Out of the Waters-ARC Page 31

  "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 enough 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.

  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.

  The man leaned forward, stretching the index and middle fingers of his right hand out toward her. Her reaction was to flinch, but she forced herself to hold still. If he was my enemy, he'd have left me to drift forever as the gryphon warned would happen....

  Alphena couldn't guess how old the man was. Older than her father, certainly; but he gave her the feeling that she was sitting beside an ancient oak. His fingers were like lengths of tree root.

  He touched her left ear, her right ear, and finally her lips. "I am Uktena," he said, smiling again. "I have seen you before, little one, but I do not know who you are."

  She licked her lips. "I'm Alphena," she said. "Ah, daughter of Gaius Saxa. But I came here--that is, I was going to Poseidonis to save my mother from the Atlanteans. Do you know who the Atlanteans are?"

  Stated baldly like that, Alphena realized how foolish her plan had been. It hadn't been a plan at all; but she'd had to do someth
ing!

  "I know one Atlantean," Uktena said. His smile suddenly had something terrifying in it. "But I would venture that in any case no enemy of yours would be a friend of mine. Come, I will show you our village... and perhaps we also will see the Atlantean."

  Uktena knocked the dottle from the pipe into his palm, then scattered it on the bare ground at the edge of his sunken chamber; some of the embers were still glowing. He slipped the reed stem under his waist band and rose smoothly without using his hands. Alphena knew the effort it required to do that when seated cross-legged, but she didn't have the impression that her host was showing off: he was just extremely fit for a man of any age.

  "Master Uktena?" she said. "Are you a magician?"

  He weighed her with a glance. "Say rather that I remember some things that the spirits have taught me," he said after a moment. "As they will teach any man, who asks them in the right way. My fellows call me a shaman, but--"

  His smile was very slight, and there was again the hint of a tiger beyond the calm expression.

  "--I would prefer you call me Uktena, little one."

  A pine sapling leaned against the opening in the chamber's roof. The bark had been stripped and the thickset branches trimmed, but stubs projected alternately to right and left. Uktena climbed it, using the stubs as rungs for his big toes. At the top he tossed aside the mat covering the opening and looked back to Alphena.

  "Do you need help?" he asked.

  Alphena couldn't decide whether he was mocking her or being polite. "No, but the ladder won't hold us both," she said, thought it probbably would have. She rose to her feet rather less gracefully than her host.

  Uktena swung out of the opening. Alphena followed, moving briskly but thankful that she wore hob-nailed military sandals whose thick soles gave her solid purchase. Her big toes weren't up to supporting her full weight on such short stubs.

  The field nearest the chamber had been planted with some kind of big-leafed grass. Two women had been cultivating it with clam-shell hoes, but their voices had stilled when Uktena came out of the ground.

  They remained upright with respectful expressions for a brief instant when Alphena appeared also. The women cried out; one dropped to her knees, the other turned to run. What looked like a cloak of bark cloth over her shoulders turned out to be a sling holding a sleeping infant.

  "Sanga, why do you run from my friend?" Uktena said. "Fear me if you like, but Alphena will not harm you."

  Sanga took two strides more, but she slowed and turned to face them. The kneeling woman opened her eyes and said, "But master--she did not go into the kiva with you. Is she a demon, or did you form her from clay by your power?"

  "Uktena caught me when I was falling from a far place," Alphena said, stepping forward. "I am in his debt for my life. I will not harm anyone whom he regards as a friend."

  The words formed in her mind as she spoke, replacing those she already had on the tip of her tongue. She wouldn't lie; but there might be advantages for both her and her host if these peasants chose to believe she was a demon held in check only by Uktena's benevolence toward them.

  He laughed, but he didn't amplify her statement. "Come, little one," he said. "I'm sure my colleagues will want to meet you."

  Women and children were appearing from the fields and the semi-circle of huts; a few men carrying bows came out of the woods. Three older men--the trio which had come to dinner with Sempronius Tardus the night Hedia disappeared--stood before the dwellings. They watched Uktena the way jackals eye a lion.

  A dune separated the grain field from sight of the shore until Alphena and her host were near the village proper. She looked past the edge of the sand and almost shouted in surprise.

  "Mas--" she said, then touched her lips to mime silencing herself. She resumed, "My friend Uktena? What is that?"

  Rather than pointing, she nodded in the direction of what looked like a spire of black glass, well out from the shoreline. The mild surf curled around the base of it, outlining it in foam.

  "That is the house of Procron, little one," Uktena said. "He came here from Atlantis flying in that tower. He is our enemy, and I think the enemy of all men in all times; an enemy even to his own people."

  "You have meditated all day, Uktena," said the man with a stuffed bird pinned to the roll of his hair. "Have you found the wisdom to send our enemy from us?"

  His tone was outwardly respectful, but Alphena could hear the undercurrent of anger in it. She eyed him narrowly.

