In a tiny fraction of a second, it had looped back to its entry point, the beginning of the ash trail. Around it went again, this time consuming the ash and leaving a circle of bright green grass in its wake. On the third and final time around the circle, it caused the grass to perform a full summer's growth. With that, the chaos dissipated, leaving behind a thigh-high circle of emerald grass. I had built me a faerie ring.
"Party time," I said to Melchior. He'd hidden on the other side of the stone pier while I worked, but he stuck his head around the corner and peered at the results.
"Joy," he said after a moment. "Nothing would make me happier than to jump into that wonderful little hole you've created in the order of the universe." Despite his tone, he came to stand beside me.
"I'm glad to hear it, Mel. Because that's just what we're going to do."
"My, but this is a bad idea," he said. "Have I mentioned that?"
"Many times, Mel. More than I would care to count."
"Then I'll only do it the once more, and anything that happens after that is your fault."
"I grow tired of insolence, Melchior." It wasn't that so much as the fact that he was probably right that I found annoying. But I couldn't very well admit it.
"Sorry, my lord and master. But as your familiar, it is my humble duty to advise you about things magical. So… First, this may be an imperfect circle. In which case we could end up anywhere. Second, there may not be an appropriate receiving circle close enough to Cerice. In which case we could end up anywhere. Third, even in ideal conditions, these things can misfire."
"In which case we could end up anywhere. I know, Mel. I know." I shrugged. "But I'm fresh out of time and ideas." I opened the mouth of the bag for him.
"As you wish," he said, bowing his head in surrender.
In all honesty, I wasn't much more enthused by the idea than Melchior. I'm a thoroughly modern sorcerer, a code-warrior, a programmer. I'm not a classical magician. I hate the old ways. They're painful, inefficient, and hideously dangerous. There's a reason so many sorcerers in old stories meet untimely ends. In the great mystical feeding chain, classical sorcerers fall roughly in the category of hors d'oeu-vre. Even using the methods developed by the Fates isn't a guarantee of safety. More than one member of my extended family has been eaten by a glitch when they didn't check their code closely enough. Doing it the old way is just begging to end up on the cosmic lunch tray. Unfortunately, it was the only thing I could think of that might work in the time I had. So I lifted Mel's bag onto my shoulder and stepped into the circle.
Chapter Seven
Intense, stabbing cold filled my universe. It made the fifteen-degree chill of the snowstorm I'd left feel like an hour in the sauna. Involuntarily, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was elsewhere. I had the briefest impression of orange sun-baked cliffs and a low ring of cacti, like a donut that had been dropped in ajar full of stickpins. I smelled piñon and sage. Then the cold took me again. This time I was in a brown-and-green swamp redolent with the stink of rotting vegetation. The faerie ring was formed by a snake, its own tail between its teeth, swimming a slow circle around a tiny island. The cold came again. Things began to get really weird.
It was like one of those college parties that's died of inertia around 3:00 a.m. The sensible people have gone home. Everyone who's going to get lucky has, and they've left too. The drinkers are passed out in the corners. The remaining partygoers are collapsed in front of the TV while someone who's into hallucinogens and channel-surfing uses the remote to set a new world speed record. A thousand settings flickered across in front of my eyes too quickly for me to take them in. Each transition was punctuated by a brief blast of arctic cold. And it all seemed to be getting faster.
I felt my brain growing numb as I was repeatedly clubbed by sensory input. It became difficult to hold my destination in my mind's eye. That was the danger. It would be terribly easy to give up my sense of self and let the rings carry me where they would. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure that if I let go of myself, I'd never see me again. Powerful magic was involved, and I had no reason to expect that my physical and mental selves would have to arrive at the same place.
I started thinking about taking a break, stepping out into the next world that looked even remotely inviting. But that wasn't a good idea either. Looking inviting and being habitable are not necessarily related. That's when I saw the tiny door in the base of the tree. It was only a flash, then it was gone, but I recognized it. Mentally, I wrenched the process around and went back. It was very like channel-surfing. I kept going up and down the line, slowly narrowing in on the right program.
