Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  Lust overwhelmed Corylus. He stood, shoving the centurion so fiercely that the fellow fell backward. Corylus wasn’t conscious of what his arm had done.

  The Maenad pressed against him, raising her mouth to his. For an instant Corylus saw and felt not the woman groping him now but rather Alphena: her face and naked body, and the eyes hot with lust.

  “No!” he cried, breaking free. He turned to leap the gulley—he could do that in his current state—to find Alphena and give her the violent rogering that he now wanted as much as she had.

  “No!” Corylus shouted again, to himself this time. If he’d still had the dagger in his hand, he might have plunged it into his own chest in horror.

  Corylus ran along the edge of the creek, toward where the throng had entered the Waking World. Just now he didn’t trust himself to rejoin his companions on the other side of the water.

  Scores of Bacchic revelers capered and called as they filtered through the broken woods. The light was bad and nobody seemed to pay particular attention to Corylus anyway—he was one more running figure in a landscape filled with assorted figures running. A handsome youth in a fawn skin tried to kiss him as they passed in opposite directions, but that was the sort of thing that might happen any afternoon at a public bath.

  The effect that the Maenad’s passion had on Corylus was wearing off, though there was a dull ache in his groin. His head was buzzing also, but that had been true since the charioteer’s torchlight had fallen on him. He was thinking clearly, but his mind lay beneath a surface of seething emotion.

  Corylus dodged behind a vine-covered maple to avoid a centaur who was galloping toward him. As the centaur swept past, hooves hammering the ground, Corylus realized that the creature hadn’t been attacking. A woman—worn and not young; probably a farmer’s wife—rode the centaur with her arms around his human torso. The centaur had twisted around so that they could kiss passionately as they charged off in whatever direction they happened to be going at the time he turned.

  “Hello, Cousin,” said the woman at Corylus’ side. A Maenad and I didn’t know she was there! he thought as he turned, not frightened but angry with himself for not having seen her before she spoke.

  She was the maple sprite, not a Maenad. She looked like a slender woman and was very beautiful. Her shift of green/scarlet/gray was translucent from an angle, transparent when the light of the rising moon fell on the fabric squarely.

  “Hello, Acer,” Corylus gasped, leaning forward. He braced his hands on his bent knees. He glanced back to make sure no one was chasing him—there were scores of people in sight, but none of them seemed interested in Publius Corylus—and began to gasp through his open mouth. He was weak and trembling, though he knew from experience on the Danube that his strength would rush back the instant he needed it again.

  The sprite ran her fingers lightly through his hair and gave a throaty laugh. She said, “I’m glad you came tonight, Cousin. I’m in the mood for company. When Ampelos visited a few days ago I met a satyr who was a lot of fun, but I think you might be even more fun.”

  Corylus straightened, though he continued to breathe through his mouth. “I can’t do that now, Acer,” he said. He had his gasping under control, or almost under control.

  The sprite laughed again and reached under his tunic to caress his erect member. “Of course we can do that!” she said.

  Corylus moved her hand away. “I mean I have to get back to my friends, dear one,” he said. “Who’s Ampelos?”

  Though Corylus’ body was certainly ready—he was a healthy young man; of course his body was ready—lust no longer lay so heavily on his mind that its weight warped all his thoughts. He seemed to be getting back to normal, or he hoped he was.

  “Ampelos is leading the troupe,” Acer said. She tried to wriggle her hand past Corylu’s again, though she wasn’t fighting his strength. “He’s usually with Bacchus, but he’s come himself this time and before.”

  Light flared as the chariot bounced toward them through the brush, accompanied by scores of leaping figures. “That one!” cried the charioteer, and pointed with the torch.

  He’s named Ampelos, not Bacchus, Corylus thought, but that didn’t matter at the moment.

  He wasn’t concerned. He had his breath back. The chariot couldn’t jump the gulley, and Corylus was sure he could outdistance any of the throng except possibly the lightly built fauns. The cornelwood staff was an answer to them, needs must.

