WebMage (30 page)

"Wha' th' hell?" I mumbled.

"It's about time," said the goddess. "Did you find it?"

There was an edge of desperation in her voice, and that scared me. Nothing should be able to upset Eris that much in the heart of her own domain. Since the last thing I wanted to do was aggravate a frightened goddess, I decided not to play for laughs.

"Yes. I think so, but I didn't have time to get a really thorough read. What's the problem? Why didn't you just pop into cyberspace and get my attention politely? That was kind of harsh."

"I wasn't willing to risk it," she said, answering my second question first. "If I'd jacked in, I'd have had to relinquish some of my controls over Castle Discord, and that doesn't seem like a good idea at the moment. The castle is an island of code floating in the interworld chaos. When the chaos gets turbulent, the island vibrates. Right now the whole damn thing is trying to conga. Something powerful is thrashing around out there. I imagine that whatever it is, it's looking for us."

" 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'?" I asked.

"In a word," said Eris, "yes."

As if in response, there came a tremendous thud, like a giant pounding on the gate.

"Sounds like we've got company." I tapped the emergency alert on Mel's keyboard. "Any thoughts on who it might be?" I asked Eris, as Mel made the shift to webgoblin.

"Ding dong," said a voice from the window.

It was Tisiphone. The Furies had arrived.

Tisiphone, the red-haired Fury, drew back one claw-fingered fist and threw a punch at the window. A sharp wet smack like flesh hitting a stone wall followed, that and a muffled shriek. Eris had exerted her will, rendering the room windowless and plunging us into deep gloom.

In Ravirn's Big List of Things to Avoid, the Furies occupied slot number one. Atropos ran a close second, but the bounty hunters of the gods edged her out by dint of having zero reason to keep me alive.

"Can they get in?" I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper.

"If they try hard enough."

"I was afraid of that. Can you beat them?"

"In a fair fight under normal circumstances?" said Eris, her tone startlingly cheerful. "Not a chance. Here, in the heart of my own power? I don't know."

"Hey," snapped Melchior, "how many times do I have to tell you that I hate it when you do this?" He yanked the end of the networking cable from his nose. Then his eyes tracked back along the line of the wire until they found the other connector. It was still attached to the athame driven through the palm of my hand. His eyes widened. "Do you want me to do something about that?" he asked, in a cautious tone. He made plucking motions. It was the first time I'd thought about it. With a quick wrench, I pulled it out.

"I take it we're in the soup again." He sighed. "I feel a bit like a bouillon cube."

"Tell me about it," I replied. "I'm thinking about getting a crosshairs tattooed on my forehead. The Furies are here."

Mel glanced pointedly at Eris, asking me a question with his eyes. I shook my head.

"Well then," he said. "Have you to started to plan the strategic withdrawal?"

"Nope," I said.

"Why in Hades's name not?"

Any answer I might have made was preempted by a sudden shuddering impact on the wall where the windows had once been. The noise was so loud it was more felt than heard. Powdered mortar shot out along every joint between the stones, filling the air with a gray haze. A moment later it was gone. Or, rather, we were. With a flick of thought, Eris moved us to a different part of the castle, the dungeons. I hadn't been there before, but the shackles and bars were a dead giveaway, as was the dank crypt smell. I could hear shattering masonry somewhere in the distance.

"It won't be long now," said Eris. "They're concentrating their power. In a moment, I'm going to go out to meet them."

"What happens if you can't beat them?" I asked.

"That's hard to say," said Eris. "If your story is true, they're here under the Aegis of the Fates, but that's just the freelancing they do for all the powers. They're ultimately responsible to Necessity alone."

I started at that name. Raised in the family of Fate, I'd only heard Necessity's name used a few times as anything but a swear word. Never manifesting in body, Necessity was more concept than being, a sort of ensoulment of the collective unconscious of the pantheon. Occasionally called "the Fate of the Gods," she was the final arbiter in conflicts between members of the pantheon, but no one wanted to involve her because she was genuinely nonpartisan. Mostly the gods preferred to fight it out among themselves. If they absolutely had to have a judge, they'd get Zeus, because he could be bribed. Justice and the Furies were sometimes called Necessity's handmaidens, but this was the first time I'd ever heard it confirmed.

