Out of the Waters-ARC

by David Drake

  Procron lifted the diamond skull. Lightning struck him. To Hedia everything went white, then shimmering purple. Lightning struck again, a huge bolt which boiled water from the surface of the spire and ignited several huts in the cantonments built at its base. The walls were dimly transparent from inside, making the smoky yellow flames visible.

  Procron lowered the skull toward his own head. The third lightning bolt seemed to focus the whole sky onto the Minos. Sizzling fireballs spat out like blobs ejected from the heart of Aetna.

  Nothing moved; there was no sound in all the world.

  Procron raised his empty hands to the sky. Purple fire from his spreading fingertips split the clouds, shoving them away with the violence of waves bursting through a wall of sand.

  Where Procron's human head had been, now the diamond skull rested. The mouth opened, and the Minos laughed. His voice was the thunder which had not followed the third lightning bolt. His armored form began to sink toward the floor of the fortress as the peak folded closed above him.

  Hedia was transfixed. She was only dimly aware that the ape-man beside her had pointed toward the lens--now invisible--again.

  They were back in the jungle. Lann set the lens on a section of wall which hadn't been thrown down during Procron's attack. He stepped into the cavity from which he had lifted the device.

  Hedia looked around, disappointed to return to this wilderness of destruction but thankful as well. Procron was frightening, even when viewed from a great distance through time and space. Even without the transformation she had just watched, she knew that Procron wasn't a man whom she could expect to twist to her will.

  The ape-man was straining at another large fragment of the ruin. Hedia frowned and moved a little farther away. People concentrating on a difficult task tended to forget everything else, and she didn't want to find herself under a slab of crystal because Lann didn't remember she was present.

  The distant thump/thump she heard was a flying ship; probably several of them. The Minoi had found them.

  "Lann!" she said urgently. "I hear ships coming!"

  The ape-man straightened slowly, pivoting a block too large for even him to carry. His lips were drawn back in a grimace which bared his teeth.

  There was a deeper blackness in the leaf mold over which the crystal had lain: the entrance to a tunnel. Lann had been aware of the approaching vessels long before she was.

  The ape-man gave a great cry and with a final push sent the overbalanced block toppling into the surrounding vegetation. It had been almost too much, even for him. He fell forward, sprawling across the edge of the pit he had just created.

  Hedia hesitated for a moment. Lann drew in whooping gasps that sounded as though he were being strangled, but the beating sails of the Minoi were drawing closer.

  She jumped down beside the ape-man and put her hand on his shoulder. "Lann?" she said. "I'm ready to go."

  The ape-man straightened as much as he ever did. It was like standing beside a horse: powerful, exciting, but for the moment not even marginally human.

  "Wook!" he said. He took the lens in his left hand and wormed his way through the mouth of the tunnel.

  His hand reached back to summon her, but Hedia was already poising to follow. She wore the dagger on the bandolier and dragged the orichalc spear behind her.

  She didn't know where they were going, but she knew what it would mean to be captured again. That wasn't going to happen if she could prevent it.

  ***

  The sails beat only fitfully, like the breaths of an animal in its death throes. Corylus looked back on their course, his face as blank as he would have kept it if he were on the wrong side of the Rhine and the bushes around him were rustling. He didn't see the giant eel, but by now it couldn't be far behind.

  "There's an island," the sprite called from the bow. "To the west, see?"

  A finger of stone thrust up from the horizon, casting its long shadow toward them against the glowing red water. Only a thumbnail edge of the sun was still visible.

  "Yes!" Corylus said with a rush of relief. He moved to her side, calling, "Master, steer to that island, if you please. Ah, will you, will we, be able to rise to the top?"

  It was another nearly vertical pillar, at least as tall as the first one, and again there was no beach at the base. The ship's keel was some twenty feet above the wave tops; not nearly high enough to land on the island, and probably not safe from the eel if it caught up with them either.

