by David Drake
“I have a good deal of experience moving men who can’t walk by themselves,” Hedia said. She chuckled and added, “You weren’t drunk, so that was a little different.”
Corylus stood. The leopards bunched their bodies, then extended so fully that their backs curved concave. They covered the waste in huge bounds. Like the wake of a racing warship, a vee of foliage spread behind the vehicle. Members of the god’s train followed to either side, each of them bringing the rock to green life as they passed.
The chariot was tight quarters for three. Corylus was even more loath to press against Hedia than he was to touch the god, but fortunately the vehicle was as solid as the Capitolium, so he didn’t sway into his companions. Furthermore, Hedia stayed as close to Bacchus as a grapevine to the olive tree planted to shade it.
“Your Lordship?” Corylus said. Or should he have said Lord Bacchus? Well, it was done now. “My friend Varus is, that is, you’ve saved his body, but his soul is fighting the Blight. Somehow, I mean. Can you…?”
“Of course my lord can!” said Hedia. “But he’ll do it in his own way, Corylus dear.”
They had reached the outskirts of the Tyla community, now scraps of wood and paper with occasional lumps that had been stone structures before the catastrophe. Bacchus reined his team to a halt and turned his attention briefly to Hedia.
“May all the gods smile on you to honor me,” Bacchus said as he kissed her.
Corylus swallowed, wondering what he should do. To his surprise, Hedia broke away from Bacchus. She took Corylus’ hand, leading him out of the chariot.
“Good hunting, dear lord!” she called back to Bacchus. “You take my heart with you!”
Bacchus smiled like the sun breaking through clouds. A second chariot pulled up beside the god’s. Ampelos, whom Corylus had met twice before, was driving it. The youth’s face was set; he didn’t look at Hedia and Corylus, nor did he seem to be watching the god.
Corylus looked into the sky where he had glimpsed the magnified figure of Varus when he first reached Govinda’s palace. The sulfurous clouds had cleared and the air smelled clean, though the volcanoes continued to belch smoke and fire on the horizon. Corylus could see neither his friend nor the blackness that had thickened about him during the course of the battle.
“Don’t worry,” said Hedia. “My lord has promised that Varus will be all right.”
She was still holding Corylus’ hand. She squeezed it and then properly laced her fingers before her.
The satyr carrying Alphena trotted up to them. The girl was riding on his shoulders and held a skin of wine. Hedia and Corylus moved toward them, but the satyr twisted, gripped Alphena under the arms, and lifted her down onto the blossoming ground. The satyr stepped back, winked at Corylus, and joined the flood of his fellow Bacchus worshipers as they followed the chariots.
Alphena was flushed. “You look healthy, Daughter,” Hedia said calmly. “Though your wardrobe has suffered since I left you.”
“There were three of them at the same time,” she mumbled in sudden embarrassment. “We needed something to distract one of them.”
Corylus remembered the trio of frogs hunching toward them in a formation as tight—accidentally, no doubt, but quite real—as that of a troop of Sarmatian cavalry. It was early in the fight to protect Varus; Alphena was still using her double-edged legionary weapon. She had thrust through her tunic to get purchase and with her left hand ripped off the fabric upward from her sword belt.
The middle frog had lifted to snatch the cloth out of the air when it fluttered overhead. That had allowed Corylus to stab through its left eye with a backhand that continued the motion that withdrew his tulwar from the right eye of the frog he had first dispatched.
He had forgotten that incident: it had happened and it was over. There had been many incidents since that one, and they were all a blur in his mind.
“Yes, I was able to watch you,” Hedia said calmly. “It was very prettily done. I’ve seen dance troupes who couldn’t have moved as gracefully as the two of you did.”
“Their lives didn’t depend on it,” Corylus said, too tired to be respectful. He reached out; Alphena handed him the wineskin without either of them needing to speak. He drank, swirling the liquid around his mouth before swallowing. It was the nectar of the gods, a balm to tissues flayed by the sulfurous air.
