Mythos (13 page)

No. Was it really that simple? It couldn’t be, but the darkness of my Raven’s shadow grew blacker yet. Stretching out my arms I matched my position to the shadow of the soaring Raven. It felt . . . right. I clenched my fists as though catching hold of the tips of my shadow wings and pulled, trying to draw the Raven shape over me like a cloak.

Searing pain filled me, as my very soul was forced into a mold that wasn’t quite the right shape, a mold made of the caustic stuff of Primal Chaos. I was devoured by it as I had been devoured before, though there were differences this time. First and foremost, I never lost my sense of self. I was completely there and completely in the moment. I felt each and every molecule of my body shifting under the Raven’s skin. I also felt intense pinpricks of heat and cold, as though someone had added sparks and snowflakes to the usual mix.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. I was . . . Intuition, the third Raven. I cocked my head to one side and looked at the window in the door. Far too tiny for me in this shape. I needed to be smaller. I spread my wings and looked at my shadow on the floor, imagining it contracting to the size of a normal raven. For just a moment I felt as though a giant scooped me up in one great hand and
squeezed
. Then I was much closer to my much smaller shadow.

Good enough. With a hop and a flick of my wings, I mounted to the window, clutching one bar in my clawed feet. I pushed my head through easily enough, but my shoulders caught. Bracing my beak against the bar below me and straining with my legs, I forced myself forward until, with a sudden “pop” and a puff of lost feathers, I fell through into the hall beyond.

I managed to get my aching wings open in time to break my fall, but I still landed hard. I wanted nothing more than to take a little break but didn’t dare, not yet. Two quick hops took me to Laginn.

“We’ll get you out of here soon,” I cawed.

I quickly inscribed a circle on the floor with my beak. It was faint and rough, and I eyed it askance even as I finished it, but I could feel the latent chaos magic within as I had not been able to feel it in the circle in the cell. It felt harsh and far more turbulent than I liked, but any consideration I might have had for starting over faded when I heard a sharp cawing scream from the far end of the hall. I quickly hopped onto Laginn, gripping the stump of his wrist as a hawk did a falconer’s gauntlet.

Throwing out my left wing, I stabbed the tip of my beak deep into the meat of what would have been my elbow in human shape. Bright red blood welled up, bringing pain with it. I touched my beak to the blood, then the circle, gave a mental twist, and . . . went elsewhere, taking Laginn with me.

Inherent in the magic of faerie rings is the idea that all places within their bounds are one place. Stepping into one means stepping into all, but there is no distance traveled and no sense of movement. At least there shouldn’t be. Yet I felt as though the step from my prison in Asgard to the miniature of Shakespeare’s home in Midgard was much longer than usual. It felt wonderful.

I might not fully be myself in this pantheoverse, but I was still a creature of disorder and chaos, and even this Norse mythos’s strangely altered version of the latter restored and renewed me. Reshaped me even. There, in the heart of change, returning to Ravirn’s skin was as easy and painless as coming home. When we arrived I bent to pick up Laginn, but the hand skittered away from me on all fives, still gray but otherwise much livelier.

“Feeling better, I see.” I stepped out of the ring, noting absently as I did so that it had resized me appropriately for the miniature.

Laginn rocked back on its wrist and bobbed a nod. An idea occurred to me then, and I decided to follow it through before I went looking for the others.

“How much better?” I asked.

Laginn spread his thumb and forefinger wide, then backed it down halfway.

“Some, but not a lot?”

Bob “yes.”

“You normally feel much healthier than you do now?”

Bob.

Uh-huh. I was pretty sure I had it, but I needed to ask one final question. “Is this the longest you’ve ever been outside of Fenris’s stomach?”

Bob.

Bingo.
“You, my friend, are a creature of chaos, more so even than I. Your very life comes from marinating in the juices of chaos within the wolf’s belly. If you want to stay healthy, you’re going to have to return to Fenris on a pretty regular basis.”

Bob—this one conveyed a sort of contemplative uh-huh, more than a solid yes. I was pleased to note that Laginn seemed more thoughtful than distressed.

“Is that all right, then?”

Bob, a firm one.

