Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  “Both your friends face danger,” Rupa said, “but there is little you could do to help Gaius Varus. Lady Hedia, however, is menaced by armed men.”

  “Is she?” said Corylus. He heard the tone of his voice change into something like a lion’s cough. He placed both hands on his staff and worked his shoulder muscles.

  “Mistress Rupa,” Alphena said. “Please send us my mother.”

  Corylus looked out past the playful dragons and noticed Aura. “Wait!” he said. “I need to…”

  He strode back to the sprite. He didn’t run, just in case the dragons’ kittenish behavior included snatching at anything moving quickly in front of them.

  “Aura?” he said. “Can we help you? For bringing me here, as you promised.”

  “There is nothing remaining for me in this existence,” Aura said. “Thank you, though. May the two of you be as happy in your love as Zetes and I were in ours.”

  “We’re not…,” Corylus said. He broke off in confusion over what the next word should be.

  “You are happier than either of you would be without the other,” Aura said. “For your kindness to me I hope you never have to learn the truth of what I say.”

  “I…,” said Corylus.

  Aura smiled. “Go,” she said as she turned. Faintly as she walked away, Corylus heard her add, “My heart and hopes go with you.”

  Corylus returned to the cave. The others were watching him, but the sprite’s final sad smile filled his mind.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Hedia’s leap through the portal carried her onto the round shrine that faced Dreaming Hill. Two soldiers sat between a pair of pillars, their feet resting on the stepped base. They were looking out; their bamboo spears leaned against the upper edge of the domed roof.

  More soldiers—about a dozen of them—and a pair of Tyla squatted around two small cooking fires, heating pastries on grills of green bamboo. The humans at one fire wore silk and had swords, though they had taken off their equipment belts and hung them on a rack made by lashing two pairs of lances into X patterns and laying a fifth lance across those supports. Their round bucklers of brass-bound wood lay under the rack.

  The men at the other fire were peasants, like the two sitting in the shrine. They carried no edged weapons. A leather corselet lay behind one man; he and two others wore leather caps. The Tyla sat with them.

  Hedia hesitated. Her only “plan” had been to get away from Govinda. She hadn’t even been conscious that the panel through which she had jumped led to Dreaming Hill.

  At least I’m on familiar ground. Though I didn’t much like it the first time.

  Before Hedia could make a choice—there were no good options—a peasant at the fire turned to call something to a colleague seated on the shrine. The peasant saw Hedia and instead shouted a warning.

  Hedia leaped from the shrine and ran toward Dreaming Hill, just as she had done the first time she had found herself here. It had been a bad choice then and she knew now just how bad it was, but there was nothing better on offer.

  She ran past the nobles as they lurched up from the fire. One stretched his arm out to grab her but overbalanced. She jumped over his sprawling body instead of dodging around.

  Hedia ran through a screen of ferns but was stopped almost instantly by bamboo. The individual canes were deceptively slender, but a stand of them was as impenetrable as brick. She turned left and struggled past the bamboo, hoping that the ferns concealed her from Govinda’s soldiers. She didn’t have a choice.

  She ducked under a stand of leaves the size of small blankets, shiny green on top but on the bottom matted with fine hairs colored a paler yellow-green. The spray of stems supporting them grew from a common center in a block that was hollow in the middle. Each side of the block was carved with a grinning face; human faces, Hedia thought, or almost human.

  A woody vine—wrist thick and looking like a branch—crossed the space between a pile of earth-covered blocks and the trunk of a tree thicker than Hedia was tall. A bird flared his wings and landed. His yellow claws kicked bits of moss-covered bark to the ground below.

  Looking down, the bird said, “Where are you going, Lady Hedia?”

  “When did that become your business?” Hedia said. She had been running almost from the moment the Eternals’ tomb had opened. She had no direction and no hope; only fears drove her from one danger to the next.

  Suddenly exhausted, she sat on a mossy projection. Its square outlines suggested quarried stone underneath. No matter: the moss and loam were as soft as a cushion.

