by David Drake
The guards were staring at him; he still held his bare sword. He sheathed it with care, using both hands. Heavy use had warped the blade slightly as well as dulling it.
“Glabrio?” he called over his shoulder as he bathed his arms to the shoulders in the irrigation tank. He splashed water on his legs, but if he moved fast enough nobody was likely to ask him about what looked like blood. “Did a woman come by this gate to see Master Melino this morning?”
“No, sir,” Glabrio said. “But the same one that came to the front yesterday was here again today, only she didn’t have her servant this time, Admetus says. I guess she’s still in there.”
I’m afraid you guess wrong, Corylus thought, but he nodded assent and went out through the gate to jog around the house. He felt cold in the heart as he rejoined the guard detachment in front.
“Admetus, did a woman visit Master Melino this morning?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Admetus said. “He let her in himself. I guess she’s still in there, right?”
“Captain, she’s real class,” volunteered Magnus, one of the newly hired gladiators. He had a thick German accent, but that was nothing new to Corylus. “I seen her last year, watching us train with some fancy friends of hers. She keeps covered up when she comes visiting here, but her name’s Lady Hedia.”
“All right,” Corylus said. His mind put together a course of action, just as he would have done if the transport in which his patrol had crossed the Danube ripped its bottom out on a snag. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
I’ll go back to Father’s house to clean up and talk with Pandareus. Lucinus is a magician, so maybe he can help us rescue Hedia, but I need to talk with Pandareus to settle my mind, because it was my error.
He started for the street. A mule cart was rattling up on the way from town. Corylus paused to let it go by, then realized the driver was Lycos and that Pulto was the passenger with him on the seat.
Pulto levered himself heavily to the ground. Lycos waited with the reins, ostentatiously not listening to what the servant had to tell Corylus.
“Master,” Pulto said, “we got a message from Pandareus. He was with Lady Alphena up to the estate of some Aulus Collinus Ceutus. He’s still up there, but Lady Alphena went into a tomb with that priest Paris and Pandareus says they both vanished.”
He cleared his throat. “It was Ceutus sent the courier,” he added. “I don’t guess Pandareus runs to that kinda money himself. If Ceutus isn’t scared shitless about what’s going to happen for losing Lady Alphena like that, he ought to be.”
“Yes,” said Corylus. “I’ll give you a leg up.”
He made a stirrup of his hands and said, “Lycos, do you know where the Collinus estate is?”
“Yep,” said the driver. He grinned. Dear gods, he’s ugly! “Is there going to be trouble?”
Corylus hefted his servant onto the seat. As he mounted beside Pulto, he said, “I wish I thought there was going to be something for us to fight when we got there, but I doubt it.”
“Well…,” said Pulto, unwrapping the belt from around the sheathed sword he’d carried in the back of the cart. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. And I brought an extra sword for you, which looks like a good thing.”
* * *
HEDIA WAS IGNORANT of what was going on, which meant she might be about to be overwhelmed by any sort of lurking future. All she would effect by badgering Melino and the demon with questions would be to delay the chance of them finding a real solution, so she said nothing.
Her uselessness made her angry. That was perfectly foolish, but it was harmless so long as she kept her mouth shut. Which made her even more angry.
She grinned and stepped away from the argument, though she continued to listen to Melino and the demon. Hedia had never been very interested in nature, and there didn’t seem to be anything on this island other than nature, except for the guard dog, so she watched him.
The dog perked up an ear, then three ears. Two of his throats began to whine.
If I let him come over here, he’d lay a head in my lap, Hedia thought with satisfaction. She smiled at the dog, but she had no wish to go beyond idle speculation, at least until the swelling had gone down a little.
“She can’t have died!” Melino insisted. “She was in good health, and I didn’t raise the pressure on her bonds enough to really hurt her. The worst they could do is lead to gangrene, and that would have taken weeks to kill her, long after I was back safely!”
“The Princess is dead or she has been freed, master,” the demon said. Her voice was perfectly flat, but there seemed to be a smile in it. Perhaps Hedia was projecting her own cold humor onto the thing of orange fire.
“Only a magician as great as myself could have freed her,” Melino said. “Lucinus couldn’t get through the wards I placed on my dwelling, any more than I could break the defenses of his farm. Who else is there, save the Princess herself? And she is harmless as long as she’s bound!”
“She is no longer bound, master,” the demon said. “She is free or she is dead. Either way, she will not draw you back to the Waking World.”
The foliage nearby quivered, drawing Hedia’s eye. An ant wriggled through clumsily. Its six legs seemed to be controlled by six different minds as each picked its own direction.
Hedia would have giggled, but the ant was very large. The jaws alone were the length of her hand with the fingers outstretched; when they closed and opened, they gave her the impression of large shears.
“I have Zabulon’s Book!” Melino said. “There must be a path that will take me back to the Waking World. I have the power of the Book!”
The demon said nothing. In fury, Melino snarled, “Tell me how best I’m to return to the Waking World!”
He is her master, Hedia thought, but she is not his friend. The demon would answer the magician’s every question and carry out any command; but if he didn’t use the correct form of words, the demon might choose to smile at him and do nothing.
