Out of the Waters-ARC Page 39

  "The Minoi have guards on the Moon," she said. "Are the Minoi your enemies?"

  Corylus had taken off the armor to sleep and hadn't bothered to don it in the morning. Now he removed the sword belt so that he could latch the breastplate in place properly.

  "I didn't know anything about the Minoi before I was thrown onto the cliff with the Cyclops and the ships on the beach below," he said. "Maybe they think I've stolen their ship."

  The sprite shrugged. "Perhaps," she said without interest. "Anyway, they'll certainly kill you if they can, now that they see you're wearing their armor. They're a haughty lot; worse than olive trees, even, for thinking that they're better than everyone else."

  Corylus hung the crossbelt over his shoulder again and latched the buckle of the waist belt; then he reached for the helmet. He would like to have a spear, or better still a sheaf of javelins. He had been pretty good at throwing a javelin, even by the standards of the Scouts.

  The orichalc armor of the Minoi glinted identifiably even while they were too distant to have shapes. Corylus noticed that the ship was descending. He looked back at the Ancient.

  The Ancient wrinkled his lips. Corylus hoped that was a grin and returned to watching the Minoi.

  The golden-furred wizard knew what he was doing. At any rate, he knew better than Corylus knew to direct him. The giant eel should be far behind them by now; and if not, it still wasn't the most serious danger.

  The Minoi were riding huge, three-headed vultures. They turned after they closed and for a time flew parallel to the ship, a furlong to either side. After a moment they drew ahead, demonstrating that their mounts were far swifter than the ship's throbbing sails.

  "Cousin?" said Corylus, though he was a little afraid to put his hope into words. "Have they decided to ignore us now that they see who we are?"

  Before the sprite could answer, the Minoi drew their swords. The vultures banked, turning inward. Their powerful wings beat as, side by side, they drove toward the ship.

  Corylus drew his sword also, but he didn't expect it to be of any use. He wasn't a sailor, but he could see the danger easily: the Minoi didn't have to attack him. All they had to do was slash the sails and cause the ship to drop into the sea. The eel would finish their work, and even if it didn't, Corylus would eventually starve.

  The Ancient gave a savage, rasping howl, the same sound he had made in response to the men/wolves of the first island they had approached. Corylus didn't look around. His concern was for his enemies; his allies--he hoped the Ancient was his ally--could take care of themselves for the time being.

  The sea ahead lifted. For a moment, Corylus thought the eel or another like it had reached them after all; but this was water alone, rising in a spray of droplets.

  It shuddered into an image of the Ancient, formed of the green sea and surrounded by a rainbow halo. It poised, hunching toward the Minoi. The vultures sheared off, but the simulacrum lunged forward, striding on the waves, and snatched one out of the air.

  The image of water used its arms the way a praying mantis does, drawing its victim back to its pointed jaws. A huge black wing dropped away, its flight feathers quivering. The helmet flew in one direction and the rider's legs and torso in the other.

  The simulacrum flung the vulture's body into the sea. The remaining bird was flying toward the rising sun. The thing of water pursued it for as far as Corylus could see.

  The ship began to rise to its usual height. The sails had slowed their stroke, but they were picking up the rhythm again.

  Corylus sheathed his sword. He turned and bowed as deeply as the breastplate allowed him to do.

  "Thank you, master," he said to the Ancient. "I am honored to be in the company of such a warrior as yourself."

  The ancient wizard's tongue lolled. He laughed. This time the sound was as terrible as his shrieks of a moment before.

  ***

  Alphena sneezed and awakened. I must have slept like the dead.

  Uktena had lighted his pipe. Holding it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he started up the ladder. Alphena saw brilliant white sparkles wherever his skin touched the wood.

  "Uktena?" she called. She began to lace on her sandals; she had taken them off to sleep. "Wait a moment."

  The shaman did not pause, but he was moving with great deliberation. By the time he had flung the entrance mat aside and disappeared onto the surface, she was ready to follow.

