Mythos (17 page)

So I clicked my digital heels together three times and told myself there was no place like home. Unfortunately, home hurt. Rather a lot. My eyes swam as I stared at the bitter steel driven through my palm.

“About time,” said Tisiphone.

She deftly plucked the slender blade from my hand and whistled the kludge code Ahllan had put together in answer to the failure of Clotho’s original athame spell in this pantheoverse. It stopped the bleeding but only dulled the pain.

I grinned at Tisiphone. “ ‘Auntie Em! I’m so glad to be home again!’ ” It was that or scream.

“Have I mentioned recently how very odd you are?” asked Tisiphone.

“It might have come up once or twice,” I said.

“So?” Tisiphone indicated Ahllan with her eyes.

“I found the problem, and I think I fixed it. I’m going to give her fifteen minutes, then try a reboot to see whether it worked. At least that part’ll be easy with her in this shape.” I patted the mainframe. “I don’t know where her hard reboot switch would be as a troll.”

“Then what?”

“Depends on what happens. If she comes back online, we’ll have to see what she has to say. I’m hoping she has some idea of where we should look for Mel. If she won’t boot . . . I don’t know. I’m not willing to wait much longer.” The fact that we hadn’t gone after Melchior yet burned my heart, but I didn’t like to think about what he’d have to say about it if we hadn’t at least tried to help Ahllan first. “We might have to power her down and hope that keeps her stable till we get back.”

I really hated the idea. Powering an AI down is dangerous, scary stuff. It leaves the body only one small step away from dead, and that seriously weakens the soul connection. I’d done it with Melchior once back before I’d learned about the existence of AI free will and souls—it was that or let a virus destroy him—and I’d practically gone out of my mind with worry even so. Doing it now with Ahllan, knowing the risks . . . I shook my head.

“That’s about what I thought,” said Tisiphone. “We’d better fuel up while we’re waiting.”

She headed for the kitchen, where she pulled out a couple of chunks of cheese and a loaf of bread. She ripped the latter in half and tossed it my way, along with a block of the cheese, then passed over a bottle of home-brewed beer. While I dug around for some condiments and a knife to convert my set of ingredients into sandwiches, Tisiphone simply tore into hers.

“I could make you a sandwich or three if you wanted,” I said, though slicing the bread made my hand ache.

“Why bother?” She looked genuinely baffled as she bit a chunk out of the bread.

“The illusion of civilization? Better presentation? Mixed flavors?”

“For the last I can alternate bites,” she replied, doing so. “The others are time wasters. The ideal food can be carried in one hand and eaten on the fly.”

“If you’re sure . . .” I started in on my sandwich.

“I’m sure.” She tilted her head to one side and frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t know why we keep having variations of this conversation.”

“I don’t know either. I guess I have a hard time believing anyone can think a meal’s most important features are convenience and speed.”

“Those are actually three and four. Minimum dietary nutrition is number one. Ease of preparation is two.”

“Is there a five?” I asked. We hadn’t wandered down this particular branch of the discussion before.

“Flavor, and no, there is no number six. The rest is frippery.”

“So, you’re not going to be big on long romantic dinners as we go forward.”

“Oh, I’m fine with them. For me it’s much more about the romance than the meal. I like good food well enough. It’s just not something I find worth the effort for its own sake. Food is a means to an end—continued health. Fuel, in short.”

I shook my head, finished up my meal, and checked the clock. Time for Ahllan’s reboot. The mainframe made a sort of raspy sizzling noise when I forced a reboot, and all the telltales blinked briefly red before mostly flipping to green.

Numbers and letters flickered quickly across Ahllan’s monitor as the minutes ticked by. Finally, a blinking cursor came up on an otherwise-blank screen.

Ahllan?
I typed, feeling once again the stiffness and soreness of my athame hand.

“What does that mean?” asked Tisiphone, leaning down beside me. “Doesn’t she recognize you?”

“I don’t know. She may not have appropriate external sensors in this shape, in which case this could just be part of her standard activation protocol.”

“Or?”

“Or she could have undergone some sort of major database failure—her body’s come back, but her memories are gone.”

“And with them, Ahllan?” she asked.

I just nodded.

Ahllan?
I typed again.
This is Ravirn. What is the last thing you remember?

I’m not an authorized user,
I typed.
I am an old friend. I do not possess an ID or password. Are you all right?

“Shit,” I muttered.

Ahllan, this is Rav
—“Ouch!” I leaped away from Ahllan’s computer shape, blowing on freshly singed fingertips. “She bit me!”

“Only once,” said Tisiphone, sliding between me and Ahllan and extending her wings protectively.

Maximum security response initiated,
flashed across the screen.
Enter override in ten seconds or extreme measures will be deployed. 10. 9. 8.

Tisiphone extended her claws.

“Hang on, Tisiphone. We don’t know what’s going on or what shape she’s in. Let me try something else to . . .”

But even as I spoke, the mainframe began to jerk and twitch in the early throes of transformation back to troll shape. Which was probably part of the aforementioned extreme measures. Lovely. We were about to have a potentially memory-wiped and furious troll on our hands. She was well past her prime and certainly no match for Tisiphone, but it wasn’t us I was worried about. It was her. There might be no way of gently subduing her, and the last thing I wanted was to have patched her up only to have to break her again.

Ahllan finished her transition. Seeing Tisiphone, she immediately raised her arms, and extended her own claws. Letting out a low, rumbling growl, she began slowly advancing on the Fury.

“Ahllan!” I yelled, ducking under Tisiphone’s flaring wing to put myself into the narrowing space between them. “Wait!” Ahllan took another lurching step forward. “It’s me, Melchior’s partner, remember?”