The chariots had shrunk to specks with the distance. Corylus could follow them only because they were the apex of the wedge of green spreading across Anti-Thule, richer and brighter than the fields that the Godspeaker had protected from the ice before the Blight came.
“Look,” said Alphena. She pointed. “Look at the sky.”
When they had first arrived at Govinda’s palace, Corylus and Hedia had not seen the semblance of Varus in the sky until Alphena had pointed him out. Now, as she spoke, Corylus saw the giant figure of Bacchus blazing with golden radiance from within. Facing the god was a shape, humanoid but featureless. Its blackness was an absence of color and an absence of life.
A centaur rode up beside Corylus. The Maenad riding on his back was blond and built like a wrestler, though she had a pretty face. Varus lay in her arms like a wooden statue. His arms were folded over his chest instead of holding on to the woman, and his legs stuck out straight as they had been when her rope of flowers had snatched him clear of the monstrous fish.
Corylus helped the Maenad lower Varus to the ground. Varus balanced upright, but Corylus suspected that his friend would topple in a strong breeze rather than adjusting his posture.
“What’s wrong with him?” the Maenad said, leaning over to wipe Varus’ hair out of his eyes.
“He’ll be all right soon,” Corylus said. She seemed a nice girl, so he tried to sound reassuring. Besides, it was true if any of them were going to be all right.
The centaur had curly black hair and an olive complexion. He looked back at Varus and let his lip curl. Without speaking he moved off at a walk, which built swiftly to a canter, carrying away the woman on his back.
Corylus put an arm around his friend’s shoulders to make sure he stayed upright. There was nothing else they could do for him. Varus felt warm and his arms had the usual firm plasticity of the muscles of a living animal.
In the sky, Bacchus pointed his thyrsus at the Blight. The animate blackness held up the Godspeaker’s tablet in response. Flashes and fireballs sizzled from the soapstone. Corylus thought—hoped—that they would glance off the god’s gleaming figure. The reality was better yet: the missiles vanished midway, like fog above a hot fire.
Bacchus laughed, a cheerful sound like the chuckle of an adult watching a boy putting on grown-up airs. The god stepped forward, ignoring the Blight’s fiery threats. Instead of thrusting, he dipped the pinecone top of his thyrsus and lightly tapped the lump that served the black humanoid for a head.
Bacchus stepped back. Corylus expected a flash or a fire, wondering what the violent destruction of the Blight would mean for Varus’ soul. He squeezed his friend’s body a little tighter.
A vine shoot poked from the filthy blackness, then another. As suddenly as if it were a green blaze, the humanoid slumped into a mound crawling with vines and flowers. It looked like gourds springing from a manure heap.
The Blight settled away from the spirit of Gaius Varus, leaving him draped in grapevines and surrounded by a profusion of blossoms. He turned his head—
And vanished. There was nothing in the sky but sunlight, and Varus stirred in Corylus’ arms.
Anti-Thule was a verdant paradise through which caroled the laughter of the God of Wine and Love.
EPILOGUE
Corylus eased back from Varus, but he kept a hand for a moment on his friend’s shoulder to make sure he was steady on his feet. “Feeling all right?” Corylus said.
Varus smiled wanly. “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” he said, “but I couldn’t sleep now if I had to. I was battling the ancestor, or anyway he’d been Govinda’s ancestor, but then he buried
me and I couldn’t get free. What happened?”
“You fought the Blight until the god Bacchus arrived to destroy it,” Corylus said. “Disperse it, perhaps. He ended it, anyway.”
Trees and flowers were growing everywhere under a bright sun. It was hard to imagine that this had been a poisoned wasteland only minutes before.
Corylus rubbed his temples. Had it only been minutes? It felt like a dream when he tried to remember what had happened. In his memory the immediate past seemed to have been painted on a sheet of glass that had then shattered. Tiny, vividly colored shards flashed before him in no particular order.
“Bacchus destroyed him?” Varus said, frowning. “Why? Why Bacchus, I mean?”
Corylus glanced at Hedia. She looked radiantly beautiful. Her gauzy clothing had received stains and tears in the ruins of Dreaming Hill where he and Alphena had met her, but those garments had been repaired or replaced since she climbed the ancient vine in Govinda’s courtyard.
