She felt herself tugged. She went where summoned and came to her residence in Purgatory. It most resembled a giant tree, but its appearance was malleable; it could be whatever she wanted. The prior Gaea had left it for her.
A young man was by the entrance. "I represent your staff," he said. "I am a lesser Incarnation; we thought it best that I handle the transition, until you are comfortable in the office. The staff consists of souls trained to serve you; they will continue to serve, or will retire in favor of replacements you may choose."
"Who are you?" she asked, surprised. "You look familiar."
"I should; I have just interacted with you. I am Eros."
"Eros! The—?"
"Incarnation of Love," he agreed.
Orb decided to set aside the implications for the moment. "You know how this office is run?"
"I know how it has been run. All decisions are yours, but we will help in whatever way you require. Perhaps you will want to interview the other lesser Incarnations who work with you, such as Phobos, Deimos, Hope—"
"In due course," Orb said. "I have one matter to settle before I get into it. Can you keep things on an even course for now?"
"If you direct, Gaea."
"Do so. I will return shortly." Orb knew she should get on into the mastery of her office, for it was important, but she simply couldn't wait to settle with Natasha.
She turned the page back to the isle. He was there. "I am Gaea," she said. "Now talk to me."
"Now there must be truth between us," he said.
"There has not been before?" she asked archly.
"There has not. I will explain. You must withhold your answer until you have heard the explanation."
"I will withhold my answer," she agreed.
"Gaea, I am asking you to marry me."
Orb relaxed. She had grown afraid he had changed his mind! But, heeding his caution, she did not answer.
"Now I must tell you that our relationship has been based on a lie. I am not the man I have represented to you. The testing of the prophecy is now upon us."
"The prophecy?" she asked blankly.
"That you might marry Evil."
"But—"
"Spell my name backwards."
Orb pieced it out. "Natasha. AHSATAN."
"And punctuate it. Ah, Satan. That is the realization of the truth. I am an Incarnation, as you are now. The Incarnation of Evil."
Appalled, Orb stared at him. Her worst horror was facing her—in the aspect of the man she loved.
Chapter 14 - FORBIDDEN SONG
"You are naturally confused," Nat said. "That is why you must hear my explanation. The attempt to void a valid prophecy can be a treacherous thing. When the Incarnations ascertained that the prophecy relating to Luna's relationship with Death and your relationship with Evil was valid, they were of course horrified. But it was not an absolute. It contained the qualifier 'may.' That meant there was doubt—and therefore room for negotiation."
"Negotiation!" Orb snorted.
"In the course of protecting Luna from My interference, your mother compromised her position on you. She promised to guide your thread away from politics, and I promised never to harm you. It was understood that this represented her acquiescence to My interest in you."
"Mother wouldn't—!"
"Of course, upon reconsideration, she regretted this, as did the other Incarnations, especially Mars, when he learned of it."
"Mars? Mym said you were a good man!"
"Not exactly. At any rate, I naturally inspected you more closely thereafter—and perceived your destiny as the Incarnation of Nature. Then My interest increased. I saw, too, that you were very like your mother, in her prior session as an Incarnation. She was the most beautiful woman of her generation, a terrible thorn in My side, but I confess to becoming somewhat smitten with her along the way."
"Niobe would never—!"
He nodded. "True, true. She would have nothing to do with Me. But when I saw how you resembled her, in appearance and mannerism, I knew I could be attracted to you as I was to her. Then it occurred to Me that a union between the Incarnations of Evil and Nature—"
"No!"
"Would give dominance of the mortal realm to Me. At last I had the opportunity to defeat Mine ancient antagonist. Therefore—"
"No! No!" Orb cried, understanding.
"Naturally the Incarnations opposed this suit. But Niobe had already compromised your thread, and there was the prophecy, whose application had suddenly clarified. Thus it was we negotiated. We set up a compromise, whereby I would be permitted to court you without interference from any other Incarnation—"
"They would never—"
"My dear, they thought I would fail. Because I agreed to court you wholly by lies, which are of course My specialty. I was required to lie to you at every turn, until the end. The end is now, and for the first time I am telling you the truth. I am Satan, the Incarnation of Evil, and I love you and want to marry you."
Orb was unable to accept this. Was Nat testing her love for him by making an impossible claim? How should she deal with this? All she could think of at the moment was to accept his statement as a starting place and explore it until the flaw was revealed.
"You say you are Satan and you lied to me throughout. But the aspects of the Llano you taught me are valid; they do work. I have been healing people, traveling in new ways—"
"I must clarify the levels of deceit I have employed. It is of course impossible to make every aspect of a situation a lie; there would be conflicts and paradoxes that would quickly render it nonsense. A lie has to be structured, internally consistent, so as to have the greatest final impact. Thus a lie is mostly truth, ironically. When the parts of a lie are verifiable as truth, it lends credence to the lie and gives it far more power than it would otherwise have. You might think of it as a mathematical analogy: negative numbers cancel each other out, but a structure of positive numbers that is then assigned a negative value is negative. Lies cancel out, while truth augments itself, but a structure of truth given a false value is the most potent lie of all."
"I think you are leaving me behind," Orb said.
