Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  He was cutting through roots. Lucinus had scribed a six-pointed star on the ground and was writing in a circle just beyond the points. Varus couldn’t read the words; in fact, he couldn’t tell exactly where the star was despite having watched Lucinus mark it.

  Ivy had overrun most of the raised beds and covered the gravel paths. Apparently the magician found it important to draw the symbol, but he didn’t care that it be visible.

  Lucinus straightened. “Is the trench finished?” he asked.

  Varus tried to scoop up the dirt he had just loosened. Most of it spilled back when his shovel struck a root and the blade tipped.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “Is it long enough for you?”

  Varus had joked when Lucinus asked if he could use a shovel. He now realized that there was a great deal more to it than he had assumed.

  He had sometimes watched servants working while he was in one of the gardens of a house he was staying in. Varus preferred to learn from books rather than people. Still, because he had watched, he had known to use his weight to drive the shovel where the strength of his arm could not.

  But he also knew that Attis, the gnarled, sixty-year-old chief gardener of the Carce town house, could cut a thumb-thick root with a twist of his shoulders. His young master couldn’t manage that except by raising the shovel and slamming the blade three times in succession into the obstacle.

  Varus smiled ruefully. And he was getting blisters in this interval of less than an hour.

  Lucinus looked over. The would-be trench was three feet long, but it was ragged and no deeper than the length of a man’s hand. Even some of that depth was loose dirt.

  “It will do,” he said. He used the hem of his tunic to wipe the scriber he had been using. Now that Varus had a chance to look, he saw that it was a knife whose blade of black glass was bound onto a deer-horn hilt.

  Varus leaned his shovel against a terra-cotta planter that years of rain and occasional frosts had cracked into little more than an ivy-covered mound. He was mildly irritated that Lucinus hadn’t been more impressed by the results of his work. He knew that was silly: it had been considerable effort, but only because he was so ignorant of proper technique.

  “I could have brought our chief gardener with me,” he said, smiling at himself. “I’m sure he could have done a much better job.”

  “Would he have been willing to do the work?” said Lucinus with a raised eyebrow. “He would have understood what we intend, I think.”

  Varus pursed his lips. “Attis would have done the work,” he said. “But he wouldn’t have been happy about it. And it would have been wrong to bring him, since what I could manage was sufficient to your needs.”

  Lucinus set the miniature boat on the ground parallel to the trench. He reached into his bag and came out with a pair of small scrolls.

  “Is that a toy?” Varus said. He had expected Lucinus to set it in the center of the hexagram, but this seemed to be its final position. “The boat, I mean.”

  “It’s a spirit boat from the tomb of one of the Libyan rulers of Egypt,” Lucinus said. He untied the silk ribbons holding the scrolls closed. “It was intended to carry the soul of the Pharaoh to the Land of the Dead.”

  He gave Varus a hard grin and added, “Perhaps it did. We will use it for a different purpose, if all goes well.”

  Varus lifted his chin. “All right,” he said. “What are my duties in this?”

  “The spell I’m using is antiphonal,” Lucinus said, handing one of the scrolls to Varus. “My uncle could have done this alone, but I need another magician.”

  I’m not a magician in that way, Varus thought. He didn’t speak.

  “We’ll read the first stanza together,” Lucinus said as he arranged spills of folded papyrus beside him. “I’ll read the next alone, and then you’ll read the third and we’ll alternate. When I deem it to be time, I’ll make the sacrifice.”

  Varus glanced at the goat. It lay on the near side of the trench, trembling and silent. Its eyes followed Lucinus.

  “All right,” Varus repeated. He put his left hand on the goat’s shoulder, hoping to calm it. Varus’ touch made no difference.

  Lucinus picked up his copy of the spell. He stepped to what was probably the center of the hexagram he had drawn.

  “We’ll begin now,” he said. Gesturing to Varus, he read, “‘This is our need.’”

  Varus noticed that though the magician held the scroll, he wasn’t looking at it. He joined the reading, “‘This is our need.’”

