Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  Talos met the jar in the air with the point of one outthrust sword. If the blade really was bronze, it was of a harder alloy than Corylus had ever seen. The terra-cotta shattered in a spray of oil, but the sword neither bent nor broke. Talos didn’t even rock backward.

  “Do you plan to drown me?” Talos said. “It will take more jars than one, and I cannot be drowned anyway!”

  Pandareus threw the branch awkwardly. It bounced off the ramp’s sidewall and caromed into the passage below. Talos’ swords chopped it into bits despite the bounce and spin, though that just meant the missile fell on the oil in a dozen blazing fragments instead of one. Low yellow flames spread across the surface like reflections dancing from a pond.

  “Do you think I will burn?” said Talos. He bent and scooped up oil on the flat of one blade. It ran down his arm and shoulders as a lambent tongue. “Come down and die!”

  “I can bring more oil,” Corylus said to his teacher. “We have as much of that as we want.”

  “This should be enough,” Pandareus said calmly. “If it works at all, that is.”

  Talos continued to laugh. He bent down to scoop up more burning oil.

  Light, as sparklingly bright as an eruption of Vesuvius at night, erupted from the bronze man’s left heel. The sizzling jet carved into the polished granite wall behind him.

  Talos cried out and tried to straighten. Instead he toppled to the floor of the passage, still bent over.

  The blaze from his heel spluttered and ceased. By contrast the flames of the remainder of the olive oil were scarcely visible.

  “Well!” said the dryad. “He never did that before, either.”

  “What happened, master?” Corylus said. He grinned and added, “Master indeed.”

  “Well, I don’t consider Apollonius a trustworthy source,” said Pandareus. He kept his tone measured where a lesser man—almost any other man—might have crowed in triumph. “But according to Alexo, Thales also claimed that the essence of life was sealed into Talos with a lead plug. While the oil flames could at best soften bronze, I was altogether more hopeful about their effect on lead solder.”

  He smiled broadly. “Correctly hopeful, I’m glad to see.”

  Corylus hugged the older man. “Master,” he said, “you are living proof of the value of a rhetorical education.”

  He stretched, releasing the tension that had built up ever since Talos had appeared.

  “And when the flames burn out,” he said, “we’ll see where Vergil’s bridge leads us.”

  * * *

  HEDIA HAD BEGUN TO SEE FACES peering from the walls of the tunnel as they walked past. They stayed close to the demon, the only source of light now that the entrance was what seemed a mile behind them. Hedia’s eyes were getting used to the dim glow.

  “Melino?” she said. “Look at the stone. It’s carved into faces.”

  “No,” said the magician without turning his head. He was hunched like an old woman carrying firewood, though he no longer needed Hedia’s help to keep up with the demon.

  “Look at it!” Hedia said sharply. It didn’t really matter, but she resented having the man dismiss her statement without bothering to check it.

  She touched the wall to emphasize her demand. Her fingers brushed flesh rather than basalt. She yelped in surprise and skipped sideways, bumping Melino.

  He stumbled but recovered by clicking his staff down. He chuckled in a cracked voice, but he still didn’t turn to look at her.

  “Others have come this way,” said the demon over her shoulder. “Some of them remain. They are not dangerous, but what caused them to remain is as dangerous to you as it was to them.”

  The faces were turning so that their eyes could follow Hedia and her companions, but they moved slowly and their expressions were agonized. They reminded her of bandits crucified outside Carce at the gate to whichever road they had infested, husbanding all their remaining strength to keep from suffocating when their arms could no longer hold their chests high enough for them to breathe.

  Hedia swallowed. She focused her eyes straight ahead and crossed her hands in front of her. She would like to wash them, wash the one that had touched the wall, at least.

  It was the changing echo of her and her companions’ feet on what again was a stone floor that alerted her, not anything she saw immediately. The demon halted. The tunnel beyond branched to right and left.

  Doesn’t she know which way to go? Hedia thought, but she didn’t speak aloud.

