“Interesting,” said Eris, cocking her head to one side. “I wondered how you would react. Whether you would embrace your new self or cling to the old.”

“Stuff it, Discord.” I used her title rather than her name, as I always did. It was a way of putting a little more distance between us. “Release them.”

“Or what?” She laughed, then raised a warning hand as I stood. “Don’t. I like you, Raven. But if you start this, I’ll finish it. Besides, they’ll come to no harm, and I’ll let them go much sooner if I don’t have to counter any heroic gestures on your part. I just wanted a moment to talk with you in peace, and this seemed simplest. Do sit down.”

I wanted to rage and throw things, but all that would have done was make her happy. She feeds on strife. So I painted the calmest expression I could manage on my face, sat down, and put my feet up on the chair so recently vacated by Megaera.

“Your move,” I said.

“Oh, very nice.” Eris returned to her own seat in front of the suddenly restored table. “You’re getting better at this, though you do need to learn the trick of relaxing your shoulders. I can see the anger you’re carrying there, and it gives the lie to your act. Here, like this.”

Eris leaned slightly farther back in her chair and all tension seemed to drain from her body. With it went the suit, replaced by a black silk camisole and a pair of low-rise gold denims. She looked sexy and slinky and completely at ease, rather like a cat in a sunbeam.

“There,” she said. “See how easy it is? That used to drive daddy Zeus crazy when I was a teenager, and he was yelling at me.” She grinned. “But not half as crazy as it drove my stepmother, Hera.”

“Stepmother?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. Discord’s past is shrouded in a good deal of mystery. Some claim she’s Ares’s twin, the child of Zeus and Hera. Others insist Nyx, or Night, as she is sometimes called, mothered her with no father in sight.

“Yes,” said Eris, steepling her hands. “I was a cuckoo in her nest: one more product of Zeus’s philandering ways. Oh how Hera hated me and hated even more Zeus’s claim that I had come from her womb entwined with my brother Ares. I think the only reason she let him get away with it was to prevent news of yet another of her husband’s bastards from becoming the talk of Olympus. You know”—she looked thoughtful for a moment—“I’m really rather surprised she’s never managed to murder Zeus. It’s not like she doesn’t have the motive. Maybe I could do something to move that along. The succession struggle would be rather entertaining. Don’t you think?”

“I’ll pass if you don’t mind. I’ve got enough deity-generated stress in my life at the moment.”

“You have managed to piss off half of the poles of existence, haven’t you,” she said. “You must sit pretty high on both Fate’s and Death’s lists at the moment. Are you sure you don’t want to help me help Hera do away with Zeus? That would give you Creation to match Hades’ Destruction and quite the trifecta.”

I shuddered. “No thanks.”

“Too bad. Creation is weaker than it once was. Zeus, the usurper to the throne of his father Cronus, is not as worthy a target as the old Titan. Still, it would have been fun. If you’d said yes, I might have decided to adopt you. You’d suit my line much better than Lachesis’s.”

“I’m pretty sure she’d agree with you. She did, after all, cast me out of her House and take back my name. You remember that, don’t you? As I recall it was because I’d just saved your sorry ass from a bad date with Necessity.”

She scratched her chin. “No. I can’t say it rings any bells.” I growled, and she laughed. “Relax. I do owe you one, but we both know it wasn’t me you were saving there. It was your soul. If you could’ve cut me loose without compromising your personal integrity, I don’t think I’d be here now, would I?”

I looked at the floor. She had a point, sort of.

“Oh, don’t feel bad about it,” said Eris. “I don’t much care about means except where they can be twisted to make life a little bit harsher. I’m much more interested in ends. And that brings me back to where I was when I made us a little time to talk alone.” She waved a hand toward the frozen form of Cerice.

I felt another stab of anger, and apparently failed to conceal it, because Eris let out another of her broken-glass laughs.

“Don’t grimace at me like that,” said Eris. “She’s a pretty enough thing, but not really in your league anymore. You’d be much better off taking Tisiphone as a consort.”

