Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  “I remember Father talking about buying a collection that had belonged to someone named Herennius,” Alphena said. She had recovered her composure. “He wouldn’t tell me what the collection was, though. He gets, well, he got very ‘I’ve got a secret’ sometimes, and it was always something silly. It made me really mad.”

  “Pandareus?” Corylus said. “Do you know where Herennius was arrested?”

  “He was at his country estate near Aricia,” Pandareus said carefully, obviously wondering what Corylus meant by the line of questioning. “He’d rushed there from the city, hoping to go abroad. He grabbed up a saddlebag of gold and ordered his servants to hide the rest of the valuables, which included his collection. A pair of centurions caught him a few miles from the estate and cut his head off.”

  The old man smiled at the memory. “The reason I know that,” he explained, “is because the servants threw the collection in the well. Priscus had acquired a parchment that was supposed to be the words and musical annotation that priests of Isis used in raising the dead. It was in a beautiful golden box decorated with jewels and enamel … but the manuscript itself had been completely destroyed by soaking. The box could be duplicated for a few thousand coppers, but the manuscript was irreplaceable.”

  Corylus laughed in sudden excitement. “A manuscript wouldn’t have meant anything to common soldiers,” he said. “Soldiers wouldn’t have paid any attention to an iron locket, either. Which means if the Ear of the Satyr really did exist, I think I know where to find it.”

  “Let me talk to Father,” Alphena said. “If we have to buy the whole estate, we can. I’m sure he’ll be willing to trade this locket to get Mother and Varus back.”

  “That is a way to proceed,” Pandareus said, starting for the outside door. “But I have my doubts about Sentius having kidnapped the pair by magic. Your brother has demonstrated magical power which I would rather not admit to believing.”

  “And Lady Hedia,” Corylus said as they walked out of the temple together, “has proved considerably more dangerous than any magician she’s faced.”

  * * *

  HEDIA STEPPED THROUGH THE LENS of rosy light and found herself in what appeared to be a well-kept park. The lens had vanished.

  She had expected to be in India. She had feared that she would be somewhere in the Otherworld facing a screaming mob of demons, monsters, and Who-Knew-What-All, like the band that had charged into Polymartium, only worse.

  Hedia looked about her. She was certainly in the Otherworld. She had no real idea what India was like—she didn’t know what Lusitania was like, except that she didn’t want to go there any more than her husband did—but she was confident that in India a tiny human face wouldn’t peek from beneath dock leaves. As she watched, the creature flew away on butterfly wings.

  On the other hand, she wasn’t in the midst of demons or even a Bacchic revel. The low brick wall in front of her seemed to have been the foundation of a building, but apart from the single wall there was nothing left, not even rubble. A line of junipers on the other side might have been planted, but the trees could as easily have grown from seeds dropped by birds sitting on the wall when it was higher.

  Hedia turned to her right and began walking parallel to the wall. She saw no sign of a road or path, though there may have been one when the bricks were part of a building.

  After fifty feet or so she came to a face of rock layered like a fancy dessert, purple-red and pale beige stone separated by thin bands of dark brown. Water bubbled from it. The flow seeped between the layers, she supposed, because there was no visible opening.

  Hedia paused, then turned left to follow the course of the rivulet instead of continuing in the direction she had been going. She would have liked a guide—

  Venus! I’d simply like someone to talk with!

  —but that wasn’t available. Hedia would walk as long as she could, and now at least she had water when she became thirsty. She looked at the stream, wondering what the best way of drinking would be. Probably from her cupped palms, but she supposed there was no reason not to bend over and suck water in directly. It would be undignified, but there was no one here to laugh at her for sticking her buttocks in the air.

  The surface of the small creek eddied. One of the eddies looked like an ear, while the other could almost be a pair of lips.…

  “Well, you could talk to me, Hedia,” the lips said.

  Hedia missed a step. The eddies hung in place while she hesitated, then moved downstream beside her as she walked on.

