The old Canaanite deities, despite their glossy black wavy hair, hooked noses, prominent eyes, and bold features, despite their swarthy skin and huge hands and feet, were timid deities. When Azzie told them he was angry, and ready to call down a lot of trouble on their heads, both were willing to desist.

"We can stop the wind," said Baal-Hadad, "but the rain isn't up to us. We have nothing to do with it. All we send out of here is pure wind."

"Do you know who's sending the rain?" Azzie asked.

They both shrugged.

"Then it'll wait," Azzie said. "I have to get back. It's about time for the ceremony."

Chapter 9.

Aretino made sure all was in readiness at the inn. Then he went up to Azzie's room.

Azzie wore a green dressing gown with golden dragons embroidered over it. He was seated at a table and bent over a parchment, a quill pen in his hand. He did not even look up. "Come in," he said.

Aretino entered. "Not dressed yet? My dear lord demon, the ceremony is soon to begin."

"Plenty of time," Azzie said. "I'm a bit winded, and my outfit is all laid out in the other room. Come help me, Aretino. I have to decide who to award prizes to. First, is everyone present?"

"They're all here," Aretino said, and poured himself a gla.s.s of wine. He was feeling very good. This play was going to send his already great reputation sky-high. He would be more famous than Dante, better known than Virgil, maybe even surpa.s.s Homer. It was the high moment of his life, and he suspected no trouble when there came a knock at the door.

It was an imp messenger from Ananke. "She wants you," the messenger said. "And she's mad."

The Palace of Justice, where Ananke held sway, was a Brobdingnagian place sculpted from blocks of stone larger than entire pyramids on Earth. Despite its size, the Palace was built with cla.s.sic proportions observed entirely throughout. The columns in front were thicker than a gaggle of elephants. The grounds were beautifully landscaped, too. On the well-trimmed lawn, sitting on a red-checked blanket near a white gazebo, with a tea service spread out around her, was Ananke.

This time there was no question what she looked like. It is known that Ananke can take many forms. One of those forms, the Indescribable, is the one she takes when she wants to discourage flatterers. It is a mode of being that literally resists description. The most one can say is that Ananke looked nothing like a steam shovel. She had chosen this mode of appearance for the occasion.

As soon as Azzie was in her presence, Ananke said to him, "Too much with the magic horses already!"

"What do you mean?" Azzie said.

"You were warned, boychick," Ananke said. "Magic is not a panacea for all that ails your ambition. You can't use magic to solve everything. It is against the nature of things to a.s.sume that matters can go in any but their customary ways whenever you please to ask them to."

"I've never seen you in a state like this," Azzie said.

"You'd be mad, too, if you saw the entire cosmos threatened."

"But how did that happen?" Azzie asked.

"It was the magic horses," Ananke said. "Magic candlesticks were all right, but when you invoked magic horses, too, you simply stretched the fabric of credulity too far."

"What do you mean, the fabric of credulity?" Azzie asked. "I've never heard you talk like this."

"Tell him, Otto," Ananke said.

Otto, a spirit who for reasons known best to himself wears the disguise of a fat middle-aged German with a heavy white mustache and thick gla.s.ses, stepped out from behind a tree.

"Do you think the universe can stand an endless amount of tampering?" he asked. "You've been playing with the meta-machinery, whether you know it or not. You've been throwing a spanner in the works."

"He doesn't seem to understand," Ananke said.

"Is something going wrong?" Azzie asked.

"Jo, something's going wrong with the very nature of things," Otto said.

"The nature of things? Surely it's not as bad as all that?"

"You heard me. The structure of the universe has become deranged, due in no small measure to you and your magic horses. I know what I'm talking about. I've been servicing this universe since time out of mind."

"I never heard of a maintenance man for the universe," Azzie said.

"Stands to reason, don't it? If you're going to have a universe at all, you need someone to take care of it, and that can't be the one who runs it. She has a lot of other stuff to do, and maintenance is a specialty in itself and doesn't need to be connected with anything else. You did bring in those magic horses, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did," Azzie said, "but what of it, what's wrong with magic horses?"

