Dahut

by Poul Anderson

  Favonius would catch her in a few more bounds.

  The next surge caught Favonius. It boiled as high as his withers. Undertow hauled him back. He struggled to keep footing. The wave that followed swept around him and his rider. Right and left, buildings fell asunder. There was nothing but a waste of water and a scrap of road up which Dahut forever ran.

  To Gratillonius, where he and his horse fought for their lives, came Corentinus. Somehow the holy man had reached Ys from the Wood as fast as hoofs had flown. Across the tops of the billows he came striding, staff in hand. Robe and gray beard flapped in the tumult. His voice tolled through it: “Gratillonius, abide! The angel of the Lord appeared to me before the heathen house. He bade me save you even now. Come with me before it is too late.”

  He pointed east along that street that led off this toward the mound where stood the Temple of Belisama.

  Gratillonius whipped his mount. The wave pulled back, awaiting the higher one behind. Favonius broke free. His hoofs found pavement and he went on aloft as his master bade.

  Corentinus paced him on the right. “No, you fool!” the pastor shouted. “Leave that bitch-devil to her fate!”

  The new wave rushed uphill. Water whirled about the daughter of Dahilis, waist-high and rising.

  Gratillonius drew alongside. She was on his left. He tightened the grip of his knees and leaned over. She saw. “Father!” she screamed. Never had he known such terror as was upon her. “Father, help me!”

  They reached for each other. He caught her by a wrist.

  “Take her with you, and the weight of her sins will drag you down to your death,” Corentinus called. “Behold what she has wrought.” He touched the end of his staff to the brow of Gratillonius.

  Spirit left him. It soared like a night heron. High it rose into the wind that blew across space and the wind that blew through time. Against them it beat, above the passage taken by the Ferriers of the Dead. The moon rose in the west. The spirit swooped low.

  Seas broke on Sena. The greatest of them poured clear across. They ramped through the house of the Gallicenae.

  In the upper room of the turret, a single lamp burned in a niche before an image of Belisama. Carved in narwhal ivory, She stood hooded and stern, Her Daughter in Her arms, at a bier on which lay Her Mother. Though the window was shuttered, the flame wavered in wintry drafts. Shadows writhed and hunched. The voice of Bodilis was lost in the skirling around, the bellowing underneath. She stood arms folded, to face the Goddess. Her lips formed words: “No longer will I ask mercy. The Three do what They will. But let You remember, by that shall You be judged.”

  A crack jagged across plaster. Stones had shifted. The floor beams left their fittings. The planks tilted into the gap between them and the wall. Bodilis stumbled backward. She went into murk. The waters received her. She rose blinded, to gasp for air. The waters dashed her from side to side and against floating timbers. A broken red thing squirmed and yowled in the dark.

  The whole house crumbled. Blocks slid over sand and rock to the inlet where the dock had been. The last human works left on Sena were the two menhirs the Old Folk had raised.

  —Storm blew the heron back east. Behind him the moon sank. He came to the Raven Tower. Forsquilis stood on its roof, at the western battlements. Wind strained her black dress around her, a ravishment she did not seem to feel. Her hair tossed like wings. The moon on the horizon showed her face whiter than herself or than the waves that rammed below. Pallas Athene had been less cold and remote. She watched the fury until it cast open the gate.

  Then, swiftly, she passed through the trapdoor and down a ladder to the topmost chamber. There she had left kindled her lamp fashioned from a cat’s skull. Taking it in both hands, she hastened along the descending stairs. Night and noise went beside her. Stones shivered and grated, began to move under the blows from both sides.

  The guardroom was deserted, its keepers fled. Forsquilis set lamp on table and stepped forth for a look. Water plunged through the gateway and the gaps in the wall. As yet it was feet below the parapet, but soon it would reach this entrance and batter the door aside if she barred it. She did, reclaimed her lamp, and continued on into the depths. The bird followed invisible and unhearable.

  At the bottom was the crypt, the Mithraeum. She entered, where never woman trod before. Between the Dadophori she passed, across the emblem of mysteries that floored the pronaos, and once more between the Torchbearers into the sanctum. Her flame made golden stars flicker in the ceiling, lion-headed Time stir as if in threat. Him too she went by, to the twin altars at the far end. Before her died the Bull at the hands of the Youth, that quickening might come into the world.