  The Ancient chuckled but said nothing. Corylus felt the ship turn slightly. It moved like a piece of driftwood which had been in the water so long that it could barely float.

  Corylus had tied his helmet to the base of the mast, using a cord clipped from the netting which held the bread. He slipped it on, though he didn't close the face guard yet. He lifted his sword and let it fall back, just making sure that it was free in the scabbard.

  "Are you afraid of what's on this island?" the sprite said. "Nothing lives here. Nothing for longer than you can imagine."

  Corylus lifted his chin in understanding. "I'm glad to hear that," he said.

  And he was. But they were going to land anyway, even if it meant battling wolfmen until he or all of them were dead. There was at least a chance with that, but an eel several hundred feet long was an adversary as hopeless as an avalanche was.

  If we can land, that is.

  The ship suddenly plunged at a steep angle. Corylus grabbed the railing, certain that the Ancient had lost control of the vessel. The sprite gave him a mocking smile, standing arms-akimbo on the deck. The antics of the hull didn't affect her any more than a branch feared to be shaken off a swaying tree-trunk.

  They heeled as the ship curved upward. The sails slammed convulsively, once and again. The vessel lurched like a horse on its last strength. Corylus, looking over the bow, could see land beneath him but the stern with the Ancient was a hundred feet back: much lower and over the sea.

  The keel ground on the lip of the tor. The bow tilted down and they scraped to final safety. Only the curved sternpost stuck out over air and the clashing waters.

  The sun had dimmed to a bloody smear on the horizon. The ship toppled onto its starboard side. Corylus jumped to the ground, clumsy because he hadn't been expecting what had happened.

  I expected to crash into the side of the pillar, drop into the sea, and drown. If the eel didn't get me first.

  The moon was low but already so bright that it cast black shadows now that the sun had set. Corylus surveyed the top of the pillar where they rested. It was circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, and as flat as a drill field. In the middle was a tumble of rocks which must have been brought there: nothing else marred the sandstone surface.

  The sprite stepped away from the tilted vessel with far more grace than Corylus had managed. Reassured that she was right about the island being untenanted, he walked to the cliff edge and looked down. The helmet felt awkward, so he took it off and held it in his left hand.

  The sea around this spine of rock glowed. At first Corylus thought it was only froth from waves hitting the hard stone, but as he watched, he realized that the water was covered with luminescent seaweed. Eddies formed whorls which curled several hundred yards out from the base. He had a feeling that they formed a pattern, but it was beyond him what it might be.

  The great eel rose from the shimmering foam, its jaws open. The monster was silent save for the roar of contact as the huge body slid up along the stone flank of the island. Corylus shouted and drew his sword.

  The eel lifted halfway up the sheer rock face. It wriggled for a moment as the sinuous body lashed the water for purchase, then hurled itself another thirty feet upward.

  That was all. Still twenty feet short of the top, the jaws clopped shut. The eel arched downward and struck the water sideways with a cataclysmic splash. It dived for a moment, then rose to curl sunwise around the rock with another flick of its tail.

  Corylus stepped back from the edge, sheathing his s
word. He looked critically at the ship and said, "If we could drag the stern in a little so that it wasn't visible from below, maybe the eel wouldn't be so agitated."

  The great body hit the rock again and again slid back. Corylus wasn't watching, but the splash as the eel returned to the ocean didn't seem as loud. He presumed--he hoped--that it meant that the creature was tiring and hadn't risen as high on its second attempt.

  The sprite shrugged. "I don't think anything you can do would make the eel less angry," she said. "Why? Do you suppose it can reach the top of this rock?"

  Corylus laughed--at himself, really. "I hope it can't," he said. "And I'm pretty sure that we can't move the ship until daylight regardless, so it doesn't matter. Except that it's one more thing for me to fret about, which I'm good at doing."

  The Ancient was prowling among the rocks, dropping occasionally to all fours. Is he searching for bugs? But that couldn't be, because neither he nor Coryla ate.

