She’d even created her own programming language when the available choices proved inadequate. And that was the problem. Given time to learn the system, I might be able to do something for her, but it would take a month to get up to speed, and she only had three days before she needed the segment running again. Still, I had to offer.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
She gave me a look that mixed longing and concern with resignation and real fear. That gave me a clue as to what she wanted but wasn’t willing to ask. She shook her head and looked away. I caught her chin in my left hand and gently turned her back to face me. She covered my hand with her own, stroking the end of my foreshortened pinkie.
I’d permanently lost the first joint to a spell a bit over a year before. It had happened the night she’d saved my life for the first of several times. It was a debt she’d never think to call in, but one I owed her all the same. She owned more than just my heart.
I took a deep breath and plunged forward. “What do you need? Really. If I can help, I will.”
She closed her eyes and practically stopped breathing while long seconds slid by. Finally, pulling loose of my hand and turning her face toward the floor, she whispered, “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.”
“What if you had Shara?”
“She’s gone, Ravirn. Dead, and that’s not a problem with a solution.”
“Orpheus—”
“No!” She cut me off. “That’s madness. All that’ll happen if you try to bring her back is that I’ll lose you, too. Don’t even think about it.”
But the moment had come. Cerice knew I’d been working on how to get Shara out of Hades. She’d tried to talk me out of it enough times. Maybe she was right; maybe it was crazy. But I couldn’t let that stop me. Shara’d died because of me—a victim of collateral damage in my recent confrontation with the Fates. An arrow that should have had my name on it had punched right through her screen, causing massive short circuits.
While I’d been horrified, I’d figured fixing her up would involve little more than solving a really tricky hardware problem. Cerice, knowing the architecture of the various webgoblins and webtrolls that ran the backbone of the mweb better than I ever would, had concurred. But when we’d gotten all the parts put back together, Shara wouldn’t boot. The hardware was fine, the software was fine, but no Shara. That’s when we’d realized that she had a “spiritware” problem. Her soul had passed through the gate so ably guarded by my new pal Cerberus, probably at the instigation of my great-aunt Atropos.
I owed it to Shara to at least make the attempt to restore her to life, and now was the time—when a rescue could do double duty. Shara was as much Cerice’s programming counterpart as Melchior was mine. She contained every scrap of information Cerice had ever voiced or written about her thesis project. As a coding resource and a friend, Cerice’s familiar was irreplaceable. If anything could save Cerice’s thesis, Shara was it.
So, all I had to do was get moving. It was time and past to screw my “courage to the sticking-place,” as Lady Mac-beth had so elegantly phrased it. But now that the moment had arrived, I felt like I’d been hit in the chest with a hammer. Best to act now before I had any second thoughts. “Melchior,” I said, “my dagger.”
The webgoblin, who’d been keeping a low profile so that Cerice and I could pretend we were alone, swallowed audibly. “Ahhh, Boss, are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Please.” He didn’t answer, but a moment later he handed it over.
“Don’t,” whispered Cerice, looking half-panicked. She shivered when I pricked my index finger.
Instantly, bright blood welled up. I touched it to my lips. “I swear by my blood and my honor to return Shara to you before the sun rises on Sunday.”
There, I was committed. A fool perhaps, but a committed one.
CHAPTER TWO
Cerice went deathly pale when I spoke my oath. “That was a damn-fool thing to do, Ravirn.” Instead of angry, she sounded scared.
“Yeah,” said Melchior. “Listen to the lady. She knows whereof she speaks.” He looked physically shaken.
I shrugged. “Too late to do anything about it now. Besides, what else would you expect?”
The two of them had been despairing of my common sense for years, and at least in this case, they were probably right. The Titans, my ancestors, had created themselves from the pure stuff of Primal Chaos—the driving force of all magic—by the sheer power of their own demiurge. Though thinned by the many generations that lay between, my own blood still carried that chaos within it. An oath sworn on it carried all the force of divine law.
If I broke my word now, the Furies would come down on me like the world on Atlas’s shoulders. Not that it really mattered. If I blew this one, I’d be stuck on the wrong side of the Styx, and there’s really not all that much that even the sisters of vengeance can do to a dead man. Which is not to say the oath was an empty one.
I had a plan, or half of one at least, but I knew I’d keep finding excuses not to try it if I didn’t do something to stiffen my spine. Basically, I was scared three-quarters of the way to death at the prospect of breaking into Hades, and the oath was the only thing I could think of that would force me to act despite the terror.
At least that’s what I tried to tell myself. But Melchior was right; there was something more than a little bit crazy about that oath. I’ve always been a daredevil, but lately I’d found myself pushing the edges harder and harder, as if something were driving me to ever-greater heights of risk taking. My fight with Fate had changed me in ways I didn’t completely understand.
“He’s at it again,” said Melchior, rolling his eyes until they came to rest on me with a glare. “I suppose you expect me to come along on this little jaunt and bail you out.”