“What!” I squawked. “That’s mad. I love Cerice. But even if I didn’t, Tisiphone is a Fury, and I’m—”

“Raven. You may not choose to admit it, but you are no longer a scion of the middle house of Fate. You have transcended your origins and are playing on a much bigger stage. The girl”—she waved at Cerice again—“is an exceptional child of Clotho’s House, but that’s all she is. You are your own House now, a power, if a minor one as yet. As long as you tie yourself to Cerice, you will possess a significant vulnerability that any of your enemies could exploit. Especially your enemies in the Houses of Fate.”

“But—” I began. A power? I wasn’t at all sure I liked the sound of that.

“Allow me to finish. Tisiphone, while she has her quirks, seems genuinely fond of you. And no one, and I mean no one, would dare to strike at you through her. Not only does she have the innate strength to protect herself against most threats, but she also walks in the shadow of Necessity. That is armor even against the greatest powers.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. It was all true—irrelevant, since I was genuinely in love with Cerice—but still true. In its own way it was even very good advice, and that made it completely out of character for Discord.

“One, I like you. Two, I owe you a favor. Three, Tisiphone really needs to get laid. It might mellow her a bit, and that would make her less likely to interfere with me. I’d still have Megaera and Alecto to worry about, since no amount of sex is going to help the former and I don’t see anyone around to throw at the latter.” She smiled, and there was nothing nice in the expression. “And finally and most importantly, I know you won’t take my advice even though you know I’m telling you the truth. What more could Discord ask for in the way of strife than painful truth offered fruitlessly to a friend?”

“How can you think that way?” I whispered in horror. I liked Eris. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did. And I’d thought she liked me. “How can you think that way?” I repeated.

“I’m Discord,” she said very quietly. “How could I not?” And for just an instant I saw a pain in her face to rival Persephone’s.

It was gone so quickly I’d never be able to swear I’d really seen it, and yet I knew it would haunt me for a long time to come.

“Thanks,” I said, “for telling me things I don’t want to hear. Perhaps you could make it up to me by telling me something of the other sort.”

“It’s possible. What do you want to know?”

“What does it mean to be Raven? Everyone keeps telling me I should accept my new ‘destiny,’ but no one wants to tell me a thing about how to do that.”

“That’s probably because no one really knows.” Eris grinned and held up her hands to form an X. “There are two major axes of power in the pantheon. They sit at right angles to each other like some giant crosshairs. The first you’ve had intimate contact with, the conflict between Order and Chaos, or Fate and Discord if you will. The second is between Death and Creation, represented by Hades and Zeus.”

“But Clotho’s role as Fate’s spinner also touches on Creation,” I said.

“Exactly, just as Atropos with her shears is the Fate of Death. In your previous family, the creation-destruction axis is split, whereas I embody the lot for Chaos.”

I was starting to get a headache. “What does that all have to do with my question?” I asked, rising to pace.

“Everything. Nothing.” Eris held up her hands like a pair of balances. “Clotho was given some reason to name you Raven, just as she once was given a reason to name me Discord.”

“Then Eris . . .”

“Was the name Zeus hung on me to complement the one he gave his precious Ares.”

Something else hit me. “Wait a second, what do you mean Clotho was given a reason?”

“Necessity is the Fate of the Gods. Though Clotho spins them, it is Necessity who manages the threads of the powers both greater and lesser. When your experiences in the Fate Core stripped you of an ordinary sort of destiny, it took you out of the hands of the lesser Fates, your family. Combine that with the immortal blood of your great-grandmother, and you became a player on the stage overseen by Necessity.”

“Are you trying to say that I’m a god?” My knees didn’t seem to want to work properly, and I dropped into the nearest chair. It had been Alecto’s, but now it rearranged itself to fit me.

“Perhaps someday,” said Eris, “if you live long enough, which likelihood I doubt. You are, however, a power, and what a power may become, no one knows except perhaps Necessity herself. Do you think Clotho wouldn’t have tried to kill me in my crib if she’d known what it would mean for me to grow up Discord?”