If she were my servant, I would have her whipped for dumb insolence, she added silently.
She smiled at the pair of them. Aloud she said, “My son once told me that ‘a man has as many enemies as he has slaves,’ though I think he was quoting some philosopher or another.”
“What do you mean, woman?” Melino said. Irritation had apparently worn away his embarrassment, because he looked directly at her for the first time since her interlude with the guard dog.
“She knows,” Hedia said, turning up her left hand in a gesture to the demon. “But right now, if you don’t deal with this ant—”
She gestured again.
“—we’ll have to move.”
Then she said, “These ants,” because two more ants—and now a third—were following the first through the moss-like shrubbery.
“Nodens!” Melino swore, and thrust his fist toward the insects.
“Burn!” the ring piped in the demon’s voice, and the yellow-orange light incinerated a cone of vegetation including the ants. A leg twitched as though it were trying to walk. It was still attached to a scrap of the armored body.
Melino sagged back. He wiped his brow, using the crook of his elbow because both his hands were full. Turning to the demon again, he said, “How can I return to the house I left without first dropping into the Otherworld? How, demon?”
“There are more ants,” Hedia said. “Come, let’s move away from here and discuss it where we’re not in their way.”
At least a dozen were in sight. The cleared ground might still be hot, but that didn’t appear to disconcert the insects crossing the patch.
“They are forager ants,” the demon said to her. “They are already on three sides of you, and they will close the fourth before you can escape their cordon.”
She turned to Melino and went on, “With the Book, you can go to the Waking World or to anywhere else through the Beginnings. I know of no other path, and the Beginnings is in the Otherworld.”
The
magician swore in a desperate undertone. He pointed his fist as the demon watched with what would have been a smirk in a human being. The ring said, “Burn!”
This time the magician swept his hand in an arc as the light blazed from it. The vegetation was too juicy to sustain the flames, but steam screamed under the fiery lash. Several of the higher trees wobbled when their trunks were severed, then began to topple.
Hedia stepped to the side because she thought one was coming down too close to her. It slammed into the ground and bounced slightly. Melino could have reached out and touched the trunk, but he hadn’t moved as it fell. From the look of him, he had barely enough strength to stand.
Hedia could see parts of ants at the edge of the boiling devastation. One victim was still alive, lying on its back with three legs flailing the air. The legs on the other side had been seared off.
More ants were approaching, their antennae twitching and their saw-toothed jaws scissoring closed and open. Hedia looked over her shoulder in a wild surmise.
“They’re all around us!” she said.
“If you do not leave here,” the demon volunteered coolly, “you will die. I am not alive, so it does not matter to me.”
Melino moaned wordlessly. He held the Book in his right hand and used his left thumb to throw it open. Hedia expected him to read out a spell. Instead the Book itself boomed an inhuman word in a groaning bass voice.
Hedia fell out of the world just as the jaws of an ant clamped shut on where her right ankle had been.
* * *
VARUS HAD AWAKENED when the automaton made its most recent circuit, striding massively past, twenty feet up the slope from where the humans lay. The creature’s sandals struck sparks from the rocks: their soles must be iron, not bronze. The huge spear—it was longer than a ship’s mast when viewed from this close—might be iron also.
Varus smiled. If he had been here with Pandareus or Corylus, he would have mentioned his observation. Lucinus wouldn’t care.
Very few people seemed to care about knowledge for its own sake, and perhaps that majority was right. Regardless, if Varus didn’t launch the boat before the automaton returned, his knowledge would die with him. He might be able to dodge the iron-shod feet, but the boat would not. Starving on this wasteland would be a worse fate than being pulped into its black rocks.
It might be a worse fate. At any rate, he didn’t intend to try either alternative.
Although Varus planned to get up immediately and to force Lucinus to get up, it was so hard to move that he found himself lying in a grim reverie when the vibration of the automaton’s feet reached him again through the ground. The creature was still out of sight; but it was coming, and it would arrive soon.
Varus rose as carefully as he could. The irregular lava was poor footing at best, and if a block turned under his weight he would scrape an ankle if he didn’t sprain it.
He lifted Lucinus by the shoulders. The magician seemed to awaken, but he remained a weight as dead as a hog’s carcase. By the time they reached the shore, Lucinus was able to stand upright while Varus muscled the boat back into the sea. He couldn’t have gotten it over the stones with Lucinus’ weight already aboard.
Varus collapsed with his head in the boat when it started to bob freely, but his torso and legs were still in the water. The eastern sky was bright. When he lifted his head from the gunwale, he saw the sun was already painting the upper slope of the island. Bronze flashed bright, and the helmet of the automaton appeared above the black rock.
“Lucinus!” Varus said. The magician was facing Varus, but there was no recognition in his eyes.
The automaton tramped inexorably toward them; most of its great body was now visible. On its breastplate was molded the fall of Phaethon, blasted from his father’s sun chariot before the boy could scorch the world to a cinder.
Varus saw a variety of bad choices, but unquestionably the worst would be not to act at all. He splashed back onto the dry rock, seized Lucinus by the arm, and staggered toward the boat with him. It wobbled outward as they approached.
