Out of the waters bote-2 Page 30

  From the way the whispers and shuffling stilled, everyone in the vast enclosure must have heard it. Perhaps it was magic, but it might have been simply an improvement on the excellent acoustics of the theaters with which Hedia was familiar.

  "Our Servitors have succeeded in capturing and bringing to us the wizard who is the key of the threat to us," the voice continued. "All that remains to ensure our safety is to bring her to the notice of Typhon, then send her to the Underworld by the path that she has already traversed. Typhon will follow and be bound inextricably."

  "The Servitors have made a mistake," said another voice, this time clearly a woman speaking. "Look at her! She's not a Minos."

  Although Hedia couldn't identify this speaker either, she noticed this time in her survey that each Minos held an object and was gazing into it. The individual talismans differed: crystals of one sort or another were common, but some of the Minoi had what seemed to be common pebbles like the one Serdain had used to fly the ship that brought her here. Occasionally she saw a tiny orichalc machine or a sculpture.

  "She doesn't have the mark, but that means nothing," said what might have been the first voice. "Her culture has its own forms; we mustn't be parochial in our views."

  "But look at her aura!" said the female voice. "She cannot possibly be a Minos. She's as common as the serfs who spread night soil on the crops!"

  If I learn who you are, dearie…, Hedia thought as she continued to smile. I may one day serve you out in a fashion that will make you less eager to insult a lady of Carce.

  "She has visited the Underworld and returned," responded multiple voices in near unison. "No one but a great wizard could do that. None of us could do it: therefore we sent Servitors."

  What if they decide I'm not a wizard? Hedia thought. If they think they're going to put me to spreading manure on flower beds, they're going to get an unpleasant surprise.

  The alternative, being dangled before a monster like a strip of pork on a shark hook, wasn't ideal either, but Hedia had never assumed that monsters had snatched her from her bed for her own benefit. Being bait seemed to offer more possibilities.

  Thought of being snatched from bed reminded Hedia of the Servitors. The glass men with the hunting party had remained aboard the ships, and she didn't see others here in the hall. Were the creatures really alive? Were they absent now simply because there was no need of their presence, or were they barred for the same reason women were not allowed to watch the Senate in session: out of fear?

  That thought made Hedia smile wider and more harshly. Most men wouldn't have agreed with her assessment of the real reason women weren't allowed in the Senate chamber, but she had no doubt that she was correct. Men demeaned what they feared, and they were rightly afraid of women's power over them.

  "And she is linked to Typhon," said another voice, male and elderly as best Hedia could judge. "She is best suited, perhaps uniquely suited, to draw the monster away from Atlantis and to that bourn from which it cannot return."

  Why in heaven do they think I'm connected with that monster? But Hedia had to consciously smooth the frown from her forehead. Am I connected with it? There's so much I don't understand.

  I don't understand any of this!

  "We don't know that," said what was certainly the female voice which had objected to Hedia's aura-whatever an aura was. "The link is to the place but not to the person except by conjecture. I say the Servitors took the wrong person."

  "The link from Typhon to her home is clear," said what must have been a majority of the Minoi present. "It is certain that this is the one whom the Servitors tracked back from the Underworld, where only a wizard could go and return. Logic indicates that one and the same person is responsible for both. We will offer her to Typhon and lead the monster to the Underworld."

  "I am Hedia, daughter of Marcus Hedius Robustus, consul and descendent of consuls!" Hedia said. The vastness seemed to drink her voice; she didn't know if anyone, even Serdain and Kalpos a few feet away, could hear her. "I am a lady of Carce! Return me to my home or face the anger of the gods who have raised Carce to the throne of nations!"

  Instead of a response, she heard a burst of unintelligible chittering, like that of a frog pond during an evening shower. After a moment-a few heartbeats, no more-a chorus said, "The Council of the Minoi decrees that this female shall be offered to Typhon, then brought to the Underworld where she and it shall be sequestered forever. It shall be done!"

