Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  Alphena had been ready to put in a finishing blow, but there was no need for that. Earlier in the fight she would have stabbed the Ethiope through the kidneys as soon as he turned away from her. Now, neither she nor Corylus had energy for any unnecessary movements.

  The wind was punishing to the defenders, but it blinded the Ethiopes who were attacking into it. Stolid though the half men were, they could not look into sand that literally wore their eyelids away and then ground their corneas opaque. They advanced with their shields lifted to cover their eyes. The first they knew of their opponents was when a sword licked below or beside their shield, dealing a lethal blow.

  Corylus and Alphena had been retreating slowly, driven back by the bodies piling into a windrow before them. Their worst danger was that they would be hemmed in by the twitching dead and unable to avoid a wild swipe from a stone axe or a spear as thick as a ship’s jib.

  The next danger—the one they wouldn’t be able to avoid—was that they would become too exhausted to raise their swords. The Ethiopes could slaughter the Daughters and anyone else in their way just by falling dead on top of them; their massive bodies weighed hundreds of pounds apiece.

  “Corylus!” Alphena shouted. She pointed outward with the blood-covered stick in her left hand. “Look! Look!”

  For a moment, Corylus couldn’t see what she was pointing to. There are no Ethiopes close enough to—

  The head of a Worm swept by sunwise with the slow majesty of a waterfall. It towered above them, higher perhaps than the escarpment that it had devoured.

  The ocean followed the Worm’s body. At the far end of its stroke, the Worm had gouged deep into the seabed, and the water rushed to fill the new embayment. Eventually the Worms would between them drink the seas as well as the land, but for now the ocean laughed thunderously at its new conquest.

  The Worm didn’t eat the land the way a caterpillar did sections of a leaf. Rather, its dark-glimmering head passed by, absorbing all that had been in its path. Rock and sand fell, no longer supported by the ground beside it, but the process of destruction itself was as silent as thought.

  The Worm continued on—toward the remaining mountains and into the desert beyond. It did not seem a swift process, but Corylus realized that a galloping horse could not have kept pace with the Worm’s head. Only the creature’s enormous size concealed the speed of its movements.

  Corylus looked for the Ethiopes. There were none nearby except the scores of sprawled corpses. Survivors loped clumsily back toward the portal by which they had entered the Waking World. Over the ocean’s gurgle, Corylus heard the Ethiopes hoot and bellow.

  Varus said that the Ethiopes had been wiped out in their own time, so their return would bring them doubtful safety. That was a matter between them and their gods, however, if they had gods.

  The wind stopped. Corylus sprawled backward—as did Alphena. He—they—had been leaning against the pressure without being aware of it. Normally they would have been able to catch their balance without falling down, but Corylus wasn’t sure for a moment that he would be able to stand again ever.

  At least not before the nearer Worm absorbed another devouring arc of the landscape, which would, this time, include Publius Cispius Corylus, Knight of Carce.

  Corylus scrambled to his feet, wobbling slightly. I’m not going to die on my back. He leaned carefully over the Ethiope he had just killed and wiped his sword on the black fur of the creature’s shoulder.

  Corylus’ blade was not only dull but twisted. Even so, it had come through the test better than anyone would have predicted. It was a standard product of one of the army shops; but then, the army of Carce manufactured weapons in the expectation that they would see hard use.

  I’ll hang it as an offering in the Temple of Mars the Avenger, Corylus thought. If I return to Carce. If Carce continues to exist.

  The Singiri warriors hadn’t lost their footing when the wind ceased to blow. Two of them now sat on their haunches, watching the Ethiopes flee.

  The third lay on the sand between them. An axe had crushed his head to a smear of blood and bones connected by skin. One warrior had been limping before the wind rose. Even the blind thrusts and swipes the Ethiopes made when they couldn’t see could be devastating to anyone who was slow to dodge.

  Had been devastating.

  Alphena was still on the ground. She didn’t appear to be injured. When Corylus walked toward her, she rolled onto all fours and managed to get to her feet. Corylus would have offered a hand, but she was obviously determined to rise without help, or at least without his help.