“Volunteers only,” I replied.
“You know I hate it when you make me make decisions,” said Melchior.
“Ain’t free will a bitch?” I replied.
He sighed. “Shara’s my friend, too, and more than that. I guess I’m stuck.” A grim smile exposed his fangs. “I suppose that, on the upside, I’ll have the rest of eternity to say ‘I told you so’ after we get killed.”
Cerice watched the interplay with a sad smile. “Same old, same old,” she said. Then she gave me a quick hug and kiss. “You’re an idiot. You know that, don’t you?” I nodded. “But you’re my idiot, I suppose. My dark bird.”
I frowned at that. “You know how I feel about the whole Raven thing.”
“I also know that Clotho does nothing without reason. Whether you choose to wear the name or not, you own it.” She canted her head to one side. “More importantly, it owns you. Names have power, Ravirn. You need to at least understand what Clotho’s given you before you can safely put it aside.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, though not because I agreed with her. I just didn’t want to start a fight with the woman I loved on what might be my last day among the living. Especially since I hadn’t yet gotten her to admit she loved me back.
“Don’t agree with me just to make me happy,” said Cerice. “It doesn’t work that way.” Before I could answer, she put a finger on my lips. “Ravirn, no one living is closer to my heart than you are. You matter to me, and I respect your opinion, even on occasions like this one, when you’re wrong.” She smiled to take the sting out of her words. “But we’ll save that discussion for another time. For now, let me just thank you for rescuing Shara.”
“You sound awfully sure of my success in spite of the odds. If you’re not careful, my head’ll swell.”
“I doubt it,” she said, stepping in very close and touching my cheek. “If it gets any bigger, it’ll burst.”
“Amen,” said Melchior from somewhere down around my knees.
“Unkind,” said Cerice. Then she winked at him.
I had to smile. She and Melchior were all that was left of my old life, and I loved them and loved that they weren’t letting the
possibility of my death and dismemberment make them go all maudlin. I hate maudlin. When it’s a choice of laugh or cry, I’ll take laughter every time and no matter the cost. I rubbed Melchior’s bald blue head for luck, then gave Cerice a very thorough kiss.
“I’d better get going,” I said when I came up for air. “I need to make some serious preparations. I have less faith in the certainty of my success than you do.” There were things I’d need back at the apartment, Shara’s mortal shell high on the list.
As I started for the door, Cerice caught me and gave me another kiss.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Just in case.”
“I thought you were certain I’d succeed.”
“I am. You’ll fulfill your oath.”
“So what the problem?”
“You didn’t promise that you’d come back,” said Cerice, and there were tears in her tired eyes. “I do sometimes wish you’d learn to count the cost. Try not to get yourself killed, all right?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, holding my hands up like two scales on a balance. “Get myself killed or come home triumphant to the grateful arms of the most beautiful woman since Helen of Troy. Tough call, that.”
No. I didn’t believe me either. I hoped I’d come back, but . . . let’s just say I’d phrased my oath the way I had for a reason.
The River Styx runs black and wide, its nighted depths unplumbed, a fact I’d counted on from the start. But darkness comes in many degrees and types: the crisp obsidian of a cloudy moonless night, the stygian depths of a sealed tomb, the pregnant potential of a theater before the show. None of them touch the light-devouring midnight that holds sway in the river of death, a fact that had me swearing before I’d swum ten feet.
My high-intensity dive flashlight penetrated about the length of one arm. Unfortunately, it was Melchior’s arm. If I pointed the beam down the length of my body, I couldn’t even see my weight belt. Combine that with the fact that my wrist compass kept spinning in circles because the underworld wasn’t exactly governed by the same rules as everywhere else, and I had major problems. I kicked slowly, trying to hold myself still relative to the water flow.
How come this kind of shit never happened in the movies? Bond always seemed to have crystal-clear water and fifty-foot visibility. Of course, a real dive in zero vis would be about as much fun on film as shoving the camera into a mudbank and letting it roll. I sighed through my regulator, letting off a trail of bubbles. In the current of the thick black not-quite-water, they slid slowly up and to my left. I turned my head in that direction and blew a bunch more bubbles. This time they moved directly away from me as they rose. I realized I could use them to tell the direction of the current and up from down. It might not make for pinpoint navigation, but it should get me across the river.
By sheer dumb luck I surfaced less than ten feet from Charon’s dock. Since he was apparently off picking up a fare, I was able to slide underneath, strip off my scuba gear, and rope it to a piling. I checked my watch—1:20, so Cerberus would be solidly into his afternoon nap. The big insomniac might have trouble getting twenty winks at night, but from one until three he went down like Morpheus on tranquilizers. It was one of the many useful things I’d learned over the months of our acquaintance. I felt bad about exploiting our friendship, but not bad enough to leave Shara on the wrong side of Hades’ gate.
