“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve forgotten my manners. Let me make introductions. Melchior you know.”
“We do,” said Bob, “but not in this form. He’s usually too busy pretending to be an inanimate object. Silly really. Laptops probably taste better than goblins anyway.”
“You’re being rude again,” said Dave, with a little growl in his voice.
Bob met his eyes for a second, then turned them downward. I got the feeling that if he could have rolled over and exposed his belly, he would have.
“And Shara,” I began.
“Her we know as well,” said Mort. His voice was very cold.
“I, uh, well. Yes.” I really didn’t know what to say to that, and apparently Shara didn’t either.
Without a word, she turned away from the rest of us and walked down to the river’s edge. There she climbed up onto a huge rock that overhung the water, keeping her back firmly pointed in our general direction. I could see her shoulders sag, and I really felt for her, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment. A long and harsh silence hung in the air until I tried again.
“I guess that just leaves Cerice. Dave, Mort, Bob, may I introduce you to the Lady Cerice of House Clotho. Cerice, Cerberus and his three . . .”
“Heads?” offered Mort, ever practical.
“Musketeers?” Dave gave a doggy grin.
“Billy goats gruff,” suggested Melchior.
Bob gave him a hard look, but didn’t respond directly. “How about you refer to us as ‘his pack’?”
“Delighted to.” Cerice dropped a curtsy.
“What?” asked Bob. “No offer to shake?”
“Give it a rest,” said Dave. “You’re stereotyping again, and that just leads to bad dog jokes.”
Mort gave a little bow. “Likewise delighted. I’ve smelled you so often, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
Cerice looked a bit taken aback, but then rolled with it. “I suppose you have at that, over your acquaintance with Ravirn.”
“Speaking of smells . . .” Bob looked at me. “You really stink.”
“Gosh, thanks,” I replied. “I love you, too.”
“He means it literally,” said Mort. “The smell of chaos that you carry with you has gotten much stronger.”
“Chaos—and Raven,” said Dave. “You are becoming the role.”
“That’s great. It’s just what I always wanted.” What can I say, for me fear engenders sarcasm.
“It’s better than the alternative,” said Mort.
“I don’t know about that,” said Bob. “The change might improve his attitude.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Dave lowered his head to look me in the eyes. “It’s like this. You’re a power, and each power has a role to play in the grand scheme of things. Your choices in the matter are very limited. You can assume the role. It can assume you. Or you can die. Two of three won’t leave much of Ravirn behind.”
That was fan-damn-tastic. I could either become something I never asked to be or let it eat me. I felt like sticking my finger in my ears, and screaming “I’m not listening, la, la, la.” I didn’t have time to think about this right now. I really didn’t. I’d worry about it once we got the mweb fixed.
“As fascinating as I find all this talk about my impending doom, and as much as I’d like to discuss it to death, I’ve got some other things to take care of. I presume you’re aware of what’s going on with the mweb?”
“Of course,” said Bob. “Hades told us all about it when he gave us our new orders. You’ve written a virus to attack Necessity, and now you’re trying to blame it on Persephone.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Blinked several times. “Is that the official story now?”
“It’s the truth,” said Bob. “The nose knows. You reek of chaos nearly as bad as Eris. Well, you’re not going to get past us. Not a chance. We’ve got orders to rip you limb from limb the instant you cross the line into Hades’ territory.”
Mort nodded. “Sorry to say it, but those are our orders. He gave them to us at the same time he stocked the river. As long as you stay on Zeus’s side of the water, you’re OK. Hades does not want the troubles with the mweb blamed on Persephone. Break the line of the Styx, and we’re duty-bound to kill you.”
“That could pose a problem, Boss.”
I shot a sidelong glance at Melchior. “Could it really? I’d never have guessed.” I turned my attention back to Cerberus. “How about Cerice? Would it be OK for her to go as far as the gate? Then you could maybe send a message for Persephone to come down for a little chat.”
Dave shook his head sadly. “Nope. Hades was pretty specific. Apparently he didn’t want to leave any loopholes in his orders. Neither you nor any of your associates or servants is allowed anywhere within the lands belonging to Death. We won’t be able to let you pass either way again. For that matter, we’re supposed to eject every living thing we find on our side of the river.”
“Which is a major bummer,” said Mort. “We had to send Kira away for the duration.”
“Back to insomnia.” Bob sounded more than a little irritated. “And it’s all your fault.”
“Can you take Persephone a message?” This time I appealed directly to Dave. He was my best friend among the trio, and he was also Persephone’s dog. “I really need to talk to her. I don’t think her little software project is working out the way she planned it.”
“She had nothing to do with this mess!” barked Bob. “Hades was very specific about that. Necessity’s problems are all with you.” He looked a little smug. “He also told me that if you came by, I was to tell you he’ll be waiting for you. Everybody crosses the river eventually, and he’s putting together a special suite just for you.”
I glanced at Mort, who nodded glumly. “You’re not going to get in, Ravirn. Not alive.”