“I—uh . . .”

“But she didn’t know my ultimate fate any more than I do. She knew only that I was to be a power and that I bore the mark of chaos. Oh, and that that was what Necessity wanted. That’s all any of us really know about you, that you are a power, the first new one born in many long years, and one marked by chaos. For all I know, you may someday supplant me as Zeus supplanted Cronus at the splitting of the worlds that birthed the multiverse.”

“Oh.” I thought about the implications of that for a bit and the idea that my role as Raven might disrupt the status quo. “Why isn’t everyone trying to kill me while I’m still too weak to defend myself?” I asked after a while.

Eris laughed. “Atropos already has, though that was before your new name came into play, and she will again. You can bet that Hades will as well, now that he’s got an official excuse. Once the idea penetrates Zeus’s dim little brain, he’ll probably join the party, too.”

“Which leads to two more questions. Why have I still got a pulse?” I put a finger to my throat just to double-check. “And what about you?”

“You are alive because there are rules, and Necessity is their enforcer. As for me, if you try to usurp my throne, we’ll likely have words. Otherwise, the simple fact of your existence creates discord among the gods, and discord is my reason for existence. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a special present Necessity dreamed up just for me.”

“Goody.”

“You’re welcome. Speaking of presents, that brings me back to the original reason I shut off the peanut gallery so that we could have this quiet little chat. That is, the problem with the mweb and Necessity’s request that I look into it. While I’d prefer not to do anyone any favors, I’m not going to turn down that particular request. Unfortunately, I’ve already been working on this mess for reasons of my own with no results to date. Since I really don’t want to go back to Necessity empty-handed, I thought I might lean on you for a little help. After all, the mweb is just one gigantic magical construct that has something wrong with it, and bug-hunting is your specialty. Perhaps even the reason Necessity sent you a name.”

“I—” What did I want to say?

Eris is a profoundly unsettling goddess. Every conversation I have with her reorders my universe in some new way, though not always for the worse. I realize that her gift and her reason for being is what she calls strife, but while she certainly disturbs me no end, I sometimes wonder if she’s not nearly as much of a villain as she likes to pretend to be. If, perhaps, discord with a small d is something we all need from time to time to keep us from stagnating. In the House of my grandmother such ideas would be rankest heresy, but what about in the House of Raven? I needed to think about that.

“Well?” asked Eris. “I’m waiting.”

“I’ll help.”

I didn’t add that my motives had very little to do with helping her out and were much more about satisfying my own concerns and curiosity, not to mention finding Ahllan. With Eris backing me, I had a far better chance of hacking my way to the truth than I would on my own.

“You’re such a good boy,” she said. “It just makes me want to give you a big wet kiss.” Without crossing the intervening distance she stood above me. Slowly, ever so slowly, she leaned down and put a hand on each arm of my chair, giving me a very clear view down the front of her camisole. “What do you say?”

“That I wish you wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” I said, closing my eyes and turning my head to one side. It was not easy, but it was necessary.

“Pity,” she whispered, moving even closer and taking the pointed tip of my ear gently between her teeth. “But if you insist.”

“—about had it with you!” said Cerice from beyond Eris, finishing the sentence she’d begun so long ago. Then, “What the fuck is going on here!”

Eris stood up and made a show of adjusting her clothes. I put my face in my hands.

“Discord,” I said through my fingers. “That’s what’s going on.” I dropped my hands and glared at Eris. “Can’t you ever give it a rest?”

“No,” she said, and I caught just an echo of her earlier pain, “I can’t. Not for one single second. Now, we have work to do.”

