by David Drake
“I don’t want to be powerful!” Varus shouted. “I want to read my books and learn things and maybe someday complete a survey of the ancient religion of Carce!”
“Your wishes and my wishes do not control the Cosmos,” said the Sibyl. “While we are here, we have our parts to play in its workings.”
She raised her right hand and continued in the same cracked voice, “Under the pleasant sun—”
“—I take delight!” Varus cried, and his body staggered as he reentered it on a ridge of sand. He no longer held Zabulon’s Book.
Corylus clasped him, arm to arm, in friendship, Varus was sure, but also to catch him if he collapsed after his reverie with the Sibyl. Varus was more alert than he often was after his visions, but he appreciated his friend’s foresight and kindness.
Varus appreciated it even more when Corylus gasped and bent toward his left. Varus glanced down and saw that his friend’s side was bloody beneath a scabbed black gash.
“By Mercury!” Varus said. “We’ve got to get you to a surgeon!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Corylus said, twisting his grimace into a smile. “The Princess said that we’d be able to return to Carce, though I’ll admit that I don’t see how that’s to happen. If she was right, I’ll have Pulto look at it.”
“Yes,” said Varus, thinking about what the Sibyl had said. “The Princess told me she came to help us because you had helped her. I don’t think she’d lie.”
Pandareus joined them. He looked tired but oddly ebullient. “Master?” Varus said carefully. “You look as though you’ve gained great knowledge.”
What he really meant was, You look as though you’ve had a religious experience. That was the sort of thing silly women did when they joined barbarian cults, and the thing barbarian madmen did by baking their brains out in the Syrian desert, and a thing barbarians did generally.
It was not something that a scholar steeped in the philosophy of Greece did. To suggest otherwise was an insult that Varus cringed even to have admitted into his mind.
“I’ve gained the greatest kind of knowledge,” Pandareus said brightly. “I know now that there’s a kind of knowledge which I previously did not believe to exist!”
“Ah, master?” Varus said. “Do you mean the gods are real?”
“Oh, by Holy Wisdom, I certainly hope not!” Pandareus said. “I will have wasted my entire life if they are—though that in itself raises the question of the meaning of life, doesn’t it? But I can see that there really is something to magic, though I can’t see what it is.”
“Well, I’ve watched…,” Corylus said, then stopped in embarrassment. He looked at Varus, shrugged, and resumed, “I’ve watched Lord Varus work magic. What must have been magic. And you’ve watched him.”
Varus lifted his chin in minuscule acceptance of the statement. It didn’t matter how he felt about it. He couldn’t fault the accuracy of what his friend had said, and the truth was the truth.
“Yes,” said Pandareus, grinning wryly at the illogic of what he was saying. “But I wasn’t able to believe what I saw. Not the way I could believe in the perfection of Hector’s final words to his infant son, which I could understand even though I could never have created them.”
Pandareus beamed again like a religious convert. “Thanks to Tassk, I was able to see the mechanism that was at work,” he said. “I once watched bull tendons wound into springs for a catapult, and it was the same feeling of revelation. I didn’t become a mechanic who could build catapults then, and I’m not a magician now—but I understand the principles which allow others to act.”
Varus pressed his hands to his face to hide from the inquiring looks of his friends. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I know what happened, I know what I did, but I don’t know how I did it.”
“I wonder…,” said Corylus, thinking about the scene from the Iliad that Pandareus had used as an example. “If Homer knew what he was doing.”
“Homer was a genius,” Varus said, shocked to the core. “Homer was the greatest poet of all time!”
“Yes,” said Corylus. “He was. I’m sure he knew he was a great poet, because he could hear the other poets of his day. We probably have the best of them still—”
He looked toward Pandareus, who lifted his chin in agreement. The scholar was smiling at something that Varus didn’t see, or at least didn’t see yet.
