by David Drake
Then the blackness was complete, until the woman and the slender, terrifying beast stepped from it and joined him.
***
Varus froze in the flood of light. He had come down from the mountain on which he had been standing with the Sibyl. Below them in the infinite distance, his body led his companions through the dwelling of Sempronius Tardus and up to the room where three magicians held Pandareus.
But even as his soul reentered his body, a flash had numbed and blinded him. He fell backward, blinking and stunned. When he shook himself alert, he found that Pulto gripped the back of his toga and was holding him upright. The sword in Pulto's other hand searched for something to stab.
"You may loose me, Master Pulto!" Varus said, speaking sharply. He was embarrassed to have stumbled, and he knew that he had been wandering and no doubt speaking without conscious awareness.
What did I say this time? They must all think I'm crazy!
And in the back of his mind: Maybe I am crazy.
"Where's the boy?" Pulto said on a rising note. He let go of Varus; tossed him aside, very nearly. "Lenatus, where's Corylus? Where's the bloody boy?"
"He couldn't have gotten past!" Lenatus said, but as he spoke, he rushed to the doorway. "You lot! Did you see Corylus? Did the tribune go out this way?"
Varus looked over the trainer's shoulder. The hallway was choked with servants in Praetorian armor, their swords out. No one could have pushed through them quickly, even if the squad had been willing to grant passage.
The three servants whom Corylus said were at the bottom of the trouble had vanished also. Varus had seen them clearly from the Sibyl's eyrie, squatting on the floor of this room where Pandareus sat facing them. Pandareus had vanished with them.
Tardus stood behind the counterfeit troops with an expression of frightened amazement. Varus snapped to a decision.
"Lord Tardus!" he said. "Come join me, please. You men there! Make way for Senator Tardus, our host!"
I'm giving orders to a man whose home I've invaded with a forged document and a band of armed slaves, Varus thought. He'd always had an analytical mind, but recently he'd become aware of the limits of analysis. Sometimes you simply had to act, whether or not reason told you that the act was courteous, legal, or even survivable. This was one of those times.
Not that Tardus was objecting. Quite the contrary: he paused nervously until he was sure that the "Praetorians" were really making way, then bustled through to the doorway of the room where Pandareus had been held
"Varus?" Tardus said. "You're Gaius Varus, aren't you, Saxa's son?"
"Yes," said Varus, puzzled at the nervous doubt in the older man's voice. Austerely he went on, "You dined with us the night before last. And after dinner, you abducted Master Pandareus."
"That wasn't me!" Tardus said, but the denial was a prayer rather than angry disbelief. "Please, you have to believe me. I-"
He paused and looked around him. "Please, Lord Varus," he said. "Can we speak in private without these soldiers around?"
"No," said Pulto. He didn't sound angry, but there was only flat certainty in his voice. "Not when my boy's gone somewhere and I figure this fellow had something to do with sending him there."
Lenatus lifted his chin in silent agreement. Neither of the old soldiers had sheathed their swords, though at this point that was probably a matter of theater rather than real concern that they would have immediate use for the weapons.
"Sending who?" Tardus said. "I've only been allowed out myself when the Sages sent me somewhere."
Varus gestured the thought away with his left hand. "Come," he said to Tardus. "This incense makes me want to sneeze. You and I will go into the library, but we'll leave the door open so that the centurions-"
He nodded to Lenatus. He and Pulto probably wouldn't have minded him using their names, but Varus felt that the less detail he gave about the others involved in this criminal enterprise, the better. He was doomed if things went wrong, but it was at least possible that the false Praetorians might escape.
"-can watch us, but you can speak privately."
Pulto snorted; Lenatus gave Varus a wry smile and said, "As your lordship wishes."
Varus remembered what Corylus had said about his behavior in the crisis after Hedia was abducted. Soldiers approved of clear, forceful orders, even if the orders themselves weren't what they wanted to hear. Confusion and hesitancy got people killed faster even than bullheaded courage.
