Etruscans

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Another replied, “I felt dizzy the moment they passed under the portico.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “They have a dreadful smell about them, did you notice?”

  “How silently they move. Have they no feet?”

  “How dare they enter Sacred Space uninvited!”

  “Are they … gods?”

  Reluctantly Pepan became aware of six dark shadows looming like vultures around the altar. He could feel cold thoughts probing his dying brain, unnatural ideas and bizarre images flickering behind his fading eyes. Panic rose in him. These must be siu, come to claim him … .

  Though the hia of his dead kin had not arrived to protect him from the encroaching Otherworld and guide him safely to Veno in the Netherworld, he could wait no longer.

  With a great burst of energy Pepan leaped free of his body and fled along the nebulous, misty pathway that opened up before him. In the distance he could see dim shapes; he prayed they were the hia of his ancestors approaching.

  Behind him, clustered around the empty shell of his flesh like carrion crows, the shadows gathered.

  The six surrounding the altar turned as one, filed down the steps, and left the templum. An unspoken thought was shared between them: We have failed; the one we seek is not in this place. Pythia will be displeased.

  Silently they returned through the city, making their way toward the gates. People from the templum started to run after them; some fell back as their minds were gripped by an inexplicable awe, leaving them weeping and shaken on the streets.

  “The moment the strangers gathered around him, Lord Pepan died,” one person whispered to another. “They must indeed be gods.”

  Several bowed down and touched their foreheads to the ground, pressing their flesh into the soil recently walked upon by the gods.

  Embarrassed by his earlier fear and terrified anew by the reappearance of the six, the guard at the gate made no effort to stop the six from going out the gateway. But when the Rasne came staggering up, he gathered the remnants of his courage, strode boldly into the road, and hurled his spear after the last figure.

  With a solid thud the weapon sank into the cloaked back, impaling him; arms flung wide, crucified on the air, he fell silently. Without breaking stride, his companions caught his body beneath the arms and dragged him away with them.

  A heavily armed company from the spura soon set out after them but came to a dead end. The peculiarly imprecise footprints of the six simply vanished off the dusty track. The Rasne searched for a while, then had to admit defeat. They returned to their city with a sense of persistent unease.

  With the resilience of the young, Vesi began to recover as soon as she had some rest and food. Wulv worked to make their shelter a secure hut without defiling the sacred nature of the place. With additional leaves and branches he camouflaged the hut so skillfully that it looked like nothing more than a windblow of forest debris. Inside it was dry and snug, with enough headroom and even a smokehole so they could build a tiny fire, the opening canted at an angle to allow the smoke to drift away horizontally, rather than straight up into the heavens.

  That evening, following their supper of rabbit, berries, and a nourishing broth of roots, they sat around the tiny thread of a fire and talked. Their voices were whispers in the gloom, only their eyes visible in the shadows.

  “I have known about this place all my life,” said Wulv, “but I never entered the circle of stones before.”

  “Are your people, the Teumetes, afraid of the stones?”

  “Not afraid, exactly; we revere them. This is a place of sanctuary. We shed no blood within the circle, and any animal that flees a hunter is safe as long as it shelters here. To my people, this is sacred space.”

  “Do you know why the glade is sacred, Wulv?” Vesi wanted to know. Her voice was thready and weak, but at least she was beginning to show interest.

  “My people have their legends, as I’m sure the Rasne have.”

  Repana smiled. She needed to keep Vesi awake and interested in her surroundings; anything to prevent her dwelling on the horror that had occurred. The older woman leaned toward Wulv. “Time spent waiting is long indeed. Shorten it for us. Tell us the stories of your tribe.”

  Wulv was flattered. To the best of his knowledge, no member of the Silver People had ever shown the slightest interest in the history or customs of the Teumetes.

  He gently stirred the fire with a stick, careful not to raise any sparks that might ignite the thatch. Then he cleared his throat several times and, rather self-consciously, began. “When I was a child I used to listen to the elders of my tribe talk. That was before my scars made me so ugly my people scorned me.”

