Spellcrash

by Kelly McCullough

  “How could I? She only did what she had to do and—” Thalia’s voice rode over mine.

  “You got all the initial blame for her doomsday virus, and it nearly got you killed. Then, what did you do when you finally found out the truth? You, who had every right to hate Persephone for what she did to you? Why, you turned right around and went back to Hades, and there you offered up your life to save her from further torment.”

  “I came out of it all right.” I really hated this kind of stuff; it made me sound a hell of a lot more noble than I actually am. “I lived.”

  “Really?” Thalia opened her eyes wide, and wisps of chaos danced in the depths. “Don’t play games with your grandmother, young Raven. You died that day.” She conjured up a finger puppet of me and waved it around. “Or the original Ravirn did, at least. He ceased to exist, devoured utterly by the raw stuff of chaos, just like your cousin Moric.” She raised her finger and blew on it—the puppet dimmed and vanished in the manner of a blown-out birthday candle.

  I looked away. I’d killed Moric, and even though I’d been forced to it, I still regretted it.

  “The Raven that remade himself from that same substance may have a lot in common with the Ravirn that was. He may wear the same face, make the same sorts of jokes. Even keep the same company.” She glanced at Melchior. “But the eyes of humor look beyond the surface of things. I see you as you really are—a shape of chaos bound by will. I am not fooled by the mask you wear, the illusion of flesh.” Thalia leaned forward and pinched my cheek, hard. “And such a sweet illusion it is—a grandmother’s joy.”

  “The hardware may have changed, but Ravirn’s operating system is pretty much the same,” said Melchior. “That’s what really counts. And this version is at least as unstable as the original.”

  Thalia laughed. “True enough, but is that more of a bug or a feature?”

  “I’d call it a core system requirement,” said Melchior, slipping into a Groucho Marx accent.

  “The boy’s design specs ain’t right, if you know what I mean.”

  I laughed along with the rest of them, though perhaps more ruefully.

  As it all too often did, midnight found me staring at the ceiling. Melchior snoozed away beside the bed in laptop shape, underlining my sleeplessness with his calm. Some of my insomnia comes from the nature of the Raven. The chaos light that lives in my eyes and the way that raw magic rejuvenates me make sleep both harder and less important for me. But I had stronger reasons for insomnia this time.

  Tomorrow morning, I would have to step fully back into the madness of life among the Greek gods. I would have to begin to deal with the problems of Necessity and Hades and whatever Cerice was up to with Zeus. Waking would plunge me into the maelstrom. And, though it was utterly irrational, a part of me felt that not going to sleep meant not having to wake up, and that not waking up meant the morning would never come—that by putting off sleep, I might put off everything that would come with tomorrow.

  It was a ridiculous conceit, and yet I found myself slipping from bed for perhaps the dozenth time since I’d retired after Thalia’s departure. This time, after pulling on a loose silk robe, I wandered over to the huge walk-in closet that Raven House had supplied me. When I’d first arrived, the closet had mostly been filled with clothes in the black and green I favored, but one corner held a small stock of Cerice’s red and gold. Over the course of our relationship, the balance between our clothes had waxed and waned due to both our efforts and some sort of ongoing magical adjustment mechanism on the part of the house.

  Now, though our fire had long since gone out, there remained one spot of red and gold, one item that neither my forebrain nor my hindbrain had ever felt ready to cast aside irrevocably: a gown. I took it from the rack then and carried it out into the bedroom, laying it across the blankets. A full-length brocade dress, it was both elaborate and gorgeous. Though I had never admitted it to Cerice, this dress produced by my subconscious was a near duplicate of the one my sister Lyra had worn for her wedding, different only in the colors of the fabric.

  When Cerice dumped me, I’d sent most of the clothes she left behind on to her apartments on Clotho’s estates. But somehow, I hadn’t been able to part with the dress. It might have gone later—once Tisiphone and I had become lovers—if clothes had held any meaning for my fiery Fury. But, of course, the Sisters of Vengeance have no interest in, or need for, clothing. Which, considering the latest turn of events, meant it was probably well and truly time I got rid of the dress.

  Instead, I found myself idly smoothing the fabric of the skirt and aching both for Tisiphone and for what Cerice and I might have grown into in other circumstances.

  What did it say about me? My entanglement with the Furies? This romance with danger made flesh? The first great love of my life had left me for Order and now had gone on to become one with Vengeance. The same Vengeance that had once worn the shape of the woman I loved now. Was it the risk that I truly loved and not the woman? The conflict? Walking a razor’s edge between love and death?

  I had no answers. Sighing, I lifted the dress from the covers and turned to replace it in my closet, a reminder of another time.

  “It was a beautiful gown.” The voice barely lifted above a whisper, but I instantly recognized Cerice.

  It came from the vicinity of the lanai overlooking the bay. Though I couldn’t see anyone there, I set the dress back down and folded my arms, waiting.

  “It still is,” I replied, when she did not speak again. “A beautiful gown for a beautiful woman.”