  "Who knows what the spirits intend, Wontosa?" Uktena said, stroking the murrhine bowl of his pipe with his fingertips. His voice was as gentle as his touch on the stone, but Alphena wouldn't have wanted the words directed at her. "But soon, I think, I will try my knowledge against that of Procron."

  "He may be gaining strength while you wait, you know," said the sage with a gold ring in his ear. He wore a tunic of familiar pattern rather than a breechclout or an off-the-shoulder robe, and his features were broader than those of the other men Alphena could see.

  "I don't know that, Hanno," Uktena said. "Do you know it? You're welcome to try your wisdom against Procron, you know. Or make trial with me, if you wish that."

  Hanno--a North African name, which explained his face and dress, but what was he doing in this place?--backed a step. "You know I don't mean that, Master! We have no hope except in you. It's just that--"

  He fell silent. Glancing sideways toward the sea and the spire standing in it, he backed another step.

  Not before time, Alphena thought.

  "Do you have something to add, Dasemunco?" Uktena said to the third sage, who had been eyeing Alphena with a guarded expression. His head was shaved except for a fringe above his forehead.

  "I wondered who the woman is, Master," he said, lowering his eyes as if in humility. "Have you created her to aid you in your battle with Procron?"

  "It may be that the spirits have sent Alphena to help me, Dasemunco," Uktena said, smiling without affection at the sage. "Until we know their will better, I will continue to take pleasure in the company of a brave friend who does not fear me."

  Turning to her, he said, "Come, Alphena. I will show you Cascotan, where I live and where my colleagues are visting since Procron's arrival."

  He stepped forward as though the sages were not there; they hopped quickly out of the way. He and Alphena walked side by side between a pair of huts and stopped in the bowl of the semi-circle. Villagers watched with the air of deer poised to flee at the first sign of a threat; none of them spoke. The sages had not followed.

  "Why did you say I'm not afraid of you?" Alphena said, as quietly as she could and still be heard. "I know I haven't seen all you can do, but I've seen enough."

  "Respect is not fear, little one," Uktena said with a chuckle. "And is not someone who rides a thunderbird worthy of respect as well?"

  Alphena started to speak, then decided not to. She realized that Uktena might know more than she herself understood about the way she had come here. Certainly he didn't speak lightly; so she shouldn't lightly disagree with him.

  The flat-ended huts didn't look very sturdy. The roof and walls of each were supported on poles that had been bent into arches with both ends fixed in the ground. The frames were covered with reed mats like the one Uktena used to cover his kiva.

  Inside were wicker benches and a variety of baskets, but no pottery that Alphena could see. They were unoccupied, except for an old woman who stared toward the doorway with milky eyes.

  Something moaned from the near distance. Alphena looked out. It didn't appear to come from the spire on the horizon. One of the watching women turned and began to cry into her hands.

  "Come," Uktena said. "Mota must be in the lagoon. It is good that you should see her, little friend."

  They walked beyond the village, paralleling the shoreline but a furlong inland. There were fields here too, planted with the same heavy grass. Vines grew at the base of each stalk.

  The deep moan sounded again from a
head of them. "Who is Mota?" Alphena said. "Ah, what is Mota?"

  "We will see her soon," Uktena said calmly. "She grubs clams in the shallows. She wanders some distance up and down the coast, but she always comes back here eventually. Her mother used to go out to meet her, but she no longer does."

  "The woman who was crying back in the village?" Alphena said. Did Mota go crazy? Did Procron drive her crazy?

  "Yes," Uktena said. "Lascosa. There is nothing she can do. There is nothing I can do either, for Mota. Perhaps I can save other girls, though, if the spirits wish me to save them."

  They stopped on the edge of a steeply sloping bank. Sedges grew down it and continued out into the water, which was black from rotting leaves. Recently stirred mud streaked the surface. Alphena looked to right and left, expecting to see a naked girl with wild hair digging in the muck with her hands. There was no one.

  Water gurgled as a woman's head broke the surface. She looked at Alphena and her host, then lifted further.

  Alphena shouted and stumbled back. She would have fallen if Uktena had not already had his arm behind her in anticipation of just that occurrence.

  Though the eyes and forehead were human, the broad jaws were those of a beast. They worked side to side with a sound like stones turning; mud, muddy water, and bits of broken shell dribbled out from the thick lips.

  More of the body lifted to the surface. It was rounded, tapering to a tail that was flattened sideways instead of horizontally like that of a porpoise. The skin was covered with fine scales which gave it a jeweled appearance.

  "That is Mota," Uktena said. "She was raking for clams with her mother when Procron arrived in his dwelling. His glass servants came from the spire and took her. In a week's time she was back, as you see her now."

  The creature--the girl--opened her mouth. Her jaws were filled with massive grinding teeth. She gave another terrible moan, then submerged again.