  Her hands and calves tingled when they touched the ladder. She swallowed, but it didn't matter. It can't matter. He's my friend.

  Black clouds filled the sky, seething like water at a rolling boil. Alphena expected thunder, but she heard none. The air on the ground was still. Dead still.

  Uktena stalked toward Cascotan. The villagers were not in sight, but the three sages waited in front of the huts as they had on the previous day.

  Alphena trotted to catch up. The copper axe-head sparkled as her arms pumped, and the hair on her right arm stood up as though lightning had struck nearby.

  "Master," Wontosa said, standing slightly before the fellows to either side of him. "We have discussed the dangers, my colleagues and I. It is not safe that you approach the Atlantean from the land as you did yesterday. Use your powers to circle him from the sea and--"

  Uktena put the pipe to his lips, drew on it, and lowered it again. He expelled an expanding jet of smoke toward the sages.

  Wontosa shouted, "Hai!" and leaped back. His rolled hair burst into smoky red flames. Screaming, he tried to beat out the fire with his bare hands. His companions were running toward the forest.

  Uktena gestured with his right hand. Wontosa sailed toward the marshes on the north side of the island. Moments later, Alphena heard a faint splash from that direction.

  Uktena had not paused. Alphena reached his left side and fell into step. She tried not to look at the shaman, but what she saw in the corners of her eyes shifted in disquieting ways.

  He is my friend. I am his friend.

  They reached the shore. Procron's tower was a glittering spike against the textured black of the sky. A thunderbolt crashed, striking the sea and turning it momentarily as clear as smoky quartz.

  Uktena dropped the pipe again. White fire wreathed him. He stepped forward, onto the surface of the water. Sparks popped and hummed about his feet. Alphena would have waded in also as she had done the previous day, but the sea threw her back with a loud crackle.

  She fell onto the coarse sand. Her right leg was numb. She reached across to massage the calf with the opposite hand, but even seated she continued to hold the axe ready in her right.

  Uktena, but no longer Uktena, advanced in a haze of sizzling light, changing and growing. The peak of the crystal fortress opened slowly. Procron drifted out with the stately majesty of an emperor being drawn in a triumphal chariot.

  What Uktena had become gathered speed as it advanced. Its swelling mass concealed Procron from where Alphena stood.

  Purple fire blazed, reflecting from the clouds and sea. The crack of thunder jolted the shore beneath Alphena and sent waves leaping across the sea in both directions.

  Uktena staggered. His wrapping of light dimmed; Alphena saw clearly the tentacled, many-legged monster he had become. Hundreds of bestial heads lifted from the mass and bellowed in agony.

  It--he--surged forward. Procron rose higher. A second purple bolt spat from his diamond skull. Uktena staggered, but the thunderclap jolted the Atlantean backward as well.

  The white fire surrounding Uktena congealed, brightened, and swelled again. Like the sun settling off the island's shore, the shaman halted momentarily, then rushed forward. Great arms spread to right and left, threatening to envelope both the spike and the Atlantean himself.

  Uktena's arms closed. Purple light flashed, through the white and from the clouds. The sea exploded from beneath the magicians, throwing out a wave as though a mountain had been dropped in into the water.

  Alphena had risen to her feet. She had a brief gl
impse of the shelving bottom before the wave knocked her down and tumbled her up the slope. She did not let go of the axe.

  The water that had washed over her was hot. It recoiled from the shore, carrying with it hundreds of fish--bellies up and parboiled white.

  There was silence for a moment. Alphena's ears rang, but she had felt the previous thunder through her sandals. Now there was nothing.

  Procron broke free, rising unsteadily. The glow that had surrounded Uktena faded.

  Wobbling, shrinking like a pricked bladder, the shaman spiraled toward the land. The Atlantean hovered for a moment, then vanished within his fortress again.

  Uktena dropped into the surf, twenty feet from the normal shoreline. Alphena waded out, sliding the helve of the axe under her sash to free both hands. Waves from the battle slapped and gripped her, but the water was no more than knee-high in its resting state. The air was thick with the stench of death and burned ooze, but the deluge which broke from the clouds began to clear it.

