WebMage

by Kelly McCullough

  So, if I was really that enthusiastic, why did I sound like I did when I said something affected by the Cassandra curse? Not that it mattered. I was going to die soon anyway. I couldn't see any way around it. At least this would let me go down trying to accomplish something.

  "Let's get Melchior fixed," said Cerice. "And speed you on your way. 'If it were done… then 'twere well it were done quickly.'"

  "Ah, MacBeth," I said. "Do you think my chances so slim, Cerice?" The look in her eyes was all the answer I needed. She was already mourning me. "I'm sorry it's come to this. You will try to do something about Puppeteer if I die without fixing the problem, won't you?"

  "If this tangle of Atropos's kills you, Ravirn, I'll see she regrets it as she's never regretted anything before." She grinned. "If anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me for all the misery you've put me through in these last few months."

  "Well then," I said. "I'd better live through the next couple of days." I bowed deeply. "If it is my lady's will to put an end to me personally, it would be most churlish of me to deny her the honor. Shall we begin the funeral arrangements?" I put her hand on my arm and stepped to the place where Ahllan waited.

  "Why not?" she asked. "Shara, would you do answering-machine duty? We don't know when Kalkin will call, and he may not have much time to talk."

  "Of course," she replied, with a sigh. "Nothing makes a girl happier than waiting by the phone."

  It didn't take much over an hour to whip up a really potent insecticide and pump it into Melchior's system. Once Mel was fully disconnected from Ahllan, I laid him carefully on my lap and hit his programmer's switch.

  There was a gentle chime, followed by the sound of his processor cycling. If everything went right, he'd be online in a matter of minutes. Time seemed to distend, stretching grotesquely like the belly of snake after a big meal. I found myself holding my breath. Finally, there was a gentle stirring in my lap.

  "Hi, Boss. How long was I out? What'd I miss? Have you managed to destroy the world without me?" His voice was scratchy and sarcastic, just this side of being offensive. In a word, normal. I crushed him to my chest.

  "I've missed you," I said, and realized I was crying.

  "I wish I could say the same," he growled, "but I've just come back from a place where there's no time in which to miss anyone. No time at all, in fact." His tone was bantering, but there was an underlying tension, and his little arms stole around ray neck in a quick hug. "Thanks for bringing me home."

  "I owe you my life, Mel. Several times over. It's the very least I could do."

  I held him for a few more seconds before letting him go. Once he was loose, he slid to the floor and looked around.

  "Welcome back," said Cerice.

  "Yes," agreed Ahllan.

  Shara walked over and planted a very firm kiss on Mel's lips, and said, "Nice to see you up again, stud."

  "Looks like the gang's all here," he said, sounding distracted.

  It was kind of fun to watch him looking from Ahllan to Shara and back, fishing for clues while trying to look nonchalant.

  "It's OK," I said. "I know the whole story."

  "That's a relief," he replied, but his body stayed tight and coiled until Ahllan nodded. Then he relaxed visibly, sliding down to sit cross-legged on the floor.

  "I wasn't sure sending you here was a good idea," he continued. "Especially not after the way Ahllan acted when Shara let Cerice in on the deal. But it was the only thing I could think of to get us out from under the Furies. Speaking of which, I don't suppose you solved all of our problems while I was out, did you?"

  "Afraid not, little buddy, though Cerice has helped me come up with a really spectacular way of committing suicide."

  "Fantastic." He turned to Cerice and shook his head. "That is not the kind of help he needs. If there were an Olympic event for getting into hot water, he'd be awarded all three medals by acclamation." The webgoblin sighed. "What is it this time? Blindfolded motorcycle racing?"

  "Even better," I said. "What's the perfect follow-up to hacking the Fate Core?"

  "I can't even begin to imagine," said Melchior, sounding resigned.

  "If you think of the Fate Core as one inviolable pole of the battle between chaos and order, what's the other one?"

  He put his head in his hands and whispered between the fingers. "Cerice, please tell me he doesn't mean Castle Discord."

  "I'm afraid he does."