The boardroom was gone, replaced by a tile-floored computer center. The big square tiles were all gleaming white and mirrored the grid of the dropped ceiling above. Aluminum racks stood along the walls, each with several large golden apples mounted within and wires trailing down through holes cut into the tiles. Between racks were numerous Formica-topped tables strewn with the electronic detritus typical of labs and equipment rooms everywhere. A faint background hiss whispered of fans that kept the space beneath the floors at a constant positive pressure. A bank of uninterruptible power supplies stood in one corner. In other words, in every respect but one it mimicked the typical corporate computing center. Eris drew attention to that anomaly with a tap of one long black-and-gold-painted fingernail. The big metallic apple rang hollowly in response.

“Multicore Macintosh servers set into my own special case mods,” said Eris. “They’re all cross-linked like a Beowulf cluster, only better since I use my own custom operating software to maximize performance. I call the result a Grendel group.”

“Hold on a second,” said Cerice, stomping over to stand in front of Eris. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“About what was going on?” asked Eris, her voice deceptively sweet. “I thought Ravirn covered it pretty well: Discord.”

“And the part where you paralyzed us? You know, when we couldn’t move, but we could hear every vicious word you said?”

I was glad Cerice was looking the other way, because though I managed not to say it aloud, I could feel my mouth shaping the words, oh shit. So Eris had given me a lecture on why I should dump Cerice right in front of her. Thank you, Discord.

“What about it?” asked Eris. “I didn’t say anything I didn’t want you to hear, child.”

Cerice’s cheeks reddened as though she’d been slapped. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Shara and Melchior ducking under a table. I wished I could join them.

“He is a power,” said Eris. “You are not. The relationship is a risk to you both. Besides, as Tisiphone pointed out so succinctly, you haven’t got a claim.”

“Is that why you were nibbling on his ear?” snapped Cerice. “Because I haven’t got a claim? Or is it just that you’re an unmitigated bitch?”

“Oh, the latter definitely. I’m really only interested in romance as far as it generates outbursts like your current one. Tisiphone, on the other hand, has had quite a sweet spot for the boy since she met him.”

“Oh, she has, has she?” Cerice whirled to glare at me. “And why haven’t you mentioned this before? Who else is sweet on you? Persephone? She certainly went out of her way to help you out.”

I’d about had it. “Cerice, I love you, and I owe you my life several times over, but I really don’t like you very much at the moment.” Melchior hissed under the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever given you any reason to doubt my affections. Shit, I just went to Hades and back for the sake of your thesis.”

That wasn’t entirely the case, since my friendship with Shara had played at least as big a role, but her “no one’s lady” comment had hurt, and I was tired of being fair.

“Despite all of that,” I continued, “you won’t, as Tisiphone put it, admit a claim. So why the hell do you feel you have the right to get mad at me when some other woman expresses interest in me?” I was yelling now. “Especially when I haven’t done anything to encourage it?”

“I—” Cerice’s voice started loud, but sank quickly to a whisper. “I—I don’t have that right, do I? Not really. Eris is probably right about Tisiphone, too.” She closed her eyes and fisted her hands for a long moment. “She certainly couldn’t be any worse for you than I’ve been lately. I’m sorry.”

Without another word, she went out the door. I started after her, but Shara caught the cuff of my leathers.

“Let her be. She’s earned some wallowing time.”

“I—” I stopped, and faced Shara. “What do you mean?”

“That she’s been dumping shit all over you since the day I got back.” She took a shaky breath. “I love Cerice. She’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to her faults. The way she’s been treating you lately is a big one. If you two are ever going to work things out, Cerice is going to have to face that. She won’t do it if you keep apologizing every time she has a hissy fit.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, looking after Cerice. It was hard not to follow her, hard to see her hurting even if she’d brought it on herself.

Shara nodded, then turned away. “Unpleasant truths have to be faced sooner or later.” The words were almost a whisper, and I didn’t think she was really talking to me. “You can’t get away from yourself, no matter how fast you run.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went to join Eris at the server rack. “When do you want to start?”

“Now works for me.” She opened her hands. Each held a slender athame, its cable extending into one of the golden apple servers.

“I think I’ll use mine and jack in via Melchior if possible.”

