The process initiated by Discord had involved the transformation of the informational totality of the Raven, the illusion of my reality if you will, into a tightly focused wave that propagated itself through a defined channel in the stuff of chaos in much the way that even quite faint sound waves will travel along a string pulled tight between two tin cans. What I had done was much more akin to dropping a rock in a puddle, which sent the wave that was me spreading outward equally in every direction.
Which highlighted my second problem. I simply didn’t have the amplitude available to a great power like Eris. As I traveled farther in every direction from my point of entry, I could feel myself quickly dissipating. When Eris had summoned me, she had used her vastly greater magical strength to create a clear channel for the directionalized wave-form version of me to travel through. Not only had I not known to do that; I couldn’t have managed it if I’d tried. Because of that, I was going to . . . well, not die exactly, more like become one with the background noise of the Primal Chaos.
It was almost a peaceful feeling, marred only by the way the wave that was me kept breaking around an anomaly in the stuff of the Primal Chaos. It . . . I don’t want to say itched, because I wasn’t feeling things in that way, but it drew the attention. Like a hole in your boots that you rediscover every few minutes as you step in a puddle, and your foot gets wet.
Almost against my will, I found myself paying more and more of my steadily fading attention to the thing. What was it, really? I forced myself to focus. Ah, a rip in the wall of reality. Another—
what did they call them? Fury gate. That was it.
There, I’d identified the problem; now I could let go and . . . Wait. There was more to it. From this side of the wall of reality I could sense the Fury gate as something like a drill bit punching its way through chaos to open a hole between points in two different worlds. The nearer endpoint was very close to me. Otherwise, I’d never have been able to touch it. More, it was in use. I could feel the presence of an individual traveling through the hole in chaos—and through my wave-form self—and out through that near anchor. Melchior! Too bad I would never see him again. No, damn it! I had to at least say good-bye.
I reached for Melchior, and though I didn’t actually touch him, the reaching gave me an idea. Maybe I didn’t have to fade away after all. I focused my scattered attention even tighter, pouring all of the me that I could identify into and through that slender hole.
If I’d had a central nervous system at that point, it probably would have hurt rather a lot. Since I didn’t, I will simply liken the process to what a hundred gallons of sugary marshmallow goo must feel like as it is forced through the extruder to make Circus Peanuts. Only in this case, the end product of that extrusion was a reconstituted Ravirn lying facedown on a cold concrete floor. Whoopee.
It felt rather like the current version of me had been made entirely of limp noodles, or congealed extract of pulled muscles—something profoundly ineffective and floppy at any rate. Given my preference, I would have stayed in my little heap on the nice solid floor just beyond the gate and napped until someone woke me with a tray of hot chocolate and toasted cheese sandwiches. Except that said floor belonged to the same damn hangarlike building I’d just burned several ounces of blood and about a million calories to escape, and it was not a Ravirn-friendly environment. In fact, judging from what I could see by making the massive effort required to tilt my head to one side, it looked like the center of a really epic dustup.
A badly bruised Alecto and the gazing ball of doom were hammering away at each other like a couple of old-style bare-knuckles brawlers in a cage match, while Megaera and Cerice had tied themselves into a whirling Gordian knot of sharp, pointy, mutual assured destruction. The cavalry had apparently arrived to save me about two seconds after I’d made my own somewhatboneheaded escape attempt. Sadly, they’d forgotten the trumpets, or I might have known to sit tight and avoid that whole wave-function nastiness. Of course, that would have ended with me getting beheaded, so maybe ending up nine-tenths dead was the best solution. And wasn’t that just the story of my life?
I wanted to take a little nap, and I might have if I hadn’t noticed that Madam Scorpion didn’t have a dance partner and apparently wasn’t the sort to play wallflower while waiting for someone to ask her out on the floor. Instead, she was coming straight for me with the obvious intent of waltzing violently all over my rather fragile-feeling self. I commanded my limp armnoodles to get between me and the floor and make getting-up motions. Nothing much happened except for an odd sort of groaning noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere in the vicinity of my face.
Melchior stepped into my field of vision. “Boss, now would be a really good time to get up and go right the hell back through that gate! What were you thinking coming back here?” When I didn’t respond, he bent down to put his eyes on a level with mine. “Boss? Are you in there?”
I smiled and reassured him I was fine, or that was how it went inside my head. The data stream coming in through my eyes and ears suggested that the only thing that changed was the frequency and tone of that damn moaning noise. Melchior glanced over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching giant scorpion-woman and started swearing and tugging at my shoulder.
As Delé got closer, she spread her dinner-plate-sized claws wide and lifted her tail into the classic posture of a scorpion about to strike. The humanoid torso that tipped her tail rose a good ten feet off the ground and raised its arms, twining spike-ended fingers together to form something very like a true scorpion’s stinger.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you myself,” she said, and in that moment her voice sounded both less human and more hauntingly familiar than it had at any time previous.
