Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  “It doesn’t matter,” Melino repeated. “Please come on. Delay may … anything may happen!”

  Hedia realized that the magician was nervous, frightened even. The air was dead still, but shadows quivered when branches wobbled high above.

  “Go on, then,” she said harshly. She was nervous also, though thus far the island appeared strange but not frightening.

  They set off through the forest. The demon led. She appeared to walk in normal fashion, but her legs passed through the high grass without making the blades move.

  Hedia grimaced. She hadn’t been sure about what to expect from Melino’s invitation, but she’d been confident that it wouldn’t be a dinner party. She had worn the heavy sandals in the knowledge that they would be preferable to fashionable footgear in anything except fashionable venues, but that was only one of many questions.

  For example, she’d dressed in a knee-length tunic so that if she had to run it wouldn’t tangle her legs as a longer garment might do. She hadn’t thought about grass-blades sharp enough to tear her calves, though.

  Perhaps I should have worn breeches like a Gaul, she thought. The image of herself as a northern rustic restored her mood and brought a smile to her lips.

  They passed under a field of flowers a foot in diameter, dangling upside down from the canopy at the end of long vines. A few of the giant blooms were white, but most of them were pastels: blue, yellow, violet, and pink. There was even a green one, though the petals were hard to see against the forest background.

  Hedia glanced at the branch from which the flowers hung. It seemed to span a pair of trees hundreds of feet apart, growing to both like a living bridge. On its underside was a pale green shape that she ignored as a leaf until it moved.

  The triangular head turned toward her, and a pair of fanged forelegs lifted slightly. She was looking at a praying mantis. She saw them occasionally in the garden, but this one was over six feet long.

  “Melino!” Hedia said. “Look up on the branch!”

  The magician glanced upward. “We’d best get on,” he said, resuming his course.

  The demon looked up as she walked. “It is following us,” she said without emotion.

  The mantis kept pace above them to where the branch joined one of the trunks as they were passing by beneath. Hedia had forced herself not to look up, pretending that she needed to watch her footing, but she cocked her head now.

  The mantis started down the trunk, walking head downward like a squirrel. Its four hind legs stepped one at a time, causing the long body to rock side to side as it proceeded. It moved deliberately, but it was clearly as fast as Hedia and her companions.

  They walked on, passing a band of trees whose paired fronds stuck out at arm’s length to either side. The demon drifted through them while Melino brushed them aside.

  Hedia followed the magician. She disliked the touch of the fronds on her forearms; she wondered if they would raise welts the way nettles did.

  She was becoming increasingly irritated with Melino’s short answers and refusal to volunteer information. She started to ask him a question, then grinned and said instead, “Demon? How were you trapped in the ring where Melino holds you?”

  They were walking through shorter foliage again, green clubs that unrolled upward as they grew. The tallest came to mid-thigh or perhaps a little higher.

  Melino glanced over his shoulder and smiled. He didn’t speak.

  “The ruby protects me,” the demon said. “It is not a trap; it is my refuge. The magician Zabulon drew me from the fires of the Underworld, then created this refuge in return for the help that I gave him.”

  “But you’re helping—” Hedia’s tongue froze on the word “Melino.” Instead she continued, “You’re helping us against Zabulon, though he protected you?”

  “Zabulon is dead,” said the demon. She didn’t turn to look at Hedia during the conversation.

  “The demon does as my spells constrain her to do,” Melino said in a tone of satisfaction. “She has no soul and no feelings of gratitude.”

  The demon now turned her head. “Zabulon is dead,” she repeated. Her eyes were unfathomable, but they were not empty. Hedia saw something in them, though she couldn’t identify the emotion.

  To the left ahead, a series of heavily veined dark green leaves grew from the ground. Each was the size of a ten-man squad tent, stretched out to dry.

  On the underside of the nearest was a caterpillar marked green, yellow, and white in thin rings. It was three feet long and as thick as Hedia’s thigh. It browsed the leaf in a short arc between two veins, backing in a ripple to devour another section when it had finished the one previous.

