by David Drake
She was lying on a reed mat on the floor of the underground room where she had glimpsed the man with braided hair. He sat cross-legged, watching her over the bowl of his pipe. He drew a lungful of the smoke up the reed stem, then blew it out through his nostrils. Smiling faintly, he lowered the pipe.
He’s a magician. He has to be a magician to bring me here!
“Who are you?” Alphena asked. She rolled her feet under her but didn’t try to get up. She wore the tunic she had donned before joining Anna in the garden, and the scabbard still hung from her sword belt. The weapon itself was missing, just as it should have been if what she remembered about the fight with the Minoi was true.
The man leaned forward, stretching the index and middle fingers of his right hand out toward her. Her reaction was to flinch, but she forced herself to hold still. If he was my enemy, he’d have left me to drift forever as the gryphon warned would happen.…
Alphena couldn’t guess how old the man was. Older than her father, certainly; but he gave her the feeling that she was sitting beside an ancient oak. His fingers were like lengths of tree root.
He touched her left ear, her right ear, and finally her lips. “I am Uktena,” he said, smiling again. “I have seen you before, little one, but I do not know who you are.”
She licked her lips. “I’m Alphena,” she said. “Ah, daughter of Gaius Saxa. But I came here—that is, I was going to Poseidonis to save my mother from the Atlanteans. Do you know who the Atlanteans are?”
Stated baldly like that, Alphena realized how foolish her plan had been. It hadn’t been a plan at all; but she’d had to do something!
“I know one Atlantean,” Uktena said. His smile suddenly had something terrifying in it. “But I would venture that in any case no enemy of yours would be a friend of mine. Come, I will show you our village … and perhaps we also will see the Atlantean.”
Uktena knocked the dottle from the pipe into his palm, then scattered it on the bare ground at the edge of his sunken chamber; some of the embers were still glowing. He slipped the reed stem under his waistband and rose smoothly without using his hands. Alphena knew the effort it required to do that when seated cross-legged, but she didn’t have the impression that her host was showing off: he was just extremely fit for a man of any age.
“Master Uktena?” she said. “Are you a magician?”
He weighed her with a glance. “Say rather that I remember some things that the spirits have taught me,” he said after a moment. “As they will teach any man, who asks them in the right way. My fellows call me a shaman, but—”
His smile was very slight, and there was again the hint of a tiger beyond the calm expression.
“—I would prefer you call me Uktena, little one.”
A pine sapling leaned against the opening in the chamber’s roof. The bark had been stripped and the thickset branches trimmed, but stubs projected alternately to right and left. Uktena climbed it, using the stubs as rungs for his big toes. At the top he tossed aside the mat covering the opening and looked back to Alphena.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
Alphena couldn’t decide whether he was mocking her or being polite. “No, but the ladder won’t hold us both,” she said, thought it probably would have. She rose to her feet rather less gracefully than her host.
Uktena swung out of the opening. Alphena followed, moving briskly but thankful that she wore hobnailed military sandals whose thick soles gave her solid purchase. Her big toes weren’t up to supporting her full weight on such short stubs.
The field nearest the chamber had been planted with some kind of big-leafed grass. Two women had been cultivating it with clamshell hoes, but their voices had stilled when Uktena came out of the ground.
They remained upright with respectful expressions for a brief instant when Alphena appeared also. The women cried out; one dropped to her knees, the other turned to run. What looked like a cloak of bark cloth over her shoulders turned out to be a sling holding a sleeping infant.
“Sanga, why do you run from my friend?” Uktena said. “Fear me if you like, but Alphena will not harm you.”
Sanga took two strides more, but she slowed and turned to face them. The kneeling woman opened her eyes and said, “But master—she did not go into the kiva with you. Is she a demon, or did you form her from clay by your power?”
“Uktena caught me when I was falling from a far place,” Alphena said, stepping forward. “I am in his debt for my life. I will not harm anyone whom he regards as a friend.”
