“But we’re not thieves!” Orb protested.
“Of course we’re not!” Then something occurred to her. “But maybe there is a thief, somewhere in here, and he activated the magic—and we got caught.”
“But we saw no one else!”
“True.” Niobe sighed; it had been such a good explanation. Then she thought of an answer. “One could have tried the first challenge, and set off more than one mine, and not retreated. That might account for it.”
Luna emerged from the water. “I got it!” she exclaimed, brandishing the harp. “I felt for it on the bottom, and there it was!”
“Oh, thank you, Moth!” Orb exclaimed.
“That’s okay, Eyeball,” Luna replied, smiling as she handed it to her.
Niobe was startled in a minor way; she had not heard these particular nicknames before. She wondered how much of children’s activities inattentive adults missed.
They dressed and proceeded cautiously to the mine cave, half expecting to encounter the thief, but there was none. The cave was empty. They tested it by tossing a stone into the center and hiding their eyes.
The explosion was horrendous. It shook the whole cave, and several more rocks dropped from the ceiling. The hazard was certainly back—and now the mines were truly destructive.
Niobe looked at the one motorcycle on this side, the one they had ridden across on. Her mouth went dry. She had crossed this cave three times, once while blind—but she was supremely reluctant to do so again. This time the hazard was real. She and the girls could be blown up! The very knowledge of that could cause her to waver on the cycle and go astray. Already her hands were shaking.
“Where’s the thief?” Luna asked.
Where, indeed! If the thief had done this by pushing on regardless, he should be here—either alive or dead. The motorcycle he had used should be visible, either whole or wrecked. But there was none—and all the other cycles were still parked in their places. There seemed to be no thief.
Well, maybe the Mountain King was cheating. He might have had no intention of giving away his precious magical instruments, so he arranged to balk the girls’ escape as if by accident.
That angered Niobe. “Two can play at that!” she muttered. She picked up another fallen rock. “Watch yourselves!” she warned, and heaved it.
There was another detonation. Again the cave shook, and more rocks dropped. As soon as the cave was quiet, Niobe picked up another rock and heaved it.
“What are you doing. Mother?” Orb asked after the third explosion.
“I am clearing a path through this trap!” Niobe said grimly. “A mine can’t explode when it has already been exploded.” She heaved again.
“Oh!” Orb exclaimed, smiling. “How smart of you, Mother! Can I do it too?”
Why not? “Yes you may—but shield your eyes.”
The girl picked up a rock and heaved, then turned away. She clapped her hands with delight as the mine went off. Children of either sex seemed to have a certain muted passion for violence, Niobe reflected.
Before long they had cleared a broad channel across the cave. They tossed in a few more rocks, just to be sure there were no live mines left. Then Niobe ferried them across as before. She wasn’t sure what would happen if they simply walked across and didn’t trust it; the motorcycle was easy enough to use, now. Safely across, she parked it, and the three of them turned to the entrance/exit passage.
But as they approached, a man came through it from the other direction. He was huge and hairy and ferocious, he carried a giant sledgehammer, and his eyes fairly sparked so that they threatened to set fire to his beard. “Thieves!” he roared. “You would rob the museum of the Vanir? I will destroy you!” He lifted the sledgehammer.
“The Mountain King!” Luna squeaked, falling back. Something akin to a berserker rage flooded through Niobe. She stepped forward, sidestepped the swinging sledge, and slapped the man resoundingly on his hairy cheek. “Leave that girl alone!” she snapped. “She’s no thief! You are!”
The man could hardly have been hurt by the slap, but he paused, astonished, as he stared at her. “Clotho!”
“Not anymore!” Niobe said curtly. Then she, too, paused. “How did you know me?”
He set his sledgehammer down and leaned on the handle. “How could any man forget the face of the loveliest creature to grace the pagan realm? What do ye here, O divine one?”
Niobe stifled a flush of pleasure. “Um, how long have you been asleep this time?”
The Mountain King ticked off numbers on his fingers. “Twenty-five years or so. Why?”
That explained it. He had been asleep all the time she had been mortal. “I returned to ordinary life thirteen years ago,” Niobe said. “I’m here with my daughter and granddaughter. We did not come here to steal from you.”
The man glanced at the instruments the girls held. “If you speak for these, Clotho, I’ll not challenge them. Indeed, me thought in my dream I heard the music of my harp, played in a manner it was Crafted to be.” Then he did a double take. “A granddaughter—in thirteen years? Your body would madden any man’s mind, but—”
“By my prior mortality,” Niobe said quickly. She gestured to Luna. “Your cabinet accepted the picture she painted, so—”
“True. Then why the alarm?”
“That’s what I want to know! We were halfway out when—”
“Tis not of my doing,” the giant said. “I will have the truth of this. Follow me, Clotho.” He strode into the cave, and his footprints glowed in his wake. He was angry.
They followed, not bothering with the motorcycle this time; the glowing prints were their guarantee of safety.
When the Mountain King came to the middle cave, he stepped into the water—and it evaporated instantly, leaving the floor dry. When he reached the barrier, a gate in it swung open to let him pass without pause. There was no doubt he was the master of this place. They continued to follow, awed.
