Codespell (22 page)
Authors: Kelly Mccullough
Tags: #Computer Hackers, #Magic, #Fantasy Fiction, #Computers, #Contemporary, #General, #Fantasy, #Wizards, #Fiction
Ahllan’s home was a series of tunnels and rooms built into a hill. My own bedroom—more remembered than seen at the moment—was low and domed, its walls covered with a collage of warm brickwork colors cut from old magazines. The ancient futon I currently occupied was heaped with patchwork quilts and surrounded by rag rugs in the same reds and oranges.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“After midnight and before sunrise local,” said Mel. “You’ve been down for something like eight hours. I can’t say when it is OST because Garbage Faerie’s still off the mweb.”
I nodded. The darkness suggested night. Even though my room didn’t have windows, the hallway beyond its door had no roof. The Furies had opened it to the sky when they’d assaulted the place looking for me the previous year. Other portions of the house had collapsed. It was only luck that had left my current refuge relatively untouched. I wondered what I had been thinking when I chose this as a destination, but I could only remember the barest fragments of what happened after the bullet hit my leg.
“Eight hours?” I forced myself to sit up, though the pain from my gunshot made things go all fuzzy and rainbow around the edges. “We’ve got to get out of here, before Nemesis shows up.” I was frankly shocked that she hadn’t already—you couldn’t follow someone’s path through a faerie ring, but this was one of my known hangouts. Besides, Nemesis had already shown a remarkable talent for finding me.
Melchior hopped up onto the bed and put a hand against my chest. “Slow down there, Boss. Even if Nemesis guesses we’ve come here, it’s going to take her some time to follow suit.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Same reason I can’t check OST: there’s no mweb here.”
“That doesn’t close off the faerie ring, and if Nemesis can do some of what I do . . .”
“That might not close it off, but breaking the circle by putting all the cans in a trash bin should more than take care of things.”
Oh. Ahllan’s faerie ring had been a circle of crushed beer cans on the slope of the hill outside. Apparently, Melchior had destroyed it.
“What about coming in via another ring?” I asked.
“Unless someone’s built a fresh one, there aren’t any within five hundred miles of this spot, probably more. When Ahllan set this place up as AI central, she made sure it was damned hard to get to. That included wiping out all the rings on this and the nearby islands, not that there were many.”
“Islands?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Melchior. “We’re actually on what would be Ireland if this DecLocus were closer to prime, near Cork.”
“So the nearest ring would be somewhere in France? That’s not all that far if you’re using magical transport.”
“Actually it’s unlikely there’s anything this side of Moscow, ” said Melchior. “Ahllan didn’t stop with that initial campaign—she wanted to get rid of all of them. I just don’t know how much farther she eventually got. For that matter, it wouldn’t be easy to find the right world with the beer-can ring gone. You’d have to be able to read the rings awfully well to recognize that any of the farther ones were in this DecLocus.”
“That or ask the system to take you to the right place, the way I did when I found Raven House.” I hadn’t specified location at all, just the conditions I wanted our destination to fulfill.
“That’s a pretty special case,” said Melchior. “If Nemesis has all of your powers
and
knows to ask the right question
and
the system actually works that way, she
might
land on top of us any second. But that’s a whole series of big ‘ifs’ that all have to come up right, and you really need to rest and heal for a bit. I can’t think of a better, safer place.”
and
knows to ask the right question
and
the system actually works that way, she
might
land on top of us any second. But that’s a whole series of big ‘ifs’ that all have to come up right, and you really need to rest and heal for a bit. I can’t think of a better, safer place.”
“You make a pretty good point,” I said, lying back down with some relief—I hurt. “Too bad we can’t set up a probability bubble like the one Ahllan used as her fallback refuge. ”
Melchior smiled. “That would be nice, since they’re completely unreachable if you don’t know the exact coordinates, but I don’t have the computing cycles or raw power to build that kind of looped gate. For that you need a full webtroll. The best I can do is make this place as snug and secure as possible. Haemun and I are planning to see what we can do about the roof in the morning.”
