Under A Velvet Cloak (31 page)

An oddity about that was that he didn’t seem surprised about her change of status, the first time he visited after her ascension. He understood that she had become Nox, the Incarnation of Night, but it made no difference to him. He was not at all awed. In fact he seemed to take it for granted. “I have been enjoying you for millennia,” he said.

“But I have lived only a century or so,” she protested.

“And that makes you better yet. There is now a firmness about you that I missed before.”

“He was having sex with Nox before you camel” Molly said when they were alone, amazed. “He’s some afreet. I don’t trust him at all.”

Neither did Jolie. But the mysterious male was part of Kerena’s life.

Every so often the timelines tried to diverge, but Jolie put them back into alignment. It was surprising how readily they could change, in trifling ways that nevertheless led to ultimate disaster. It was almost as if this reality wanted to be doomed, a curious notion.

Then, abruptly, shockingly, Morely was gone. That was only part of it; the entire warren had been wiped out. Kerena returned from a tryst to discover Vanja gazing at the ruin in grief. “I was delayed returning,” she said. “And found this.”

The warren had been destroyed. The entrance was rubble. The vampires were not trapped inside; their bodies were hung on the branches of trees, horribly mutilated. Superstition had it that a vampire had to be killed by burying it with a stake through its heart; the fact was that simple hacking apart would
do
it, and it had been done.

Kerena traveled back in time to discover what had happened. A villager out hunting had discovered the entrance, and lurked, watching. He had seen the vampires come and go, and had recognized their nature. The villagers had organized and struck in force at noon, when the vampires were in their chambers. They had charged inside with torches and knives, blinding and slashing the occupants, driving or dragging them out. Then they had used explosives to collapse the warren. It was a disciplined slaughter, well planned and executed.

“Why do they hate us?” Vanja asked. “We never hurt them.”

“Superstition,” Kerena said. “They hate what they don’t understand, and they don’t want to understand.” She was choking with grief too. She had loved Morely for centuries.

She took Vanja to a private apartment she maintained for convenience, and arranged for a new identity for her. As Nox she had ways to
do
such minor things. Vanja was her one remaining living or half-living friend from her original time.

Once Kerena had handled the necessary details, she retreated to a private place and suffered. Morely, who had first recognized her Seeing, similar to his own. Morely, the early astronomer and chemist. The one who had taught her to think rationally. Who had taught her sex. Who had always been there for her intellectual considerations. How could she exist without him?

She wept for perhaps a week, and in that time the gathering of secrets did not proceed, for she did not divide into other selves. All of them would have been as grief-stricken as the original. She mourned him with
abandon,
caring for nothing else. Molly and Jolie stayed out of it; they had had griefs of their own, and knew there was no amelioration but time.

Slowly her grief shifted to something else: anger. Those ignorant villagers had destroyed one who had never done them harm. Why should they be allowed to live when they had killed him? They should be made to pay.

“Kerena,” Molly said. “I don’t think it’s my place to object, but-”

“Then don’t!” Kerena snapped.

Jolie stayed out of this too, because the timelines were not fudging. Whatever was to happen, was to happen. She had to let it be. But it promised to be ugly.

For the first time Kerena used her power as Nox for personal vengeance. She went to the village by night, divided into more than a hundred selves, and visited each sleeping person. She put the knowledge of another person’s secret into the dream of each, firmly enough to be remembered on waking. Then she settled back to watch. Her indirection was about to become savagely direct, through the actions of the dreamers.

A mother learned that her brother had been sexually abusing her daughter. A man learned that his son had been torturing small animals. A woman learned that her diffident lover was homosexual. A poor man learned that his cousin had cheated him of his inheritance. A rich man learned that his wife was plotting to poison him. A woman learned that her married lover was also having sex with her sister and her best friend. A grandfather learned that neither his grandson nor his son were his own; he had been cuckolded throughout.

There was a kind of pause when day came, as the villagers pondered the dirty secrets that had come to them. They knew they were true, because Nox had instilled absolute belief-and because they
were
true. They questioned, they verified, they reacted. Then the mayhem commenced.

