Out of the Waters-ARC

by David Drake

  Spreading, swelling, the shaman moved outward. He was no longer Uktena, and she wasn't sure that he was her friend or even Mankind's friend.

  He's our defender, though. He's putting himself between us and our enemy.

  Purple light ripped from the Minos, lashing the shaman and the sea. Water boiled away in a thunderclap, but the huge bulk continued to advance. The protecting white fire partially concealed the creature within, but Alphena could see enough of its writhing immensity to feel sick.

  Clouds filled the eastern sky, coalescing out of clear air as suddenly as vinegar curdles milk. Black and lowering, they rushed toward the shore to meet the cloudbank that hung above the land. The storm broke in full earnest: rain and howling winds bent the tops of pine trees and sent a hut flying out to sea like a huge bird.

  The thing that had been the shaman engulfed Procron despite the unrelenting sheets of purple flame spitting from the diamond skull. The monster had grown to the size of the island from which it came.

  The white glow had dimmed so that Alphena could see clearly what Uktena had become. Some of the heads were of beasts she had never seen before, and some could only be demons.

  Tentacles spread toward the Atlantean. Hissing purple light burned them away, but they regrew and redoubled like the Hydra's heads.

  Alphena fell to her knees. Windblown rain slashed her, washing away her tears. Like the thousand arms of what had been her friend, more tears sprang from her eyes.

  Inexorably, the monster's bulk forced Procron back. The painful purple light didn't slack, but its punishment no longer slowed the advance of what had been the shaman. Where the flame now touched the creature, flesh bubbled and swelled and changed still more horribly, but it continued to crawl on.

  Alphena unlaced her heavy sandals. They would help to wading depth, but she couldn't swim in them. She would be ready....

  Procron burst upward from the encirclement. He began to accelerate like a dropping stone. A hundred tentacles rose and snatched him down. They stripped him of his armor the way a cook shells a crayfish, flinging the gleaming bits away. Even under a storm-covered sky, the fragments shone like the tears of the sun.

  The fight is over.

  Procron suddenly blazed with shimmering violet energy. The gripping tentacles shrivelled and dropped away.

  The Atlantean hung shimmering in the air for a moment. As fresh arms reached for him, he flung himself back into his spire.

  The monster surged forward like the tide driven in by a storm. The doors at the top of the fortress slapped closed like the shell of a clam reacting to danger. What had been the shaman covered the spire and mounded above it.

  How much larger can it grow? How much larger can my friend Uktena grow?

  All the world grew transparent to her eyes. Alphena saw Procron in his crystal spire and saw the fortress in the monster's swollen body like a pearl in the oyster's mantle.

  The crystal shifted. It could not break free in space, but it stretched into another dimension; fading, losing color and form, becoming a sparkling ghost of itself.

  The creature made a convulsive movement like a whale swallowing. Even the ghost vanished. Procron and his fortress were cut off forever from Alphena's world.

  The monster, swelling still greater, trembled. The storm paused, the clouds frozen in place and the winds still.

  Alphena rose to her feet. She shouted, "Uktena! Come back to me, my friend! Come back!"

  The monster slumped toward her like a wall of sand collapsing. She stood with her arms crossed. Heads and tentacles drew into the vast body and the body shrank.

  "My friend!" Alphena shouted.

  Uktena took a step toward her collapsed into the surf. She thrust the axe helve through her sash and waded out to get him.

  The sea spit light and occasionally stung her flesh like sparks from a bonfire. Uktena's compact body wobbled on the swell. He was face down.

  Alphena hurled herself against the water, but her tunic dragged her back. She should have taken it off with the boots before she left the shore.

  The tide was going out. It was taking Uktena with it.

  Alphena untied her sash and snatched the tunic over her head to drop on the waves. The axe was gone also. That didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she reach Uktena before he drowned. She swam toward him, wishing she had spent more time in the swimming bath even if that meant less at sword practice.