  A deep shadow lifted itself like a cloak of filth at the mouth of the left branch. It opened huge yellow eyes; it was a toad larger than an ox. Its tongue licked out and back.

  Melino was shivering and his face had no color save that of the demon’s rosy light. He said, “You must let us pass, Paddock.” He sounded like a dying beggar.

  The toad’s laughter gurgled like oil at a roiling boil. “Must I, wizard?” it said. “I do not think so.”

  Melino raised the Book in his left hand. “Paddock,” he said, his voice stronger. “You must.”

  The toad grunted. Its dark mass quivered; Hedia poised to run.

  Instead of attacking, the toad slopped to the side in a series of awkward motions. When at last the way was clear, the demon walked down the left-hand branch.

  Melino staggered after her without hesitation. Hedia waited until her companions were far enough ahead that she could sprint past without risk of bumping into them.

  The toad didn’t move until they were some distance down the passage. Behind them in the darkness Hedia heard broad feet slapping the stone as the guardian resumed its post.

  The magician looked like a walking corpse. He had drawn Zabulon’s Book close to his chest again; he clung to it like a drowning man clutching a float. Even the threat of using the Book seemed to have drained him.

  Hedia wondered how many times more Melino would have strength for the spells this place required. She wondered what would happen to her if he collapsed, dead or hopelessly weak.

  And she walked on.

  * * *

  VARUS AND THE SIBYL STOOD beside the two exhausted humans sleeping on the shore near their boat. In the water thirty paces up the beach was a crab whose shell was ten feet across and whose claws were paired scythes. It was in restive motion, sidling two paces toward the sleepers and then one back. Its body barely broke the surface.

  “Sibyl?” Varus said. He felt more alive in this world of his vision than he had since he boarded the boat in Sulla’s garden. Exhaustion had worn his physical body to a gray shell during the voyage. “Is this Zabulon’s Isle?”

  “This is the island to which Zabulon retired, bringing his Book,” said the Sibyl, turning to look into the jungle close behind. “This is the island where he died and where his body remains.”

  The crab continued to edge closer. It was clearly interested in the sleepers. Varus wondered how fast it could move in a rush.

  “The Book will not confine the Worms,” the Sibyl said in a musing tone, “nor will the Book destroy the Worms if they are released; but if a magician of sufficient power holds the Book, the Worms could be confined or even destroyed.”

  The crab stopped ten feet from the sleepers, but its stillness was as threatening as that of a crouching leopard. Water shivered above its gills.

  “Sibyl, can you drive away the crab?” Varus said. He wondered what would happen to his present self if his physical body passed down the gullet of a giant crab.

  “Why do you ask me, Lord Magician?” the Sibyl said with a cracked laugh. “If you want it away, send it away yourself.”

  And how do I do that? But the best way to learn was to try.…

  Still in the vision, Varus stepped toward the crab. “Raging fire will flow!” he said, and waved his right hand in a gesture of dismissal.

  To his surprise, there was a crash!

  A blue glare enveloped the crab. Water sizzled and the crab leaped back the way it had approached, then scuttled into deeper water. One of its legs wob
bled at the shoreline; the severed joint was noticeably charred.

  Varus tingled. He felt exhilarated.

  “If the Worms proceed undisturbed,” said the Sibyl, “they will cleanse the Earth.”

  Varus turned to her. “They’ll destroy all life!” he said. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  The Sibyl shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said. “As you destroy the molds and tiny creatures living on your body when you bathe. When you cleanse yourself.”

  She looked eastward, as if by chance. Varus followed her eyes and saw that dawn was beginning to brighten the sky. Lucinus moaned softly, but Varus’ body was as motionless as a stuffed dummy.

  Philosophically, he could accept the view that the Earth had as much right to clean itself as he did. He could also accept the view that to a philosopher a gentleman of Carce was neither better nor worse than a tattooed savage from Britain.