  "I am Hedia, wife of Consul Gaius Alphenus Saxa! Release me and take me home!"

  "She should be clothed," said the female voice. Hedia didn't know whether the woman was an ally in some fashion or if she simply enjoyed disagreeing with her peers. "We must provide her with a garment."

  There was a further brief interval of wordless chirping. A number of voices-many, but not the great consensus of Hedia's condemnation-said, "She shall have a garment."

  Almost immediately the Council in unison said, "Then she will be taken to the cells and held till we have made the necessary preparations. It shall be as we decree."

  A youth, a commoner in a bleached white kilt, stepped between a pair of armored Minoi and trotted toward Hedia with his head lowered. He held a bundle which he tossed at her feet, turned, and scurried back the way he had come. He never looked up.

  Hedia considered for a moment, then bent and opened the bundle. It was a shift folded from a single piece of cloth, with arm-holes in the sides and a head opening cut at the top. It was off-white with a dingy blue cast, but it seemed clean; its straight lines could be made attractive with a sash and a few judicious gatherings.

  She shrugged it over her head. Though the garment was obviously utilitarian, the fabric itself was as soft as cobweb.

  Hedia stood straighter, wondering if the female voice would demand that the prisoner be given a bath. Instead, and without warning, the floor beneath her feet began to sink. Her stomach flipped twice; for a moment she was afraid that she would disgrace herself by vomiting in public.

  She wasn't in public. The floor of the hall was high above her; she could see only a glint of brighter light when she turned her eyes upward. The shaft in which she fell was as smooth and featureless as ice.

  Hedia's descent slowed; weight threatened to buckle her knees. She stopped in a rotunda, facing two glassy Servitors.

  "Where are you taking me?" she said.

  Instead of answering-could they answer?-they bent and shifted the bonds from her ankles to her waist again. That done, they marched her down a corridor with cells to either side. Through the door gratings Hedia saw shapes moving. She didn't think they were all human, or at least fully human.

  "When will I be released?" she shouted.

  The Servitors shoved her into an empty cell. The flowing fetters vanished.

  The door of the cell clacked shut before Hedia could turn around.

  ***

  Alphena couldn't see very much from the gryphon's back. The sky was black and filled with stars, but they weren't the constellations of Carce. Indeed, they didn't seem to be grouped at all, just scattered as randomly as a field of daisies.

  Straight ahead were a pair of larger, diffuse, blobs which didn't appear to be coming closer though the gryphon's wings beat strongly. Alphena thought she saw detail in what at first had been featureless blurs, however.

  By leaning forward carefully, clamping her knees, and gripping the longer feathers above the eagle head, Alphena was able to look past the wings and see that her mount had folded its legs beneath it like a cat. Which it was, she supposed, so far as its body and hind legs went.

  The gryphon turned its head to fix her with his right eye. "If you fall," he said, "you will probably fall forever. Unless I should manage to turn and catch you in time, which has its own-"

  He stretched out his right foreleg and extended the claws. They were thicker at the base than Alphena's thumbs, and the points were vanishingly sharp.

  "-difficulties for you."

  The gryphon l
aughed, a croaking sound from deep in its throat. If a man had behaved the way this creature was doing, Alphena would have struck him. That wasn't a practical response here.

  She felt her expression softening into a grin. I take myself too seriously. By now I should realize how little I matter to the cosmos.

  Aloud she said, "I appreciate your concern, Master Gryphon. Do you have a name?"

  The gryphon chuckled again. "Who is there who could name me?" he said. "And I have not chosen to give a name to myself."

  The creature's wings were relatively short and broad, like those of a raven. Though they beat powerfully, Alphena didn't feel the slap of air that she would have expected if a tame pigeon had taken off from her wrist. She seemed to be breathing normally, but she was beginning to wonder whether this was real or a dream.

  "Is the light ahead of us Atlantis, master?" Alphena said. She knew she was speaking to occupy her mind. She had decided it was better to react to her nervousness than let her thoughts about the near future spiral down into paralysis.

