The Legions of Fire

by David Drake

  A statue of Priapus, the traditional protector of gardens, stood at one end. His torso and bearded head had been crudely hacked from a length of tree trunk; his phallus was a separate branch of cedar as long and thick as a man’s thigh. The wood still had a realistically ruddy tinge.

  Hedia walked past. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the statue wink and waggle its enormous penis. She didn’t turn and stare, but she smiled as she went on. She had enough experience to associate a really impressive partner—she’d known one or two—with pain, not a thrill.

  A man stepped out of the forest. He was nude; his deep chest was covered with flat, distinct sheets of muscle. Black curls covered his head, and over his right shoulder he carried a stout wooden club.

  His legs from midthigh were hairy, and the knees bent the wrong way; he walked on split hooves. He’s not a man after all.

  “My name is Maron, woman,” said the faun. “I am compelled to be your guide.”

  VARUS TURNED HIS BACK as he pulled on his tunic. He didn’t know what to say, so for the moment he pretended that Urash didn’t exist.

  “Varus?” she said.

  He looked over his shoulder, embarrassed by his own behavior. He hadn’t even unlaced his sandals! “M-mis …,” he said. “Yes, Urash?”

  She’d lifted herself onto her right elbow and was watching him. She was noticeably more solid than she had been when he first entered this … place between places.

  “When will another come to me?” Urash said. Her need, her longing, were so vivid that Varus blushed with the memory of her body writhing under his.

  “I don’t know!” he said harshly, and hated himself as the words came out. The pulse in his mind was strong and growing stronger as he delayed in this place.

  Varus knelt beside the woman and took her hands, then met her eyes. “Urash,” he said, “I don’t know about, well, anything. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do, just that they say I have to do it or the world will die. I met your h-h-hus … I met Oannes this afternoon and he sent me here, but he didn’t tell me anything.”

  His face scrunched with misery. He wished he could make the truth something else than he knew it was. If this had been a poem, he could change his scheme and bring consolation to this ordinary, nice woman and her perfectly decent husband who had made a mistake out of love alone.

  Homer had brought the goddess Athena out of the heavens to end the feud between Odysseus and the families of the suitors whom he’d killed. But Varus couldn’t summon gods; and he wouldn’t lie.

  “Urash,” he said, “I’m sure that Oannes will do all that he can for you, as he has in the past. But I can’t tell you any more than that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Urash said softly. She got to her feet, bringing him up with her. She didn’t put her clothing on. “You’ve been very kind. I know that it isn’t anything you could control, but I needed, I need …”

  Her voice broke off and she began to cry silently.

  Shriveling inside, Varus stepped close to Urash and kissed her, tasting the salt. “Dear?” he said. “How do I reach my guide?”

  Urash lifted her face and looked toward the window into the sacrificial mound. Though the men had taken the torches with them when they left and the entrance was blocked up, the corpse was still visible in a faint blue aura. Sigyn’s blood was a deeper blackness on the stone.

  “Open the way, Varus,” Urash said. She stroked his tunic where it lumped over the ivory talisman. “You have the power of Botrug. You have the powers of a god, Varus dear.”

  Varus turned his head slightly to the side. “Urash?” he said. “Can I help you?”

  He felt himself coloring again. “Can I help you leave this place, I mean?”

  “Not even a god can do that, Varus,” she said. She touched his shoulders and gently turned him to face the barrow. “You have your duty.”

  Varus drew the ivory head from beneath his tunic and cleared his throat. He didn’t know how to proceed. Do I just …

  As Varus hesitated, the now-familiar fog swept in to enclose him. He couldn’t see Urash anymore. Either she’d taken her hands away from his shoulders, or he was no longer in the place where she must stay for eternity.

  Varus walked into the mist. Was there really anything beneath his feet? Did he have feet or any material existence here, or was it a trick his mind was playing on him?

  He came out in brightness. The old woman sat cross-legged on a stone plinth. Beside her was a brazier from which licked thin violet flames as long as a man’s forearm. She smiled, forming new creases in her wrinkled face.

