogating the fulfillment of my love?"

"I suppose I am, Clotho. I can proffer inducement if you prefer. I could assume the likeness and manner of your-"

"You're crazy!"

Satan sighed. "No, I am evil, not crazy. I have merely confirmed that no decent woman would accept Me if she knew My nature, however I might clothe Myself. You know Me, therefore you will not do for Me what you did for Chronos."

Niobe stared at him. "You-desire my favor?"

"I do desire it."

Almost, she felt sorry for him. Then the memory of Cedric surged back, and the emotion became anger. "Well, you will never have it!"

"That I know. Still I would have you remain in office."

"You should know better!"

"You will not do it?"

"I will not do it!"

Now he flared brightly with his abrupt fury. "I tried to be reasonable! To be honest, though it pains Me! I'm not good at it, I know, but I did try. Now you will feel the brunt of My wrath!"

"Go to Hell, Satan," she repeated mildly.

"And your child will suffer too!" he cried as he faded out. "You and yours will rue this hour!"

He was gone-and Niobe found herself shivering with reaction. Had she made a mistake by refusing to deal with Satan? He had seemed oddly pensive, and his expression of desire for her had seemed honest. Satan, of course, had all the women he wanted, in all the forms he wanted, in Hell-yet none of them were good, by definition. Did he have a hankering for the opposite type? Was there some good even in the Prince of Evil?

Surely not! Satan's designs were always evil, also by definition. If she opposed him, she was probably correct. If he was angry, she should be pleased. She was fulfilling the vengeance she had so long sought against him.

Yet Satan was also devious. The Father of Lies knew how to deceive by indirection as well as by direction. Why had he come to her to make his plea and why had he shown such obvious anger when she declined it? That suggested that it was an act, and that she was in fact doing exactly what he wanted.