Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  Hedia had caught her breath and had taken the time to consider what she might best do next. She could pick up a weapon, perhaps another spear, and join the young people. She would more likely get in the way than help, and for the time being they didn’t appear to need help.

  She thought of going to Varus, standing in the middle of the courtyard, but that would be as pointless as standing beside the statue of Marsyas in the Forum. The bronze satyr would probably provide better conversation than Varus in a trance.

  Beside the outbuilding that Govinda used as his sanctum was the arbor and ancient vine down which Hedia had climbed from the Otherworld. A little old man sat there, so still that he might have been a queerly twisted vine shoot. Hedia walked over to him.

  The old man seemed as dissociated as Varus; Hedia wasn’t sure that he was going to acknowledge her approach, but his eyes suddenly lit on her. He smiled, spoke, and then switched to Greek and said, “Greetings, mistress. My name is Bhiku.”

  “I am Hedia, wife of Senator Gaius Saxa,” she said. Her voice was raspy, though she no longer noticed the smoke or the nearby-lightning smell that had cut the insides of her nostrils like a saw. “May I ask what you’re doing here?”

  “Ah,” said Bhiku. “The mother of my friend Lord Varus. I followed when King Govinda brought him here, and when Govinda loosed the Blight onto the Earth again I decided to stay. This grapevine—”

  He gestured upward without looking away from Hedia.

  “—seems as good a companion as any to wait for the end of the world. Though I’m pleased to have you join us, the grape and I.”

  “You were at Polymartium,” Hedia said. She had always been good at remembering men, even men with whom she neither hoped nor expected to have any further contact. “You’re a magician.”

  She glanced at her daughter and Corylus. They appeared to have dispatched the grubs and now were prodding at another frog. The butts of two broken lances lay behind them, so they must have replenished their equipment.

  “In a small way,” Bhiku agreed with a nod. “Not enough even to enable me to help Lord Varus. But I can watch and marvel at his power.”

  “You think he’ll win?” said Hedia, trying to control her sudden unexpected delight. She glanced at the sky past the grapevine’s looping tendrils; she could see Varus only dimly, because the smoke smothered even the blue-white lightning.

  “No, Lady Hedia,” the old man said quietly. “No human could defeat the Blight when it has the use of the Godspeaker’s tablet. But your son has been fighting more strongly than I had believed any human could do. You must be very proud of him.”

  “Yes, of course!” Hedia snapped. She remembered very clearly her glimpse of Anti-Thule at the instant before the Eternals cleansed it, the terrified inhabitants and the crawling filth that prepared to sweep over them. “But my pride doesn’t help defeat the Blight, does it?”

  “I’m not really a philosopher, an academic, like your son,” Bhiku said, “but I have tried to live as a sage, a sophist. The study of wisdom prepares one for death, even the death of all things.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find me trembling when the time comes to die,” Hedia said grimly. She stepped onto the bench and gripped the vine with both hands. She looked for a fork in which to plant her foot. “As with Lord Varus, however, I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  Or ever, though she didn’t imagine that determination would make her immortal.

  Hedia climbed. The bark was rough on hands already tender from previous exertions, and the forks pinched her feet if she put weight on them carelessly.

  She glanced over her shoulder. She was viewing the courtyard from much higher than she had climbed. Bhiku looked upward and shaded his eyes with his hands.

  The frog was dead. More grubs, frogs, and something like an octopus were approaching. Alphena and Corylus awaited them.

  In the middle distance, a monstrous fish squirmed across the foul wasteland. Hedia couldn’t imagine what the young people hoped to accomplish against a creature the size of a ship, but they had proved surprisingly resourceful in the past.

  Hedia raised her foot for the next crotch and stepped onto solid ground instead. In front of her, Bacchus lounged on a silken couch. Ampelos lay at the other end of the same couch; their feet were crossed together. The camp of the god’s entourage spread around on all sides.

  “My dear Hedia!” Bacchus said, standing with a movement as graceful as the curve of a vine shoot.

  “How did you get here!” said Ampelos.