On the first day several villagers committed suicide when they found their guilty secrets exposed. Several more were killed in crimes of passion. Others were so severely shamed they had to leave the village, never to return. On the second day the retaliations began, for the outrages of the first day. Day by day the carnage continued, until the village was but a hollow shadow of its former self.

Yet somehow vengeance didn’t feel sweet. Like the urgency of sex, it seemed less reasonable once satisfied.

“I think it is time for me to be moving on,” Molly said. Kerena knew that the siege of ugliness had turned her off, though she was too polite to say so directly.

There was nothing for Kerena to
do but oblige her friend’s wish to be separate from her. It was part of her own punishment for misusing her power. She resolved never to do
that again. She still missed Morely, but recognized too late that this was not the way to honor his memory. It had not brought her relief, and had cost her a friend.

Then she found a situation for Molly. A handsome young woman in the Irish city of Dublin had lost her mind and would soon die if not helped. She was a fishmonger, selling cockles and mussels in the street from her wooden wheelbarrow. It was dull, dingy work, but it paid her way.

Molly took over the vacant body, restored to life. “But you know my curse will catch up with me,” she reminded Kerena.

“But maybe not for years. Meanwhile you will have life, and so will a body that would otherwise have died much sooner.”

By day Molly the fishmonger wheeled her wheelbarrow through the streets of the city, crying out her wares for sale. But by night she reverted to her own early trade, becoming a pricey courtesan and making a lot more money. She reveled in it, knowing she was
good
at it.

But after a decade the curse did catch up, and she was brutally murdered. Kerena, attuned, came immediately to claim her soul, and she returned as the ghost companion she had been. She was philosophic about it, and appreciated the years of renewed life she had been granted.

But her story wasn’t over. The officials of the city, appalled by the double life revealed and embarrassed because a number of them had been Molly’s nocturnal patrons, did their best to erase all evidence of her existence. They pretended she had never existed, and that even the legend of her double life was fake. “As if there could ever be a fake legend!” Kerena said, laughing. Indeed, the common folk remembered, and the legend refused to fade. It even became a song.

Then the American-Irish city of Kilvarough, seeking tokens of authenticity, offered Molly a position there, as a ghost. It wasn’t a perfect spell, because Molly could truly interact only with those who were approaching death. But it was better than nothing, and had its own recognition. Kerena visited her on occasion, and she was satisfied.

Thereafter the afreet had disturbing news. “I have studied you, Nox, and discovered something. Your reality is not constant. It deviates from its proper course.”

“I don’t understand,” Kerena said. Of course she understood the truth of his observation perfectly; what she didn’t understand was how he could know of this. Would he finally tell her?

“I have made something of a study of the timelines,” he said. “There are many of them, each traveling its destined course. But yours is unnatural; it shifts into alternates. Do you have any idea why?”

Kerena was sure she did not want him to know the truth. He was a great lover, but she had no notion of his ultimate nature or aims. Her Seeing did not help her in this respect; his background was a frustrating secret from her. So she played the innocent. “What is a timeline? Is it like a row of clocks? I don’t believe I have seen anything like that.”

His mouth smiled, but his eyes smiled not at all. “You are the mistress of secrets, of course, and you are keeping them well. I am sorry that you
do
not trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

Jolie was outraged. This ultimately secretive entity expected to be trusted? Sheer hubris!

“I don’t know who you are!” Kerena flared. “You have never even given me a name, let along revealed your true nature. How can I trust you?”

“Perhaps in time.” He faded out. She tried to use her Seeing to track his essence, but he was totally gone.

“The afreet is more than he seems,” Jolie said. “He knows I am adjusting the timelines to make this one conform to mine. But I don’t fathom his motive. Does he know what happens to the timelines that don’t conform?”

“I don’t know,” Kerena said. “He’s such a great lover that I have been hesitant to challenge him, but the fact that he takes Nox in stride makes me nervous. Who or what could
do
that?”

