by David Drake
They stopped twenty feet or so from the door by which they had entered. Hedia looked back, but the metal valves were lost in the light. At any rate, she couldn’t see them.
Melino began to laugh. He was standing straighter now. Entering this place had given him back both strength and confidence.
“Now!” he said. “Who but I could have come here? We can return to the Waking World from this nexus. It will cost me the ring, but what of that if I have Zabulon’s Book?”
He raised the Book in his left hand. Hedia looked at the magician sharply, considering what he had just said. The demon remained impassive.
Melino’s lips moved. The Book rumbled a word. The vault and the world beyond trembled to the echo.
A vortex formed in what had been a solid crystal floor. It spread outward and downward, eating into the stone. Melino backed a step and knelt.
The demon did not move. “It is not the rock that is dissolving,” she said, her eyes on Hedia’s. “The Cosmos itself is dissolving in this place.”
Hedia looked down. She had not retreated when Melino did, because the demon had remained where she had been standing. The edge of the cavity stopped just short of her toes. Though it continued to expand away from her, they were in no more immediate danger than they had been when they entered the huge chamber.
At the bottom of the slanting pit was a flickering point of light, blue and so intense that Hedia’s head jerked back reflexively from its impact. She felt as though shards of ice had been jabbed into both her pupils. Her head ached, and she saw floating orange afterimages even after she massaged her eyes with the heels of her hands. Her vision cleared slowly.
The magician had knelt, supporting part of his weight on the staff, after the Book spoke. He didn’t get to his feet yet, but his features were still animated and his face hadn’t lost its color as it had when he used the powerful spells in the past. This light-filled cavern strengthened him or at least made his recovery quicker.
“He will smash the ruby,” the demon said, speaking to Hedia. “Then he will order me into the Underworld unprotected; and I will obey, because he is my master. My agony will anchor the spell which he speaks through Zabulon’s Book. It will open his passage to the Waking World. His passage and yours.”
Hedia looked at Melino. He took the ruby ring from his left hand and placed it on the crystal floor in front of him, then lifted himself upright with his right hand on the staff.
She had started to say, “Is that true?” but the demon hadn’t lied—couldn’t lie?—yet and there was nothing in what she had said that didn’t fit with Melino’s previous behavior.
“Stop,” Hedia said. “We can’t do that. She’s one of us.”
“What?” said Melino, looking more dumbfounded than angry. “Are you insane?”
He positioned the butt of his staff over the ruby and prepared to bring it down. The blow would shatter the jewel into dust. The demon watched.
“No!” said Hedia. She bent and snatched the ring away with her left hand. “She’s one of us!”
“You slut!” Melino said. “Well, your pain will do as well as hers!”
He stepped toward Hedia with the staff crossways, pushing her toward the edge of the pit. She tried to claw his eyes. He blocked her with the Book in his left hand.
I’m going over, Hedia thought. She was beyond fear. This is how life ends.
The demon’s lips moved. Zabulon’s Book boomed a word that froze time. A force set Hedia back on the crystal floor.
Melino screamed in sudden awareness. Spinning, he plunged into the tunnel he had opened into the Underworld.
Hedia didn’t follow him with her eyes—she remembered the pain of her first ignorant glance—but the screams continued as though they would never stop. She swallowed. The demon was watching her with a slight smile.
“What do I do now?” Hedia said, knowing that she was on the edge of more than a passage to eternal torment.
“Whatever you wish, mistress,” the demon said. “Zabulon’s Book gives you all power.”
“I want to go back to the Waking World!” Hedia said. “But I can’t; I’m not a magician. I can’t use this—”
She hefted the Book.
“—because I can’t work magic!”
“Then it’s fortunate, mistress…,” the demon said with the same cold smile as before. “That your servant can work magic.”
Her expression changed slightly. Hedia remembered Melino saying that the demon had no emotions. She had thought him a fool to believe that. A fool indeed, and now a damned fool.
“There are other ways to focus a spell than by agony,” the demon said. “But agony is fitting, since that was the method my former master preferred.”
Her lips moved silently. The Book in Hedia’s hand opened and thundered a word.
Melino’s screams redoubled, seemingly louder than if he were standing beside them instead of by now far below. The pit slowly began to close as a similar cavity rotated into the wall of the chamber behind Hedia.
She looked at the ring in her left palm. “Demon, what do you want?” she said.
The demon had no expression. “My will is your will, mistress,” she said.
“Hecate strike you barren!” Hedia shouted in frustration. “My will is that you tell me where you want to be! Do you want to remain in this place? What do you want?”
“If the ring that protects me were dropped into the Underworld,” the demon said, “then it would keep me safe from the rigors of that place; and there I would be safe also from magicians of the Waking World who would use me for their ends. But I have no will but your will.”
“Then go!” said Hedia, and hurled the ring into the pit. The demon’s form sucked into the ruby like a wisp of smoke an instant before the ground closed over it.
The Book spoke again. Hedia stood on packed red sand. The sun was rising. It was already bright enough to dispel the chill fog that had come in from the sea.
CHAPTER XVI
Hedia’s first thought was, This isn’t Carce. Why did the demon send me here?
