Under A Velvet Cloak (17 page)

She stood in the forest, orienting. She was eighteen years old, looking slightly younger physically, but rather older in experience. Much older in information and power. Was it enough? It had to be.

She tuned in on the swirls of energy. They were widely scattered, but one was relatively close. She oriented on that, adjusting the cloak to ignore the others. She phased out most of her mass, and started walking toward it.

She passed through trees with only fog-like resistance. She turned on the cloak’s attraction, and it started urging her forward. She phased out further, and allowed herself to be carried forward, her feet no longer walking. She was on her way.

The cloak carried her roughly southwestward, through Scotland. But it didn’t stop there. It took her on to the shore and across the heaving sea. This startled her, but she realized that she no longer needed solid ground to walk on; she could walk on water if she needed to. She lightened further, and her body moved faster. She wanted to get where she was going.

She came to another shore. That would be Ireland. She forged giddily though its trees, houses, and mountains. She hoped she didn’t have to
go
beyond Ireland, because she knew there was nothing but broad ocean beyond the isles in this direction. She would go the distance she needed to, but she preferred this first excursion to be short.

The direction changed. This alarmed her; had the cloak lost track? No, she realized; it was that the energy swirl was also moving, so was no longer where it had been when she started. Soon it changed again, but only slightly.

Her awareness of the energy swirl intensified. She was getting close. She increased her mass and decreased the attraction, slowing. When she was very close, she returned to full mass and walked, regaining her equilibrium. She had of course practiced this mode of travel before, but only for very short local hops; this time she had gone vastly faster and farther than ever.

Ahead of her was a vaguely human figure in an encompassing black cloak. Beside it stood a magnificent pale horse with a huge scythe strapped to its side. The figure was leaning over a man lying on the ground. It looked as if the fallen man had had some kind of internal failure, and lost consciousness.

Consciousness?
He had died!
That was why the Incarnation of Death was here. This was the sudden grim confirmation of Vorely’s story: the Incarnations of Immortality existed. They were real, and operating in exactly the way conjectured. Or so it seemed.

Death reached down with one hand. The hand swept through the body, pulling something out. Kerena realized that this would be the man’s soul being drawn from his body. She shuddered.

Now she was close. “Hello, Thanatos!” she called, feeling vaguely foolish. What did one say to an Incarnation?

Death turned to face her. Within the cloak’s dark hood was the fleshless visage of a human skull.

Appalled, Kerena simply stood there staring.
This was Death,
the taker of souls, of life. How could she face him, let alone make any demand of him?

“You see me,” Death said, his voice sounding surprisingly human.

“I see you,” she echoed numbly.

He glanced at his wrist, where there was what Jolie recognized as an anachronistic timepiece. “You are not on my schedule. Who are you?”

There was nothing to
do
but answer. “
I-I
am Kerena. A mother. I come to ask-a favor.”

“No.” Death turned, mounted the stallion, and murmured a word to it. The horse leaped-and disappeared.

Kerena was left standing alone, amazed. Thanatos hadn’t even considered. He had simply denied her.

Her feeling shifted slowly to anger. The Incarnation didn’t have to grant her favor, but he should have listened. Her enormous effort to locate him warranted at least that much.

All she had wanted to ask Death was to postpone Gaw’s death until a more timely age, so that he would have a chance to live out his life and accomplish whatever great deeds were otherwise destined. Death had rejected her plea without even the courtesy to hear it.

Then her rationality took hold. There were other Incarnations. She could achieve her desire with one of them.

She adjusted the cloak, eliminating the signal that was the Incarnation of Death. Now there were six. She oriented on the closest of those. She resumed traveling.

Now the cloak did take her out across the larger sea. She accelerated, wanting to get clear of the endless water. She zoomed heedlessly across the Atlantic.

Then, suddenly, the energy swirl was close. There was a large island, with the ocean extending on beyond it. What was this?