“—and they’re at best curiosities, while Homer had genius, is genius. But I wonder if Homer knew why he was a great poet and the others weren’t, any better than you know how you just saved the world, my friend.”
Varus turned away. He understood now. He didn’t want to meet his friends’ faces while he tried to decide whether Corylus was correct.
Varus’ mother and sister were coming toward them. Both were splattered with blood. Alphena was fighting beside Corylus and the Singiri, but whatever was Hedia doing?
The answer quirked Varus’ mouth into a grim smile: whatever she thought was necessary.
He went to meet the women. Corylus and Pandareus walked to either side of him.
* * *
ALPHENA WAS ALMOST COVERED IN BLOOD. It was sticky and uncomfortable, especially when it glued her clothing to her skin and pulled out hairs when she moved—but it wasn’t her blood. She was sure of that, because if any significant portion had been from her own body she would have been dead.
“Ah, did ever a god feast as I have done today?” said First. “You are twice fortunate, little worshiper, because you have me to worship, and also because your mate is such a man of blood. Would he also worship me, do you think?”
“He’s not my mate!” Alphena said, jolted into fury. She lifted the idol, meaning for an instant to smash it against one of the worn crystal pillars.
She calmed immediately. The mental image reminded her of the number of times in the past hour when flint points had shattered against the black wood. First, uncouth and ignorant though he undeniably was, had saved her life repeatedly.
It also reminded her that slamming First against the crystal would probably just numb her hand. She grinned. First, who she already knew could listen to her think, giggled.
Aloud Alphena said, “Gaius Corylus is a sturdy example of the yeomen who guard our borders.” She was trying to be both stilted and didactic, in part because that tone infuriated her when somebody used it on her. “He’s a fine fellow in his own fashion, of course, but I am a lady of Carce. You might as well suggest that I mate with a dog.”
“You should ask your mother about that,” First said. He giggled again.
Alphena looked up, saw Hedia directly in front of her, and blushed furiously. Hedia raised an eyebrow, and the idol laughed even harder.
Alphena had to turn away. How much did she hear? she thought. And, far worse, Is it true?
“Alphena, dear?” Hedia said. She didn’t make the question more explicit.
If I asked her, she would tell me—no matter what the truth was, Alphena thought. And it doesn’t matter, not to me or to Father or to anybody else.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mother,” Alphena said formally. She suddenly realized both her hands were full.
Hedia stepped close and hugged her anyway, saying, “I must say the same.”
“Oh, I’ll get you all bloody!” Alphena said, trying to jump back.
Hedia laughed and let her go. “Well, bloodier, perhaps,” she said. “When we get back to Carce, that will be easy to cure. And of course if we don’t get back to Carce, it won’t matter.”
“You’ll go back,” First said, gesturing with one of his tiny wooden arms. “Look at the temple where your enemy was opening the sky. A friend of yours, Lady, has given you passage.”
“What friend?” Alphena said, following the gesture toward the remains of the round temple where the Etruscan priest lay. Around it and around him had formed a ball of hard, red light. It could not have been confused with the pinkish glow of the portal through which Paris had pursued the Dau
ghters and the Egg.
“Not yours, little worshiper!” the idol said sharply. “Your mother, who does not worship me yet. Though perhaps…?”
Hedia sniffed. “I said my husband would build you a temple if you got us back to Carce,” she said. “While you personally weren’t responsible for that, neither Saxa nor myself is a pettifogging clerk. And the fact that our daughter came through the fighting and is still able to walk—”
“I wasn’t touched, Mother!” Alphena said. “And First really did help me!”
“I’m sure he did, Daughter,” Hedia said. She reached out with her left hand and caressed the idol’s bloody, ugly head as though First were a puppy. “He will have a temple and an endowed priesthood in Carce.”
“And blood?” First said.
“And blood sacrifices,” Hedia agreed, but with a hard edge to her voice. “Though our acquaintances will think we’ve become barbarians, if they ever hear about it. And doves, I think, rather than larger animals. No matter how much we appreciate you, First, you are a very small god.”
