Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  Alphena tried to step through the gate. Lenatus blocked her with his left arm without looking at her and went through himself. She had seen him sheathe the dagger. She hadn’t seen him draw the infantry-issue sword now in his right hand.

  “All right,” Lenatus said, walking forward. Rago and Drago followed him, jostling Alphena without quite shoving her behind them.

  The Illyrians were stripped to the waist and barefoot. Their torsos showed more scars than Alphena had imagined. Their tattoos must conceal much of the scarring on their arms. They fanned out to either side of Lenatus, and at last she could enter.

  The moonlit garden looked ordinary enough. It was a working garden, providing vegetables for Sentius’ town house and the villa’s own staff.

  The pool running most of the length of the central axis was probably for irrigation rather than being a “water feature” in the sense an architect would have meant it, but it was fed by a fountain in the shape of a faun playing double pipes at the head end, near the rear stoop of the house itself. Alphena trotted toward the statue, holding the iron locket in her left hand.

  Her sword was in its scabbard, but she could draw it if it was needed. Not as quickly as Lenatus, but quickly enough.

  The stone faun lowered the pipes as Alphena approached him; water continued to spurt from the instrument into the long pool. The statue’s features were those of a boy, but the now-living eyes she looked into were ancient.

  “Greetings, Faun,” she said. “I am the Lady Alphena. I’m looking for a friend, a tall man with red hair named Corylus. Have you seen him?”

  Pandareus stood beside her with an expression of bright interest. The men of her escort were grouped around them. Mostly they faced outward, but Lenatus and the two Illyrians glared at the statue as though they wanted to lop its head off.

  I suppose they could, or at least could crack it to pieces. Tuff isn’t very strong.

  “I heard Rupa call somebody ‘Corylus’ this afternoon,” the faun said in a nasal voice. “They were on the porch, though. I couldn’t turn around and see them, but I recognized Rupa’s voice. She’s a wizard, you know?”

  “Yes,” said Alphena. “Are they still in the house?”

  “Beats me,” said the faun. “I can’t turn around, remember? Well, I couldn’t till now, I guess.”

  He turned his head toward the building. As he did so, a woman in a long white garment stepped out onto the porch. Publius Corylus walked stiffly beside her. With them were—pigmies? Monkeys?—wearing headdresses made of long feathers.

  The animals—they wore clothing and walked on two legs, but their faces weren’t human—began to chant in chirping voices. Nets of green light sprang from their folded hands and fell over Alphena and her companions.

  She felt only a tingle, but the men with her froze. Lenatus had opened his mouth, probably to call Pulto for support, but he stood stiff and silent. The faun was a statue again also, facing the pool into which his pipes trickled water.

  “Good evening, Lady Alphena,” said the woman. “My name is Rupa, and I believe the amulet you’re holding will be better in my care.”

  Smiling like a cruel goddess, she walked toward Alphena. Corylus wore no expression as he followed the wizard.

  * * *

  IN CARCE HEDIA RAN with a fast crowd, all of whom would have said that she drank as hard as any of them. In fact, though she made a point of being among the first to ask for unmixed wine as the party began warming up, she didn’t often refill her cup and she almost never became drunk.

  Hedia had found that her male companions were more at ease if they thought she was tipsy. She wanted men to be at ease, and she had no difficulty in being uninhibited without needing alcohol to stimulate her.

  She was drunk now, or at any rate she was in a state of exhilaration greater than wine or sex or anything else had brought her before. She had been drunk or exhilarated ever since Bacchus took her hand to lift her into his embrace.

  “How long have we been here in this basket?” Hedia asked lazily as her fingertips toyed with the fine golden hair of Bacchus’ chest.

  She had seen the enclosure woven from grapevines before it was hung between the pair of strange-tusked elephants, so she knew it was a basket. The interior was that of the finest bedchamber imaginable for the sort of sports proper to a bedchamber, however. The walls and floor were firm when that was desired, resilient to aid a counterthrust, and sometimes soft when Hedia lay back in exhaustion.

