Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  “I was rather surprised myself,” Pandareus said conversationally as he followed Alphena inside. “I would have expected Rago and Drago to kick the door down instead of opening it. I suppose they were on good behavior in front of Lady Alphena.”

  The interior was cramped, dark—the small windows were under the eaves—and smelled as though cleanliness wasn’t of much concern to the occupants. There was a rectangular table, a low couch that probably doubled as a bed, and a single chair. The walls were mud brick without plaster or other decoration.

  Indeed, there was nothing inside that was in the least decorative, unless you counted the strings of onions hanging from along one sidewall. Alphena didn’t count them, and she doubted that Paris did, either.

  The Etruscan soothsayer was dressed for travel. Alphena said, “We’ll leave as soon as the carriage is ready. If that’s all you’re taking—”

  She nodded to a cloak rolled into a bindle, probably holding a few objects in its folds.

  “—I can have one of my men take it down for you.”

  “I will carry it myself,” Paris said. Her offer of courtesy seemed to have made him angrier, though it was hard to say.

  “I don’t see any books, Master Paris,” Pandareus said. “Is your library in another room?”

  “Books are the business of clerks,” Paris said with a sneer. “A wise man listens to the flow of the Cosmos instead of reading the words of men who know nothing of reality.”

  “Indeed?” Pandareus said in a tone of mild curiosity. Alphena had the sudden impression that she was watching a pair of gladiators, though she suspected that neither man had ever held a sword in his life.

  “And if I may ask out of scholarly curiosity…,” Pandareus continued. “Is yours a family name, or did you choose ‘Paris’ yourself from the Iliad?”

  “Your Iliad,” said Paris, “is a lie told by a race of liars. This much is true: My people were driven from their home by Greek barbarians and settled here, only to be displaced again by even greater barbarians. The Greeks called the prince of my people ‘Alexandros,’ but Homer knew him by his real name too, Paris.”

  Alphena frowned. She had heard of the Iliad, but she thought that it was very old.

  “Do you mean that you’re descended from the man in the poem?” she asked. Another possibility struck her and she added, “Or do you claim you’re his reincarnation?”

  Looking at Pandareus, Paris said, “She is completely without logic, and she appears to be unable to listen. Yet I am to bow to her!”

  Pandareus smiled in a fashion that restrained Alphena in a way that nothing physical could have done. He said, “Her Ladyship is, of course, a woman. She has therefore not been educated in logic and rhetoric—or in literature, for that matter. But I have found her withal to be intelligent and clearheaded in difficult circumstances. In addition…”

  Alphena waited in anticipation.

  “… Her Ladyship has practiced swordsmanship with a degree of success which has impressed better judges than a Greek scholar like myself. She would not need the help of her entourage to end your earthly cares, Master Paris, and to set you adrift in your flowing Cosmos.”

  “Hey, Rago!” Drago said, ostensibly to his cousin, also in the doorway, but in fact loudly enough to be heard in the olive grove. “Archias got the wagon turned around down there.”

  Alphena smiled. Phalanthus, the understeward in charge of the present detail, was probably horrified, but the Illyrians’ subterfuge served the purpose of informing her.

  “We’ll go on to the Collinus estate, masters,” she said. “I hope we’ll reach it within two hours, from what the coachman estimated.”

  She walked back outside and stepped away from the door so that Pandareus and the Etruscan could follow her. When Paris came out, carrying his bindle, she added, “And Paris? Master Pandareus was too polite to mention this, but I’ll point out that it was his reading of books which has located the gryphon’s egg we’re all interested in seeing.”

  Alphena let her lips quirk, not quite into a sneer. Paris was glaring at her.

  “Perhaps age,” she said, “has deafened the ears you use to listen to the Cosmos. Reading books may be a better technique in the long run.”

  * * *

  VARUS AND HIS ESCORT ARRIVED at dawn at a home on the Palatine Hill, coming from Saxa’s town house nearby in the Carina District. He didn’t know where Lucinus had spent the night, but he and one of the black goats were already standing at the gate with a thin, balding man.

