WebMage (5 page)

Clotho is the easiest to face. She's the spinner of destiny, taking the raw stuff of chaos and drawing it into the strands that define lives. She's first and foremost a creator, and there's a vitality to her features that speaks of a love for all things. But it doesn't touch the eyes of Fate.

My grandmother, Lachesis, partakes of some of the same dichotomy. She measures out the lifelines, giving one person a span of a hundred years, and another a mere three and ten. The same basic features that look warm and inviting on Clotho are stern and austere on my grandmother. And again, the eyes are somehow dominant and out of place.

Only Atropos, the cutter of threads, matches her eyes, and it's a likeness that invariably sends nervous shivers along my spine. There's no hint of human emotion in the eyes of Fate. They are eyes in which you can see the knowledge of every single thing you've ever done or thought of doing. Every secret fear that lurks in the shadows of your heart, every petty jealousy, every noble ambition, becomes just another data point in Fate's calculation of your destiny.

I was lost in those eyes. Normally when I'm going to deal with one of the Fates, I have a chance to brace myself. This time I met Atropos's gaze all unprepared. It was the most frightening experience of my life. I have no idea how long she held me, pinned like a butterfly in a specimen case, but eventually she chose to blink, releasing me.

For several minutes, all I could do was breathe. Inhaling and exhaling seemed to take enormous effort. Atropos waited patiently until I had almost recovered.

Then she spoke again in that clear inhuman voice, "You've grown in stature since the last time I saw you, nephew mine." As she spoke, bubbles rose from her mouth and drifted slowly upward. It was distracting.

"Thank you," I replied. "I've been making sure to eat my Wheaties." I'm not certain what impels me to make such statements at times like these, but fortunately Atropos is utterly impervious to sarcasm.

"I'm particularly pleased with how your education has progressed. Lachesis has chosen an excellent course of study for you. With a little judicious pruning you may yet grow into a credit to the tripartite house of Fate."

"Gosh, with all the possible destinies out there to watch, you've been keeping an eye on mine. I'm touched. I hadn't realized you cared."

"I don't," she said. "Not in the sense you're implying. I see all of those destinies, Ravirn. Every last one has to pass into my hands eventually, even yours." She made a snipping motion with her fingers and smiled.

I felt as though someone had just injected about a thousand cc's of liquid helium directly into my spinal column. Time to change the subject and the tone. I bowed deeply from the waist.

"But I've been forgetting my manners, Madame. I was so startled by my appearance here that I failed in the proper courtesies. Pray forgive my rudeness."

"Think nothing of it, nephew mine."

"Thank you, Madame. I assume you had some service you desired of me, or you wouldn't have taken such drastic steps to assure my attendance on your person. Speaking of which, I had no idea that could be done. However did you manage it?"

"The how really isn't important. Let us go directly to the why."

"As you would have it, Madame. What may I do for you?"

"I am discontent."

"With what?"

"Chaos. The state of the balance. Fortune and her ally Discord have grown too powerful, my sisters and I too weak."

"I doubt that there is much that I might do to help you, Madame. Tyche and Eris are far beyond my humble powers," I said, using the goddesses's proper names.

"I know that, silly boy. But they are not beyond mine, or at least not entirely. I have a few thoughts on how to redress the imbalance. Kalkin!"

She snapped her fingers and a squat, menacing shape slid into view, her webtroll: mainframe supercomputer one minute, ravening carnivore the next. He was big for the breed, almost four feet in height and more than that in width, with skin the color of old bone. Massive shoulders led to apelike arms. His wrists were as big as my thighs and hung on a level with his ankles. Broad, spade-shaped feet sat at the end of legs so short it was hard to tell whether he had knees.

The glare he directed my way suggested he was assessing my potential nutritional value. In any other company he would have been terrifying. With my great-aunt to measure him against, I found myself wondering how much I might be able to get for the ivory of his four-inch tusks.

He extended one thick, three-fingered hand to Atropos. On his palm lay a slender crystal. An eight-sided cylinder about two inches long and half an inch thick, it was a green beyond emerald with glints of gold in the depths.