  “Lady,” he said, making a slight bow. “I have to come to you when I need power. Magic, I guess I mean.”

  They were on top of a bare sandstone knob. Below them—thousands of feet below—a brilliantly white cloudscape humped from horizon to horizon. The wind was thin and very cold, and it didn’t appear to affect the lambent flames from the brazier.

  “I don’t exist, Lord Varus,” the woman said, smiling still more widely. “All power, all knowledge, are yours. I’m just the way you choose to assert your power.”

  Varus narrowed his eyes. He started to say that he didn’t believe what she had just said, but that would be discourteous. Besides, the mechanism didn’t matter. If his mind told him that he had to come to this plane, this cloud-world, that was perfectly all right so long as it permitted him to do what was necessary.

  Which in this case …

  “Lady,” he said, “I need to go to a woman in a tomb, Sigyn. She’s … she will guide me.”

  “Then go, Varus,” the woman said. “Open the portal. You know how.”

  Her face worked over silent words. “Out I go at once,” Varus squeaked, “flinging wide the doors! I have no fear—”

  Varus felt his soul swoop into the ocean of clouds. He was blind and felt as though he were spinning. He was suddenly afraid that he was going to vomit. At least that would prove I have a body, he thought.

  Varus was laughing as he stepped into the dank blue interior of the tomb. The stones were slick from moisture that had sweated through the cairn and frozen, but the worst of the chill was spiritual. The chamber stank of blood and death.

  Sigyn lay on the slab, face upward. Her eyes were open, and her throat gaped raggedly; the knife had been dull, though the killer’s strength and nervousness had made quick work of the task.

  Sigyn was younger than Varus had realized. She couldn’t be any older than Alphena! He swallowed.

  How do I …? Varus thought, gripping the talisman with his left hand. The ivory felt warm.

  “Awake, good maiden!” he called in his own voice, surprising himself. “Awake, Sister Sigyn!”

  The corpse stirred, but as mindlessly as a grapevine touched by a breeze.

  “Awake, my friend!” Varus said. “You sleep in a cave of darkest night, but we must go forth together.”

  The corpse’s eyes were already open; now they focused on Varus. Her head lifted slightly. In a rusty voice she said, “Who is it that calls Sigyn? Sigyn is dead. Now there is only the Bride.”

  Varus squeezed the ivory talisman with his left hand. His brow was sweating, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. “Awake, Sigyn,” he said, “and we will go forth together—or I will hedge you with fire and compel you!”

  Sigyn sat up with the creaking deliberation of a wagon turning and fingered her throat with her left hand. Dried blood had matted her flowing hair.

  “Who are you to command me, poet?” she said, eyeing him now with comprehension. Her voice was stronger, and her features were beginning to show animation.

  “I am Gaius Varus,” he said, choosing the words consciously for the first time since he had entered the tomb. “I have the power”—he held out the talisman to the length of the thong around his neck—“and the need. I must lead the Legions of Surtr or the world will die, so you must guide me to them.”

  The woman got off the slab, moving stiffly but without wasted motion.
“You have the power,” she said. “You cannot compel Sigyn, but the Bride will guide you on your way.”

  She looked at Varus; his hand tightened on the talisman. When he realized he was keeping it in front of him as a barrier against the woman’s cold gaze, he let it fall and stood with both arms at his sides.

  “You have a great task, Varus,” she said; her voice seemed without emotion. “Do you have the strength to complete it?”

  “I have to try,” Varus said, trying to keep his tone calm. “Otherwise the world will end.”

  The woman laughed like pebbles rattling. She took him by the right hand. Her flesh was cold, and he almost gagged on the stench of her fresh blood.

  “Come, Varus,” she said. They walked together toward the end of the chamber, and the stones dissolved before them.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The back wall of the cairn had been a blur. It cleared, and Varus stepped onto a trail along a mountainside. To his left was a cloud-filled gorge, and above, the sky showed the smooth pearl of high overcast. A patch near zenith was brighter than the remainder, but the sun wasn’t visible.