  Forsquilis held out her lamp. “Now save Your worshippers if You can,” she said. “My life for Ys.”

  Through the span of a wave-beat there was silence. Then she heard a mighty rushing. The sea had broken in. She set the lamp down, turned about, and from her belt drew a knife. The cataract spilled over the stairs, into the crypt. Before it reached her, she smiled at last. “Nor shall You have me,” she said. Her hand with the blade knew the way to her heart.

  The Raven Tower fell in on itself. The heron flew free.

  —Ocean rolled inward across Lowtown. The heron saw Adminius asleep, exhausted, with wife and two children who had not left the nest. The incoming din woke them. Bewildered, half awake, they stumbled about in blindness. A wave burst the door. Flood poured through. Adminius drowned under his roof.

  —Cynan shepherded his loves through a lane toward higher ground. Pressed between walls on either side, the pursuing water became itself a wall. The weight of it went over the family. Maybe it crushed their awareness before they died.

  —The heron winged to the Forum and by a hypocaust entered the library. A few candles showed fugitives crowded in hallways, study rooms, the main chamber. Innilis went among the poor countryfolk and fisherfolk. Her garb of a high priestess was filthy and reeky, her face pinched and bloodless until it seemed a finely sculptured skull, but exaltation lived in her eyes. “Nay, be careful, dear,” she said to a woman who scrambled erect by a shelf, heedless of the books thereon. “We must keep these, you know. They are our yesterdays and our tomorrows.”

  The woman held forth an infant. It whimpered. Fever flushed it. Innilis laid fingers on the tiny brow and murmured. Healing flowed.

  Sound of wind and surf gave way to rumble and crash. Walls trembled. Shelves swayed. Books fell. Folk started out of their drowse, sprang from were they lay, gaped and gibbered. Water swirled and mounted across the floor. People howled, scrambled, made for the one exit. They filled it, a logjam of flesh that pummeled and clawed. A man knocked Innilis down in his mindless haste. Feet thudded over her. Ribs broke, hip bones, nose, jaw. The sea washed her and her blood in among desks and books.

  Outside, it tumbled such persons about as had gotten clear of the buildings. Perishing, a few glimpsed a man on horseback, a-swim across the square.

  —The heron circled over Hightown, where the great folk dwelt. Vindilis ran down the street from her home. Sometimes she slipped and fell on the wet cobbles. She rose bruised, bleeding, and staggered on. Her hair fell tangled over the nightgown that was her sole garb.

  When she came out on Lir Way, crowds swarmed along it, fleeing for High Gate. She worked herseli to the side, on toward the Forum.

  Water raced to meet her. The avenue became a river. It caught Vindilis around her throat. She swam. The current was too powerful for her to breast. It swept her backward till she fetched against a stone lion. Long arms and legs scrabbled; she got onto the statue. Riding, she peered and cried westward. Still the stream rose. Vindilis clung. It went over her head.

  —Soren sought his porch. Through wind and dark, he needed a while to understand what was happening. When he did, he went immediately back inside. To the servants clustered in the atrium, he said, “Ocean has entered. The city dies. Hold! No cowardice! You, you, you—” his finger stabbed about—“see to your mistress. C
arry her if need be, out the east end. You three—” he pointed to his sturdiest men—“follow me. The rest of you stay together, help each other, and it may be you will live. Make haste.”

  Brushing past his wife, he met Lanarvilis bound from a guest chamber. She had thrown a cloak above her shift. He took both brown-spotted hands in his and said, “The Gods have ended the Pact. Well it is that you agreed to stay here till the danger was gone. Afterward, we shall see.”

  Shock stared, until the Queen rallied. Hand in hand, they went out into the night. Soren’s wife caught a sob before she let the people assigned hustle her along.

  The household stumbled downhill to Lir Way. They reached it quite near High Gate. The first false dawnlight made pallor within the opening. On their left they saw the deluge approach from where the Forum had been. Behind that white chaos, yet another tower collapsed. It toppled straight eastward. The wooden upper works came apart. Fragments arced as if shot from a ballista. They seemed to travel infinitely slowly. Their impact filled no time whatsoever. Beams and planks slammed into the wall. They choked the gateway. A shard of glass hit Soren in the neck. Blood spurted. He fell. Lanarvilis knelt by him and shrieked, “Is this what I served You for?” The sea arrived and ground her into the barricade.