"You used too many of them, that's what's wrong. Do you really expect you can clutter up the landscape with all the magic horses you want to use? All to provide easy explanations for stuff you're too lazy to work out beforehand? No, my fine young demon, you've gone and messed up this time. This d.a.m.ned universe is changing under our eyes, after all my years of holding it together, and there's nothing you or Ananke or me or anyone else can do about it. You've loosed the lightning of His terrible swift sword, if you take my meaning, and now there's going to be h.e.l.l to pay in the Badlands. You've toyed with reality one time too often."

"What does this have to do with reality?" Azzie asked.

"Listen up good now, my fine young demon. Reality is a sphere of solid matter made up of various substances lying in strata. Where one stratum abuts another, there, we can say, is a potential fault line, just as it is in the Earth. Anomalies are the things that explode shock waves along these interfaces. Your illicit use of the magic horses was one such anomaly bomb. But other anomalous things have been happening, too. The fact that the old G.o.ds have escaped is an event so impossible that its occurrence has shaken the universe.

"It is poor Venice that is bearing the brunt of this cosmic disaster that you have perpetrated. The city has had the bad luck to be the focus of events, and your work has subjected it to a reality strain. The floods, the Mongol invasion, and the plague soon to follow, are not at all part of the main line of Venetian history. They weren't really supposed to happen at all. They are side possibilities, with vanishingly small chances of being activated in the normal run of things. But due to you they have been activated, and so all of recorded history from this time forward lies under threat of destruction."

"How can time forward be threatened?" Azzie asked.

"You must think of the future as something that has already happened, and that is threatening to happen again, wiping out all that has gone before. That is what we must avoid at all costs."

"A lot of stuff is going to come down," Ananke said. "But first, you must get these pilgrims of yours back to their homes."

Azzie had to be content with that. But at the back of his mind, there began a small stirring beneath the sea of anxiety. Ananke said he wasn't acting according to reality. But what was reality but the balance, the agreement, between Good and Bad? If he could get Michael to change that agreement, to their mutual benefit... But first he had to look in on his pilgrims.

PART TEN.

Chapter 1.

When Azzie left the Palace of Justice his tail was between his legs and a suspicious wetness was in the corners of his brown eyes. He was trying to get used to the idea that his play, his great immorality play that was going to astonish the worlds, was never going to happen. The legend, the all-important legend of the golden candlesticks, was not to be allowed to play to its ending. He was under direct and unambiguous orders from Ananke Herself to stop his actors in midscene.

There had to be a way around her order. Moodily he went to a Power Booth outside the Palace of Justice and refilled his travel spell. At a nearby lunch area he found a stall that specialized in quick convenience foods for demons, where he bought a sack of deviled cats' heads in a nice clotted red sauce. It would give him something to snack on on his way back to Earth. Then he activated his spell and found himself hurtling through the transparent veils that spiritual s.p.a.ce seems composed of.

As he flew, he munched on the cats' heads and thought furiously. Despite his utmost efforts at transcendental casuistry, he could find no way to get around Ananke's command without her finding out sooner or later and coming down hard on him. And it wasn't just Ananke that he had to fear. There was also the fact that he had upset the balance of the cosmos by his overuse of magic horses. Were he to persist, it might all fall apart, the whole shooting match, everything, all of creation, engulfed in the pure white flame of self-contradiction. If that happened, the cosmos itself might collapse. At the very least, the laws of reason would be overturned.

Soon he was back over Venice, and the sight of the city from the air was a sad one. Rising waters had already engulfed some of the low-lying outer islands. The winds had fallen off, but floodwaters had risen to engulf the San Marco's Square to a depth of ten feet. The older and less secure buildings were already collapsing as the brackish tidal waters washed out the old mortar that held their bricks and stones together.

Azzie came down at Aretino's house and found the poet outside in his shirtsleeves, trying to sh.o.r.e up his house with sandbags. It was a task useless on the face of it, and Aretino put down his tools and sadly followed Azzie indoors.

They found a dry room on the second floor. Wasting no time, Azzie said, "Where are the pilgrims now?"