Codespell (WebMage Book 3), page 29
“Hello, my old enemy,” said Nemesis, her voice too loud, “my old master—my thousand-times-damned mother. How does it feel? Alone and defenseless? Voiceless even? Knowing that I am wholly without mercy? It hurts you, doesn’t it? It certainly hurt me when you threw me in the pit.”
I was still trying to make sense of that, of the idea that the Furies were not just the successors to Nemesis but her sisters as well, when the spinnerette arrived, leaping at her over the top of the row of servers. Nemesis spun on her left heel, whipping her right foot around in a kick that connected brutally with the side of its head. There was a horrible crack, and it dropped and went forever still, its neck bent at an impossible angle.
“Pathetic,” said Nemesis as she turned back to the console. “Is that really the best you can do, Mother? Throw a toy at me? And one stolen from Fate, no less? How far you have fallen. It will be almost a mercy to put you out of my misery.”
I looked away, trying to find Tisiphone with my eyes. Nothing. The only Fury I could see was Megaera, and she had not moved. I had to do something. Had to stop Nemesis from destroying Necessity and possibly the universe with her. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I knew where I had to start. Moving as gingerly as possible, I lifted my right leg and braced my boot against the wall. Then, catching the grip of the sword in my left hand, I yanked with my whole body.
Black lightning and agony. The blood-slippery sword came free of my hand and slid through my arm until the hilt struck my flesh and brought it to a sudden, breathtaking stop. I convulsed with pain but somehow managed to get my other foot up on the wall, putting the whole of my strength into straining against the trap that held me. The sword grated free of the wall, and I fell.
I lost a couple of seconds when the end of the blade dragged along the floor, though I didn’t quite pass out. I spent a few more seconds on throwing up, then forced myself back to my feet. Ten staggering steps brought me up behind Nemesis. She was still talking to the computer, though I couldn’t seem to make sense of the words, and still whistling away. As was Melchior in a sort of magical stalemate.
Whether she hadn’t heard my approach over the alarm and her own gloating, or whether she just didn’t consider me enough of a threat to bother with, I don’t know. For whatever reason, she didn’t so much as turn an eye in my direction.
I paused for a moment, looking for some weapon to use on her. There was nothing. Nothing except the blade still sticking through my arm. I wanted to cry then, or simply walk away. I couldn’t. I had a job to do.
I braced the sword’s grip with my left hand and sort of lurched into her point first, aiming for the heart. The blade slid home well enough, but I didn’t have sufficient control to stop there. Together we toppled into the computer, driving the sword into the front panel.
As its point punched through the plastic casing and grated across the electrical connections beyond, I felt a touch of that same giddy sense of dislocation that came when I drove the athame home in my palm. The sword, lodged deep in my flesh, acted as a magical conduit, connecting me to the computer that was Necessity. Information flooded into my brain so fast that I felt as if it might burst. Images, thoughts, emotions. It was far too much for me to process or even hold on to, save only one thing. One thing that lay at the heart of the current conflict.
Pain.
The pain of a mother driven to the ultimate conflict with her firstborn daughter by the necessity of being Necessity. A pain that had prevented her from striking the killing blow she knew she should have. Pain at knowing that she had earned the hatred of a daughter who, driven by her own nature and role, must forever after become her mother’s ultimate Nemesis.
I was still trying to cope with that idea when the universe seemed to split in two, just as it had when I’d tried to jack in earlier. Again I found myself straddling the divide. In response, my nonexistent feathers decided to stand on tippy-toe and do their impression of the Bolshoi Ballet performing Swan Lake. In one universe, I fell through the connection into the heart of Necessity and was lost forever in that wild flood of information. In the other, I grabbed hold of the naked blade where it stood out from Nemesis’s back, intentionally slicing my hand open to expose . . . chaos?
In that instant, I understood the mystery of the two universes. It was the point of maximum uncertainty, and I had only one hope. I caught the blade, squeezed, and slid my hand along the edge. The blade, made of Fury-stuff and activated by my willing connection, exposed the chaos within me. The Raven’s shadow seemed to fill the room, bigger and darker than it had ever been before, as though the night sky had taken bird shape.
I was the Raven, a power of chaos, and what was chaos but the stuff of uncertainty itself? The blade Necessity had sent me was a key of sorts, a codespell in physical shape that allowed me to touch the power of Necessity, to play system administrator with the universe. For that brief moment I became the point of maximum uncertainty, the place where DecLoci were split one from the other, the bridge between order and chaos.
Reaching through the sword, I took control of the system and started making decisions. In one universe, Nemesis moved quickly enough to pull us free of the computer, and I died. In the next, I acted more quickly, twisting the point deeper into the system and creating a massive magical short, a surge of chaos so great that it fried the heart of Nemesis, bursting her body asunder and leaving her soul naked and unhoused. With no host prepared, she was powerless to prevent me sending her back to Tartarus and bondage.
I used my brief stint as administrator to choose the latter universe, and Dairn’s body came apart in an explosion of silvery lightning that banished its occupant. Instantly, a second split appeared in my mind. In one fork, the surge that destroyed Nemesis took me as well. In the other, Tisiphone, who had been sneaking up from behind, caught the blade between Nemesis and me, grounding the magical charge and frying the entire row of servers touched by her trailing wings. Again, I took the second path. Tisiphone screamed.