  “Lord Varus?” Lucinus said. “This is Lucius Trebianus, the owner of the house.”

  Trebianus made a half bow to Varus. His fringe of hair had probably been red when he was younger. Two servants accompanied him, but they were staring at the black goat. They looked terrified.

  So was the trembling goat, tethered to the handle of the gate to the back garden. Its eyes rolled and it was too frightened to bleat.

  “You promise that you can lay the spirits here?” Trebianus said, turning to Lucinus. He had a slight lisp and a tendency to put his nouns in the nominative case, whatever their position in the sentence structure. From his name, he was a Gaul from the Po Valley.

  “I promise nothing of the sort,” Lucinus said calmly. “But since you’re not paying me and my colleague, I think I can promise that we will not cheat you.”

  He lifted the lid of the wicker basket at his feet, part of the slight luggage he had brought from his farm near the Bay. He took out a wooden boat wrapped in raw wool. It was flat bottomed and the length of Varus’ forearm; there was a small cabin in the middle.

  “Has your family been disturbed by spirits here, Master Trebianus?” Varus said. His escort, a dozen men directed by an understeward named Coccius, formed an arc around him and his companions; they narrowed the street as effectively as a builder’s dray. More effectively: a wagon wouldn’t club you senseless if you bumped it.

  “Well, not that exactly,” Trebianus said. “I’ve got a house on the Aventine; that’s where I live. I bought this place for the lot, you see. This house—it’s run-down, but mainly it’s tiny. It’s a hundred and fifty years old, here on this prime location! I figured to tear it down and build something big enough for folk nowadays to live in. Only—”

  He licked his lips, glancing toward the gateway.

  “You see,” he went on, “the crew I brought in didn’t like the feel of the place. They downed tools and the overseer wasn’t any happier about sticking around to whip them than the crew was to keep digging like they’d been doing. And I—”

  He glanced back again. Varus realized that the reason they were having this discussion in the street was because the owner didn’t want to enter his own property.

  “—don’t like the place much myself. So when Master Lucinus said he was a magician, well, I was glad to meet him.”

  A wagon that must have hauled quicklime to a building site rattled along the street in a miasma of stinging white dust. The driver whipped his pair of mules along. Wheeled vehicles weren’t allowed on the streets of Carce during the hours of daylight, but he was hoping to reach the apron of the Piling Bridge over the Tiber before the Watch stopped him.

  Varus’ escort drew together, shouting threats and waving their cudgels. They were probably concentrating on a possible normal danger so that they didn’t have to think about the magic they might be about to witness.

  “If I can ask you, lordship?” Trebianus said. “I was wondering just where you come in on this, you being a senator’s son and all?”

  He sounded suspicious rather than merely curious. Perhaps he thinks I’m going to try to cheat him out of the property to build a house for myself.

  Suppressing a smile, Varus said, “This house was the property of Lucius Sulla during his dictatorship following the Social Wars. It was here that those whom he had proscribed as Enemies of the Republic were brought for identification.”

  Varus had dropped into the dry lecturing tone that he often used unwi
ttingly. This time it was deliberate, showing himself to be the sort of pedantic scholar who might accompany a magician for no better reason than knowledge.

  As I really am, he thought.

  “That is, their heads were brought here, to this house,” he continued aloud, “where they remained until either Sulla or one of his aides confirmed their identification so that they could be struck off the list. There were four thousand, seven hundred of them, forty-seven hundred severed heads, waiting here until they could be carried to the Forum and displayed to the populace at large.”

  Varus gestured toward the open gate like an orator. “It’s scarcely surprising that this place should be the haunt of restless spirits,” he concluded. “If malign influences exist anywhere, then surely it is here.”

  Master Pandareus would be amused at what I was doing with his rhetorical training, Varus thought. Then, I wish Pandareus were here. His presence helps me believe in logic and the role of intellect, which I sometimes come to doubt.

