With a Tangled Skein (39 page)

But as the smoke dissipated, something moved. The demon's right foot remained; it hadn't dissolved, and had been hidden by the swirling vapors. Her kiss of death had reached its limit.

Niobe reached for her vial again. What harm can one foot do? Clotho thought.

"Any part of a demon is bad news," Niobe said tersely. She put some holy water on her fingers and reached for the foot.

The thing scrambled across the step, using its claws to hitch itself forward. It was trying to escape. Niobe sprinkled it by snapping her wet fingers outward, and puffs of smoke erupted where the drops struck. The foot fell off the edge of the step, into the grass. She pursued it, sprinkling more water, but the fragment disappeared.

"I hope I got it all," she muttered.

Can't be more than a toe left, Atropos thought.

"Demons aren't like mortal folk," Niobe said darkly. "Pieces of them can survive."

Can one toe hurt us? Atropos thought. How?

Niobe shrugged. "I don't know. But I hope that thing is all gone, now."

Well, let's see what's inside, Clotho thought. Like Atropos, she did not take the toe of one demon seriously, and Niobe had to admit she was probably a bit paranoid about demons. One had killed Cedric, another had killed Blanche, another had tried to eliminate Luna and Orb, and now one had tried to rape her. She had reason-but what, indeed, could one demon toe do?

Niobe pinned her torn dress together as well as she could, and strengthened it with strategically placed strands of thread. Then she walked on into the senator's house.

A young man stood in the hall. His clothing hung on him, enormously baggy. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings. He was staring at himself in the full-length hall mirror.

She was too late!

She sighed. "Senator?"

He answered without looking at her. "Yes, of course I'll have to resign my office. There would be talk, gossip, perhaps an investigation. I couldn't afford that! I might even have difficulty proving my identity. After all, I've just lost forty years!"

"You're-not staying on?" This surprised her.

"Of course not. It just isn't feasible. I'll have to make a new life. But it's worth it! Forty more years, starting with everything I already know!"

"But don't you owe Satan?"

"He asked no price. It's a gift, no strings."

"But the burden of evil on your soul-"

"No evil attaches to the acceptance of a gift freely proffered, when I provide no political favor in return. And I won't; I'm dropping out of politics."

This amazed her. If the senators weren't staying in office, how could they do Satan's bidding, twenty years hence? It didn't make sense!

At least she had destroyed the demon. There would be no more bribes of restored youth. She extended a thread and slid up it to Purgatory.

They discussed it at the Abode as they rechecked the threads. As they fathomed the changing pattern, the situation came clear. The senators had been bribed indirectly-by being freely given what they most desired. In order to enjoy it, they had to vacate their offices. That meant there would be appointees to complete the terms- and Satan surely controlled those appointments. The new senators would all be young and competent and would give no sign of their true loyalty-until that day, some twenty or so years hence, when Satan required it, to negate Luna's position and give the final victory to Satan. A long-term plan, a real sleeper-but it seemed it was already in place. In a vote as close as that one was destined to be, four changed votes would be more than enough. Five, counting the senator who had just been eliminated here.

The new threads were not yet in place, however, for the appointees had not yet been appointed; that process would take a few days. But, search the Tapestry as she might, Niobe could find no way to nullify it. Satan had made his play, and could readily defend it against any effort she might take. The five old senators had already been bribed to vacate and could not be unbribed; youth was already theirs.

"There has to be a way!" Niobe exclaimed. "We can't just give up the world to Satan, even if it is twenty years ' away."

She checked quickly with the other Incarnations, but none of them had an answer. At last she went to the person most concerned: her granddaughter Luna.

Luna took it in stride. She was a truly beautiful woman now, despite the distortion of her hair color. "My father told me that something like this might come up," she said. "He left a message for that occasion."

"My son anticipated this?" Niobe demanded, surprised.

"He was a most accomplished Magician," Luna reminded her. "Perhaps the best of his generation-and he spent the last thirty years of his life researching this very problem. He used to apologize to me for his neglect-but he really didn't neglect me. We were very close."

As Niobe and her son had not been. But that was ancient history. "What is the message?"

Luna fetched a small blue topaz, a pretty but not truly precious stone. She set in on a small shelf before a white screen and turned on a special light. The stone fluoresced, sending a pattern of blue shadows across the screen.

"It's a magic stress on the molecules of the topaz," Luna explained. "I just need to get it in focus and find the right angle; most of the facets are nonsense, but the right one will display the message. The Magician set it up that way so that no one would accidentally read the message before it was time. Premature divulgence would alert Satan, you see." She turned the stone, and the pattern on the screen changed.

She turned it again, and suddenly several lines of fuzzy print appeared on the screen. "Ah-there it is! Now for the focus." She moved the light, and gradually the print clarified; in a moment it would become legible. Then something rolled across the shelf and collided with the topaz. The stone slid out of position, and the image was lost.

"The demon's toe!" Niobe exclaimed. She brought out the vial and dumped the remaining holy water on it. The thing vanished in a puff of smoke.

Luna recovered the stone. "Good thing the creature didn't hurt it," she said. She set it in place, and refocused the beam of light.

Only blank blue showed on the screen. Surprised, Luna turned it to a new facet, but no pattern showed. "It's been erased!" she exclaimed in dismay. "The magic is gone!"

"The demon did it!" Niobe cried. "Its mere evil touch canceled the good magic!"

And we wondered what one toe could do! Atropos thought, chagrined.

Niobe exchanged a stricken glance with her granddaughter. Now they had lost the vital message!

"Is there any backup stone?" Niobe asked after a moment.

