Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth

by David Drake

  Red light flashed around the dog and clung to his fur like a spray of water. The beast lay where he was, paws outstretched. The chain reached back to the cave mouth like a trickle of fire.

  Varus glanced at Lucinus. The magician seemed as stiff as the dog. Barely moving his lips, he said in a rasping whisper, “Quickly! The Book!” Varus pushed through the grass and quickly skirted the beast.

  Though it was as motionless as a statue, the dog gave off a definite animal odor and radiated heat. Varus had been doing some physical exercise since he and Corylus became friends, but he wasn’t fit enough to outrun the monster if the magician’s control slipped. An Olympic sprinter wouldn’t be able to do that.

  Varus grinned. He was focusing on details to avoid thinking about the chance that he would suddenly cease to exist. Given that his mind could comprehend athletes running a two-furlong course but it could not comprehend non-existence, this showed good judgment on his part.

  He took one step into the cave, then paused to let his eyes adapt. A tall man sat on a throne facing the entrance: Zabulon. His hands were open and empty in his lap.

  Varus climbed the three-step pedestal on which the throne stood, then moved his hand over Zabulon’s hands in case the Book was invisible. It has to be here.

  It wasn’t there.

  Zabulon glowered in frozen fury. Varus avoided touching him, touching the body, he supposed, but it would have been easy to imagine that Zabulon was still alive and about to breathe out again.

  Knowing that Lucinus might lose his hold on the dog at any moment, Varus stepped down from the throne and went farther back into the cave. There were apparatus whose purpose he could not guess and apparatus whose purpose was all too obvious, including a complex and horrifying rack. A tapestry hung against the cave wall without hooks or a framework, and balls the size of chickpeas danced by themselves in the air.

  There were no books nor any chest or basket that looked as though it could hold a book. I didn’t ask whether Zabulon’s Book was a scroll or a codex … but I don’t see either one.

  He heard a dog whine. The dog whine. It was breaking free of Lucinus’ control.

  Varus sprinted from the cave toward where Lucinus sat. If the dog was already loose, he was doomed. At that point he would turn and meet his fate, as he had done earlier. Until he was certain that there was no escape, however, he was going to do everything possible to survive.

  There was nothing undignified about physical effort. Vergil himself had said that brutal labor overcame all things.…

  The dog wasn’t fully awake, but his right foreleg was pawing the air. He saw Varus come out of the cave and his roan right head turned and howled mournfully toward the interloper.

  Varus ran across the barren ground. Through the green and yellow curtain, he saw Lucinus swaying. Varus crossed his forearms in front of him against the edges of the grass-blades.

  The athame dropped from Lucinus’ hand and he began to topple forward onto the pattern he had laid out. Varus leaped as though he were diving into the water. He felt the slam of the dog’s feet as his own left the ground.

  Varus fell through the grass curtain and sprawled bruisingly onto the ground. The shock of the dog crashing down at the end of its chain bounced Varus up and flipped him on his back. He lay panting, unable for a moment to turn his face away from the bright sun.

  He rolled over slowly. He was dizzy from effort and emotion. As he’d flown through the air, he had been sure that the dog was going to rend him among its pairs of jaws.

  Lucinus was already sitting up. Angrily he said, “Where is the Book? I don’t see the Book!”

  Varus carefully got to his feet. The dog was slavering on the other side of the grass, hopeful that his prey would come just a little bit closer.

  “Where is the Book, boy?” Lucinus shouted. “Didn’t you bring it?”

  “Zabulon’s Book wasn’t there, Master Lucinus,” Varus said. He was too weary to be angry. “There were no books in the cave, not on Zabulon’s lap and not anywhere else I could find. There didn’t seem to be anything deeper into the cave than I got, but I couldn’t have seen a book without more light anyway.”

  “It was there, you fool!” said Lucinus. “The world is going to end because you’re blind!”

  Varus felt something change. He still wasn’t angry, or at least he didn’t think he was, but he was very cold, and he shivered with the power that filled him.