"What I told you of the Llano is true. But my purpose in telling you those truths was false. By showing you spot truths, I was deceiving you in a far more fundamental fashion. For one thing, I was encouraging you to believe that I was not Satan. Thus those minor truths were contributing to the greater lie."
"But I tested you! I proved that you could not be a demon or Satan!"
"It was no valid test; it only deceived you."
"Now that I can't accept! I had you touch a silver cross, sing a hymn—"
Nat nodded. "I realize how difficult this is for you, but I must make you understand the truth now. I used a device the Incarnations had not anticipated. I took you into three extensive visions, and the visions were lies though their parts were true. Little within those visions was valid in the real world."
"You are confusing me again!" she said hotly. This was evidently some sort of game, and she liked it not at all, but she had to play it through. "What were these visions?"
"Each was associated with a song: the Song of Awakening, the Song of Power, and the Song of Love. Three of the five major themes of the Llano, the Song of Songs, if you care to call it that. I lied to you when I said I knew only fragments of the Llano; I know all of it, but I can only use fragments."
"Five themes?" Orb asked, distracted for the moment by this information. "What are the other two?"
"The Songs of Loss and Dissolution. You would call them Night and Chaos. But you would not want to sing them."
"Why not?"
"Orb, this is straying from the subject. It is my duty now to make you understand and believe the deceit I have practiced upon you, so that—"
"Teach me those songs," Orb said abruptly.
He looked flustered. "Gaea, I am trying to tell you the truth, and those themes are only mischief! I am the Lord of Mischief; I know! The the
mes of the Llano equate roughly to the five Elements, or the five Kingdoms, and as you know, some of those are dangerous. There may come an occasion when you have use for the Song of Night, but never for the Song of Chaos, and I would be deceiving you anew if I—"
"Five Elements?" Again the detail distracted her from the main thrust, as her mind sought relief from the awful truth that was encroaching on it.
"And five Kingdoms. But—"
"Animal, Vegetable, Mineral..."
"Demon and Spirit," he finished. "But the correspondence is only apparent, not substantive. Actually, every theme of the Llano aligns with every Element and Kingdom, forming the basis of the enormous power of Nature, once you learn to use it. That will take years, decades, but—"
"You say you are telling me the truth now," she said grimly. "Teach me those songs, then."
He sighed. "How hard it is for Satan to do good even by indirection! If it must be—"
"It must." Orb knew she was grasping at something irrelevant to the main issue, but her need now was to establish some basis for belief, to feel at least partly in control. To make Nat do her bidding, instead of telling her what she abhorred. "Then I will teach them to you. But I beg of you, consult with the other Incarnations before you invoke Night, and never invoke Chaos, for it is forbidden."
"Then why does it exist?"
"Because it is the ultimate weapon against Me," he said reluctantly. "When all else fails—but believe Me, the cost is too great! I love you, Gaea, and—"
"Get on with it."
He sang the Song of Night. Darkness closed about them, like the gloom of absolute negation; nothing was visible or audible, and there seemed to be no sensation of any other kind. Only when he finished did the sensations of existence return.
"But if you sang it, it would not be mere illusion," he said. "It would—"
"And the other?"
He sang the song of Chaos. This time there was no effect; it was just a melody that bore an evident affiliation with the Songs of Morning, Day, Evening, and Night, but had a broken beat that gave it an uncanny awkwardness. Orb did not like it at all, but it was certainly no horror.
"That's it?" she asked, disappointed.
"It has no power for me. Or for anyone. Only for Gaea. Each Incarnation has one weapon against which no other Incarnation can stand, not even Me, not even Mine ancient rival. The Song of Chaos is the Green Mother's weapon. But I urge you, I plead with you, I beg you, Gaea—never invoke it! You have already made a captive of Me."
"But if what you say is true, you are my ultimate enemy!" she exclaimed. "And if it is not—"
"It is true. Every experience you had in association with the learning of the first three songs was part of their visions, and so each was a lie, but this is the truth."
"But the songs worked for me when I wasn't with you! I cured Tinka's blindness, got the Sludge off H—"
"The aspects of the Llano are valid. That lent verisimilitude to the visions. Not much else was true."
Orb felt as if her head were being compressed by the pressure of unwelcome information, and her heart was slowly turning cold. Still she fought the concept. "You are saying that when I first met you, when you helped save me from Satan's forced marriage—"
"That was not Satan. It was a demon playing the role. But the vision began before that."
"Before—" Orb considered. "You can't mean—when I talked to the Incarnations? To Mother and Gaea?"
"They were demons in the semblance of Incarnations."
"But they warned me of the trap and told me how to escape it!"
"By singing a duet with Natasha," he agreed. "A script to introduce Me in a form you could accept. Then there was the vision of the dancing skeletons—"
"A vision? That?" She was appalled anew.
"From the time you woke in the storm, until the time you resumed the trip to Hawaii. There was no storm; it was all the vision."
"But Thanatos and Chronos warned me about you—"
"Demons in their semblance. The real Incarnations would never have served Me in such fashion. The tests were mock; in the vision, My rules govern. In reality, I could not have accommodated those tests."