  They passed the leaves. Hedia glanced over her shoulder to see if the mantis would pluck the caterpillar for its dinner. Instead the beast continued to stalk after them, coming slightly closer with each step of its four legs.

  The demon reached a wall of vegetation shaped like so many six-foot sword blades. Each leaf had a green core and bright yellow edges. Instead of passing through, the demon stopped and turned around.

  “Beyond is the cave,” she said. “I cannot help you get closer.”

  Hedia pushed up to the yellow-green barrier, primarily so that she wasn’t the closest of them to the following mantis. It crossed her mind that Melino might have brought her to throw into the jaws of danger and allow him to get on with his own business.

  Her smile was tiny and humorless. If he tried that, he would learn that Hedia kept a small dagger in her sash. Its silver mountings were chased with delicate scenes of cupids farming, but the double-edged blade was as sharp as glass. It had already let out one magician’s life.

  The mantis was within twenty feet of them. It paused, its forelegs pumping minusculely in the air. It was about to act.

  The ground beyond the wall of leaves was barren in a semicircle fifty feet in all directions from the cave in the outcrop beyond. The distant portion of the slanting rock was covered with plants ranging from patches of lichen to thick curtains of foliage from overhanging trees, but the portion near the cave was as bare as an iron pot.

  If the mantis charges, I’m running for the cave no—

  “Nodens take the creature!” Melino shouted. He thrust his left arm toward the mantis with his fist clenched.

  The demon said, “Strike.” Her voice showed a total lack of emotion, just as every other time Hedia had heard her speak.

  A red flash from the ring lighted the insect and turned the surrounding foliage momentary shades of purple. The mantis scrambled forward like a bull in the arena. Melino stepped to the side, pulling Hedia with him.

  Spurning clods and tearing shreds from the vegetation, the mantis plunged blindly toward the cave. It was barely its own length into the clearing when a dog the size of a pony charged from the cave, barking with all three heads. They slammed into one another.

  The dog’s jaws clamped onto the insect’s right foreleg, its thin neck, and the middle leg on its left side. Choked growls and the crunch of chitin replaced the chorus of barking.

  A thin chain—too thin to hold the monstrous dog, Hedia would have guessed, but from its shimmer it was orichalc—tethered the middle neck to a stake at the mouth of the cave. The rush stretched it as straight as a ship’s mast.

  The mantis slashed fiercely with its forelegs, but the toothed edges had no effect on the dog’s iron gray fur. The insect’s head came off and bounced across the dirt, the jaws still snapping.

  All the limbs quickly separated from the mantis body, but the dog’s jaws continued to worry what was left. The heads pulled against one another, ripping chunks of flesh apart and hurling them considerable distances. The sound was chilling, even to ears that were familiar with the carnage of the amphitheater.

  Smaller bits spattered Hedia; then a ten-pound gobbet, shiny with clear ichor, landed at her feet. She could see muscle fibers in the white flesh, but she had no idea which part of the victim it had been.

  She felt unexpecte
d kinship with the mantis, though until a moment before it had been only a dangerous threat. If I’d run into the clearing, that would be me.

  The noisy rending continued for minutes longer. The demon was still, and Melino made no attempt to intervene.

  At last the dog finished its business and stalked stiff legged back to the cave. One, then the other, outer head glanced back at Hedia and her companions. Each time the throats growled counterpoints like three saws cutting stone.

  The dog disappeared into the cave’s interior. The mantis was spread over a wide area, mangled almost beyond recognition. Only the head and a few leg sections could be identified.

  Looking around the clear area, Hedia saw fragments of previous victims: wing cases, bits of chitin, a giant stinger ripped from its place and lying forlorn with a portion of the poison sac still attached.

  Hedia let out the breath that she had been holding unconsciously. The stench of the carnage was unfamiliar. It was no worse than an afternoon in the amphitheater, but it was different.

  She looked at Melino and said, “Well? Can’t we just go around the dog? Keep outside the chain’s stretch, I mean?”