  The words were coming to his lips without seeming to pass through his eyes. The morning sky seemed darker, duller, though there were no visible clouds; the change might have been his imagination.

  Lucinus read, “‘We have a boat.’”

  Varus heard the wind sigh, then howl. The air was still. The sky was black, but he could see his immediate surroundings. I am a citizen of Carce.

  “‘It is a fine boat,’” Varus read in a clear, calm voice. No one listening to him would have imagined that he was frightened. His eyes were focused on Lucinus; everything beyond the edges of the magician’s face had become a blur of gray in Varus’ mind.

  Motion beyond the trench drew Varus’ attention. The funeral boat had swelled from a toy to something that stretched twenty feet from end to end, almost touching one wall of the garden. Instead of being solid, the crescent-shaped hull rippled with pale light. Varus thought he saw figures within the swirls.

  “Our boat needs a crew!” Lucinus shouted. He threw down his scroll and grasped the goat by the uppermost horn; it bleated pitifully. The magician pulled the animal’s head over the trench and cut its throat with the stone knife.

  Blood gushed. The goat thrashed repeatedly, then went limp. Lucinus dropped the horn and lifted one of the hind legs to hold the goat upright over the trench as the rest of its blood drained.

  “We will feed our crew,” Varus said. He felt dizzy. The stench of blood and goat urine seemed overpowering.

  The air thickened into ghastly wraiths, their features melting. One brushed Varus. He felt nothing, nothing; but the hair on his arm stood up straight.

  The mouths of the wraiths were open. They moaned, pushing toward the blood-soaked trench but rebounding; they moaned louder, like the wind through a ruined temple.

  “Our crew will row our fine boat to Zabulon’s Isle!” Lucinus cried triumphantly. The wraiths swirled forward, merging as they filled the trench. The earth tossed and heaved as if children were playing in it, then became still again.

  Varus saw motion, a thickening of the air, but the wraiths had vanished. The floor of the trench was dry, covered with fine dust. The six paddles bound to posts along the boat’s side began to quiver.

  “Come,” Lucinus wheezed as he stepped out of the hexagram. He lifted his foot over the gunwale but wobbled there until Varus put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

  “Come…,” Lucinus repeated. He lurched aboard.

  Varus followed the magician, standing near him in the bow. The paddles moved, and the boat began to move.

  I am a citizen of Carce.

  * * *

  ALPHENA HAD ORDERED the sides of the carriage rolled up, though the roof still protected the right side from direct sun. The benches doubled as beds if the occupants wanted to sleep during the journey, so there was plenty of room for all three passengers to be in the shade, but Paris nevertheless sat opposite her and Pandareus. Paris wore his broad-brimmed hat, which at least shaded the back of his neck.

  “I thought the Etruscans lived north of Carce,” Alphena said. “But Collina’s farm is closer to the Bay than to Carce, isn’t it?”

  She was embarrassed to speak because she didn’t know a lot of the things—literature and geography and history—that her brother took for granted. She could identify a Thracian gladiator or a Gaul—but she didn’t know or care where either of them came from.

  “Which is why I doubt that there’s anything to be discovered there,” said Paris.
“The Samnites ruled this region at the time you claim Collinus Laethius settled here. They were no friends to our people.”

  Alphena smiled in her mind. She knew what a Samnite gladiator was, and now despite herself she did know where Samnites came from. Not that most of the gladiators fighting with swords, large, round shields, and helmets with grilled masks came from any particular tribe nowadays.

  She didn’t mind admitting to Pandareus that she didn’t know things. He liked to teach, and he really seemed to appreciate Alphena’s questions. She listened and either understood or asked more questions until she did; and she remembered.

  “The letters of Collinus Balbo didn’t address the question directly,” Pandareus said. If he was aware of the priest’s hostility, his tone showed no signs of it. “Based on his letters he was rather nice about his family’s honor, though. He had found material belonging to his ancestor which distressed him and suggested that Laethius was in self-imposed exile in order not to face something worse if he had remained in Veii.”

