Out of the Waters-ARC

by David Drake

  She shrugged. "You humans worry about time," she said as she returned to where Corylus stood at the railing just forward of the mast. "I don't know when we'll reach the waking world. I don't know if we ever will."

  She slid her hand through the sleeve of his tunic and began fondling his chest. He took her wrist and firmly placed her arm at her side; she pouted and turned her back, but she didn't move away.

  Corylus looked up. There were no clouds, but the sky itself had a pale cast that suggested haze. The sun remained bright, though not hot enough to make him wish for better shade than he had available.

  "I should have thought things through before we left the beach," Corylus said. "Does, ah, your friend know how long we must fly to get back?"

  The sprite turned and glowered for an instant. Then her mood broke and she said, "I don't think he cares any more about time than I do, cousin. You humans are hard to understand."

  She walked toward the bow but threw a glance over her shoulder to show that she wasn't stalking away; he followed. "But there was nothing good about that island, not for me and certainly not for you. I'm glad you left. And--"

  She raised her eyebrow.

  "--what would you have done when another Cyclops came? Though I might have asked the Ancient to help. Even though you're not as friendly to me as you should be, cousin. Don't you think I'm pretty?"

  "At another time I'd...," Corylus said. "Well, I might find you very pretty. But not now, please, mistress."

  The Cyclops had almost crushed him to death, and in this place he wasn't sure he was alive to begin with. Is my body lying on the floor of Tardus' library, turning purple and cooling?

  He grinned at the thought. So long as he could imagine things being worse, the way things were didn't seem so bad. Any soldier could tell you that.

  "Well, I think you're being silly," the sprite said with a pout, but she wasn't really angry this time. "What else is there to do?"

  "I'm going to check the food and drink," Corylus said, removing a pin so that he could slide the wooden bolt that fastened the hatch cover. He had spoken to change the subject, but as soon as he formed the words he realized that he was very thirsty.

  The shallow hold was empty except for a tank with a spigot and a net bag holding hard, fist-sized lumps that looked like plaster. He supposed they were rolls. The tank wasn't metal, wood, or pottery of any familiar sort. It had flowed like glass, but it didn't have the slick hardness of glass when Corylus tried it with his fingertip.

  He turned the spigot and ran fluid into the mug of the same material chained to the tank. It was water and too tasteless to be really satisfying. He drained the cup regardless, then took one of the rolls back on deck.

  "Do you need something to eat?" Corylus said to the sprite. "And there's a cask of water, too."

  She brushed the thought away moodily. "I don't eat; I can't eat. And I no longer have a tree."

  She caught his glance toward the creature in the stern and laughed. "No, not the Ancient either," she said. "What a thought, cousin!"

  At least I've cheered her up, Corylus thought. He wondered what it would be like to be imprisoned for millennia--imprisoned forever, very likely--in a bead of glass with an inhuman sorcerer. Of course the sprite was inhuman also....

  He took a bite of the roll as he leaned over the railing, looking down. He started to chew, then stopped and spat out the mouthful. It tasted like stiff wax.

  "Mistress?" he said. "What is this stuff? I thought it was food."

  "It's the food that the serfs eat on shipboard," the sprite said without much interest. "The Minoi have fresh food, but that's probably all gone now. The ships were cast up many seasons ago, you know."

  "I see," said Corylus. He leaned on the railing again, eyeing the roll again. His teeth had left distinct impressions, just as they would have done in wax. He might become hungry enough to eat the stuff; but though he was very hungry, he wasn't to that point yet.

  Swells moved slowly across the face of the water, occasionally marked by flotsam. Spurts of foam suddenly flecked the surface well off to starboard.

  Corylus focused on the flickers of movement: flying fish were lifting from the sea and arrowing above it for several hundred feet, slanting slightly to one side or the other of their line in the water. Following them closely were the much larger shadows of porpoises, curving up from the surface and back. Their motion reminded Corylus of a tent maker's needle as he sewed leather panels together.