  “Got to leave!” Corylus said, turning as he spoke. He intended to take two strides and then leap the gulley. He jerked to a halt an inch into the air over where he’d started.

  The grapevines that hung from the maple tree were wrapped around his torso and left ankle. He hadn’t felt their touch until they brought him up short. He reached for his dagger with his left hand, but another vine was about his wrist. His right hand was bound to the staff.

  “Acer!” Corylus cried, but there was nothing the tree sprite could do. The throng encircled him. The chariot drew up. Ampelos leaned over the side, holding out the torch.

  Acer put her arms about Corylus, ignoring the vines wrapping his limbs and torso. “I think I’ll send you to my sister, since you’re such a sweet boy,” she said, and kissed him on the lips.

  Light flashed like the sun from a silver mirror. Corylus gasped.

  He was in the arms of a different sprite. The maple tree was free of grapevines, and the sky above the woods was a richer, sharper blue than ever in the Waking World.

  Corylus was in the Otherworld. There was no sign of Ampelos and his minions.

  * * *

  HEDIA AND BOEST HAD WALKED DOWN from the top of the ridge in silence until they were within fifty feet of the house and the tree from which Gilise hung suspended with his back to them. There Boest paused, digging his toes into the green turf. He stretched his arms out and back, keeping his right hand cupped so that Paddock didn’t have to move.

  Hedia stopped a pace farther and looked back. “Would you like me to release him?” she said.

  “You’ve come back?” Gilise called. “You took long enough! Come, let me down!”

  He flailed his arms, apparently trying to rotate so that he could look at her. Mostly he jounced up and down, making the branch quiver.

  “No, I’ll take care of that,” Boest said quietly. He set Paddock down on the damp grass and walked with a long, easy stride to the hanging man. The toad hopped after Boest, moving in flat hops that covered ground more quickly than Hedia would have guessed.

  “Listen, you bitch!” Gilise shouted. “You gave your oath! Demons will gnaw your bones in the Underworld if you don’t free me!”

  Hanging hasn’t improved his temper, Hedia thought, smiling faintly. Or his senses, since he obviously hadn’t heard Boest’s reply.

  Boest took the sash between the thumb and forefinger of his big right hand. He rotated his grip slightly so that Gilise turned to face him.

  “Boest!” Gilise said.

  “Hello, Gilise,” Boest said. “I’ve come to take my valley back. Is the handcart still in the shed?”

  “Boest, you can’t kill me!” Gilise said. His voice was as shrill as the north wind through the tops of frozen fir trees. “The woman swore she’d let me go! I gave you your soul back!”

  Hedia joined them. Paddock sat nearby on the grass, looking more alert than she had imagined a toad could look.

  “I’m not going to kill you, Gilise,” Boest said. “You and I are going to give back all the souls you’ve stolen, not just mine. Lady Hedia says the bottles are in the lean-to, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s where they are!” Gilise said. “We’ll take them back, just as you say. But let me go now, darling; this is agony, what she’s done to me!”

  “I’m going to the shed,” Boest said to Hedia. “I’ll be back in a moment. But leave him as he is, please.”

  Hedia nodded. She watched Boest stride toward the outbuilding. She felt uncomfortable with the situation, though she didn
’t think Boest was the sort of man to lie.

  “Lady, you have to let me go now before he comes back!” Gilise said. “He’ll kill me, you know he will, and you promised you’d let me go!”

  He made a desperate attempt to grab her garment, but shooting his arms out made him rock back on the silken cord. She took a half step backward.

  “He’ll kill me!”

  “You deserve to die,” Hedia said.

  “Boest will not kill you, Gilise,” said Paddock. “He gave his word, and his word is good.”

  Boest returned from the shed, pushing a handcart. It squeaked abominably: the wooden axle was rubbing the hubs of the two wheels without lubrication.

  He stopped a little distance from Gilise, smiled at Hedia, and took a hammer from the bed of the cart. It looked tiny in Boest’s hand, but Hedia knew the iron head must weigh more than a pound.

