Spellcrash

by Kelly McCullough

  “What!” She looked at her hand in alarm, then paled as the blood drained from her features. “We really are out of time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, but she had already grabbed the edges of the partially completed gate and forced herself into the too-narrow and already-closing slit.

  “Nemesis is in the Fury control center, or has at least begun to be able to influence it.” Cerice thrust her own hand in front of my face, claws extended. “She has cut off our power to open the walls of reality.” The needle-sharp lengths of organic diamond had lost much of their luster. “We must succeed in the next few minutes or fail utterly.”

  She turned and followed Alecto’s disappearing feet through the gate. That left me and Melchior and Fenris. A sick thought struck me, and I glanced at the coin-shaped patch of Fury diamond in my own palm. It, too, had dimmed and faded. It was only in that instant that I realized that when Nemesis became the ruler of the Furies, I might be included on the list of puppets. I showed it to Melchior, and he nodded.

  “I’d thought of it already, but didn’t think there was any good to be had from telling you about it.” Then he went after the others.

  I turned to Fenris, but he shook his head. “I won’t fit, and in this world I can’t change my shape as I once did. You must go on without me.”

  “But—” I made a sweeping gesture that took in the endless tumbling chaos around us.

  “I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself, even here. You can come fetch me when you’ve won. The way closes; go before it’s too late.”

  There was nothing to say to that, and nothing I could do for him. I wrapped his neck in a quick hug, and he licked my cheek; and then I left him. Between that and the thought of what the dimmed diamond in my palm meant, I found myself balanced between an urge to vomit and the impulse to slit my wrists now and get ahead of the rush.

  I dragged myself through the hole and into a classical Greek temple built to colossal scale and found my feet as the gate closed behind me. The sun, pouring in through the great front doorway, fell squarely on a solid block of black marble nine feet long, four feet wide, and perhaps three feet thick. A marble effigy of a woman built to the same scale as the temple—perhaps eight feet from toes to head—lay atop the slab. Alecto stood at the effigy’s feet, her head bowed, as she said a brief prayer in Attic Greek—it sounded like an apology of sorts.

  “Is that Necessity?” I was shocked to think about the goddess ever having had a body. Alecto nodded. “Big woman.”

  “Titan,” said Alecto as though she were speaking to a child. “Themis, the first and oldest of the breed, who became Necessity when the worlds of divinity were split each from each. But we have no time for history lessons now. Come here. You and my sister both.”

  I suppose that somewhere in the back of my head I had known all along that Necessity had begun as a Titan, but for all of my life and the lives of my ancestors back to the days of the birth of the Fates, she had simply been Necessity, the faceless power that ruled the powers. But I had no more time to think on that as we joined Alecto at the foot of the goddess. Set into the marble there were three sets of handprints.

  “These are keyed to the Furies,” said Alecto, “and cannot be opened in any other way. I just hope that the two of you count.”

  So apparently everybody had figured it out but me. I didn’t know whether to yell at them for keeping me in the dark or thank them for sparing me the horror, so I just silently joined them.

  Alecto took the center, Cerice the left, I the right. For ten long seconds nothing happened, and I felt certain we had failed and would all too soon become the playthings of a mad goddess. Then, as silently as though the mechanism were freshly oiled, the whole slab rose into the air, exposing a long flight of stairs.

  As it locked into place, a wild scream of pure fury came from behind us. “How dare you!”

  “Megaera,” said Alecto, under her breath. “All of you go down the stairs as quick as you can. The inner workings of Necessity lie beneath. I’ll hold her here. I can defend the doorway for a long time.”

  Melchior started down past us. As I edged after him, I threw a glance over my shoulder. Megaera stood in the doorway of the temple, her wings spread wide like great seaweed curtains. They provided a hell of a dramatic backdrop for the battered scorpion-form spinnerette and the great smoky silver ball that flanked her.

  “The Voice of Necessity warned me of your betrayal, Alecto, but I didn’t want to believe her.”

  Megaera began a slow advance.

  “Evil, of the darkest sort,” said the silky, inhuman voice of Delé as she slid in just behind Megaera.

  “You go,” Cerice said to Alecto. “I can hold the door as well as you, and your knowledge of what lies below might be the thing that makes the difference.”

  “You’re accepting a death sentence,” said Alecto. “Megaera’s older and more experienced than you. With the spinnerette and the eye of Nemesis to help her, you won’t stand a chance. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “I know,” said Cerice, pushing Alecto gently toward the stairs. “I’m not going to win. I just need to slow them down. Go!”

  “Thank you, sister,” said Alecto.

  Then she stepped into the stairwell above me, and her wings blocked out my last view of Cerice. I wanted to push past her, to argue with Cerice, to make things come out a different way, but I knew that all any of that would do was diminish our slender chance of success and with it her sacrifice.