  —Maldunilis’s fat legs pumped. The flood chased her up her street. The sound of it was like chuckling and giggling. At first it moved no faster than she could run, for the way was very steep. Soon, though, she began to gasp and reel. “Help me, help me,” rattled from her; but servants, neighbors, everybody had gone ahead.

  She sagged downward, tried to rise, could not for lack of breath. The water advanced. She rolled onto her back and sprattled as a beetle does. “Bear me,” she moaned. “Hold Your priestess.” The water floated her. Around and around she drifted, among timbers, furnishings, cloths, bottles, food, rubbish. Sometimes brine sloshed over her nose. She emerged, choked, coughed, sneezed, grabbed one more lungful of air.

  A man washed out of an alley and collided with her. He too was large; but he floated facedown. His limbs flopped and caught her. She tried to get free. That caused his head to turn. Eyes stared, mouth yawned. She flailed away from the corpse’s kiss, went under, breathed water. Presently she drifted quiet.

  —Her maidservant shook Guilvilis loose from nightmares and wailed the news. For a moment the Queen lay still. Then she ordered, soft-voiced. “Take Valeria with you. At once.” That was her daughter at home.

  The maid ran out with the candle she had carried. It left Guilvilis in the dark. She murmured a little at the pain in her hip when she crept out of bed. Bit by bit, she hobbled into the atrium. The three who attended her, and nine-year-old Valeria, were there. “Why have you not gone?” Guilvilis asked.

  “I was about to come get you, my lady,” the man answered.

  “Nonsense! Don’t dawdle. I can hardly crawl along. You can’t carry me through a tide. Bring the princess to her father in the Wood.” Guilvilis held out her arms. “Farewell, darling.”

  The girl was too terrified to respond. The man led her away. The women followed. Guilvilis must shut the door behind them.

  They had lighted a pair of lamps. She sighed, found a chair, settled down, folded her hands. “I wish I could think of something to say,” she murmured into the clamor. “I am so stupid. Forgive me, Gods, but I try to understand why You do this, and cannot.”

  After a while: “Should I forgive You? I’ll try.”

  The sea came in.

  —Valeria’s party reached the pomoerium. There the flood trapped them beneath the wall of Ys.

  —From the palace dome, just below the royal eagle, Tambilis had a wide view. Light from the east seeped upwind into night. By its wanness she saw waves roll everywhere around. To west, stumps of wall or tower reared foam-veiled out of them. Eastward remained more of the rampart and a few islets where ruins clung. North and south abided the horns of land; she made out the pharos, darkened at the end of Cape Rach.

  “The tide is at its height,” she said. “Soon it ebbs.” Billows drummed, wind whined.

  “We might have gotten ashore had we been quicker, my lady,” Herun Taniti muttered at her side. The naval officer had put himself in charge of the guards detailed to her for the duration of the tempest.

  She shook her head. “Nay, the thing happened so fast. I could see that. We’d have needed more luck than I believed the Gods would grant. Here we stand above and can wait.”

  “Well, aye, well, belike you’re right. Yours are the Power and the Wisdom.”

  “If only—” She bit off her words. “Grallon would scorn me did I lament.” She covered her face. “But oh, Estar!”

  Her home was the lowest-lying of the Gallicenae’s. Her younger daughter had surely been without possibility of reaching safety.

  Tambilis raised her head. Against the mass of Point Vanis gleamed the Temple of Belisama, on the highest ground in Ys. A part of that terrain extended some yards west, low as Sena. Surf bloomed about Elven Gardens. Her Semuramat was among those vestals who had had night duty yonder.

  Herun tugged his ruddy beard. “Best we go down, my lady,” he suggested. “They’re frightened, your household. You give them heart.”

  Tambilis nodded and preceded him to the stairs. On the second level, floorboards quivered, plaster cracked and fell off in chunks, rooms reverberated. The ground level was flooded halfway to its ceilings.