He led Tardus across the hall and gestured him to the only couch in the library. That was partly out of respect for a man far his senior, but still more because that resulted in Varus looking down at-scarcely at his host; say rather, looking down at his potential enemy-as they spoke.
"Witnesses watched your servants abduct Master Pandareus outside my father's house," Varus said. He let the anger he felt as he spoke the words peek through in his tone. "There would be no point in you denying it, even if we hadn't seen them and Pandareus across the hall-"
He gestured.
"-a moment ago."
"They're not my servants!" Tardus insisted with a hint of fear. "They're Sages from the Western Isles. They're magicians, and they were-"
He gestured with both hands as if trying to pull words out of the air. His expression was anguished.
"They were working me like a puppet. You must believe me!"
Varus didn't speak for a moment while he considered what Tardus had said. Is that true? And whether it's true or not, what does it mean?
"I could see and hear what was happening," Tardus said. He sat rather than reclining on the couch and he rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. "Mostly I could at least, but it was as though it was all behind a wall of glass. And what I remember seemed to be happening to someone else."
"Where did they go, the Sages?" Varus said. "And where did they take Pandareus and Corylus?"
"I don't know," Tardus said, speaking with apparent satisfaction. "So long as they were controlling me, I saw what they were doing and heard what they said, even among themselves when I wasn't present. But when you broke in on them, I was freed. Thank Venus and Mercury, I'm free again!"
The goddess from whom Carce's founder Aeneas was descended, Varus thought, and the god of luck. Good choices.
Then, smiling slightly, he thought, A pedant even now. Well, a scholar.
Tardus frowned and lowered his hands. Apparently realization that he was his own man again had freed the senator from some of his terror… which might make him less cooperative.
"Who is this Corylus?" Tardus said. "I saw Master Pandareus, of course, but I don't remember a Corylus."
"Never mind," Varus said with another dismissive flick of the hand. He had no intention of letting the older man take charge of the discussion. "How did you meet these Sages? Or how did they meet you?"
"I didn't-" Tardus said, alarmed again. He stopped and licked his lips. He was obviously willing to lie to Varus, but he seemed to be afraid to do so. "Well, perhaps I did… That is, I carried out some, ah, researches to gain knowledge about Atlantis. I didn't learn anything and thought I'd failed, but it may be that by asking in certain fashions, I lit a beacon of sorts for the Sages. They sailed here from the Western Isles and left their ship at Ostia."
He frowned and added, "Their ship flies through the air, like the ones I saw during your father's entertainment. I, ah…"
He lowered his face again and wrung his hands. In a barely audible voice, he continued, "They asked me questions. I couldn't deny them. Couldn't, no more than I could walk on air. They wanted to know who the magician was who caused the vision in the theater. I told them Pandareus did. I didn't realize it was you, Lord Varus."
Tardus gestured for words again, then locked his fingers together and stared at them. He said, "I had seen Pandareus in the Temple of Jupiter the night I was in charge of the Sibylline Books. I was asleep so I didn't see what happened, but I thought Pandareus must have been the cause. He's a great scholar, you know. Your fa
ther arrived, but he wasn't, well, wasn't a magician, and I never thought of a youth like you. So the Sages took Pandareus."
This is actually funny, Varus thought. Though he wasn't sure his father would have thought so.
He wondered what would have happened if these Sages had tried to abduct him. Varus had a considerable escort at any time he went out of the house, but these were magicians. He remembered how the Hyperborean wizard had put everyone in the Temple of Jupiter to sleep; including Tardus himself, now that Varus thought about it.
Instead of speculating about what had drawn the Sages to Tardus in the first place, Varus asked, "Why did they want Pandareus? Or me, or anyone? If they're magicians themselves."
As they clearly were, given the way they had vanished-and taken Pandareus with them.
"They're afraid of a monster named Uktena," Tardus said. "He has a connection with Carce, but I don't know what it is. I don't mean they hid it from me-I couldn't understand what I saw in their minds. Your father has the other half of the talisman that they use in their own magic, the murrhine tube. Perhaps that's what drew them."
