by David Drake
The reflected moon swelled and blurred and suddenly coalesced into the figure of a coldly beautiful woman glaring at her with a furious expression. The garden was still, but a wind whipped the woman’s garments.
The woman held in either hand the leashes attached to a pair of three-headed vultures. When the birds opened their long beaks, their tongues quivered. Alphena heard no sound except the surrounding thunder.
The woman and the vultures faded into pale light. The gryphon on the rim of the bowl shrieked and flapped its wings tentatively. It twisted its eagle head around to stare at Alphena.
Light filled the bowl; Alphena could no longer see blood or the glazed pottery, just the four animals hanging in the air. Three—the chimaera, basilisk, and mantichore—groomed themselves, but the gryphon seemed to be struggling to break free of unseen bonds.
Alphena thought she could make out Anna’s form on the other side of the window, but she wasn’t sure; the light was swelling. An image formed within it: a series of ring islands nested within one another like ripples in a pond spreading from a dropped stone.
The islands sharpened into focus. They were forested, but crystal buildings glittered on crags. The city of the vision in the theater spread along the shore of a deep bay.
Mother’s been taken to Atlantis. But how will I get there myself?
The gryphon called in high-pitched triumph. Either it was growing or Alphena was shrinking. Atlantis hung in the unimaginable distance, though she still saw it clearly.
Anna and the garden vanished, but Alphena and the gryphon stood on solid air. The creature’s body was much larger than that of the lion it resembled; it was more the size of an ox.
It lifted a birdlike foreleg and began cleaning the gaps between its toes, extending its great claws as it did so. It watched Alphena with eyes as bright as spearpoints. Her hand hovered close to her swordhilt, but she didn’t draw the weapon.
The gryphon lowered its paw. “Well?” it said, speaking in a haughty tenor voice. “Will you get on my back and ride, or shall I carry you to Poseidonis in my talons?”
It laughed, opening a hooked beak that could have snapped the head off a calf—or a man. Despite the shrill overtones, the creature’s voice reminded Alphena of Lenatus and Pulto discussing their army service.
“You’ll be more comfortable on my back, I think,” it said. “But it’s all one with me, mistress. I will serve you as you wish.”
“I…,” Alphena said. “I’ll ride you, then.”
She stepped close to the gryphon; it had a warm, animal odor, strong but not unpleasant. It hunched down, lowering its withers and folding its feathered wings tightly against its torso.
“You’ll need to sit just below my neck, I’m afraid,” the creature said. “If I’m to fly, that is, and there’s not much point in this excercise if I don’t.”
Alphena put both hands on the gryphon’s neck. The fur was as stiff as hog bristles, though the feathers into which it blended had a silky texture.
This isn’t going to be comfortable, she thought. She grinned wryly. But there may be worse to come.
She vaulted aboard. The scabbard slapped her left leg, but she got her seat easily enough.
Alphena straightened. The gryphon rose to its feet and stretched like a cat before looking back at her. “Hold tight, mistress,” it said. “If you fall, it will be a long way.”
It laughed again; not cruelly, but with a hard carelessness. “A very long way,” it added.
“All right,” Alphena said, digging her fingers into the fur. It was long enough to give her a grip, though not a very good one.
What am I going to do when we reach Poseidonis?
The gryphon sprang upward with the strength of all four legs. Its wings beat with a fierce suddenness, more like the release of a catapult than that of a bird flying.
The ground fell away into a gray blur. The islands of Atlantis hung in the sky, seemingly as far as they ever had been.
But first we have to reach the city.
* * *
BECAUSE THERE WERE SEVEN SLAVES to be freed at one time and Varus knew that other slaves would want to watch, he had suggested that his father hold the manumission ceremony in the courtyard instead of in his office. Saxa stood with his back to the central pool. His chief lictor was to his left holding one of the rods which, bound around the helve of his axe, were the symbol of his authority.
