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Authors: Kelly Mccullough

Tags: #Computer Hackers, #Magic, #Fantasy Fiction, #Computers, #Contemporary, #General, #Fantasy, #Wizards, #Fiction

Codespell (5 page)

BOOK: Codespell
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I opened my mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. Nothing came out. You see, I had met my grandmother before, seen her perform even, though I had never realized we were related. Thalia! The muse of comedy and comedic poetry. Which made me the product of Fate and Slapstick. I couldn’t help myself; I laughed. Suddenly the cosmic irony of my life made so much more sense.
Thalia laughed as well, an utterly infectious sound. When we had both wound down, she spoke again. “No hello for your grandmother, child? What’s wrong, my little black-bird? Cat got your tongue?”
From any other goddess in almost any other circumstances, the reference to my Raven side probably would have sobered me right up. In her case, it was the final ridiculous straw, and I started laughing again. My grandmother was right there with me. Cerice kept looking back and forth between the two us and shaking her head, which, of course, only made it funnier.
When I finally started to catch my breath, I took another look at Thalia. She was beautiful, but what goddess wasn’t? They choose their own appearances and change them at a whim. But she was also more human than most. She had chosen to be short and to let the lines of her spirit show in her face. I liked that. I liked less that she had ignored my existence for more than twenty years.
“Why now?” I asked.
She grinned ruefully, and I knew she’d caught my meaning. “Because of who you are and what you have become. As long as you and your sister remained loyal to the Houses of Fate and their ideals, I knew you wouldn’t have much use for me, or I for you.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“You are a chaos power now, if a very minor one. Lachesis and her sister Fates are the pole powers of order and your natural enemies. That makes us not just relations, but allies as well.”
Now I was definitely confused. “I thought you were allied with Zeus.”
There were two axes of power in the pantheon. Chaos and order, embodied by Eris and the Fates. Creation and destruction, Zeus and Hades. I’d always placed the muses with Zeus.
“We are,” said Thalia, “but we are more complex than that. Calliope, our chief, is allied nearly as closely with order as she is with creation. Epic poetry is a very ordered sort of art, and Calliope gets along with Fate quite well.” She caught my eyes with her own. “But comedy, comedy is a thing of chaos.”
Thalia winked, and for one brief second before her eye closed, I saw the tumbling stuff of chaos where her pupil should have been. When she reopened it, it looked normal again.
“You see, we have more in common than you might think.”
“And less,” said a deadly cold voice from behind me. “Since you are truly immortal, and he will die one day.”
Hades. Though I’d only heard the voice once or twice, I would never forget it. Never forget the pain he had caused me or the terrible weight in the black fires of his eyes. I could feel it now, hate hammering on my back like a blacksmith’s ghost. I did not want to meet that gaze ever again, wished I could just walk away. But it was not an option. I turned and looked into the eyes of death.
He was tall and thin, with smoky black hair that moved on its own and skin that barely covered his bones. There was something of smoke to his flesh as well, as though it might blow away and expose him as a skeleton pretending to be a man. He wore a Savile Row suit as smoky as the rest of him. He smiled at me, showing too many teeth, and I felt the weight of his eyes tugging at my soul, like a magical black hole. Death wanted me dead. Here and now.
Without trying, I took a half step backwards. Then another. Before I could take a third, I felt a strong arm go around my waist, warm and comforting, a hip pressed against my own. Thalia.
“You are not welcome here,” she said to Hades.
“At my dear brother Zeus’s party? Are you quite sure of that? I did get an invitation.” He smiled. “Or was that a joke? I never can tell. No sense of humor, you see.” His eyes stabbed at me. “Death isn’t supposed to be funny. Not at all.”
That last was for me, for the torments he had promised to have waiting when I finally crossed the Styx. I felt weak, and my knees went spongy.
“Death, not funny?” Thalia’s words rang out sharp and loud and filled with merriment. “You must be reading your own press releases a little too closely, Hades. That or you’ve never heard of black humor.”