  Tassk and Pandareus had been hunching in a swale. It was slight, but it had been enough to keep them out of that murderous wind. Corylus smiled grimly.

  Alphena must have been thinking the same thing, because she said, “The wind saved our lives. It flayed my bare skin, but if the Horseheads had been able to see, they would have killed me.”

  “Killed us,” Corylus said. He walked toward Pandareus, hoping that the scholar could tell him where Varus was.

  “Corylus?” Alphena said, walking beside him. “How long will it be before the Worms come back?”

  They both wobbled, but they were keeping their feet. Corylus dropped his shield onto the sand, but Alphena kept her wooden club as well as her short sword. Its blade was as warped as that of his longer weapon.

  Corylus looked at the deep inlet from the ocean and, on the other side of it, the shimmering crystal cliff. The Worm’s flank trembled as the head cut eastward, inland. When it reached the end of that arc, probably at the Worm’s own side, it would begin to swing back for the deeper cut that would engulf the humans and Singiri here in the basin.

  “A quarter hour, I suppose,” he said. “I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to what the Worms were doing.”

  In a battle you learned to prioritize. The first thing you dealt with was the enemy who would kill you in the next instant. After that you could worry about the mission.

  “I’m going to see Mother,” Alphena said. “She may need … I’m going to see her.”

  Hedia was picking her way past the final pile of Ethiope corpses. She was blood spattered but regal. Her face was as calm as though she had been watching her husband burn a pinch of frankincense on the altar of Jupiter Best and Greatest.

  Hedia didn’t need any help Alphena could bring her, but her icy strength was exactly what her daughter needed after the murderous battle just concluded.

  Tassk and Pandareus had clasped hands as they sat facing each other. They seemed to be supporting each other.

  “Master,” Corylus said. “Do you know where Lord Varus is?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Pandareus said. He was looking down at the sand between himself and Tassk, apparently too exhausted to raise his eyes. “I have been…”

  He looked up after all. He smiled and said, “Master Tassk and I have been chanting a spell, I believe. It was a unique sensation, and one I hope never to repeat.”

  “Your friend Varus,” Tassk said, his voice soft with weariness, “and my princess are saving your world. But especially Lord Varus, who has Zabulon’s Book.”

  “Saving the world?” Corylus repeated, feeling as though his mind were clogged with scum. He looked toward the Worm, a shivering cascade of glittering gray horror. The other Worm was visible also, in another arm of ocean lit by the morning sun. “I don’t understand.”

  Tassk gestured toward the three Daughters, now standing together. Beyond them was a steely distortion that completely shrouded whatever was inside it.

  Corylus couldn’t be sure how large the distortion was. It was as confusing as the Egg had been. And where was the Egg?

  “There,” whispered Tassk.

  The distortion vanished. For an instant Corylus saw Varus, holding a black codex in his left hand, and the Singiri princess. Between them was the Egg.

  Where the Egg had been was suddenly light, and the light, a rainbow as bright as the sun, filled the basin and the w
orld.

  There was a plangent cry, sweetly musical but so loud that Corylus thought the cells of his body were melting. For an instant, everything was joy and peace.

  He again stood on sand at the sea’s edge with his friends nearby. The sky was rainbow light. A spike of that sky stabbed down into the nearer Worm, lifting it as a starling does a grub.

  The Worm was unthinkably huge. Corylus for a moment imagined that he saw the frozen Danube hanging in the air, thrashing wildly. The Worm vanished by portions—by gulps, or so it seemed. The massive grayness merged into the blaze of rippling colors and was gone.

  Pandareus raised an arm; Corylus braced it so that the older man could rise. The last of the Worm disappeared, though water sloshed and chuckled in the channel it had eaten in the Earth. The sweet cry repeated. Pandareus’ hand tightened on his.

  The sound died out. The second Worm flicked into the air as the first had done. It began to disappear as well.

