by David Drake
“Yes, child,” Uktena said with a faint smile. “It is time.”
He paused to light the herbs in his pipe bowl with a pinch of punk which he kept smoldering in a hollow gourd.
“And perhaps it is the last time,” Uktena said.
CHAPTER XVI
“I was talking with my friend Marcus Priscus last night, Varus,” Saxa said.
Even half-dazed by the dream of his conversation with the corpse, Varus felt his lips lift in a tiny smile. His father was so proud to be able to claim Priscus as a friend.
A man as wealthy as Saxa could easily have scraped acquaintance with military, political, or social leaders. What he had wanted, however, was to join those whom he regarded as truly wise, the only group which could not be bought with money. The disasters threatening his family and the world had at least allowed Saxa to achieve his greatest ambition.
“He pointed out that Hedia’s disappearance,” Saxa said, “and that of Master Pandareus as well, of course, weren’t the start of this business. It started with the vision of the monster that we saw in the theater.”
He cleared his throat and added in a small voice, “I talked to Meoetes, you see. The climax of the mime wasn’t his doing after all. It was a real vision that surprised him as much it did the rest of us. In fact—”
Saxa smiled ruefully.
“—it surprised him more than it did me, because I thought it was a trick that I was watching.”
Varus looked at the splinter of bone. It fitted his hand like a leatherworker’s awl. He thought, I can’t have been dreaming. But what does it mean?
Aloud he said, “I don’t know the answer any better than you, Father. There’s nothing in the books I’ve read—and Lord Priscus would know better than I anyway. Though—”
As he spoke, an answer presented itself.
“—there is a person I could ask. I’m not sure she would tell me, though.”
Or even that she exists outside my own imagination—since she claims she doesn’t.
As suddenly as the thought, Varus felt himself dropping out of the present, onto a fog-ridden hillside. Instead of the familiar track which would lead him to the Sibyl’s eyrie, this was bare black rock. The Sibyl waited for him at the foot of the slope.
“Sibyl?” he said. “Why are you here?”
“You have need of me, Lord Wizard,” she said. Her smile was unreadable, another seam in the wrinkles that covered her aged face. “Where else should I be, since I am wholly a part of you?”
“Mistress, tell me what I should do,” Varus said. He didn’t care what meaning she gave to the question. He needed help in so many fashions that any answer would be welcome.
“Come with me and meet your enemy, your lordship,” the Sibyl said, taking him by the hand. She started up the slope. Ancient though she seemed, her pace was both quick and steady.
She doesn’t have a body, of course. And neither do I in this place. I don’t think that I have a body in this place.
Varus didn’t ask further questions: he would have his answer when the Sibyl chose to volunteer it or he had the wit to determine it for himself. If she is really part of me, I’m a difficult person to get information out of.
They reached the top of the hill. In front of them stretched a bleak moor. The sparse grass or sedge—he couldn’t be sure—was gray with hoarfrost; the sky was gray as well. The sun, huge but orange, hung in mid sky; its light did nothing to temper the bitter wind.
A spire of black crystal stood on the moor half a mile away. From horizon to horizon, it was the only object which was taller than the occasional black bush which might have risen to Varus’ knee.
“Is that Procron’s keep, mistress?” he said. “Or is there another Minos in this place?”
“This is where Procron hides,” the Sibyl said. She continued to walk forward; Varus kept pace. “This is your enemy, Lord Wizard.”
His feet crunched on the sere vegetation. Something small—perhaps a rabbit, though it didn’t move like one—scurried ahead of them; Varus thought he heard it squeal. The air was thin, and it didn’t seem to fill his lungs.
“Why did—” Varus began. He caught himself, grinning with what he thought was a pardonable degree of self-satisfaction.
“Sibyl…,” he said, a philosopher and a lawyer now instead of a youth too frightened to use his education. “Did Procron abduct my mother? Because I know that the sages took Corylus and Master Pandareus. I was there when it happened.”