  The demon looked at her. She would be smiling if her face ever changed, Hedia thought.

  “The cave is Zabulon’s tomb,” the demon said. “The Book is with Zabulon.”

  Hedia lifted her chin, showing that she understood the situation. She looked at Melino, expecting him to explain the next step. He said nothing; he even turned his face away to avoid meeting her eyes.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” she said. Her voice was slightly strident. That wasn’t deliberate, but she didn’t attempt to polish away the overtones. “Strike the dog blind with your ring? Or kill him?”

  Again it was the demon who spoke, saying, “Zabulon brought the dog to guard his body and to guard his Book. This one”—her eyes flicked over Melino—“cannot undo what Zabulon has done.”

  “Well, what then?” Hedia demanded. “You have some plan, so what is it?”

  “The cave was Zabulon’s workshop while he lived,” Melino said in a low voice. He seemed to be gazing up the sloping outcrop, but Hedia was certain that the magician’s mind was in a different place entirely. “It became his tomb when he died. He sits on the throne from which he worked his magic and his Book is in his lap. The dog which guarded the workshop while Zabulon lived now guards his tomb in death.”

  “And?” said Hedia. “What do we do?”

  “Demon, tell her!” Melino said.

  “The dog cannot be harmed,” the demon said. Again Hedia caught a hint of something that convinced her that the demon was not so emotionless as Melino believed—or, anyway, as Melino stated. “Yet it is still a male dog. If a female in oestrus should run into the back of the cave, then the male would follow to the length of its chain. It would mate with the female for long enough that this magician could remove the Book from Zabulon’s hands and retreat to safety with it.”

  Hedia looked from the demon to Melino. “You said ‘a female,’” she said. “But a dog, surely?”

  “I can change you into a dog,” said Melino to the forest through which they had just passed. “For long enough, anyway, and change you back.”

  He turned and cried in a fury of anger and embarrassment, “You won’t be harmed! It’s a dog, and if you’re a dog … Anyway, you won’t be harmed.”

  Hedia looked at them both: the demon impassive, the magician wringing his hands in misery. She burst out laughing.

  “I don’t know how many times I’ve been called a bitch in heat,” Hedia said, “but often enough, certainly. I suppose it’s only fair that I should become one in truth!”

  She continued to giggle as Melino and the demon prepared their spell.

  * * *

  VARUS WATCHED AS THE OARS dipped and swung back, sending swirls of bubbles through the clear water. The looms creaked in the rowlocks and water pattered as it dripped back into the sea. No one, nothing visible, was pulling the oars, but the boat slid forward.

  Lucinus stood in the stern, holding the tiller of the steering oar. He didn’t seem to be aware of what his hands gripped. He was murmuring softly, but Varus couldn’t hear the words.

  Varus didn’t want to hear the words. Lucinus was a magician; Gaius Alphenus Varus was accompanying him because he too was a magician. The thought offended him as a rational man and as a philosopher, but because of magic—and in part his own magic—he was here on a sea that could not exist.

  Varus sat amidships, just ahead of the shelter of linen cloth carried on hoops of reed. The few clouds were as sharp edged as blobs of clotted cream. The sun at zenith was redder and larger than what he was used to except at sunset on a misty day.

  Varus rose to look out over the bow; he touched the shelter with one hand, but he didn’t put his weight on the flimsy structure. Though he was careful to stay over the centerline, the boat wobbled.

  Lucinus didn’t seem to notice. If the oarsmen did—Varus smiled—their concern was as invisible as their bodies.

  There was nothing on the horizon ahead, but now that Varus was standing he saw what might have been an island far to the left. To port, he corrected himself, recalling the technical term. The black smear might have been anything, even a shadow, but surf against the shore raised a lacey white froth.

  Varus shielded his eyes with both hands, trying to make out details in what was a blur no matter how hard he strained, though perhaps a greenish blur instead of simply black. They were going to pass well wide of the island, so it didn’t matter except as an object on which he could concentrate. Concentrating allowed him to trick himself into feeling that he was doing something productive.