  He looked at the roll. "Mistress," he said, "we don't have fishing gear or any way to make it that I can see, but I think if we get right down on the surface ahead of those fish, some of them will fly aboard. I've seen it happen before, on regular ships."

  He grinned. "Flying fish are bony," he said, "and I don't suppose there's any way to cook them, but even fish would be better food than these rolls."

  "It doesn't sound very good to me," Coryla said, "but if that's what you want...."

  She called to the creature in the language they shared. He barked in obvious amusement.

  Corylus didn't see him change what he was doing--he simply squatted in the stern, occasionally looking over one railing or the other--but the ship slid downward as smoothly as it had risen. They were bearing to the right as well, putting them into the path of the school of fish.

  Feeling triumphant, Corylus tossed the roll he held over the side. He felt a catch as the ship's keel brushed through the top of the swells. Spray flew backward on the breeze. Droplets splashed the creature, who calmly licked his golden fur smooth again.

  A fish slapped onto the deck, wriggled, and flung itself back through the railing as Corylus tried to grab it. Almost immediately, two more fish came aboard. He hadn't replaced the hatch cover--from laziness, not foresight--but that allowed him to scoop first one, then the other catch into the hold.

  They were each the length of his forearm. Corylus was more pleased at having come up with a clever idea than he was at the prospect of eating them raw.

  "Cousin?" the sprite said. "Have you looked into the water over the stern recently?"

  Corylus grimaced to be interrupted: another fish had landed on the deck and there was one caught on top of the port sail as well.

  She didn't sound concerned--but she never sounded concerned.

  Corylus leaped past the Ancient, looking back while holding onto the inward-curving stern piece. There was only swelling water, a translucent green that darkened--

  "Take us up!" he shouted. "Higher, by Hercules!"

  The Ancient laughed like a chattering monkey. The sails slammed the air back and downward, thrusting the ship upward and making it heel onto its port side. Corylus grabbed the starboard railing with both hands and kept his grip though his feet skidded out behind him.

  The sails flapped again. The ship wasn't gaining height--the port rail barely skimmed the tops of the swells--but they had turned at almost right angles to their previous course. The golden-furred creature continued to laugh.

  It was going to let us die without saying a word!

  But then, it was already dead. Presumably nothing would change for the Ancient and Coryla if the glass amulet was in the belly of a--

  The sea exploded upward where the ship would have been if it had continued dawdling along catching flying fish. The head of the monster was ten or a dozen feet long in itself, and its gape was wider yet. The fangs were a foot long, back-slanting and pointed like spears.

  The jaws clopped shut on spray and air. If the ship hadn't twisted to the side, they would have crushed the hull.

  The monster curled to follow its prey's new course. Its head and body were a tawny bronze, with darker mottlings as though brown paint had been dripped over metal.

  The eyes, prominent and well forward in the snout, glittered with what Corylus read as anger. He knew he was projecting his fear onto a beast whose small brain likely had room only for hunger. Hunger was quite enough of a threat.

  The ship was rising at last, describing a s
low curve which would bring it back on the course which Corylus had left to go fishing. He looked at the magician in the stern. His right hand trembled toward his sword hilt.

  The anger flooded out of Corylus; he laughed also. He leaned over the railing to see the monster which had almost devoured them.

  Coryla's friend had done what he told it to do. If Corylus stabbed in the dark and cut down the wrong person, would he be angry with his sword? In the future, he would be more careful, but--

  He turned to the creature and bowed. "Thank you, Master Magician," he said. "By turning the ship instead of just rising as I ordered, you saved us from the danger I put us in by my ignorance."

  The Ancient very deliberately touched the tips of his long fingers together, then put his hands on his thighs as before. Corylus didn't know what the gesture meant, but it was clearly an acknowledgment.