  “Where are you going, anyway?” the lips said. “There’s nothing you want in this direction.”

  Rather than answering, Hedia snapped, “How do you know my name?”

  The stream laughed. “Oh, I know much more than that, Hedia,” the lips said. “I know that there’s a fellow named Boest on the other side of the ridge beyond me—to your right, as you’re walking now.”

  Hedia looked in the direction indicated. The slope didn’t look impossibly steep. The terrain was similar to that outside Polymartium where she had danced to Mother Matuta; Hedia wondered if she was in the same place—but in the Otherworld.

  “Why should I care about this Boest, Stream?” she said, continuing to walk.

  “Why indeed?” chuckled the stream. It was less than two feet wide and shallow; she could step across it easily. “Perhaps because Boest knows where the Spring of True Answers is. Aren’t you looking for true answers, Hedia?”

  Hedia raised her left arm to sweep aside the fronds of a weeping willow that hung across the path. Before she touched them, the branches supporting the tendrils swept upward and cleared her path.

  “Do you know where this spring is, then?” Hedia said, looking down into the clear stream.

  “You should ask Boest,” the lips said, wobbling as they spoke. “He’s a water spirit. He’ll know.”

  “All right,” Hedia said, stepping over the water as easily as she had expected. “I will. Good day to you, Stream.”

  Because of the outdoor ceremony, she had worn sturdier sandals than she might otherwise have done. The circle around the altar had been raked clean of pebbles—almost clean—so the soles of her feet hadn’t been badly bruised even during the barefoot dance. Hedia had no immediate problems.

  As for Boest …

  Hedia smiled. Spirit or not, he seemed to be male. She’d generally gotten along well enough with males.

  * * *

  VARUS STAGGERED AS HE ALWAYS DID when he returned to the Waking World after visiting with the Sibyl. Unfortunately—

  He looked around to be sure, but there could be no question.

  —he wasn’t in the Waking World this time. He stood on a pond covered with water lilies. The three women watching him flicked their fish tails as they dived.

  Varus waggled his toes; the water didn’t ripple. He was standing in the air over a pond. The shore was a hundred feet away at the nearest and much farther in all other directions. He must have followed the Indian delegation into the Otherworld as he remembered telling the Sibyl he would, but the Indians were nowhere to be seen.

  A few clumps of large shrubs grew on land near the shore, but their crooked trunks shouldn’t have been able to conceal the bright clothing of the Indian officials. Other than the shrubs, the land seemed to be arid scrub with more bare dirt than vegetation.

  A chicken-sized bird sat on a shallow nest of reeds. She was almost close enough for Varus to have stretched out his leg and tickled her with his sandal.

  Even when he glanced that way, he might not have noticed the bird if she hadn’t said peevishly, “Look, you don’t belong here. Just get on back to land and leave us alone.”

  “Good morning”—is it morning?—“Bird,” Varus said. “I’m looking for a party of seven men, some of them wearing bright clothing. They may have passed by here—”

  Or simply appeared out of the air, as he probably had.

  “—about ten minutes ago.”

  The bird’s back
and breast were brown, but there was a bright golden patch on the back of her neck. Varus couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t seen the creature immediately.

  “I don’t know anything!” she shrilled. “Get out of here, why don’t you?”

  Varus pursed his lips. He didn’t lash out the way his sister did—or anyway, as she used to do—nor could he make anybody believe the sort of cold threats that Hedia used when she thought they were necessary, but he had learned ways of coping with unreasonable and unpleasant people.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Bird,” he said. “Perhaps I should ask your eggs what they may have seen.”

  There were three eggs in the nest, their shells the same glossy brown as the bird’s feathers. They were so large that Varus could see them even with the bird brooding. When he spoke, it—she?—leaped to her feet. Her claws were very long. She shrilled, “What are you talking about! Can’t you just leave us alone?”