"No. None for this occasion. The Magician didn't want it to be obvious-"

"That's what I thought," Niobe said heavily. "Satan must have known or suspected about the stone and given his demon a secondary instruction to erase it when it had the chance. Now it has done so."

"Now it has done so," Luna agreed.

"So now only the Magician knows the message."

"And he is dead."

Niobe embraced the young woman, and they both cried the tears of hopelessness.

Then Niobe straightened, lifting her chin. "But I am an Incarnation! I can go to my son in Purgatory and ask him directly!"

"Yes!' Luna cried, her gray eyes lighting. "My father did not know you would become Fate again! He focused on me."

They embraced and cried again, this time with renewed hope. Then Niobe rode a thread back to Purgatory to seek her son.

But when she checked the computer for the specific location of his soul, she received another shock.

MAGICIAN KAFTAN'S SOUL IS NO LONGER IN PURGATORY,

the screen said.

"You mean his penance is finished? He has gone on to Heaven already?"

NO. AN ERROR IN HIS CLASSIFICATION WAS DISCOVERED. HIS DAUGHTER HAD BORROWED SOME OF HIS BURDEN OF EVIL. SHE IS DESTINED FOR HEAVEN, BUT HIS TRUE BALANCE WAS NEGATIVE.

Why would Luna have done a thing like that? Niofc wondered. But she had a more immediate problem. "Negative? Then-"

YOUR SON IS NOW IN HELL.

Niobe stared at the screen in horror. She was sure this was the real information, as she had taken steps to se that none of Satan's illusions interfered this time.

The only person who knew how to nullify Satan's victory-was in Satan's power.

15 - MAZE SQUARED

Back at the Abode, they hashed it over. "We know there is a solution," Niobe said. "We just don't know what it is."

"And chances are, we won't find it on our own," Atropos said. "Maybe, if we were all experienced, we'd know it, but by the time we get experienced enough to know, it'll be too late."

"We're still in Satan's trap," Clotho agreed.

"Not entirely," Niobe said. "If all three of us were new, that might be true; but I did have thirty-eight prior years of experience. I know Satan's power is not complete. There has to be something he's hiding from us."

"The solution!" Clotho exclaimed wryly.

"Too bad we can't go to Hell and ask the Magician what his message was," Atropos said.

Niobe pounced on that. "Maybe we can! Incarnations have special powers!"

They checked with Thanatos, who confirmed it. "I have been there," he said. "But only in spirit. The physical body has to be left behind. All the things there are spirits, but they seem solid, as they do in Purgatory. But Satan wouldn't let you visit anyone there."

"But then how did you go there?"

"I was invited on a tour."

Oh. She knew about that sort of thing. Still-

"Can he stop a mother from visiting her son?" she asked.

All three of them paused at that. Who would know? Clotho thought.

"Gaea," Niobe said. "The Green Mother understands everything about human nature and then some."

They went to Gaea. "Satan cannot stop you, in this instance," she said. "But he will not help you. This represents a conflict between Incarnations, and your chance of success would be half."

"But I can do it?" Niobe asked.

"You can cut off your foot, too, but you might not want to." Gaea smiled coldly.

"If I do this-if I go to Hell-I stand to win the salvation of man-or at least enable my granddaughter to. What do I stand to lose?"

"Your soul," Gaea said grimly.

"But I'm an Incarnation! Satan can't touch my soul!"

Gaea shook her head. "You must put your soul on the line to gain entry to Hell. If you win your objective, you keep your soul. But if you fail, your soul is forfeit. Hell is not child's play, Lachesis!"

Niobe sighed. "It certainly isn't!"

Well, that lets that out, Atropos thought. A good soul locked in Hell-

"How do I set it up?" Niobe asked.

Don't do it, Lachesis! Clotho thought.

What shall it profit a woman to win the whole world, if she lose her own soul? Atropos thought.

"That's figurative; this is literal," Niobe said. "The whole world is on the line, this time."

"You must choose a referee," Gaea said. "To ensure fairness in the proceedings. Otherwise Satan will cheat."

Niobe considered. "How about Mars? He knows how to supervise war-and this is really a battle in the war between Good and Evil."

Gaea nodded. "Excellent choice. Go to him and ask."

"Thank you, Ge."

"Every Incarnation must sooner or later confront Satan," Gaea said. "You did it long ago, in the Void. Now you are doing it again-but the locale is not neutral and the stakes are higher. We shall be watching-but none of us will be able to assist you, once you enter Hell."

"I know." This was, among other things, confirmation that Gaea had recognized her, the day of the excursion into the model Hell, and had kept her secret.

"You will leave your body and your two other Aspects behind. If you fail, they will have to choose your replacement-with no soul to exchange. That body will die."

A heavy penalty indeed! Yet, added to the loss of the world, did it matter? She had to make the effort!

"Farewell," Gaea said. "You are a fine woman, Lachesis."

Niobe slid her thread to Mars' castle. This time he was at home. Quickly she explained the situation. "You have courage," Mars said gruffly. "I trust you know that Hell is no picnic."

"I know, but I must go. Will you serve?"

"I will serve. But I can guarantee only that the terms are honored. I cannot help you or advise you in any way. Once you enter Hell, you are on your own."

"But-I have no idea what to expect there!"

"As referee, it is my job to help arrange what to expect," Mars said. He raised his red sword, and it flashed. "Satan!"

Satan appeared. "What the Hell do you want. Mars? A war?"

"Both," Mars agreed, unperturbed. "Lachesis wishes to visit her son, the Magician Kaftan. You may not deny her that."

Satan turned on Niobe. "So you learned of that, you meddling female! But it will cost you your soul."