  So I turned away and left the woman I had once loved to die defending my back, because to do anything less was to fail her. I scooped up Melchior when I caught up to him and started to take the downward stairs in a series of half-mad leaps. My throat burned, and my eyes ached for Cerice and for Fenris. But no tears came. None ever would.

  At the bottom, Alecto slipped past me and led the way through a maze of passages and rooms filled with computer equipment ranging in age from antique to “did anyone ever really think this was a good idea?” as well as nine and ninety kinds of temple paraphernalia.

  Finally, we came to a great shadow-filled stone arch with the name THEMIS carved into the stone above it. There, Alecto stopped her headlong progress and bowed to the doorway, repeating her earlier prayers. I wished my Attic were better so that I could get more than the gist. There was a rolling solemnity to the words that touched my heart despite my lack of understanding.

  “What’s on the other side?” I asked.

  “Necessity.” Alecto stepped forward through the curtain of shadows.

  I followed, and the shadows felt like cobwebs against my skin as I slid through them. Beyond lay a circular room filled with a sourceless light like the summer sun on Kos or Naxos, warm and welcoming and full of life. On a great slab of marble that mirrored the one in the temple above lay the goddess.

  She was beautiful in the standard-issue-goddess sort of way—flawless skin, thick black hair, killer curves. But all of that barely registered on me, eclipsed in my attention by her eyes. She lay on her back, hands clasped beneath her breasts, and her eyelids were wide-open, exposing the churning wildness of chaos in a perfect mirror of my own.

  “Her eyes are . . .” I couldn’t think what more to say and kept checking to see if she was breathing.

  Alecto glanced up at me. “The eyes of a Titan.”

  “Did all the Titans . . .” Again I couldn’t finish.

  “Born of chaos,” said Alecto.

  “And returned to chaos when they die,” said Megaera as she entered the chamber behind us. She was battered and bloody but already healing.

  “Cerice?” asked Alecto.

  “Somewhere behind us, dying. The eye of Nemesis is dealing with her as she dealt with Delé.”

  “The eye of Nemesis?” Alecto sounded horrified. “Then you know?”

  Megaera nodded. “I began to suspect a day or two ago, and my suspicions were confirmed in the encounter above.”

  “And still you chose to serve h
er?” Alecto’s eyes filled with a terrible anger, and her claws slid from their sheaths. “Against our younger sister?”

  “She is no sister of mine.” Before Alecto could move or say more, Megaera held up her hand.

  “But, no, I will not serve Nemesis. I told Delé that if they could handle the girl, I would slip on ahead and stop you. I could have, too. I was close enough behind you to have slit the Raven’s throat before ever you had known I was there. But I said it only so as to get here ahead of them. I discovered my mistake too late to prevent what must come now. That task will require the presence of three Furies, and I owe it our mother to be one of them.” She glared at me. “Had I known how to arrange it, I would have exchanged this one for the baby Fury or, better still, Tisiphone, but I could not, and so he will have to do.”

  “You don’t mean . . .” Alecto’s voice trailed off.

  Megaera nodded. “We’re going to have to completely shut down and reboot Necessity.”

  Alecto hissed but didn’t say anything. Her expression told me nothing, but Megaera’s spoke volumes.

  “What’s the end result of the process?” I asked.

  “It will be the death of Nemesis,” said Alecto. “Now that all the other systems large enough to offer her refuge have been closed to her, the reboot should throw her soul into the void beyond the edges of the multiverse.”

  “And Necessity?” I asked, though I thought I knew the answer.

  “Necessity goes, too.” Megaera’s words came out barely above a whisper. “And I bear much of the blame for that.”

  “Shara?” asked Melchior, who had stayed quiet and still until now.

  “Likewise.”

  Shit. “This takes three Furies,” I said. “What if I refuse?”

  “You can’t,” said Megaera. “Not if you care about anyone or anything in this multiverse. The damage done to the computer form of Necessity can only be repaired by a hard reboot and partial restore. There is no other way. Necessity must die if Nemesis is to be slain. And to let Nemesis live is to hand the fate of every living thing over to the mad spirit of Vengeance.”

  She stepped to the right of Necessity and took up the goddess’s hand. Alecto did the same on the left.

  “You must take the head,” said Megaera. “Place your hands on either side of her face, and do it quickly. I think I hear the approach of Nemesis.”

  I took my place. “What now?”

  “Now we pull the plug,” said Alecto.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “How exactly does this all work?” I asked from my station at the head of the Titan who had become Necessity.

  “Just follow along,” said Megaera. “We have no time for explanations. I can feel Nemesis chipping away at the protections that keep her from owning our souls.”

  I moved my hands away from Themis’s face but couldn’t keep from staring into the chaos of her eyes. “You know, I’m not really good at taking orders, or trusting the word of any goddess. Not even such a paragon as yourself.”

  “Boss!” said Melchior, and I couldn’t tell whether he was more worried about the general time crunch or the Fury-baiting.