  “Come then, little man,” Varus said. He didn’t shout, but the ground trembled. The great dog yelped and backed a step. “Come, I said.”

  “What do you mean?” said the magician. “Are you mad?”

  Varus took Lucinus by the shoulder and dragged him into the trampled area. Blue fire danced about them. The grass flattened, and the leaves of nearby trees stood stiffly away as though caught in a violent storm.

  Lucinus was wailing something, but his words were lost in the dog’s triple fury. The beast didn’t attack, but it bent so close to the humans that all three heads spattered them with slaver.

  Varus watched both through his own eyes and from a place outside himself. He felt no emotion.

  He tried to slap the dog with his open hand. He didn’t connect, but a blue flash lifted a cloud of dust from the ground and tumbled the dog end over end. It yelped pitiably and slunk to the most distant edge of the clearing.

  Varus pulled Lucinus to the mouth of the cave. It took the older man a few paces to get his feet under him so that he wasn’t being dragged, but that made no difference to Varus in his present state.

  Varus threw Lucinus into the cave. “Look, then!” he said. “There is no book!”

  The world shook with each syllable. Pieces of apparatus clinked against one another, and the stiff figure of Zabulon fell off his throne.

  Varus turned and walked away. Light sparkled about him and vegetation bent away.

  His disembodied viewpoint noted that he was heading for the shore where they had beached the boat. A great tree in their path shattered and fell to the side, carrying with it a great swath of the jungle. Winged things, some of them birds, lifted away from the coming ruin.

  The hull of the boat showed Alphena asleep in a ruined village, surrounded by corpses. Varus stood beside the vessel for a moment, then collapsed. As he sprawled on the sand, the detached viewpoint through which his soul had been watching went black.

  CHAPTER XV

  Alphena was dreaming. Beside her stood a black figure with harsh features and white eyes. His pupils were tiny. The world beyond was faint and grayed out.

  “Well?” said the figure. “What will you do now, Alphena?”

  His iron tongue clicked against teeth as white as his eyes. He was not the idol, but he was what the idol represented. He was First.

  Alphena swallowed. She didn’t say either the first thing that came into her mind: I don’t know! or the second: I want to go home! because neither was an answer to the question. She didn’t have an answer to the question.

  She looked about her. Everything but First was blurred, seemingly by distance rather than fog. The Daughters of the Mind danced about her, but they were fainter shadows among the slightly sharper scenes—which were also of the Daughters.

  Alphena viewed the women in separate moments and settings. They didn’t blur into one another, though there was no separation. When she focused on them dancing on a waste of sand dunes with no other life visible, the adjacent images—a forest so deep that the treetops shaded out the undergrowth, and the mud shore of a lake too broad to see the farther bank—faded into near transparency.

  “You are viewing the past and the present,” said First. His head turned stiffly, but his arms remained crossed on his chest. “When what you see ceases to be the future also, the world will end for living things.”

  In every scene, the Ethiopes appeared—spreading out, marching stolidly toward the dancing women. Just beyond thrusting distance of an Ethiope spear, the Daughters vanished. With them went the Egg in the c
enter of their pattern.

  “Why would it change?” Alphena said, trying to keep desperation out of her voice. “Why shouldn’t they just keep dancing?”

  “Even the Mind…,” First said in a terrible voice. “Grows tired.”

  Alphena saw the same scene in each of the hundreds of segments about her. The Daughters danced on dunes of red sand; to the west the surf broke and broke again, dozens of times in total, before it crawled up the shore. Pieces of driftwood, some of it ripped from the hulls of ships, lay here and there as half-buried monuments.

  An arch of rosy light, a portal, appeared on the next dune inland from where the women rotated about the Egg. The Etruscan priest Paris stepped through. His lips moved in an inaudible chant. Ethiopes followed him. They paced toward the women, their feet scattering sand ahead of them.

  The Daughters continued to dance. The Ethiopes reached the valley between the dunes and climbed toward them, though the sand slipped and gave under their weight. There were scores of Ethiopes already, and more continued to appear through the portal. The leaders were nearing the ridge of the dune.