Varus and Tardus were off to the right side, witnesses rather than participants in the process. The recording secretary sat cross-legged in front of them.
The entire household, as well as Tardus’ considerable entourage and very probably servants from nearby buildings, crowded around. They filled the courtyard, pressed against the second story railing, and—younger males in particular—sat on the roof looking in with their bare legs dangling.
“I, ah…,” said Tardus. He glanced toward Varus, then looked down again quickly when the younger man tried to meet his eyes. “I must apologize for the way I behaved when I visited the other day. I wasn’t in control of my actions, of course, but even so I’m embarrassed at what I remember. The very little that I remember.”
Varus lifted his chin in solemn agreement. He hadn’t been sure how Tardus was going to react to the invasion of his house by a gang of slaves. The wrath of a senior senator would be no slight thing, even if the senator was regarded as a superstitious fool by most of his colleagues. It appeared that Tardus primarily wanted to distance himself from the business, which Varus—and Saxa—were more than willing to help him do.
“It must have been awful to be under the spell of foreign magicians that way,” he said sympathetically. “I’m glad Father was able to devise a way of freeing you—”
Would Pandareus approve of me lying in that fashion? Still, an orator should phrase an argument in the fashion which his audience was best able to appreciate. That’s all Varus was doing when he attributed the plan to another senator instead of to a youth from the frontier whose father was merely a knight.
“—from their domination.”
“All present attend the tribunal of Gaius Alphenus Saxa, Consul of the Republic!” boomed the chief lictor. He had trained his voice to silence the crowd when court was being held in the Forum, so the relative constraint of this courtyard was no challenge whatever. “Let the first petitioner state his business!”
The first—the only, of course—petitioner was Agrippinus. The majordomo stepped through the line of lictors arrayed in front of the consul and said, “I come to the magistrate to proclaim the formal manumission of seven slaves who are the property of myself alone.”
“I had understood that Saxa would be freeing his own slaves today,” Tardus said in a puzzled tone.
“That’s correct,” Varus explained, “but Father first sold them to our majordomo for a copper each. That way he can act as magistrate in the manumission without questions being raised about the owner and magistrate being the same person.”
Agrippinus took the first of the slaves by the hand and brought him in front of Saxa. He said, “I declare this man to be my slave Himilco.”
The lictor touched Himilco—a North African; short, swarthy, and muscled like a statue of Hercules—on the head with his rod and said in his resonant voice, “I declare Himilco to be free from this day onward!”
“Surely no one would have objected?” Tardus said doubtfully.
“I assent,” said Agrippinus, releasing Himilco’s hand.
“My father is a stickler for the correct forms,” Varus said. He started to smile, but that would have projected the wrong image. Tardus was if anything more focused on foolish detail than Saxa was … though apparently not the same details. “He deemed this to be the safest route.”
“It is hereby noted that the former Himilco, now Gaius Alphenus Himilco, is a freeman,” Saxa said. The secretary duly jotted the information down on a wax tablet.
Himilco stood with his mouth open. Instead of showing enthusiasm, he looked as tho
ugh he had been thrown bound into the arena with half a dozen lions.
He’d probably be more comfortable with the lions. They would be more in keeping with his past experience than being stood before a pair of senators, one of whom was also consul.
Agrippinus leaned over to whisper in Himilco’s ear. A smile of understanding spread across the new freedman’s face. He threw himself onto hands and knees, lifted the consul’s foot and placed it on his neck, and then shambled back to where he had been before Agrippinus brought him forward. He hadn’t overbalanced Saxa in his enthusiasm, as Varus had rather feared he might.
“I would say…,” Varus murmured to Tardus. “That the willingness to grasp a sword and charge armed enemies does not require a high intellect.”
Before he met Corylus, he would have said that it couldn’t be paired with high intellect. Still, he suspected that his friend was the exception.
“You freed me, Gaius Varus,” Tardus said. He made a small gesture with his left hand as the second slave was brought forward. “From a worse servitude than that. Me, a Senator of the Republic and a Commissioner for the Sacred Rites!”