  “Right, right, I see that,” Trebianus muttered toward the ground. “It can’t have been this bad all the time, though. Up to a couple years ago, there was people living here, and they couldn’t do that if it was like it is now.”

  “I think we’re ready to begin, Master Trebianus,” Lucinus said. “Do you care to come into the garden with us?”

  “Hercules!” the owner said. “Are you out of—”

  He remembered who he was talking to. If fear of magic hadn’t driven Varus’ escort to a distance, one of them might have corrected him already.

  “That is,” Trebianus said, “I have no part in such matters, sirs. I’ll leave you to it—and wish you Good Fortune!”

  He started off, then paused and looked back at Lucinus. “I’ve given you the keys. When you’re done, just lock up.”

  Trebianus turned, then turned back again. “Or leave it open, I don’t care!” he said. “There’s nothing to steal here, and I’m going to tear it down anyway. Only by all the gods, cleanse it, master. I’ll pay more than the property’s worth just to have the things here gone for good. And there is something here!”

  “Then we had best be about our work,” Lucinus said. He held the boat in one hand and the basket with the rest of his paraphernalia in the other. “Lord Varus? Will your attendants…?”

  “No,” said Varus. He turned. “Coccius?”

  The understeward was standing just beyond arm’s length, facing outward. He spun and bowed to Varus.

  “You have an idea of what we’ll be doing here, Coccius,” Varus said coldly. “You and your men will be a distraction for me, perhaps a dangerous distraction. I suppose it’s already obvious that you’re of no use?”

  “Ah, yes, Your Lordship,” said the understeward. He was a short man and from his accent a Sicilian. “We’d been wondering what you might want us to do.”

  “For my own safety, I want you to return to the house,” Varus said in the same tone of haughty command. “I’ve told Agrippinus that I would probably do this.”

  If he didn’t phrase his directions this way, there was a fair chance that the escort would refuse to leave. They were certainly afraid of magic, but that was an unknown quantity. They faced a certainty of crucifixion or being thrown to the beasts if they abandoned the young master in a dangerous situation, and that was a certainty.

  “Agrippinus knows about this, Your Lordship?” the understeward said in relief.

  “Yes,” said Varus. “I gave him instructions in writing as we left.”

  “Right,” said Coccius. He turned and said, “We’re heading back for the house, boys! It’s the master’s orders!”

  “Are you sure…?” said one of the escort in a thick Thracian accent. He was a hand’s breadth shorter than any of his fellows and slightly built; presumably he had been included for his enthusiasm.

  “Look, d’ye want to take the place of that bloody goat, ye fool?” a comrade called. The Thracian looked blank, then trotted away with the rest.

  Lucinus watched the escort leave with a sardonic expression. To Varus he said, “If you’ll lead the goat, we can get to work. You’ll probably have to drag him.”

  “All right,” said Varus. He loosed the rope from the gate handle. The goat pulled backward but was too frightened to make a real effort to escape.

  Varus wasn’t sure how he would describe his feelings. He wasn’t excited, certainly. It was more a matter of being resigned—and perhaps mildly curious about the outcome.

  “There are shovels in the garden where workmen left them,” Lucinus said. “Can you use one, Your Lordship?”

  “It’s a simple adaptation of an inclined plane, isn’t it?” Varus said with detached amusement. “I should be able to master the principles involved, yes.”

  “Then if you’ll close the gate behind us,” Lucinus said, “we can get started.”

  Varus followed, smiling faintly. He found that he could drag the goat with reasonable ease if he lifted it by the halter so that its forefeet didn’t touch the ground.

  “Be philosophical, my caprine friend,” Varus said. “You may well be the best off of the three of us before the day is over.”

  Lucinus looked back with an unreadable expression. Varus smiled a little more broadly.

  * * *

  “IT’S THE ONE WITH THE beige stucco,” said Kurnos, the foreman of the three gardeners whom Corylus had joined as a fourth. Corylus grunted understanding: it was the house that Lucinus had shown to him and Varus in a vision.

  The path to the back of Melino’s house was more of a farm track than an alley. This far from the city, not all the houses had walls around their back gardens. A few servants were already at work as the crew passed; often there was an exchange of greetings.