What, indeed, Jolie wondered. This was the center of the Atlantic, in the vicinity of the Mid-Atlantic mountain range, deep below the surface. She knew her geography. There was not supposed to be any such island here. Yet the timelines were straight.

Kerena slowed, coming to land on the beach. This
appeared
to be a garden paradise, warm and fair, with plants of every imaginable type. There were animals too, of every species, predators and prey, mingling without fear of each other. Strange indeed.

Jolie’s mental jaw dropped.
The Garden ofEden
! It existed here near the Equator, between the continents. Or was it Atlantis? Here until it suddenly sank into the sea, as the great rift shifted. She had not realized that calamity was so recent, barely before European ships started crossing to the New World. No wonder there were persistent legends.

Kerena walked toward the energy whorl. She approached an elegant twentieth century mansion.

But this is the fifth century!
Jolie protested.
This can’t be here!
Yet obviously it was.

Kerena found the architecture odd, but wasn’t concerned, as this was far from England. She knocked on the door.

A man of middle age opened it. Behind him hovered a glowing hourglass: The Hourglass that controlled time. “Will I summon you?” he asked.

“I summoned myself,” Kerena said boldly. “You are Chronos?”

“You are esthetic, for an undead,” he said, eying her.

So even the Incarnations noticed her body. “I come to ask a favor. You must enable me to return to the point when I inadvertently tainted my son, so I can avoid it. He-”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I never interfere with a timestream on the whim of a denizen of the mortal realm; it disturbs the flow.”

Kerena was taken aback. “The flow?”

“The flow of time. It is my position to ensure that it is even. A change affects everything following it. I would be aware of such an effect if I am to make it. There is no change; the flow is undisturbed.”

Jolie remembered: Chronos lived backward. From the future to the past. Thus he knew the consequences of any act; they were in his memory. So he spoke of what he would do, though it was what had already been done, in the awareness of all the folk of the world. Kerena didn’t understand that, but didn’t need to.

“But my son,” Kerena said. “I must save him!”

Chronos focused on her. “You are a half mortal. How did you come here to Purgatory?”

Purgatory! But that was not on Earth. It was-Jolie didn’t know where it was, though she had been there. An alternate dimension, maybe. What was it doing as an island in the Atlantic?

“Purgatory is becoming more primitive as the religion that spawned it approaches its infancy,” Chronos said, answering her. “Now it is on this isle, which is near its termination, and in a few mere centuries purgatory will not exist as a separate entity.”

“I didn’t ask about that,” Kerena said. “I am here on behalf of my son.”

Chronos focused on her. “What is a ghost from my past doing in you?” he demanded. “This disturbs the flow. I must deal with it.” He reached up to grasp the Hourglass.

The timelines blurred badly.

Distract him!
Jolie thought violently. The Incarnation of Time had detected her temporal nature, and surely had the power to drive her away from this timeline. He was receiving her thoughts.

Kerena did not understand the sudden urge, but obeyed it. “I am no ghost,” she said, opening her clothing. “Let me prove it to you.”

“But there is a ghost within you. It-”

Kerena cut him off with a kiss, and bore him back into his mansion. She was extremely good at what she knew how to do. Her body was exquisite, buttressed by her magic Seeing and her considerable experience. In a moment he was indeed distracted. He was after all a man. From the future, living backward when away from Purgatory, but still a man. Now there was nothing in his mind but the divine unmortal body so avidly seducing him.

By the time she was done with him, Chronos had completely forgotten about the ghost.
Now get out of here.

Kerena got out of there, leaving Chronos blissfully sated. She reduced her mass and oriented the cloak on the next closest energy swirl. She was on her way to the next Incarnation, whatever that might be.

“What is this ghost in me?” she asked. “That forces me to protect its secret?”

Jolie tried to prevent it, but now that she had the hint, Kerena was determined, and she had considerable psychic power. She oriented on the mystery within her, and in a moment had it. “A foreign spirit!”