  Cerice finally faded into view, dropping the magical chameleon effect of a hunting Fury. She had one hip leaned on the rail, and her wings stretched wide behind her as if to sift the night wind. She looked as though she’d only just alighted or, more likely, that she wanted me to believe she had. Her skin, always pale, looked even more so with the icy curtain of her wings and hair as a backdrop. Her expression held a cold sort of regret—an awareness of loss untouched by sadness.

  “Was,” she said, her voice still quiet. “That dress is as much a part of the past as any yesterday that has slipped forever beyond the reach of today.”

  “Are you coming in? Or do you have to have an invite before you cross my threshold?” I’d intended it as a joke, but my words came out bitter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as it sounded. Please, come in.”

  “Apology accepted, and your invitation as well.”

  Cerice folded her wings and stepped through the door. It made for a strange sort of déjà vu, her entering the bedroom we’d once shared in a manner that echoed Tisiphone’s usual mode of arrival in that same place. I glanced at the table where Melchior still lay, deep in electric dreams. Unless he had some reason to run on alert mode, noises usually didn’t wake him.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked. “A drink perhaps?”

  “No. I don’t need anything.” She shook her head and crossed the distance between us, putting a hand to my cheek.

  So close she stood, inches away. Beautiful and naked, this lover from my past, her new appearance providing a silvery shadow of my present lover, yet I felt not the slightest hint of desire. Perhaps I was finally growing up? Or perhaps there was one betrayal too many lying between us now.

  I pulled away from Cerice. “That’s not the truth. If you didn’t need anything, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Cerice bowed in acknowledgment, her expression wry. “A perfect bull’s-eye, sir. Shara sent me. She wants me to bring you to her.”

  “What if I’d rather not go with you?”

  “She didn’t make a suggestion of it.” This time her voice came out flat and hard.

  “So, because you’ve been ordered to do it, you’ll drag me kicking and screaming?”

  “Only if you force me.”

  I turned away and, without thinking, put my fist through the thin stone of the wall. It hurt, but I welcomed the pain, pulling my arm back to throw a second punch. Before I could do it, Cerice caught my wr
ist in a grip tighter than any vise, halting the motion.

  “Don’t,” she said, but then released me.

  “How could Shara do this to you?” I demanded. “She knows the cost of becoming a power.” No one knew it better, not even the Raven.

  “Necessity drove her to it,” said Cerice. “Necessity and necessity both. The system that holds the pantheoverse together is coming apart at the seams. Shara needed a real programmer to begin to stitch up the rips. Persephone’s virus tore the hell out of Necessity; and then, just when the goddess was starting to develop some work-arounds, you and Nemesis very nearly finished her off. If Shara hadn’t made me a Fury, this MythOS would already have de-cohered. It would have split itself into a billion inchoate worlds of probability, and they would have quickly reverted to Primal Chaos, snuffing out one by one.”

  “But even so . . .” I whispered, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

  “But even so, she would never have made a Fury of me had I not begged her to.”

  “Begged?” I didn’t want to believe that.

  “Yes, begged.” Cerice looked deep into the chaos of my eyes. “Don’t tell me there isn’t enough Ravirn left within the Raven to understand. Clotho was right: I am fundamentally a creature of order, a true child of the Fates. It wasn’t lack of love that drove me away from you; it was finally understanding that any marriage between fire and water can only end in the utter destruction of one of the celebrants.”

  “I—” Cerice touched a finger to my lips, a finger tipped with a needle-sharp claw.

  “The Raven would have devoured Cerice, the daughter of Fate, just as Chaos would already have devoured this entire continuum of existence if I hadn’t taken up the role of the Fury and begun the repair of Necessity. You saved us all from Order absolute when you thwarted Atropos, and from ruin when you shut down Persephone’s virus and later killed Nemesis. But the Raven is a chaos bringer, and in acting you have moved the pendulum too far in the other direction. I became a Fury to save the pantheoverse from you, and I did it of my own free will.”

  She couldn’t have hurt me more if she’d sliced me wide-open. I leaned forward and tugged a feather of living ice from one of her wings.

  “This is all my fault? I’m the villain? The enemy of everything? The one who drove you to embrace your own destruction as an individual? That’s just splendid! Is that why you sold me out to Zeus? And to Fate before him?”

  I didn’t see her move. Didn’t even feel the impact. One instant I was snarling at Cerice. The next I was tumbling backwards across the bed, my chest hollow and sore and half-paralyzed from the impact. I hit the nightstand and shattered it, sending Melchior’s laptop shape spinning across the room. He changed form in midair and landed on all fours.

  “What in Fate’s festering name is going on!” he yelped as he bounced to his feet. Then he saw Cerice and froze. “Oh. Should I assume the boss was making his usual efforts at diplomacy? Or did you start this particular rerun of the hostile-and-nasty hour?”

  I’d have replied if I could have drawn a full breath.

  Cerice shrugged. “Six from column A, half a dozen from column B. Either way, it totals up to twelve. Hello, Melchior. Is he treating you as well as you deserve?”