“Good, that’s going to make your life a lot less messy. But you still look quite gray. We’d better see if we can’t get Fenris back here somehow. Any thoughts?”

A hesitant bob followed.

“Then lead on.” I still had to find Melchior and Tisiphone and find out what had happened in my absence, but Laginn’s needs were more immediate.

Laginn rocked forward onto his fingertips again and scurried for the door. He was almost to the threshold when Melchior stepped in front of him.

“Where in Hades’ cursed name have you two been?” demanded Melchior. “I’ve been worried half to death, and Ahllan’s practically blown a logic circuit—which she can’t afford at her age, I might add. Next time call or something!”

I grinned. Who would have guessed Melchior could sound so very much like an irate mother?

“Sorry, Mel. If I’d known I was going to be kidnapped by a couple of my distant cousins, I’d have left a note or something.”

Melchior suddenly looked even more concerned. “Cousins? As in children of Fate?”

“No, these are on the
Corvus Corax
side of the family, though
Corvus Gigantus
or
Corvus Magus
might be more appropriate in the case of these ravens. Oh, and I did bump into my great-aunt Atropos’s twin sister.”

“That’s not even a little bit funny,” said Melchior.

“No, it wasn’t. Neither were the ravens.”

“You’re not kidding, are you, about either thing?”

“Afraid not. The ravens called themselves Mr. Hugin and Mr. Munin, though their boss referred to them as Thought and Memory. On the Fate front, her name is Skuld, and she’s Atropos’s twin in bearing, though more Clotho-like in attitude. I liked her almost as little as I like the ones whose bloodlines I share. I’ve had a very bad day and a night. How about you?”

“All right except for the part where I’m watching Ahllan fall apart in front of my eyes. This whole having your loved ones get old thing is a shitty plan.” Melchior glanced away then, trying to hide the shimmer of tears, I think.

“Immortal relatives have their downsides, too,” I said. “There’s something to be said for at least pretending you might outlive the ones who give you hives.”

“Who said anything about relatives?” asked Melchior, not looking up.

“Point taken.” I knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Melchior. I really am. She’s a grand old lady, and I don’t want to see her go either. Is there anything I can do?”

“No, not really. But you’d better tell me more about your day. If we’re going to have an invasion of giant ravens or the local mythos equivalent of the forces of Fate in the next couple of hours, I’d like a little bit of warning.”

“I’ll give you the short version as we walk. We need to get Laginn and Fenris back together ASAP, so that’s priority one. No, make that priority two. Can you whistle me up a replacement pistol? The ravens still have my .45.”

“I’ll see what I can do. I still haven’t got the full hang of this pseudobinary stuff yet.”

Several minutes passed along with about ten attempts before Melchior finally produced a shiny new model 1911, though sadly not another CQB, with three spare clips and a couple of boxes of ammunition.

“I summoned them from a gun store rather than conjuring fresh,” he said. “Ain’t no way I can whistle stuff like that out of thin air without at least a couple of more weeks of practice. What do you want to call the spell?”

“How about ‘Lock and Load’?”

“Not bad. You can’t dance to it, but it’ll do.” He handed me the pistol and clips.

“Thanks, Mel. I appreciate it.” I tucked the .45 into my shoulder holster and the clips into a pocket as we headed for the door. “Has Tisiphone come back yet?”

“No, but unlike you, I don’t worry about her. Furies can take care of themselves even if . . .”

“Even if what?” I asked.

“Are we heading over to York Minster?”

I looked at Laginn, who bobbed a yes.

“I’ll show you on the way.”

A few minutes and one size-change later we were standing in the same place where the three of us had arrived two days earlier. Several short, sharp shards of organic diamond lay in the dead grass, bits of Fury claw, if I was any judge. There was also a good bit of dried blood, though whom it had belonged to, I couldn’t tell.

“This came through from our pantheoverse?” I asked.

“I think so,” said Melchior.

“I wish I knew what was going on back there. I’m really worried about Necessity. Doubly so since her problems are largely my fault.”

“There’s more,” said Melchior.

“What?”