  Repana made a small sound of sympathy in her throat. It was, Wulv thought, the first such sound he had heard from a woman in many years.

  “The ancestors of the Teumetes lived in forests even darker and denser than this one. We were the Children of the Bear. That was our name because we were not men and women, you see. We walked upright but our bodies contained the spirits of bears.”

  “Hia,” Vesi murmured. Her mother gave her a sharp look.

  Wulv nodded. “Our bear-spirits were fierce and brave, hia a man would be proud to welcome into his body. But then a new people came up from the south, following the seacoast in boats made of timber and reeds. They also walked upright but their spirits were those of the river serpent. Members of a subtle, cunning race, they invaded our homeland in search of certain herbs and stones, metals and crystals to use in their rituals.

  “The Serpent People could not outfight the Children of the Bear but they were far more clever. In the fighting that followed, my ancestors were defeated. They fled their home forests and at last reached this region, only to find it was already inhabited by an ancient and venerable tribe who practiced a form of magic involving the spirits of the stones. They tolerated us as long as we respected their customs and did not desecrate their sacred sites.

  “We were weary of running, so we stayed. A few of the Serpent People pursued us almost this far, but they would not go near the sacred sites of the stone-magicians. Eventually they went back across the mountains to the land they had stolen from us. In the seasons that followed we waged constant war with the serpent folk, harrying them along the rivers that bordered the two lands. As time went by, they changed: they were no longer as cunning, no longer as fast or as deadly … but we had changed too; we were no longer powerful and virile. So there came a time when the descendants of the serpent folk simply disappeared from our lands. But by then there was no going back for us; we had become men and women. Our bear-spirits simply … faded away.” The hunter touched his scarred flesh. “Though bears are with us still,” he added somewhat ruefully.

  Repana understood more of Wulv’s simple tale than he knew. The Silver People had legends of their own origin that were not totally dissimilar, stories of an era when existence had been in a state of flux, with flesh and spirit interchangeable. The ancestors of the Etruscans had, of course, been nothing so crude as bears or serpents. In ancient times the Ais had invaded their bodies and minds, impregnating them with the divine. Thus the Etruscans became the embodiment of all that was fine and noble, avatars of love and war and wisdom transcending mortal limitations. They could interpenetrate the various planes of existence at will, wearing their flesh into the Otherworld or reclaiming their hia from the Netherworld.

  Slowly, choosing her words with care, Repana tried to explain this to Wulv, so he would understand the natural superiority of herself and Vesi. But he had the sort of blunt and basic mind that kept asking irritating questions.

  “Why can’t you still do that?” he wanted to know. “If the Etruscans are almost gods, why can’t you move instantly from place to place without needing either protection or a guide?”

  “The Ais are easily bored,” Repana replied, speaking as patiently as to a child, “so all things change after a time. For their own reasons the gods chose to alter the r
elationship between flesh and spirit. Some of our ancestral hia were permanently lodged in mortal form, becoming the tribes of Etruria. The best of them, of course, became the Rasne, my own people. Other hia retained an independent existence. They never put on flesh; they never accepted mortal limitations.

  “The men and women of Etruria revered their ancestors, as they should. These were beings who had been almost gods. But this competing homage made the Ais jealous. By way of retaliation they caused some ancestral hia to embody all the vices of humankind but none of the virtues. Thus were the siu created, to keep us torn between good and evil.”

  Repana glanced sidelong at her daughter. “And the siu, like the Ais, are with us always. Each cruelty, every crime, has, at its heart, a siu.”

  At this the girl entered the conversation. “The people your ancestors found when they first came here—were they Etruscan?” she asked Wulv.

  The Teumetian shook his head. “I don’t think so. The Etruscans began somewhere to the east, or so the stories of my people claim. They settled here later. They are a very different race from the stone-magicians.”