She and First exchanged oddly similar smiles. The idol giggled again.
Hedia looked beyond her; Alphena glanced over her shoulder and saw that the three men—Pandareus and his students, though thinking of them in those terms now made her smile—were walking toward them. Corylus limped and his side was bloody, which she hadn’t noticed before.
“We’ll join our friends,” Hedia said. “And we’ll all go to the temple where we see the red arch, because I think that will be our way back to Carce.”
She looked toward the sea, but Alphena was sure that Hedia’s mind was much farther away than that.
“The color of the light,” Hedia said, “is the same as that of a ruby which belongs to a recent acquaintance. A friend, I would say.”
Her face shifted into its public expression. She smiled a greeting to Varus and his companions.
* * *
WE LOOK LIKE SURVIVORS OF A SHIPWRECK, Hedia thought dispassionately as she watched her companions trudge toward the circle of column bases. She was at the end. She had taken charge of their return simply by force of will, and this was where she chose to be.
The arch of red light was mostly transparent, giving jewel-bright radiance to the scene beyond: desert and the remaining escarpment, the portion between that engulfed by the two Worms. Occasionally, though, Hedia thought she glimpsed the back garden of Saxa’s town house in Carce. She might be letting her wish to go home trick her into seeing something that wasn’t there, but—her smile was cold—why not?
Walking was uncomfortable, because blowing sand had rubbed the outer skin off her legs. Hedia had borrowed a sturdy woolen tunic from her maid before going to Melino’s house at the start of this business, but she had worn a silk tunic beneath it for comfort.
When the wind rose as she walked into it, she had lifted the skirt of the outer tunic to shield her face. Her legs felt as though she had the worst sunburn of her life, and the inner tunic was reduced to a shredded train.
I’ve had my clothes ripped off in more pleasurable circumstances, she thought. Her smile was so dry that it didn’t reach her lips.
Corylus was limping more noticeably. Hedia didn’t think the boy’s wound was serious, but it was stiffening and he couldn’t have much reserve of energy after the battle with the Ethiopes. Hedia hadn’t watched the fighting—it would only have distressed her—but the flashes she had seen, and the straggling piles of horse-headed corpses, showed how fierce it had been.
Ethiope weapons were strewn along the track Hedia’s group was following. Fleeing, the creatures had passed close to the ruins where Hedia had met Paris, and where Paris remained.
“Corylus, let me help you,” Alphena said, moving close to the youth’s left side. “Here, you can lean your weight on me.”
“Lady Alphena!” Hedia said. “Please step back. Varus, please go to the aid of Publius Corylus.”
Her use of “please,” particularly the first time, was merely a tuft of silk on a sword blade. Hedia intended to be obeyed, and nobody who heard her tone could have doubted that. Alphena stepped aside without looking back, though not very far aside.
“I don’t need help,” Corylus grumbled. The weakness of his voice belied his claim.
They all paused as Varus put his friend’s arm over his shoulder, then resumed shuffling forward. Together the youths were moving no faster than they had been separately, but there was less chance that Corylus would fall on his face.
Pandareus dropped back beside Hedia. He said, “If you don’t mind, Your Ladyship?”
“So long as everyone keeps moving, Master Pandareus…,” Hedia said. By now they were within fifty feet of the temple ruins. “I’m glad of your company.”
That was a polite fiction rather than the truth, though Hedia didn’t mind the scholar’s presence. She felt that she should be concentrating on the remaining details of their return—but there were no details.
Her mind was spinning like that silly aeropile that Varus had built on the instructions of some Greek from Alexandria. Steam from heated water flowed into an egg with angled arms and squirted out, making the egg rotate pointlessly. You could get the same result with less effort by giving a pet squirrel a wheel to run in.