  The Ancient squatted and turned his face toward the rising moon. He howled with bleak misery.

  The sound chilled Corylus, though he wasn't disturbed by the splash and slapping waves as the eel tried again to mount the rock. He half-drew but released his sword as he ran to the rocks in the center of the island; the sprite was beside him.

  The Ancient cried out again. He remained oblivious of his companions when they reached him. Corylus looked at the ground to see if there was a material cause for the misery--a scorpion, some sort of trap that gripped even the being of an ancient ghost.

  The rocks had once had squared edges, though Corylus had to bend close to be sure of that after the long ages they had weathered. He couldn't tell what the structure had been. There weren't enough blocks to construct a dwelling, but a pillar or an altar could have been constructed from what was present. There might have been more originally.

  He reached down to turn a block over to see whether its protected underside was ornamented. Coryla stopped him with a hand and pursed lips.

  Oh, of course!

  Corylus backed away cautiously, then bowed low to the Ancient before turning to the ship. He hadn't eaten--hadn't wanted to eat--while it looked as though they would have to land on the waves at sunset. The rolls weren't appealing, but he was very hungry; and anyway, he had to eat to live.

  The Ancient wailed again. Corylus could only guess, but he would bet his life on that guess: the magician's golden-furred race had raised the structure from which the present ruins had crumbled.

  He tried to imagine what it would be like to stand in the Forum after the surrounding buildings had fallen and goats browsed among the scattered blocks. He couldn't really feel that, but he could come close enough to shiver at the thought.

  Before he clambered aboard the ship, he looked down into the sea again. The eel was some distance out in the weed, but it drew a serpentine curve toward the rock when Corylus reappeared. Its leap was half-hearted, though; scarcely more than lifting its wedge-shaped head from the sea.

  A fragment of verse returned to him, from a manuscript Varus had found in the library of the Raecius family which had links to Gades and Spain more generally, going back before the Second Punic War. The document was very old and had been written on leather rather than parchment; it seemed to be a geographical description written in archaic Greek.

  Here weed floats in the water and great beasts swim, bringing terror to mariners....

  Corylus mouthed the words as he remembered them. Then he climbed over the railing to get food.

  ***

  Varus heard the music of pipes and sistrums, wishbone-shaped rattles whose bronze disks clinked together on the double arms. He might be imagining the Egyptian instruments because the book from which he had read the phrase was Egyptian also.

  He thought he heard the wind sighing also; but down where he walked on a stone pavement, the air was dead still. The light was like that of the moon above a thin overcast, enough to see the path but not to make out distant shapes.

  I wish the Sibyl were here to tell me what all this means.

  Varus laughed. He said aloud, "I even more wish Corylus were here. There probably won't be anybody to attack with a sword, but I'd feel better if I knew I had a friend who could do that if needed."

  His words didn't echo, but they had a fullness which suggested he was in an enclosure rather than in the middle of a barren wilderness. That made him feel better, though as a philosopher he knew that the grave was an enclosure also.

  He could just as easily wish for a cohort of the Praetorian Guard. Though from comments he remembered, Corylus would probably protest that the Batavian auxiliaries were better combat troops.

  Varus walked on, his sandals busking against the flagstones. He grinned.

  A group of men stood to the right of the path. They wore togas and were arguing. He paused, but the men didn't seem to notice him. Beyond them he could see the forms of buildings, softened as though by thick fog. The men talked on the steps of the Aemilian Hall, but the Julian Forum which Caesar had built more than seventy years ago wasn't beside it.

  One of them turned from the group, hesitated, and stared at Varus. His features could have been the original of an ancestral death mask on the walls of Saxa's office, but it was hard to compare flesh with age-blackened wax.

  The man shrugged and stepped away. He and his companions vanished into the grayness. Varus nodded and kept on walking.

  He had learned that to keep on going was often the only choice. Well, the only choice besides lying down and waiting to die. Resignation to fate was a proper quality for a philosopher, but giving up most certainly was not. Not for a philosopher who was also a citizen of Carce, at any rate.

