Mythos (10 page)

“That.” Melchior pointed with the tip of his tail.

Where before there had been nothing, now there was something. Strange. Take a spider, crossbreed it with an armadillo, or perhaps a tank factory.
Et voilà
, a huge armored spiderweb, part of one at least—since big chunks around the edges seemed to fold into other dimensions. Make that a glow-in-the-dark armored spiderweb. A really big one.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The local version of the mweb, or at least what we can see of it from here.”

“Rock, please.” I held out my hand.

Melchior winked, and a rock appeared. It was actually a hacking tool, a tiny self-contained application designed to remotely check on security systems, and I used it as such. That is to say, I threw it at the nearest chunk of armor plating. It rebounded with a hollow “boom,” falling into the nothingness between us and the network.

“Lends a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘intertubes,’ doesn’t it?” I said. “I wonder what that sounded like on the inside?”

“Maybe I should just move us back a little,” said Melchior.

The window pulled away from the web until it was only a glimmer in the distance. Then we waited. Cracking involves a remarkable amount of waiting. You do something. It doesn’t work. You wait to see if the cybersecurity goons show up. If they don’t, you try something else. Minutes passed. Nothing happened. Melchior took us in close once again.

“Closer,” I said, and it was done.

I could lean out the window and touch the nearest armored tube with my fingertips. Better judgment suggested another autonomous applet, a bit of code I could stick to the outside while we played wait and see again. I had a strong suspicion it would have the same result as the rock had. Besides, patience is not always a virtue. I poked the tube with my finger. It felt slick and extremely slippery, more like a length of intestine than the giant steel pipe it resembled.

Swearing, Melchior jerked us away from the network. “That was stupid.”

“Probably.” I nodded, though I’d learned a number of things. “We’ll see.”

A whole lot more nothing happened. We moved in close again, and I tried a number of other code tools, the cyber equivalents of drill, blowtorch, and dynamite. The results remained consistent—nothing, nothing, and still more nothing. It was what you might call a pattern, and one that didn’t really surprise me after that initial contact. It was more a case of confirming a suspicion.

“Thought so,” I said after a while.

“Thought so, what?” Melchior tilted his head to one side on his long snake’s neck.

“We’re not getting in this way.”

“Are you sure?” asked Melchior.

“Very. Ahllan’s been here how long?”

“About a year, assuming time flows the same as it does back in the prime Greek DecLocus, and the season would suggest it’s very close.”

I nodded. “Ahllan may claim she’s old and obsolescent—by computer standards she might even be right—but she’s also a hell of a cracker. She did things with Fate network security that I’d be damn proud to match, and I doubt I’ll ever surpass. Do you really think that if it was just a coding problem, she wouldn’t
own
this system by now?”

“So what is the problem?” Melchior opened his wings and took flight, hovering so he could look me in the eye.

“Proprietary hardware.” I pointed out the window. “That thing out there requires some sort of electronic widget for access. A chip with hardwired security, maybe. Or a special antenna. Something physical built right into the computers designed to work with it. I’d bet my tail feathers.”

“Can we simulate it?”

“Maybe, but we’ll need to get our hands on one first. Take it apart, see how it works. Until then—rock—the best we’ll be able to do is this.” I threw the rock Melchior had supplied, and it sailed through the darkness, bouncing off the armor to fall into nothing.

The return to my body was, as always, a shock. The sudden resurgence of pain in the form of the athame drove the breath from my lungs with a heavy “whoosh.” I bit back an expletive and whistled the short spell that sealed athame-induced wounds.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Same result. That was when I remembered we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Well, shit.

“Melchior!” I called while applying pressure to both sides of my pierced hand. “Could you go get Ahllan?”

After some careful thinking and experimentation, she found a phrase of the local binary that served much the same purpose as the standard-model athame healing spell. Unfortunately, it was both less effective and slower acting. I could still feel the burning ache of the wound for hours afterward, and I could tell that both my strength and mobility were going to be compromised for a while.

 

 

The view from the little round tower was . . . odd.

Melchior and I had explained my proprietary network hardware theory to the others over lunch, and Ahllan had agreed. It was the conclusion she’d reached as well, but she’d wanted me to come at it fresh in case she was wrong.

After the meal, I’d decided to take a walk around the grounds of Forestdown Estates at full size and, as it turned out, by myself. Melchior and Ahllan had catching up to do. Tisiphone hadn’t liked the hardware idea at all but had chosen to agree with the experts and go looking for some local godling to mug for his computer. I wasn’t sure that was at all a good idea, but arguing with Tisiphone once she’s made up her mind is remarkably pointless and potentially unsafe to boot. I didn’t know what had become of Laginn. He hadn’t eaten with us and was presumably off doing disembodied-hand things, whatever those might be.

All of which put me on the roof of what the Forestdown brochure—pilfered from the ticket office—referred to as the “lookout tower.” Since it was about fifteen feet tall and mostly surrounded by trees, that seemed rather grandiose. Still, I could spot the tops of several of the other large miniatures from where I stood. Seeing the Tower of London in all its glory surrounded by forest, its nearest visible neighbor, Dunvegan Castle, of all places, provided more than enough surreality to make up for not being able to visit Eris.

I was taking a closer look at the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral when I noticed the ravens. A pair of them, winging in from the west in tight formation like a fighter jock and his wingman. Big birds, too; too big. Way too big: my size. I didn’t realize that last until they’d landed on either side of me on the top of the tower.

I met the eye of the nearer of the giant birds. “Hello . . . ?”