  She didn't know how long it was before she reached the shaman. He turned his face to breathe, but she wasn't sure that he noticed her presence. She rolled him onto his back. Kicking and stroking with one arm, she began to return to the shore. The storm was passing, though the wind still whipped froth from the wave tops.

  Alphena felt momentarily weightless; the water about her glowed white. Everything returned to normal, except that six flounders rose to the surface and began a round dance on the tips of their tails.

  The fish dived back toward the bottom, their white bellies gleaming. Alphena continued to stroke shoreward. Maybe she had imagined the fish, and anyway it didn't matter.

  She didn't realize how close they had come till her knees scraped sand and bits of shell from the bottom. She gasped in shock and managed to swallow water.

  She squatted because she wasn't able to stand. She laid Uktena's head in her lap to keep it above water. He was breathing, but he didn't seem to be aware.

  Awareness would come. He was breathing. That was all that mattered.

  Alphena didn't know how long she squatted there with her eyes closed, getting her breath under control and easing the white ache of her right arm and shoulder. The surf only came to her ankles at its flux and retreated well out into the sound.

  She heard voices. After a further moment, she raised her eyes. The three Sages were coming toward her, chanting in unison. Forty-odd people, probably the whole village of Cascotan, waited at the high water mark.

  "Help us," Alphena said. "He's all right, he's just tired. Help us back to the kiva."

  Still chanting what must be a prayer, the Sages lifted Uktena from her. Hanno and Dasemunco took the shaman's arms. Wontosa, carrying the pipe, walked ahead of them. They paid no attention to Alphena.

  She got up and wavered. She should have put her hands down to help herself, but she hadn't wanted to appear weak. I could scarcely appear weaker than I really am. She followed the four men higher up the shore.

  Wontosa said, "Here. The sand is dry, so he won't be able to take power from the water."

  He began to fill the murrhine pipe with herbs from the embroidered deerskin pouch. Uktena had left it behind in the kiva.

  "What are you doing?" Alphena shouted. She stumbled forward. Arms caught her from behind--the women Sanga and Lascosa; the latter the mother of the thing Procron had created in the marshes.

  "He's too dangerous," Sanga said. "Don't you see? He has to be sent away or we'll never be safe!"

  Uktena sprawled on his back on the sand. The Sages squatted around him and continued to chant. Wontosa puffed on the pipe he had taken from the greater magician.

  "He saved you!" Alphena said. Her vision blurred with anger and tears. "He saved you all!"

  "He's a monster!" Lascosa said in a venomous tone. "He didn't save my Mota. He would destroy us all!"

  The chant reached a crescendo. Wontosa blew a great jet of smoke over the torso and head of his exhausted rival. Uktena's form blurred.

  "No!" Alphena shouted as she tore loose. She flung herself over her friend's body.

  The world shifted like a mirror tilting. She was alone, falling again through the emptiness from which Uktena had rescued her.

  But now he cannot rescue even himself.

  ***

  Lann ran heavily. He was faster when he dropped down and used his knuckles as forehooves, but even then Hedia had no difficulty keeping up. He didn't seem comfortable on all fours, however. He regularly lurched upright and tried to run on two legs like a man.

  He wasn't a man, poor dear,
except in his mind. And not really all of his mind, though enough to satisfy Hedia. She focused on the virtues of the men whom she liked, and Lann had most of the virtues which Saxa lacked. Between them, they made a truly wonderful man.

  Hedia smiled. She'd found over the years that if she tried, she could like most men.

  The ape-man paused, rose on his hind legs, and sniffed the air. He frowned in doubt. Turning, he looked back the way they had come. He didn't seem to see any more there than Hedia did--blank grayness--but he noticed the lens she carried.

  "Hoo!" he cried, as delighted as if he were meeting an old friend. He snatched the device from her without ceremony.

  Hedia felt her lips purse, though she didn't object. It was his, after all, though he might have been more polite.

  Except that Lann couldn't be more polite. He was a beast, an animal, with major virtues. And, like Saxa, he was devoted to her.