  The road had become a rural path. Varus walked beside a single track which had been worn by animal hooves. Not even a country cart with solid wooden wheels could navigate this hillside.

  A vista opened, this time to the left. A man struggled behind a crude plow being drawn by a single ox. The animal was small and shaggy, with a blotchy red-and-white hide and forward-curving horns. The farmer wore a simple woolen tunic and a broad leather hat with a low crown; he was barefoot. Between the field and the path was a wall piled from stones plowed out of the field in past years.

  The man looked up as Varus passed, then dropped his plow handles and lifted the brim of his hat. "Varus?" he called in accented Latin. "Gaius Varus?"

  His voice had become thin by the last syllable; the grayness was returning. Varus waved, but the fog grew thicker yet and there was nothing more to wave to.

  He trudged on. That was the only acceptable choice.

  Varus no longer had even a path to follow, so he kept to the center of the terrain that opened before him. For a time he walked through woodland, even crossing a narrow brook, but very shortly he found himself skirting the edge of a dry lake. A yellow-gray dog, scraggly and thin, ran off with its tail between its legs. It glanced back over its shoulder.

  There was a tree ahead. Someone sat at the base of it, apparently waiting. The trunk and branches curved, and the leaves dangled in long double rows from central stems. Corylus would know what it was....

  Varus continued straight. The ground was a thin layer of leaves and yellow clay over limestone, with frequent outcrops and spreading roots.

  The seated figure was the corpse of a woman with a heavy jaw, prominent brow ridges, and black hair over all her exposed skin. The right half of her body was skeletal; it had been picked as clean as if it had been boiled. Ants might have been responsible; no beak nor jaws bigger than an insect's could have done so neat a job without disarranging the bones.

  The woman's arms and torso had been tied--wrapped--to the tree with vines. Her legs, one of flesh and the other bare bones, splayed out in front of her. Between them were a few fist-sized rocks which had been broken to a crude point on one end.

  "Greeting, child from the children of my womb," the dead woman said. She chuckled.

  Her jaws worked normally though only half of them were clot
hed with flesh; Varus could see her black tongue moving; it had been sectioned lengthwise as neatly as a razor could have done. Her voice was low-pitched and rough, but not really exceptional.

  Varus swallowed. "Greetings, mistress," he said. His mouth was dry. "Should I, that is, may I release you?"

  She laughed again. "Release me from death?" she said. "Do my descendents have such power, then? I think not, though I see that you are a great wizard. You are my worthy progeny, child."

  "Mistress," said Varus, "why have you brought me here? I will do whatever you wish, if I'm able to. But I don't understand."

  "Take a piece of my jawbone, child," the corpse said. She couldn't move either arm because of the way she was bound with vines, but the tip of her half-tongue thrust to the side and licked the bare mandible. "Take the bone, for the time will come when you will need it."

  Varus had been standing at arm's length. The dead woman wasn't threatening, but the situation was too uncanny for him to approach unbidden. He stepped forward and squatted, putting his face more or less on a level with hers; he didn't know what to do next.

  "Crack it, child," she said in a testy voice. "Use the hand axe at your feet."

  "But...," Varus said.

  "Do it, boy!" the woman said. "End this business for both of us. Crack my jaw and take the splinter!"

  "Yes, mistress," Varus said; meekly, as he would have responded to Pandareus when he was being called down for an error in class.

  There were several stones, all of a size to fit in the cup of his hand. He picked one that seemed to have started as a stream-washed pebble, dense and black. It had been egg-shaped, but the small end had been flaked to a point which was irregular but surprisingly sharp.

  The dead woman opened her jaws wide. "Forgive me, mistress," Varus muttered as he moved to the side to get a better angle on the task. She chuckled.

  He struck. The axe clocked loudly, but it didn't break the heavy bone.

  "Harder, child!" the corpse said. "End this!"