“Where is he now?” I was more than a little bit worried about him, between the abuse he’d suffered from Nemesis and taking him away from the place that defined him.
“He’s in the other surviving guest room, sleeping like the dead and snoring worse than you are. He went down almost as hard as you. Now, why don’t we quit playing twenty questions and get back to recovering.”
“Is that the editorial ‘we’?” I asked.
“No, the medical, as in ‘Have we had our meds today?’ If you don’t want me to dose you again, you’ll surrender peacefully and go back to sleep.”
“All right, Mel. You win. I’m in no state to keep arguing anyway.” I settled myself as comfortably as I could manage with all my aches and pains and was asleep in minutes, very glad indeed for the respite from the insomnia that had plagued me in the weeks since I’d returned from my dissolution into chaos.
The next time I woke, a line of bright yellow at the base of the door told me the sun was high enough to shine down into the open hallway. Melchior was nowhere to be seen, but he’d left a bell beside the bed. Since he’d also left a cane and I really needed the bathroom, I decided to see how far I could get on my own.
Sitting up didn’t kill me. Neither did getting to my feet, though the latter left me feeling as though it should have. My leg was not at all happy with me, though the ache in my back from the first shot had faded completely, along with the bruise it must have left.
I tested my bad leg carefully and found that even without the cane I could walk. It hurt, rather a lot, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be jogging anytime soon. Still, it was better than I’d expected. Melchior must have done wonders with the healing magic. Combine that with the legacy of quick recovery I’d inherited from my Titan forebears, and I couldn’t complain. Not when I was walking so soon after taking a bullet and aggravating the old damage in my knee. Even if the latter didn’t want to bend properly.
Swearing periodically, I hobbled off to the bathroom. I didn’t bother with clothes. I’d found my bloodstained shepherd’s tunic in a heap next to my leathers and decided that neither looked very appealing.
Unlike the bedroom where I’d slept, the bathroom had recently been cleaned and dusted. Another domed room, its walls and ceiling were surfaced with a broken-glass mosaic, the edges of which had all been smoothed until they felt something like tile. Here and there, a fragment of labeling identified a bit of soda bottle or a mason jar. The colors ranged from green-blue through blue-green to emerald. The effect was a bit like scuba diving in the Mediterranean. The porcelain was spiderwebbed with fractures but clearly sound.
After I’d relieved myself, I checked my leg in the mirror and was delighted to find the wound thoroughly scabbed over. It was high on the outside of my thigh, and only luck had prevented the slug from hitting the bone with all sorts of ugly complications. There was no exit wound, so Mel must have drawn the bullet. I was very glad I hadn’t been awake for that. My knee was swollen and red and popped very quietly and very painfully when I bent it much past thirty degrees, but it had been much worse in the past. I was beginning to wonder whether I hadn’t substantially fixed it when I built myself a new body after I melted the old one in Hades.
The bathroom had a huge sunken soaking tub, and between the blood and the sweat and the aftereffects of Zeus’s little impromptu pub party, I really needed cleaning up. I looked at the scabbed-up hole in my leg again and regretfully opted for sponging myself off instead. I’d have to get Mel to come up with some sort of waterproof bandage so I could soak later. When I finally went back out into the hall, it was much darker, and I looked up to see if a storm was rolling in.
“What are you doing out of bed?” demanded Melchior, peering down through a gap between two of the rusty metal patches that now bridged the gap of the ruined roof.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I pointed over my shoulder toward the bathroom.
“Idiot,” he muttered. “Why didn’t you ring the bell?”
I ignored his question in favor of one of my own. “What on Earth are you using to fix the roof?”
“Car hoods,” said Haemun, leaning over the edge beside Melchior. “There’s a sort of automotive graveyard over that way.” He waved vaguely. “Once we’ve got them in place, we’ll cover them with dirt.”