  The ape-man held the frame in one hand and touched the lens with his index finger. When he did so, he and Hedia stood on a pavement of dull metal in place of something firm but unseen in the universal grayness. She tested it with her toes.

  This is what we've been walking on all the time. This isn't a mirage of the past, this is real.

  Other paths branched from this one. Each was of a different material: brick laid in various patterns; concrete; a hard material as black as muck from a swamp; and uncountably many others. Some tracks were dirt, sun-baked or rutted or even grassy.

  One of the paths was leaf-mold on which Hedia could see her own footprints pressed delicately onto the broad, splayed marks of the ape-man who had led her. An Atlantean airship flew above that side-branch and vanished through the portal at the end; the second ship followed only moments later.

  The hunters who had chased Hedia and the ape-man on foot were also running back the way they had come, but it was too late for them. Typhon crawled on its many legs from the prison which Lann had breached.

  The monster seemed deceptively slow because it was so large, but its tentacles swept fleeing humans into its slavering maws. Typhon had as many heads as it had legs. They were equipped with beaks and fangs and muscular gullets to squeeze and crush and swallow. Some of the victims turned to fight, but that was like watching mice bare their teeth at a forest fire.

  None of the hunters reached the jungle path. Instead of stopping when it engulfed the last of them, Typhon swelled through the portal with scarcely a pause.

  For an instant Hedia thought she saw not a monster but a man in a loincloth who wore his iron-gray hair in braids. Then Typhon again filled the path from its ruptured prison to the portal, flowing onward without seeming to diminish.

  The ape-man hooted joyfully and resumed his journey. He held the lens in his left hand, walking on either his legs or his legs and the knuckles of his right hand. He continued to chortle.

  Hedia swallowed. The Atlanteans weren't her friends, Venus knew, but... all of them, the Minoi and their servants and their little dogs and the very worms in the dirt of their gardens? Because she didn't imagine Typhon would halt while there was still something to destroy.

  She mentally shrugged as she accompanied the ape-man. The pavement was wide enough that she could stay within half a step of him while keeping far enough to the side that they wouldn't collide if he stopped abruptly.

  She wouldn't have chosen that end for the Atlanteans... but she hadn't chosen it. Besides, it was done now. In this world--in all worlds--women get used to making the best of situations which they can't change.

  Hedia grinned. Men really weren't much better off, but they were less likely to accept reality. That was another case of the woman having the advantage, if she had wit enough to use it.

  They had passed numerous branchings, but Lann continued to follow the central metal path. Now at last he bore to the right, onto flagstones of volcanic tuff which appeared to have been set in concrete. Though a byway, it was wide enough that Hedia didn't feel uncomfortable as long as she kept to the middle of it. She wasn't sure it was possible to fall off the path, but the thought of drifting forever in this limbo frightened her more than the risk of death.

  The ape-man paused again and concentrated on his lens. Hedia bumped him because her thoughts were elsewhere. That was no harm done: it was rather like walking into a tree with furry bark.

  For a moment Lann and Hedia were in a vision of a bleak waste on which Procron's fortress stood under an orange sun. The ape-man made an adjustment by changing the angle of his right index finger. Their viewpoint shifted to the air above Poseidonis as Typhon advanced on the city like a tidal wave.

  In the distance was the ring island outside the one on which Poseidonis stood. The monster had torn a gap the size of itself in the land as it emerged on the site of Procron's keep.

  Typhon was larger than that now. It would continue to grow for as long as there was space for it, spreading like the sea.

  Nothing can stop it. Hedia swallowed again.

  Ships were rising from the harbor as they had done in the vision of the theater, but in this reality they were not attacking the monster. Instead, heavily laden with liveried retainers, they wobbled toward a shimmering disk hanging above the pinnacle of the great tower. The portal rested on the orichalc finial, which blazed now brighter than the sun.

  The Minoi and their households were abandoning Atlantis rather than struggle against an inexorable doom. Typhon would triumph, but not over them.

  Perhaps some of the women have carried along their little dogs, Hedia thought. The worms and the common people could take care of themselves. Though as an aristocrat herself, who was she to object?