  Alecto reached a hand across and caught Megaera’s wrist, just above her clenched fist. “Let me. Raven, would you let Nemesis win to satisfy your contrariness?” Then she shook her head. “Of course you would, for you are at heart a creature of chaos. Then, in brief: Necessity’s former Titan body provides the motive power for Necessity the computer. It is a living chaos tap of the highest order. The only way to cut the power off is to cut her off. When Themis became Necessity, she foresaw that a day like this might come, and she made arrangements for it. An advance directive, if you will, with us as her designated proxies.”

  That made sense but left a rather large question hanging. “What comes after? Once we’ve turned off the power supply for the system, how do we reboot it?”

  “We will need to replace Necessity that was with Necessity that will be,” said Megaera, and her expression grew even more bitter. “A new soul must take on the burden.”

  “Whose? Yours, Megaera?” Wouldn’t that be a nightmare for me? “Or Alecto’s?” Better, but still not good.

  “No,” said Alecto. “Neither. For as Furies, we draw our power directly from Necessity, and a system cannot draw power from itself. It must be another Titan or one of the other great powers of the pantheon.”

  “Even if that weren’t the case,” said Megaera, “the system is programmed to prevent us from seizing power. The subsystem that governs the Furies includes a piece of code embedded in the hardware that prevents any of us from taking up the mantle.”

  “And how much time will we have to replace the goddess once we pull the plug?” I asked. This was starting to sound like out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  “Seconds to minutes,” replied Alecto. “Which is probably more time than we have left if we don’t do this.”

  “But how are we going to get a replacement here with the mweb down?” I asked. “And who will it be?”

  “He is already here,” said Megaera through clenched teeth.

  “He?” I glanced at the chaos in Themis’s eyes again and . . . Lightbulb! Oh. Hell. “You can’t mean me! I’m not a Titan . . . am I? Even if I were, aren’t I technically a Fury at the moment and so disbarred?”

  There was a crash from somewhere beyond the shadow curtain, and the sound of something big approaching fast.

  “You know the answer in your heart,” said Alecto. “Shara gave you the powers of a Fury, not the limitations.”

  “Put your hands on either side of Necessity’s face, Raven,” said Megaera, though it obviously hurt her to say it. “Necessity warned us it might come to this. I believe that it is why she had Clotho rename you the Raven. You are the Final Titan, and this is your hour.”

  Shit! Shit, shit, shit.

  “Yours will be the third part,” said Alecto. “Repeat what we have said when Megaera finishes.”

  She took a deep breath and began to speak, tears bright on her cheeks, “Themis, I release you from your long burden. Return to chaos with the blessing of Alecto.”

  “Themis,” said Megaera, her voice breaking, “I release you from your long burden. Return to chaos with the blessing of Megaera.”

  Both of them turned their gaze on me, while from without the sound of approaching doom came closer.

  “Boss, you don’t have to do this.”

  I glanced down at Melchior and sadly shook my head. In the absolute sense, he was right. I could refuse and hand the multiverse over to Nemesis. I might even be able to slip free of the proximate grasp of Nemesis somehow. I was, after all the Raven, the Trickster and finder of loopholes. In my own special case, gnawing my sword-encumbered hand off might be enough to slip me out from under the Fury clause. But I could do so only by abandoning my principles and my friends. And that I would not do. I lifted my eyes to meet the chaos in Necessity’s.

  “Themis, I release you from your long burden. Return to chaos with the blessing of the Raven.”

  The goddess seemed to sigh, and for the briefest moment I felt her presence looking out at me through the gates of chaos where her eyes should have been. In that very moment, the silver orb of Nemesis rocketed into the room, coming straight for my face. Necessity’s hands lifted and caught the globe easily, bringing it down to rest against her breast in the manner of a mother with her firstborn. Then her eyes closed, and she and the globe both dissolved.

  First into chaos. Then into nothing at all.

  And whether it was Mother Necessity taking her misbegotten daughter into the night with her, or Nemesis finally avenging herself on the mother she hated more than any other being, I will leave to some other’s judgment.

  “You must take her place on the table,” said Alecto, and there was the sound of grief restrained only at great cost in her voice.

  I looked at Megaera to see whether she had anything to add, but the Fury of the Sea had no more interest in the things
of this world. In the moment of her mother’s passing, she had extended her own claws to their fullest and plunged them into her heart, and now she slowly slumped to the floor.

  As I allowed Alecto to help me into the place where Necessity had so recently lain, I couldn’t help but think that this was one of those victories where nobody wins. Melchior might have been thinking something similar, but it was hard to tell from his hunched and turned back.

  I had no words of comfort for him, so I simply said to Alecto, “What do I do now?”

  “Nothing. The tomb will take care of it.” But even as she spoke, her words seemed to go all tinny and distant, and I felt my awareness being pulled down and out of my body into the worldcomputer that was Necessity 2.0.