by David Drake
The line halted just short of the ship in an explosion of sparks that spread to right and left, following the curve of the circling fleet. Not only the target but several vessels ahead of and behind it began to glow in a faint violet echo. A human seated along the railing of the central ship threw up his arms and jumped overboard. His body burned in the air like thistledown; ashes drifted onto the treetops.
The balas-ruby exploded into sand. The ship’s stern vanished; molten blobs of orichalc armor flew in all directions.
The bow dived into the forest. The three ships which had been approaching the spire settled somewhat less violently, like driftwood flung onto a beach.
Lines of yellow light began to reach inward from the encircling ships; some strands were brighter than others. They twisted as they stretched toward Procron’s fortress, weaving a net that grew brighter as it extended.
Purple fire from the spire snapped like a whiplash, ripping the meshes of light for a hundred feet to either side of the contact. Trees in its path toward the spire sizzled and flared, but Procron’s stroke faded into orange afterimages. The net rewove itself brighter and denser than before.
Light spat from the spire again, this time as a thrust toward a ship on whose deck a Minos spun a top turned from moss agate. The air along its track into the netting roiled into a spitting rainbow.
Almost, but not quite, the fire reached its target. It finally spluttered out no more than an arm’s length from the hull. The woman in orichalc armor looked up once, then went back to her stone spindle as it spun and spun back, and spun. The soil beneath was burning, and gobbets of molten bedrock bubbled along the track as from a volcano.
The net was near about the fortress, now; the ships of the Minoi closed in behind its protection, while the vessels captained by Servitors stayed behind, wobbling just above the treetops. The net’s upper edge was higher than the top of the spire, and at the bottom it burned the rock clean.
Varus expected Procron to try at least once more to break through the closing meshes. The spire began to sizzle with fuzzy light, like fruit infected with purple fungus. Instead of spitting another bolt, the fortress rocked sideways, then ripped free of the mountaintop. It began to rise.
Many of the Minoi closed in when they saw what was happening: portions of the net’s upper edge looped inward as the ships turned bow-on to the spire. At least a third of the great fleet hung back, however. Either the Minoi directing those ships were concerned for their skins; or, more charitably, the tightening circle didn’t permit all the vessels to approach without fouling one another.
The spire lifted raggedly, like a wounded man trying to climb a palisade. Cords of yellow light, by now brighter than the sun, wrapped its base. Instead of slowing, the cone of black crystal steadied into a smooth climb. The cords of light stretched, and the nearest ships jerked nearer still. Their prows lifted skyward.
The black fortress was several hundred feet off the ground when it paused. Varus thought, Has Procron finally exhausted his power?
The spire began to slip westward, moving hesitantly. Two ships had been lifted to the crystal’s height and were directly in its path. Varus expected splintering crashes. He had once seen a storm hurl a pleasure boat onto the cliffs of Capri. Instead he had a momentary impression of each ship intersecting with a mirror image of itself and vanishing.
The spire moved with gathering speed, leaving the net of light in tatters behind it. Several ships had crashed into the jungle, whipsawed by bonds of light which their directing Minoi had not loosed in time.
One vessel whirled in circles behind the spire to which it was attached by a vivid hawser of light. The Minos with the moss agate spindle had been directing it, but when the vessel overturned the first time, it flung her and her talisman out. A dozen human servants had been aboard with her; all of them dropped into the sea or the jungle despite desperate attempts to cling to the railings.
Four Servitors remained on deck, as firmly fixed as the mast. Varus could see them as glittering refractions of sunlight even after the ship and the spire which dragged it had vanished into the west.
The edges of the vision began to blur. The images became fog from which the color bleached, filling the valley in which Varus had watched the battle.
He turned to the Sibyl. Her lined face smiled. She said, “You have seen Procron, Lord Wizard. Can you stand against him?”