  At the moment, the floor was as soft as a cloud. She was both as tired as she had ever been in her life and as soaringly excited as butterflies circling to mate above a field of sunlit flowers.

  “Shall we go somewhere else?” said Bacchus, offering her a grape that he had plucked from a bunch growing from the sidewall. It was sweet and fiery and the most delicious thing Hedia had ever in her life eaten—save for the grapes she had eaten from the god’s fingers previously.

  “I’m happy here,” Hedia said. “It doesn’t matter; I just wondered.”

  She was transportingly happy. She was happier than she had thought was humanly possible. Perhaps she wasn’t human anymore; perhaps intimacy with the god had made her a god as well.…

  Bacchus combed his fingers through her hair. The tight ringlets of current Carce fashion had relaxed into soft curls that fell to her shoulders; they sparkled with gold and silver and diamonds when the god touched them.

  “We’ll visit the Waking World,” Bacchus said, rising to his feet. He drew Hedia up with no more than the touch of his fingertip on hers. “King Govinda has sent two of his vassals against a rajah who worships me alone. We will rout the attackers.”

  The wall opened, and they stepped out onto the ground. In the procession’s track, trees and vines spread with luxuriant abandon.

  “Greetings, Lord Bacchus!” cried nearby members of the throng. The gold and ivory chariot Bacchus had ridden in when Hedia first met him was following the pair of elephants, though no one rode in the car. The giant leopards ramped in their harness, pawing the air, but their roars were joyous rather than threatening.

  Bacchus handed Hedia into the car and followed her. “We go to demonstrate our godhood to unbelieving princes!” he called.

  The leopards leaped over the elephants, drawing the car after them as though it were made of gossamer. The whole procession surged forward, across the plain and then into the Waking World without a transition which Hedia noticed.

  Ampelos followed them in his similar chariot. Hedia avoided looking directly at him—it would provoke him, and Hedia saw no reason to do that—but a side-glance showed that the youth was as stony faced as his poor emotional control allowed him to be.

  Ampelos obviously had only the power of the god’s regard. To enter the Waking World, Ampelos had needed the help of magicians preparing the way: Bacchus had simply willed himself and his entourage from one world to the other.

  “Why are you attacking underlings if Govinda is your enemy?” Hedia said. She clung to the god’s side for the thrill of the contact, but her feet were as solid in the bounding chariot as they could have been on the bedrock of the Capitolium.

  The leopards slowed to a playful lope. Dikes fell and hedges parted for the cats. In the chariot’s wake, thorn bushes became olives and fruit trees draped with blooming grapevines. Laborers stared after Bacchus or capered in the train following the god.

  “When I conquered India, I planted a grapevine in the palace of Govinda’s ancestor,” Bacchus said, waving his thyrsus like a standard. “So long as that vine grows, the kings of India accept me as their suzerain. Govinda is testing the length of his chain, but not so directly that I have to hang him with it. And the grape still grows in his palace.”

  “Was it a cutting from that vine that Govinda’s delegation planted at Polymartium?” Hedia said. It was hard to remember her normal life in the Waking World, even the last scene she had witnessed there.

  “Where is Polymartium?” asked the god. That was an ans
wer of sorts.

  An army was drawn up on the plain before them. In the center were a score of elephants on whose backs rested platforms bearing three or four armed men apiece. Some were archers with bamboo bows and long arrows, but others carried pikes as long as the lances of Sarmatian horsemen. The pikemen were in better clothing and sometimes wore steel caps or body armor.

  Large bodies of cavalry flanked the elephants. The riders dressed in colorful garments, probably silk, and carried lances and curved swords like those of the noblemen Hedia had seen in Polymartium. Unlike the delegates, these men generally wore armor, often including steel helmets.

  There were thousands of cavalry, but on both wings were many thousands more infantrymen. These men were peasants, not obviously different from the gardners who planted the vine at Polymartium. Many carried tools with stone heads or spears made of bamboo cut to a sharp point, but there were so many of them.

  Hedia had seen the entire Praetorian Guard paraded in Carce, more than five thousand men under arms. This Indian army was far larger than that, many times larger than that.