  Corylus looked down at the giant fish which now was swimming near the surface. It had a fin the whole length of its back, but nothing else marred the serpentine smoothness of the several hundred feet of its body. The ship was drawing ahead, but it was clearly following.

  "Our magic drew it from the bottom," said the sprite. "The eel isn't a natural creature, you know. Well, most of what I've seen in this place you brought me to isn't natural, as we know it in the waking world."

  Corylus cleared his throat. They were a hundred feet above the water and leveling out. He thought of going higher, but--

  He smiled grimly.

  --experience had taught him to trust the magician's judgment over his own.

  "Will the eel chase us far, mistress?" he said to the sprite. His hands ached from their grip on the railing; he began to spread and clench the fingers, working circulation back into them.

  "Until it dies, I suppose," Coryla said, "or we leave its world."

  She shrugged. "Or until it catches us and you die, of course."

  "Of course," Corylus said. By squinting when he looked back along their course, he could see the eel as a long shadow rippling in the water.

  The sun was past zenith. It would go below the horizon in five or six hours.

  For now, the ship flew on.

  ***

  Water trickled down a back corner of Hedia's cell. It wasn't because the walls sweated like those of the cells under the Circus during the winter: this stream was guided by a channel. When it reached the floor, it ran down a channel cast into a tile with a beveled hole in the middle.

  A greater flow echoed hollowly in the sewer beneath the cells. Though the floor was probably nearly transparent like the rest of the building, there wasn't enough light below for Hedia to see through it.

  She walked to the grating on the corridor side. Two Servitors stood against the far wall, watching her. Each held an orichalc spear; a dagger of the same gleaming metal was thrust beneath a sash of coarse fabric.

  "I need food!" she said, not shouting but in a commanding voice. The glass men didn't move any more than she expected them to.

  She rattled the grill. It was steel, or at any rate some gray metal. The hinge pins were discolored, but there was no rust despite the damp conditions. The bars were too thick for her to cut through in less than a month even if she'd had a saw.

  Which she certainly did not. There was nothing with her in the cell except the garment which the Council of Minoi had given her after their decision. She had taken it off and used the wetted cloth to rub herself clean as soon as she had taken stock of the situation. She didn't need clothing, and she would feel much better to be rid of the filth and dried blood in which she was covered.

  "Your masters don't want me to starve to death!" Hedia said. "If you don't bring me food, that's what will happen. What will they do to you then?"

  The Servitors were as still as statues. She wasn't sure that they could understand speech anyway--or even hear.

  A steel grating of about the size of the cell's floor covered a section of the corridor roof. It stood out as ridged black against the faint blue glow of the crystal in the walls, floors, and the rest of the ceiling. Air rose through it with a low-pitched whistle, drawing cooler air along the corridor.

  A human servant shuffled down the corridor, carrying a nearly empty sack made from rope netting. He was a stooped old man with his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.

  "Good sir!" Hedia called, pressing herself against the bars. "Come here! I will make it worth your while."

  He ignored her as completely as the Servitors had done. Stopping, he rummaged in his bag and brought out a lump the size of two clenched fists. He offered it to a Servitor, who took it in his glass hand.

  The human continued onward without ever having looked toward Hedia. The Servitor crossed the corridor and thrust the doughlike lump through the bars. They were set closely, but Hedia could have reached between them.

  She didn't bother, since she knew from experience that she couldn't have overpowered a glass man. Even if she had, it wouldn't get her out of this cell.

  She grinned. It would be satisfying, though. Throttling anything would feel good right at the moment.

  Hedia bit into the lump as she walked to the back of her cell. It reminded her of overcooked octopus: bland, resilient, and tough. She chewed mechanically, wondering what it had been originally.

  The cooks of noble households in Carce prided themselves on disguising the ingredients of their dishes, fashioning "roast boar" from mackerel and "rack of lamb" from peacocks' tongues. She doubted whether even the most experienced of them could create something quite so namelessly nasty as this, however.