He appeared to be getting his mental bearings again, but Varus no longer feared that the senator would be uncooperative. It seemed that imagining Saxa's son was a magician of untold power had frightened him as much as his earlier concern for the Emperor's torturers.
Tardus half-raised his arm, an orator making a gesture of emphasis. "When you showed a vision of the monster," he said, "they thought they could force you to help them. They thought Pandareus could, I mean. So they took me-forced me to take them-to Saxa's house when the teacher was present."
"Uktena?" Varus said, frowning. He knew what the monster of the vision was. The Sibyl told me… "You mean Typhon?"
Tardus shrugged with a look of irritation. "They called it Uktena," he said. "Called him Uktena; they said he used to be a man. But he's a monster, now, and they think he's about to break out of the prison they put him in."
Varus wished that Pandareus were here to discuss this with, for his wisdom. And I wish Corylus were here, because he's sensible and he makes the world around him seem solid. Even when the world clearly wasn't solid.
"What did your Sages have to do with my mother's abduction?" Varus said, attacking the problem from another angle.
"Your mother?" said Tardus in surprise. "You mean Lady Hedia? Has she disappeared also?"
He grimaced and made a gesture with both hands. "I don't know where she's gone," he said. "I don't know where the Sages went, or Pandareus or this Corylus. The others don't matter, but the Sages do."
Tardus looked up at Varus. The terror in his expression was unmistakable. This time it had nothing to do with the youth whom he thought was a magician.
"If the Sages can't control Uktena, they'll try to release him somewhere far away from their Western Isles," Tardus said. "You know what the monster will do-you showed us all the vision of what would happen if he got free."
He swallowed and said, "The Sages will release Uktena here in Carce."
***
Hedia turned. She was draped in three nets which were being dragged in slightly different directions, but she drew herself up as straight as she could. The hunters chattered excitedly to one another in-bad-Greek, so it was in that language which she said, "I am Lady Hedia, wife of Lord Gaius Alphenus Saxa, Consul of Carce. Take these cords off me at once and bring me proper clothing!"
It was a challenge to be regally disdainful while naked, limping, and covered with cuts and scratches, but Hedia had generations of noble ancestors to fall back on. She didn't expect her captors to pay attention, but at least she wasn't disgracing her family.
Somewhat to her surprise, the hunters-servants, obviously-fell silent and slacked the net ropes enough that Hedia could straighten fully. Along with tunics that left the right shoulder bare, they wore ankle-length boots of some supple material. Some of them glanced back to the taller man in fiery armor who was walking toward them.
"Are you in charge of this rabble?" Hedia said. "What do you mean by behaving in this fashion?"
The man smirked at her in a comfortable, arrogant fashion. That wasn't an unfamiliar expression on the faces of men who were seeing Hedia nude; though usually her appearance was less bedraggled.
"I am the Minos Serdain," he said. "Kalpos and I-"
He nodded toward the similarly armored man who remained in the more distant of the two ships.
"-were sent by the Council of the Minoi to bring you back when the Servitors botched the job."
Serdain made a sour face. "Using the Servitors was a bad choice but a necessary one," he said. "Even the most powerful of us couldn't have gone to the Underworld and returned… but you did, Minos Hedia. Which is why we need you."
He wasn't speaking bad Greek, she realized, but rather a very foreign Greek. Among Saxa's recent visitors had been a delegation from the ancient Greek colony of Vipasca in Lusitania. Their speech had some of the same rhythms as this Serdain's did; perhaps it was the Phoenician influence.
"Release me, then," Hedia said, sounding as haughty as she could while naked and looking-literally-like a sparrow which cats had been playing with. "When you've done that, we can discuss my terms for helping you."
She was no more a magician than she was Emperor, but if these Minoi wanted to think otherwise, then perhaps that would give her some bargaining power.