  She smiled wryly. As tired as I am, I wouldn’t notice bare rock. What would my maids think?

  “Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you it was out of the goodness of my heart,” the bird said. “Still, I thought you might appreciate a guide who has lived in the city from before the Eternals removed themselves. There are dangerous creatures in this ruin.”

  “I know that,” Hedia said. “I met one the first time I was here. I’m going to go around him.”

  “Ah, the Guardian and its chest of jewels,” the bird said, nodding. His short, stiff tail twitched to counterbalance his head. “No, you don’t need jewels, do you, Hedia? And the Guardian can’t move away from its tower; that’s its anchor to our world.”

  The bird cocked his head, bringing his bright red eye into sharp relief against the line of black running across the generally white feathers of his head and breast. “There are more dangers here than just the Guardian. There are creatures who are of this world and can move in it as easily as I can. There is a snake, for example, whose gape will swallow you whole if your course takes you to him.”

  Mention of the snake brought back a memory to Hedia. “You’re one of the hawks I saw in the Otherworld, when the cyclops chased me!” she said.

  “Am I?” the bird said carelessly. “I’m a kite, though I suppose ‘hawk’ is close enough. There are many of us kites, on the plains outside Dreaming Hill and elsewhere.”

  There aren’t many who talk! Hedia thought, but she kept the words in her mind. Aloud she said, “I want to go through this ruin and out the other side. Can you guide me to do that?”

  “Easily,” the bird said. He laughed like a cricket chirping. “Easily for me but not so easily for you on the ground, I think. But if you’re willing to try, I’ll guide you. And I’ll keep you away from the serpent.”

  Hedia stood but had to brace herself on a sapling because she felt faint. I got up too fast, she thought. And—when did I last eat?

  “I’ll follow,” she said. She thought of asking what was on the other side of the ruins. She didn’t; the tangled jungle was enough to worry about for the moment.

  The trek was hard at the beginning and there were repeated stretches that were worse. What must once have been a courtyard was now an obstacle course in which a thicket of palms stood on stilt roots that lifted the paving blocks askew. There were other places that were almost as difficult.

  Hedia occasionally cursed under her breath, but she never complained loudly enough to be heard at any distance. No one was forcing her to do this. She smiled: I can sit down at any time and wait until I starve to death. Unless the snake finds me first, I suppose.

  The bird flew short distances and perched where she could see him plainly. His white breast feathers were as good as a waving torch in this waste of green gloom.

  For the most part he kept her path on the level by leading her around the larger masses of masonry, but once she had to clamber over a wall still laced together by the roots that had lifted apart the individual blocks. The huge trees to either side were impassable, and beyond them was bamboo.

  “You’re almost to where you’re going, Lady Hedia!” the bird called cheerfully. “Climb over this fallen tree.”

  Hedia looked at it. The trunk was almost as high as she was; it disappeared into the forest at both ends. Bark had started to slough away, showing the yellowish wood beneath; mosses and ferns were thick on the top, and red and yellow s
helf fungi grew out from the sides.

  She closed her eyes and leaned against the obstacle. I’m so tired …

  But that didn’t matter. Hedia opened her eyes and looked again at the tree with the benefit of a moment’s rest. She tested a shelf fungus with her hand, then put her foot on one of the lowest fungi and slowly increased the pressure until it supported her whole weight.

  Grinning coldly, Hedia walked up the ladder of fungus steps to the top of the trunk. There were no fungi on the farther side, but the ground below was a carpet of ferns. A piece broken off a corner lay on the loam, but she could avoid it easily.

  Hedia swung her legs over to that side, then slid down with her knees flexed. Only then did she look around her.

  She was standing in front of the tower into which the snake-legged monster, the Guardian, had pursued her. The chest of jewels with its lid ajar sat in the entrance.

  Where did the bird go?

  She heard the swish! swish! that heralded the monster’s approach.

  “I didn’t expect you back, Hedia!” the Guardian said. “Since you’ve come, though, I’ll savor you all the more.”