  "It will be Atlantis," said the gryphon, glancing back. "And Poseidonis. And then my task is completed, is it not so?"

  Alphena felt her chest constrict with terror. How will I get home?

  She let out her breath slowly. Because she hadn't immediately reacted aloud, she'd had time to realize that blurting, "You have to take me and mother back to Carce!" would be as useless-and possibly as dangerous-as a similar shrill demand directed to the Emperor.

  "I will not venture to tell you your duty, Master Gryphon," Alphena said. "You will act as your honor requires you to act."

  The great eagle head faced front again; the gryphon chuckled. "Such a clever little chick you are," he said. "Such a clever little wizard."

  Alphena swallowed. That could have gone very badly wrong if she'd reacted as she would have done a few weeks ago, before she really started observing the way Hedia moved in a world where men had all the public forms of power.

  She whispered, "Thank you, mother."

  The stars moved visibly though still without forming familiar combinations. The vague light directly ahead became a view of a glade in which women in flowing garments stood or walked, sometimes hand in hand. Alphena didn't recognize the place or the faces, though she scanned them intently, hoping to see Hedia.

  A spring-fed pool sent a trickle out into the forest. Eyes watched the women from the leaf-dappled water, but nothing moved except the ripples.

  The gryphon flew on; the scene blurred to a desert under moonlight. Trees as large as temple pillars threw shadows onto sand, rocks, and thorny brush. Their trunks and upraised limbs were covered with needles.

  A slight, stooping figure walked across the landscape. It had a fox's head and was covered with lustrous fur. It reached out a startlingly long forearm and snatched a scorpion from a rock. It snapped off the tail with delicate jaws, then swallowed the remainder of the scorpion like a moray eel taking a shrimp.

  "Master?" Alphena said. "What is that beast?"

  "Do you pray, little wizard?" the gryphon said. "If you do, then pray that you never get close enough to him to learn what he is."

  The scene blurred to a village near the seashore. Fields hacked from the forest were turning green with spring crops.

  Alphena's focus swooped from the rounded huts to a reed mat at the edge of the clearing, then beneath it into an underground chamber. The light that seeped through the mat-covered entrance shouldn't have been enough for vision, but Alphena saw a man squatting in the center of the room. He wore only a breechclout, and his iron-gray hair was bound in two braids. He held a reed pipe to his lips as if he were playing it, but there were no finger holes in the tube.

  At the other end was fitted a murrhine cylinder. If it wasn't the artifact from Saxa's collection, it was the mirror image of it.

  The man lowered the reed and looked at Alphena, still-faced. Smoke curled from the end of the reed and from the murrhine cylinder in which chopped herbs smoldered. There was no threat-no emotion whatever-in his expression, but for an instant Alphena had the feeling that she had stepped around a corner and found a tiger waiting.

  He's the man I saw in the theater! When the others said they saw a monster!

  The man smiled at her. His lips barely quirked, but the change was as profound as that from cloud to full moonlight.

  Then he and his chamber were gone. The crystal city, by now a familiar image, formed in the globe of light.

  "Little wizard," said the gryphon, "we have company, and I do not think they are friends."

  Alphena had been concentrating on the window into other worlds toward which the gryphon was flying. If she was honest, as she tried to be at least with herself, she was doing that not only because it interested and affected her, but also because that allowed her to forget all the other things that were happening.

  When the gryphon called her into the wider present, she saw that what had been the second blob of light now had the face of the moon; it was silvered over with light that seemed to come from inside. On the sphere, like a statue on a rounded plinth, stood the cold, angry woman who had appeared when Anna chanted over the basin.

  The woman no longer held the leashes of her vultures. Alphena wondered for a moment where they had gone; then the woman faded away and two specks rose from the moon's cratered surface.

  As they swelled toward her, Alphena saw that they were the three-headed vultures and that a figure in orichalc armor rode astride the middle neck of each bird. She didn't have to wonder any more.

  "Your magic won't help you against the Minoi, little wizard," the gryphon said. "Not while we are between worlds."