  That would be as high as ever the sea rose in this bay, were the weather calm. Still raving from the storm they remembered, waves rushed over that surface. They struck the palace walls, shuddered, fell back with a titanic whoosh for their next onslaught.

  Tambilis looked about the corridor where she and Herun had emerged. Nobody else was in sight. The passage boomed dim and chill. “Poor dears, they must be hiding,” she said. “Come, my friend, help me find them and comfort them.” She straightened. “For I am a Queen of Ys.”

  A surge came enormous. Foundations gave way. Stone blocks tumbled. The dome broke, the eagle fell. As she went under, Tambilis closed herself around the child in her womb.

  —Una, Sasai, Antonia, Camilla, Augustina—Forsquilis’s Nemeta and Lanarvilis’s Julia were at the Nymphaeum. The rest of Gratillonius’s daughters, quartered round about in Ys, Ocean engulfed. In like manner went most of the children of Wulfgar, Gaetulius, Lugaid, and Hoel, together with every work of those last Kings.

  —The bird flew inland. A tall man with whitening golden hair ran along Processional Way. Before the Sacred Precinct, he slammed to a halt. The building on its west side, which held the stable, was afire. Wind-fanned, flames had already taken hold on the Lodge and spread to the Wood. They whirled, roared, hissed. Sparks streamed. Roofs caved in. Red and yellow flared over a courtyard where attendants milled about. They had snatched their weapons. The tall man howled. Before they should see and come after him, he left the road for the meadow and the heights northward.

  —The night heron flew back to Ys.

  Gratillonius glared around. The river that had been the street flowed swollen. Houses gave way like sand castles. Through the gaps they left, he saw how fast the eastern half-circle of rampart broke asunder. But the Temple of Belisama shone ahead.

  “So are the Gods that Dahut did serve,” knelled the voice of Corentinus.

  For that moment, Gratillonius’s fingers forgot her. The current tore her from him. Her shriek cut through the wind. He leaned almost out of the saddle to regain her. He was too slow. The waters bore her out of his sight.

  Corentinus grasped the bridle and turned about. Favonius plowed after him, onto the ridge that the sea had not yet claimed. Corentinus let go.

  A machine inside Gratillonius declared that it would be unmanly to surrender. He guided his mount over the neck of land, behind the striding shepherd. Waves crested fetlock deep. Spume blew. The Temple was vague in sight against the gray that stole from distant hills. They could shelter there and wait for ebb.

  Bits of Elven Gardens lay he
aped on its staircase or washed around beneath. Corentinus stopped, looked back, pointed his staff past the building. Dull startlement touched Gratillonius. “What?” The chorepiscopus walked on.

  “I should follow you ashore?” Gratillonius mumbled. “No, that’s too far through this water.”

  Corentinus beckoned, imperiously.

  Gratillonius never knew whether he decided to heed—what matter if he died? How easy to go under—or whether ground slid and carried Favonius along. Suddenly they were swimming.

  Corentinus walked ahead over the tops of the waves.

  Around Gratillonius was salt violence, before him reefs of wall or tower, until the surf crashed in full force against land. A billow dashed across him, another, another. Glancing behind, he saw pillars topple. Flood had sapped earth. The Temple of Belisama fell into the sea.

  Favonius swam on. Combers rocked the stallion toward gigantic whitenesses. Gratillonius left the saddle. They’d have to take this last stretch each for himself.

  The breakers cast him about, up, down, around. Whenever his face was in air, he seized a breath, to hold when he went back under. Saving what strength remained, he made himself flotsam for Ocean to bear into the shallows.

  He and the horse crept the last few feet.

  That which upbore Corentinus left him after he had no more need of it. He waded to the new strand, where he stood leaning on his staff in the wind, gray head a-droop.

  XX

  By late morning, calm had fallen and the tide was out. Gratillonius dragged himself free of the half-sleep, half-daze that for a while had claimed him. He would go forth in search of something, whatever it might be—strength? peace? meaning?—before he returned to duty.

  The room where he had been was dusky, its air warm and thick. Bodies huddled together, those few who had escaped the whelming: Suffete, sailor, servant, watchman, worker, trader, herder, widower, widow, orphan, all nameless now, wreckage that breathed, down in forgetfulness. No, somewhere a woman he could not see wept, quietly and unendingly.