  The woman released his hand. “Come,” she said, starting along the trail. The fog beside them swirled and eddied in the direction they were walking.

  “Sigyn?” Varus said, his head turned slightly toward the gorge. The mist moved as swiftly as a millrace. Occasionally he saw the top of a pine tree, and once something in a treetop stared back with unwinking eyes.

  “There is no Sigyn, Varus,” the woman said. “Sigyn died in a far place and at another time. If you want an answer, you must ask the Bride.”

  Varus didn’t speak for a moment. He hadn’t been a good poet, but he’d been a meticulous one. He understood the importance of words.

  “Sigyn,” he said firmly. “Where are you taking me?”

  The woman raised her left hand and traced her fingertips along the line of the cut. She began to laugh; flakes of blood cracked off the skin of her throat.

  “We go to pick the fruit of the First Tree, Varus,” she said. “The Tree is on an island in a sea which cannot be crossed. When you have picked the fruit, then we will go to the entrance to the Underworld, where the Guardian waits. You have already met the Guardian.”

  Varus thought. “The lizard that Pandareus and I had to run from?” he said.

  “The dragon that you ran from,” said the woman. “The Guardian cannot be harmed. We must pass the Guardian to enter the Underworld, where we will meet my destined husband. My husband will direct you to the end of your route, Varus.”

  Varus said nothing for a time. The path was broad enough for two, but he found himself lagging a half step behind his guide. The upward slope to the right was just short of a sheer wall. He saw a few birches and once a squat, gnarled conifer, but all those trees grew from cracks in the rock. Other than that, only lichen provided patches of color.

  There was a dot in the sky. Varus stared at it for a moment. It didn’t seem to move, but when he closed first one eye, then the other, the touch of blackness remained. It wasn’t a speck in his eye.

  Now and then a whorl of mist cleared on the left. The glimpses through those eddies showed that the descent into the gorge was equally steep. What would happen if I fell?

  Varus opened his mouth to ask the question aloud, then swallowed the words unsaid. Nothing good would happen. He would die, or he would cripple himself—could he die in this place? Sigyn hadn’t—or perhaps he would spend eternity in a dank gray abyss whose walls he certainly couldn’t climb. It was better that he not fall.

  The path didn’t seem to have been cut, but it couldn’t be natural given the slope above and below it. It was free of debris. No pebbles had weathered out and fallen onto it from above, nor had slabs cracked into the gorge to narrow the path into a ledge down which Varus would have to sidle with his heart in his mouth.

  If I can concentrate on the small puzzles, Varus thought, then I don’t have to think about the great ones. The latter mean life or death for the world—and I can’t solve them either.

  He grinned. His logic was impeccable even though the situation was completely irrational. Pandareus would be proud of me.

  At first Varus had thought he could see the opposite wall of the gorge, but now the sea of mist spread into the unguessable distance. There was a howl from below. It could have been the wind, but he didn’t think it was.

  “Sigyn?” he said. “What made the sound I just heard? From down in the valley.”

  The woman glanced back at him. She laughed, making the edges of her severed throat wobble.

  “Are you afraid, Varus?” she said. “Nothing here can stand against the wizard who dared to steal the Bride of Loki.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Varus said. The sudden anger warmed him. “Not about that, anyway—I’m afraid I’ll fail, of course. But I want to know what that animal is because I like to know things!”

  The woman’s mocking smile faded. “It is not an animal,” she said. “Once it was a spirit, but that was long ago. Now it is a hunger and a memory, but it cannot climb to where we are.”

  “Thank you, Sigyn,” Varus said. He coughed for an excuse to lower his eyes.

  I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly. She’s been murdered, after all; she has an excuse for being, well, negative.

  “Sigyn knew little and feared much,” the woman said, facing the path again. “All the folk of Thule did. When the Horn, the mountain on the shore, rumbled, they were frightened. The Horn belched smoke that burned our throats and bleached the leaves, so the men of the Tribe gathered in council. They vowed Sigyn to Loki in the Underworld.”