“I don’t know,” Corylus said. “I think your mother may know something about that, but you should ask her.”
“Ah,” Varus said in understanding. He smiled very faintly. They were both embarrassed. “I don’t think I’ll do that, but I will thank her. It was very … unpleasant when I was surrounded by that.”
He walked to where Hedia stood, holding against her cheek a rose that she had plucked. She seemed in a reverie.
Corylus looked for Alphena and found her lying on her back on the sod. She had twisted her sword belt around so that the long tulwar lay between her legs where it wasn’t in the way, but she hadn’t taken it off.
“You need to get up,” Corylus said. “We’ve both got to move or we’ll cramp like old folk with arthritis.”
“I don’t want to move,” Alphena said, but she tried to get an elbow under her.
Corylus bent over, offering a hand. She took it and rose with a groan, only half-joking.
“Believe me, I do know how you’re feeling,” he said. “But it’s better to walk it out while we can.”
Not only had vegetation sprouted instantly across Anti-Thule; the roots of the flowers and grasses had broken the basalt and grit into rich black soil also. Trees had sprouted also. Corylus saw a pair of poplars not far away. He thought of walking to the trees and chatting with the dryads but after consideration decided that he wouldn’t.
Alphena hadn’t let go of his hand. “What do we do next?” she said. “Can we get home?”
Corylus shrugged. “I have a line on where we entered Anti-Thule, I think,” he said. “We can walk in that direction. I’m not sure what we’ll find when we get there, though. I suspect more has changed than just the landscape.”
“That changed for the better,” said Alphena. She looked at him and said, “You saved my life, Publius Corylus.”
“Yeah, I did,” Corylus said, continuing to walk. He tried to imagine having this conversation with a Batavian Scout—and chuckled. “About fifty times, I’d guess.”
He met her eyes and said, “About as many times as you saved mine, Alphena.”
Alphena looked down, but she moved closer and put her arm around his waist. “I’m not going to give you up, Corylus,” she said. “No matter what Mother says.”
“I’m not worried about what Lady Hedia says,” Corylus said. You had to have served on the frontier to understand how black a joke that was: the problem wasn’t what Hedia said but rather what she would choose to do. That was worth worrying about.
He put his arm around Alphena’s waist also. The muscles of her hip rippled smoothly as they continued to walk.
“I’m not going to give you up, either,” Corylus said. Until I die.
* * *
WHEN HEDIA APPROACHED WITH VARUS, Alphena felt Corylus start to remove the hand that lay on her buttock. Before Alphena could react, he put his hand back.
They both stiffened when they saw Hedia walking toward them, though. There was no way to avoid that.
“Now that we’ve had a little time to recover,” Hedia said as calmly as if she were choosing a dress for dinner, “I think we should return to Govinda’s palace. Do we all agree?”
“Ah,” said Corylus. “Yes, Your Ladyship. I think I could lead us in the direction of where we entered Anti-Thule, if that would be helpful?”
The question in his voice showed that he was just as doubtful as Alphena was. Even if what he said was true—and she accepted that it might be, though she had no idea of the path she’d taken on the shoulders of the capering satyr—there hadn’t been a portal on this side when Bacchus and his train had carried them to Anti-Thule.
Hedia cocked her head. “Yes,” she said, “your army training, I suppose. But I think I’d prefer that my son take us there. Varus?”
Varus looked startled. Corylus took the opportunity to drop his hand and ease slightly away from Alphena. Doing that while Hedia’s eyes were on them would just have called attention to what was already obvious.
Alphena let out a sigh of relief. At the moment she was both exhausted and giddy. She didn’t assume that Hedia would ignore the situation forever, but not having a scene now was a much better result than Alphena had expected.
“Mother,” Varus said, “I may have power, but I do not have knowledge. I don’t know how to do that.”
“Brother,” Alphena said, speaking as the words formed in her mind. “You’ve never known how to do any of the things I’ve watched you do, but you did them anyway. Do it again: take us to Govinda’s courtyard.”