Her second thought was that she was back in Atlantis—from which she had escaped either weeks ago or eleven thousand years ago, according to the figure Master Pandareus had given for when the island had been destroyed.
But this wasn’t Atlantis. At least it wasn’t Poseidonis, the capital where Hedia had been imprisoned, and the distant black cliffs cutting the bay off from the interior of the land were nothing like the Atlantean terrain she had seen.
The ruins she stood among, though, were unquestionably Atlantean: crystal pillars worn to a rough milky texture, and even bits of orichalc that must have come from the swags and finials of the buildings. The remains were being engulfed by the coarse red sand that now filled the bowl within the rocky hills.
The other side—the west side—was surf drifting lazily from a sea without apparent end. Hedia had no way of knowing how far the water stretched, but in her heart she was sure that this was Ocean: the great stream that circled the rim of the world.
She smiled faintly. At any rate, the sea was as uninviting as the rough black rocks to the east. Tufts of knee-high grass sprouted from the sand dunes, but the rocks had no vegetation that she could see. Perhaps if she got close enough, she would find lichen in some of the cracks and on shaded surfaces.
Occasionally driftwood stuck out of the sand where the surf had deposited it. There were branches and whole tree trunks, and once there was a curved timber that might have been the keel of a ship.
Hedia’s smile became colder still. An old wreck was no more helpful than the trunk of a palm tree. Reefs streaked the sea with foam for as far out as she could see. She didn’t imagine that a ship could reach this shore safely though them. She had thought that this might have been a port, but no vessels—
Hedia grimaced with sudden realization. She wondered why she hadn’t seen the obvious immediately. No seagoing ship could reach this place, but the ships of Atlantis flew through t
he air. This had been a colony, protected on both the land and water sides.
The Atlanteans spoke Greek, and it seemed that like the Greeks they had sent colonies to distant shores. This had been such a settlement. Though it had not been caught in the destruction of its motherland, it could not survive long by itself in this inhospitable place.
Something was moving along the line of surf. A dog? Or perhaps a shaggy brown wolf with vertical stripes. It was prowling the margin, making occasional snaps into the water and tossing whatever it had caught higher up the beach, then pouncing on it. Fish, Hedia supposed, or more likely crabs, when she thought about it. The dog was big enough to be dangerous if it wanted to be, but for the moment it seemed to be as harmless as the gulls screaming overhead.
Thirst and starvation were more likely to kill her than the dog. If nothing else happened, thirst and starvation were certain to kill her.
Why did the demon send me here? I was better off in the Otherworld!
But that wasn’t true, as she knew as soon as the words formed in her mind. She would rather die in the Waking World than live for however long in the Otherworld. For that matter, from what she had seen of the other denizens of that place, “however long” was likely to have been a very short time.
It was still surprising that the demon, whom Hedia had considered an ally and perhaps a friend, would have sent her here. Well, there was no reason to expect that a human being would find a demon’s humor to be funny or even survivable.
The sand at her feet wriggled. A breeze she couldn’t feel? She looked down; a bright lizard eye looked up at her for an instant before vanishing. The ripple continued down the face of the dune as the lizard burrowed away.
Hedia looked about the ancient ruins and considered her choices. She had only the clothes she wore and Zabulon’s Book. The clothes were of sturdy construction, but they were already considerably the worse for the time she had spent hiking through the Otherworld.
Though—thank Venus!—she had learned from previous experience and was wearing garments that were appropriate for hiking across a wasteland. Or, better, thank her own common sense.
As for the Book … it was of no more use to her than her gold bead earrings, the only jewelry she had worn when she went to meet Melino in the guise of a commoner. Even her maid Syra wore earrings, though they were merely gilded iron. She might just as well set the Book on one of the fallen pillars. A loaf of bread would have been much more valuable.
Still, the Book wasn’t heavy enough to be a real burden. If she kept it, there was always the possibility that someone would offer to trade her a loaf of bread for it.
Hedia carried a little knife hidden in her sash. At the moment she saw no better use for it than to open a vein when thirst grew unbearably oppressive. Still, the knife had saved her life—and had taken lives—in the past; it might do so again.
She had been facing the sea, watching her shadow on the sand shrink as the sun rose higher. She turned, wondering if there was a path eastward that she had missed earlier: to safety or at least to life.
Something shimmered in the air near a block that might once have been the sacrificial altar standing before a temple. For a moment, Hedia thought she was seeing a mirage; then she realized that real figures were forming out of the air.
Her hand reached into her sash.
* * *
ALPHENA, GRIPPING THE IDOL in her left hand and the sword hilt in her right, stood in a plain of wild oats, waist high in the sunlight. A few thorn trees were the only green vegetation visible in the sea of russet grass. A mile or so to the north was an escarpment of bare rock climbing by a series of steps to a considerable height.
The Daughters of the Mind sat resting on a knob where the stunted oats were no more than a palm’s breadth above the ground. Alphena guessed that there was a boulder buried under such a thin layer of soil that the grass didn’t get enough moisture to grow to normal height.
The Daughters rose when she appeared. The Egg was a glowing presence in the center of their group, throbbing with light that didn’t color even the ground that should have been shaded by its presence.