  “There’s four guards outside and they got the gate closed,” said Nothus, a one-eyed man who was missing the toes on his left foot. He looked at Corylus and added, “That something to do with you, kid?”

  “I hope not,” Corylus said. “But if I knew everything that was going on, I wouldn’t be here.”

  He grinned: he wasn’t doing anything unlawful, and he wasn’t much worried about private punishment if Melino learned the truth about him. The crew carried hoes and shovels, and Corylus was pretty sure they’d stand beside a friend of Baucis against a few hired guards.

  “Hey, Xerxes,” Kurnos called. “What you all doing out here?”

  “Hell if I know,” said a guard. “Admetus and me are pulling a double shift, and there’s supposed to be a whole extra crew hired from Ajax’s gladiator school to take over at sunset.”

  “Roxolanus says we’re supposed to watch out for lizards,” said another guard with a puzzled expression. The guards carried light shields and six-foot spears intended for thrusting rather than throwing, as well as the swords Corylus had seen in Lucinus’ vision. “I wonder if he meant snakes?”

  “Well, we’re here to water plants, that’s all,” Kurnos said. “Hey in there, open up!”

  “It’s Kurnos, Glabrio!” Xerxes called. “Let ’em in.”

  “Roxolanus is your captain?” Corylus said in a general fashion. He figured it was safe to show mild interest since the guards had brought the name up.

  “If you ask him, he thinks he’s god come down from Olympus,” said Xerxes, lowering his voice slightly as the bar rattled on the other side. “Or wherever Sarmatian gods live.”

  Nothus spat in the dirt. It was probably a comment.

  A guard inside pulled open the gate. He’d leaned his spear against the inner wall, but his shield was attached by a strap to the shoulder of his breastplate to take some of the weight off his left arm. He didn’t speak as Kurnos led in the crew. Neither did the guard at the far end, near the door into the house.

  Corylus swept an expert eye over the garden. It was of herbs, some of which were unfamiliar to him. Instead of piped water, there was a well with a basin below it; separate channels led from the basin to the eight planted rows.

  Besides the her
bs, there was a rose arbor against one corner of the house and an umbrella pine shading a bench at the other corner. Corylus tapped Kurnos on the shoulder to get his attention, then walked toward the pine. Kurnos opened one of the basin’s watercocks, while the other two lifted water from the well and poured it into the basin.

  Corylus glanced at the house, but there was nothing unusual about the outside. Louvered shutters closed the windows in the upper story. It might be possible to see out through them, but he probably couldn’t view the interior even if he stood on the stone tie course between the floors.

  There had been a row of trees down the middle of the garden, but they had been cut down within the past two years, probably when Melino rented the house and planted his herbs. The low stumps hadn’t been removed. They had been fruit trees, but Corylus couldn’t tell more without touching them. He thought of walking closer, but that would be too much like walking over a battlefield and closing the eyes of the corpses.

  Trees die and people die; that was the way of existence. What was important right now was to prevent all trees and all people and all life from being swallowed down crystal jaws.

  The pine’s broad canopy would throw a dappled shadow over this corner later in the day. The marble bench was weather scarred; the relief of grapes and vine leaves was worn or covered by black corrosion. The tree must be older yet.

  Corylus laid his palm on the trunk, his back to the house. His mind slipped into the tree the way water rose from roots to the topmost needles, permeating the wood.

  An old woman waited for him in green silence. In a firm voice she said, “You’re welcome here. But what has such a likely lad to do with an old woman like me?”

  “I came to this garden to learn about the owner, a man named Melino,” Corylus said. “He’s a magician, and he’s—he may be—planning to release the Worms of the Earth. I hope you may help us stop him.”

  The pine sprite laughed. “Loose Gaia’s children, that one?” she said. “No, not him. He went to the Otherworld. He came back with a demon inside him and a greater demon on his finger, but he’s no enemy to the world. Earth will take her revenge, but not through him, I think.”