Spellcrash (15 page)

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, self-serving, 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 Persephone 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.

I’m better at it than most of my demihuman peers because I generally dislike and distrust the pantheon’s heavyweights, and the feeling is decidedly mutual, but Persephone was a special case for me. How special I hadn’t realized until that very instant. I would have to watch out for it in the future, make sure that anything I did for her I did for my own reasons.

Minutes passed, and my impulse to fall asleep
right now
faded into a more mundane and manageable sort of postinjury weariness. I pushed myself back into a sitting position and rearranged the pillows before turning my attention to Melchior.

“I’ve got a couple of questions for you. Like, how did you all manage to show up in time to keep me from finalizing my last big mistake?”

Mel hopped up onto the foot of the bed. “When we ducked through the gate you’d cut back to home and didn’t find you at the other end, I knew something must have gone wrong, so I put in a call to Shara. She sent Cerice to us, and Cerice did some Fury-tracking magic to follow you back. Oh, and Cerice also asked me to give you a warning.” I raised an eyebrow. Even that took more work than usual. I might not want sleep, but I needed it. I could feel it in the ache behind my eyeballs and the tingling misfires of nerves all over my body. Though Persephone’s care and my brief time as a wave in the sea of chaos had repaired most of the accumulated damage of the past few days, I still felt very much as though I had been left too long in the spin cycle of life.

“So what does her royal uptightness think I did wrong this time?” I asked.

“You forgot to close up the gate you cut.” He held up a quelling hand before I could argue. “I know Megaera prevented you, but the end result is the same—an unclosed Fury gate.”

“Which means?” Gods but I was tired.

“Ultimately a big explosion. The gates open from one point in the multiverse to another via something like a least-time path through chaos. Apparently that takes a lot of energy. The longer they’re open, the bigger the energy cost, because the multiverse is always moving. The movement sort of stretches the connection between the two points and keeps stretching it farther and farther with each passing second until it reaches an unsustainable point. Then it snaps, and a bunch of the energy gets whiplashed out through the gates.”