  Because his focus was so complete, it wasn’t until he felt the boat rock that he looked down into the water. Swimming through the swells within twenty feet of the rail was an animal with tan fur, a dog’s head, and a neck as long as a giraffe’s on a bulbous body.

  It looked back at Varus with warm brown eyes. Flippers at the front guided the creature like rudders, but broad hind flippers drove it forward in up-and-down undulations like a whale.

  Varus resisted the reflex to Do Something. There was nothing he could do except possibly overset the boat; and anyway, there was no need to do anything. The creature looked so friendly that perhaps the greatest risk was that it would swim closer and try to nuzzle Varus like a friendly puppy.

  The creature lowered its head and dived into the sea. It was visible in the clear water for over a minute, shrinking and blurring but never deviating from its arrow-straight line. Had it been a long-necked seal?

  Lucinus continued to mumble in the stern. He hadn’t noticed the creature, or at any rate he hadn’t shown that he’d noticed.

  The oars continued to dip and slant and rise. Their shafts were long and bisected the small semicircular blades. Nothing, not even shimmers in the air, indicated the oarsmen, but Varus remembered the mowing horrors that had guzzled blood from the trench.

  Will I ever see Carce again? But that was a question anyone might ask while taking a sea voyage, and it was unworthy of a philosopher anyway.

  The seal—the swimming animal, anyway—had seemed as real as the boat or as Varus himself, but the rock nearing to starboard had a misty outline and didn’t kick the sea away from its shore. A woman sat in a niche on the slope. Her lips moved as though she were singing, but Varus heard only a faint susurrus.

  The woman’s mouth opened wider. Her teeth were blades with spikes at the corners of the upper jaw. Varus turned away. Even though he wasn’t looking, the almost melody rippled like fingertips on his backbone.

  Varus wanted to ask Lucinus about the boat, about the great seal, about the siren if she was a siren, about everything that was going on. He couldn’t, because Lucinus was lost in a trance. If Varus could shake the magician out of his trance, the most likely result was that something undesirable would happen to the boat.

  Varus grinned. The question of which particular undesirab
le thing would occur was at least as worthy of his attention as whether a rape victim should choose to marry her attacker without providing a dowry or if she should have him executed. That had been one of the subjects Pandareus had set for class debate a few weeks ago.

  That world—the world in which Varus stood on the steps of the Temple of Venus the Ancestor and tried to convince his classmates of a point that he and they had no interest in—was a lifetime ago. It was farther from him now than this sea was distant from Carce and the Forum.

  The sun was lower in the sky than it had been when they set forth from Sulla’s garden. Varus wondered whether a day here was the same length as a day in Carce. He was in a kind of reverie also. It wasn’t a trance like that of Lucinus, but Varus knew that his mind was in a state as unfamiliar as this sea.

  Lucinus adjusted the tiller. Varus noticed that only because he happened to be looking sternward at the moment the magician’s hands drew the bar slightly back. Lucinus continued to mumble. His eyes were empty, though he blinked occasionally.

  They would be passing a wooded island close to port. It would be so close, in fact, that if Lucinus hadn’t adjusted their course they would have piled up on the sloping shore.

  Varus watched the island closely as they approached. There were bright flowers on the trees, some of them belonging to lesser plants that grew on the branches, and he thought he saw fruit as well.

  The sun was touching the horizon. Even if the boat could continue through the darkness, Varus wasn’t sure that Lucinus could. He was wobbling where he sat, as much supporting himself with the tiller as guiding it; his lips were barely moving. It would be risky to rouse the magician from his trance, but it might be more risky still to let him go on in this state.

  Varus ducked to pass under the shelter so that he could put a hand on Lucinus’ shoulder. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Straightening, he looked at the island again.

  It crawled with serpents. There were thousands of them, wrapped around branches and writhing on the ground. Their wedge-shaped heads were lifted, and their eyes formed glittering constellations as they turned toward him.