Cybermancy

by Kelly McCullough

  I suspect that’s the real reason the Fates went modern with their ever-expanding set of computers for tracking life threads and running coded spells. It’s also probably a big part of why Zeus has kept such a low profile for the last couple of millennia—he’s lost control, and he knows it. So now he sulks. Of course, he never really had control, but he’s dim enough that I imagine it took a while to sink in. But hey, that’s the head of the pantheon to a tee, astronomical energy harnessed to teensy-weensy processing capacity. Kind of like the early-model PCs they used to run the space shuttles at the turn of the century.

  Whatever the reason, magic flows very freely out at the edges of things. The worlds there can become quite strange, bent as they are by the fundamental force of the irrational. In this one, despite an apparent lack of people, the detritus of a modern civilization lay everywhere, rusting hulks of cars, trashed refrigerators, old computers. The smell of decay hung heavy in the air. Yet there was a weird beauty to it all, because nature was in the process of reclaiming the works. Bindweed and other flowering creepers had taken hold of most of the larger pieces of trash, transforming junked pickups into floral topiary. A blown-out television had a Japanese rose growing out of the hole where the tube had once been.

  Weird and wild and strangely wonderful, Garbage Faerie reeked of magic. Spells that might take a thousand lines of whistled code and draw heavily on the mweb in the vicinity of Olympus would need little more than a thought and pursed lips here. That plus its distance from the corridors of Fate was why Ahllan had set up shop here. I turned then to look at her blasted and empty home.

  The low hill that had once sheltered a dozen homey rooms had been cloven in two, its mosaic-covered walls lying shattered and exposed to the elements. I heard a gasp from beside me and looked down to see Shara. She was trembling, and who could blame her? She had died here, falling in the ruin of this place.

  “I didn’t know it was this bad,” she whispered. “I went down too early to see it.” She put her face in her hands. “I feel so awful.”

  I knelt to put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” I was speaking of her death as much as the destruction of the house.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Ravirn,” she said. From her tone I knew she’d caught my meaning. “I know that’s hard for you sometimes”—she was interrupted by a whispered “amen” from Cerice, but didn’t acknowledge it—“but this isn’t your fault. Sure, you were the proximate cause, but it was Atropos and the other Fates who did this in their desire for absolute control.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But we aren’t here to argue about comparative guilt. We’re here to find Ahllan.”

  “She’s gone.” Melchior was kneeling a few yards away, sniffing at the dirt. “She was here, but not for long.” He pointed at a pair of deep footprints in the mud. “There was a gate there.” He pointed again, but I didn’t see anything beyond a few more tracks. “Incoming only.”

  That would explain it, no physical traces. Webgoblins’ magical senses were much stronger than mine, able to see the faintest of spell traces if they hadn’t been deliberately masked.

  “So what happened? It looks like something very strange.”

  Melchior nodded. “Ahllan appeared through the LTP gate, walked a couple of steps, called us, then poof.”

  “But she didn’t gate out?” I asked.

  “Not that I can tell. And unless she did a really spectacular backflip, she didn’t leave via the faerie ring. I can’t Vtp her either. I’ve been trying since we got here. Although whether that’s because she’s blocking messages, gone somewhere off the net, or just because the turbulence is so bad, I can’t say.” He shivered. “It feels . . . wrong, like something crawling around the inside of my skull. Shara?”

  “I’m not hooked up, and if you don’t mind, I’ll just take Mel’s word for it. I’ve got enough problems without things crawling around inside my skull.”

  Cerice gave Shara a penetrating look. Normally webgoblins hate to be out of touch with the mweb and will only break contact by order or request. The stream of information and magical power that comes to them through the mweb is as much a part of them as the blood flowing in their veins.

  For perhaps the millionth time, I wished that I could experience the mweb in the same way Melchior did. Sure, I could enter its virtual space by using an athame, but it wasn’t the same thing at all. It was the difference between being a scuba diver and being a fish. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t going to grow gills. We needed to find out what was going on, and fast. With Ahllan missing, I could only think of one other possible source for that information: Eris.

  “I want to visit Castle Discord.”

  “What?” exclaimed Shara. “Why? We should go home and keep our heads down. This isn’t our problem. This is a matter for the gods to sort out with Necessity. If we try to fix it, if we even go within a thousand yards of the mweb servers, Fate will have collective apoplexy and murder us on the spot. Let it go.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said.

  “I’m definitely right. This is not our business.”

  “So I’ll take the three of you back to the apartment before I go on.”

  “Not a chance,” said Melchior. “Not with Ahllan missing. I’m going, too.”

  Cerice knelt in front of Shara. “We have to do this, honey. We just have to.”

  Shara sighed. “All right. But if we have to go, we should do it quick before the mweb cuts out and we’re forced to use the faerie ring again. Maybe it worked this time, but they still give me the creeps.”