  “We can’t fight so many!” Hedia said. Bacchus swept his thyrsus forward and the chariot bounded ahead.

  The throng in the god’s train followed crying, “Io Bacchus!” from a thousand throats. Hedia clung to her lover and cheered along with the others.

  The wall of elephants before them crumbled as the great beasts rose onto their hind legs and began to dance, spilling their riders and shaking off the platforms. The chariots swept through the line. Centaurs, most of them bearing riders waving thyrsi, were almost as swift. The Indian army disintegrated at contact.

  Bacchus drew his chariot in a curve to the left, leaving in its wheel tracks masses of grapevines to snake through the sere grass. “Io Bacchus!” Hedia cried, squeezing a wine-filled grape into her upturned mouth. “Io Bacchus!”

  They drove through the Indian army’s open camp, teeming with families and servants in numbers even larger than those of the men in arms. Shelters of cane and dry grass bloomed; tendrils of vine burgeoned from the ends of the poles that stretched silken tents.

  Hedia plucked grapes from the bunches growing from the chariot’s railing and hurled them to the Indians. A vine sprang from each spilled droplet when the ripe fruit burst in the hands of startled camp followers. The grapevines grew, flowered, and fruited as Bacchus rolled on.

  People were making love, and not only people: an ox coupled with a centaur, and birds tumbled from the sky to tread one another among the spreading vines. Cries of joy and triumph rang out, musical and clear.

  Bacchus wheeled the chariot to a halt on the banks of a creek. From the wan appearance of the fringing reeds it must have been nearly dry in this season, but now it foamed and bubbled with red wine.

  A section of bank crumbled. The head of a great crocodile pushed out of its summer lair, called back to life not by rains but by the arrival of the god. The crocodile opened its jaws to the stream; wine tumbled into and past them.

  Hedia fell into Bacchus’ arms. Her universe was peace and joy and love like nothing she had ever known before.

  CHAPTER XI

  Raguram’s palace was a sprawling collection of low buildings. An old woman carrying a bundle of reeds called cheerfully when she saw Bhiku and Varus approaching. The sage called back and waved.

  “That’s the third person I’ve heard greet you,” Varus said. “You’re popular here.”

  “Well, I’ve been gone for four months, you’ll recall,” Bhiku said. “Nona there had been afraid that I was dead.”

  Would anyone notice if I disappeared for months? Varus wondered. But of course they would: it would be something for the hundreds of servants at Saxa’s town house to discuss. For a few days it would replace love affairs, chariot races, and the unjust behavior or this or that other servant as the main topic of conversation.

  But after that, the interest would melt away. The only people who would really care were his immediate family and Publius Corylus. The peasants greeting Bhiku had been genuinely friendly, though none of them appeared to be intimates of his.

  The palace compound wasn’t surrounded by a wall, but a squad of soldiers waited under a palm-thatched awning near the road. Bhiku called to them. The leader, who wore a brown silk tunic and a curved sword, called back.

  “I asked Motara where the prince was,” Bhiku said to Varus in Greek. “Lord Raguram was in the stables when Motara came on duty an hour ago. He has an office there, so we’ll try it before we go into the main palace.”

  “The feel of this place is different from that of Ramsa Lal’s compound,” Varus said as he followed the sage through the bustling community. “Better. Though it’s all the same things going on and the same sort of people.”

  “I liked it,” said Bhiku. “That’s why I settled here when I decided I had traveled long enough.”

  Varus and Bhiku had mostly discussed geography during their trek to Raguram’s palace. The sage’s knowledge didn’t come from writings. Rather, over many decades he had hiked from the Island of Taprobane in the far south to the mountains rising to the heavens north of Govinda’s kingdom, and recently back here to settle with Prince Raguram.

  Bhiku chirped a laugh and added, “Whereupon our lord Govinda decided I should go to Italy because I have some small skill in magic. Well, the gods choose what we humans shall do.”

  Raguram’s stables were similar to those of Ramsa Lal, but they were thatched instead of having a tile roof. There was a barrack for the attendants on one side of the central entrance. On the other side was an office guarded by a pair of swordsmen who straightened when they saw Bhiku.