  The shaman was flaccid, a dead weight. Alphena lifted his arm over her shoulders and started back. Crackles of white fire licked the sea around them.

  They reached the shore. Alphena thought of laying the shaman down now that he was out of the water, but she was afraid that she might not be able to get up again for hours if she paused even briefly

  They staggered through a line of sea oats at the top of a ridge of sand. Where the heads brushed Uktena's body, they sparkled and were transformed to crystal, which as quickly crumbled to sand.

  Alphena walked forward. Uktena's feet had been dragging. Now he lifted the right one for a hesitant step.

  White light infused the ground. Three earthworms squirmed up, twisting into the air as though they had bones. Alphena grimaced but walked on. The worms sprouted wings and flew ahead of her and the shaman, making high, keening cries.

  He is my friend. No matter what happens, he is my friend.

  Uktena took his weight on his own legs, but his head sagged and his eyes were blank. Alphena guided him, though she was dizzy and her eyes blurred so badly that she could barely see.

  "Food!" she croaked as they passed through the village, as clumsy as a dog with a broken back. "Bring us food or by Hecate, I'll kill you all!"

  They reached the entrance of the kiva. As they sank to the ground, the boy who had brought Alphena's clothing the previous day now appeared again. This time he carried a pot of porridge.

  "Eat, my friend," Alphena whispered. She dipped out porridge with her right hand and held it to the corner of the shaman's mouth. "Eat, warrior. We will need your strength tomorrow."

  ***

  Hedia wormed deeper into the tunnel so that Lann could jump in behind her. She expected him to close the entrance to conceal them until the Minoi and their servants gave up the search. The ape-man jumped in all right, but instead of trying to pull the slab back over the opening, he gestured Hedia forward with hooting violence and a scooping motion of both hands.

  She turned again and stumbled on. The six-foot spear was impossibly awkward in the twisting passage; she abandoned it regretfully.

  The tunnel had been cut through the coarse limestone underlying the jungle. To Hedia's surprise, it wasn't completely dark beyond the dim light from the entrance. The water oozing through the porous rock had a faint green glow. Her eyes adapted to it the more easily because the forest itself had been so dim.

  She reached a raggedly wider spot. Her feet crunched uncomfortably on what she thought was sharp gravel; then she saw the hand of a Servitor against one wall, and a little farther on was part of a glass skull. From the amount of glittering debris, at least a dozen of the not-men must have been destroyed here--by one another or by survivors.

  There was a piece of apparatus also, but it had been melted into a mass that Hedia couldn't identify. It probably wouldn't have meant anything to her even if it were whole. The battle that shattered Lann's fortress had been conducted by Servitors advancing underground as well as by the ships which she had seen in the vision which the ape-man's lens had summoned for her.

  Lann pushed past her, not harshly but with no more delicacy than to be expected from a beast. Hedia was happy to let him lead, though she was uneasily aware that the entrance in the ruin was open for those hunting her to find.

  She smiled wryly. On balance, she supposed she preferred to have the ape-man between her and whatever might be waiting ahead of them. Regardless, she had no choice in the matter unless she decided to overpower her companion and force him to follow. She suspected that she would have more chance of breaking through the Minoi with her bare hands.

  Not only Servitors had fought in these tunnels. Something rocked beneath Hedia's foot; when she looked down, she found she had stepped on most of a human pelvis. The right socket had been burned off.

  Because Hedia was looking down, she almost ran into Lann when he stopped abruptly. She gave an unintended squeak and hopped back, placing a hand on his hip to steady herself and remind him where she was

  The passage ahead had been blocked when a section of the roof caved in; apparently during the fighting, because a single glass arm stretched out from beneath a tilted block the size of a litter. Strong as the ape-man was, Hedia didn't think he could budge that, especially because it seemed to be wedged against the unbroken portion of the ceiling.