“Hades won’t even let me see her now,” said Dave, sounding like someone had taken away his best friend. If Kira was right about his relationship with Persephone, someone had. “Go home, there’s nothing you can do here except die.”
This was getting better by the minute. I was beginning to suspect that the only way I was going to have a chance to make things right was by entering Hades proper again, something I definitely didn’t want. Especially now, with Cerberus no longer even partially on my side. On the other hand, it’d probably solve my Raven problems.
“Give me a minute to think,” I said, turning my back on the canine triumvirate.
Cerice stepped closer. “What are we going to do?”
I didn’t know the answer to that. But I did know that if I made another visit to Hades, I couldn’t take anyone with me this time, not even Melchior, not with my odds of getting back out so low. I was still trying to figure an angle when a sharp tearing noise drew my gaze upward. An all-too-familiar rip had opened in the air between us and the tunnel that led out to the foot of Olympus.
“I hope we’re not too late to join the party,” said Alecto, as she slid through into this part of reality. I had a brief glimpse of the meeting chamber in the Temple of Fate before Megaera blocked my view on her way out.
“So glad to see you here,” she said. “I think it’s time we ate crow.”
“Raven,” said Tisiphone as she joined her sisters. Her voice sounded flat and dead. “He is the Raven.”
“Birds of a feather and all that,” said Alecto.
“Once you’ve gutted them, they’re pretty much all the same,” agreed Megaera.
“I’m sorry,” said Tisiphone.
“I take it that my grandmother and her sisters have issued my death warrant.”
Alecto produced a scroll from somewhere around her person. I wondered at that; it wasn’t like she had pockets.
“Signed.”
“Sealed,” said Megaera, with a satisfied smile.
“And now, delivered.” Tisiphone looked like she wanted to throw up.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
>
The three Furies advanced on me, and I took an involuntary step back, colliding very gently with the furry pillar of Cerberus’s left leg. Megaera chuckled, low and evil. She and her sisters kept coming. They weren’t moving fast, but they didn’t have to. With the river on one side and the wall on the other, I was pretty much pinned between them and Cerberus. Besides, Alecto and Megaera were enjoying this too much to want it to end quickly, and Tisiphone was clearly reluctant to have it end at all.
That gave me precious seconds to think. Unfortunately, I was about out of options. The faerie ring was too far away to do me any good. The river was bad. A gate would take too long, especially with the mweb whacked. A fact which also limited my spell menu. It was more good luck than planning that Hydrophobia had worked, since it was mweb-based magic. Most of my spells were. I’d grown up in the mweb era, and except for a few brief hours when I’d crashed the whole shebang, it had remained a constant throughout my sorcerous career. Megaera had gotten perhaps fifteen feet away when Melchior stepped between me and her.
“Run, Boss!” he yelled, before whistling the beginnings of a spell.
It didn’t sound like one of mine, and the roughness of it suggested he was coding on the spot. Since I’d never known Melchior to spontaneously compose, I was frankly fascinated to see the results. Stupid, I know, but there it is. Before he’d gotten more than a few dozen lines in, Megaera stepped forward and bent down, backhanding the goblin.
It was clearly a casual blow, contemptuous even, but it sent him flying. For all his attitude, Melchior’s not much bigger than a cat and lighter than he looks. He hit the cave wall with a thud that made my stomach turn a cartwheel. Cerice hurried to his side. The Furies let her pass. I stood alone, my back tight against the hound of hell.
I should have been terrified. I was. But even more than fear, I felt anger. Anger at the way Megaera had treated my familiar. Anger that the Furies’ presence prevented me from going to him. Anger at the whole damned situation. Anger that was exactly what I needed to break my thinking loose.
I couldn’t escape from the Furies, not really. Not in the long run. Even if I gave them the slip here, they would keep coming after me. That was what they did. That was who they were. No, as long as they operated under the authority of Atropos and her sisters, I was going to be a target. If I wanted any hope of ever getting my life back, I had to find a way to stop Persephone’s virus, fix Shara, and make things right with Necessity. That meant going to Hades. My only true escape route lay across the Styx.
There was a quick way to make that journey, a very quick way, and Megaera would be only too happy to buy my ticket. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up on getting back out. That meant that I had to shake the Furies loose at least for a few moments. And as the living wall pressed against my back reminded me, I had to get Cerberus out of the way, too. Perhaps I could introduce problem A to problem B to create opening C.
“Tisiphone,” I said. “Do you still feel the same way about me that you did when last we talked?”
“I do,” she answered.
“Then, if someone has to kill me, I’d prefer it were you.”
“I . . . Don’t ask me to do this,” she said.
“That’s cruel,” said Megaera stepping forward. “Ask me. I’d love to help.”
“Or me.” Alecto stepped up beside Megaera. “It’s my duty and if you face it with honor, I’ll end it quickly.”
“Dave,” I said quietly.
“What? I’d rather not get involved at this point.”