Jolie considered moving back to just before the girl’s discovery, but knew that was no
good.
Chronos had given it away, and there was no way to avoid that interview, because that would change the timelines. She had done what she had to, and that had worked: the lines were clear again. She would have to face the revelation of her presence, and hope she could manage it in such a way as to maintain the alignment.

A friend,
she thought.

“Those other times I changed my mind-that was your doing?”

Yes. But never to harm you. To guide you.

“For what purpose?”

This is complicated to explain.

“Make it simple.”

Jolie tried.
This world is headed to a bad end, unless guided to a good end. I am Jolie, from a world just like this one, except it achieved a good end. You are the key to the difference between them. My job is to guide you along the correct course so that your world, too, achieves salvation.

“What bad end?”

Satan wins control and leads it into destruction.
Jolie did not try to explain that the Incarnation of Satan at that time in her world was not an evil man, and wanted to save the world as much as the other Incarnations did. But in the alternate world the Incarnations were different, with God incompetent and Satan truly evil. Kerena could change that.

“How can I believe that?”

Use your Seeing.

Kerena did. “It is true. You are beneficial, and I need your guidance. But there is something else odd about you. What is it?”

I do not yet exist. I will not be born until the year of our lord 1191, in France. But lam independent of time in your world, which I am visiting.

“You feel young, like me. What is your personal history?”

At age fourteen I was sent to serve a powerful man, a sorcerer named Parry. I became his apprentice, then his wife when I was fifteen.

“So you
are
like me! You loved and married young. I feel grief in you; did he die?”

No. I did, when I was seventeen. I was murdered by Crusaders sent by Evil’s minion Lucifer. I came to inhabit a drop of blood on Parry’s wrist, so I could appear to him as a ghost. He became an influential cleric. Satan sent a demoness to corrupt him, and she did, but she also fell in love with him. When he died she helped him defeat Satan and assume his office as the Incarnation of Evil.

“You
are
like me!” Kerena repeated. “Forever younger than eighteen. And I made an ally of Vanja so Morely could become chief of the vampires.”

Good men have that effect on women. There may be a further parallel: the other Incarnations treated him with contempt, as they seem to be treating you, and he swore vengeance on them. He tried to wrest ultimate power from the Incarnation of Good, and in the end succeeded, in his fashion.

“This is your good end? Satan wins?”

I
said in his fashion. He fough t to preven t the Incarnations from declaring the office of the Incarnation of Good to be vacant. When he lost that, he made his own nomination, and his candidate became the new God.

“Isn’t that the same thing? That man is one of Satan’s creatures.”

No, it was a good ghost woman named Orlene, related to all the Incarnations in some manner so they could not oppose her. She is doing her best to make the world better.

“A ghost woman!
You’re
a ghost woman!”

A different one,
Jolie agreed.
Orlene’s friend. It is really at her behest that I came here. So that she will be the Incarnation of Good in this world too. This is vastly better than the alternative.

“She’s trying to take power here too.”

No. She is not power hungry. She merely wants tosave this world from the doom that otherwise awaits it.

Kerena considered. “I know you through my Seeing. I like you. But my mission is not yours. I must save my son from the taint on him, so that he can thrive normally.

This is more difficult than you imagine. But there is no necessary conflict with my mission. If your world aligns with mine, you will rescue your son, in a manner.

“In a
manner?
What manner?”

It will happen many generations hence, when
-

The timelines blurred.

Jolie tried to move back a step, but could not. Kerena had taken control. That was amazing and alarming.

“What is that?” Kerena demanded. She was now aware of the alternate frames.

What I am telling you is changing the course of your reality. I must not do it, lest the alignment be lost. You must let me revert, to eliminate that telling.

Kerena considered again. “I believe you. My Seeing confirms it. But I mislike this. Am I to be a puppet on a string?”

That is an unkind way to look at it. It is more like a course that will in time achieve what you desire, that you must confirm, lest you lose the way.