I stood in a perfect circle of dead grass. On my right was the fountain that lay just in front of the Harvard student union. Behind me was the yard. Directly in front was a grand old oak tree with a tiny door between two roots. The door was dark green and no more than three inches high. I remembered it from a visit I'd made while I was just a few miles away at MIT, back when I'd been on my grandmother's good side and still living in one the primary threads of reality. It was probably around 1:00 a.m., but the area was still heavily populated.
I staggered out of the circle before it carried me away again. Then I dropped to my knees and threw up. Around me, people did what they always do when someone appears magically in their midst. They assumed they had been looking away at the critical moment and ignored me, pretending nothing had happened. Throwing up helped the process along enormously. Pretending you don't see someone becoming violently ill around bar rush is an ingrained survival skill on most college campuses.
When I was done being sick, I slid my athame from an inner pocket and surreptitiously pricked the ball of my thumb. Then I flicked a bit of the blood into the center of the circle, sealing it. Before I came through, it was probably just a proto-ring, not a gate at all. But now it was as much an invitation to disaster as an open manhole cover with a bit of newspaper covering it. My blood would hold it shut for a night and a day, then it would be open for business. I'd have to arrange to destroy it before then.
I put the athame away and dragged myself into a standing position. If I was remembering things properly from my previous visit to campus, there were internet-ready computers and hookups in the union. The architecture was typical seventies Ivy League. Lots of open space and preformed concrete. A twisted loop of stainless steel entitled Infinity sat just inside the doors. It must have been art, because I couldn't think of anything else that would look like that, except possibly a locus transfer gone terribly wrong. I paused long enough to get a soda out of a nearby machine and slam it, washing away the taste of vomit, then dropped onto a chair. When I reached into my bag, Mel bit me.
"Ow!"
"Serves you right," said a sullen voice.
"What did I do?" I asked.
"Do you want the whole list, or just the most recent and relevant bits?"
I couldn't stop myself. I chuckled. He sounded so aggrieved, and I couldn't help but think of the image I must be projecting for anyone who cared to watch. Since my arrival, I had thrown up, stabbed myself in the thumb, staggered into the union, and here I was talking to my shoulder bag.
"Why don't you just hit the highlights, Mel."
"Well, most immediately, you just stuck a finger in my eye, and another in my mouth. That'd justify biting you all by itself. But you also carried me through that Powers-damned faerie ring in goblin shape, instead of as a laptop. Which means I had a stomach for the whole trip. I won't be forgiving you for that anytime soon."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know what it was going to be like."
"What do you mean?" asked Mel, his voice deceptively calm.
"I've never actually used a faerie ring before. I know the theory, of course, but it never seemed like a good idea to test it."
"Are you bleeding much?" asked Mel.
I checked. "Yeah. You got me pretty good."
"Well, that's something at least."
"Thanks, Mel. I'd love to continue this
conversation, but I need to hook up. Melchior, Laptop. Execute."
The shoulder bag writhed around in my lap. When it stopped moving, I pulled out my laptop and hooked into the local WiFi net. A quick search verified that Cerice was listed as a graduate research assistant in Comp-Sci. Cracking the Payroll Department to find her address took a bit longer, but not much.
Predictably, the doors to the graduate dorms were locked. If I'd dared, I'd have run Open Sesame, but we'd have had to tap into the mweb to do it, and I didn't want my signature showing up in any DecLocus other than my own. I'd have to get in the hard way. Fortunately, I'd been able to pry a building schematic out of the campus computers.
The dorm was three stories tall and shaped like a brick. I went around to where a rusty fire escape climbed the end wall like an iron version of the ivy that was everywhere. When I was sure no one was looking, I took a deep breath and leaped up to catch the ledge of the lowest landing. I could've tried for the ladder, but I figured pulling it down would make enough noise to wake my grandmother, several dimensions and half a world away. Besides, the lower landing was only about fifteen feet off the ground, comfortably within my reach.