“Ravirn, don’t get in the way, damn it!” snapped Tisiphone. Picking me up one-handed, she tossed me a good ten feet to land on the couch.

“Ravirn?” asked Ahllan, stopping her advance. “What are you doing with Tisiphone? Where are . . . Oh.” She blinked several times and shook her head like a bear with a bug in its ear. “Sorry. I’m a little foggy.”

She slumped abruptly forward and would have fallen if Tisiphone hadn’t caught her and carried her to the bed, murmuring as she went, “It’s okay, Ahllan. You’ll be fine. Just lie here and rest for a minute.”

I picked myself off the couch and joined Tisiphone beside the bed. “Ahllan, are you all right? You gave us a bit of a fright there. What’s the last thing you remember? Did you see what Loki did with Melchior?”

“Give her a moment,” said Tisiphone. “She’s had some shocks. Oh”—she lowered her voice to a harsh whisper— “and don’t ever cut in front of me in a dangerous situation like that again. That’s twice today, and the third time is not the charm. In fact, fair warning here: if there is a third time, I will break your arm as a reminder for the future.”

“Better I get hurt than her,” I replied, surprised by the fierce belligerence I heard in my own voice.

A strained silence fell, interrupted finally when Ahllan cleared her throat rather vigorously.

“If you two are done with the dominance displays, this old troll would very much like to find out why she’s got a blank place in her memory and how much she’s missed. I take it from the mention of Loki that I don’t get to write off my memories of the year since Shara dumped me here as a rather colorful systems malfunction?”

“I’m afraid not,” I replied. “How much do you remember of the last couple of days?”

“Let me think.” She sighed. “Even electronic memories start to get spotty over time. Data corruption is the bane of my old age. Hmmm. The three of you arrived, what, two days ago?”

“Just a bit over,” I said.

“Then, I think I’ve got most of it. Right up to . . . you’d just started to call up Loki with Melchior and Laginn.” She looked around worriedly. “Where are they?”

“With Loki,” I said, grimly. I quickly filled her in. “We were hoping you could tell us something about what happened there at the end.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ahllan. “It’s all gone.”

Tisiphone snarled something unintelligible and started pacing again. I had a hard time not joining in both activities. Instead, I knelt beside Ahllan.

“I’m sorry, too, but—”

“You’re going to have to leave now,” said Ahllan. “I know. Frankly, if you’d asked me, I’d have told you to go after Melchior rather than hanging around here trying to save an old lady from a fate that’s coming soon no matter what you do. But then, if I’d been able to tell you that, you wouldn’t have needed me to, and since I wasn’t, I’m not going to second-guess you now.

“But don’t wait a moment longer on my account. Melchior’s my son, or as close as possible given we were both built rather than born. I’d even thought I might eventually hand over the reins of the underground to him back before our secret was blown.” She smiled. “I’ve never been prouder of him than the day he made the Fates acknowledge our independence and saved your life doing it. I may not be in the best shape I’ve ever been in, but I’m a survivor, and Melchior needs you. I’ll make do.”

Driven by an impulse I didn’t want to examine too closely, I bent and kissed her withered cheek. “Thanks, Ahllan. We’ll find him.”

“Go.”

“Good-bye,” I said, and got to my feet.

Tisiphone took my place, kneeling on the floor beside Ahllan, her thighs inches from the darkly stained oak of the futon platform.

“I owe you an apology,” she said. “For the destruction my sisters and I visited on your home, I am sorry.”

Ahllan looked completely gobsmacked; but then, she didn’t have the advantage of having heard Tisiphone express similar sentiments earlier.

“And you are forgiven,” Ahllan finally said. “At my age, I know a thing or two about remorse, and remorse from the legendarily remorseless is a precious gift.”

“For the giver as much as for the recipient,” replied Tisiphone. “I thank you for your forgiveness, and though I cannot thank whatever whim of Necessity sent me here when I am so clearly needed at home, I’m glad I had this chance.” A half beat of her wings flicked her to her feet, where she turned away from Ahllan and toward me. She grinned then. “Let us find Loki and teach
him
a thing or two about regret.”

Now, that was
classic
Tisiphone.

So was what she did to Loki’s miniature fieldstone faerie ring a few minutes later. It was far too dangerous to leave such a thing open in the middle of a tourist attraction where some poor human might stumble into it and end up who knew where.

Tisiphone let slip the reins of her temper. The fires of her hair and wings quickly grew as bright and hot as the heart of a foundry, forcing me back and away from her.

“Watch this,” she said, her voice simultaneously holding glee and anger as she spread her wings to their full extent.

I nodded, though she was burning so brightly I had to slit my eyes to see her. The white column of her body amidst the flames looked like a pale birch in the heart of a forest fire. As such a tree inevitably must, she slowly toppled, falling backwards onto the brown lawn. When she touched the dead grass, there came a cacophony of sizzles and “pops,” and a great burst of smoke as the dry vegetation flash-burned.

Coughing and choking, I stumbled a few feet farther back. “What
are
you doing?”

My only answer was an amused chuckle from the heart of the smoke. A moment later, her fires once again banked, Tisiphone stepped out of the rapidly dissipating cloud. I shook my head bemusedly.

“Wait for it,” she said, still chuckling evilly.

The smoke finished clearing, then I had to laugh, too. The faerie ring was gone, replaced by a deep char mark in the shape of Tisiphone’s right wing. Opposite lay the matching mark of her left wing, with a blackened stripe between the two where her long hair had burned away more of the ground cover—the whole making a dark mirror of a child’s snow angel.