  She looked at Varus again; he met her eyes by an effort of will. Her smile this time was different from the cold cruelty he’d seen in it before.

  “Now I am the Bride,” she said. “I know all things; but I do not fear, and I do not care.”

  Varus had a sudden vision of what for him would be Hell … and perhaps was Hell for Sigyn also. He swallowed, then wiped his stinging eyes. She was too young to have done anything that deserved this. Perhaps no one deserved it.

  “Where is Thule, Sigyn?” he asked. His throat unclogged as he spoke, as he had hoped it would.

  “You speak to one who is dead,” the woman said petulantly; but after a moment she went on. “Thule is in the north. I cannot describe the location in a form you would understand.”

  Varus chewed cautiously on the inside of his cheeks to work the dryness out of them. Sigyn might be past fear, but he wasn’t. It wouldn’t prevent him from going forward, though.

  “Sigyn?” he said. “This volcano, the Horn?” She’d described it as a mountain that rumbled and blew out sulfurous smoke. “Do Hyperboreans live on it? Wizards, I think?”

  The woman laughed horribly again. “You mean the Twelve,” she said. “They went to the Horn and walled it off from the waking world when Nemastes left them. But they do not live, Varus, they exist; just as the Bride exists.”

  For a moment, the pulse of the dancers in Varus’s mind was so strong that he staggered. He dipped to one knee and pressed the fingertips of both hands against the rocky path.

  The pressure drained as suddenly as it had begun. Varus got to his feet and said, “I’m sorry. I’m all right now. We’ll go on.”

  The woman had waited for him; now she resumed her measured pace. In the distance ahead were touches of red and yellow instead of the omnipresent cold white that Varus had seen thus far in the sky here.

  “The spells protecting the Horn are stronger than the cosmos itself,” she said, her eyes on the horizon. “So long as the Twelve exist, the spells cannot be breached. Not even the Legions of Surtr can pass them, though they march across the whole waking world besides.”

  “I’m going to lead the legions,” Varus said. He heard his voice rising. Furious with his weakness, he grimaced.

  The woman laughed. After a moment, she pointed ahead of them. She said, “We are nearing the First Tree, wizard.”


  The thing in the gorge howled again. In a moment, another of its kind answered in keening despair.

  ALPHENA FORCED HER WAY THROUGH a clump of plants whose sword-shaped leaves stood vertically. The edges weren’t sharp enough to cut, but the underside of her forearms tingled after the contact. She wondered if the soft skin there was going to break out in a rash.

  As she’d hoped, she’d reached a clearing. The ground was covered with grass whose blades were as fine as a cat’s fur. It was an immediate relief that foliage wasn’t touching her as it had done for all the past hour or more. The track had been worn by animals—pigs, perhaps?—whose shoulders came no higher than Alphena’s knees. Above that, leaves hung close on both sides.

  Round orange fruit dangled from a tree growing from the wall of vegetation across the clearing twenty feet away. Alphena doubted they were really oranges—the tree trunk twisted like the body of a snake, and its branches were lesser snakes writhing from it—but the fruit was certainly edible: scraps of rind, some of them whole half-spheres, lay scattered on the grass below. The pulp was pallid with a faintly blue cast.

  A bird with a long tail flew off with a cry that was more like a cat than anything with wings. Alphena hadn’t seen the creature till it moved, which disturbed her. I have to be more careful. What if it was a snake?

  To the right of the fruit tree grew a stand of saplings; their leaves drooped in ribbonlike tassels. In the foliage dangled blue flowers, each as big as a man’s head. Alphena couldn’t tell whether the blooms hung from the saplings like the leaves did or if their stems dropped from the limbs of trees deeper in the forest.

  A Cyclops twelve feet tall stepped through the curtain of leaves; his passage made only a faint rustle. He was clad in skins that had been knotted together, not sewn; they were raw and stank of sour death.

  The giant’s face was a shaggy mass with only the nose and brow clear of tangling hair. When he opened his mouth in what was either a grin or a silent snarl, his breath was foul as a tannery.