"What does
she
have to do with all of this?" whispered Melchior.

"Impossible to say," replied Eris. "Necessity goes her own way. I'd better get on with it." Eris shimmied in a way that made me very glad she'd turned off her sex appeal and was suddenly garbed in black-and-gold armor. Instead of the rapier and dagger she'd met me with, she held a two-handed sword over six feet in length and ten inches across at the base. It must have weighed fifty pounds, but when she gave it a test swing, it danced through the air as lithe as a reed whip.

"I hate to mention this," I said. "But curiosity is killing me. Why aren't you just throwing me to the wolves?"

Eris laughed. "If I thought it would do any good, I'd give you to the Furies in an instant. But if you were all they were here for, they'd have let me know when they arrived."

"Oh," I said. "What do they want then?"

"You know?" replied Eris. "I don't give a damn."

Then she was gone. For that matter, so was I. I found myself in another tower room, Melchior at my side. We were looking down on the castle's inner courtyard. Only, even as I watched it expanded, growing in seconds from a square a hundred yards on a side to a baseball stadium surrounded by a sea of bleachers. The tower changed as well, becoming a tall press box of dressed stone. The bright summer aromas of popcorn and hot dogs drifted up from the empty seats below us. For the moment, Eris stood alone at home plate. She raised her sword to me in salute.

"Hang on for a bit and see how things transpire," whispered her voice in my ear. "If I fall, finish Orion and take it to Tyche. Atropos can't be allowed to win."

She might have said more, but just then a triple shadow crossed in front of the golden apple of the sun. The Furies appeared from behind me, sailing low over the tower. Alecto flew the lead, her storm-shot pinions and granite skin a foreboding presence. Slightly behind and to her right followed Megaera, whose seaweed wings and pale green flesh seemed to whisper of drowned sailors. Trailing by a hundred yards was Tisiphone. Tongues of fire danced through her hair and trailed from her wings. She winked and waved as she passed me.

It was strange to see the Furies and know that, at least for the moment, I was safe. Going after me with Eris loose would be like fishing a minnow out of the shark tank with your bare hands. Of course, if they did take her, I'd be the next course.

Gesturing for her sisters to follow, Alecto folded her wings and plunged toward Eris. Megaera was right behind. Tisiphone sideslipped through the air and began to circle around behind Eris. At home plate, the Goddess of Discord raised her sword like a batter awaiting the pitch. A split second before she would have been in range, Alecto opened her wings and rolled to the side, skimming away inches above the earth.

"Steeerike one!" called Alecto.

"And the Furies are ahead on the first call," Tisiphone announced from above.

"It's not a game," said Megaera, plunging straight onward.

Her great green wings parted like the mouth of a Venus flytrap as she stooped on Eris. There came a sharp crack like the world's biggest bullwhip being snapped, and suddenly Megaera was flying up and back.

"It's a hit," said Tisiphone. "And what a shot, too. Looks like it's going clean out of the park."

"Unkind," admonished Alecto.

Megaera remained silent as her backward arc continued. She struck the tower a few yards below my window, and the impact shook the building to its foundations. I looked down, expecting to see blood smearing the wall as she slid away. But the stonework was clean, and she was starting to stir even before she hit the ground.

While I was watching what happened to Megaera, I missed something on the field. There was the ringing noise of steel on steel and a shout of "foul ball." When I looked up, Alecto was bouncing away down the baseline, Eris's sword clutched in her taloned feet. The dugout disintegrated in a flurry of splinters as Alecto smashed into it.

Then Tisiphone was there, flying straight out of the wreckage. The cloud of dust and debris raised by Alecto's fall caught fire from Tisiphone's wings, becoming an expanding fireball. Riding the shock wave, Tisiphone crashed into Eris, sending the goddess tumbling.

"Ooh, a bean ball," said Tisiphone as she climbed steeply away. "How very unsporting."

"Would you two quit with the commentary and just take her?" called Megaera.