  “I wish my friend Atilius Priscus were here,” Pandareus said in a wondering tone. “He loves music above all things. He would give his life, I’m sure, to have heard that sound.”

  “We’re still alive, master,” Corylus said. “For however long the gods grant us, of course. But that’s always been true.”

  The last of the Worm was dissolving into the light. The Princess walked toward them—toward Tassk, most likely—but Varus stood as motionless as a statue. He had lowered the Book and held its weight against his chest, but Corylus was sure that his friend’s mind was in another place.

  The Worms were gone. The cry sounded a third time. The radiance sucked itself into the high sky and vanished in its turn.

  “I was never in doubt that we were on the correct side,” Pandareus said musingly. “But I’ll admit to doubting until just now that we would be on the side which survived.”

  “Yes,” said Corylus. “I doubted that too.”

  He bowed to the Princess as she joined them.

  EPILOGUE

  Tassk stood when he saw the Princess approaching. Corylus offered an arm, but though Tassk moved carefully, he didn’t need help.

  “You fight well, warrior,” Tassk said. He looked toward Alphena’s back and his tongue lolled out in the Singiri equivalent of laughter. “As does your little friend. The females of my race are not warriors.”

  “Nor are most of ours,” Corylus said drily. “I’m fortunate that Lady Alphena is an exception, because I wouldn’t have survived without her watching my left side.”

  He tried to sheathe his sword but stopped in sudden stupefaction. The blade was too damaged to have fitted the scabbard anyway, but that was secondary: his scabbard and belt were missing, and there was a deep gouge across his ribs from what must have been the same flint-headed spear that had ripped off his equipment.

  “Hercules!” he gasped. He’d been so wrung out generally that he hadn’t noticed that particular wound. When he did, the pain hit him like a shower of hot coals. “Hercules!”

  “Is the injury serious?” Tassk said, tracing it with his long fingers but not quite touching either flesh or the scraps of tunic that were now glued to the wound.

  “I don’t suppose so,” Corylus said, trying not to wince. There wasn’t a great deal of blood, all things considered, though it continued to ooze out in brighter red whenever he moved and cracked the scab. It was deeper than the similar injury to his right side during his fight while trapped with the Princess. “I don’t recall it happening, is all.”

  Even trying to cast his mind back didn’t help much. An Ethiope had thrust a spear at him—and missed. That had happened at least a score of times in the past quarter hour, but most of them hadn’t come anywhere nearby.

  Or anyway, he hadn’t thought they did.

  Which reminded him … “Master Tassk?” he said. “Do we have you to thank for the wind? Because it saved our lives.”

  “Master Pandareus and I raised the wind,” Tassk said, nodding. The scholar stood with them but seemed to have drifted into a separate world. He wore a dazed expression.

  “When one grows too old to fight,” Tassk said, “one must find other ways of serving the Princess. I will never be a magician, but by effort and the help of a very skilled partner—”

  He glanced at Pandareus again, this time with obvious respect.

  “—one can help real warriors like yourself and my younger brethren.”

  Corylus looked at the surviving Singiri warriors, squatting beside the body of their comrade. They hadn’t moved since the Ethiopes fled.

  “I didn’t have much time to watch what your men were doing,” Corylus said. “I was busy myself at the time. But I can see the bodies of those they were fighting. I’m glad Alphena and I were facing Ethiopes and not your warriors.”

  Tassk burst into hissing laughter. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, that would be a delight to watch, yes.”

  He sobered and went on, “But yes, your world is fortunate that you and your female were fighting on its behalf rather than against it.”

  The Princess joined them. She must have slowed in order to let Corylus and Tassk speak to each other privately, man-to-man.

  Corylus gave a hard smile. Tassk might have scales, but he was a man by any definition that mattered to Corylus.

  The Princess nodded sideways to Tassk, then turned to Corylus. “Warrior Corylus,” she said. “I and mine have tried to repay your kindness to me.”

  “You have done so, Lady,” Corylus said. “My help was just a personal thing, but you’ve saved my world.”