“I wonder if you could tell me anything about the passage we’ll be following here,” Pandareus said, gesturing with his left hand. “Master Corylus and I arrived in a very different fashion, by stepping into a vision which a dwarf who had been Vergil created in a basin.”
“I don’t even know if there is a passage,” Hedia said. “My daughter’s idol, First, tells me that there is and said that it was opened by the demon which Master Melino controlled. Well, First hinted that.”
She smiled at a memory. “Melino insisted that his demon had neither personality nor emotions,” she said. “He was wrong about both; and in the end, he appears to have been wrong in believing that she was his demon.”
Because she was with a man, Hedia reflexively glanced down at herself. “I look a fright,” she said ruefully. “My maid will be horrified.”
“I trust you’ll be able to clean up before your husband sees you, Your Ladyship,” Pandareus said mildly.
Hedia laughed cheerfully. “Saxa won’t worry,” she said. “Saxa seems to think that nothing can really hurt me.”
“Your husband is a very wise man,” Pandareus said.
Hedia stared at him in surprise. She didn’t reply, but only a lifetime of control kept her from blurting, “Are you joking?”
“I realize that Lord Saxa has foibles,” Pandareus said. He was obviously serious. “Underneath them, though, he has remarkable understanding of character, understanding of the heart, if you’ll allow me to use a term which I believe is more accurate than a more scientific one would be.”
“I think you are correct, Master Pandareus,” Hedia said after she had taken the necessary time to consider the statement. “And I thank you for an observation which had escaped me.”
The two youths and Alphena had reached the temple. The arch of light was a solid ruby wall, no longer transparent or even translucent. It seemed to burn with internal light.
The girl turned in horrified realization. “The Daughters!” she said. “Where are they? I promised I’d defend them!”
“The Daughters are with the Egg,” chirped First. “Where would you expect them to be, worshiper?”
“The Egg hatched,” said Varus in what for him was a hard voice. He was frowning at the discourtesy to his sister. “Where are the Daughters now?”
“The Egg hatched and the Phoenix fed and lived its saeclum,” First said in a singsong. “And now the Daughters again guard the Egg of the Phoenix, Lord.”
The last word was obviously a sneer.
Varus had no expression for a moment. Then he chuckled and said, “Thank you for enlightening me, little godling.”
I’m not sure he learned that sort of response from me, Hedia thought. She felt a surge of prid
e. But he might have.
“Well, aren’t you going through?” First said. “There’s no point in building me a temple here. Though I suppose having lizards sacrificed to me is better than nothing.”
“I’m going through,” said Corylus, lifting his arm clear of his friend’s shoulders. He strode into the pane of light and vanished. Alphena and then Varus stepped after him.
Hedia’s eyes fell on the body of the Etruscan priest. There were bubbles of blood at his nostrils. As she focused in surprise, she saw his remaining eyelid quiver.
The sun will finish him off before long.
She thought of Melino, and thought of the little insect man that Melino had left half-legless in the Otherworld.
“Go on through,” Hedia said to Pandareus. “I’ll follow in a moment.”
The scholar lifted his chin in acknowledgment and vanished into the light. Another man might have protested the brusque order, but Pandareus seemed to have quite a good grasp of character himself.
Hedia walked back a few paces to the spear that an Ethiope had thrown down. It was like dragging a tree, but she didn’t have far to go.
Hedia set the point against the Etruscan’s chest and tilted the shaft into an upward angle. “Since you believe in gods,” she said, “go to whatever place they choose for you.”
She leaned forward, but the weapon’s own weight did most of the work. The needle-sharp flint crunched through bone and gristle; the eyelid ceased to flutter.
Hedia, wife of Gaius Alphenus Saxa, stepped into ruby light and through, to her companions and to the Waking World.
Read on for a preview of
Air and Darkness
David Drake
Available in November 2015 by Tom Doherty Associates
A “Tor Hardcover” ISBN 978-0-7653-2081-0
Copyright © 2015 by David Drake