As quietly as I could, I headed for the third floor. If I'd read the plans right, Cerice's room was at the corner, and the nearer of her windows was only about eight feet from the top of the fire escape. Climbing cautiously onto the broad ledge that encircled the building at window height, I discovered that my motorcycle boots tended to slip around a bit, making scratching noises that reminded me of just how much I didn't want to fall backwards off a three-story building.
As I slid into place outside Cerice's window, I noticed a ghostlike red dot on the glass. The hand that had been about to knock froze. I slowly and carefully lifted my arms away from my body with my palms open and facing the window. A quick glance downward confirmed my suspicion that there was another red dot, this one considerably brighter, on my chest just above the heart. A laser sight.
"Cerice, it's Ravirn," I whispered, frantically trying to remember what sort of gun she used. The Kevlar in my jacket would stop most bullets, but it wouldn't take much to knock me off that ledge, and Cerice might be using armor-piercing rounds. "Don't shoot."
When Cerice didn't pop me immediately, I decided it was probably all right to breathe. A couple seconds went by and the window swung inward. At no time did the red dot move from its place over my heart.
"Come," she said. I slowly stepped through the opening and onto a desk, keeping my hands firmly in the air. "What in Hades's name do you think you're doing?"
"Would you believe me if I told you I wanted to restage the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet!"
"It's you all right." The red dot winked out, but she didn't put the pistol down. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I also noticed what she was wearing. A frown and nothing more.
"I'm here because I need to talk to you." Certain portions of my anatomy were making other suggestions. I ignored them as best I could.
"Oh," she replied. "Really? I'm not sure we have anything to talk about." Her voice had icicles in it. You could almost hear the little syllables freezing as they left her lips, then dropping to shatter on the floor.
"Please, Cerice. There are things I need to tell you." I paused and swallowed. "But first, I have a favor to ask."
"A favor?" The ice was gone, replaced by a blowtorch. "You send me a note after Garbage Faerie. A note in which you tell me you want to spend more time with me and that you want this to be more than a fling. Then nothing, for weeks. Now you show up here and try to break into my room, and you want a favor?"
"Cerice, I owe you several apologies, a couple of explanations, and my life among other things. If I could do this without the favor, I would, but I just don't think I can."
"So what is it?" she snarled.
"Would you please, please, put some clothes on. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever known, and I could stare at you for hours. But right at the moment I have things I want to tell you, and every time I look at you my brain freezes up, and I start drooling."
"I…" She paused. "I should probably just shoot you and get it over with." She set the gun down. "But I won't. All right. Turn around."
Part of me wanted to protest that since she was already naked, there wasn't much point in my looking away while she got dressed, but the admittedly small part of my brain devoted to self-preservation overrode my mouth. So I spent what felt like hours staring at the iron plate welded over what had once been a fireplace.
"All right," said Cerice after a while. "Against my better judgment I'm going to give you a chance to state your case before I throw you out." When I turned back, she was wearing a heavy skirt of red wool and a yellow-gold T-shirt. She looked fabulous.
"First," I said. "I'm very, very sorry I haven't gotten in touch. It's inexcusable."
"We agree on that at least."
"But I had no choice."
"No choice? No choice?" Her voice was rising again. "You had no choice? What kind of crap is this?"
"I've been cut off from the mweb. Lachesis revoked my access. I can't send anything between DecLoci. There was literally no way for me to get a message to you."
"Can you honestly stand here and expect me to believe that? Do you think I'm an idiot, Ravirn? If you can't use the mweb, how the hell did you get here?"
"I built a faerie ring."
"You—" She stopped, her mouth open. "That's insane. Faerie rings are chaos magic. Do you know how dangerous that is?" She shook her head abruptly. "No. I don't believe you. Even you aren't that crazy."