  “Then what happened to the stone-magicians?”

  “I don’t know. Some of our elders believe they simply melted into their stones,” Wulv concluded in a hushed voice. He glanced out into the night, fingers touching the bone amulets stitched into his clothing.

  Silence filled the hut, a silence permeated with invisible beings who must be taken into account and ancient events that continued to affect the present. Only the little fire dared to hiss.

  TWELVE

  The five cloaked beings were not accustomed to running, but now they ran, seeking a place where they could learn the extent of their comrade’s injuries in safety. There was always the chance that the Rasne might send armed warriors after them. The awe they had sought to exude through sheer mental power obviously did not work equally on all the Silver People, as the guard’s action had shown.

  If they fell, they would have failed Pythia. Then even death might not protect them from her anger.

  They set out toward the nearest river, the Tiber, to seek aid. Water was sacred to Pythia. Certain rivers had special powers, not the least of which was the ability to cure followers of the dark goddess. Or so her acolytes believed. The time had come to put that belief to the test.

  The one they dragged made no sound. He might already be dead, but was at least beyond feeling pain. They stopped long enough to shoulder him like a sack of meal, then hurried on. The last in line kept turning back to watch for the pursuit that never came.

  As he recovered from the shock he had endured, the being in the cave grew increasingly hungry. He was now afraid to return to the Otherworld; she was surely waiting there to exact her punishment. But if he remained in the Earthworld, the flesh he had acquired at such cost must be nourished.

  He began to lust for food.

  He allowed his consciousness to roam into the forest beyond the cave, seeking a developed life-form. He could subsist off the flesh and spirits of birds and beasts, but they provided insufficient energy. He needed richer fare.

  Gradually he became aware of the existence of the six. Though still some distance away they were headed in his direction and one was seriously wounded. Its life force was bleeding away.

  Gathering himself, the siu left the cave. Sustenance must not be wasted.

  By the time the five reached the river, all semblance of life had left their comrade. Without hesitation they plunged down the bank anyway, intending to immerse the body in the water and beseech holy Tiber to restore him. But the task that awaited them was not an easy one. Yesterday’s storm had swollen the Tiber to flood strength and now it rushed headlong between its banks, hissing like an angry serpent. The five struggled to keep their footing on the muddy bank while lowering their companion into the river.

  Abruptly, his robe ballooned as water flowed beneath the fabric. Within moments he was torn from their grasp. The rampaging river whirled the body away, tossing it like a log in the current, sending it spinning down the river course to disappear around the nearest bend.

  Only a short distance below the bend, the being from the cave trotted along the riverbank, anxious eyes searching.

  He stopped abruptly and scanned the river.

  The Tiber was carrying an appalling mass of tree branches and uprooted bushes toward him. The siu ignored the debris, his attention arrested by someone caught in the flood. As he watched, the river tossed the body of its helpless victim to and fro. The flailing limbs provided a spurious life that excited the siu almost beyond bearing. He began to run along the bank in hot pursuit. Food! Energy!

  The river course narrowed, the water boiling white through a defile. The body tumbled in the rapids and then paused, snagged on an outcropping of stone. To the siu watching anxiously from the riverbank, it appeared as if the figure in the water had caught hold of the rocks to save itself.

  The siu eagerly waded into the river to claim his prize.

  The pure water of the Tiber shrank from his glaucous flesh. But he managed to catch one end of the sodden robe and drag the body onto shore, hauling it through mud and briars with apparent ease. Grinning, the siu crouched to examine his catch.

  The corpse’s hood had become dislodged. A thin patina of serpentine scales covered his flattened, almost triangular skull.

  The siu spat in disgust. He knew these creatures of old and considered them abominations. He should cast this one back into the river. But he hungered, hungered desperately for the life he thought the body still contained.