With a final desperate grab, Varus caught the gunwale in his left hand. The water was already at his lower chest. He half-lifted, half-shoved Lucinus into the belly of the boat, then stood gasping, unable to follow the magician.
The automaton strode along the shore, rattling thunder with each slow pace. Its head creaked around and its empty eyes stared down at Varus.
He dragged himself over the side. Lucinus was already at the steering oar, mumbling a spell.
Varus lay gasping, looking back at the island because his head was turned in that direction. The automaton had halted. It watched the boat for a moment, then lifted its spear in what might have been a salute.
The automaton turned and began climbing back toward the peak where it had lain as a fallen statue when the vessel approached on the previous evening. It walked directly up the slope instead of reversing its winding progress to the shore. Varus continued to watch until the island sank below the eastern horizon.
CHAPTER XII
Alphena hit the ground hard enough to bruise, but the village clearing was no farther beneath her than the bottom of the basin would have been if it were stone and not magic. She rolled to her feet, drawing her sword with only a faint ring of steel against the lip of the scabbard.
Alphena felt as though she were in the steam room of a bathhouse. It had rained recently, perhaps within the past few minutes. Water stood in pools on the bare ground, but it was evaporating quickly in the heat.
She looked around, then up, hoping to see the opening through which she’d fallen. Just as the door by which she entered the Child’s chamber had vanished as soon as she was through it, so there was nothing now beyond the huts save trees and the vines hanging from them.
Something chattered angrily from a tree, but she couldn’t see it. The creature could have been anything—bird or monkey or for that matter a frog. In any case, it probably wasn’t dangerous, or at least immediately dangerous.
Alphena was sweating already. The stone chamber had been cool and dry. She hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time, but the contrast with this muggy, muddy jungle was overpowering. Of course the temperature and humidity weren’t the things she should be worrying about.
There were twenty or so huts, arranged in a rough circle. They all had roofs of leaf thatch on pole frames that were walled with wicker for about three-quarters of the way up. The eaves were so low that anyone taller than Alphena would have to duck to go through the doorways. Most had originally had doors of wicker, but many of those had been wrenched off.
The huts were beginning to fall in, though that might happen in a short time in these conditions. The corpses—Nubians, apparently, unless the scraps of skin still clinging to the bones had darkened after death—lay all about. They had variously been stabbed or battered to death; a broken flint spear blade was wedged in the spine of one.
Alphena had never been good at counting. There didn’t seem to be much point in knowing the exact number anyway. There were several, maybe more, for each hut. From the way bodies were disarranged, wild animals had been feasting until the flesh became too rotten for anything but the blowflies.
The jungle already bursting through the stockade walls stank of rot also, a heavy vegetable odor that Alphena found more oppressive than that of the human corpses this long after the slaughter. I may have to spend the rest of my life in this stinking place, Alphena thought.
In the center of the clearing was the idol she’d noticed when she stood beside the Child, looking down on the basin’s visions. She walked over to it, her sword out. She was ready for any excuse to use it.
Killing something wouldn’t help get her home, but at least then she could feel that she’d stopped being a marker on somebody’s board game. I wish I’d killed that Child when I saw him!
The idol was of naturally black wood. It was about two feet tall, but its tapering base had been forced into a crack on the top of a block of fi
eldstone. That base allowed the idol to glare back at Alphena eye to eye.
It was even uglier close up than she had thought while looking from above at the vision. Branches springing nearly straight up from the trunk formed its arms. On their ends were crudely carved hands.
The almond-shaped eyes were inlaid with clamshells drilled to indicate the pupils. The nose was as flat as a pig’s muzzle. From the snarling mouth protruded a tongue that had been a knife blade of hammered iron. The blood that had been smeared on the lips and mouth had dried black and was scaling off.
When she looked at the image in the basin, Alphena had seen skulls ranged around the idol—two human and two of large crocodiles. The bones had been carefully cleaned, either by boiling or possibly by being set on an anthill so that the tiny insect jaws could pick off the flesh and sinews.
With the skulls were now the heads of a pair of lizardmen like those in Veturius’ compound. These had not been properly cleaned. They sat in pools of their own liquescent decay, and their pebbled skin was slumping away.
Did the lizardmen slaughter the villagers? But surely they wouldn’t have left their own dead to rot here if—
A man with the head of a horse stepped out of one of the less-damaged huts, tearing off half the roof instead of bending low enough to go through the doorway. He was seven feet tall and naked except for the sash over his right shoulder. From that hung a stone axe and two flint-bladed knives.
His spear was longer than he was tall. Its shaft was a three-inch sapling that still had the bark on.
The Horsehead laughed like sewage bubbling. “The Master was right to leave me in this wet hell!” he said in guttural Greek. Alphena could barely make out the words. “Now I will kill you and rejoin my herd.”
He stalked toward Alphena with the spear raised to thrust like a harpoon. His feet were split into two fleshy toes.
Alphena instinctively stepped to the side to put the idol between her and the Horsehead. She immediately recognized her mistake: the length of the Horsehead’s spear and his great reach meant he could easily drive her back, but it would prevent her from closing with him to use her sword.