  “They’re going to leave now, aren’t they?” Alphena said. The horse-headed giants had come closer to the dancers in previous images, but there was something different this time.

  “They cannot,” said First, “so they will not. The Mind is tired, so the Daughters of the Mind will die; and the world will die.”

  “They can fight!” Alphena said. The women couldn’t fight. They were naked except for belts of eggshell. “They can do something!”

  “They will die,” First repeated. “And because they die, the world will die.”

  The Ethiopes surrounded the dancers. The giants paused, then surged in like the sea reclaiming an island. They looked awkward, but Alphena had seen their strength. They stabbed and slashed. When the stone heads of their weapons rose again, they slung fresh blood in connected strings of droplets.

  Paris was cackling in triumph. On the horizon beyond him, two great crystalline worms twisted toward the dunes. Their open maws engulfed the ground itself, leaving behind them a surface as smooth as that of the jet pendant on a woman’s throat. The Ethiopes continued to hack at the bloody sand.

  “Stop it!” Alphena cried. She didn’t know if she was talking to First or to the Cosmos, but in any case the images vanished. She stood in grayness with the black figure. The dancers were only a hint of motion, and there was nothing else.

  “First,” Alphena said, forcing herself to meet the statue’s eyes of polished shell. They had a sardonic glint as they returned her gaze. “Two lizardmen fought the Ethiopes so that the Daughters could escape in your village. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Two Singiri fought the Ethiopes and died,” said First. “Why must I tell you what you watched yourself, worshiper?”

  Alphena’s hand clenched on her sword hilt, then released it. There was nothing in this limbo to use a blade on. There was no purpose for her in this place.

  “Can you take me to the Daughters?” she said. “Wherever they are!”

  “They are with us now, Alphena,” the statue said. His tongue licked his carven lips again. “If that is what you choose.”

  “I choose it!” Alphena said. “I can buy them some time. I can do something!”

  “There will be much blood,” said First with satisfaction.

  As he spoke, Alphena felt the world shifting into a grassland beneath a towering basalt knob.

  * * *

  VARUS WATCHED HIS FRIEND Corylus walking unsupported among the stars. He carried his sword bare against unguessable threats.

  Pandareus followed, looking about with wonder and delight—a sharp contrast to the set, hostile expression with which the younger man faced the empty cosmos. They seemed real enough to touch, but Varus knew that when he opened his eyes he would find that he had been dreaming.

  “Lord Varus?” Lucinus said.

  Varus started. His eyes were open. He was sprawled on the beach of Zabulon’s Isle, watching his friends in the hull of the boat that had brought him here.

  Varus sat up and at some greater length regretted having moved so quickly. His vision blurred.

  He closed his eyes and braced both palms on the coarse sand because he was afraid of toppling over if he didn’t. He seemed to have fallen flat without injury the first time, but he wasn’t sure that his luck would hold if he repeated the experience.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Lucinus said. He sounded concerned.

  “I think so,” Varus said. “I’m not going to stand up for a while, though.”

  He reopened his eyes, then turned his head carefully to look at the kneeling magician. He’s not worried about me, Varus realized. He’s frightened.

  “I was wondering if you would explain how you controlled the guardian, Your Lordship?” Lucinus said. “As one adept to another, that is? I, ah, didn’t hear you intone a spell, though of course I was distracted at the time.”

  “I don’t know what I did,” Varus said, looking away. He felt uncomfortable talking about what had happened. He was uncomfortable even thinking about what had happened. “I didn’t do anything that I remember. I’m not sure that what happened had anything to do with me.”

  “The dog was afraid of you, Lord Varus,” Lucinus said. “It was afraid of you even before you drove it back with a wave of your hand. The guardian should have feared nothing save Zabulon, and Zabulon was dead; but it feared you.”