  That said, the Briton was going to be thrown out on his ear if he tried to barge into the Alphenus town house—and Varus was going to stop the Worms if there was a way to do it. Even at the cost of his life.

  “It’s time for me to return,” he said.

  The Sibyl nodded and said, “Now join those who go forth!”

  Varus shook his body awake on the shore of Zabulon’s Isle. The air breathed a mixture of spice and composting vegetation, and a creature wailed in the far distance. The Sibyl’s voice still rang in Varus’ ears.

  He put a hand on the magician’s shoulder. “Wake up, Lucinus,” he said. “We’re here.”

  Varus’ muscles ached, but he was exhilarated from loosing the blast that had seen off the crab. If that had really happened …

  He glanced toward the shoreline. The burned leg floated where he remembered it from his vision. That much at least had been real.

  Lucinus awakened more easily than he had on previous mornings during the voyage. He rubbed his eyes in normal fashion, then brushed the cheek that had been lying against the sand.

  His eyes lighted on Varus. “You’re ready, then?” he said. “Good.”

  Lucinus got up from the sand. Each joint moved separately, like those of a marionette. He looked at the vegetation before them, then said to Varus in a haughty tone, “The world depends on my power and on your ability to help me.”

  Varus lifted his chin in recognition of the statement, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. The voyage had been physically and mentally difficult, so his control was wobbly. A farmer from the Campania should not be patronizing a noble of Carce.

  It was a thought unworthy of a philosopher, but it was quite proper for Lord Gaius Alphenus Varus. If Lucinus persisted in arrogance, he was likely to meet the other half of his companion’s personality.

  The thought renewed Varus’ good temper. He smiled, then gestured to the older man. “Lead then, Master Lucinus,” he said. “We will both attempt to act as befits our stations in life.”

  The magician strode into the vegetation. The soft-stemmed brush near the beach bent away before he could have touched it, but it sprang back at once.

  Varus smiled wryly and elbowed the foliage aside in normal fashion. During the voyage he had worried that Lucinus might not be in condition to act when they reached Zabulon’s Isle. That concern was obviously misplaced, but the magician in his full health and strength posed other problems.

  A creature with a black, shiny body stepped in front of them. It was the size of a bull. Great eyes covered most of its face with myriad separate lenses.

  A cricket, Varus realized, and therefore probably not interested in them as food. But if it stepped on them—

  Lucinus held out his left hand with the fingers spread in a fan. Red sparks popped and crackled from his fingertips, wilting the foliage that they touched. The cricket gave a spastic leap and landed on its back thirty feet away. Two of its legs had shriveled, but the remainder were thrashing violently.

  The magician stalked on as if following a paved track; Varus followed. The shriveled vegetation eased the younger man’s progress somewhat, but his arms already itched from contact with the plants.

  Lucinus led them into a forest of hairy-trunked trees. There was enough room to walk between them comfortably. Varus glanced upward: they were in a stand of sunflowers hundreds of feet tall. The multiple bright yellow blossoms on each stem were in motion, turning their eyeless faces slowly toward the humans below.

  The flowers didn’t seem hostile, but he was glad when the magician led him into a bed of ferns larger than palm trees. Attention from objects that should have been inanimate was more disquieting than Varus would have guessed without the experience.

  He wished he could discuss matters with Pandareus now. The voyage with Lucinus was providing Varus perspectives on life that books and lectures would never have given him. Of course the same would have been true if he had become an officer on the frontiers the way Corylus planned to do, or had been enslaved by the Sarmatians and trudged across the plains behind a squealing wagon.

  To a philosopher, all forms of experience were equal. Varus felt on consideration, however, that he preferred books and lectures.

  Lucinus halted at a band of grass that grew higher than his head. The blades were as close together as the palings of a fence. They were bright yellow on the edges, but their cores were green.

  The magician lowered himself carefully to sit cross-legged on the ground. “We have reached our destination,” he said. “Beyond this—”

  He nodded to the grass.