This was the first time Alphena had seen the Egg directly rather than in a vision of some sort. She couldn’t focus on it; she couldn’t guess how large it was or even where it was. The women stood within six feet of one another, but the Egg seemed to be much farther away—farther even than the cliffs to the north.
“Greetings, sister,” the Daughters said. They spoke together, their words as perfectly synchronized as those of the chorus of a mime. Alphena heard Latin, spoken with an upper-class accent, but the movements of their lips didn’t match the sounds. “We are pleased to have your company, but you should know that you are in great danger so long as you are near us.”
“Two Singiri visited us recently,” the Daughters said. As before, all three spoke, but what Alphena heard was in a different trio of voices. “They were killed by those who wish to kill us.”
“They were killed by the Ethiopes,” the Daughters said in a third voice. “The same who killed King Ganges and who wish to destroy the Egg which we guard.”
Alphena heard—or rather felt—a humming. It might have been coming from the Egg, but she couldn’t understand anything about the Egg.
“The Singiri who visited the Daughters were students, come to learn,” said First. “They stayed to fight the Ethiopes instead of returning to their people. As they could have done.”
Students like my brother and Publius Corylus, Alphena thought. But lizardmen.
“The Singiri said they wanted to learn from us,” the Daughters said in unison. “But we have nothing to teach. They were brave, though.”
In a different voice they added, “Are you a student, sister?”
Alphena swallowed. “No,” she said. “No, I’m not. But I have a sword, and I hope I’m brave. As brave as a lizardman, anyway.”
The wooden idol laughed. One of the Daughters looked at him. Together they said, “Greetings, First. I hope you have kept well since we left you?”
“Very well indeed, children,” the idol said. “My new worshiper has fed me and will feed me again. You need not be concerned about her courage.”
At the base of the northern bluffs, red sparks crackled into an arch of rosy light. A man came through it—the priest Paris, whom Alphena had followed into the tomb and by stages to this place.
Paris stepped aside. Ethiopes followed him through the portal one after another. They loped through the oat grass, holding their weapons. Alphena watched, wondering if there was an end to their numbers or if the horse-headed giants would continue to appear for as long as there was something for them to kill.
She took a deep breath. She had to die somewhere, sometime. Perhaps here she could make a difference. A minuscule difference.
The three women resumed their high-stepping dance around the Egg. Alphena could hear their chant, now: “The most ancient of things is God, the uncreated.”
“Go on,” Alphena said. “I’ll hold them for as long as I can.”
First laughed again. “Not yet, little worshiper,” he said. “Take us with you, Daughters—one time more. Then I will feed.”
The women made no response, but Alphena felt darkness close off the world. She could see nothing, not even the sword and the idol that she held in front of her.
Nothing but the Egg, spinning in the infinite distance.
“The swiftest of things is Mind,” chanted the Daughters of the Wind. “For it speeds everywhere.”
* * *
CORYLUS WAS BRACED to step into the high grass in which Alphena had been standing when he looked down on the vision in the basin. Instead he was on coarse red sand in the midst of wind-worn crystalline blocks that seemed to have been part of buildings in the distant past.
One environment wasn’t better than the other—though perhaps these packed sands would be firmer footing for a swordsman than grass, which might hide gopher holes or the roots of shrubs. He wa
s shocked not to be where he had expected to be, however. The unexpected was always a jolt when you were in hostile territory … which this certainly was, despite the presence of Alphena, the dancers whom the little man called the Daughters of the Mind, and Hedia.
Hedia being here was an even greater surprise to Corylus than it was to find himself standing in a mountain-fringed half bowl on the shore of a great sea. She looked worse for wear, as he had seen her in the past at moments of crisis. This time her tunics were whole, though muddy and plucked into tufts by thorns, and she was wearing sturdy sandals.
She was also carrying a book, a black-leather codex. Corylus wasn’t sure that he had ever seen Hedia holding a book before. She looked calm and unruffled, disdainful, in fact, of the situation in which she found herself.
Jupiter! What a commander of a legion she would make. Especially for a legion which was facing ten times its number of howling barbarians!
“My goodness,” Pandareus said. “Surely these are Atlantean ruins! Do you suppose there are Atlantean settlements which might still survive? On the coast of Lusitania, perhaps?”
Hedia gave him a cold smile. “I’m more concerned with our own chances of survival, Master Pandareus,” she said. “Which I don’t rate as very high at the moment.”
“First brought me here because I asked him,” Alphena said. “I didn’t know you were coming, Mother. Or y-you, Publius Corylus.” She swallowed, looking upset.
Corylus scanned the rocks that formed a distant rampart for the enemies who he was sure were coming. He had come seeking his friend’s sister in order to get her back to the Waking World, which now seemed to be impossible. He wasn’t interested in what the girl thought or wished or wondered.
“Who is First, Daughter?” Hedia said. From the approving look Pandareus gave her, he would have asked the same question if Hedia had not.
“First—,” said the carved wooden cudgel in Alphena’s hand, making Corylus jump and breaking his concentration on hidden enemies, “—is the god whom Lady Alphena worships. If you are wise, you will become my worshipers as well.”