  “I said I don’t know what happened!” Varus said. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked at the scene before him. There was a purple clamshell between his hands, no larger than his thumbnail. The shell opened slightly and thrust out two tiny legs. On them the clam ran down the beach and into the sea.

  “I see,” said Lucinus, who clearly didn’t see. He continued to watch Varus warily.

  “What do we do now?” said Varus, who was coming to himself again. It was a necessary question; and besides, it sufficed to change the subject. “Do we return to Carce?”

  He wasn’t sure it was possible to return to Carce. At best, the voyage would be as grueling as the voyage here had been. Still—if needs must, they must.

  “We have to find the Book,” Lucinus said in an attempt to sound positive. “The Book is necessary if I am to save the world. I’ve recovered enough that I can work a—”

  He paused and looked at Varus. Licking his lips, he resumed, “Ah, that is, unless you wish to carry out the exploration, Lord Varus?”

  “No,” said Varus with a jerk of his head. He tried to control his anger. “Do as you see fit.”

  Lucinus had set up another array of stones—stones and a tiny figure of orichalc—on the sand while waiting for the younger man to come around. Varus couldn’t identify the statue because reflection from the bright metal hid the details.

  Lucinus raised his athame and pointed with it as he intoned, “Let the spirits send to me—”

  Varus sank into himself. He clearly remembered slapping back the dog and dragging Lucinus into the tomb. He had watched it through his own eyes and from a disembodied viewpoint that was still his own … but he had no idea of how he had done it or even why he had decided to do it.

  Yes, of course—he’d been irritated when the magician accused him of cowardice and stupidity. If someone had asked Varus at that moment what the result of stepping within the guardian’s reach would be, though, he would have said that the dog would tear him to bits.

  Even so, he hadn’t been courting suicide. Some part of Gaius Alphenus Varus had known exactly what he was doing.

  “—truth through the membrane of black horn!” Lucinus shouted. Into the air before him lifted a spiral of sand that caught sunlight and formed itself into images:

  Melino scuttled from the cave, bent over something that he held to his chest.

  Lucinus was breathing deeply. He no longer chanted, but his athame continued its complex rhythm
as though his arm’s motion wasn’t connected with the deathly fatigue Varus saw in his eyes.

  A bitch came out of the cave, whisking her tail in wide sweeps. The three-headed guardian followed her, but she ignored its fawning attempts to attract her attention. It snubbed up at the end of its chain; the bitch continued through the curtain of grass and rubbed against Melino’s leg.

  Melino spoke a word, unheard in the vision. Hedia rose from where the bitch had stood, slender and startlingly beautiful. Her garments lay on the ground; she donned them with her usual grace.

  Melino lowered his arms to look at the thing he had brought from Zabulon’s tomb. It was a codex bound in black leather, with iron mountings.

  Lucinus gave a stifled groan; the vision collapsed into a cascade of sand without form or meaning. He wailed, “We’ve lost. That woman gave Melino the key to Zabulon’s Book. With the Book he will destroy the Earth, demon that he is. There is no hope for the world, and there is no hope for us except that we stay here on the island which Zabulon took out of space and time.”

  Varus frowned as he considered what he had just seen. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “My mother would never help destroy the world. There’s some other thing going on.”

  “You saw her, you fool!” Lucinus cried, too miserable and desperate to choose his words. “You saw her, didn’t you? She distracted the guardian and Melino has the Book!”

  Varus got to his feet. “That is bad logic,” he said, as coolly as though he were addressing another member of Pandareus’ class. “Even if the vision is to be trusted, and I don’t think we can trust the vision. We’ve seen other things in this place which indicate that it has its own laws.”

  “Your mother is a fool and you are a fool, boy!” the magician said. “Melino tricked her. It’s obvious that she was helping him!”

  Another man—his friend Corylus among them—would have reacted a different way. Varus laughed.

  “Little man,” he said, drawling his words like the most affected member of his noble circle. “Fooling me would be easy enough. Fooling my mother would be quite another thing. You would more easily trick me with a forged stanza of Sappho than you or any man would mislead my mother regarding his intentions.”