The old woman glanced toward him. He thought she was smiling again, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Procron did not take Hedia,” she said, “but those who took her are for others. Your duty is to deal with Procron, for no one else can.”
The Sibyl made a chuffing sound that Varus thought was a laugh. “And even you may be unable to stand against Procron, Lord Wizard; though your world will end if you fail.”
Varus sniffed; for a moment he was solely a son of Carce. “My world will certainly end if I fail,” he said in a haughty tone, “for I will have died in the attempt. Of course.”
They had come within a furlong of the crystal fortress, the length of a footrace. The high-arched door at ground level remained sealed, but the top of the spire split open. The angled sides moved soundlessly, catching sunlight and scattering it across the bleak landscape in a shower of orange droplets.
A figure in fiery armor slid from the fortress, standing on the air. He did not wear a helmet. In place of his head was a skull carved from diamond.
“Who are you who dares come to me?” the figure said. “I am Procron, Lord of Atlantis! Submit or I will crush you as I crush all my enemies!”
“I saw you run from your fellow Minoi, magician!” Varus said. The words leaped to his tongue without his conscious volition. “And you must have run again, or I wouldn’t find you here. Bow to Carce or take the consequences, barbarian!”
Procron raised a hand, but it was from his glittering skull that purple fire leapt at Varus and the Sibyl. The ground in a circle about them flashed into steam and bitter smoke.
Varus started back, but the bolt had halted at arm’s length from him and splashed in all directions. The Sibyl stood, smiling faintly. The sparse vegetation could not sustain the fire.
Am I physically here in this cold wasteland?
Embarrassed to have recoiled from the purple fire, Varus strode forward. He didn’t know why it hadn’t incinerated him, and he certainly didn’t know whether he’d be as lucky the next time. Besides which, the Atlantean wizard was a hundred feet in the air; unless Varus had developed an unexpected ability to fly, he couldn’t get at his enemy even if Procron failed to blast him to ash in the next instant.
No matter. I am a citizen of Carce. If I don’t know what to do in a crisis, I will go forward.
The flame-scoured moorland was hot beneath his feet. He was wearing silk slippers, suitable for a gentleman doing research in his family library. He grinned wryly. Blistered feet were the least of his worries.
Procron’s diamond jaws opened as if to shout, but no sound came out. He spread his hands. Light the color of orichalc danced from his gauntlets. It formed walls in the air, tumbling and joining until they locked suddenly into a faceted sphere. It surrounded Varus and the Sibyl, slanting into the hard soil beneath their feet.
“Did you think you were safe because you could block my spells?” Procron said. “Stay here and starve! You cannot return to the world from which you came. I will watch you die and rot and crumble to dust—and even the dust will remain, for all eternity!”
Varus reached out with his left hand, touching the tip of his little finger to the amber gleam. The light was as solid as bronze. It had neither texture nor temperature, but he could no more step through it than he could the doors of the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest.
“Die, you puppy!” Procron said.
The Sibyl said, “May the doors—”
“—of heaven be opened to me!” Varus said, completing t
he phrase in a cracked, ancient voice which caused his father to jump back in alarm.
“My son?” Saxa said. “I don’t understand.”
Varus rubbed his forehead, then bent and picked up the book he had dropped: a copy of the Aetna, the Stoic response to Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. He had always been in sympathy with Lucretius’ Epicurean disbelief in the gods, but recent events had made him think the Stoics might be right after all.
“I don’t understand either, Father,” Varus said. “And I’m afraid I don’t know what has happened to Mother. But I know what I must do.”
Unfortunately, I don’t have the faintest notion of how to do it.
* * *
CORYLUS AWAKENED when he felt the ship begin to tremble. The sky had brightened, and the sails were quivering.
Corylus ached pretty much everyhere. He had slept on the ground beside the tilted keel, using a biscuit—or whatever they were—to cushion his head. They did better for that than they did as food, though he supposed they would sustain life.