“That makes sense, I—”
Melchior held up a warning hand. “Hang on, Boss. I’ve got a funny feel—Ah! Incoming call from Tisiphone via the voodoo phone. Do you want to take it as you are? Or—”
Before I could respond, light-fog started pouring out of his mouth and eyes, and he bent forward as though he were about to throw up on me from above. A rough misty globe formed in the air between us, and a moment later an image of Tisiphone appeared at its core. She looked around in momentary confusion before glancing downward. As soon as she saw me, she developed a wicked smile.
“Hello there!” she said. “You really didn’t have to strip just on my account. I’m used to being the only naked one in any conversation where my sisters aren’t around.”
“Uh . . .” I groped for the right words and moved my cane to cover as much as one thin piece of wood could.
“Of course, there’s something to be said for doing things this way.” Her mouth widened into a grin. “Polite is always good, especially when it so improves the view.” She moved her head to the side, quite obviously peering around the cane.
I blushed as I felt myself harden in response to her obvious interest. “As much as I’m enjoying the current drift of the conversation, I doubt it was the reason you called. Before we get too far off topic, I have to ask whether you got my message earlier.”
“I did, and I was just calling back to arrange for our meeting. I had intended to suggest a place, but all things considered, why don’t I just come to you? That way you won’t feel the need to overdress for the part. Don’t move a muscle.”
“You know—” I began, but she was already gone. “Damn. Melchior, could you come give me a hand?”
I had no idea of how long it would take for her to get from there to here. In part because I had no idea of where there was. I quickly hobbled back to my bedroom and lowered myself onto the edge of the bed. I’d been on my feet too long and was sweating from the effort.
“What do you want, Boss?” Melchior stood in the doorway, his silly grin leaking foggy light at the edges.
I looked at my leathers and the tunic. “I don’t know, Mel. Some dignity maybe.”
He followed my gaze. “You’re not going to find it there. The tunic never had any, and you really don’t want to try slipping the leather pants on over that leg.”
“You’re probably right,” I said with a sigh. “It’s just that I feel so vulnerable like this.”
“So get under the covers, and I’ll try to find you a robe. I know Ahllan had a few around here at one time.”
“Thanks, Mel. I appreciate it.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when a slice opened in the air behind him with a brutal ripping noise. I quickly put my back against the headboard and flipped the blankets over my lap. The rip widened, and Tisiphone stepped through into the hallway. She paused there for a second, and I thought I saw her sniff the air before she turned my way.
“I told you not to move a muscle.” She frowned at me theatrically and shook her head as she crossed the threshold.
“Hello, Tisiphone,” said Melchior before ducking past her into the hallway. “Back in a tick.” Then he vanished, presumably off in search of a robe.
She waved vaguely after him without taking her eyes off of me. “Sure, see you then.”
“Hi,” I said, feeling strangely shy.
“Hi.” Tisiphone stepped deeper into the room and stopped abruptly, sniffing again.
Her frown deepened into something real as she knelt to look at my wadded-up tunic.
“This is your blood, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice hard.
“It is. Nemesis shot me.”
Tisiphone stood up, her wings and hair flaring wildly. The frown turned briefly into a snarl, and the claws that tipped her fingers and toes elongated, glittering like red diamonds in the light of her personal fires.
“We should have destroyed her utterly,” growled Tisiphone. “Mother was wrong about that, and Megaera was right. This time, we will rend her soul and bind the shreds to the four winds so that they may evermore haunt the wastes of the world.”
Her words were accompanied by a dissonant grating. It took me a moment to realize that it came from the way the repeated clenching of her toes dragged her claws across the stone floor. My attention must have drawn hers because she stopped a moment later.
“Sorry. She just makes me want to kill something.” Tisiphone took several deep breaths, and the fires of her rage slowly dimmed as she retracted all twenty of her claws.
“You know,” said Melchior from the doorway, “maybe this is a bad time.” He had a bundle of plaid terry cloth in his arms.
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