Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,24
your beautiful bride was right,” Katrielle told him. “I believe this is Victor Maze’s doing. We’re feeling his influence. He may have been greatly weakened when he escaped Bantariax and came to the realms, but he is clearly becoming stronger. And as he gains strength, so does chaos. Arrangement loses stability, calm becomes disquiet, order becomes disorder.”
Everyone pondered that in silence.
“So you’re telling me that Maze grows stronger every time he uses his powers – because he’s using them to create chaos? That’s fair.” Thane’s anger was palpable in his words this time. Because it wasn’t actually fair at all. Normally those who used their power grew weaker the more they used it. That was the way it was supposed to work.
“That isn’t exactly what I said,” Katrielle corrected calmly. “I said that the stronger he gets, the stronger chaos in turn becomes. But I meant chaos in general, chaos out here – among us – in the world, and so forth.” She shook her head, then glanced at the window of the meeting room, which this time happened to look out over a very cold Lake Eerie. The meeting room for the sovereigns changed on a constant basis and was always warded in order to keep those inside safe.
She frowned for a moment as if noticing something they couldn’t see, then turned back to them. “I would imagine that using his powers still weakens him as of yet, and that he’s probably fueling himself some other way. At least for now.”
But Thane had a feeling that she was thinking what he was thinking – that before long, it would all just become one big loop of chaos feeding chaos. Because that was what Entropy did. That was its very nature.
“Before long, he won’t need to feed any other way,” said Damon Chroi, echoing Thane’s thoughts. “Entropy feeds itself, doesn’t it?” He glanced at his wife, who smiled knowingly. “Like dominoes.” Again – parents of triplet fae children.
She nodded. “Entropy is a building momentum of disorder. Leave one thing out of place, and everyone thinks someone else will take care of it. Pretty soon, just due to pure chance, something else gets dropped. And everyone thinks, ‘If I pick that one up, then I’ll have to pick them both up because picking just one up is stupid.’ So no one picks up either and you have two things out of place. And then two becomes four, because now everyone’s just thinking, ‘Well, it was already getting messy, so who cares about a little more mess? Besides, I’m certainly not cleaning up for everyone now!’ And then four becomes eight. And eight, sixteen. And so on, until pretty soon? You’re rebuilding the treehouse in another part of the forest because someone decided to just set the forest on fire rather than obey their mother and take on the task of tidying what was by now a very messy treehouse.”
Thane blinked. He tried very hard not to smile at the image that popped into his head. He failed. So he tried very hard not to laugh.
His wife failed on that one first, and her laughter was joined by Evie D’Angelo’s, and soon by everyone’s at the table.
“You need a nanny, dude,” said Nick, the Nightmare King.
“We had one,” said Damon resignedly. “You don’t want to know where we found her when the kids managed to convince a new mother faeline that the nanny was one of the cat’s newborn children.”
Thane’s eyes widened. Faelines were wildcats normally found in the Twixt, a realm between the fae kingdoms that was somewhat considered neutral ground. Faelines were enormous beasts, like sabretooth tigers on steroids.
“Uh… yeah, we totally do,” said Lazarus with an encouraging and rakish grin.
Diana slapped her hand over her face in more resignation and said through her fingers, “We found her in the faeline’s den, squashed between six naked mewling faeline kittens, terrified to move an inch or mutter a sound. The mom was trying to get her to suckle from her teat.”
The table exploded into laughter, this time louder than before.
“Needless to say,” interjected Damon, “she’s no longer our nanny. And… we have to pay for her to receive regular visits from her choice of healer for therapy.”
Thane’s laughter trailed off a little as the others continued to chuckle, and suddenly he was looking up and meeting Katrielle’s eyes. The Nomad looked sad.
She nodded at him, just once.
“Okay then,” said Thane softly as he straightened from the table. Everyone fell silent when