  The Princess made a gesture with her hand, dismissal, Corylus thought, but he might have been imposing human meaning on a Singiri action.

  Tassk said, “The difference may be less than you think, warrior. Regardless, we all acted in a fashion that will make our offspring proud when others speak of this day.”

  “Do you wish to return with us, Warrior Corylus?” the Princess said. Her tone made him think of Hedia in her formal guise.

  “No, Princess,” Corylus said, trying to equal her formality. “I will stay with my friends, though I’ll admit that this—”

  He looked around him.

  “—isn’t the most attractive part of the Waking World.”

  Tassk laughed again. The Princess said, “You and your companions will return to Carce, if that is your wish. But for you, Warrior Corylus? Keep the link of chain which I gave you. It may be that someday my world will seem a refuge from the place in which you find yourself. You will be welcome.”

  She nodded to Tassk and said, “It is time that we return.”

  The Princess walked toward her three warriors. The survivors rose to their feet, lifting the corpse of their fellow between them.

  “Tassk?” Corylus said as the old Singiri started to follow his princess. Tassk turned again and faced him.

  Corylus nodded toward the warriors. “I’m sorry about your Theta,” he said, using army slang; Theta, the first letter of “thanatos,” dead, was the roll-call marking for fatalities. “Please offer my condolences as a warrior to his mate. Ah, if he had a mate.”

  Tassk laughed again. “Oh, Sele was a great hero, Corylus,” he said. “Else he would not have been here, where few could be brought. There will be many females to mourn him. I will tell them that you honor Sele in memory.”

  Tassk looked at the Singiri warriors, waiting for him with the Princess. Very quietly he said, “Sele will never grow old. His fellows think that he is unfortunate, but they are young too. When they reach my age, they may see things in another way.”

  Tassk trudged toward his fellows, looking older than he had at any time since Corylus first saw him in the shipping cage in Puteoli. The Princess was holding out the chain that had taken her and the warriors home after her rescue.

  Varus suddenly shouted something, the first sound he had made since the Phoenix appeared. Corylus walked toward his friend.

  When he glanced back, the Singiri were fading like mist in the sunlight.

  * * *<
br />
  VARUS LOOKED DOWN on the fan-shaped patterns eaten from the surface of the Earth below his viewpoint. “So much damage in only a few minutes,” he said. “Such deep scars.”

  Beside him the Sibyl said, “The sea has already softened the cuts. In a year, they will have blurred together. In fifty years, sand drifting from the desert to the east and sand brought in by the sea will have made the bay indistinguishable from any other on this coast of Africa.”

  “The Phoenix saved us,” Varus said.

  “The Phoenix hatched,” said the Sibyl. “And saved the world.”

  Varus understood the difference in emphasis, but he wasn’t willing to accept the implication that he had helped save the world. I watched everything happen from here in a dream!

  Below, the Singiri were joining hands at a slight distance from Corylus and Pandareus. Varus’ own body stood by itself, and the women—his mother and sister—were making their way slowly toward the men.

  “What will you do with Zabulon’s Book?” the Sibyl said. Her voice was as calm as the surf.

  “What?” said Varus. He looked into the crook of his left arm where he supported the codex. It was closed and the iron clasps latched the covers together. “I’d forgotten I had it.”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “I won’t do anything with it. If Vergil thought it should be taken out of the world, then I have no business with it. Do you want it, Sibyl?”

  He held the volume out in both hands, suddenly aware of the weight.

  “I have no existence outside your mind, Lord Varus,” the old woman said, smiling like a whorl in the bark of a desert tree. She lifted the Book from him. “But it can return to Zabulon, who created it and who is dead.”

  She touched the back of Varus’ wrist with a fingertip as light as a butterfly landing. It was the first time he had been in physical contact—or so it seemed—with his vision.

  “You are wise, Lord Magician,” the Sibyl said. “You are wiser than you are powerful, and you are more powerful than you dream. You did not need the help of the Princess, though it speaks well of her and of the Singiri that she came.”