“Mmnnmnmm, mmmnmnmnmnm!” I husked back in my best sarcastic action-hero style.
I was beginning to get some feeling back in my arms and legs. The upside of that was that someday I might even be able to move again. The downside was, of course, that I was going to feel every bit of the pain when Delé started ripping me limb from limb in about five more seconds. She was practically on top of me at that point.
Melchior started whistling code, though I was in no state to parse it out, particularly as he was doing his own three-part harmony. Whatever it was, I had serious doubts about him finishing his spell before Delé finished me.
That was when the trumpets finally sounded. Well, it was more of a howl, but the intent was the same—a declaration of help on the way. Fenris came through the gate in a great bound that landed him square in the middle of the scorpion’s back.
“Mn gmnmnmn, Mnm cnmnmnm mnnmnnm ommnmmn nnmnm,” I said, which translated loosely as, “Oh, good, I can pass out now.”
So I did. The last thing I saw before my lights went out was Laginn leaping from the top of Fenris’s head to the throat of Delé’s humanoid half. Can you choke the life out of a tail?
I woke from dark dreams into that disoriented feeling that lets you know that wherever you are, it isn’t home in your own bed. Adrenaline flooded through me, and I sprang instantly upright in the same moment that I opened my eyes, or I would have if I hadn’t still been suffering the aftereffects of my time without a body. Rather than vaulting straight from sleep into a fighter’s crouch, my spongy muscles took me from flat on my back in bed to facedown on the lawn beside it in a tangle of blankets.
Lawn? Hang on a second. Who puts a bed in the yard? I made the titanic effort necessary to bring my arms around in front of me and pushed myself up onto hands and knees. This time it even worked. Go, team Raven!
“Boss,” said Melchior, stepping in front of me, “it’s all right. You’re safe.”
I decided to take him at his word—it was a hell of a lot less effort than continuing with the whole panic routine—and collapsed back into a sitting position against the side of the bed.
That put me just under the edge of a very Greek sort of garden bower. Rough stone pillars supported a loose wooden framework laced with
grapevines for shade. In the back and along the sides, a thick growth of cypress offered privacy, while a small lawn edged with heliotrope and anemone opened out in front of the flagstones that provided a footing for the bed. Beyond the flowers lay a variety of small orchard trees—olives and almonds mostly, with the occasional apple interspersed among them.
I was about to ask Melchior where the hell we were when the scuff of a foot off to my right alerted me to the imminent arrival of a visitor. Turning my head that way, I noticed for the first time a narrow dirt track that emerged from among the trees. Coming along it toward me was a vision of purest loveliness, the goddess Persephone.
As was so often the case, the first thing that registered for me was her beauty, all the promise and potential of springtime condensed into a woman’s shape. Persephone’s was the pure beauty of beginnings, unsullied by the cares and ravages of time. Or so you might believe if you never met her eyes, and most people she did not allow to do so, though whether that was more for their benefit or hers, I can’t say.
Though she is free now—loosed from her long ordeal in Hades—the mark of millennia of imprisonment and repeated rape can be seen in the windows of her eyes. Pain is there, and hatred, and an eternal anger at the injustices done her. Persephone’s eyes are no less beautiful than the rest of her, but it is the terrible beauty of an unconquerable soul tempered in the fires of almost unimaginable suffering. They hold the beauty of a perfectly crafted sword whose point is thrusting straight for your heart.
She caught me with those eyes now and held me for perhaps a dozen heartbeats before breaking the connection. Looking into her eyes hurt me. It does every time. I accepted the pain, understanding its source.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “I heard your struggle with the blankets and came as quickly as I could.”
“I’m fine. I woke in a strange place and was frightened. Then I fell.” The fear was not something I would have admitted to most people, preferring to conceal my vulnerability behind the armor of humor. But I would not lie to Persephone. Especially not about fear. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”
She nodded, and there was a deeper understanding in that gesture than most could have conveyed with words. “It’s all right. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you woke. I wanted to reassure you, but I was called away at the wrong moment. Athena wanted a word with you, and I needed to be quite firm in denying her.”
“I take it she still thinks my head would look better on a platter than on my shoulders?” I said it as lightly as I could, but Athena’s proximity was one of the reasons I came so rarely to the gardens of Persephone.
“I really don’t care what she thinks,” said Persephone. “You are my guest and in my care. No one will harm you or disturb your rest while I have the power to stop them. Speaking of which, let me help you back into bed.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and wrinkled her nose—a show of effort entirely for my benefit—and I found myself back in bed, propped against a thick stack of pillows.
“Athena’s not big on accepting no for an answer,” Melchior said worriedly. “Are you sure you managed to convince her?”