  Hedia looked at the youth as she took the god’s hand. “My dear lord and I have a deep connection, Master Ampelos,” she said sweetly.

  “Indeed we do,” Bacchus said. He laughed like golden bells. “And we’re going to have another right now!”

  “Yes,” said Hedia, feeling her body flow against that of the god. “And then I have a favor to ask you.”

  She knew males of Bacchus’ sort too well to try to change his mind at this moment. And besides, Hedia didn’t want to change his mind.

  First things first. There would always be time to die if she failed.

  * * *

  THE SOOTY CLOUDS WERE SCARCELY less black than the scraps of sky that they didn’t cover, and sulfur in the air burned Alphena’s throat. The baked dirt of Govinda’s courtyard had given way to basalt knobs studding soil of black sand and pebbles. The landscape was completely barren.

  A thing that might have been an octopus approached her and Corylus. It gripped projections in the ground and pulled itself along, stretching out one ten-foot tentacle after another. The body, dragging behind like a flaccid sack, kept its slit-pupiled eyes trained on the humans.

  “Keep the arms off me,” Corylus said. He stepped forward, holding his lance very near the butt.

  How can I do that? Alphena thought, but she followed at his left side.

  Corylus lowered the lance—it must stretch even his strength to hold the pole from so far behind the balance—and thrust through the creature’s left eye. Instantly the tentacle that had been reaching for a rock curved up to grasp the spearman’s thigh.

  Alphena hacked it with her sword—a curved tulwar, the second she’d used since she had dulled both edges of the sword she’d brought—then pivoted and slashed at another arm rising to grab her. Neither blow severed the arm completely, but the ends beyond her cuts dangled by tags of skin. The first dropped from Corylus’ leg, and the other only slapped her own.

  She and Corylus stepped back. She had trouble not letting her sword drag across the stony soil. That was partly the unfamiliar length, partly a comment on how tired she was.

  “What’s happening?” Corylus muttered, looking behind them. “What’s happening to the world?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think we’re in Anti-Thule. Or it’s come to us, I guess.”

  She was bent forward at the waist—they both were, to help them fill their lungs, though sulfur in the air made every breath torture. On the horizon from which the monsters were advancing was a line of volcanoes spewing fire and foul gases that dimmed the yellow-orange glow of the lava.

  Eventually the molten rock would spread to where she and Corylus stood, and behind the lava would be the Blight. She and Corylus could do nothing about either catastrophe. The monsters that had swollen and distorted in the Blight’s crater were problems on a human scale.

  Alphena giggled at the absurdity of that thought. Say better, close enough to a human scale thus far. The giant catfish stumping across the basalt would be another matter, but it wouldn’t reach them for some minutes yet.

  A grub humped over the still-twitching remains of another of its sort. “I’ll take it,” Corylus said, standing still. Alphena stepped to the left and waved her sword. Sometimes they shouted also, but the grubs seemed to be deaf.

  The creature turned toward her and gathered itself; its legs looked like inverted cones of flesh. Corylus stepped in and stabbed into the skull from where the head attached to the bo
dy. The grub relaxed, quivering like a shaken aspic.

  She and Corylus retreated slightly. They were gasping; they had been gasping from their exertions for a long time now. They had retreated well out into what had been the courtyard, and the bodies of monsters—many still moving, though dead—lay by the score in a line from the place where Corylus had killed the first frog.

  “We’re lucky they’re stupid,” Alphena said.

  Corylus responded with a cracked laugh. “I don’t think anybody watching what we’re doing would say that we were smart,” he said. “But eventually we’d run out of places to run if we tried running. Or we’d die, and that’s the worst that can happen to us here.”

  Alphena looked into the sky where they had seen the image of her brother. Occasionally she had caught a glimpse of him recently, but for the most part smoke hid him. It was as black as the clouds that the volcanoes belched and as foul as the Blight itself.

  “I think…,” Alphena said. She paused because she couldn’t give facts to support what she thought, what she felt.

  Varus is the philosopher, not me. I can say what I think.