Serdain chuckled. "No, I don't think I'll do that, my dear," he said, "since I'm not a mindless automaton like the Servitors. We might not be lucky enough to get you back the next time. And you-"
His grin became suddenly cruel.
"-might not be so lucky either. The jungle can be dangerous, particularly where you were, in the ruins of Lann's keep after Procron destroyed it. Procron played with Lann's dependants, you see. Some of the results may still be alive, in which case they're worse than the creatures that nature herself created."
The ape with a human head, Hedia realized. But that- Aloud she said, "Your forehead."
She tried to point, but she couldn't raise her arm high enough to make the gesture more than a hint of her intention. "The tattoo there. What does it mean?"
"Mean?" said Serdain. He raised his free hand-the other held the flaring helmet that covered even his face behind a mesh of the same metal as the remainder of his armor. His gauntleted finger stopped just short of touching the pentagram. "It means that I'm a Minos, of course. It's a sign of the favor of Zeus. But I see-"
His eyes narrowed.
"-that you do not have the mark. Has the Council made a mistake, I wonder?"
"You'll learn what a mistake you've made if you continue to treat me with disrespect!" Hedia said.
Serdain chuckled. "No doubt, no doubt," he said in a mocking voice.
A pair of glass men-Servitors-had come from the nearer ship. They reached under the tangled nets and locked hobbles around her ankles.
The restraints appeared to be made of the same translucent substance as the Servitors themselves. To Hedia's amazement they weighed as little as silk leggings, but when she tried to kick, they were as constraining as steel. They would allow her to take only shuffling, eighteen-inch steps.
When the hobbles were in place, the servants began to remove their nets. Their task was more difficult because they seemed afraid to touch Hedia. Some of the cords were looped on her elbows and even chin.
She glared at Serdain, refusing to help or even recognize the servants. He continued to smirk. That appeared to be his normal expression.
The nets came free, one after the other in quick succession. The servants retreated in pairs and began to roll the nets without letting them touch the coarse grass. Serdain said, "Come to the ship and we'll be off, Minos Hedia. If you really are a Minos."
"Carry me," Hedia said, her arms crossed. It was a petty response, but she had noticed that the servants were afraid of her. "Since you've made it impossible for me to walk."
She could walk, of course, but she couldn't walk in
a dignified manner. There was almost nothing she could do with dignity in her present condition, but she didn't intend to stagger along like a hunched beldame in addition to the other degradations.
Instead of responding, Serdain turned his back and stalked back toward the nearer vessel. The servants followed, murmuring among themselves again.
Are they going to leave me? Hedia thought. The two Servitors gripped her by the upper arms and lifted off the ground. The walked toward the ship in perfect unison; they could have been one another's mirror images.
Hedia drew her legs up under her to kick but restrained the reflex in time to save herself a broken toe-or worse. It'd be like kicking marble statues. She held herself silent and upright as the creatures paced on.
The ship lay on its port side, canted at about a thirty degree angle. That put the railing low enough for the servants to clamber aboard easily; despite his armor, Serdain mounted without apparent difficulty. He walked to the stern and used both hands to settle the helmet back onto his head.
With the helmet in place, Serdain took an object-it looked to Hedia like a simple pebble-out of a pouch of silvery cloth hanging from a stud on his breastplate. She had noticed it but had assumed it was simply a bangle.
The Servitors stepped aboard with Hedia between them and stood her against the single mast. One held her in place while the other bent at her feet. She heard a click and found her hobble was firmly attached to the mast step.
The ship trembled, then rocked upright on its keel. The crew didn't have anything to do with it, so far as Hedia could see. The humans, the hunters who had caught her, squatted along the rails. Other than shifting slightly, presumably for balance, and talking among themselves in low voices, they didn't seem concerned or even interested.
The Servitors-two on this ship with Hedia, but four on the deck of the other vessel-stepped into the bow and didn't move after that. She might have taken them for glass decorations if she hadn't seen them previously.