  Lann grunted in disgust and resumed his swaying course up the stone pavement. Hedia looked down at the blocks with a sudden question--and a recognition.

  Where are the Minoi going in their flying ships? And--

  The ball on top of the Atlantean temple is the same as the one we saw on the sundial in the Field of Mars.

  ***

  "I'm very glad to see you, Master Corylus," Pandareus said as Corylus finished undoing his bonds. He pursed his lips and added, "How did you know the Westerners were carrying me to their ship, if I may ask?"

  Corylus had untied the knots instead of cutting them because he was trembling in reaction to the fight. It had involved every fiber of his being--but only for a few heartbeats. It was over now, but his blood was still flooded with the emotions which had carried him through.

  "I didn't know," he said. His mouth was dry as sun-baked sand and he felt a wash of dizziness as he finished freeing his teacher's wrists. He stepped back. "I don't think it was luck, though. My companion--"

  He nodded to the Ancient, who was grooming his fur with his tongue.

  "--is a great magician, and I've found him a better friend than I had any reason to expect would be the case."

  "I see," said Pandareus in a neutral voice. He turned his head; Corylus followed his eyes toward the sprite.

  "Ah!" Corylus said. He'd gotten so used to Coryla that he'd completely forgotten about certain matters that should have been obvious. "Cousin, while we're here in, ah, the waking world, would you put some clothes on, please. Ah, I think this fellow's tunic--"

  He toed the corpse with the stuffed bird in its hair. The two he'd killed were covered with blood... as was his own right forearm, now that he noticed it.

  "--will do."

  "He can see us too?" Coryla said, giving Pandareus a thoughtful look as she walked over to the dead man. "Is it because we've been in the dreamworld, do you think? Or are you that great a magician?"

  "I'm not a magician," Corylus said. He said to his teacher, "She's a cousin of mine, master. A very distant cousin."

  There were quite a number of people watching them now--a score or more openly, and doubtless many times that number peering from cover or through slatted shutters from the buildings facing the harbor. The mule cart had drawn attention, which the sudden bloody violence would have multiplied.

  N
obody had tried to interfere: a gang which killed three men in broad daylight wasn't anything for civilians to trifle with. A section of the Watch was bound to be arriving shortly, though.

  "Master, where were they taking you?" Corylus said. "That is, if you know."

  He had already decided that they had to use the ship to escape Ostia, though there weren't any good places to fly to. They would have to land in daylight unless he wanted to wait six hours for nightfall. Even then someone would probably notice them in the air unless they landed in a barren location or came down at sea and rowed in, as presumably the glass men had done when the Sages arrived.

  Corylus couldn't handle both sweeps by himself. Pandareus wasn't strong enough to help, and asking the Ancient to do that sort of physical labor would be... a matter for cautious negotiation.

  "I think they were taking me home," Pandareus said. "To their home in the Western Isles, that is. They were joining my mind to theirs to force me to use my powers of magic--"

  His smile was wry.

  "--to control the monster Uktena, so my consciousness listened to their discussions. They had decided to leave because the fleet of their enemies, the Minoi, was going to attack Carce at any moment."

  The Watch had arrived at the end of the quay. Though--if he was reading the standards correctly, they were accompanied by a number of Marines as well. Part of the detachment at Misenum must be stationed in Ostia.

  "The Atlanteans here?" Corylus said. "I thought Atlantis was destroyed thousands of years ago. That is, if it were even real to begin with."

  "So did I," Pandareus said with a rueful smile. "If I understood the Westerners' discussion correctly, Atlantis was destroyed but its rulers are coming here to escape. The Sages couldn't stand against them, so they were taking me home to continue trying to find a way to control Uktena."

  He looked down the quay toward the armed men advancing, then looked back at Corylus. He said. "I suspect that the Minoi will only put off their danger by fleeing to Carce. If their weapons are as terrible as the Westerners seem to believe, however, Carce's present population won't survive to be threatened by the monster."