Even as the shorting switch console died, and the power faded away, I had a final choice. Allow the surge to stop her heart or take the last of the feedback into my own body and me into a long darkness, walking just this side of the border between life and death.
Lights out.
EPILOGUE
The lanai of Raven House is a beautiful place to eat and watch the sun go down, especially in company.
“Lovely,” said the redhead sitting across the table from me.
I nodded, but didn’t respond aloud. I was having a bad week. For starters, I was having dinner with the wrong redhead. Don’t mistake me, the more I see of Thalia, the more I like her, but I’d really been hoping for a very different evening with a very different titian-haired goddess.
“Such a frown,” said Thalia. “Someone might think the world had ended rather than that you had saved it.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I guess I’m just not in a smiling mood.”
“And why, pray tell, is that?”
She knew very well what was bothering me. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she just smiled.
“You can be a silly boy sometimes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re all bent out of shape because your new lover is angry and not talking to you, right?”
“Why is that silly?” I asked.
This time she laughed out loud. “She’s a Fury, oh, Raven.”
“And?”
“Furious? Being angry with a goddess of anger because she’s angry with you doesn’t strike you as the least bit silly?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“What other way is there to put it?” she asked. “Tisiphone is angry. It is her job to be angry. If you’re going to have any kind of relationship, you’re going to have to learn to live with the occasional round of the grouchies.”
“But I didn’t deserve this one.”
“That’s my cue,” said Thalia.
“For what?”
“Either my exit or extreme measures.” She snapped her fingers, and a heavy chocolate silk pie appeared in her open hand. “Which would you prefer? Whine again, and I’ll make the choice for you.”
I grinned at the absurdity of it. How many people have been threatened by a goddess wielding a pie? “You’re right, I sounded all of eleven years old there, and it’s not the first time this week. I guess I’ve earned the pie.” I braced myself for impact.
“Better,” she said, setting the pie on the table instead of hitting me with it, much to my surprise. “Your sense of humor is restored, and that means it’s time for me to go.” She stood and turned toward the faerie ring.
“What about the pie?” I asked, as she started walking away.
“You could always hit yourself with it, but I’d recommend you eat it.” She stepped into the ring and winked. “Humbly.” And she was gone.
The pie was delicious.
The sun set but I didn’t move. Haemun brought me a mojito, and I sipped it in the dark. Thalia was right, but that didn’t change the fact that I missed Tisiphone.
“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” said Melchior from the depths of the porch. “She did let you stay long enough to put together a kludge for the subroutines for Tartarus and its inhabitants and to fix the ELF.”
“Only because Alecto and Megaera insisted,” I replied. “Doesn’t it bother you that she’s the one who actually threw us out at the end, Melchior? Not Alecto. Not even Megaera. Tisiphone.”
“Not really, but then, I’m not dating her, so I’ve got a bit more perspective. She feels guilty.” He emerged onto the lanai with Shara trailing behind him—they’d made themselves scarce during Thalia’s visit, though from the mussed look about them, they’d probably been looking for some private time, anyway. I raised an eyebrow, and Melchior flushed indigo, but continued, “The battle did an awful lot of damage to Necessity, and Tisiphone is the one who brought you in, and in her eyes, the one responsible for all the harm done to her mother.”
“And the one who loves you,” interjected Shara, “at least a little, and that makes her doubt her judgment where you’re concerned.”
With the official end of winter, Necessity had spat Shara back out into the real world. That was two weeks ago now, and she’d been visiting with Cerice’s grudging approval. A thought that made me feel doubly girlfriendless. I looked at the pie and grinned. Still enough to hit myself with if I got too far down pity-party lane.
Maybe my current time alone was for the better. I still had a lot to learn about all this Raven stuff. Witness how I had been able to wield the power of Necessity, if only for an instant and with her consent. What that meant I hadn’t begun to understand.
“Tisiphone will come back,” said Melchior, his voice laced with both sympathy and sarcasm. “You’re irresistible. ”
“I don’t think Cerice would agree with that,” said Shara. Then she winked at me. “But he might be right.”
Haemun arrived with more drinks then: another mojito, Drambuie for Melchior, and something with rum and a little umbrella for Shara.
Melchior raised his glass. “Absent friends.”
Shara nodded. “Ahllan.”
“Ahllan,” I said, and drank. She had been the subject of much conversation over the time Shara had been visiting. “Speaking of which, tell me again what you found out about her disappearance while you were running the show for Necessity. It didn’t make much sense the first time through.”
“All right, but it’ll take a while.”
Much, much later, I crawled off to bed. When winter came again and Shara returned to Necessity, we would have to see what we could do about Ahllan. The troll vanishes and is never seen again was not a satisfactory result. I glanced over at the rack where my new sword cane, Occam, rested beneath the nameplate Melchior had insisted on. I had a feeling it might come in handy on that trip.
Finally, I shut off the lamp and settled back into bed, only then noticing that Haemun had been through and tidied the room. On my bedside table lay the slightly creased card that had started it all. By the light of my eyes, I reread it for the umpteenth time.
Zeus wants you!
KELLY MCCULLOUGH has sold short fiction to publications including Weird Tales, Absolute Magnitude, and Cosmic SF. An illustrated collection of Kelly’s short science fiction, called Chronicles of the Wandering Star, is part of InterActions in Physical Science, an NSF-funded middle school science curriculum. He lives in western Wisconsin. Visit his website at www.kellymccullough.com.
Kelly Mccullough, Codespell (WebMage Book 3)