The chasm was there in the third cave, and the vampire bat alert. The King strode into it, and the illusion or reality vanished, leaving the cave empty. The tremulous light pattern that was all that remained of the vampire bat fled.
They came into the display room. There was a demon with its finger in the harp-cabinet. Evidently that evil influence was what was triggering the thief-alarm; as long as that demon remained, no one could pass.
“Ho! Loki’s work!” the Mountain King exclaimed, and hurled his massive sledge as if it were a toy.
The hammer struck the demon. The creature puffed into smoke. The cabinet exploded.
The Mountain King retrieved his sledgehammer. The far-flung fragments of the cabinet imploded, re-forming their original shape, with a hint of the music Orb had made.
“Go in peace, Clotho,” the giant rumbled. “You and yours. My apology for this nuisance.”
“Quite all right, sir,” Niobe said, somewhat taken aback. She hustled the girls out again. This time there was no problem in any of the caves.
The instruments were wonderful, and both girls continued to prosper in their talents. By the time they completed school, each was as skilled as any Niobe knew. She was sure both would prosper in life, if Fate permitted. But there was the matter of the tangled skein that had not yet materialized.
After Blenda died, the Magician Kaftan moved to America with Luna, apparently unable to face the old country in her absence. Niobe was saddened more by Luna’s departure than by her son’s, for she had actually been closer to her granddaughter. But she could not protest. Luna was a fine, levelheaded young woman, and she would take good care of her father.
Then, after twenty-two years of their marriage, Pacian died. He was seventy-four, by no means young, but it came as a shock; somehow she had always thought of him as eleven years younger than herself, and she was only forty-six, physically. She had lived twenty-three years in her first mortality, and the same number in her second. It was as if she had finally completed the term set for her original love of Cedri
c. She still loved Pacian, but the intensity of it had eased over the years. Now she had raised her family, and was satisfied to meet the necessary severance of threads. She had seen Pace ailing, and had done what she could for him, never thinking he could actually die. Satan seemed to have no hand in this; the cause had been natural.
After the funeral, she tended to retreat from participation in worldly matters. Orb went away on tour as a singer; indeed, she had been traveling about the world from the time she turned eighteen. There just wasn’t much left for Niobe in the mortal realm.
Then she received news that her son, the Magician, had also died. This was entirely unexpected; he was only sixty-three. Luna wrote to report that she now lived alone in the Magician’s house, carrying on his business, and that she was dating the new Thanatos, exactly as the prophecy had foretold. Niobe had no stomach for that business. She kept her letters polite and left the girl alone. What, after all, had she expected of mortality—perpetual youth, bliss, and innocence? She was in as good a position as any woman to know better.
She was chronologically eighty-six years old; she had outlived her time. Her comfortable, placid world had been replaced by modern high-tech, high-magic world. She was prepared to depart it with a minimum of fuss.
But the following year, things changed.
—10—
LACHESIS
The spider descended before her on a thread of silk, then transformed into a comely young woman with hair so light it was almost white. “We must talk with you,” the woman said. “Do not utter the name of him who must not know.” She had an accent, but was intelligible.
“Clotho!” Niobe said, suddenly remembering that moment a quarter-century before when she had drawn a refugee girl from a line in Budapest. “Lisa!”
The woman smiled. “You have changed; I have not.” Then she patted her hair. “Except cosmetically. I am eternally grateful for what you did, rescuing me from that city. It gave me a new existence, and I was able to help my troubled friends. They never knew I had—changed.”
“I understand,” Niobe said. “It is nice of you to let me know.”
“But this is not a social call,” Lisa said quickly. “We— have something very important to ask of you.”
Niobe smiled. Privately she was dismayed by the contrast between them. When she had selected Lisa to be her replacement, Niobe herself had been a slender beauty, while Lisa had been attractive but less stunning. Now, a quarter-century later, Niobe knew herself to be lined and dumpy; she hadn’t seen any reason to maintain herself, the last two years especially. Lisa had remained exactly as she had been. What a terrible scourge mortal aging was!
“If your question is whether the—unnamed one—has been interfering in my life since I turned mortal, I’m not sure. I can think of only one instance, when I took my girls to—”
“No, no,” Lisa said quickly. “Not a question. I—I have been selected to ask you this, because I am the only one of us who has met you. Lachesis and Atropos have changed—”
“Terms are getting shorter these days!” Niobe remarked. “I was an Aspect for thirty-eight years!”
“Yes, you were one of the great ones, and you dealt well with—the anonymous. I—we—had a difficult time. He twisted the threads without license, he confused us—”
“He does that,” Niobe agreed. “If I was proof against him later, it was because I had some hard lessons early! I’m sure I was no better than—”
“Yes, you have had much experience. More than any other mortal. That is why we must ask this thing of you.”
This sounded serious! “Exactly what is this thing?”
“You must come back.”
“What?”
“To be an Aspect of Fate. We need you again.”
Niobe was so surprised she stuttered. “To—to be—I, I—Lisa, I’m forty-eight years old, in mortal terms! Only a young woman can—”
Lisa shook her head. “Not to be Clotho. To be Lachesis. That is the key Aspect—the one who governs the Tapestry.”