  Melchior grinned. “Treating me as well as I deserve is a mathematical impossibility, but mostly he doesn’t fall any shorter than expected. What brings you to our humble abode?”

  “Shara wants a few words with Ravirn.”

  “And I’d like a few with her,” I said. “Unless that whole Zeus thing is freelancing on your part.”

  Cerice shook her head. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, and at this point I guess I really don’t care. I just wish Shara could have sent someone else to deal with you. When I was watching you with that dress, I almost forgot how insufferable you are. Let’s just get this over with.”

  She stomped over to where I lay and caught me by the collar of my robe, lifting me to my feet as easily as I might have picked up Melchior. With her other hand, she sliced a hole in the walls of reality. Before I could so much as suggest I’d like to put some real clothes on, she stuffed me through the gap into elsewhere.

  Melchior followed me a moment later. We had arrived in a very familiar and very homey sort of living room where battered furniture stood against curved green walls—an exact replica of Ahllan’s old place save for one thing only. It was entirely cut off from the outside world. There was no door, and the open skylights in the low dome of the roof showed only a blank granite that had been enchanted to cast a directionless but full-spectrum light.

  The walls were painted in a mottled pattern that suggested the million leaves of a northern forest in high summer. Trellises and flowering vines heightened the effect. They climbed the walls of the dome, meeting at a heavy wrought-iron chandelier in the middle and hanging down in a thick profusion of blooms. Despite its underground location, the place smelled vividly alive and vital, like a greenhouse or a walled garden.

  Shara occupied a webgoblin-sized recliner at the point farthest from our entry. At least, her hardware did. As had so often been the case over the last two years, her spiritware was not currently resident. The little purple webgoblin sat perfectly still, her Mae-Westian curves looking artificial and embalmed without the animating will that should have filled her with life.

  “Shara?” I said into the silence. “Are you here somewhere?”

  There was no answer, and it was only in that moment that I realized that Cerice had not followed us through the gateway between worlds, that it had, in fact, closed behind us. Fear of imprisonment touched me then, and I reached for the power of the Raven. When my shadow grew black wings I relaxed, letting my connection to the inner Trickster slip away, and dropped into the twin of my old favorite recliner to wait. Melchior frowned but flopped onto one of the goblin-sized chairs and settled down as well.

  Less than five minutes had passed when Shara appeared in the center of the room. I flicked a glance at her still-seated hardware form. That and the faintest hint of transparency around the tips of her ears and the ends of her hair were the only clues that she was there only in projection.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, before I could speak. “I wouldn’t have kept you waiting, but Cerice didn’t immediately inform me that you’d arrived.” There was more than a hint of exasperation in her tone.

  “Aren’t there sensors?” Melchior waved a hand in a vague gesture that took in the room.

  “All over this world and beyond,” replied Shara, “far more than a very finite me can keep track of, even with a lot of good pseudo-AI subroutines to take up some of the processing slack.”

  “Beyond?” said Melchior. “That’s new, isn’t it?” Shara nodded. “That’s one of the things Cerice was able to do, get us fully reconnected to the mweb so we could start reintegrating all the worlds that got lost in the Persephone meltdown. But it’s been a seriously mixed blessing.” She snapped her fingers, summoning a projection of a chair into existence behind her, and settled into it. “With Necessity plugged back into the system, I’m even more over-stretched and overstressed. I’m just not the computer she is.” Though her projection didn’t show it, I could hear a soul-deep weariness in her tone—she was not herself.

  “I’m sorry for my part in your troubles,” I said. I hated to see a dear friend suffering for things I had done. Though I would never admit it to Cerice, her comment about saving the universe from me had struck deep into the bone. “I wish that I had been wise enough to find another way.”

  “Don’t.” Shara shook her head. “You did what needed doing when it needed doing and with less collateral damage than anyone had a right to expect. I’m not interested in blame at this point. All I care about is solutions to a truly epic problem. That’s why we’re having this conversation without Cerice. How two such utterly brilliant and dear people can turn into idiot five-year-olds in each other’s presence is beyond my understanding.”

  “I’ll give that
a big old ‘amen,’ ” said Melchior.

  I held up a hand. “Can I plead guilty to the five-year-old thing and reserve the right to contest the accusation of brilliance at a later date?” I certainly didn’t feel very smart at the moment. “What exactly is the problem this time? My last interaction with Necessity was brief and cryptic. As was my last interaction with you.”

  Shara smiled wanly. “I wish I could remember that.”

  That made me sit up straight. “What do you mean? Last time I checked, you were an AI with theoretically perfect memory.”

  “Only in a stable system with regular backups. Something went ‘fap’ in a major way while you were making your last visit to planet Necessity. It fried a whole lot of subsystems and erased an entire bank of storage devices, including one that held most of a day of my personal memory. I remember shutting down some of the security systems to allow you to sneak into this DecLocus, and I remember Cerice waking me up from a reboot in a complete panic about nineteen hours later but nothing in between.”