  Hedia stepped in front of Boest. “Master Boest,” she said. “I gave my word. I will not—”

  She caught herself. She couldn’t stop Boest from doing anything he pleased. Her little knife was still knotted into the end of the sash, and she didn’t think it would be much use anyway against the big man with a hammer.

  “Master Boest,” Hedia said. “Please, if you feel any obligation to me, do not besmirch my honor in this matter.”

  “I owe you my soul, Lady Hedia,” Boest said with a sad smile. “Gilise and I will carry the souls he stole back to their owners. I need him to guide me, if you doubt my honor.”

  “I don’t doubt your honor,” Hedia said, stepping out of his way. I never should have doubted him, but I did.

  “But Lady Hedia?” Boest said without moving from where he stood. “He must stay with me until we have finished.”

  “I will, Boest,” Gilise trilled. “I’ll make up for my mistakes. I swear I will!”

  Hedia smiled at Boest. “I promised him his life and his freedom,” she said. “No more than that.”

  “Then be ready to loose the cord,” Boest said. “I will catch him so that he doesn’t fall to the ground.”

  Hedia walked to the springhead and pulled slightly on the sash to give herself slack. She lifted the loop off the stone stele; she could unknot it at leisure.

  Boest held Gilise’s free ankle with his left hand, then flipped the hammer in the air and caught it by the head. Gilise was babbling something. Boest broke his shin with a quick tap of the hammer handle, an eighteen-inch hardwood baton.

  Gilise screamed. Boest gripped his other ankle and broke that shin also. He cradled Gilise’s body to the ground as Hedia released the sash. Gilise had fainted.

  “I don’t know how long it will take to find all the victims,” Boest said. “I may have to break his legs several more times as they heal. I hope by the time we have finished Gilise will understand the pain he has brought to others and he’ll change his ways after I let him go.”

  “You used to love him,” Hedia said. The smell of Gilise’s fear hung over them, like that of a rotting corpse.

  “I still love him,” Boest said quietly. He looked at the toad and said, “I’m sorry, little one, but I do.”

  Paddock made a grunting sound. “I’ve never asked you to lie to me, dear heart,” he said. “I never will ask that.”

  “Lady Hedia, I’ll take you to the Spring of True Answers now,” Boest said. “It isn’t far away.”

  He looked down at the toad. “And you, little one?” he said.

  “I’ll wait here with Gilise,” Paddock said. “Just watching. You don’t need to hurry back on my account.”

  I promised Gilise his life, Hedia thought. Then she thought, A quick death would have been too good for him.

  CHAPTER VII

  Alphena and Pandareus had the back garden of Saxa’s town house to themselves. It wasn’t a place in which she had spent much time in the past.

  Behind the high wall was an alley, and in the wall was the gate through which deliveries generally arrived. The plantings had been almost an afterthought, though there was a loggia against either corner of the inner wall to suit the family’s possible whim.

  Originally there had been two fruit trees: a pear and a peach. Now the pear was gone, shattered by a killing frost in midsummer while Saxa was under the control of the wizard Nemastes and they worked magic here. Publius Corylus had recently sent a pomegranate to replace the pear, but no other work had been done in the garden since the spell had been conjured here.

  In practice the loggias had been used to store gardening tools until magic had tainted the garden with a feeling that the servants found as unsettling as the fumes of burning sulphur. The doorman at the back gate stood in the alley instead of in the garden, looking out through a grate, and gardeners had moved their tools somewhere else. That way they didn’t have to enter the garden except to water the trees. They probably wouldn’t have done even that except that Alphena checked and kept them to the task.

  I might not have bothered about the peach, she thought. But we couldn’t let the gift of Publius Corylus wither and die.

  Pandareus sat beside her in the northern loggia, looking at the painted frieze beneath the roof. Alphena had brought him here because it was private in a fashion that no place else in a house with over two hundred resident servants could be, but as a foreigner of no status he was properly holding his silence until his noble hostess began the conversation.

  Alphena took the Ear of the Satyr out from under her tunic. The iron case felt warm between her palms. Instead of talking about the things that mattered, she said, “Is there something important about those paintings, Master Pandareus?”