“An Incarnation,” Jolie said. “An angel. A demon. A ghost.”

“He is none of these, as far as I can tell. He’s not an afreet, either; I’m sure of that now.”

“So am I,” Jolie said.

Kerena continued to watch, and saw the woman Niobe come on the scene. Now was coming the time of the changing of Incarnations. But she remained clear of Niobe, not interfering with her at all. She had done enough of that five centuries before, via Gabriel.

In 1917 Niobe gave her baby boy into the care of her dead husband’s brother’s family and became Clotho, an Aspect of Fate. Actually the three Offices of Fate had already changed in the interim, so that aspect of Kerena’s vengeance had already been accomplished. In any event, she was no longer so keen on vengeance. For one thing, it distracted her from her main personal mission: somehow removing the taint from the lineage of her son.

Forty years later, Niobe stepped out of the Clotho role and married a mortal, Pacian Kaftan, then of middle age. Niobe was still physically 23, the age she had been when she became Fate. The following year she birthed her daughter Luna, destined to be a prominent politician. In 1980 Zane shot Death and assumed the office, becoming Thanatos, and began his association with Luna, then 22.

In 1981, after Pacian died, Niobe returned to Fate, this time as the Aspect Lachesis. She was now 46 physically, no longer a beauty, but a solidly responsible woman. She had finally had the experience she had missed before: that of raising her child.

Meanwhile Niobe’s granddaughter Orb had been active. An accomplished musician, she sought the Llano, the potent set of melodies that could be called the operating system of the cosmos. She loved Mym from the east, but his royal family broke up their affair, not knowing that she was pregnant. In due course she birthed a daughter, Orlene. Mym learned of that only after he became the Incarnation of War. By that time they each had other social interests. Orb became the Incarnation of Nature and took an interest in Parry, who remained physically a young man. When she discovered his identity as Satan, she destroyed humanity in a fit of rage. Kerena understood about that sort of thing. But Chronos, the Incarnation of Time, who lived backward in time, reversed it, saving the world. Parry had courted her for a purpose, but fell in love with her, though it was not acceptable for the Incarnations of Nature and Evil to be a couple. Nevertheless, they married. Love was love, regardless of rules or the approval of others.

Orlene grew up and entered into a key relationship: a ghost marriage to Kerena’s descendant Gawain, who had died of the curse before she met him. It would be her duty to conceive a baby of a living man, to inherit Gawain’s name and fortune. The ghost of Gawain located a man named Norton and sent him to impregnate his bride. From this affair came Gawain the nth, who became known as Gaw2. His father appealed to Gaea to change his genetic pattern to match Gawain’s, and she, not realizing the significance or the consequence, obliged. Thus Gaw2 acquired the Taint, and died as a baby.

Orlene, distraught, committed suicide, determined to follow and somehow rescue her baby. Norton, desolate, would later take the Hourglass and became the Incarnation of Time.

The turnover of the Incarnations was complete or accounted for, except for the Incarnation of Good. God. Jolie felt relief; she had guided Kerena almost to salvation for her timeline.

Then something changed.

It was the afreet who did it. He made glorious sex with her as always, then hit her with it.

“I have investigated. You have been having your timelines changed. There is a malignant ghost doing it, costing you grievously.”

“So you say,” Kerena said, determined not to let him trick her into revealing the truth.

“Her name is Jolie. She is determined to bring you to ruin.”

Jolie jumped, figuratively. How had he learned her identity?

“How
do
you know such a thing?” Kerena asked.

“I visited her home timeline and saw her cross over. She has been interfering with you for some time.”

“And you say this supposed ghost is malignant? Why?”

He smiled grimly. “Because she caused you to lose your lover, Morely. And before that, your baby, to the taint.”

Now Kerena jumped. “I don’t believe it!”

“I shall be happy to explain. She nudges your reality from one timeline into another. In the originals you suffered neither of these horrors.”

“That can’t be!”