“You may call me Mr. Hugin,” said the first raven, his voice precise, gentle, and dangerous. “This is my associate, Mr. Munin.”

“Ravirn,” I said. “No Mr.”

“Interesting,” replied Munin.

“Very,” agreed Hugin.

“Our employer would like a word with you,” said Munin.

“Now,” said Hugin.

I suddenly regretted my failure to retrieve Occam from beside the bed before taking a walk. Of course, I still had my .45. I began to edge my hand toward the front of my jacket.

“I don’t really have an opening in my schedule at the moment,” I said.

“Immaterial,” said Munin.

“Academic,” said Hugin.

They cawed together—a harsh, wordless harmony—and I felt pain settle upon me like a burning cloak as every fiber of my being was ripped away from every other fiber. It lasted for only a split second, but I instantly recognized it for what it was—I was being shapechanged . . . from the outside! I was going to have to schedule a mini-nervous breakdown about the dangers of that at a later date.

“There,” said Munin.

“You look much better now,” said Hugin.

I looked down at my feet. Yellow and clawed.

Three giant ravens sitting on a tower. One flew free and then there were two.

“You’re next,” said Munin.

I leaped into the air, and he followed.

And then there were none.

Before my feet had even cleared the edge of the parapet, I felt something grab my ankle. I made my glance downward as casual as possible—I didn’t know exactly what had happened, and I didn’t want to give any further advantages to Mr. Hugin and Mr. Munin if I could avoid it.

When I spied Laginn clinging just above my foot like some twisted Gothic ankle bracelet, I was glad I’d chosen to play it cool and not draw attention. I could definitely use the helping hand.

Not long after we started flying, my companions did something funny with the fabric of space-time, something that caused the earth below to bunch itself into a kind of rocky point attached to the end of the biggest damn rainbow you ever saw.

“Bifrost,” said Hugin.

“The Rainbow Bridge,” said Munin.

“Someday we’ll find it,” said I, beneath my breath.

We turned in the air to fly along the arch of the rainbow. Contrary to pretty much everything I know about optics and the physics of rainbows, it stayed perfectly visible and running like a highway below us, though the Earth beneath soon faded into mist. We flew for what felt like hours before a bright castle appeared out of the fogs ahead. It stood on a high pillar of rock that hung unsupported over the bottomless nothing of the fog—which became in that instant great banks of glorious cloud lit by a brazen sun. Closer still, and the rock spire became the prow of an island-ship sailing the sea of clouds.

Green hills climbed up from the glimmering castle to a mighty city. As we approached the end of the bridge we dropped lower, flying only a few yards above the rainbow until we reached a huge blond bear of a man mounted on a golden-maned stallion. He wore white armor and carried a horn longer than my arm. As we passed, he nodded and blew the gentlest of notes on the great horn, notes that somehow held the names Hugin and Munin and Raven. I bobbled just the slightest bit in my flight when I heard that last. I had given my title and house to no one here, yet the horn blower knew to announce me as a power.

We did not go on to the city as I expected but veered into a grove of ancient oaks off to the left. There, in the largest of all the trees, we alit, three giant ravens on one mighty branch beside a clearing. Neither Hugin nor Munin said anything, so I settled in to wait, hiding the hand clasped around my ankle as best I could.

Perhaps ten minutes passed in fraught silence before an older man entered the clearing from the far side. Odin. He had exchanged his hiking gear for a long gray robe of finest wool. Intricate patterns of horses and riders were woven through it so that, with each step he took, light and shadow painted a tale of battle from his ankles to his neck, a battle that moved and changed from instant to instant. He wore a rider’s boots and a hat with a high point and a wide brim that almost hid his missing eye. When he reached the center of the clearing, he stopped. Instead of a trekking pole, he carried a shining spear.

“Thought.” He nodded to Hugin. “Memory.” Another nod for Munin. “And . . . Impulse.” He shook his head at me, and I thought I saw some uncertainty in his eye. “I don’t remember asking for another Raven.”

He snapped his fingers several times, and once again I heard drums in the sound, deep booming echoes that bounced through the trees and built into something greater, a chorus of percussion. Next came the tearing pain of an involuntary shape-shift, like being skinned alive—I definitely needed to freak out about that when I had the leisure. I hate it when
I
do it. As I transformed, I allowed myself to curl into a ball and fall from the branch, catching Laginn in my own hand as I did so and putting both inside my jacket when I clutched at my chest a moment later.

I took a few seconds to mentally inventory all my bits and pieces—everything seemed to be in the right place, and as perhaps the sole benefit of the whole thing, the chaos magic of the transformation had significantly speeded the healing process in my athame-injured hand. Not that it made up for kidnapping and forced transformation, and I resolved to file a protest with management. Unfortunately, management didn’t look to be interested. When I finally met his eye, I found Odin unmoved both in position and in attitude.

“So, if
I
didn’t ask for a Raven, who did?” He shook his head. “Or perhaps you were sent? In either case, I’m not at all happy that someone has transferred you from the column of Zeus’s headaches to mine.”

“You know about—” I cut myself off and cursed inwardly at Odin’s grim smile.

“Zeus? Naturally. I am Odin. There is very little I don’t know. However, it does simplify things to have you admit your origins. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said with a sigh. “This is why I tend to lose at poker.”

“I wish I could just kill you here and now,” said Odin. “Let you become Uller’s problem in Niflheim or better still, Hades’ in your own universe. Unfortunately, among a number of other complications, you are a power—reduced and transformed by your shift of venue perhaps, but still a power. That means killing you is likely to have even more unintended consequences than letting you live.