  “I think what’s happening to the ground is connected to what’s happening in, in the sky,” she said. “Happening to my brother.”

  “I wish I could help him, then,” Corylus said. “Because it doesn’t look like keeping these beasts away is going to be enough.”

  A pair of frogs advanced side by side, bumping repeatedly in their desire to swallow the humans waiting for them. Alphena said, “I’ll take the left one.”

  That was obvious, but she and Corylus always spoke their intentions before acting. The frog-things were getting in each other’s way. The defenders could have had similar problems, but training was as much learning to coordinate as it was basic swordsmanship.

  Varus—his physical body—stood only a few feet back of Alphena and Corylus. He was as still as a heroic statue in the Forum. If we survive this, perhaps he’ll get a statue.

  “Now!” Corylus said. He and Alphena lunged forward together, both crunching the points of their swords through the thin bones of the creatures’ skulls. Corylus’ victim had opened its mouth, so he reached into the great maw; Alphena’s had not, so she stabbed between the bulging eyes.

  She and Corylus withdrew in the same practiced motion as they had thrust. Alphena had gotten almost blasé about the frog-things. She knew that attitude was dangerous, but she was too tired to have the edge of alertness that she knew was safer.

  It would be safer yet to have a cohort of Praetorians with them. She might as usefully wish for Praetorians as wish that she weren’t so exhausted.

  The great fish was very close. Corylus sheathed his curved sword. He was still using the same one; he had been right about how good Indian steel was.

  “Stay here,” he gasped to Alphena. “I’ve got an idea.”

  He staggered toward the ruins of the palace. He’s as tired as I am, Alphena thought. But you wouldn’t know it by the way he strikes.

  She was too tired to wonder what her companion was doing. She breathed deeply, watching the approach of a monster too huge for them to kill.

  * * *

  THE RUINS OF GOVINDA’S PALACE were the same as they had been when Corylus and his companions had arrived here—escaped here, as they thought at the time—from Dreaming Hill. Where the palace had been completely flattened Corylus caught glimpses of peasant dwellings that appeared unchanged also.

  The courtyard was no longer packed dirt, nor was the landscape beyond sere grasses growing on friable soil. The ground for as far as Corylus could see had become the heads of basalt columns mixed with black pebbles and grit that had weathered from the rock. It was barren except for the human constructions that sat on it like toys on a stone tabletop.

  A low hum was the sonic equivalent of the foul black sky. Corylus less heard than felt it through the soles of his feet. He supposed it might be the sound of lava being pumped to the surface where it spilled out in balls and streams of hellfire.

  Powerful blows had struck Govinda’s palace. Though the main building had not collapsed completely like one of the wings forming the shorter sides, a section had spilled out into the courtyard.

  A six-inch wooden roof beam stuck sideways from the pile of masonry. The free end was ten feet in the air, but where it slanted into the broken brickwork it was barely higher than Corylus’ chest. He pulled himself onto it at the low end and then walked up the beam as though he were crossing a stream on a fallen log.

  He was wrung out, but that was nothing new. He had been with the Scouts when they were returning after raids; anyone who couldn’t keep up would have to be left for the Sarmatians close behind.

  Corylus was ready to jump on the end of the beam if necessary, but as he had hoped, his weight was enough to rip it loose. It dropped slowly halfway, then crashed to the ground as he jumped off. Dust lifted from the pile and drifted away.

  He grabbed the outer end of the beam, lifted it high enough to take some of the weight on his right hip bone, and worked it sunwise a few steps. The dowels joining the beam to its hidden end post cracked.

  He walked toward Alphena, one step after another. His eyes were blurry and the timber’s weight was a sharp pain on his hip, hands, and arms, but he walked.

  Alphena still leaned forward behind the rampart of squirming corpses. She was too exhausted to spare the effort of watching what her companion was doing.

  Corylus hadn’t asked her to help because he hadn’t thought she had enough strength left. She would have either hurt herself or hurt him when she collapsed completely. Now—well, if he dropped this accursed beam he was pretty sure he could keep his feet out of the way.