  Instead of barring the sage and his companion, one guard greeted Bhiku and gestured him into the room, then bowed.

  “Thank you for your welcome, Gol Singh,” Bhiku replied in Greek. “My friend and I need to talk with Lord Raguram.”

  The man sharpening his sword on a bench inside was too well dressed to be a steward, but only context suggested that he was the prince himself. Bhiku said in Greek, “My lord, I’ve come with a learned man from Carce who has become my friend during our travels. He is Lord Varus, and he is a powerful magician.”

  Raguram wiped the oil from his curved blade; he got quickly to his feet and sheathed it. Bowing, he said, “Greetings, my teacher. I have missed your wisdom during these past months.”

  To Varus’ surprise, the prince then bowed to him also. “And greetings, Lord Varus,” Raguram said. “A man whom my teacher calls learned is learned indeed.”

  Varus bowed in response, since that appeared to be the polite custom in this country. “Greetings, Prince Raguram,” he said. “I should warn you that your neighbor Ramsa Lal may be looking for me. Ah, with a degree of anger against me.”

  Raguram laughed. He was well into his forties, older than Ramsa Lal, but he was fit and radiated powerful good health. “I haven’t begun worrying what my neighbor may think since you left me, Teacher,” he said. “And that’s even more true since our Lord of Lords Bacchus made a procession through Lal’s northern provinces. There’s thirty villages that won’t be paying taxes for years, and the half of his troops garrisoning the region are now scattered or drunk on their backs.”

  Varus frowned, remembering what had happened at Polymartium before he stepped into the Otherworld. “What does Bacchus do?” he asked. “Does he slaughter the people he comes across?”

  “There are some deaths,” said Bhiku, “but not many.”

  “Probably not as many as snakebite kills in a year,” Raguram said with another laugh, “and only the ones who actually try to fight him and his followers. Mostly they just worship the god—or join him. A lot of the peasants go off in Bacchus’ procession. Particularly the women.”

  “Even the soldiers aren’t generally killed,” Bhiku said. “But they stop being, well, interested in soldiering. Fruit trees give so abundantly that the branches crack, and the wine is much stronger than that of ordinary grapes. To say nothi
ng of the fermented palm sap that serves for the peasants.”

  A troop of cavalry approached the stables and dismounted with a great deal of loud banter. Varus used the commotion as an opportunity to think while he framed his next question. As the troopers led their mounts in single file, he said, “Do these incursions by the god harm the land, then? Or are they just, well, entertainment?”

  “The soil is more productive,” Bhiku said. “Even for grains, though of course it needs to be replanted if you want grain instead of grapes and fruit trees.”

  “The peasants are happy,” said Raguram with a wry smile. “I don’t mind that, of course … but they’re too happy to work. Indeed, they’re generally too drunk to work. Bacchus went through two of my villages seven years ago, and my taxes from the region still aren’t up to half what they were before that happened.”

  “Bhiku,” Varus said. “Why does Govinda want to spread Bacchus’ rule to Italy? Because that’s what you and your fellows were doing at Polymartium, wasn’t it?”

  “Lord Bacchus doesn’t need a vine shoot to enter the Waking World,” said Raguram.

  “Yes,” said Bhiku. “The portal which we opened—Rupa opened, really, though I might have been able to do it with the shoot itself as a focus. That portal was to allow Ampelos into Italy—and us to return, of course, but there would have been no need for us to be in Italy had we not planted the vine.”

  He shrugged and added, “Lord Arpat and his fellows did not—could not, I think—tell me why Govinda wanted that, and I kept my distance from Rupa.”

  “But what could Govinda gain by spreading disruption to Italy?” Varus said. “His kingdom doesn’t compete with the Republic. There’s all of Parthia and the Gedrosian Desert keeping us apart.”

  “King Govinda gains nothing by harming you…,” Raguram said thoughtfully. “But he would gain if the god’s activities in Italy meant that he spent less time here. Govinda would gain very greatly if the god spent all his time in the Waking World in a place other than here.”