Varus considered the unexpected confidence. He said, “I’m glad we were able to offer you a service, Lord Tardus. That is, to a man of your stature, and to the Republic through you.”
That certainly didn’t sound like the admission of a man who had invaded the house of a senator with a band of armed slaves. Pandareus would be proud to see the effects of his teaching.
When we find Pandareus.
Agrippinus was bringing the third slave forward now. After the ceremony was complete, Saxa would be providing each of the new freedmen with a gift of a thousand coppers, the amount the emperor had given each legionary upon his accession at the death of Augustus. Lenatus and Pulto would be given property worth four hundred thousand coppers: the requirement for becoming a Knight of Carce.
Corylus—when he returned—would be offered nothing, at Varus’ insistence despite his father’s protests. That saved his friend from embarrassment and saved Saxa from worse embarrassment when Corylus refused the gift.
There wasn’t enough money to have induced Corylus to plan and execute the raid on Tardus’ home. By the same token, Varus knew Corylus wouldn’t accept money for doing what friendship and the needs of the Republic had made necessary. Saxa, to whom money meant nothing, couldn’t understand the logic of a principled man to whom money was important—but not overwhelmingly important.
“The sages brought me the murrhine tube,” Tardus said, lowering his eyelids as he looked back in memory. “They said that it was an artifact of great power. They burned herbs in it, drawing the smoke out through a reed tube at one end.”
Varus lifted his chin. “That’s what they were doing when we broke in on them and Pandareus,” he said, frowning. “The one with the censer blew smoke onto Corylus—he was the first one of us through the doorway. There was a flash and I couldn’t see anything—none of us could. When we could, Corylus was gone as well as the sages and Pandareus.”
“One of them blew smoke at me too,” said Tardus. He was turned toward the manumission ceremony—the fifth slave was being freed—but his mind was clearly in another place. “I couldn’t move except by their choice after that—until you freed me.”
He shook his head as though trying to cast out the memory. “They said the murrhine pipe was half the representation of an amphisbaena. It had great power.”
“The snake with a head on each end of its body,” Varus said, speaking to solidify the reference in his mind. “Yes, I understand now. And Father has the other half.”
“They knew that Lord Saxa has it,” Tardus said. “They took me to your house to gain it. I was a slipper and they were the foot that wore me, whether I would or no. I was less than a slave to them.”
“Father and I sympathize with you, Lord Tardus,” Varus said in a suitably solemn tone. It was a relief to learn that the senator was more concerned with forgiveness for his own behavior than redress for what Varus and his friends had done. “Were you present when the sages discussed their plans, perchance? Though—”
He frowned at his error.
“I suppose they would have been talking in their own language, even if you could hear them.”
Tardus looked at him, frowning in concentration. “Yes, I suppose they were…,” he said, “but I could understand them perfectly well. I hadn’t thought of that.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t myself, you see,” he said. “That is, the sages were me; but that means I was them too, I suppose. But—”
He shrugged. “But I can’t tell you where they took Master Pandareus,” he said. “From what you describe, they must have acted in the crisis. Certainly they didn’t plan anything of the sort when I was with them.”
“I understand,” said Varus; and he did, though he’d hoped that Tardus would be able to help them. “Well, we’ll have to find Pandareus—”
And Corylus, but no reason to emphasize that.
“—in some other fashion. Will these sages stay here in Carce, do you think? If they do, perhaps they’ll reappear and we’ll be able to find them.”
“I suppose they will remain,” Tardus said. “Their business is here, after all.”
“Their business?” said Varus, irritated at himself for not having asked the most obvious question before Tardus reminded him of it. “What are they doing here, your lordship?”
“They don’t think they can hold Uktena where he is for very much longer,” Tardus said. As he spoke, his voice became thinner and his face began to look gray. “They plan to gain time by releasing him here in Carce, a long distance from the Western Isles, while they either create defenses or find a way to bind the monster again.”
