Spellcrash (37 page)

“Gosh, thanks. I love you, too.”

“It’s not that,” said Alecto. “I can’t think of many that would be better either. The potential candidates are few, and none of them ideal.”

“Wait a second.” Melchior’s face lit with sudden hope. “Are the two of you suggesting we might be able to fob this off on someone else?”

“I don’t see how it can be done,” said Alecto, “but I don’t have the mind of Necessity to do my thinking.”

“Or the soul of a hacker and cracker,” I added. “I think I may have found a loophole, in the Fury system, but Alecto’s right. There has to be a Necessity, and my leaving would require finding another sucker to take my spot.”

Cerice raised a hand. “I vote for finding a sucker.”

“Me, too,” said Melchior. “But where? And perhaps as important, what are the criteria of suckerhood?”

“I think I may have an answer to both those questions,” said Shara, speaking for the first time.

“Who?” The word was said in chorus.

“That’s something I’d prefer not to speak of immediately.” She fixed my projection with a hard look. “And don’t you go rummaging around in my brain or anything to find the answer.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Guiltily, I withdrew the fingers of thought that had been reaching to do just that and gave them a little mental smack. This omniscience thing had some serious ethical implications.

Shara gave me back a creditable version of my own raised eyebrow, letting me know she had her doubts about my denial. “Ravirn, if you would allow us the freedom of privacy, I want to talk to Melchior about this and maybe send him on an errand.” Her projection gestured for Melchior to accompany her out of the tomb.

“Don’t think of a duck,” I replied sourly, as they disappeared.

Then I did my damnedest to not access the parts of my brain that knew what they were doing. It made for a very painful sort of zen—this not examining thoughts my brain was already thinking.

A few moments later, Shara returned without Melchior. While we waited, I kept right on not thinking of a duck.

Until Persephone arrived.

I blinked several times and realized I’d been not thinking of two ducks, and that they’d both just walked through my door together.

“Persephone,” I said—well, croaked really. Apparently omniscience is all down in the logical-thinking part of the brain and not so much with the emotional intelligence. “I . . . Why are you here?”

She smiled. “Melchior explained the situation to me, and I came to rescue you.”

“You . . . I . . . Mel . . . Shara! How could you think to put her in prison again? Hasn’t she suffered enough?”

Persephone pointed a finger at me. “You, be quiet a moment and listen. Shara did exactly as I would have asked her to had I known what was going on. This flesh”—she pinched her cheek—

“is not terribly important to me. In fact, it has been more a burden than a joy for many long centuries. Nor do I particularly care about freedom in the abstract. What I care about is freedom
from
, not freedom
of
. Freedom from pain and fear and the shadow of Hades that ever haunts my dreams. I can think of no greater
freedom from
than to put on the armor of Necessity.

“I have been hurt in ways that can never be healed,” continued Persephone, “and would still be taking fresh hurt every day were it not for your choice to risk everything on my behalf. For that, I love you in my own way and ever shall. I have spent many hours watching you, and I think I know you better than most. This”—she made a gesture that took in the whole of the world around us—“will be the death of your spirit if you stay here. What would read as security for me will ultimately read as a trap for you. It may not gall you yet, but a trickster pent is a trickster destroyed. Just as a trickster without challenges will eventually become a trickster looking for death.”

Shara stepped up beside Persephone. “That’s why I sent for her. The last thing this MythOS

needs after the troubles just past is a suicidal Necessity. Don’t do this to yourself, or to us.” They were both right, and I knew it. That didn’t make the idea of letting Persephone assume my burden any easier to bear.

What did was flicking my consciousness into Hades’ office. “You know, you’re right,” I said to the Lord of the Dead. “I
am
unsuited to being Necessity. That’s why I’ve decided to hand the reins over to Persephone.”

Then, with the look of shock and horror still fresh on his face, I returned to my friends, nodded, and told Necessity the computer that there had been a tragic mistake and that it had accidentally deified a Fury to take the place of Themis.

Take a sentient world and a Ravirn-shaped cookie cutter. Press the one into the other, ripping loose and discarding any bits that don’t fit. I
was
that world, and in the process of ceasing to be so, I experienced pain on every level—physical, emotional, mental. I lost senses that I hadn’t realized I possessed until that instant and in a manner every bit as painful as being blinded by red-hot irons. I was crushed and flayed and lobotomized, all without anesthesia or hope of recovery.

And, when finally I had become only myself once more, I retained the memories of what it was to be Necessity. I, who had briefly been God, was mortal once again and all too aware of what that meant. I screamed then, and kept right on screaming until Melchior injected oblivion directly into my carotid artery.

Lights out.

We sat on the balcony of a restored Raven House, we four who had so recently journeyed together from the world of the Norse gods. It was time for farewells.

“I do wish I could have seen Hades’ expression,” said Melchior. “I bet it was priceless.”

“It is a memory that I will cherish for as long as I live.” As opposed to so many others—for relief from those I prayed nightly to Lesmosyne, Goddess of Forgetting and my new choice of patroness.

“What do you think Persephone will do with him?” asked Fenris. He was looking happier than I’d ever seen, and healthier, a result of proper integration with the chaos magic of this MythOS. I thought he might have even put on a little weight. “Hades, I mean.”

“Not a thing,” I replied. “Not a thing.”