She chuckled, and some of my strength returned.
"Walk among the mortals and learn something, O
Death
.” There was an undertone of “ooh, scaaaary” to the way she said it that made me grin. “See how their comedians make a mockery of everything about you.
“Death isn’t supposed to be funny?” This time she bugged out her eyes, mimicking and mocking Hades’ heavy tones before laughing aloud. “No. Death isn’t funny. Death is hysterical. Life is the joke the universe has played on us all, and death is the punch line. You
are
the last laugh, and you can’t even see it. How very rich.”
This time when she laughed, I laughed as well. As I did so, Hades seemed to shrink before my eyes, to diminish into something vaguely ridiculous. In that instant I realized how very great was Thalia’s power. I knew that when the laughter had passed, I would fear Death once again, but I also knew that I could never fear him as much, having laughed in his face. His might was not reduced in any way, yet his power over me was forever weakened.
Still laughing, I bent and placed a kiss on my grand-mother’s cheek. “Thank you.”
She grinned up at me and nodded approvingly.
“This isn’t over, Raven.” Hades thrust his words at me like some kind of spear, but underneath the threat and bluster I could hear confusion.
Maybe he really
didn’t
have a sense of humor. If so, wasn’t that the funniest joke of all?
Thalia seemed to think so. She made a scary-monster face at me, laughed, and said, “Boogah, boogah, boogah!” This time the whole tent seemed to laugh with her.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Raven!” Death’s voice was shrill, almost panicked.
“And your little laptop, too!” said Thalia in a perfect imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Then she snapped her fingers in Hades’ face and laughed so hard she had to sit down. Since there was no chair, she landed hard and squawked like a punted chicken. Then she made a horribly pained face and exaggeratedly rubbed her butt. Hades turned on his heel and stormed from the pavilion without saying another word.
Even Cerice smiled then. “You’re all mad, you know that, right?” she asked, shaking her head and giggling.
“Of course,” said Thalia, as she got back to her feet. Then her expression went deadly serious. “Yet I just defeated Death.” The laughter stopped for a moment. “Which reminds me, who’s heard the one about Hades, Dionysus, Morpheus, and the farmer’s daughter?”
When no one answered, she grinned and began to tell an improbably obscene but deeply funny story.
That was my other grandmother to a tee.
We spent perhaps an hour with Thalia. Several of the other muses dropped in during that time as well, and it was probably the most fun I’d ever had with family in my life. But I still needed to find Zeus and make my official hellos. So, with much regret and promises to visit soon, Cerice and I moved on.
More snapshots of the freak show that is my great sprawling family.
Dryads performing an elaborate dance that had them leaping wildly one minute and transforming into a windswept grove the next.
Apollo and Artemis playing a wild game of light and shadow with gold and silver shields.
Persephone, heartbreaking in her beauty, surrounded by admirers and radiating contentment. The pain of her long imprisonment could still be seen in the depths of her eyes and occasional moments of quiet when she seemed to gaze through the people around her.
She didn’t see me, and I didn’t try to catch her attention. We had things to talk about, but a crowded party on Olympus wasn’t the place.
I shook my head and sighed.
“Penny for your thoughts?” asked Cerice.
Before I could answer, my bag binged. Cerice half smiled and shook her head in a “what can you do?” kind of way. I pulled Melchior out of the bag and flipped up his lid.
Incoming visual transfer protocol link,
typed itself on his screen.
Who?
I responded with my free hand.
Fido, Fido, and Rover.
I glanced at Cerice. She sighed and nodded.
“Go ahead. I need to stop at the ladies’ room anyway. Find you here?”
“Sure.”
Cerice walked off as I typed,
Put him through.
Melchior’s screen seemed to deepen and expand, creating a three-dimensional space like a tiny theater. Mist swirled there for a moment: red, blue, and green. Then, Cerberus was looking out at me.