The words formed in her mind as she spoke, replacing those she already had on the tip of her tongue. She wouldn’t lie; but there might be advantages for both her and her host if these peasants chose to believe she was a demon held in check only by Uktena’s benevolence toward them.
He laughed, but he didn’t amplify her statement. “Come, little one,” he said. “I’m sure my colleagues will want to meet you.”
Women and children were appearing from the fields and the semicircle of huts; a few men carrying bows came out of the woods. Three older men—the trio which had come to dinner with Sempronius Tardus the night Hedia disappeared—stood before the dwellings. They watched Uktena the way jackals eye a lion.
A dune separated the grain field from sight of the shore until Alphena and her host were near the village proper. She looked past the edge of the sand and almost shouted in surprise.
“Mas—” she said, then touched her lips to mime silencing herself. She resumed, “My friend Uktena? What is that?”
Rather than pointing, she nodded in the direction of what looked like a spire of black glass, well out from the shoreline. The mild surf curled around the base of it, outlining it in foam.
“That is the house of Procron, little one,” Uktena said. “He came here from Atlantis flying in that tower. He is our enemy, and I think the enemy of all men in all times; an enemy even to his own people.”
“You have meditated all day, Uktena,” said the man with a stuffed bird pinned to the roll of his hair. “Have you found the wisdom to send our enemy from us?”
His tone was outwardly respectful, but Alphena could hear the undercurrent of anger in it. She eyed him narrowly.
“Who knows what the spirits intend, Wontosa?” Uktena said, stroking the murrhine bowl of his pipe with his fingertips. His voice was as gentle as his touch on the stone, but Alphena wouldn’t have wanted the words directed at her. “But soon, I think, I will try my knowledge against that of Procron.”
“He may be gaining strength while you wait, you know,” said the sage with a gold ring in his ear. He wore a tunic of familiar pattern rather than a breechclout or an off-the-shoulder robe, and his features were broader than those of the other men Alphena could see.
“I don’t know that, Hanno,” Uktena said. “Do you know it? You’re welcome to try your wisdom against Procron. Or make trial with me, if you wish that.”
Hanno—a North African name, which explained his face and dress, but what was he doing in this place?—backed a step. “You know I don’t mean that, master! We have no hope except in you. It’s just that—”
He fell silent. Glancing sideways toward the sea and the spire standing in it, he backed up another step.
Not before time, Alphena thought.
“Do you have something to add, Dasemunco?” Uktena said to the third sage, who had been eyeing Alphena with a guarded expression. His head was shaved except for a fringe above his forehead.
“I wondered who the woman is, master,” he said, lowering his eyes as if in humility. “Have you created her to aid you in your battle with Procron?”
“It may be that the spirits have sent Alphena to help me, Dasemunco,” Uktena said, smiling without affection at the sage. “Until we know their will better, I will continue to take pleasure in the company of a brave friend who does not fear me.”
Turning to her, he said, “Come, Alphena. I will show you Cascotan, where I live and where my colleagues are visting since P
rocron’s arrival.”
He stepped forward as though the sages were not there; they hopped quickly out of the way. He and Alphena walked side by side between a pair of huts and stopped in the bowl of the semicircle. Villagers watched with the air of deer poised to flee at the first sign of a threat; none of them spoke. The sages had not followed.
“Why did you say I’m not afraid of you?” Alphena said, as quietly as she could and still be heard. “I know I haven’t seen all you can do, but I’ve seen enough.”
“Respect is not fear, little one,” Uktena said with a chuckle. “And is not someone who rides a thunderbird worthy of respect as well?”
Alphena started to speak, then decided not to. She realized that Uktena might know more than she herself understood about the way she had come here. Certainly he didn’t speak lightly; so she shouldn’t lightly disagree with him.
The flat-ended huts didn’t look very sturdy. The roof and walls of each were supported on poles that had been bent into arches with both ends fixed in the ground. The frames were covered with reed mats like the one Uktena used to cover his kiva.