  “Amen to that.” Melchior pulled out a string and stylus and began sketching out a hexagram in the dirt. “At least when I make the gate, I know I can trust the driver.”

  I thought back to our most recent trip from Hades and how that had gone, but didn’t say anything. Melchior clearly felt strongly on the subject, and, judging by the profound look of relief on Shara’s face, so did she. A few minutes later we stepped into the light. It wasn’t nearly as rough as our last trip. This just felt like being trapped in an elevator with its cables cut, a wild straight drop through darkness with a sudden stop at the end. We landed hard, though not hard enough to break bones.

  When the light cleared, we stood on a small rectangle of stone completely surrounded by the wild billowing colors of the Primal Chaos. Some sort of irregularly shaped invisible shield prevented it from reaching the surface of the rock and devouring us, though occasional tendrils of the stuff came frighteningly close.

  Eris prefers to live off the grid, way off. Castle Discord is a floating island in the sea of chaos. Whether it lies in the turbulence between worlds or somewhere beyond the farthest edges of reality is something that’s more a question of philosophy than science. To make things even more difficult, the castle moves constantly. Combine that with the fact that it’s not actually connected to the mweb, and you have a situation where only a fully functional webtroll like Ahllan, exerting maximum concentration, can keep its coordinates fixed long enough to open up a gate to the castle proper. For the benefit of visitors Eris has placed a chunk of stone in a fixed and permanent relationship to the rest of the multiverse. She called it the welcome mat, and it even had the Greek welcome, Kalos Orisate, carved into it in letters six feet tall. That’s where we arrived.

  I’d been there before and knew the routine, so I slowly turned in place until I saw it. Far off and high up, a speck appeared. Castle Discord. Our arrival had triggered the doorbell, and now the castle was coming to us. As I watched, it grew steadily closer, becoming a ragged chunk of golden granite. The top was hidden by the angle at first, but as it descended, I could see a great splash of green covering the surface. It looked nothing like it had the last time I’d seen it. No surprise.

  Castle Discord doesn’t actually exist in the way most people mean the word. It’s entirely a state of mind. I can’t even begin to explain the spells involv
ed in its creation. It’s very deep, wild magic of the kind that scares the living daylights out of me. All I can speak to is the result. Castle Discord is a sort of mathematical description of a place with all the descriptors as variables that can be adjusted by the whim of its occupant. One minute it’s a medieval cathedral, the next it’s a Vegas-style casino. It depends entirely on what Eris’s notoriously changeable mood desires.

  Even more bizarre, when she isn’t actively exerting her will on the place, it will rearrange itself to suit the whim of whoever happens to be wandering its halls, a fact I had discovered on my first—unauthorized—visit. At the moment, it most looked like some sort of huge botanical garden occupying a series of interlinked greenhouses. But that was on the outside. We wouldn’t know about the inside until we got there.

  When it reached a point about a hundred feet above us and perhaps twice that distance away, Castle Discord stopped moving. An archway opened just below the rim. Like some sort of huge stone frog mouth, it spat a long flight of stairs at us. They had no railing and looked to be made of black glass. As with the welcome mat itself, some sort of invisible barrier kept the stuff of chaos from pressing too close to the stairs.

  “Have I mentioned that this is a bad idea?” mumbled Shara, when the stairs touched down in front of us.

  “I’d certainly gotten that impression, yes.” I stepped up onto the first stair. “But unless you want to play ‘ring the doorbell and run away’ with the Goddess of Chaos, we’d best get moving.”

  “I think it’s fascinating,” said Cerice, following close behind. “Ever since you first described this place to me, I’ve wanted to see it.”

  I’d been here any number of times since my initial visit but always by invitation, an invitation that had included only me and Melchior. I probably could have brought Cerice, but I’d always felt it safer to keep her away from Discord. Eris might find me amusing. She might even have a soft spot for me. But she was one of the most dangerous and certainly the most capricious of goddesses. I preferred not to give her any more handles on me than I had to, and Cerice would make a mighty fine one.

  I looked past her now to Shara, who was reluctantly bringing up the rear. I wished there was something more I could do for the little purple webgoblin. I missed the wild, willful, sexy creature she had been before her time in Hades, and it tore at my heart to see her so subdued. I’m not sure which was worse, that or the fact that I’d started having suspicions about her. I hated my own paranoia, but that didn’t prevent me from keeping one eye on her as we climbed the stairs. On one of my periodic glances her way, I noticed a bright flash on the welcome mat that I might otherwise have missed. It was similar to a locus transfer yet not quite the same.

  “I wonder what that is,” I said quietly. I couldn’t think of any answer that would make me happy.

  “What?” asked Cerice.

  Instead of responding I stepped past Shara, and said, “Melchior, Eagle Eye. Please.”

  He quickly whistled the spell that gave me the vision of a raptor, then duplicated it for Cerice, Shara, and himself.