She was on her feet again and preparing to reenter the fray. But before any of the Furies could take advantage of the situation, the world changed. The stadium and all its trappings were gone. In their place was a dense tropical jungle. Rich humid air redolent with the smell of green growing things and the perfumes of exotic flowers filled my lungs as I stood on an open platform high in the branches of a giant tree. Tisiphone was visible circling above, but Eris and the other Furies were concealed by the growth. I tried to spot them by looking for out-of-place colors, but the vines that wound through everything came in a million hues. I was still looking when I heard Discord's voice whisper in my ear.

"Watch this."

Like an Apollo rocket taking off, one of the trees suddenly sprouted flames at its base and leaped skyward. As it sailed past Tisiphone, its branches lashed out and grabbed the Fury, dragging her with it. They had climbed perhaps another thousand feet when the dome of heaven suddenly sprouted an eyelid. As the tree and the struggling Fury approached this feature, it opened. As with Eris, there was no eye within the socket, but rather the twisting madness of raw chaos. Tisiphone and the tree plunged through and were gone. I swallowed once.

"Nice," said Melchior.

"I can't say I'm sorry to see her go," I replied. "But that seemed a bit harsh."

"Not at all," said Eris's disembodied voice. "And nowhere near permanent enough. I just ejected her from the knot of reality that houses my domain. She'll be back soon enough. In the meantime though…"

There was a sudden thrashing in the greenery below. At first I couldn't see anything. Then chain lightning exploded skyward, blasting the undergrowth asunder. Revealed in a smoking circle were Eris and Alecto. The former had the latter pinned in a sort of full-nelson wrestling hold modified for a victim with wings. Alecto was clearly straining to break free, but Eris's strength was too much for her. That wasn't the only thing Eris was doing. Working her will on the stuff of Castle Discord, she was causing the thick, dark soil of the forest floor to rise up around Alecto's feet, wrapping her legs in a muddy embrace.

That was when the tree nearest mine seemed to come apart. The thick green shroud of its canopy dropped as though fall had come all at once. This green cloud was almost on top of Eris before I realized it must be Megaera's wings. But before Megaera could finish her descent, a thick purple vine slithered down behind her, snapped out like a frog's tongue, and wrapped itself around her waist. Megaera's long claws slashed out, severing it. But four more vines, each a different color, sprouted out of the two severed ends and instantly clutched at the Fury. Her claws flashed again, and again the vine split and multiplied. Other vines joined the battle. In seconds, Megaera was wound tight in a rainbow-colored vine cocoon.

"I think I'm going to be sick," said Melchior.

"What?" I asked, startled. "Why?"

"That's Eris's network," he replied. "That's the thing I was vampired onto. It's awful."

"Oh, don't be such a prude," said Eris's voice. "Tangle is one of my favorite pets. It's the genetically engineered offspring of the hydra. After that little fuss with Hercules, I realized my initial design was flawed. Hydra was vulnerable in the head department, and since he didn't have much in the way of brains to start with, I decided to eliminate the case he carried them in. It was really…" There was a long pause. "Shit."

"What's going on?" I asked, but there was no response.

I tried peering downward. A vine-covered Megaera lay at the feet of an almost entombed Alecto, who was still struggling feebly against Eris. It looked like a complete triumph for Discord except for one little detail. There was a strange flickering glow coming from the ground under Megaera, and the soil was rising and cracking as though giving birth to a miniature volcano. The small cone rose another foot, then erupted, splashing Eris. The goddess, hair flaming, threw herself to one side and rolled while Tisiphone rose out of the fire. She caught hold of Alecto with her left hand. With her right she grabbed the vines that encased Megaera and burned them away. Clutching her sisters to her breast, she leaped skyward.

"I think it's time," said Alecto, her voice crackling out like thunder.

"But we were having such fun," replied Tisiphone, blowing me a kiss as she passed.

"I thought it was time and past before we ever arrived," growled Megaera.

"Then we're agreed?" asked Alecto.

"I suppose so," said Tisiphone, with obvious reluctance.

"Oh, get on with it," said Megaera.

The three Furies vanished in a boil of multicolored light. Strands of black and silver braided themselves together with others of swampy green and fiery red, creating a roiling knot of brightness so intense I had to look away.