When the barge returned, it was carrying four crisp-looking Russian Spetsnaz carrying AK-47s and about two dozen Japanese tourists who didn’t seem to have a real solid grasp of their situation—they were taking pictures and talking excitedly among themselves. I pulled myself up on the dock and, inasmuch as it was possible, blended in with the group headed for the gate.
A series of velvet ropes stood to one side to allow the area in front of the gates to be divided into a zigzag queue for high traffic. At the moment, it was a straight shot from the ferry to the place where a couple of obviously bored dead souls in Hades Security Administration uniforms were standing by something very like a metal detector. I was a little worried about that until the heavily armed Spetsnaz got through without the HSA boys so much as blinking their huge and vacant eyes.
When my turn came, I made sure Cerberus wasn’t about to make an appearance, then boldly stepped through. The alarm went off like a harpy with its tail caught in a blender. The security detail stopped looking bored and started looking like the damned souls they were.
I yelped and started to run.
I say started because I didn’t really understand what running meant until I heard the dreadful hungry baying of the oldest and most dangerous hound ever born. Cerberus was coming. I had thirty feet to cover from checkpoint to open gate. He had a half mile or more. The hot breath on my neck as I crossed the last yard was my only warning. I dived forward. If he’d really wanted to, he could have had me then. But those mighty jaws closed on air instead of me, and the pile-driver force of his striking head tossed me through the gate.
I landed hard, even by demigod standards, and emptied my lungs in a great whoosh. Why do I always end up taking on entities higher up the ladder of divinity than myself? Just once I’d like to go toe-to-toe with somebody from a lower weight class. It took me a good minute to get up the will to stand and another after that actually to manage the job. I was just glad to find that my bad knee hadn’t taken too much of the impact. It was much better than it used to be—witness my sprint—but it still occasionally went out if I misused it.
When I looked back, all I could see was bristling hellhound. He filled the gate from top to bottom and edge to edge, or a bit more than that on the sides. He’d really have to squeeze if he wanted to get through. By looking between his big, bowed legs, I could see that the security checkpoint had been reduced to kindling in his charge.
“We told you not to try it,” said the three heads in that one terrible voice. “We told you; you aren’t Orpheus. But you wouldn’t listen. Go on. Find the one you came for, but remember that we’ll be here when you come back.”
He settled down to wait, his eyes a poignant mix of angry and woeful, and I realized I’d just kicked a dog. I felt like a world-class heel.
“Good-bye for now.” Mort shook his great head. “See you in a bit.”
“We’ll have to kill you.” Bob sounded almost tearful. “But after that you can still play bridge with us, at least until you drink Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness.”
“You won’t make it past us again,” said Dave. But then he smiled a sad/friendly smile. “No one but Orpheus has. Still, I wouldn’t eat any pomegranates if I were you. Now, move before the boss shows up. We’ll only kill you on the way out. Hades will kill you anywhere. Get out of here, Raven.”
It was a slap in the face, and it stung, but I figured I’d earned it. I got going without another word. The underworld is a bit like a subway station with the trains all permanently delayed. Lots of bored and grumpy people sitting around doing nothing, forever. But there is a way out. All you have to do is let the Lethe wash your memories away. Then they send your blank soul back for another go-round in a fresh body. Hades may be the personification of death, but he’s also big on recycling.
Once I felt sure Hades wasn’t going to take a personal interest in me, I found a quiet corner and pulled my laptop out of the freezer bags I’d used to keep him dry. Run Melchior. Please.
“Kind of reminds me of the 149th Street
station in the Bronx,” he said once he assumed his webgoblin shape. “But the view is better, and it doesn’t feel quite so hopeless.”
“I thought 51st and Lexington in Midtown,” I said.
“It’s not that bad,” he replied with a wink. “Mind you, I wouldn’t want to winter here every year the way Persephone does.”
“Yeah. Remind me not to join Hades’ fruit-of-the-month club.”
I might make light of the situation, but it really was that bad. In fact, it was much, much worse. Hades is the land of the dead. I’d always known that, b
ut you can’t really understand what it means until you’re there. Life is something we all take for granted at a very deep level. Oh, not in the sense of never questioning our mortality or anything like that, but rather that it surrounds us all the time.
Biologists will tell you that no matter where you go, you’re surrounded by living things. Even in the deepest, darkest caves and basements, you’ll find spores, molds, tiny plants, bugs. You can find bacteria at the bottom of the ocean, or inside of stones, or in near-boiling water. There is no place completely devoid of life. No place, that is, except Hades. Here there are souls, but not a single living creature other than Hades himself and, for a few months a year, Persephone. You can feel it in your bones and your blood. In every breath that you draw there. The absence of life is a palpable thing.
I had never realized until that moment that we all carry a sort of sense of life within us, a deep psychic connection to the biosphere around us. We may not see the web of life, or be aware of it in any conscious way, but when it’s gone, it’s as obvious as if the sun had blinked out. A darkness of anima as scary as any loss of light.
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