  She could see the creature in the maze of shifting planes between her and the entrance to the tower. At each change it was closer.

  Hedia turned, desperately hoping that there was some way to get over the tree trunk from this side. There wasn’t, but the bird sat watching, just out of reach.

  “Have you no honor!” Hedia said.

  The bird laughed. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m a carrion eater. But I did keep you away from the great python. He would have swallowed you whole, just like the King of Serpents whom you met in the Otherworld. Whereas my friend the Guardian—”

  The bird hopped an arm’s length farther back on his long yellow legs. Hedia had been inching closer, but he had noticed and understood.

  “—leaves scraps.”

  “And don’t think your daughter’s magic will save you, Hedia,” the Guardian said. “I am not of this world, and this world’s magic cannot affect me.”

  Hedia turned, loosing her sash. The creature stood on its human legs in front of the entrance to the tower, the only place in this ruin that offered sanctuary, if not escape.

  She bent and picked up the corner of rock, then knotted it into her silk sash. “My daughter isn’t a magician,” she said, “and she’s not here anyway. But I am here.”

  Hedia, wife of Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa, stepped toward the Guardian. It was twelve feet tall, thick bodied, and armed with pincers that were each the size of her torso.

  She swung back her makeshift mace. She would only get one blow, but she intended that the creature should ache while it devoured her body.

  * * *

  CORYLUS STEPPED ASIDE TO GIVE Alphena a chance to look through the lens of air also. It had shown him the backs of a squad of Indian soldiers. At least four were noblemen with curved tulwars. There were also two Tyla magicians, who were certainly more dangerous than the spear-carrying peasants and perhaps more than the swordsmen as well.

  “I don’t see Mother,” Alphena said, frowning.

  “She was there,” said Rupa, watching impassively beside them. “She can’t be far.”

  “The soldiers don’t have her,” Corylus said. He drew the orichalc dagger, but he held its blade parallel to his staff so that he could use both hands on the wood. “They’re looking at the jungle, but they seem afraid of an attack rather than getting ready to go in themselves.”

  “Them looking the other way makes it easier,” Alphena said, drawing her short sword. “How do we”—she looked at Corylus—“get there so that we can find Mother?”

  “Through this,” Rupa said, gesturing with one hand at the disk of air. “I will send you when you’re ready.”

  Corylus saw the doubtful look on Alphena’s face. Grinning, he said, “I guarantee that it will hold us, just the way a mirror would show our whole images. Anyway, it held me.”

  “This time you will pass through,” Rupa said. “That will be different.”

  Her face and tone were so deadpan that only after a moment’s consideration did Corylus realize that she was joking. He smiled. In different circumstances, he and Varus would have a good time chatting with Rupa; and Master Pandareus would as well.

  “I’m ready,” Corylus said. “Alphena, I’ll go first and you come after.”

  She nodded and moved aside. Corylus stepped in front of the small disk, his staff poised crossways before him.

  As suddenly as Rupa had trapped him before, Corylus was standing in a round shrine. The Indians and their Tyla magicians were on the ground just below, as he had seen their images a moment before.

  He jumped down, swinging his staff one-handed at the skull of the nearer Tylon. He heard bone crack as he put the dagger in his left hand under the ribs of a swordsman. The fellow’s blue silk shirt was loose enough to have concealed armor, but the point met nothing more resistant than skin before it sliced through kidney.

  Corylus had struck so quickly that the victim’s gasp was lost in the chatter of the nervous guards while they watched the jungle in front of them. The man dropped the sword he held point down and stumbled forward when Corylus jerked the dagger out. He fell onto the feet of the man beside him.

  Corylus grabbed the tulwar as it fell, but he fumbled with its basket hilt. The second Indian had started to turn when the edge of Alphena’s sword cracked the big bone of his upper arm.

  The pain of Corylus’ kidney blow was so shocking that his victim had frozen, but Alphena’s man screamed and tried to run. He stumbled over his feet and fell; his shield bonged as it hit the hard ground.