“Good enough,” said Eris. The athame in her left hand vanished, leaving only the cable with its network connector.

“Melchior, you up for this?”

He glanced at Shara, who had returned to a place under the table, where she sat with her back against the wall and her chin resting on her drawn-up knees. She made a vague shooing gesture, and Melchior joined us, hopping up onto the low table beside the rack. He gave Eris a sidelong glance.

“What will your role be?”

“Support,” said the goddess. “I’ve already had a couple of goes without any success. I, and Grendel here”—she patted the rack—“are just here to provide computing muscle.”

“All right, then let’s do it.” Melchior melted quickly into his laptop shape. Whenever you’re ready.

I plugged Eris’s cable into one of his networking ports, then pulled out my athame and attached its cable to a second port in his side. I studied that slender blade for a long moment, holding it point down above my palm and thinking about what it meant.

For jacking in, a hard connection from body to computer still remained the best way. A wireless hookup didn’t have the same resonance with the life thread, or the silver cord, as it was sometimes referred to in fluffy New Age circles. Whatever you called it, the strand that Clotho spun for you at your birth embodied the vital essence of your soul, your anima. The house of the anima in the body was the bloodstream, the internal network that pumped life with every heartbeat. The athame and the cable attached to it provided a symbolic and sorcerous link to a node on the mweb, in this case Melchior, and through him to the network that connected the infinity of possible worlds.

Of course, all of that was just a way of keeping my mind on something other than how much the whole process hurt. It didn’t really help much. With a sigh and a grimace, I stabbed the blade through my hand, then surfed the bitter wave of pain into the world of the mweb.

I arrived in a small room wallpapered with pebbled blue leather. There was only one exit, a wide-open and jagged-framed window overlooking an orchard. Stepping close to the window, I could see a thousand identically rendered trees standing in neat geometric rows. Each tree had a set of six hexalaterally symmetric branches dripping with golden apples. The symmetry repeated itself in the roots and the placement of the fruit.

It all had the eerie unreal feel of a poorly thought-out video game. You know the kind, where the programmer rendered one side of one tree, then got bored with the process and just duplicated that single side over and over again in a total failure of imagination. An average three-year-old with the most rudimentary of computer skills would have done better. It seemed utterly unlike anything Eris could have had a hand in, yet I knew I stood on the threshold of her server farm.

With deep misgivings I said, “Melchior, Red Carpet. Please.”

The window opened even wider, and a long roll of lush carpeting appeared in front of me. It quickly unrolled itself, forming a bridge to the orchard, a bridge whose far end opened in a split like a snake’s forked tongue. As I started across, I paused a moment to look back. Melchior’s head towered above me, his tongue providing the carpet I now walked.

“Show-off,” I whispered. The giant face winked an eye at me.

When I reached the end of the carpet, I extended a foot above the flat green field that stretched between the trees. It looked more like a fuzzy bath mat than a lawn. At least it did until I stepped onto it. At that moment many things happened all at once.

The green sheet began to bubble and eddy like antifreeze in an overheated car. To the touch it remained solid. I could feel the occasional bubble press against the bottom of my booted feet, like a rock suddenly growing beneath me—but to all outward appearances it had become a liquid.

The trees started a slow and chaotic dance, slipping from their rigid positioning into an ever-changing geometric relationship that owed very little to the simple shapes of Euclid’s imagination. They also lost their symmetry, twisting and growing into gnarled forms straight out of some cautionary Grimmsian fairy tale. The apples themselves became detached from the branches, though they remained clustered around the trees in thick clouds, glowing now like a swarm of mating fireflies.

“Like it?” a voice whispered in my ear.

I jumped a good thirty feet into the air, unbound as I was by physical restraints. Turning, I flew back down to land beside Eris, who now wore a black-and-gold dress with a huge train that twisted off between the trees.

“Don’t do that! You just about scared me out of my skin.”