He reached into his belly pouch and pulled out a half dozen strands of shimmering white, like flexible threads of ice—frozen but unmelting—hair spun from snowflakes.

Melchior handed them to me. “I wanted to show these to you without having to tell Tisiphone.”

“I can see why.” The hairs were cold to the touch, like living ice, and the elemental magic of them reminded me of nothing so much as the flame that Tisiphone wore on her own head. “I don’t think she’s going to like this one little bit.”

“That’s an understatement.”

I nodded. Tisiphone had two sisters, neither of whom was a creature of ice. The conversation that resulted from this latest message from home wasn’t going to be any fun at all.

 

 

“Now what?” asked Melchior.

“Ask Laginn,” I replied.

The hand had just finished something resembling an elaborate dance number that involved a good deal of finger snapping and drawing of runes in the dirt.

“Well?”

Laginn did its equivalent of a shrug, then settled down to finger tapping.

“I guess we wait,” I said.

“And who doesn’t love waiting?” replied Melchior with a sigh.

“I suppose it depends on what you’re waiting for,” said a sardonic voice from behind us.

Melchior jumped about a foot straight in the air, then ducked around the nearest corner of York Miniature. Laginn froze.

“You, actually.” I turned to face Loki, accompanied once again by the big black poodle. I indicated the dog with a nod. “You’re not fooling anyone. You know that, right?”

“Are my roots showing?” growled Fenris, his voice deep and dangerous. It carried all sorts of resonant and frightening subtones, the warning snarl of the world’s biggest and baddest junkyard dog. “I guess I’ll have to talk to my hairdresser. Or maybe I’ll just eat him and look for a new one.” He took two long steps forward and shoved his nose into my crotch, sniffing vigorously.

I forced myself not to flinch, raising an eyebrow at Loki instead. “Is he always so direct?”

“Only if he really takes a shine to you,” replied Loki. Then he tugged on the thin silver leash that connected them, the leash that trailed into the distance behind Loki. “I don’t think pit bull’s going to work any better than poodle with this one, Junior.”

Fenris backed up a couple of steps and sat down, eyeing me askance. “How about this, then?”

He shook like a dog shedding water, and the poodle shape slid off him, leaving behind the wolf. The real Fenris was half again as tall as a Clydesdale, though much thinner, and his fur was the dark gray of afternoon storm clouds. A broadsword pierced his lower jaw and lip in place of the iron thorn I’d seen there before, and I could see fresh blood on the tip where it gouged at the roof of his mouth. Only the thin silver cord tied around his neck remained the same.

“Does this shape please you better, man?” The growling voice came out even deeper and scarier than it had through the poodle’s lips.

“I am no more a man than you are a wolf,” I said. With a wrench of my will and an infinite instant of tearing pain I shifted my shape to that of the Raven. “We are both of us creatures of chaos, is that not so? Both more and less than the skins we clothe ourselves in?”

The wolf laughed, deep and growly and remarkably infectious, though the sword in his jaw cut his tongue and mouth when he did it. After my own cawing cackles had finished, Fenris bobbed his head at me and reassumed his poodle form.

“Fair enough,” he said, his voice higher and friendlier now, though it still held the growling undertones. “I think that I like you, Raven. Though whether that ultimately plays as prologue or appetizer remains to be seen.”

Great.
I twisted my will and my form again, returning to the body I’d been born with, or—more accurately—a reasonably thorough reconstruction of same. The original-issue body had been utterly destroyed in my final duel with Hades, and I’d had to put the new one together from memory. Each time I made the change, it came a little easier, though it never hurt any less.

“You’re so reassuring,” I said.

“Hey, what to do you expect from a wolf in poodle’s clothing?” he growled.

“A favor, actually. Hopefully one that’s mutual.”

“Say on,” said Loki, reinserting himself in the conversation.

“I believe you both know my associate, Laginn,” I said, gesturing for the hand to come forward.

“Chew toy,” Fenris said wistfully, edging closer to the hand.

“What of it?” asked Loki, pulling back hard on the leash.

“You have something it needs,” I replied. “Primal Chaos, that is. The stuff sloshing around in your son’s gut. Without frequent reimmersion, Laginn will die.”