I’d asked her that very question in a moment of frozen time that she’d set aside for our parting.

“Nothing,” she had told me. “Nothing at all. What Hades did to me is unforgivable and worthy of terrible punishment. But it will not be me who metes it out. His was a crime of power. He raped me because he could and because it pleased him to dominate my flesh so. If I were to take my vengeance now, it would be just. No one would deny that he deserves it, but it would also be the beginning of my own destruction; because I would not be doing it out of a sense of justice, though I might tell myself I was. I would be doing it because I could, and in that I would have taken a step toward becoming the thing I hate.”

“I don’t think that I could be that forgiving if I were you,” I replied.

“Forgive? Never. Not if every living thing in all the worlds of creation were to beg me on bended knee would I forgive Hades. He is an abomination in my sight. But that doesn’t mean I have to be one, too. Of course”—and here she smiled an icy smile—“I do intend to take a great deal of satisfaction in knowing he will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of eternity, waiting for my revenge to fall and worrying. That I
can
enjoy, for it is a punishment he will have inflicted on himself. Nor will I hesitate for a moment to crush him if he steps one jot out of line. But let us speak of more pleasant things in this last meeting.”

“You say that like you think we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“It’s possible that we will meet again, for I cannot truly foresee the future. But it seems unlikely, with you planning your imminent departure from this MythOS.”

“It’s not that I don’t want . . .” I trailed off. How to express all my mixed feelings on the subject?

“You have no need to,” Persephone answered my thought, “for I can see into your heart, can’t avoid it actually, for I have not your gift of lying to myself. I cannot avoid thinking of the duck.

There is much here that you love and would not part from, but many things more that you cannot abide. Perhaps most of all, having Necessity in your back pocket.”

“I don’t think I’ve got you . . . Well, not really . . . I don’t think of it that way . . . It’s just . . .

Well, Tisiphone, and the knowledge . . .”

“That if you stay here, you will never again know if what you achieve is through your own actions or if it is me giving the odds a little nudge in your favor. I know. And you are right to want to leave, though I will miss you, as will many others, Thalia not least among them. The uncertainty would destroy you as certainly as remaining Necessity would have. You must go, and though I will miss you terribly, I will not keep you here.”

“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“You’re welcome, and just to give you some small incentive to return from time to time, I will give you two gifts.

“Here is the first.” She reached out and touched the nodule of Fury diamond in the palm of my hand, making it burn for a second. “Though it will no longer grant you any of the powers of my handmaidens, Occam is now possessed of two pieces of magic of its own. No matter how badly it is broken, it will always grow back anew. And while it will not make you a hole from one place in
this
multiverse to another, it will allow you to move between the one MythOS and others as you need.”

I knelt then and laid my sword hand at her feet. “If you should need me, know that my blade is ever at your service.”

“Thank you, my knight in motley.”

For just an instant she clad me in an armored version of a jester’s gear, and I laughed with her, for what is a fool but a face of the Trickster? She reached down then and took my hand, pulling me back to my feet. Our eyes met and held then, or rather, didn’t meet, as hers had also gone to chaos when she took on the mantle of Necessity, and I wondered what her other gift might be.

“The gift of
freedom from
,” she said. “If ever you should die in this world or any other such that your soul returns here, you shall not pass the Gates of Hades. Even as we speak, I have placed a new set of stars in the heavens. They draw the shape of the Raven, and with it, the soul of the Raven should true death ever sunder it from the flesh of your body. Like Cassiopeia before you, you will end in light, not in darkness.” She smiled then and once again clad me ever so briefly in fool’s motley. “Call it a constellation prize for your service to Necessity.” Necessity with a sense of humor? How very lovely. “Thank you, Persephone, for everything.”

“You’re welcome.” She kissed the palm of her own hand then and set it to my cheek. “Go with my blessing.”

“Good-bye,” I said, for there was nothing else to say, and she did as well.

It always comes to that, doesn’t it?

And here it came again. Final toasts had been made, pledges of friendship and love spoken, tears and hugs exchanged. With Haemun’s blessing, I had passed the deed of Raven House over to Fenris and Cerberus, who had absolutely refused to change the name or count it as anything but a loan. I had arranged all my affairs, saying farewell to the grandmother I loved—Thalia was spending every waking moment with Persephone—and telling the one I hated to go jump in a lake.

Now it was time for Melchior and me to depart for other worlds and fresh challenges, and I said so. But as I rose from my seat, there came the too-familiar sound of a Fury tearing a hole in the world behind me.

“Hello, Cerice,” I said as I began to turn. “I’d hoped to get a chance to say good-bye before I left and . . .” Holy shit!

“What’s the matter, big boy? Goblin got your tongue?” Shara stood before me.

But not the Shara I knew so well. This was Shara the—“Persephone made you a Fury!” exclaimed Melchior, interrupting my thoughts.

“Believe it, boys.” Shara grinned and fanned wings like the sky at night. Stars flickered in the darkness, and she shrugged. “I tried to convince her that sex was an element, and that’s what my wings ought to be made of, but night was as close as she was willing to get to the topic. I suppose I can’t really blame her, and this
is
pretty spiffy.” She moved then with the terrible sense-blurring speed of the Furies, tackling Melchior and sitting on his chest.