Inside were wicker benches and a variety of baskets, but no pottery that Alphena could see. They were unoccupied, except for an old woman who stared toward the doorway with milky eyes.
Something moaned from the near distance. Alphena looked out. It didn’t appear to come from the spire on the horizon. One of the watching women turned and began to cry into her hands.
“Come,” Uktena said. “Mota must be in the lagoon. It is good that you should see her, little friend.”
They walked beyond the village, paralleling the shoreline but a furlong inland. There were fields here too, planted with the same heavy grass. Vines grew at the base of each stalk.
The deep moan sounded again from ahead of them. “Who is Mota?” Alphena said. “Ah, what is Mota?”
“We will see her soon,” Uktena said calmly. “She grubs clams in the shallows. She wanders some distance up and down the coast, but she always comes back here eventually. Her mother used to go out to meet her, but she no longer does.”
“The woman who was crying back in the village?” Alphena said. Did Mota go crazy? Did Procron drive her crazy?
“Yes,” Uktena said. “Lascosa. There is nothing she can do. There is nothing I can do either, for Mota. Perhaps I can save other girls, though, if the spirits wish me to save them.”
They stopped on the edge of a steeply sloping bank. Sedges grew down it and continued out into the water, which was black from rotting leaves. Recently stirred mud streaked the surface. Alphena looked to right and left, expecting to see a naked girl with wild hair digging in the muck with her hands. There was no one.
Water gurgled as a woman’s head broke the surface. She looked at Alphena and her host, then lifted further.
Alphena shouted and stumbled back. She would have fallen if Uktena had not already had his arm behind her in anticipation of just that occurrence.
Though the eyes and forehead were human, the broad jaws were those of a beast. They worked side to side with a sound like stones turning; mud, muddy water, and bits of broken shell dribbled out from the thick lips.
More of the body lifted to the surface. It was rounded, tapering to a tail that was flattened sideways instead of horizontally like that of a porpoise. The skin was covered with fine scales which gave it a jeweled appearance.
“That is Mota,” Uktena said. “She was raking for clams with her mother when Procron arrived in his dwelling. His glass servants came from the spire and took her. In a week’s time she was back, as you see her now.”
The creature—the girl—opened her mouth. Her jaws were filled with massive grinding teeth. She gave another terrible moan, then submerged again.
“But why?” Alphena whispered.
“Because he could,” said Uktena. His voice was as calm as a frozen pond. “There have been others. There will be more, until someone stops him.”
Alphena started to say something optimistic—and empty. She looked at Uktena and caught the words unspoken. There was no place for silliness around this man.
“How can I help?” she asked. Trying to keep her tone from slipping into defensive anger she continued, “I know I’m a woman but I’ve trained, I can fight. I lost my—”
She didn’t have a word for sword.
“I lost my long knife fighting the vultures, but if you have something here, a knife or an axe, I can help you fight.”
Uktena looked at her. Instead of the objection—or worse, dismissive laughter—that Alphena was poised for, he said, “A battle with Procron will not be fought with knives and axes. It is always good to have a friend nearby in a hard place, though. I welcome your presence.”
Alphena lifted her chin in understanding. She’d had to ask, though. She glanced toward the lagoon. Mota hadn’t surfaced again, which was a mercy; but she was there.
“Uktena, who are the other men?” Alphena asked. “The sages?”
“Come, we will walk back now,” he said. Turning, he continued, “They are the wise men of neighboring villages. Hanno was brought to our land by a spirit wind, which whispered secrets to him. He, Wontosa, and Dasemunco all think that I have great power because of the talisman that came here not long before Procron did.”
He touched the murrhine bowl of his pipe.
“Are they right?” Alphena said, responding to the tone she heard in Uktena’s voice.
“The talisman is a tool of great power,” he said, smiling at her. “But it is half the tool it was before Procron split it and crushed the sage who had used it to fight him. Procron too has a talisman. He is the talisman himself. But tools do not win battles, little one.”