Lachesis—of course. Niobe was now middle-aged in body, and looked it. Lachesis was the middle-aged Aspect. Yet—
“Lisa, I never dreamed—it’s never been done before! Once an Aspect returns to mortality—once any Incarnation leaves the office—”
“True. That is one reason we believe it must be done this time. The unnamed will never suspect.”
To fool Satan. That was one way to do it, certainly! “Lisa, I’m flattered that you should think of me for this! But I’ve had my turn at immortality, and don’t really deserve—”
“It is much to ask of you, we know,” Lisa said hurriedly. “But you are the only one who can do it. Otherwise—”
“Now wait. Lisa! New women come into the office all the time! Everyone learns on the job, and Fate is more fortunate than the other Incarnations, because there are always two experienced Aspects to guide the new one. So you certainly don’t have to—”
“Please,” the woman said. “Perhaps I do not make myself clear. I could speak better in my native tongue—”
“You are speaking perfectly! I’m just trying to say—”
“Please, I must explain. We—we must depart our Aspects—all together.”
“All at once? That’s impossible! There would be no—”
“Yes, we think the unnamed has arranged it. There has been much trouble, and your son’s child Luna is central. All of us have had to help intervene to save her. He tried to make her die, but Thanatos would not permit it—”
Something clicked in Niobe’s mind. “That period last year, when people mysteriously stopped dying—?”
“Yes. Thanatos stopped taking souls so he would not have to take hers, because he loves her. Finally he faced the unnamed down. Luna was spared, and Thanatos went back to work. We—Lachesis arranged to select him for the office, so that would happen.”
“You interfered in the selection of another Incarnation?” Niobe asked, horrified.
“We—it was necessary. This is—we think it is the major battle of the war. I do not like war.” Lisa paused, and Niobe knew she was remembering Budapest. “But when the tyranny of Evil advances, it must be fought by whatever means. The battles are terrible, but... “
Now Niobe saw the tangle of the skein. Her granddaughter was indeed standing athwart it—and the reason for her astonishing association with Thanatos was apparent. Only Thanatos could stop a person from dying, once that thread had been cut. Still—!
“How did you know about the plot against Luna?”
“The Magician, her father, he knew. He studied magic all his life and knew of a prophecy that the unnamed intended to void. The Magician planned everything and gave up his life to introduce Luna to Thanatos in a manner that would deceive the—”
“So that’s why he died young! They never told me!”
“They could not, lady. No one could know until it was done. The Magician knew he had to protect his daughter beyond his own time, for the fate of mankind depends on her.”
“So little I knew!” Niobe lamented. “I thought he was burying himself in magic just for—for a hobby. Or business. But he must have understood the prophecy far better than—”
“Yes. Then there was something strange. We think Chronos was involved, and that he stopped the unnamed from doing something else, but he won’t say. He knows the future, but if he said, it would change, so—”
“So the Incarnations are all involved in—in a major engagement,” Niobe concluded.
“A twenty-year engagement,” Lisa agreed. “The unnamed means to take political power on Earth. His agents are at work in every nation, but America is difficult because its politics are so chaotic anyway. If he prevails there, the rest will fall in line, he believes, because of the economic leverage. So he must be stopped there, and Luna will cast the key vote against him—if she survives.”
“And she wanted to be an artist!” Niobe exclaimed.
“Now we believe that we, the three Aspects
of Fate, are at the center,” Lisa continued. “The unnamed means to be rid of Luna, and we know that—”
“That I would give my life, happiness, and honor to protect her!” Niobe finished. “Of course I will do it— will become the Aspect of Lachesis—if that’s what it takes! But I never performed in that Aspect before, and— what’s this business about all three of you changing together? If the unnamed is pressing you as you suggest, that would be absolute folly! Three novices together—”
“Yes. Folly. That is why we come to you. You have experience—”
“That part I see! But you other two would have to remain, at least for a year or two—”
“We cannot,” Lisa said. “We must change now—this week.”
“That’s preposterous, girl! You know what’s at stake!”
“We know. But we have opportunities that come only once in a lifetime, if ever. We cannot turn those down, any more than you could have turned down your second love. The chance to have your daughter—”
Niobe held up her hand. “You make your point. We are all frail human creatures! Yet if you know, or suspect, that these opportunities have been arranged by—”
“He has, as you say, sweetened the pot to the point where we cannot desist. But it is more than that. You see, we do not know what he plans—and if we retain our Aspects, he will know we cannot be fooled, and he will do something else. Something we perhaps cannot prevent. So this trap of his—we decided it was better to fall into it—”
“With one experienced Aspect he doesn’t know about!” Niobe concluded. “To spring his trap—and destroy it!”
Lisa smiled. “I knew you would understand.”
Niobe mulled it over. She had sworn to have her reckoning with Satan for Cedric’s death, but somehow she had never had a satisfying denouement. She had told herself that just doing her job, as an Aspect of Fate, had been sufficient, and seeing to the upbringing of Luna and Orb was sufficient, since they were integral to the foiling of the Prince of Evil. But how much better it would be to foil Satan directly, personally!