He’d had a few bites of one to supplement the raw fish. He would probably eat more today, because he didn’t trust the remaining fish to be safe without smoking or at least a drying rack. Though being doubled up with the runs didn’t seem quite as terrible as it would have been if the alternative were something other than the chalky blandness of the ship’s stores.
Coryla was watching him. “Good morning, cousin,” he said politely. She pouted.
The Ancient had stopped shrieking some time in the middle of the night, but he still sat in the ruins. Under other circumstances, Corylus might have built the scattered stones into a shelter; the ship lay almost crossways to the prevailing wind, which was as bitter as that of the Hercynian Forest in November. It was better to feel chilled to the bone than to cannibalize the Ancient’s shrine, however.
The same concern, perhaps even more strongly, had convinced Corylus not to use the sprite’s warmth to shelter him. He needed the Ancient as an ally if they were ever to get off this needle of rock. Even without that, he was sure that the result of provoking the golden-furred wizard into a rage would be unsurvivable, and he’d seen more than one man knifed or battered to death because of a disagreement over a woman. The sprite’s pique was a cheap price to pay for avoiding that risk.
Water slapped loudly, then rebounded from the base of the rock. The eel hadn’t slept during the night either. Judging from the sound, none of his leaps had equalled his first attempt. Corylus hadn’t looked over the edge again, however, for fear of spurring the creature to a sufficiently greater effort.
The Ancient squatted with his wrists resting on his knees. His fingertips dangled almost to the ground. He watched as Corylus approached.
Corylus bowed. “Master Magician?” he said. He doubted whether the Ancient could understand his words, but he thought it was better to speak directly rather than to use the sprite as an intermediary. “I would like to leave as soon as you determine that there is light enough to lift the ship.”
He gestured toward the brightening east without turning his head. He bowed slightly. The Ancient simply stared.
I depend on his goodwill, Corylus thought. He turned his back and began walking toward the ship. When both parties know that one cannot force the other to his will, then only a fool attempts to threaten.
There was a scrape on the dirt behind him. Corylus started to look over his shoulder. The Ancient shot past him in a flat leap that carried him to the stern of the ship. He slammed into the deck and straightened, his claws biting the wood. He grinned at Corylus.
Corylus grinned too, then broke into laughter.
“Men!” the sprite said. Her voice held a mixture of amazement and disgust.
“Time to board, cousin,” Corylus said as he lifted himself over the railing. “And very glad of it I am, too.”
He continued to smile. The sprite was quite correct. He and the Ancient were both men—not just males—in all the important senses. That had risks if you weren’t properly courteous in the other fellow’s terms, but Corylus understood that: he’d grown up with the Batavian Scouts.
If you were in a hard place, you wanted your companions to be men also. Corylus was in a very hard place now.
The hull rocked upright. When the first bright edge of the sun showed above the horizon, the sails gave a mighty stroke and the ship lifted. Below and behind, the sea slapped to the desperate fury of the monster eel.
The moon, just short of full, hung in the western sky as though it were the beacon toward which the Ancient was steering. For an instant, Corylus thought he saw an angry woman standing astride the orb; then she was gone, but two specks lifted from the silver surface.
Corylus watched the specks, his eyes narrowing. He couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to be swelling … which meant they were headed toward the ship.
“Cousin?” he said. “Do you see those dots? Are they coming toward us?”
The sprite joined him in the bow; she seemed to be over her irritation. She had a basically sunny personality, which made up for an obvious lack of intellect.
“The Minoi have guards on the Moon,” she said. “Are the Minoi your enemies?”
Corylus had taken off the armor to sleep and hadn’t bothered to don it in the morning. Now he removed the sword belt so that he could latch the breastplate in place properly.
“I didn’t know anything about the Minoi before I was thrown onto the cliff with the Cyclops and the ships on the beach below,” he said. “Maybe they think I’ve stolen their ship.”
