CHAPTER ONE
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? The eyes of Cerberus glared down at me, six balls of black fire. There was no dog older or more dangerous. But here I was standing practically in his mouths, trick in hand.
“Oh, get on with it,” growled the right head, the one called Mort, a mastiff. “We haven’t got all night.”
Almost against my will, I looked over Cerberus’s shoulder. The River Styx lay behind him, and beyond it the gate to Hades, land of the dead and present residence of a webgoblin by the name of Shara. My lover’s computer-familiar, Shara was the child of her magic, and a dear friend of mine. Her current address would have been hard enough to bear if it weren’t my fault she’d ended up on the wrong side of the river. Knowing I was responsible for her death . . .
Thoughts for another time. I flipped my last card over, the six of spades. Not much of a card, but enough to take the trick and fulfill our contract.
“Read it and weep!” said the middle head. A rottweiler named Dave.
He was my normal partner, if you could call anything about playing bridge with the three-headed dog of the underworld normal. They had to do an elaborate dance that involved a lot of closing of eyes and some sort of special deal with the central intelligence that ran the body and connected the heads in order to even make the game possible. But as far I could tell, none of them were cheating, and they all seemed to enjoy it.
“I believe that’s three hands in a row,” chortled Dave.
Bob, the Doberman third head, gave me a gimlet look. “I wish you’d never taught us this game, little Raven.”
I looked away to hide my expression. I don’t much like being called Raven, and it isn’t the name I was born with. That’s Ravirn, which I still insist on for daily wear. Unfortunately, I’d had a little disagreement with my family’s matriarchs, better known as the Fates. Yes, the crones who measure out the destiny of every living being like threads for a tapestry are my own flesh and blood. I’m thrilled. As a result of our little spat, the name I think of as my real one got taken away.
It could have been worse certainly. My great-aunt Atropos is the Fate who wields the shears, and she would have preferred to take my birthday away, or at least make sure I didn’t have any more of them. My umpteen-times-great-grandmother, Lachesis, the lady who measures the threads, initially agreed with her.
Only the intervention of Necessity, the one goddess even the Fates fear, kept me alive. Robbed of the opportunity to remove me from the land of the living, Lachesis cast me out of the family of Fate and revoked my name. Then, for reasons I still don’t understand, Clotho, the spinner, broke with her sister Fates, declared me a legitimate force for chaos, and gave me a new name, Raven.
It’s better than not owning a name at all, but it feels wrong every time I hear it, a bitter reminder of my outcast status, and I’d prefer not to think about it. That attitude has caused considerable friction with Cerice, my lady fair and a child of Clotho’s House. She insists I’m foolishly ignoring the power of names.
Perhaps she’s right, but remembering that day and its aftermath still burns my heart. Yes, I took the side of Eris against the houses of Fate. Yes, the Goddess of Discord is my family’s oldest and bitterest enemy. But it was that or let Atropos turn every thinking being in all of the infinite worlds of existence into a gaggle of marionettes dancing to Fate’s every whim. For the crime of choosing free will over slavish destiny, I’d been banished and stripped of my identity. All of which meant that Bob’s little dig bit deep.
“That was uncalled for,” said Dave, taking my side. “I didn’t hear you complaining last week when you and Mort took three rubbers in a row.”
“I’m sorry, Ravirn,” said Bob.
“It’s all right,” I answered.
It wasn’t really, but I let it slide. I liked Cerberus far more than I did many of my closer cousins. Why did all of my problems have to involve family ties? The whole giant inbred Greek pantheon was a divine mess. Cerberus might be a distant enough cousin that friendship was more important to our relationship than blood, but the damned blood was still there. That mix of loyalties would make what I had to do to him in the coming days both harder and easier.
“Hurry up and deal,” said Mort, jolting me back into the moment.
He had a calculating expression on his face, and I couldn’t help worrying that my look over the Styx had given too much away. But nothing seemed to come of it. An hour and a bit later it had gotten very late or started to get early, depending on how you looked at it. Part of the reason Cerberus and I get along is that we’re both night people, me because I sleep deepest between 4:00 A.M. and noon, him because he’s a raving insomniac. Anyway, it was time to pack it in. The last game had been mine and Dave’s, but we’d lost the evening. Bob and Mort were quite pleased with themselves—himself? I was never quite sure how to think of the three of them: as Mort, Dave, and Bob, my buddies? Or as Cerberus, dread guardian of the underworld?