  "Oh my," said the webgoblin, taking a deep breath. "And this was your idea?"

  "Guilty," said Cerice.

  "I should have stayed crashed." Melchior started pacing. "It would have saved some steps. I don't suppose there's any way I could talk you out of this."

  "No," I replied. "At this point, I think it's the only way to move forward. If there's a chance of clearing my name, it rests in Castle Discord." I quickly brought him up to date.

  "I guess you're right," he said when I finished. "But I'd been kind of looking forward to a bit of quiet time when we got here. Preferably with lots of Ahllan's wonderful baking involved." Then he straightened up and squared his shoulders. "When do we leave?"

  "I leave as soon as we can crack a channel open," I answered. "But this is a volunteers-only mission. If you'd rather stay here, I'll understand. In fact, I'd applaud the decision. That way when I do get myself killed, I'll take one fewer friend with me."

  "Hey!" said Melchior. "That's not how it works. I'm your familiar. Where you go, I go."

  "Not anymore. We both know that you're more than an extension of my will. If you want to come with me, I won't turn you down. Necessity knows I could use the help. But if you do come, you do it as a friend, not a servant. It has to be your free choice."

  The look on his face was agonized. "Damn, but I didn't know self-determination could hurt so much," he said. "You're going to die. You know that, right?"

  "Probably."

  "There's no doubt about it, not if you go alone. And then you'll break her heart." He jerked a thumb in Cerice's direction. "I am not going to be held responsible for that. So, I guess I'll just have to come along and save your sorry ass one more time."

  "Are you sure?" I asked. "If you do this, it has to be for you, not for anybody else."

  "You're not going to let me fob off the responsibility for this, are you?" he asked. I shook my head. He sagged, then lifted his chin decisively. "I'm still in. Life with you is always interesting. I don't know what I'd do for entertainment without the chaos that follows in your wake." His mouth quirked upward at one corner. "Besides, 'I've grown accustomed to your face.'" He stuck a tiny hand out. "Partners?"

  "Partners it is," I replied, taking it. I suddenly found myself grinning like a maniac. Maybe we could pull this thing off after all. "Hey, Cerice, when you came up with this crazy idea, did you have any thoughts for how to start? Castle Discord isn't exactly on the mweb."

  "Actually, yes. I figured we could try a variation of the technique I used to get to your DecLocus back when you crashed the mweb. A single-use gate."

  "I thought that required being at one of the Fate Servers."

  "It does," she replied.

  "You know I don't dare go anywhere near any of the three."

  "Well then, aren't you lucky we have a Fate Server right here?" Ahllan stepped forward and bowed.

  "Oh," I said. "Right. I keep forgetting. But don't you think Castle Discord will be warded against this sort of thing? It's not like the Fates are Eris's favorite people."

  "Probably," said Cerice, "but it's the only suggestion I've got."

  "And it's one more than I've come up with, so I guess we'll have to go with it. Do you want to start the arrangements now, or should we wait until we hear from Kalkin? I'm still on evil-genius watch, am I not?"

  "Why don't we get started," she replied. "Kalkin has already taken longer to get back to us then he should have."

  "I'm ready when you are," I said.

  "Let's begin then," she said. "Ahllan?"

 
; "Of course," replied the webtroll. "We'll need a flat wall. Come on."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Milan led a small parade to the back of the house-under-hill. Just past the bathroom, the passage ended in a heavy steel door marked USS ARIZONA. Ahllan undogged the hatch. Beyond, a series of shallow stairs led downward.

  They ended in big room with worktables on two walls. The one on the left was covered with clamps and soldering irons, oscilloscopes and wires, cables and computer enclosures. In short, a fully stocked lab for the repair and assembly of computer hardware. The one on the right held chalk and string, alembics and beakers, and countless jars of herbs and multicolored fluids. It had all the makings of a classical wizard's workshop.

  "Wow," I said. "I want one."

  Cerice nodded. "It's a really nice setup. There's even a clean room through a door under the stairs."

  Ahllan grabbed a box of chalk and a tape measure before heading for the wall at the end of the room.