Varus suddenly laughed. “Not Govinda’s anymore,” he said. “That I’m sure of.”
His face hardened, and he looked much older than the brother she had grown up with. “We shall be as we were before!” he said.
There was no feeling of motion, but the four of them stood beside the ancient grapevine. The dust from the shattered palace had settled, but the fires burning in the ruins had taken firm hold. Hedia sneezed and Alphena felt her eyes begin to water.
“By Mercury,” Varus said in reverent wonder. “I could as easily have brought us home, couldn’t I?”
“No,” said Hedia. “We needed to stop here.”
When Alphena had first come to the palace from Dreaming Hill, she had noticed—and had promptly forgotten—a little old man seated in the gazebo under the ancient grapevine. He was still there, but he bounced to his feet when he saw Varus.
“Bhiku!” said Varus, taking two long steps and embracing the old man. “How did you get here?”
“I walked, Lord Varus,” Bhiku said in Greek. “By the time I arrived, the surviving residents were fleeing, so I had no difficulty in coming inside. It seemed as good a place as any, as I told your lady mother.”
He bowed to Hedia, looking like a polite monkey.
Hedia lifted an eyebrow in minuscule agreement. She said, “Ah, there it is,” and walked to the gazebo.
Alphena glanced to see what her mother was talking about. The cape that she had taken from Lenatus lay on a stone box in the gazebo. Then she recognized the box itself.
Hedia slid the lid aside. The jewels that the demon had used to lure victims were even more dazzling in full sunlight than they had been in the jungle-shaded ruins.
Corylus had looked in the same direction, but he ignored the jewels. “This vine is dying,” he said. “It’s a thousand years old, but now it’s dying!”
“My lord Bacchus has decided to leave India,” Hedia said. “He decided that Anti-Thule was a suitable place for him to shape a home for his followers. The mundane world can get on about its business without his divine presence.”
“Mother?” Varus said. “You convinced him?”
“Ampelos, the god’s special friend, helped me convince him,” Hedia said calmly. “I had a discussion with Ampelos, and he saw the benefit of Bacchus ruling in a place where no one, myself included, would intrude on his majesty.”
Corylus touched the vine with his left fingertips. The broad leaves were withering, and even Alphena could see
that a gray glaze had started to spread over the bark.
It meant nothing to her—plants die, and there were many more grapevines—but she understood that Corylus felt otherwise about it. She moved to his side, but at the last moment she didn’t touch his arm as she had intended. This distress was a private thing in which she had no right to intrude.
“Very well,” Hedia said. “I came for these jewels, which my lord Bacchus left here on his way to conquer Anti-Thule. Publius Corylus, can you carry them back with us? Not the chest, of course, just the contents. I thought that my daughter’s cape would make a satisfactory bag for the purpose.”
Corylus touched the stone box with his right foot and judged the weight by pushing until it slid slightly. He gave Hedia a slow smile.
“I guess I could manage the chest if I had to,” Corylus said with the quiet pride of a strong man: a man, her man. “But there’s no lack of stone in Carce, so sure, I’ll bring the jewels.”
“Mother?” Alphena said. “Why? Why did you have us come here to get jewels? Father would buy you anything you wanted, and he’s not interested in jewels himself.”
She paused and thought of Saxa’s collection of curiosities, a hodgepodge of fakes mixed with real wonders. “Unless they’re ancient carved gems, I mean.”
“Quite true, Daughter,” Hedia said. She smiled like a queen, like an empress. “But the Emperor’s tastes are more catholic. These will make a fine gift for your father to give the Emperor—after dear Saxa has bought them from the finder, Corylus here, for a sum of … several millions, I think.”
“Oh,” said Alphena. “Oh!”
“Furthermore,” Hedia said, “the Emperor should be happy to grant Saxa the small favor of nominating Corylus to a questorship to make him eligible for the Senate. The young man will have the necessary property qualification from the sale of the jewels.”
She turned to Corylus. “I believe that will affect your matrimonial prospects, Publius Corylus,” she said. “And my daughter’s, I daresay.”