  The things that mattered were first: that they weren’t any closer to finding Hedia and Varus than before they went to Polymartium and they’d lost Corylus besides. And second: that Alphena had tried to rape Corylus after the charioteer’s light had shone on her.

  The second thing was what filled Alphena’s mind as fully as passion had the previous evening at Polymartium. She had humiliated herself—and Corylus had then rejected her, which increased her misery.

  It was possible that Pandareus hadn’t seen what was going on. It was even possible that Pulto had misunderstood; certainly he hadn’t said anything to suggest that he had understood what Lady Alphena was trying to do.

  Of course Pulto hasn’t said anything to me. He’ll talk to Lenatus and who knows what other army buddies, though! And they’ll talk to their girlfriends and everybody in Carce will know that Saxa’s daughter is a hot-crotch little tramp!

  Everybody including Hedia, when she returned. The embarrassment of having failed her stepmother was the worst thing of all.

  “Important, Your Ladyship—no,” Pandareus said. “But they’re quite interesting. You see here”—he stood and indicated the frieze over the ends of the loggia by pointing in both directions—“you have cupids imitating a battle of Greeks and Amazons. On the front and back”—he rotated ninety degrees—“you have the battle of the centaurs and Lapiths, again being fought by cupids.”

  “I’ve seen cupids on friezes before,” Alphena said, glad to turn her mind from her own thoughts. “Doing farm labor, working in shops—all the things people do.”

  “Indeed,” Pandareus said. “But these cupids are copying the frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, which is the most perfect work by Ictinus.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Alphena said. “I’ve never heard of Ictinus, either.”

  She was mildly irritated. Pandareus should know her well enough to realize that she didn’t care about anything in Greece, which Carce had conquered centuries ago. Now it was a source of teachers, like Pandareus himself, and old statues, which impressed Saxa. If Greece had bred gladiators, she might know something about it.

  “Ictinus designed the Parthenon,” Pandareus said. “Thirty years later, he designed the temple at Bassae, which refined his earlier design—but in the middle of nowhere. Even for those of us who find more importance in Greece than most citizens of Carce can understand.”


  He smiled gently.

  He does know me, Alphena realized. Aloud she said, “I’ve heard of the Parthenon. Even I have.”

  “Everything is connected, Your Ladyship,” Pandareus said. “If we could understand the connections, we could understand everything. I try to explain that to my students, but I’m afraid most of them would settle for knowing which Stable will win the next day’s chariot race. Your brother and Master Corylus being exceptions, of course.”

  “I’d settle for getting them back,” Alphena said. “And Mother.”

  The silly digression had calmed Alphena more than she would have believed. She could think again instead of just wallowing in pointless misery like a landed fish flopping on the sand.

  She looked at Pandareus sharply as her mind went into a different pathway. She said, “Did you…?”

  Pandareus grinned and sat beside her again. “A teacher of rhetoric learns quickly that some young men, no matter how sturdy and athletic they may be…,” he said, “are terrified of speaking in public. A good teacher also learns to calm them when that happens, because his fees depend on their parents as well as those of his more stolid students.”

  Alphena hefted the amulet. “Should we approach Lucius Sentius and offer to trade this to him if he returns our, our friends?” she said. “It’s interesting to be able to talk to statues, I suppose, but it’s useless for getting Corylus, everybody, back.”

  “Well, how do you expect us to help you?” piped a voice from the left. One of the Amazons was glaring at Alphena over her odd crescent-shaped shield. “None of us were at Polymartium, were we? And this Sentius didn’t make his plans in this loggia, I can tell you that!”

  “I take the lady’s point,” Pandareus said with an approving nod to the frieze. “And I very much doubt that Lucius Sentius holds Corylus. He could hold your mother and brother, though I doubt that. I watched what happened to Corylus while Pulto was helping you to safety, Your Ladyship. He vanished with a female whom I took to be a tree nymph, based on my past experience with Master Corylus.”