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Authors: Kelly McCullough
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Contemporary, Magic, Computers, Wizards, Computer Hackers
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making snide remarks about the gentle grace of the lesser Greek walrus.”
“Oh, Mel, I am sorry. Would it help if I accidentally punted you into the water? Because, you know, anything for you. Raven’s only here to help.”
“Thanks, but I’ll just wait to get soaked until you fall off a wave and take me with you.”
“Good enough,” I said, digging deep and heading us in toward the break.
I kept an eye cocked behind me, both looking for the right wave and making sure not to get under the wrong one. I spotted what I wanted soon enough and paddled harder. I needed to be moving fast when it caught up to me, or I’d miss it. Once I was up, Melchior crawled out to the nose of the board and leaned over the edge. He won’t admit it, but I think he likes surfing almost as much as I do. For a little while I just slid gently up and down the face of the wave, getting a feel for it. Then I shot right up to the crest and tried a cutback to reverse course on the wave. It could have been beautiful . . . if I hadn’t buried the nose in the curl and cart-wheeled right off the board.
The next wave went better, though I didn’t try anything too showy. After that I was pretty much in the groove and even managed a beautiful little layback without killing myself. Everything was going wonderfully until I noticed a shadow as I was shooting the tube of another wave.
There’s this wild joy to be found in the front end of the tube, with the green darkness closing in behind and the sunlight at the end of the tunnel hanging just out of reach. If you get a good wave and play it right, you can stay there for ages, chasing that circle of light. I’d found the sweet spot on a beauty and was just gliding along when I realized the silvery gray shadow paralleling me a few feet away in the body of the wave shouldn’t have been there.
It was a shark, riding the inside of the breaker in a perfect mirror of the way I was riding its surface. I’d seen that happen once or twice before, but this baby was big, ten or twelve feet, and close. If I reached out my right hand, I could have touched the tip of its closest fin. Also, it was exactly even with me and had been for a while before I really noticed it. The whole thing creeped me out. Sure, shark attacks are rare. If you leave them alone, they’ll mostly leave you alone. But did it know that?
I leaned away from the shark, sliding down the wave and speeding up to get out of the tube. It nosed down and accelerated smoothly, staying right with me.
“Melchior, Shark Circuit,” I said. “Please.”
Melchior began to whistle as we came out into the sun. The codespell was something I’d come up with recently as a surfing tool. Like all of my latest magical compositions, it was mweb independent, and more dangerous because of that, especially for Mel. I didn’t much like that, but the Fates hadn’t specced out webgoblins with undigested chaos in mind the way they had the webtrolls. Despite all my modifications and upgrades, Mel was still built on a webgoblin frame.
As he finished the spell, a tiny chaos tap kicked in, creating and powering a madly pulsing electrical field tied to my board. Sharks have electricity-sensing organs, and we’d tuned the field to thrash the hell out of them.
In the water beside me, the shark did a neat barrel roll but didn’t move away. Great, I’d found an electrically blind shark. Looking ahead I could see that my wave was about to peter out, too, leaving me pretty much stopped in the water. That’s when the shark winked at me. It was very slow and very deliberate, and I had no doubt it was a wink. I jerked away hard and just about flipped my board doing it. I would have died if that had happened. I might anyway.
The shark had mirrored pupils.
“Dairn!”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What?” yelped Melchior. “Dairn? Where?”
“The shark! It’s him, I don’t know how.”
I was already leaning back for a turn. Pivoting the board on its
“Oh, Mel, I am sorry. Would it help if I accidentally punted you into the water? Because, you know, anything for you. Raven’s only here to help.”
“Thanks, but I’ll just wait to get soaked until you fall off a wave and take me with you.”
“Good enough,” I said, digging deep and heading us in toward the break.
I kept an eye cocked behind me, both looking for the right wave and making sure not to get under the wrong one. I spotted what I wanted soon enough and paddled harder. I needed to be moving fast when it caught up to me, or I’d miss it. Once I was up, Melchior crawled out to the nose of the board and leaned over the edge. He won’t admit it, but I think he likes surfing almost as much as I do. For a little while I just slid gently up and down the face of the wave, getting a feel for it. Then I shot right up to the crest and tried a cutback to reverse course on the wave. It could have been beautiful . . . if I hadn’t buried the nose in the curl and cart-wheeled right off the board.
The next wave went better, though I didn’t try anything too showy. After that I was pretty much in the groove and even managed a beautiful little layback without killing myself. Everything was going wonderfully until I noticed a shadow as I was shooting the tube of another wave.
There’s this wild joy to be found in the front end of the tube, with the green darkness closing in behind and the sunlight at the end of the tunnel hanging just out of reach. If you get a good wave and play it right, you can stay there for ages, chasing that circle of light. I’d found the sweet spot on a beauty and was just gliding along when I realized the silvery gray shadow paralleling me a few feet away in the body of the wave shouldn’t have been there.
It was a shark, riding the inside of the breaker in a perfect mirror of the way I was riding its surface. I’d seen that happen once or twice before, but this baby was big, ten or twelve feet, and close. If I reached out my right hand, I could have touched the tip of its closest fin. Also, it was exactly even with me and had been for a while before I really noticed it. The whole thing creeped me out. Sure, shark attacks are rare. If you leave them alone, they’ll mostly leave you alone. But did it know that?
I leaned away from the shark, sliding down the wave and speeding up to get out of the tube. It nosed down and accelerated smoothly, staying right with me.
“Melchior, Shark Circuit,” I said. “Please.”
Melchior began to whistle as we came out into the sun. The codespell was something I’d come up with recently as a surfing tool. Like all of my latest magical compositions, it was mweb independent, and more dangerous because of that, especially for Mel. I didn’t much like that, but the Fates hadn’t specced out webgoblins with undigested chaos in mind the way they had the webtrolls. Despite all my modifications and upgrades, Mel was still built on a webgoblin frame.
As he finished the spell, a tiny chaos tap kicked in, creating and powering a madly pulsing electrical field tied to my board. Sharks have electricity-sensing organs, and we’d tuned the field to thrash the hell out of them.
In the water beside me, the shark did a neat barrel roll but didn’t move away. Great, I’d found an electrically blind shark. Looking ahead I could see that my wave was about to peter out, too, leaving me pretty much stopped in the water. That’s when the shark winked at me. It was very slow and very deliberate, and I had no doubt it was a wink. I jerked away hard and just about flipped my board doing it. I would have died if that had happened. I might anyway.
The shark had mirrored pupils.
“Dairn!”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What?” yelped Melchior. “Dairn? Where?”
“The shark! It’s him, I don’t know how.”
I was already leaning back for a turn. Pivoting the board on its
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