“Is he my enemy, Sibyl?” Varus said. He had no way to measure the strength of one wizard against another—or against a hundred others—but he had seen rock melt and lush forest blaze at the touch of the powers the opponents were using. That he could understand.
“He is the enemy of all men and all life,” said the Sibyl. “Can you stand against him?”
Varus wet his lips with his tongue. I am a citizen of Carce. “Sibyl,” he said, “I will face Procron for as long as I can. I will face him for as long as I live.”
“Then return to the waking world for now,” said the Sibyl. “The time is coming. Strong necessity demands that these things—”
“Your lordship?” said Manetho. “I, ah, didn’t hear all of your command. You were saying that something needed to be accomplished?”
Varus sat up, disoriented for a moment. He had been lying on the couch in the library. On the floor lay the wax tablet from which he had been reading his notes on the manumission ceremony to the clerk transcribing them in ink to a scroll.
The clerk still stood beside the desk, though he looked logy and had almost certainly just been awakened. The windows were shuttered, but sunlight came through the louvers. The librarian, Alexandros, was also barely awake, but Manetho by the doorway looked brushed and alert. Varus wondered whether he and another deputy steward had been taking shifts so that one was sure to be ready when the young master woke up.
“Your lordship…,” Manetho said carefully. “The decision was made not to awaken you when you nodded off. If that was a mistake and you should have been helped to your bed, I will personally search out the servant responsible and have him sent to the fields. Ah—or perhaps to your noble father’s silver mines in Spain?”
Varus grimaced at the thought. Manetho wasn’t joking, though he surely didn’t—Varus hoped he didn’t—think the young master would demand that sort of punishment for a servant who had simply guessed wrong about which of two equally probable outcomes Varus would prefer when he woke up. Not so long ago Alphena might have reacted that way, though Varus had the impression that she too was becoming more measured in her behavior.
“Of course not,” Varus said. He was suddenly angry when he realized that Manetho might be looking for an excuse to send a rival to brutal labor and an early death. “Don’t ever suggest something like that to me.”
It had been bad enough to imply that the young master might be savage and unreasonable rather than the philosopher he strove to be. It was much worse to use him as a weapon against a victim who was not only undeserving of such punishment but even innocent.
Varus got to his feet. He said, “Open the—”
Before he got the rest of the sentence out, three servants were throwing open the shutters. His whole entourage—the day and night shifts together—was here in the library or in the corridor outside.
He bent to pick up the tablet which had slipped from his fingers, wondering just how far he’d gotten in his dictation. He had thought he was too tense to get to sleep and that focusing on scholarship would calm him. The plan had apparently worked better than he had hoped.
“Permit me, your lordship!” said the girl who had snatched the tablet from the floor. She put it in his hand, pressing his fingers as she did so. She must have been sleeping at the foot of his couch.
Varus didn’t remember her name, though he had seen her repeatedly in the past several days. He couldn’t imagine why she had been assigned to him. If in fact she had been: in a household as large as Saxa’s, it was quite possible for recently purchased servants to float for weeks or months without being give
n specific duties.
He straightened abruptly without trying to hide his look of irritation. Just as he didn’t want to be a tool of vengeance between servants, he disliked the notion of some illiterate girl using his favor to elevate herself among her fellows. She didn’t even speak good Greek!
“I believe I’ll go to the baths now,” Varus said to Manetho. “Or—are the baths in our gymnasium warm, by any chance?”
Saxa’s little exercise ground was fully equipped, though it had rarely been used before Varus invited his friend Corylus to visit. The attached bath had a steam room and a cold pool only big enough to sit in rather than swim, but that would be sufficient to relax the stiffness of a night spent sleeping awkwardly.
Manetho smiled. “When I learned your lordship was here,” he said, gesturing to the bookcases, “I ordered the furnace to be stoked. The water should be ready now.”
You just redeemed yourself, Varus thought. And after all, it was possible that the deputy steward hadn’t had any evil motive in talking about punishments.