  The remaining swordsmen were at least marginally alert when Corylus and Alphena hit them, but the Indians weren’t trained in the sort of close-up butchery that the legions of Carce made their specialty. Corylus’ man got his buckler up, so Corylus chopped through his left ankle with the sword and slanted the dagger upward into the back of his neck as he toppled.

  The dagger caught in the spongy bone at the base of the Indian’s skull. Corylus dropped it and spun to do whatever was required with the last swordsman.

  Nothing was required. The Indian’s hand still gripped the hilt of his tulwar as it bounced on the ground. The man ran screaming in the direction of armed peasants, trying to hold his severed wrist with his remaining hand. He wasn’t able to pinch off the artery while running; blood squirted ahead of him.

  Alphena pointed her sword in the direction of the peasants like a bloody extension of her arm. “Go!” she shouted. “Or die!”

  Where’s the second magician?

  The peasants fled in shouting panic, most of them dropping their spears on the way. Corylus hadn’t expected them to fight, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if one had thrown a spear at them before he turned. He had batted a spear aside on the Danube, and that one had been cast by a Sarmatian who wasn’t shiveringly afraid.

  Alphena slowly lowered her arm and sword, though she continued to watch the direction in which the peasants had gone. Corylus checked the swordsmen. The fellow Corylus had knifed in the kidneys remained alive, but he was as harmless as if he were encased in lava. Kidney wounds seemed to be as painful as blazing rock.

  The one with the knife stuck in his skull was dead, and the man with the broken arm was unconscious. That last man was the sort who got an extra spear thrust in the ribs as a Scout passed, just to be sure, but he wasn’t shamming. Corylus had heard the bone crack under Alphena’s sword edge: a numbing blow until the shock set in, and the shock was generally fatal.

  The second Tyla magician crawled on the ground, his arms stretched out toward Alphena. Did she kill him?

  But the creature was chittering and meeping: therefore alive, therefore dangerous. Corylus stepped over the body of his second swordsman to finish the job. Despite the tulwar’s curved blade, the point would be effective with a straight thrust.

  “Don’t!” Alphena said. “He’s telling me ab
out Mother.”

  The satyr’s ear had bounced out from under Alphena’s tunic in the fighting, but she now held it in her left hand. The Tylon had lost his feathered headdress. He writhed on his belly, but his eyes never left the rough iron amulet.

  “Go, then,” Alphena said, this time speaking to the Tylon. “Get as far away from here as you can. You’d do better to dance on a pony in a traveling menagerie than to go back to Govinda, but I don’t care so long as I never see you again.”

  She sounds just like Lady Hedia, Corylus thought.

  The Tylon turned—it was like watching a snake move—and scampered briefly on all fours before rising to his hind legs and disappearing into the grass in the direction in which the peasants had gone. They probably weren’t returning to King Govinda’s service, either.

  Alphena slipped the amulet back within her tunic. “He won’t harm us,” she said. “Where’s the—oh.”

  The Tylon Corylus had swatted with the staff lay where he had fallen. The back of the creature’s skull was dished in; they had much lighter frames than humans, even slender humans.

  “He’s not going to harm us, either,” Corylus said. “What did yours say about Lady Hedia?”

  Corylus gripped the dagger hilt with both hands and put his left foot on the head in which it was stuck, then withdrew the blade. He wiped the orichalc clean on the dead man’s shirt. Cotton waste would have been better, but the silk was sufficient.

  “She ran past them into the jungle,” Alphena said. “She didn’t have any weapons. He and the other magician were afraid to be so close to the ruins, but they had to obey Govinda’s orders.”

  Alphena had wiped and sheathed her sword; now she picked up a buckler. The pair of parallel handles on the inner curve were intended to be held in one hand. Fortunately, the Indian soldiers were relatively slight; Alphena’s hand could grip the shield adequately.

  “He said there are terrible monsters in Dreaming Hill,” she said, “and there is magic too great for even the Godspeaker.”