  “If he was an Etruscan among Samnites…,” Alphena said. “How did he survive?”

  She had only the vaguest notion of history. From what her brother had described to her, however, she fancied that the tribes of Italy during ancient times more resembled wild beasts in the arena than they did those jockeying on the Republic’s distant borders in recent times.

  “Balbo says that Ligurian mercenaries defended the Collinus estate,” Pandareus said. “He was quite proud of the fact that his ancestor had paid them with unminted gold. He doesn’t seem to have made the connection I did between the gold bullion and the practices which caused Laethius to leave Veii and his ethnic kin for what could best be described as a fortified outpost in savage territory.”

  Pandareus glanced at the Etruscan priest. “It would appear that whatever Laethius heard in the flow of the Cosmos…,” he said. “Brought material rewards with it.”

  Paris glared at the scholar as though the comment had been a personal attack. He said, “You can laugh at my people now, Greek. But soon neither gold nor any other material thing will be of value! Earth is preparing to wipe herself clean of life!”

  Paris stood up and walked to the back of the carriage, gripping the struts that supported the roof. He remained there, looking over the tailgate at the countryside they had passed. His stiff shoulders were a mute rebuff to any attempt to continue the discussion.

  Pandareus smiled again.

  * * *

  HEDIA GOT OUT OF THE sedan chair. The bearers—it was a hired vehicle; Venus only knew where they’d been born—didn’t seem disposed to leave. Agrippinus must have paid them very well and they were hoping to get a refresher if they also brought Hedia back.

  “You needn’t wait,” she said crisply to the man in front. She started up the short walk to Melino’s house.

  Hedia didn’t know when she would be coming back, or if she would be returning, though that wasn’t a concern she chose to dwell on. Every morning it was possible that she was awakening for the last time.

  Six guards watched from the porch. The big Sarmatian wasn’t there, though his Greek partner of the day before was on duty. He seemed less cocky now, though Hedia hadn’t chosen to say anything about his behavior to Melino.

  She felt, well … not frightened, but uncertain in ways that she usually wasn’t. Hedia had gone to the houses of many men, more often at night than in the daytime, but by daylight as well. She had always had at least a maid with her, however. Leaving Syra behind had been unexpectedly difficult, though there was no reason to cause a very skillful maid the sort of difficulty that she would face if her mistress vanished—or was found dead.

  If Alphena hadn’t already left for Carce as directed, Hedia would have brought her. I’m glad Alphena obeyed. But perhaps her honor wouldn’t have been compromised if she’d stayed with her mother for just one more day.…

  The guards separated to either side of the door into a group of two and a group of four. They didn’t speak to her, and only a blond fellow missing both ears—a thief or worse—would even meet her eye.

  Melino himself opened the door. “Welcome, Lady Hedia. Welcome indeed!”

  Hedia walked over the threshold and said curtly, “Close the door.”

  The door closed behind her. Melino hadn’t touched the panels or even gestured, and no servant was visible. Well, she had known Melino was a magician, though she didn’t find much interest in magic that did no more than an inexpensive doorman could.

  Hedia would have preferred that her visit not have been announced to all the world. A slave who had done something similar when Hedia was visiting a gentleman would have been whipped to the point he couldn’t walk—or couldn’t breathe.

  But Melino was a wellborn but very naive young man; Hedia was visiting for another purpose entirely; and at this point, her reputation could scarcely be blackened. There was an advantage to being notorious beyond redemption.

  The last thought restored her good humor. She reached out and stroked Melino’s beardless cheek. He yelped and sprang backward, startling the two baboons. They were already at the ends of their chains, trying to stay as far as possible from their master.

  Smiling, Hedia said, “You’re very serious for such a handsome young man. Are you really in such a hurry to find a book?”

  He had offended her because he didn’t understand proper decorum for a woman of her station. She had paid him back because she did understand his idea of proper decorum and thus could deliberately flout it.