“I was hoping that I might,” she said, with a wicked smile. “I thought it might prove enlightening. Or failing that, entertaining. Sso, sshall we be going?” she asked, her voice taking on a sort of hissing undertone.

“I thought you were just providing backup.”

“That, and transsportation.” She twisted suddenly, and a portion of the train of her dress slid around in an s-curve, bumping against my calf.

It felt a lot more substantial than any dress should have, and I looked down to find that the portion touching my leg had a saddle straddling it. Only in that instant did I realize it wasn’t a dress. An enormous snake’s body descended from Eris’s torso and trailed out behind her.

“You’re not serious,” I said. “A lamia?”

“You’re going on a quest. That means you need a loyal steed, and this sounded like more fun than a sphinx. Hop on, and we can get going.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Oh come on, it’ll be fun. How often are you going to get the chance to ride a goddess? Barring coming to your senses about Tisiphone, that is.” She licked her lips with her now-forked tongue. “Look, you can argue all you want. In fact, I’d enjoy it. I live to argue. But this is the best way for me to accompany you. We both know you’re going to get in that saddle eventually, so why not just admit it and enjoy the ride.”

“All right. Melchior?”

“Here, Boss.” A tiny blue bat with Melchior’s head on its shoulders landed on my wrist. It wasn’t the real Melchior, of course, just an icon representing his attention.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said, swinging a leg over Eris’s elongated body.

Instead of sinking into the seat as I’d intended, the saddle rose up to meet me, and stirrups slid out to catch and cradle my feet. That’s when I noticed that the saddle was actually grafted onto her body.

“Hi ho, nutjob, away,” I said very quietly, and we suddenly shot forward.

I had to throw my arms around Eris’s waist to stay on. Her flesh was warm and soft and very feminine. I tried not to think about it. We left the orchard shortly thereafter through a fat pipe that represented one of the remaining lines of the damaged mweb.

“So where are the reins?” I asked eventually. We were still sliding along an essentially unbroken tunnel, but I knew I’d want more control at some point.

“Steer with your knees, my dear. I can be very responsive.”

“Yeah, it’s that ‘can be’ part I’m worried about.”

“Support and transport and nothing more,” replied Eris. “Isn’t that what we agreed?”

I sighed but nodded and looked ahead. A light quickly grew until the walls opened out around us. Eris stopped then, leaving most of her long body in the tunnel behind, and reared up like a cobra preparing to strike. We had emerged high up on a mountain with the core server architecture of the mweb lying like an endless gem-studded plain below.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Eris.

“Uh-huh.”

“But this is all on the public side and not much use for finding out what’s wrong. For that, we’ll have to dig deeper.”

“Wait a second,” I said.

But my protest fell on seemingly deaf ears as we slithered down the mountainside. Before I had time even to frame my argument, we were among the jewel-toned shapes that represented the many, many cores of the mweb mainframes. We didn’t stop until we’d reached a huge ebony sphere, like some massive pearl—one of Necessity’s black boxes. Remembering my last encounter with the goddess’s security, I squeezed Eris’s sides hard with my knees.

“Whoa there. I almost got fried the first time I messed with one of these. We should take it slow.” I quickly described my experience with trying to crack Necessity.

Eris shrugged. “Last time you didn’t have me along to play crowbar.”

Then she slid to the left of the sphere and circled back until she’d met herself on the other side. She did this again and again until she’d looped three coils of herself around the huge black globe. She must have been elongating herself as she went, because I was pretty sure the Eris I’d first mounted couldn’t have managed the feat.

“I thought I was in charge,” I said.

“You are.”

“Then tell me you aren’t about to crush that thing in your coils.”

“All right. I’m not going to crush that thing in my coils.” She grinned. “But I’m sure as hell going to try.”

With that, she squeezed. The black fire that had destroyed my code weasel broke out over the entire surface of the processor core, and the world filled with blinding sparks and the smell of burning snake.

“Sssshiiittt!” and whether it was Discord’s voice or mine doing the screaming, I couldn’t say.