"You were so angry at me—"
"No. I merely seemed so. The vision had accomplished its purpose."
"And when I sought you—the mixed up Llano—"
"All vision, scripted by Me. In reality, your former lover Mym is Mars, and he has consort and mistress as represented, but you encountered none of these. When I sang, I accomplished no good, for there was no evil other than that of the script."
Belief was forcing itself upon her. "All—"
"All part of the courtship," he concluded. "To cause you to fall in love with Satan, so that you would marry Me, completing the prophecy."
"I—how could the Incarnations have gone along with this?"
"As I said, it was a compromise. They thought that I could not succeed in winning you through any tissue of lies—especially since I had to tell you the truth before I married you. It was their belief that you would at this point turn violently against Me."
Orb's head seemed to be whirling. "I can't believe this!"
But she feared she could.
"I shall be glad to show you My domain. I think you will be convinced. Or you can ask any of the Incarnations."
"But—why? What do you care about the validity of an old prophecy?"
"You believe that I am lying now when I say I love you?" He seemed so earnest and was so handsome that she found herself wanting to believe.
She fought the desire off. "If you are Satan, you are made of lies! I must not believe you!"
"Then I will merely remind you of the power I stand to gain, if allied with the Incarnation of Nature. You and I together can swing the balance toward evil, and Mine antagonist will not prevail in the end. The crisis of power that Luna is to mediate will never occur; My victory will already have occurred."
"Luna! You expect me to betray her?"
"Join with Me, and I will see that no evil comes to her or any other you wish to protect."
"But Satan can not be believed!"
He held out his arm. "Scratch Me. Bind Me by blood. I will take any oath you wish. That you can believe."
She stared at him, becoming convinced. "Then you really are Satan, doing this for power?"
"For love and power, yes."
"Get away from me," she said dully.
He faded out.
For a long time she sat on the isle, staring out across the water. Slowly the sky clouded, and an unnatural stillness developed. The surface of the ocean became like glass. There was a grayness throughout.
At last she reacted. She began to sing the song of Night, and isle, sky, and ocean vibrated to the magic of it. Darkness closed, Stygian, impalpable, oppressive. As she sang, she expanded and discovered that the gloom enfolded all the globe; no one on Earth could see. Even so was the mood of her heart.
But it wasn't enough. She had suffered the loss of her love in the worst possible way, by being completely duped, and grief was not the appropriate emotion. The way those visions had been crafted so artfully to play on her innocence—"Can't you see she loves you?" demanded of Natasha by the pseudo-Mym while she protested that her affair with Mym was over, protested this to Satan!—leading her on, meddling freely with her deepest feelings! No, grief was not what was called for! Rage was the appropriate emotion! And what could she do about it?
Her being reached out and found the heart of the Llano, its most potent aspect—the Song of Chaos, the forbidden theme. Now in her fury she invoked it, starting a reaction that spread throughout the world. Her passion gave it maximum force, though she did not understand its implications.
Her shock at the revelation Satan had made was finding its expression.
Ponderous and subtle forces had been invoked; the elements of Water, Air, Fire, Earth, and Void were in motion. But the initial effects were slight. Some animation returned to the surface of
the ocean, and the sun shone down more brightly. The day was warming.
Orb was disappointed. She had vented her outrage in the most effective way she knew, and it seemed to have fallen flat. What use was it to rail at what Satan had done to her, if nothing happened?
The heat increased. Vapor rose from the water. Orb became uncomfortable on the isle, because of the humidity, so turned the page to her tree-house in Purgatory.
Eros was there, looking grim. "What's the matter?" Orb asked.
"I wish you hadn't invoked the Song of Chaos," the youth said. "There is apt to be Hell to pay."
"To Hell with Hell!" Orb exclaimed. "Satan played a hell of a trick on me; I have a right to be angry!"
"To be angry, yes; to unleash Chaos on Earth, no. This is the one process that cannot be abated."
"Good! I don't want it abated! I want a real show!"
"That is irresponsible—" he started to say, but she turned a page and was back aboard Jonah.
The tour had been finished; the others were waiting only for Orb to get settled in her office, before dispersing to their new lives. Jezebel was the first to spot her. "You're back!
“How'd it go?" Orb sighed. "I assumed the office and told Nat—but it was a disaster. He—"
Then she was crying, and Jezebel was holding her. Orb hardly cared about the anomaly of a demoness comforting the Incarnation of Nature; she simply needed support.
When she lifted her head, the others were there. Brokenly, she told them: "Natasha—is Satan. All his proofs of mortality were false. He wants me to join him in evil."
"But he touched my cross!" Betsy protested.
"It was a vision. He didn't really touch your cross; we all dreamed it happened."
"But I don't dream!" Jezebel said.
Suddenly something clicked. "It was a dream—the skeletons and touching the cross and singing the hymn and everything!" Orb exclaimed. "And Jezebel doesn't dream! No wonder she didn't remember it! If only we had taken the warning!"
"You mean—she wasn't really there?"
"Of course I wasn't there!" Jezebel said. "Since then I've picked up what you're talking about; all of you had an experience I didn't. But I never thought of Satan—I mean, that he could have arranged it. I let you down!"