  Losing control of his greed, he tore off gobbets of flesh and thrust them into his mouth while he dug for the heart. It was not the meat he craved, but the living essence. He chewed perfunctorily, then gulped, swallowing hard … and gagged violently as a shudder ran through him.

  There was no essence of life.

  The only essence was death.

  He had ingested dead fesh!

  Abandoning his prey, he staggered away from the river. Twice in a short period of time the siu had joined himself not with life but with death. First with the boar, now with this creature. Slow black waves rolled through his body, battering at his consciousness, leaching away his personality, his memories.

  He was …

  He was …

  He …

  As the madness claimed him, the violence of his derangement sent a shrill discord jangling through the Otherworld. Those who heard and understood the sound laughed at his pain.

  Thoughts flowed around Pepan; he swam through them as through water. He had a sense of millions of swarming intellects, some sparkling like fireflies, others as dull and muddy as frog spawn. This was a plane separate from, yet impinging upon, the reality he knew. The consciousness of Earthworld trees and plants cast constantly changing reflections here, and the movement of every Earthworld animal caused a parallel vibration in the invisible realm.

  Looking down at himself, Pepan discovered that an image of his body continued to cling to his spirit like the afterimage of the sun on one’s eyeballs. He also became aware that his hia was sending out an auditory signal as distinctive as birdsong, a deep, musical ululation that echoed through the Otherworld. This was the song of his soul.

  Pepan’s call was soon answered. A dense cloud materialized in the distance, pulsing with a rhythmic beat as familiar as his own heartbeat had been. Without even thinking about it, he recognized the sound and knew its source, listened as his own sound melded and became part of the greater symphony. His ancestors were coming for him …

  Abruptly Pepan’s attention was distracted by a faint and very different signal coming from the opposite direction.

  A mere thread of music, lyrical and heartbreakingly sweet, it evoked a powerful response in Pepan.

  Three strains in delicate harmony, soaring together. They were not his family, yet he recognized them with a loving heart.

  Repana.

  Vesi.

  And the child!

>   The child already quickened within her then. So soon …

  Separated from them by death, Pepan felt more concerned about them than ever. In the Otherworld everything touched upon everything else, so perhaps he could continue to have influence on their lives. Perhaps he could finish what he had set out to do: protect Repana and Vesi … and the baby.

  With this thought uppermost he hurried to intercept his escort, eager to explain what he required of them.

  THIRTEEN

  “The child is growing far too fast,” Wulv told Repana. “I have had little experience in such matters, but I know a woman should not swell like that. Not so soon, so quickly.”

  Repana cast a critical eye toward her daughter. The Teumetian was right; he had confirmed what she had only suspected. After only a few days Vesi’s belly was already large enough to contain a seven months’ child. Had it been the siring of a human father such development would have been frighteningly abnormal.

  The father was not human.

  But she did not want to admit this to Wulv. How could she admit to this primitive woodsman that her daughter was carrying a demon’s child? Such an admission to one’s inferior would be extremely embarrassing. And who knew how he might react? Those like him were superstitious brutes. He might slay them out of hand; she dare not take the chance. “My daughter has probably been pregnant for longer than anyone thought,” she said. “It is easy to misjudge such events.”

  Wulv was saying, “Only yesterday her belly was almost flat.”

  “Sometimes that happens,” Repana replied with a calm she did not feel. “Infants grow in spurts, you know.”

  He looked dubious. “I’ve watched the breeding of animals. The unborn inside them grow slow and steady.”

  “My daughter is not some beast!” Repana snapped. “I ask you to remember that she is Rasne.” The woman turned away before Wulv could ask any more awkward questions.

  Vesi was aware of the child’s extraordinary swelling within her. She knew she should feel terror at the very thought, but onrushing motherhood produced a calming effect. Whatever the baby’s sire, the unborn was also part of her and she could not fear part of her own self. Sometimes she just sat beside the fire with her fingers laced across her rounded stomach and crooned to the child inside, promising to love it no matter what its nature might be.