"I can take you to the terminus on this end," I said quickly. "It let me out by the student union. I sealed it to keep it from swallowing up innocent bystanders. Would that be proof enough?" She nodded. "Show me."
* * * *
"All right," she said after examining the ring. A wry smile touched her lips. "I believe you're a maniac, and about the mweb access. Next question. Why did she cut you off?"
So I told her about the nocturnal visit I'd received from my grandmother and about Saint Turing's. As we talked we walked, heading slowly across the campus. It seemed to be earlier in the season here, more late fall than early winter. The dead leaves crackled underfoot. We'd just reached the steps of the main library when I finished my account.
"But that's less than half the story," I said, turning onto the stairs. "And I owe you the whole thing."
I stopped. From here on out, everything I said was going to be filtered through Atropos's curse. I wanted to scream. Instead, I turned to the concrete wall that ran beside the stairs and smacked my forehead against it. Cerice looked at me curiously, but didn't say a word. Instead, she continued upward and took a seat on the top step. I sat down a few feet away. It was a good place to talk, well above the general level of the campus, where no one could sneak up on us. The silence stretched out, and the expression on Cerice's face began to darken.
"Well?" she said after several minutes.
"I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to go about this." I pressed the palm of my left hand against my forehead and squeezed.
"Begin at the beginning," said Cerice, as though she were speaking to a child. "Pass through the middle, and wrap up with the end."
"That's not the problem," I replied.
"What is the problem?"
"You aren't going to believe a word I say."
"You sound awfully certain," she said, some of the anger returning to her tone. "Is that because you don't trust me to judge what you say honestly? Or because you aren't planning on being honest?"
"Actually, it's neither." There was no good way to go about this. I was going to tell her everything, she wasn't going to believe me, and our budding relationship would come apart like a hard drive when the head touches the disk. "Look," I said finally. "For reasons I can't explain beforehand, I know you're going to find this unbelievable. The only thing I can do is ask you to listen to the whole thing before you make any judgments. Will you do that for
me?"
"I suppose," she said, leaning back on her hands. "Though I can't think of a good reason why."
"Thank you. I wasn't hacking Atropos.web just for the challenge on the night I crashed the mweb." My lips tingled, but only slightly, and Cerice nodded as though she'd been expecting that. "I was looking for a memory crystal. Atropos is trying to shift the balance between Fate and free will." The numbness increased dramatically, and I heard my voice go uncertain and shifty. Damn, damn, and double damn, I thought.
"That's more or less her job description," said Cerice. I was losing her.
"I told you that you wouldn't believe me. Please, just listen for a while."
"All right." She agreed, but her expression hardened.
"This is a little more drastic than usual. She wants to eliminate chance and choice completely. What's more, I think she can do it if her spell works." I hopped to my feet and began to pace. The tension was simply too great for me to hold still.
I told her everything that had happened since Atropos had approached me about Puppeteer. Every word came out sounding like the desperate slitherings of a pathological liar, and my mouth went so numb I lost all track of my tongue. By the end I'd bitten it pretty badly at least twice. I couldn't feel it, but I could taste the blood in the back of my throat. I studied Cerice's face, trying to gauge her reaction. Her brow was wrinkled in an intense frown of concentration. It wasn't the expression I wanted, but it was better than I'd expected.
"You don't believe me," I said. A statement rather than a question.
"No," she replied, and it felt as though someone had hit me in the stomach. "But I know you're telling the truth. It's an amazing feeling. The emotional half of my brain is sure you're the biggest liar since Hades told Persephone the pomegranates were delicious and completely harmless. But at the same time, the thinking half knows you're telling the truth."
"What?" She was supposed to be calling me nasty names and walking out of my life. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to happen, but I'd been bracing for it so hard that her actual response left me severely off-balance. I stopped pacing to face her. "How do you know?"
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