“Are we still friends?”
“Yes—” he said, simultaneously with Bob’s “No.” “—good ones.”
“Then, I’m sorry to get you into all this. You and Tisiphone both.”
“I don’t—” he began, but I was already moving.
I chose Megaera, both because she was closer to the river than Alecto and because she was much more likely to let her anger govern her actions. I took a long step toward the Fury and away from Cerberus. Using my left hand, I unzipped my jacket and exposed my chest. Megaera grinned and lunged at me, just as I expected. Ten razor-tipped fingers came straight at my chest, and the flow of events seemed to slow down. I felt like I had all the time in the world to implement my plan.
But I was moving as slowly as everything else. So despite the fact that it seemed like I had hours in which to decide exactly how and where to grab Megaera’s wrists, I was only just able to catch them, pulling her forward and up at the same time as I threw myself backwards and down so that she passed over my falling body.
It shouldn’t have worked, and it probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had help. Even though I knew I couldn’t hold Megaera for long, I had a firm enough grip for the action of the moment. But I’d forgotten about the talons on her feet, talons that would have slit me from throat to groin if Tisiphone hadn’t leaped forward at that exact second. She collided with Megaera in what looked like a clumsy effort to help her. Instead, it gave Megaera a little added boost, and those toe claws dug ten shallow trenches in my chest rather than filleting me. It felt like she’d ripped my nipples off, but it didn’t kill me, and Megaera kept right on going, sailing over me to collide claws first with Mort’s nose.
Pandemonium. A dog’s nose is about the most sensitive bit of his anatomy, and Mort’s was no exception. He howled like a bee-stung basset and almost instinctively snapped at Megaera, catching her shoulder in his oversized mastiff’s jaws. With a reflexive toss of his head, he threw her aside, sending her sailing through the air. Then he turned his attention on me, glaring down and snarling with his great fangs bared. Since I was flat on my back and practically between his feet at that point I should have been paralyzed with fear. I didn’t have time.
Tisiphone had taken Alecto’s place as the closest Fury, standing over me with both of her feet a few inches to the right of my pelvis. As her toe claws sank deep into the stone there, I felt my penis shrivel and try to climb up into my body to get away from them. She swung her right hand high above her head as though she were about to rip me open.
At the very same time Alecto was coming in from her left. But before Alecto could do anything, Mort’s descending head struck her square in the ribs. He kept his jaws closed, but the force of the blow was tremendous, and she tumbled, smashing into Tisiphone. Together the Furies fell toward me. Again, I probably should have died when that tangle of sharp death landed on me, but somehow Tisiphone’s wing, like the pinion of my very own personal guardian angel, swept me out of the way at the last instant.
It wasn’t gentle, and I picked some up fresh scrapes and bruises as I rolled across the loose rocks and rough stone that made up the near bank of the Styx. Megaera came back about then, descending on me from above.
“You attacked Mort!” Dave bellowed in a voice that sounded like a bad actor auditioning for the part of a vengeful gang member in West Side Story.
Then he snapped Megaera out of the air. Tisiphone got to her feet about then and screamed something incoherent before lunging at Bob. I don’t know what Alecto and Mort were thinking at this point, but full-scale battle had been engaged between their respective counterparts, and they crashed together in an apparent desire not to be left out. Cerberus lost his footing and fell almost on top of me, forcing me to scramble like mad to get clear.
I ended up at the base of the long finger of stone that Shara had climbed earlier and quickly leaped up beside her. We were trapped there by the snarling tumbling ball of madness that was the Furies and Cerberus. Well, I had my distraction. I just needed to figure out how to get past the barrier of the river. I was glad the melee had separated me from Melchior and Cerice. That would make my plan for taking the next step alone much easier to execute. Now I just had to lose Shara and get across the damned river.
“What do we do now?” she asked, looking worriedly from the wild brawl to the black water that surrounded us on three sides.
The entire surface rippled and roiled with the nastiness Hades had release
d into the waters. Directly beneath us, the water was so churned up that sooty foam had formed in small clumps.
“I don’t know. Swimming doesn’t seem like a great option.” And I want to leave you on this side of the Styx anyway. She was half-rescued, and I didn’t want to have to rerescue that half later.
“Really?” said Shara, rolling her eyes. “You don’t say? No swimming. And here I was thinking you and I were finally going to get a chance to go skinny-dipping without Cerice around to spoil the fun.”
Before I could respond, the battle between the two tripartite heavyweights caught my attention. It was one of those brief moments of stillness that happen even in the worst fights, and I got a snapshot view of the state of things. Tisiphone had Bob in some kind of modified head-lock and was viciously smashing the balled fist of her free hand again and again into the center of his forehead. Either Alecto had caught Mort’s upper jaw with her hands and his lower with her feet and was desperately trying to force them apart, or Mort had grabbed Alecto and she was trying not to get munched. It was hard to tell which. Dave had Megaera’s waist clamped between his teeth and was shaking her brutally.
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