  “—is the tomb of Zabulon.”

  Varus had been a pace behind the older man. He moved slightly to the side and examined the grass. It grew in a band four feet deep and as sharply bordered as if it were in a rich man’s garden. He wondered if the bed was artificial or if it had grown in this fashion by the whim of nature. Nature on this island certainly was whimsical.

  Something had burned a swath into the grass. Fresh growth was poking up from the roots, but the original stems were black and shriveled.

  Lucinus was taking colored stones from his satchel and placing them in a pattern on the ground. Varus watched him for a moment, then stepped into the burned place. He shifted the remaining grass to the side with his arm so that he could look through.

  The ground beyond the curtain of grass was trampled and scarred, bare except for fragments of giant insects. It stank like the mudflats fringing the Tiber when the river was low.

  Across the semicircle of bare ground was a limestone bluff, steep though not quite vertical, and in the middle of that a cave or tunnel. Varus stepped forward.

  Lucinus looked up from his preparations. “Don’t, you fool!” he shouted.

  A huge dog sprang toward Varus from the cave mouth, barking savagely from all three throats. It covered half the distance in its initial leap and stretched to spring on top of its prey.

  Two years previously a lightning bolt blew the doors off the temple Varus had been about to enter. The blast had driven him back, though he hadn’t been injured except for a tingle all over his body. This was the same: he backed a step from the sheer violence of what was happening.

  And stopped, crossing his arms before his chest. He couldn’t outrun the dog, and he wasn’t willing to give up his dignity. I am a citizen of Carce.

  The dog reached the end of the chain that Varus hadn’t seen. The shock jerked the dog’s forequarters high—the collar was around his middle neck—and his hind legs skidded out in front of him. His hind claws flicked up, fanning the grass between him and Varus.

  The dog hit the ground on his back. Everything shook as though a building had collapsed. He weighs as much as an ox, Varus thought.

  The dog scrambled to his feet, whining but uninjured. Being slammed to the ground didn’t seem to have affected him beyond silencing his barking. He paced off to the end of his chain, not straining against it but keeping the thin flame-colored links off the ground. No wonder the ground was trampled bare.

  Varus turned away. The magician was staring at him.
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  “Are you insane?” Lucinus said. He sounded amazed, not angry. “You just stood there.”

  Varus looked at him, trying to understand what point Lucinus thought he was making. “My friend Corylus would have noticed the chain, I suppose,” Varus said. “I just realized that I couldn’t get away. The rational choice was to stand where I was; I wasn’t being brave.”

  “Don’t take insane risks,” Lucinus growled as he returned his attention to the pattern of stones he’d laid before him. “I need you to enter the cave and bring back the Book while I hold the dog. I can’t do both.”

  He touched his temples with his fingertips, apparently concentrating. He looked at Varus and said, “Now, don’t do anything until I have put the dog to sleep with my magic. Especially don’t distract me. As soon as I’ve held the dog, run into the cave and bring the Book from Zabulon’s lap.”

  “All right,” said Varus. The great dog continued to pace back and forth at the edge of the clearing. Whichever head was on the outside focused on Varus and the magician, but the other two kept watch on the jungle and the sky above.

  Lucinus had his athame out again. As he chanted, “Let peaceful calm relax your limbs,” the obsidian blade dipped from one stone to another. The motions were not in a particular order that Varus could identify, but he was sure that there was a structure beyond his awareness.

  “Let peace come from the stars on light breezes.”

  Varus had watched spiders building webs. Their movements seemed random also, but the pattern of each finished web proved that the tiny creature was working as precisely as Pheidias had when he designed the Parthenon.

  “Put your head down and rest your twitching eyes.”

  The dog was becoming logy. It wobbled as it paced, and one or another of its heads nodded.

  Suddenly it lunged with all its remaining strength toward the seated magician. The chain snubbed the dog up as before. The snarl from the middle head choked to a squeak. The dog lowered all three heads to the ground.