The sprite shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said without interest. “Anyway, they’ll certainly kill you if they can, now that they see you’re wearing their armor. They’re a haughty lot; worse than olive trees, even, for thinking that they’re better than everyone else.”
Corylus hung the cross belt over his shoulder again and latched the buckle of the waist belt; then he reached for the helmet. He would like to have a spear, or better still a sheaf of javelins. He had been pretty good at throwing a javelin, even by the standards of the Scouts.
The orichalc armor of the Minoi glinted identifiably even while they were too distant to have shapes. Corylus noticed that the ship was descending. He looked back at the Ancient.
The Ancient wrinkled his lips. Corylus hoped that was a grin and returned to watching the Minoi.
The golden-furred wizard knew what he was doing. At any rate, he knew better than Corylus knew to direct him. The giant eel should be far behind them by now; and if not, it still wasn’t the most serious danger.
The Minoi were riding huge, three-headed vultures. They turned after they closed and for a time flew parallel to the ship, a furlong to either side. After a moment they drew ahead, demonstrating that their mounts were far swifter than the ship’s throbbing sails.
“Cousin?” said Corylus, though he was a little afraid to put his hope into words. “Have they decided to ignore us now that they see who we are?”
Before the sprite could answer, the Minoi drew their swords. The vultures banked, turning inward. Their powerful wings beat as, side by side, they drove toward the ship.
Corylus drew his sword also, but he didn’t expect it to be of any use. He wasn’t a sailor, but he could see the danger easily: the Minoi didn’t have to attack him. All they had to do was slash the sails and cause the ship to drop into the sea. The eel would finish their work, and even if it didn’t, Corylus would eventually starve.
The Ancient gave a savage, rasping howl, the same sound he had made in response to the men/wolves of the first island they had approached. Corylus didn’t look around. His concern was for his enemies; his allies—he hoped the Ancient was his ally—could take care of themselves for the time being.
The sea ahead lifted. For a moment, Corylus thought the eel or another like it had reached them after all; but this was water alone, rising in a spray of droplets.
It shuddered into an image of the Ancient, formed of the green sea and surrounded by a r
ainbow halo. It poised, hunching toward the Minoi. The vultures sheared off, but the simulacrum lunged forward, striding on the waves, and snatched one out of the air.
The image of water used its arms the way a praying mantis does, drawing its victim back to its pointed jaws. A huge black wing dropped away, its flight feathers quivering. The helmet flew in one direction and the rider’s legs and torso in the other.
The simulacrum flung the vulture’s body into the sea. The remaining bird was flying toward the rising sun. The thing of water pursued it for as far as Corylus could see.
The ship began to rise to its usual height. The sails had slowed their stroke, but they were picking up the rhythm again.
Corylus sheathed his sword. He turned and bowed as deeply as the breastplate allowed him to do.
“Thank you, master,” he said to the Ancient. “I am honored to be in the company of such a warrior as yourself.”
The ancient wizard’s tongue lolled. He laughed. This time the sound was as terrible as his shrieks of a moment before.
* * *
ALPHENA SNEEZED AND AWAKENED. I must have slept like the dead.
Uktena had lighted his pipe. Holding it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he started up the ladder. Alphena saw brilliant white sparkles wherever his skin touched the wood.
“Uktena?” she called. She began to lace on her sandals; she had taken them off to sleep. “Wait a moment.”
The shaman did not pause, but he was moving with great deliberation. By the time he had flung the entrance mat aside and disappeared onto the surface, she was ready to follow.
Her hands and calves tingled when they touched the ladder. She swallowed, but it didn’t matter. It can’t matter. He’s my friend.
Black clouds filled the sky, seething like water at a rolling boil. Alphena expected thunder, but she heard none. The air on the ground was still. Dead still.
Uktena stalked toward Cascotan. The villagers were not in sight, but the three sages waited in front of the huts as they had on the previous day.
Alphena trotted to catch up. The copper axe head sparkled as her arms pumped, and the hair on her right arm stood up as though lightning had struck nearby.