  "How does this work?" I asked, as she began inscribing a large hexagram.

  "It's a bit like an ltp link," said Cerice.

  "Why is it vertical?"

  "It's going to create a tunnel of probability," said Ahllan. "One end's anchored here, the other in the target DecLocus. If it were on the floor, that distance would be vertical, and you'd have to drop something like fifty feet."

  She finished the basic geometric structure and started putting equations in the interstices with blanks instead of numbers. I asked her about that.

  "In an ltp link, the magical resource locators are just placeholders," said Ahllan. "The worlds are constantly shifting in their relation to each other as new DecLoci are created and old ones fade away. You send a request to the server to open a gate between two mrls. Then the server calculates relative positions and opens the way."

  "Uh-huh," I said. "I get that." It was all stuff I'd learned long ago. "But what's with the blank spots?"

  "Castle Discord is off the mweb, so the calculations have to be done on the fly and constantly updated. Every time I refigure, the numbers will automatically show up in the boxes." She filled in another symbol. "There, that's it. We can start whenever you're ready."

  I turned to Cerice. Opened my mouth. Closed it again. There were so many hard truths and half-truths between us, so much deception and delusion. And now, one more goodbye. Cerice smiled sadly and shook her head.

  "I know," she said. "I know. It'll have to wait." She stroked my cheek. "After this is over we'll talk."

  I caught her hand and held it against my face. "What if there is no after? This isn't a faerie tale."

  She shrugged. "I'd say it's in the hands of the Fates, but I'd rather not believe that."

  "You and me both," I replied.

  Then, since I didn't have the words, I kissed her. It was a promise of sorts, and she returned it in kind.

  Turning away, I said, "Showtime."

  Ahllan nodded. "Stand by the hexagram and be ready to move. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to hold it open once I make the connection."

  "Is this really safe?" asked Melchior.

  "No," said Ahllan. "Not at all."

  "That's what I was afraid of."

  Ahllan's features slumped as she turned inward, and the blank places filled with scrolling numbers. A moment later the whole hexagram began to glow a pale red and curdle the space around it.

  It looked like a two-dimensional figure suddenly deciding to become three-dimensional but not quite getting it right. Take a wafer of warm iron and set it on a slab of butter. As it slowly sinks in, it leaves a hole. The diagram did that, only not. At the same time it moved away from us it also stayed in exactly the same place. It was deeply disturbing, and I was about to spend time with it up close and personal.

  I stretched my arms to loosen up, then groaned. Black agony coursed up the left one from wrist to shoulder, and I cradled it against my chest. I'd cracked loose a bit of the already flaky Patch & Go spell I'd used on the king-size piercing Dairn had given me.

  "Let me see that," demanded Cerice.

  A little bit of blood was oozing out around the torn edge of the spell, but the pain had passed.

  She examined it carefully. "That looks terrible."

  "It wasn't supposed to have to last this long."

  "Even so, it's an ugly little piece of work. What were you thinking when you coded it?"

  "That under any circumstances where I'd be willing to use it, I'd be in the position of desperately needing to."

  "Well, it's going to have to come off," said Cerice.

  "I hate to interrupt," said Melchior. "But the gate's open."

  A stone hall could be dimly seen at the far end of the red tunnel.

  "That's my cue," I said, and tried to pull away from Cerice.

  She didn't let go. "The spell's unraveling and tearing the hell out of your arm in the process. If we don't take it off in a controlled manner now, it'll fail catastrophically soon enough. Maybe we can abort the gate and try again later. Ahllan—"

  Shara shrieked. "Emergency burst from Kalkin." Her eyes and mouth slammed open, vomiting light into the air.

  "Atropos has detected your gate," snarled Kalkin's image. "The Furies have taken the scent. Fly." With a flare like an exploding bulb, Kalkin vanished.

  "That's done it," I said. "If I leave, the Furies will follow. I've got to go now."

  "You'll lose the arm," said Cerice.