Aloud he said, “Have a fresh tunic brought there for me,” and started for the door. Manetho whisked out ahead of him.
Frowning, Varus added, “Manetho, do you know what happened to the slaves whom my father freed, ah, yesterday?”
“They were enrolled in a section of their own,” Manetho said. “Master Lenatus was appointed as the decurion who will lead them.”
“Ah,” said Varus, lifting his chin in understanding. His face was blank as he started downstairs toward the gymnasium at the back.
It would not do for the emperor to hear a rumor that Gaius Saxa was raising a private army of former slaves. On the other hand, Saxa’s new clients had to be dealt with in some fashion, and keeping them in Carce under Lenatus was probably as safe as any choice could be. Besides, they might come in useful again.…
Varus thought of a wizard with the power to lift crystal mountains and to scour swathes of forest to bubbling rock. The emperor wasn’t the worst threat which Saxa and the world faced at the moment.
* * *
INSTEAD OF HANGING its sail from a single spar, the Atlantean ship had two booms joined separately to the mast. When they began to flap like wings, Corylus looked up to see how they were attached.
There was no joint: the booms grew out of the mast the way branches spread from a tree bole. Corylus laid his palm against the mast and felt the wood bunch and flex as though he were touching the flank of a running horse.
“Cousin?” he said. “Is this ship alive?”
The sprite turned from the bow, where she had been looking out to sea. “I suppose it’s alive the same way a crystal is,” she said. “Does that matter?”
“Perhaps not at the moment,” Corylus said, a trifle sharply. The sprite’s lack of curiosity disturbed him, but he had met no few human beings who also disregarded the world unless it had some immediate application to themselves. The soul of a tree which had been dust or ashes for untold thousands of years had a better reason to lack a sense of wonder.
They were far enough out over the sea that Corylus could barely see the land they had left. They had slanted upward until the keel was—he looked over the railing—about a hundred feet above the water, but they were no longer climbing. There was nothing ahead or to either side, as best he could tell.
The ancient wizard grinned at him. It didn’t seem to need a talisman like those he had seen the Atlanteans in visions use when they propelled their ships.
The ship’s wings beat with slow, powerful strokes like those of a vulture gaining altitude on a gray day. Corylus said, “How long can we fly before we have to land? Or—”
He knew he was being optimistic, but that didn’t cost any more than anxiety would.
“—can we soar without flapping?”
The sprite looked puzzled. “How would we do that?” she said. “But we can fly as long as the sun shines. Why would you want to stop flying?”
There was no useful answer to that—because of her disinterest and his ignorance, they were talking at cross purposes—so Corylus said, “Will we get home—to my home, I mean—before sunset, Coryla?”
She shrugged. “You humans worry about time,” she said as she returned to where Corylus stood at the railing just forward of the mast. “I don’t know when we’ll reach the waking world. I don’t know if we ever will.”
She slid her hand through the sleeve of his tunic and began fondling his chest. He took her wrist and firmly placed her arm at her side; she pouted and turned her back, but she didn’t move away.
Corylus looked up. There were no clouds, but the sky itself had a pale cast that suggested haze. The sun remained bright, though not hot enough to make him wish for better shade than he had available.
“I should have thought things through before we left the beach,” Corylus said. “Does, ah, your friend know how long we must fly to get back?”
The sprite turned and glowered for an instant. Then her mood broke and she said, “I don’t think he cares any more about time than I do, cousin. You humans are hard to understand.”
She walked toward the bow but threw a glance over her shoulder to show that she wasn’t stalking away; he followed. “But there was nothing good about that island, not for me and certainly not for you. I’m glad you left. And—”
She raised her eyebrow.
“—what would you have done when another Cyclops came? Though I might have asked the Ancient to help. Even though you’re not as friendly to me as you should be, cousin. Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
“At another time I’d…,” Corylus said. “Well, I might find you very pretty. But not now, please, mistress.”