  The fish lifted itself and fell, closer each time. It was moving faster than Corylus could, and it didn’t have much farther to go. He plodded on. It was like a forced march with full pack, but he’d done that and he would do this too.

  Varus hadn’t moved. Whatever his soul might be doing in the heavens, it wasn’t affecting his body here. Corylus didn’t know what would happen to Varus’ soul if the fish swallowed his body down or simply crushed it to a smear on the basalt, but it probably wouldn’t be good, and that would be very bad for the world.

  Alphena finally glanced around and saw Corylus. She sheathed her sword and trotted to him; it was only a few steps by now. Her eyes were alert and her face muscles no longer had the slackness of utter fatigue; these few moments of rest had allowed her to recover, at least briefly.

  They might only have a brief time anyway.

  Alphena took the beam from the other side, placing her hands just behind his. Her grip was awkward—she could use only the strength of her arms—but she and Corylus shuffled the short distance to the dead frogs and together lifted the beam high enough to drop on the topmost one. The corpses thrashed at the weight, but he flopped onto the beam to keep it from sliding off until the movements of the dead flesh ceased beyond occasional shudders.

  The fish was very close. Its pectoral fins lifted the creature up several feet and thrust it forward. Every time the body flopped down, the dense rock jolted like the deck of a skiff in a storm.

  The beam pointed up at a shallow angle, but it was the best they could do. Corylus drew his sword and hacked at the upper end, shaping the broken wood into a better point. It was a crime to treat the tulwar this way, but it was what he had. The fine steel held its edge remarkably well despite being used for a task that should have been done by an axe.

  Alphena was chopping with a curved dagger. At the other end of the beam, Corylus thought, wondering why but too focused to care.

  As the fish loomed above Corylus, he jumped onto the beam to brace it. Alphena had dug a notch in the soil behind the makeshift harpoon. She couldn’t chip the basalt, but she had worked a depression between a pair of column heads. It wasn’t much, but—

  The fish lifted, then rocked down toward Corylus. It was like watching Cleopatra’s obelisk in the Campus Martius topple t
oward him. Despite his weight, the beam skidded backward into the notch—and caught, tilting upward as the fish tried to tear itself away from the pain that was driving up through its throat and into its brain. The monster’s own mass was destroying it.

  When the beam flexed, it flung Corylus backward onto the ground. He tried to roll to his feet, but the shock had numbed the lower part of his body. He had to lift the comatose Varus and run back to save him from the fish skidding forward on inertia.

  In the convulsions of death, the fish arched up higher than before. It teetered with its spine curved like a ship’s sternpost; then its huge white belly started down.

  Alphena grasped Corylus by the shoulders and started dragging him to the side. He shouted. “Not me! Get your brother!”

  But it didn’t matter, because the death was going to crash onto all three of them and wipe them from existence.

  Golden light flooded the bleak landscape. The sky had opened and through it raced Bacchus and his entourage.

  A goat-legged satyr caught Alphena around the waist and bounded off with her; her mouth was open with shock. As a centaur ran by, the Maenad on his back caught the motionless Varus with a lasso of flowers and pulled him into her arms.

  They’re safe, Corylus thought. He smiled, realizing that a moment before he hadn’t expected to die with a smile.

  A chariot drawn by a pair of huge leopards swung to a halt beside Corylus. “There’s no time!” he shouted.

  The driver was Bacchus, golden and resplendent. He held up his thyrsus. At its touch the fish froze as though it had become a sculpture firmly locked on to its base. Hedia sprang out of the chariot and lifted Corylus with a lithe twist of her shoulders, then stepped back into the vehicle.

  Bacchus laughed. The chariot sprang forward. The body of the catfish crashed down, sending a ripple across the grim landscape.

  Corylus flexed his knees and got them under him again. The numbness was wearing off. “How did you pick me up?” he said to Hedia.

  They were curving in a broad sweep across the black plain. Behind them the bare rock bloomed and burgeoned with flowers and vines. The clouds were scattering under the weight of warm sunlight.