  “On us depends the existence or non-existence of all life!” Melino said in shocked amazement. “What could be more serious than that?”

  If you have to ask that question, Hedia thought, then it would be pointless to discuss the matter with you.

  “Then let’s get on with it,” she said. Her smile was brighter than the thought behind it. “Though it seems to me that reducing stress before a difficult task is a better plan than some.”

  Melino led the way upstairs with quick, mincing steps. He was wearing the same white robe as on the previous day, but this time he had cinched it with a sash of red fabric. Hedia wasn’t sure what the material was—she didn’t think it was silk, but it certainly wasn’t one of the coarser cloths she was familiar with.

  These are better things to worry about than more serious matters. Which I can’t affect.

  They entered the room where the orichalc mirror stood beside the frame to which the lizardwoman was shackled. Perhaps because she was expecting something, Hedia noticed an unfamiliar odor. The closest comparison she could find was that of hot sandalwood.

  The lizardwoman watched Hedia rather than the magician. Hedia returned her attention coldly. The creature appeared to be securely fastened, which was the only thing that concerned Hedia.

  “Now, there’s no danger,” Melino said in a forceful voice. “If there should be any difficulty when we reach Zabulon’s Isle, all I have to do is speak one word and we’ll return to this room.”

  In Hedia’s experience, that tone of pompous certainty meant there was considerable danger. She had assumed there was danger from the beginning, so she merely smiled.

  “With the mirror,” Melino continued, “I can open a passage directly to the isle.”

  Hedia followed his eyes to the orichalc surface. She disliked the lack of reflection where her mind knew that she should be seeing herself, her companion, and the furnishings of the room from a different angle.

  “The Princess isn’t necessary for that,” Melino said. The lizardwoman continued to watch Hedia, as though the magician did not exist. “What she will do is provide us with a tether to the Waking World. Her pain will draw us back no matter what our situation on Zabulon’s Isle may be.”

  The decoration showed that this had been two separate rooms before an interior wall was knocked out. The portion to the right had pale walls into which were set black cartouches with gold figures of gods and goddesses; it had been half again as large as the other, which
was frescoed with the teetering vistas of a stage set.

  The sliding divider was in the center, not where the original wall had been. Melino obviously didn’t care about aesthetics: he had made changes only for functional reasons.

  Hedia looked at the lizardwoman again. Membranes flicked sideways across the creature’s eyes, but its gaze did not waver. It wasn’t hurting Hedia—she wasn’t even sure it was hostile—but she found the implied judgment irritating.

  “Pain?” she said. “It doesn’t seem to be in pain to me.”

  “Do you want to see pain?” Melino crowed. He balled his left fist so that the ruby ring faced the lizardwoman. “Do you?”

  A tiny voice chirped, “Faster!” Melino didn’t speak the word; Hedia wasn’t even sure she heard someone speaking and not wood rubbing wood somewhere close by.

  The bands of light holding the captive were a red so dark that it would have passed for black in direct sun. The light became brighter with hints of orange.

  The lizardwoman moaned softly. Her limbs quivered, but the movement didn’t reach her torso. Her mouth opened, showing short, pointed teeth. A forked black tongue flicked over and past them.

  “Is that what you wanted, Hedia?” Melino repeated. He had been nervous since he opened the door to her, nervous at least since she stroked his cheek. “Is it?”

  It was, Hedia admitted silently. And I regret it now, but no one will ever know that.

  Aloud she said, “You’ve convinced me, yes. Now, let her be so that we can get on to our business.”

  Melino laughed. “I can’t let her be,” he said. “Her pain is our lifeline, as I told you. But we can go now, you and I. You and I…”

  He clenched his fist again. A mist rose from the ruby, twisted, and congealed into a nude female whose body had no blemish and no humanity despite its shape. The figure was the color of fire, and the same fire burned in Melino’s eyes for an instant.

  This is a demon, Hedia thought, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.