"What is it?" I asked, though I had a suspicion.

"I call it Puppeteer," she said, picking it up. "It's an extremely sophisticated spell embedded in a memory crystal."

She tossed it my way. It tumbled slowly through the clear fluid, and I was able to catch it easily. Closer inspection revealed that the gold I'd seen from a distance was an incredibly complex, three-dimensional latticework running like a tracery of veins through the body of the stone.

"It's beautiful," I said. "I knew you were without peer as a coder of spells, Madame. I hadn't realized you were an artist as well. This is magnificent. I've never seen anything so intricate."

"Lamentably, beautiful is all that it is at the current time." She sighed then, and it seemed a very strange thing to hear Fate sigh. "There is a flaw in the spell, one I haven't been able to find."

"I think I begin to see."

She nodded. "I think you do. Lachesis's reports of your growing abilities have been quite glowing. The independent corroboration I've gained as you hover around the edges of my security implies that she is not far off in her estimate of your skills."

"You want me to find the flaw."

"I do."

"How do my grandmother and Clotho feel about this?" I held the gem in front of my eye and peered through it at her.

"I haven't discussed it with them, but I think they will see the value of my ploy once it's in place. Free will is such an inconvenience." She smiled coldly. "You should see good value as well. With a tighter grip on the reins of destiny, I shall be able to reward you quite handsomely."

"That does sound nice," I said.

Actually, the thought of what Atropos might do once she'd gutted the concept of free will was a waking nightmare. But I was dancing on the cliff edge, and when I looked into the gulf I couldn't see a bottom. I had to be very careful if I didn't want this to be my last conversation. Though she couldn't cut my thread arbitrarily, there were more straightforward ways she could make an end of me.

"Good then," said Atropos. "It's settled."

"Actually, I'd like to have a brief word with my grandmother. Of late she's been most critical of how I've been using my skills and time. I shouldn't want to do anything like this without getting her permission first. You understand, I'm sure." I handed the stone back.

"Don't try my patience, nephew. You'll find it isn't very deep."

"I would never try your patience, Madame. I'm a wiser man than that, but I must give my first loyalty to my grandmother. So, if you'll excuse me, I do have midterms to study for."

She made a grabbing gesture, and seemingly from nowhere a glowing strand appeared. She strummed it lightly, and my bones vibrated like a plucked harp string. I realized she was holding my life thread. It made my skeleton itch. "It would be a shame if I had to tie this in knots. There are many things worse than death, young Ravirn. Remember that. I'll let you go this time. But only for a very little while. You
will
help me."

I bowed again. "In whatever way I feel I can, of course."

"Weasel words won't help you. Nor will my sisters. I am not yet ready for this to reach their ears. Since you have spurned me as Cassandra spurned Apollo, I think I will give you something of the same gift he gave to her."

She whistled a long stanza, harmonizing with herself. It was in hex rather than binary and faster than anything a webgoblin could do. I felt the spell reach out and tie itself around my mouth and voice. I wasn't able to make out a tenth of what she put into it, but I didn't need to. I was familiar with Cassandra's story. Apollo had given her the gift of true prophecy, with the caveat that no one would believe a word she said about her visions. While Atropos would never give me the gift of prophecy, binding my words so they wouldn't be believed when I spoke against her was completely in character. I bowed in acknowledgment of her cleverness.

"Very nice. You've closed my mouth most effectively, Madame." As I spoke I felt a sensation in my lips like the tingling of a limb that has been asleep.

Her smile broadened. "My goodness," she said. "I know what I've done, and yet when
you
say it, even I have a hard time believing it. How marvelous."

"Isn't it?" I replied. "I applaud your inventiveness." The tingling came again, but worse than that was the sarcasm I heard in my own voice. It was so thick that
I
didn't believe me. Atropos had just put a sharp kink in the strand of my life.

"Good-bye, nephew mine. I'll see you soon, I trust." She waved her hand dismissively, and I felt myself fading into nothingness.