  "I'm not a wizard!" Alphena said. She drew her sword. "Can we fight them?"

  This time the gryphon's chuckle was deeper and there was a catch in it. He said, "Of course we can fight them. Of course."

  The gryphon shifted. Alphena swayed with her mount, gripping the feathered neck again with her free hand.

  The vultures and their riders were becoming rapidly larger. Judging from the size of the armored figures, the Minoi, the birds were at least as big as the gryphon.

  The hanging image of Poseidonis rotated into one of raw jungle. Alphena couldn't tell if it was the forest beyond the crystal city or if the scene was as distant as that of the desert minutes before.

  She supposed it didn't matter. Nothing mattered until they had settled their account with the vultures.

  The birds were approaching from above and below. The higher one banked slightly, allowing Alphena to meet the stare of the rider. The Atlantean's mesh-fronted helmet blurred her view of his features, but she could see that he had a moustache.

  The Minoi had proper saddles, and they held reins to their mounts' middle head in their gauntleted left hands. They had drawn their swords also; the orichalc blades curved slightly upward at the tips. Alphena wondered how that fiery metal would fare against the demon-slaying blade she had brought back from the land of dreams and spirits.

  We'll know soon enough.

  The vultures edged closer. "Watch yourself," the gryphon muttered. With the words he stooped on his lower opponent. His fore claws were extended, and his eagle beak opened. His challenge could have pierced stone.

  The vulture twisted with unexpected agility, spreading its talons to meet the attack. Its rider held his seat; his legs were locked at the ankles beneath his mount's neck.

  When the gryphon dived, the second vulture plunged down from the left. Alphena turned to meet it, slashing with her sword instead of trying to thrust. Her blade met the Atlantean's with a shock that numbed her arm and scattered ropes of blue fire through the starry firmament.

  The Minos fell backward out of the saddle, but his mount collided with the gryphon. Alphena lost her sword. She grabbed at the gryphon's neck with her right hand, but her arm had no feeling and her fingers, as lifeless as a statue's, slid over the feathers.

  The gryphon snapped, catching one of the vulture's necks with a beak big e
nough to shear a bull's haunch. The violent movement flung Alphena off.

  The first vulture had circled, gaining altitude; now it slanted toward her. The Minos leaned over his mount's neck, his sword poised to strike as he drove past. Given the way a similar sword had resisted her own lost blade, he would probably cut her in half.

  The gryphon screamed and dived again on the circling vulture. Locked together, the giants tumbled away in a confused melee that Alphena couldn't have sorted out even if she had leisure to try.

  You will fall forever, the gryphon said. Well, this wasn't his fault, but Alphena didn't really blame herself either. Sometimes you lose. It was as simple as that.

  She couldn't see either the gryphon or the vultures. The stars glittered and shifted as she fell. The window in darkness which had been their destination had faded again to a glow.

  The same thing might have happened if I'd gotten there. How could I have fought an army of these Minoi?

  The blur of light coalesced again. Alphena saw the seashore village and the man with braided hair. He held his smoking pipe in his left hand, but with his right he reached out and gripped her wrist.

  Smiling minusculely, he drew Alphena toward him.

  David Drake

  Out of the Waters-ARC

  CHAPTER 13

  Alphena awakened and sneezed violently. Her eyes stung and the light was dim. She thought, Was I dreaming? Then, Where am I?

  She was lying on a reed mat on the floor of the underground room where she had glimpsed the man with braided hair. He sat cross-legged, watching her over the bowl of his pipe. He drew a lungful of the smoke up the reed stem, then blew it out through his nostrils. Smiling faintly, he lowered the pipe.

  He's a magician. He has to be a magician to bring me here!

  "Who are you?" Alphena asked. She rolled her feet under her but didn't try to get up. She wore the tunic she had donned before joining Anna in the garden, and the scabbard still hung from her sword belt. The weapon itself was missing, just as it should have been if what she remembered about the fight with the Minoi was true.