The manumission ceremony had just concluded. Hundreds of servants shouted, “Yo, hail Lord Saxa!” waving caps and pieces of cloth in the air.
The cheering smothered Tardus’ voice, but his lips and the obvious logic left Varus in no doubt that Uktena terrified the old man.
It terrifies me as well.
* * *
CORYLUS COULDN’T MOVE and he couldn’t see his own body. He wasn’t sure that he had a body in this place.
“Where am I?” he said to the slim, straight woman. Her hair was a lustrous dark brunette, but there were green highlights in it.
She laughed with friendly amusement. “You’re here, cousin,” she said. “That’s all one can ever say, I think. Though I know you humans have other ideas about it.”
That was the answer I should have expected when I asked a dryad about geography, Corylus realized. Though he wasn’t sure that “geography” was the right word.
The inhuman creature squatted on its haunches. Its narrow mouth opened enough to let its tongue loll out between hedges of small, sharp teeth. It rested its arms on its thin thighs; its hands stuck out before it.
“Mistress…,” Corylus said, looking at the woman but really concentrating on the creature beside her. Standing, it would be no taller than the sprite and it wasn’t nearly as heavily built as Corylus himself. Its bite could be unpleasant but no more dangerous than that of one of the mongrel dogs which lived on Carce’s streets, and its claws were as blunt as a dog’s also.
Despite that, Corylus really hoped that the creature wouldn’t decide he was an enemy. He recalled Caesar’s description of Germans laughing the first time they saw the soldiers of Carce who were so much smaller than the barbarians themselves.
They didn’t laugh after the first battle, though; those who were still alive. Corylus wasn’t laughing at this creature.
“I am Publius Cispius Corylus,” he said. “May I ask your name?”
“Of course you’re Corylus, cousin,” the woman said with another trill of laughter. “And I’m Coryla, silly. My tree was struck by a rain of burning glass from the moon. The rest of it perished in the fire, but the glass sealed the air away from one nut, so I still survive. As for the Ancient—”
She r
an an affectionate hand through the fur over the creature’s spine. It writhed toward her touch but continued to keep its unwinking eyes on Corylus.
“—I don’t know what his name is; I don’t know if he has a name. My tree grew over his grave, but he wasn’t with me until the glass fell.”
Corylus would have touched the tektite amulet if he could have moved his hand. Or if he’d had a hand to move, which might be closer to the real situation.
“Is the glass, ah, magical?” Corylus said. He was speaking and she was understanding him, but he couldn’t feel his lips move.
“What?” the sprite said. She bent to rub the base of the creature’s ear. It tilted its fox-like head toward the touch, but it never took its eyes off Corylus. They had the same golden cast as its fur, but the pupils were slitted horizontally instead of vertically like a cat’s. “I shouldn’t think so, no.”
She gave the creature a final pat over the ribs and straightened. “But he is, of course,” she added. “He’s a great magician. Did he bring you to him, do you suppose? I’m not always sure what he’s planning, even though he’s part of me, in a way.”
“Him?” said Corylus in amazement. “It? But it’s just an animal, isn’t it?”
The sprite’s laughter was as sweet and musical as a nightingale singing in the dusk. “Of course he’s an animal, cousin,” she said. “You’re all animals, you and him and the squirrels in the branches of my tree. Didn’t you know that?”
“I mean…,” said Corylus. “It doesn’t think the way a man does. Or you do. It, he, isn’t he your pet?”
The creature made a clicking sound at the back of its throat and stood up. It continued to stare at Corylus. Its hind legs folded the way a man’s did, not a dog’s.
“Pet?” said Coryla. He thought she would laugh again, but the look she gave him had nothing of humor in it. “Him? Are you mad, cousin?”
The creature reached toward Corylus; toward where his face should be, if he had a face. It had four slender fingers. One was opposed to the other three like the hind claw of an eagle, not a human thumb.