“Quite. I told her that I would bring the administration of Olympus crashing down around her ears if she didn’t get out of my garden and leave you alone, and I made her understand that I meant it.”
“How?” I didn’t doubt her for a moment—this was the goddess who had almost destroyed the entire structure of the multiverse in pursuit of her freedom. She was full of pain, and fragile in her own way, but she was also hard and strong and dangerous—every inch a goddess.
“There is a code-worm wrapped around the kernel at the heart of the system Athena uses to run things for Zeus,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “Any attempt to remove it will result in the complete destruction of the system, and I can activate it at any time, which would also destroy the system. I showed it to her.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I blinked. “I mean, for you?” Though it probably had its downside for me, too, in terms of giving Athena yet another reason to dislike me.
Persephone waved a hand dismissively. “Not as long as my worm survives. If anything happens to me, it will go active. Athena is a realist. From now until either you leave here or she roots the worm out of the system, you are safer with her than you would be curled in your own mother’s arms.”
I refrained from pointing out that I would be safer with a viper wrapped around my neck than I would be with my mother’s arms in the same position. Mine is not a happy family.
“Thank you, Persephone. Though I think you may be underplaying the danger. This will have moved you way up Athena’s list.”
“Perhaps, but she will suspect that I only revealed my worm because I have another, deadlier threat to the system already prepared, and she will be right. Oh, and I also asked my mother to stop in and remind Athena how happy she is that I’m home for good and how very nice it is that Olympus has eternal summer once again. Athena won’t miss the underlying threat of eternal winter if anything happens to me. She won’t like it, but she also won’t mess with me.” The goddess smiled a cold and deadly smile. “If you must play a game, always play it for blood.”
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I said.
Her smile went from winter to summer in an instant. “Somehow, I find that very difficult to imagine, my rescuer.”
I looked away. There was nothing I could say in response that wouldn’t have sounded trite, selfserving, falsely modest, or some combination of the three. I had done what I felt was right at the time and would almost certainly do the same again under similar circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” said Persephone. “I’ve made you uncomfortable. I didn’t intend to. It’s just that I owe you so much, and you’ve never asked for anything in return. It is hard for a goddess to stand in such a debt.”
I had the same problem as before, but this time she had put me in a place where I had to answer.
“I’m going to make a hash of saying this, but it won’t be the first time I’ve stepped on my own tongue. Your imprisonment was wrong; it hurt me to see you in that trap and healed me to help you get free of it. I get all the reward I could ever want from seeing you walking free under the summer sun. You don’t owe me a thing. In fact, there is little in this world that I want less than for you to feel that you are under any obligation to me. Debt’s just another kind of bondage and I would see you wholly free.”
“If that’s what you call a making a hash of things, then either you think well of hash or your bar for success in speech is too high for anyone short of Orpheus, for those were very pretty words. Still, they do not excuse the debt. Though, if you will insist, I will find another word than ‘debt’
for what I feel for you. Perhaps you would accept ‘affection’?”
Persephone sat down on the side of my bed then and awkwardly took my hand. It was the first time I had seen her voluntarily touch anyone since she had been freed, and I was very careful to make my return squeeze as gentle as a feather and as brief as a mayfly’s retirement. Off to the side, Melchior did a valiant impression of invisibility.
In that moment, I understood something that had never made any sense to me before, the appeal of the tradition of courtly love—the chaste, idealized version that was supposed to happen between a true knight and his queen. I loved and cherished Persephone as I had few other women, but I had not the slightest desire for anything more than her good opinion and regard.
“I think I can work with that,” I said, and moved to break the contact between us.
But as our hands slid apart, Persephone frowned abruptly and caught my hand again, firmly turning it palm up. It was my right, and she put a fingertip on the drop of Fury diamond in the center.
“That’s new,” she said. “I noticed it when I tended your many injuries yesterday. I could remove it for you, if you asked.”
“I . . .” What? I am not usually the tongue-tied sort, but Pe
rsephone had a talent for making statements that left me face-to-face with parts of myself that I normally prefer to avoid.
In this case, my sense of obligation. I didn’t at all like what Shara had done to me when she tied me to Occam, but at the same time, our long bonds of friendship meant that I wasn’t about to just turn my back on her. And, if I really wanted to help out with Necessity, I was going to need the power and access the sword would buy me.
“You needn’t answer me now if you don’t want to.” Persephone let my hand go and returned to her feet. “But do think on it. In the meantime, rest and recover. You are safe here. Sleep.” My pillows lowered me back toward the bed as she turned away, and I felt my eyes already beginning to droop.
But I didn’t want to sleep yet. I managed to stave off the impulse for the minute or so it took Persephone to move beyond the range of sight. After that it was easier, and got more and more so as she got farther away. She hadn’t actually used overt magic on me, but even the suggestions of a goddess carry a weight that is hard for any lesser light to ignore.
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