  Because she didn't have a cup, she held her lips to the groove in the wall and sucked the trickle which followed it. It was good water, at least.

  She resumed eating. The situation was unpleasant, but the fact that she didn't like the food wasn't close to the top of the list of things she didn't like. If the guards had been human, she might have complained; though without expecting anything to change. Railing at the Servitors was as pointless as screaming at her bronze mirror.

  A clang like a cartload of armor overturning sounded in the corridor. Holding the lump of food in one hand and her garment in the other, Hedia walked in a dignified fashion to the grilled doorway. Walking was about the only dignified thing she could do under the circumstances, and she didn't imagine that her moving faster would change anything that was going on outside her cell.

  The Servitors had leaped into action. They stood beneath the grate in the corridor ceiling, pointing their spears toward the dark bulk that had crashed down hard enough to dimple it. Had a block fallen from the top of the airshaft?

  Fingers from above thrust into the grating. It rocked, then lifted slightly. Hedia touched her own bars. If the grating was the same metal, it had to weigh five or six times as much as she did.

  A guard thrust upward, nicking the steel. His orichalc point missed the gripping fingers.

  The square grate lifted a hand's breadth higher, then shot down into the corridor. One guard dodged in time, but it struck the other squarely and slammed him back against Hedia's cell. His spear flipped into the air like a spun coin, bounced from the corridor ceiling, and landed ringing on the floor. The grating toppled to lie on the point and half the shaft.

  Lann hung within the air shaft, his broad palms pressed against opposite walls. He had lifted--and thrown--the grate with his feet. Weight alone held it on studs cast into the sides of the bottom course of crystal blocks.

  The ape's tattooed human face scanned the situation below; then he leaped onto the standing guard, catching his spear-shaft in his toes. They hit the floor together with Lann on the bottom.

  Hedia pushed the rolled-up garment between the bars with her right hand and caught the end with the other hand, lacing it back through the next opening to the left. The guard had fallen with his back against the cell. He started to get up.

  Hedia looped the garment around his glass neck and crossed the portions on her side around one another. She didn't have time to knot the
ends, but even so the fabric took the strain instead of her hands and arms. The Servitor half-rose, then recoiled into the bars with a clang almost as loud as that of the grating hitting the floor.

  Lann used his hands and feet together to fling the other Servitor against the wall of the corridor. The glass head shattered to dust; the Servitor's torso and limbs crumbled into gravel-sized chunks a moment later.

  The remaining guard jerked forward again. The steel bar flexed noticeably outward, but to Hedia's amazement the makeshift noose didn't break: the fabric had made her itch, but it was clearly stronger even than silk.

  The Servitor turned and reached through the bars. Hedia jumped back, avoiding a grip that she knew could squeeze her bones to powder. The glass hands pulled the loop open, now that she was no longer able to keep the ends tight.

  Lann grabbed the Servitor by the ankles. The glass man reached for Lann's wrists instead of holding onto the bars. Lann swung him sideways like a huge club. His head hit the opposite wall and powdered like that of his fellow guard.

  Hedia stared at the ape-man, scarcely able to believe what she had just seen happen. How strong are you? she thought. But unless he could tear apart steel bars as thick as her two thumbs together, killing the guards wouldn't change her situation.

  Lann gripped the spear of the guard he had just killed and jerked it from under the grate. He thrust the point into the door's lower hinge. Gripping the shaft in his hands and the bars with his toes, he pulled. The slender orichalc blade didn't bend, but the hinge pin snapped and the lower corner of the door twisted noticeably inward.

  I might be able to slip through, Hedia thought; though she knew that slim as she was, she wasn't really that slim. But if Lann would break the upper hinge also--

  The ape-man dropped the spear and gripped the corner of the door. With his feet braced on the crystal jamb, he used the bars' own length to lever them outward.

  "There, I can squeeze through!" Hedia said. She got down on her hands and knees.