I woke covered in sweat. When I tried to sit up the blinding pain in my knee reminded me of where I was. It also reminded me that my circumstances were worse than any nightmare. My meeting with my great-aunt had been entirely real. Likewise, my attempt to sneak into her demesne and steal the Puppeteer crystal and all that followed.

The Cassandra curse was one of the nastiest spells I'd ever encountered. Even Melchior hadn't believed me at first. I'd been forced to go into his command line and program him to believe me on the topic. And I hadn't been sure that would work before I actually did it. Every other kind of writing I'd tried had proven ineffective at circumventing the spell. The problem was that it focused on belief. I could tell anyone anything I wanted to, in any way I could imagine, and I'd tried quite a few of them, but I was simply unbelievable in every possible form of communication. I couldn't break it either. Only the caster could do that. I was well and truly in the soup.

I also had a bladder that felt about ready to explode. That at least I could do something about. Leaning over, I conveyed my distress to Melchior, who went to find our hostess.

When he opened the door, dim yellow light flooded the room. It was low and domed like the inside of a yurt, the walls and ceiling lined with pictures cut from magazines. They were of all shapes and sizes, arranged without thought of straight lines. Color dominated rather than subject, dark reds and oranges for an effect something like brickwork laid by an insane mason. Yet it was somehow soothing. My futon was covered by a variety of patchwork quilts that smelled of a long stay in a dusty cedar chest. The floor was thick with rag rugs. Both bedding and rugs were of the same warm-brick colors as the walls.

The troll couldn't have been far away, because she arrived within a minute or two of Mel's departure. She wasn't much more than three feet tall, but she was nearly that wide. Her skin was the brown of a peeled apple left too long on the counter. Her wrinkled features had something of that same shrunken apple about them. Her forehead was low, her black eyes small, her cheeks round and lumpy. A heavy jaw dominated her face, with broad upthrusting tusks that came to wicked points on either side of her wide nose.

In short, she bore an uncomfortable resemblance to my great-aunt's familiar. But Melchior had assured me of her goodwill, and there was a strange nurturing quality about her. Someone from a gentler family than mine might even have called her grandmotherly. I found myself trusting her.

She smiled graciously at me, exposing a row of gnarled teeth that had a distinctly carnivorous look to them. I smiled back. Stepping close, she lifted me as though I weighed nothing and carried me down a hall to the bathroom. In the process I got a better idea of what the house underhill looked like. All of the rooms were decorated in the same style as my sleeping room; only the colors and scrap materials varied.

Making use of the facilities was not something I enjoyed in the least. Suffice it to say that I needed help, and the procedure was painful. I was sweating and shaking when I returned to bed, but I was beginning to feel like I might survive.

I wanted to talk with Ahllan, but she wasn't having any chitchat. Instead she gave me another drink of the cream-and-bananas mixture.

* * * *

"Boss, wake up." Melchior gently shook me.

"Wha, ahhumm, what?" I grogged, through a yawn.

"I just got a ping off the mweb. Looks like it's back up."

"You mean it's been down all this time? Bugger. How long has it been?"

"Something like twenty-two hours subjective, but I don't know about real time. This world's way out of the main-stream of reality. Shall I query the Fateclock?"

"Yes, do that. Then why don't you check our mail? Hmm…" We'd need to do this very carefully. "Melchior, initiate Sidedoor Link. Execute."

"Executing," said the goblin. "Waiting for connection." There was a long pause. "Connecting, bandwidth very low. Real-time video and audio unavailable. Sending password as admin. Logon as admin confirmed. We're in. It's been six hours, twenty-seven minutes, and eighteen seconds objective since the mweb went down."

"Powers and Incarnations! My grandmother is going to have me stuffed and mounted. Melchior, Secure Mail. Execute."

"Executing. Finding mail host. Accessing host. Bypassing security. Downloading mail." The statements came in staccato bursts with long pauses between as he waited for data to move through the slow connection. "The only thing in the queue's a note from Cerice."

"What's it say?" I asked.

"You want it verbatim?"

"No, what's the gist?"

"She hopes you're still alive to get this."

"That's a sentiment I can endorse. What else?"