  Then, in the calmer tone that Varus had hoped to hear in the first place, the bird said, “There may have been some people that way—”

  She extended a brown-and-white wing toward the near shore.

  “—but it was way off on the horizon, and I didn’t pay much attention. They weren’t bothering me, so why would I bother them?”

  “Thank you, Mistress Bird,” Varus said. He bowed slightly and started toward the shore.

  “Say…?” the bird called after him. “Human?”

  He looked back over his shoulder. She was still standing above her eggs.

  “Yes, Mistress Bird?” he said.

  “How is it you’re able to walk on water?” she said. “You’re not running across the lily pads like I do.”

  Varus weighed the response in his mind. With a smile of self-mockery he said, “It may be because I’m a great magician, Mistress Bird.”

  The bird bobbed her head quickly. “Thought so,” she said. “Thought so. Well, you go find your friends or whatever they are. I don’t guess there’ll be any reason for you to come back this way, right?”

  “I do not think so,” Varus said. I have absolutely no idea what I’ll be doing in the future. For the moment, I’m walking in the direction you pointed. “Farewell, Mistress Bird.”

  When Varus walked beyond the surface of the pond, his feet squelched in the marshy ground. It was firm a few steps farther on, but his sandals and toes were muddy.

  Perhaps the Sibylline Books contain a spell to clean the feet of magicians, Varus thought. He couldn’t accept intellectually the idea that he had magical powers. He didn’t really believe that anyone had magical powers, yet here he was in a realm of magic.

  A lizard raised its head from the slanting trunk of one of the shrubs. “If magic isn’t real,” the lizard said, “then you must have gone mad. Have you?”

  The lizard was nearly as long as Varus was tall, but he hadn’t noticed the creature before it moved. I’m not very observant of the world around me. Its forked black tongue flicked the air when it spoke.

  “I don’t think I would accept myself as a reliable witness to that question,” Varus said politely. He walked on.

  The Sibyl claimed she was part of his own imagination. If that was true, then his imagination could have invented the bird and lizard also. And perhaps I am mad, but then are my friends who see the same things mad also? Or are they as imaginary as the bird and lizard?

  Varus looked back the way he had come. The pond, which from this higher ground seemed to be a swelling in a shallow river, was at the edge of his vision. That meant the people the bird saw must have appeared near where he stood now.

  He couldn’t see the bird. I didn’t see her when she was in arm’s length, he thought wryly.

  Slightly to the right in the direction Varus had been walking was what he had thought was a gray stump. Now that he was closer, he saw that it was a waist-high stone cone on a square base. The sides of the base were carved in high relief with figures whose supple limbs intertwined. The curves put Varus in mind of Scythian broaches, but Scythian work was stylized while these in stone were intended for real humans and animals.

  “It’s a spiritual focus,” said a rasping voice behind him. “A group of humans from the Waking World used it to enter here not long ago.”

  Varus turned, pleased with himself not to have jumped. A lion peered from a clump of dry grass that Varus had walked past a moment before. The lion’s mane was short and almost as pale as the cat’s tawny hide, but he seemed a very healthy animal.

  “Three of those humans had swords,” the lion said musingly. He stretched out his right foreleg and spread the claws. Varus had never looked so closely at a lion’s paw. It was much wider than he would have imagined. “And at least one was a magician as well, or they wouldn’t have been able to appear the way they did.”

  “That’s the party I’m looking for,” Varus said. His voice did not waver. “Can you tell me in which direction they went, Master Lion?”

  “Well,” said the lion, rolling up onto all fours, “I’m not sure that the question really matters to you. You don’t have a sword, do you?”

  When the lion spoke, his breath stank of rotting flesh. His great teeth were mostly yellow but black at the gum line.

  “I am a citizen of Carce!” Varus said. His voice was firm. Perhaps even a philosopher could be granted a final grain of pride in the last moment before he was devoured.

  The lion gave a thunderous laugh. “No doubt, no doubt,” he said, “but again it seems a distinction without a difference to either of us.”