  "Children," said Ahllan, through clenched teeth. "The Furies are coming, and this is not as easy as it looks."

  "Give me five minutes," said Cerice. "This has to come off."

  "You have two," said Ahllan.

  "Done," she replied, and yanked on the spell.

  It ripped free with a horrible rupturing sound, and the pain drove me to my knees. Blood poured hot and wet from the reopened wound.

  "Shara," said Cerice, "That Which Does Not Kill Me. Please."

  The purple webgoblin spat out a long string of binary, and it felt like someone passed a branding iron through my wrist. The world went entirely white, and I'm pretty sure I screamed. When the colors returned, I couldn't feel anything from the elbow down, and the entry and exit points were covered with a sort of silvery fur. It looked a bit like the stuff you find growing in abandoned Tupperware in the back of the common room fridge at the dorm. It also appeared to be swaying in a gentle breeze that didn't exist.

  "What in Hades' name is that stuff?" I asked.

  "No time to explain," said Cerice. "Besides, you really don't want to know. Suffice to say it'll speed healing and dry up and fall off when it's done."

  "Cerice," I said. "I can't feel my arm."

  "Good. It's working." She stripped her belt off.

  "Cerice, I may need that arm."

  "You wouldn't have had the use of it much longer anyway, not with that awful spell of yours. The only difference is this isn't permanent."

  "Children!" husked Ahllan, strain clear in her voice.

  "Right," said Cerice. She looped the belt around my neck and arm, making a crude sling, then gave me a gentle push. "Go."

  I leaned in close to get one last lungful of her perfume. Then I grabbed Melchior and stepped into the gate. From the inside, the portal looked like a long cylinder of red crystal filled with hairline fractures. Each of the fractures was actually a magical energy flow and gave a sort of sticky resistance as I pushed through it. It felt as if the entire space were packed with sheet after sheet of cobwebs. I wanted to run, but the resistance and disorientation caused by the energy threads made it difficult just to stay upright and keep walking.

  Before I truly realized it, the horrible slithery resistance ended, and I stumbled out the far end of the tunnel. I turned around. On this side there was no sign the gate had ever existed, just a grim passage of gold-flecked granite stretching away into the distance. There would be no return.

  I felt like a rat. It was me the Furies wanted, and once they found out I was gone they'd move on, but they coul
d inflict an awful lot of collateral damage in the meantime. Perhaps worse than that was that Atropos had given the Furies our whereabouts, alerted apparently by the activation of the gate. The darkest of the Fates now knew there was a rogue Fate Server. Atropos wouldn't rest until she'd found and eliminated what she would see as a usurper of the powers of Fate. Cerice and the others were going to become prime targets after this.

  "I sure hope they get out before the Furies arrive," I said quietly.

  "I wouldn't worry," said Mel. "Ahllan's very resourceful, and Cerice is no slouch. They'll be fine."

  "I'm sure you're right," I said, forcing a smile. The smile he gave me in return looked as waxen as mine felt. "You don't believe it either, do you?" I asked. He shook his head.

  "No, but at least the problems they're having should be of a lesser magnitude than the ones we're about to stir up. I can't think of many worse places to be than here. Of course, it's possible Ahllan blew it and we're nowhere near Castle Discord." He suddenly grinned. "Maybe we've just ended up in a rather starkly decorated health spa."

  "That's a cheering thought," I said. I had no idea what the odds of such a miss might be. "We'd better confirm we're in the right place. It's clearly a fortress of some kind, whether it's Eris's castle or not. All the old stonework and arrow slits are dead giveaways."

  "Yeah. The architecture's definitely of the 'hostile neighbors' school of design." His expression became nervous. "You know, I'd be a big fan of getting out of this hallway. It looks like a main thoroughfare."

  He was right. The long stone passage was broad and high-ceilinged, with a well-worn rug patterned in yellow and black running down the middle. There were doors along one side and slit windows on the other. At each end it met another corridor in an L, with a stairway that led both up and down tucked inside of the angle.

  "I'm going to take a quick look out the window, Mel. Why don't you find an unoccupied room."