“No,” Alphena said. If you fail, I hope Procron kills me at once.
They had reached the Cascotan again. At least a dozen men were present. Most people faced her and her host, but those Alphena glimpsed from behind had three lines scarred into their left shoulders.
“My friend and I will eat now,” Uktena said to the assembly. “Bring our food to my kiva.”
Wontosa stood slightly in front of his two fellows. He said, “When will you fight Procron, master? Tomorrow night will be the full moon. That is when he takes captives.”
Uktena looked at him. “When the spirits inform me,” he said, “I will try my knowledge against that of Procron.”
He smiled. “You have an axe, Wontosa,” he said. “An axe of copper that came from far to the west, do you not?”
“You know I do, master,” Wontosa said. He touched the stuffed bird woven into his hair, obviously nervous. The other two sages eased away from him. “The axe is my talisman, though not so powerful as your pipe. Not nearly so powerful.”
“Give your axe to my friend Alphena,” Uktena said, still smiling. “She may have need of it.”
I’ve seen sword blades with more humor in them than the line of his lips.
“But—” Wontosa said, and stopped. Then he said, “Yes, master. I’ll fetch it at once.”
“Send it to the kiva with our dinner,” Uktena said over his shoulder as he and Alphena strode through the village.
Quietly, to Alphena, he added, “It is possible that you will need the axe tomorrow morning, little one.”
* * *
VARUS STOOD BESIDE THE SIBYL, looking over an escarpment toward the jungles of Atlantis. He didn’t recall climbing the opposite slope to meet her this time.
He grinned. Perhaps I’m dreaming.
Below, flying ships made slow circles about a spire of black glass. “How many are there, Sibyl?” he asked. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“One hundred and thirteen Minoi rule Atlantis,” said the old woman. “All are here in their ships, and most are accompanied by other ships directed by Servitors who draw power from the talisman of the Minos they serve.”
Unlike the other crystal mansions Varus had seen in his visions, there had been no ordinary human dwellings around the base of black spire.
The nearby forest smoldered where flames from the ships’ weapons had glanced. The spire, untouched, rose from bare rock like a toadstool.
“The Minoi have gathered to punish Procron, who is also a Minos and who defies them,” the Sibyl said. “All are present, because even so they fear that they will not be strong enough to prevail. And there is Lann, who is no longer a Minos but still lives in a fashion.”
“Why are they fighting?” Varus asked. As he spoke, three ships turned inward from the circle. A Servitor stood alone in the stern of each. Smoke rose from a dozen patches of forest, ignited when ships crashed there burning.
“Procron and Lann were neighbors and enemies,” the Sibyl said. “The Minoi have always fought among themselves; they have no other recreation, save diddling their serfs and drugging themselves. But instead of burning out Lann’s cantonments, Procron destroyed Lann’s keep and practiced other arts on Lann himself. Procron sculpts human beings.”
As she spoke, Varus saw as if at arm’s length an unfamiliar animal hanging by all four limbs from a tree limb; the ground was at least two hundred feet below. Lichen streaked the beast’s shaggy gray fur; if it had not been for the jaws’ slow movement, Varus might have thought he was looking at a bizarre swelling of the tree bark.
The eyes and forehead were human, or a parody of human.
“That’s enough,” Varus said, his voice clipped. As the thought formed in his mind, the creature shrunk to a blur beneath the forest canopy over which ships maneuvered in battle.
“Lann’s talisman was an amphisbaena which he had carved from murrhine,” the Sibyl said. “It was hollow to concentrate the thoughts of the one who used it. No other Minos thought he could have stood against Lann and his talisman; but Procron broke the talisman and broke Lann, so in fear they attacked Procron together. And even united—”
A line of shimmering purple curved from Procron’s fortress with the casual grace of a trout leaping. It arched above the three approaching vessels, reaching instead for a ship in the distant circle. In its stern a Minos hunched over a rod of balas-ruby.