“Ravirn,” said the middle head, a rottweiler I called Dave, “What happened at the party?”
“Yeah,” chimed in the mastiff on the right, Mort. “Hades came home early, and he looked—”
“Like he was going to tear someone’s head off,” said Bob, the Doberman, sounding quite cheery. “He mentioned your name.” Bob and I had issues.
“I’d watch my back if I were you,” said Mort.
“I wouldn’t,” said Bob.
Dave rolled his eyes. “Shut yer yapper, Bob. Or I’ll shut it for you.” He was the pack alpha, and Bob put his head down to show his submission. Dave continued, “Is Persephone there?”
I smiled sadly at that. Dave had been Persephone’s dog for millennia, and he missed her terribly, even though he’d repeatedly thanked me for freeing her.
“She’s here, but I haven’t spoken with her yet.”
Dave contrived to look simultaneously terribly happy and completely bereft. “I wish I could be there, but I don’t get a lot of time off.”
“Maybe you should go on strike for better working—”
“What’s wrong?” Mort asked me.
“I’m not sure. I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.”
I had, and I saw it again now. Zeus.
“Gottagobye,” I said to Cerberus, and had Melchior sign me off.
“Ah, there you are, Raven!” boomed the sky god’s jovial voice from off to my right. “Been looking for you all over the place. Kept missing you, too, though I heard rumors of your presence from Thalia, and saw the state you left old Hades in.” The voice was interrupted by a chortle. “Silly stick-in-the-mud, brother though he is.”
I braced myself and turned to face him. The king of the gods is a big man, seven feet tall and broad of shoulder. His skin is bronze, really bronze, metallic and shiny like he’s been recently oiled. His hair and beard are golden, likewise. When he laughs, tiny bolts of lightning jump between the curly locks, and he laughs a lot. Zeus is a joker of the “hail, fellow, well met” variety and his own best audience. He has more teeth than he should, or at least it looks that way when he smiles, which he does constantly. As usual, he had an attractive woman on one arm, a naiad, judging by the green of her hair and the faint gill slits.
I bowed from the waist, slipping Melchior into my bag in the process. “Thank you for inviting me—”
“Inviting you?” He chortled again and slapped me on the back so hard that I almost went face-first into the dirt. “Wouldn’t be the same party without you. No summer. Good work that. Never did like winter. Makes a body wear too many clothes, doesn’t it, sugar?”
He patted the naiad on her very scantily clad behind, and she giggled. I was more than a little embarrassed for her, but nymphs are funny creatures, and she seemed to like the attention.
“But that’s only true for some, eh, son.” Zeus grinned and winked at me. “Others are made of tougher stuff. Tisiphone, for example.” Like all the Furies, Tisiphone disdained clothing even in the depths of winter. “She’s how I found you. Knew right where you were when I asked her, did Tisiphone. Smart, that one, and worth a second look, or maybe even a third if you know what I mean.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at me.
I swallowed hard and tried to think of a safe answer, a task made more complex by the return of Cerice.
“Your Majesty,” she said, tipping him a curtsy.
He took the opportunity to leer down her bodice in a theatrical way. “This one’s a beauty, too, of course. But you’re young yet. You don’t want to be too tied down, now do you? Not like I am with Hera. Speaking of which”—he caught Cerice’s hand in his own and brushed a kiss across her knuckles—“when the boy breaks your heart, come on by, and I’ll give you a comforting word or six.”
His divine lecher patter should have been appalling. It
was
appalling. But at the same time there was such a good-natured honesty to it that it was also weirdly charming.
“Now, come along both of you. You’re wanted at the head table.”
He put an arm around my shoulders and another around Cerice and started steering us through the crowd. We were nearly back to the main tent when we ran into Clotho. She stood between us and the head table, and not even Zeus will be rude to Fate, so we halted facing her.
BOOK: Codespell
5.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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