  A bright rip had opened in the air at the base of the stairs, like someone had sliced a hole through from someplace else. That was because someone had. I’d seen the effect once before. It was the Furies’ version of an LTP gate. I didn’t know how it worked, except that it involved the adamantine claws that tipped their fingers and some special application of the powers granted them as Necessity’s personal handmaidens and IT staff.

  First through the gap was Megaera with her seaweed-colored wings and hair, not to mention a personal vendetta against yours truly. I didn’t honestly care who came next. None of them was good news, and I couldn’t help but think their arrival here and now was no coincidence.

  “Run!” I said, turning back toward the castle. Cerice was ahead of me. She’d already scooped up Shara, and was taking the remaining stairs two at a time. I grabbed Melchior and followed.

  We were already close to the top, and I felt confident we’d reach the gate ahead of the Furies. But there my confidence ended. Whether the doors would open for us, and what would happen after, I didn’t know.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Cerice, running just ahead of me, passed through the stone arch at the top of the stairs, then skidded to a stop. Beyond lay a small vestibule lined with gold-veined black marble. The far wall held an elevator door beside a single button, marked “?”. Typical Eris. I pushed the button then glanced back down the stairs in time to see the light that had announced the arrival of the Furies blink out. They were all on this side of the rift now.

  I felt sweat break out on my forehead as I realized they were at most a minute or two behind us. If not for the narrowness of the stairs preventing the use of their wings, they would have already arrived. I hit the elevator button again. It didn’t help. The Furies began to climb the stairs, their wings tightly furled around their naked bodies. Megaera led the way. Behind her was Alecto. I couldn’t really see her, hidden as she was by her sister, but I remembered her well enough.

  She was taller than Megaera and curvier, with hair and wings like storm-shot night, lightning forking and reforking with her every move. Her skin was a stony gray, save only her lips and nipples, which mirrored the storm in her hair. Bringing up the rear would be Tisiphone, tall and slender and fire-haired. I checked the elevator. Still not there.

  “What should we do?” asked Cerice, loosening her sword in its sheath and opening the flap of her holster.

  “Not that,” I said, reaching over and resnapping her holster. “Neither guns nor swords are going to have a big effect on them. Even magic wouldn’t help much.”

  Cerice nodded and bent her head close to Shara’s. Still no elevator. I checked the stairs. Perhaps sixty feet still separated us from the Furies. Megaera waved and gave me a jaunty smile that set what felt like a small horde of flying bugs to buzzing in my stomach. To hide my fear I waved back. When the distance had closed to perhaps ten feet, the elevator dinged.

  Too late, I thought as the doors slowly opened. Way too late.

  Still, I turned and followed Cerice aboard, hoping to avoid a confrontation. This time there were two buttons. They said, HERE and THERE. Cerice had already hit the THERE button, lighting it up, but the doors remained open as the Furies entered the alcove.

  “Hit them with a spell?” Cerice whispered in my ear.

  “Not a good idea,” I answered, handing Melchior to Cerice to clear my hands.

  They hadn’t made any hostile moves, and I didn’t want to provoke them if by some slender chance they weren’t here for us. Nor did they attack, as one by one they joined us in the elevator. I edged toward the back when they got on, putting my body between the Furies and Cerice and the goblins. It wouldn’t provide much of a shield, but I had to do what I could.

  A sign by the buttons claimed the elevator had a capacity of ten people. That might have been true if none of them were Furies. But between the wings and their apparent personal space issues with each other, it would have been quite full with just the three of them. Add Cerice and me and two goblins and it became something like a sackful of cats, all hard looks and sharp points. It didn’t help that the Furies had never developed elevator manners. Instead of sliding inside and looking at the doors, they were all facing the back and me.

  “Hello, Raven,” said Megaera, who stood closest to the door. She tapped the THERE button. This time the doors immediately closed. As they did, a horrible steel drum rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” began to play. “Thanks for holding the elevator.”

  “Very polite,” said Alecto’s voice from somewhere on the far side of Megaera. She was once again hidden by her sisters’ wings. “Not at all like the last time we saw him.”

  “But that was such fun,” said Tisiphone, who was practically pressed against my chest. “Cat and mouse is my favorite game. And he made such a cute little mousie.” She made batting motions inches from my nose, highlighting the long, deadly claws that ti
pped her fingers. Her voice dropped half an octave. “Didn’t you, Raven?” And she ran one of those fingers down my chest from throat to navel.

  It’s never wise to meet the eyes of a goddess. They can do things to you that way if you give them the chance. At the same time, I didn’t dare not look at Tisiphone. So I kept my eyes down to avoid her gaze. Unfortunately, that meant I was staring at her breasts. They were very nice breasts, high and small and very pale, with erect nipples the color of flame. If they’d been on some other chest or in different circumstances, I might even have enjoyed the view. As it was, both the personality attached to the body and the fact that I had my heavily armed girlfriend pressed against my back made for a situation of acute discomfort. I found myself half-wishing they’d just kill me and get it over with.