The Cyclops had almost crushed him to death, and in this place he wasn’t sure he was alive to begin with. Is my body lying on the floor of Tardus’ library, turning purple and cooling?
He grinned at the thought. So long as he could imagine things being worse, the way things were didn’t seem so bad. Any soldier could tell you that.
“Well, I think you’re being silly,” the sprite said with a pout, but she wasn’t really angry this time. “What else is there to do?”
“I’m going to check the food and drink,” Corylus said, removing a pin so that he could slide the wooden bolt that fastened the hatch cover. He had spoken to change the subject, but as soon as he formed the words he realized that he was very thirsty.
The shallow hold was empty except for a tank with a spigot and a net bag holding hard, fist-sized lumps that looked like plaster. He supposed they were rolls. The tank wasn’t metal, wood, or pottery of any familiar sort. It had flowed like glass, but it didn’t have the slick hardness of glass when Corylus tried it with his fingertip.
He turned the spigot and ran fluid into the mug of the same material chained to the tank. It was water and too tasteless to be really satisfying. He drained the cup regardless, then took one of the rolls back on deck.
“Do you need something to eat?” Corylus said to the sprite. “And there’s a cask of water, too.”
She brushed the thought away moodily. “I don’t eat; I can’t eat. And I no longer have a tree.”
She caught his glance toward the creature in the stern and laughed. “No, not the Ancient either,” she said. “What a thought, cousin!”
At least I’ve cheered her up, Corylus thought. He wondered what it would be like to be imprisoned for millennia—imprisoned forever, very likely—in a bead of glass with an inhuman sorcerer. Of course the sprite was inhuman also.…
He took a bite of the roll as he leaned over the railing, looking down. He started to chew, then stopped and spat out the mouthful. It tasted like stiff wax.
“Mistress?” he said. “What is this stuff? I thought it was food.”
“It’s the food that the serfs eat on shipboard,” the sprite said without much interest. “The Minoi have fresh food, but that’s probably all gone now. The ships were cast up many seasons ago, you know.”
“I see,” said
Corylus. He leaned on the railing again, eyeing the roll again. His teeth had left distinct impressions, just as they would have done in wax. He might become hungry enough to eat the stuff; but though he was very hungry, he wasn’t to that point yet.
Swells moved slowly across the face of the water, occasionally marked by flotsam. Spurts of foam suddenly flecked the surface well off to starboard.
Corylus focused on the flickers of movement: flying fish were lifting from the sea and arrowing above it for several hundred feet, slanting slightly to one side or the other of their line in the water. Following them closely were the much larger shadows of porpoises, curving up from the surface and back. Their motion reminded Corylus of a tent maker’s needle as he sewed leather panels together.
He looked at the roll. “Mistress,” he said, “we don’t have fishing gear or any way to make it that I can see, but I think if we get right down on the surface ahead of those fish, some of them will fly aboard. I’ve seen it happen before, on regular ships.”
He grinned. “Flying fish are bony,” he said, “and I don’t suppose there’s any way to cook them, but even fish would be better food than these rolls.”
“It doesn’t sound very good to me,” Coryla said, “but if that’s what you want.…”
She called to the creature in the language they shared. He barked in obvious amusement.
Corylus didn’t see him change what he was doing—he simply squatted in the stern, occasionally looking over one railing or the other—but the ship slid downward as smoothly as it had risen. They were bearing to the right as well, putting them into the path of the school of fish.
Feeling triumphant, Corylus tossed the roll he held over the side. He felt a catch as the ship’s keel brushed through the top of the swells. Spray flew backward on the breeze. Droplets splashed the creature, who calmly licked his golden fur smooth again.
A fish slapped onto the deck, wriggled, and flung itself back through the railing as Corylus tried to grab it. Almost immediately, two more fish came aboard. He hadn’t replaced the hatch cover—from laziness, not foresight—but that allowed him to scoop first one, then the other catch into the hold.