  He hunched, his hind legs drawn up as tight as the arms of a cocked catapult.

  In the back of Varus’ mind, an ancient woman cackled, You will be utterly devoured by fire!

  The words didn’t reach Varus’ lips, but the lion snarled and sprang sideways, hitting on his shoulder in his haste to escape. He rolled to his feet and disappeared into the brush in a flat fifty-foot leap. His voice quavered back, “How was I to know!”

  Varus blinked. Dust was settling where the lion’s feet had kicked it from the ground. Other than that—and a remaining hint of rotting meat—the beast might never have existed.

  I suppose that was a line from the Sibylline Books, Varus thought. Which he would not be permitted to see unless and until he became a senator and was appointed to the Commission for Sacred Rites. I wonder whether my being told the contents by the prophetess herself is a violation of religious law?

  That was the sort of whimsy Varus used to discuss with Pandareus and Corylus. Good training for the mind, he supposed, like the formal subjects set for declamations.

  He felt a stab of nostalgia for that time a few months past when he dreaded having to make presentations before the class. I was more afraid of my classmates in the Forum than I was to face demons not so very much later.

  Varus continued walking in the direction he had followed from the pond. A pity that the lion didn’t take my question seriously, but on balance I can’t complain about the way matters had worked out. It might have been a great deal worse.

  He reached better-watered country with frequent palm trees and stands of supple-limbed bushes. Ivy covered the soil between the larger vegetation.

  The palms swayed as Varus approached. Breezes? he thought, though the air at ground level was still. When he came close to a palm, he saw that it was crawling away on tiny roots. They wriggled like handfuls of worms at the base of its trunk.

  It’s afraid of me! he realized, suddenly furious at the injustice. He wouldn’t hurt trees; he couldn’t hurt them!

  I will burn up mountains and rivers! chirped a tiny voice in Varus’ mind. I will dry up springs with my fire!

  He thought that the Sibyl’s voice sounded coldly amused, but he might have been reading too much into what was barely a whisper. I’ve been ignored for most of my life, even by servants, Varus thought. Now I’m a monster.

  And he thought, I’d rather be ignored.

  The brush ahead swished as Bhiku pushed through it.

&nb
sp; The old man smiled to see Varus, then bowed deeply with his palms pressed together in front of him. “Lord Varus!” he said. “I hadn’t realized you wished to come with us. I’m delighted to see you again, delighted!”

  “I…,” Varus said. “To be honest, I didn’t make up my mind until you and your party had already gone through the portal. Ah—will I be welcome with your companions?”

  Bhiku laughed cheerfully. “I left them in a safe place, an outcrop surrounded by a flowing stream,” he said. “They’re terrified of being without me in the Otherworld, even Lord Arpat. They’ll fall all over themselves when I tell them that you are a magician of such power that we have nothing further to fear in this place.”

  “I would be pleased to accompany you,” Varus said. He thought of adding that he didn’t claim to be a magician, but he had already told Bhiku that back in Polymartium. It irritated him to be told the same thing repeatedly by someone, since it implied that he was too stupid to have understood it the first time.

  Besides, given the way the lion—let alone the palm tree!—had reacted, it seemed that Varus was a magician in this place. Suggesting a lie was the same thing as lying, which he would do only if it was necessary.

  As the old man led them through the shrubbery, Varus said, “How did you find me, Master Bhiku? I was at a loss as to where you had gone.”

  Bhiku chuckled, sounding disturbingly like the Sibyl. “I suppose that to a magician of your power, other students of the art are invisible in your own glare,” he said. “For me to notice you, however, is like seeing that the sun has risen. Even with my eyes closed, your presence is unmistakable.”

  “I see,” said Varus. He didn’t, of course, but it was the polite thing to say.

  Bhiku pushed through the last fronds of brush and onto a slope of ivy leading to a stream. Varus thought he saw human faces looking up from the vines, but the figures could only have been a finger’s length tall if they really were people.