  Lann gave a low hoot of dismay. He had the lens in his left hand, but he tugged at the block tentatively with the other. It didn't move any more than Hedia had expected it to. He hooted again.

  She touched the ape-man's left wrist. When he turned to look at her with a frown of surprise, she touched the lens and gestured him to give it to her. His frown deepened for a moment--either he didn't understand or he didn't want to give it up--but he finally gave her the device.

  Hedia drew the dagger with her free hand and stabbed at the block. Even with no more than her strength, the sharp orichalc point chipped a noticeable divot from the stone. She turned the weapon in her hand and offered the hilt to Lann.

  The ape-man snatched it. Using both hands, he attacked the block.

  Hedia had stepped away, but she had to back still further. Dust and chunks, some of them fist-sized, sprayed from the soft limestone. She had seen when Lann freed the lens that orichalc wasn't unbreakable, but gouging through what seemed to be hardened clay wasn't an excessive strain.

  The block split crossways. Lann dropped the dagger and gripped the lower portion. Hedia ducked low, knowing the risk she was taking, and retrieved the dagger just in time.

  The ape-man waddled backward, dragging the half-block with him. It scraped along the floor of the tunnel, then crashed flat in a cloud of choking dust. The top portion hesitated for a moment, then slid after the part which had been supporting it. Rubble was piled beyond, but at least for a distance there was room between it and the tunnel roof.

  Lann clambered up the pile on all fours and started through the choked passage. Hedia hesitated a moment, but there wasn't any choice. She sheathed the dagger--which would have been buried under the slab of rock if she hadn't grabbed it in time--and followed.

  The gap wasn't as tight for her as for the ape-man, but he was more agile and she was carrying the lens. The ape-man seemed to have forgotten for the moment that he'd given the device to her, but Hedia had seen how important he considered it.

  She decided she would give up the dagger before she would drop the lens. It might not be directly useful, but any woman knew the importance of symbols. If you lack physical strength, you quickly find other tools to give yourself an advantage over those around you.

  The floor beyond the blockage again glittered with shattered Servitors. Hedia pressed her lips together as she followed. She had hoped that by shuffling her feet, she could avoid the worst of the pain, but the tunnel floor was too irregular for that to help. The next time, she'd wear hobnailed army sandals of the sort Alphena affected.

  She laughed. The next time!

  The tunnel straightened and the wal
ls became smoother. It was marginally wider as well, though Hedia still could not have walked alongside the ape-man. The problem wasn't only his broad shoulders but also the fact that he tended to weave side to side as he shambled.

  She smiled affectionately. She stretched her right hand out toward Lann's hip, but she didn't let the fingertips touch his coarse hair. He needed to pay attention to what was in front of them, not to his companion's whim.

  They came out into an underground chamber. It seemed to be roughly circular, though roots had penetrated from above and brought down part of the ceiling. Many--certainly more than a dozen--tunnels led off from the chamber.

  Most were like the one Hedia had followed, but almost opposite her was a wider, taller opening with an arch rather than being crudely cut square. That one was noticeably brighter. Lann dropped to all fours in his haste to reach it.

  Hedia followed, suddenly excited that there might be a way out of this place, this world. The only reason for her hope was that this was a change from what she had been through since the Servitors took her from Carce; and the change that she most desired was to be back in her home.

  This short tunnel was lined with crystal, though Hedia could see the texture of the limestone beneath. They entered an enclosure the size of an amphitheater, also of crystal. Originally it had been open, but the forest had grown up on all sides to overhang it, turning sunlight into a green haze. It had seemed bright only by contrast with the dim glow of the tunnel.

  They had reached the foundations of Procron's spire, left behind when the assembled Minoi drove their fellow and his fortress out of Atlantis. Hedia realized that the battle between Lann and his neighbor had involved a warren of tunnels, not just the one she had followed. Procron had created the underground gallery so as not to have to pierce his own quartz walls for each attack.

  Though the floor was thick crystal, impermeable to roots, the enclosure's interior was covered with forest debris. Leaf mold was ankle deep everywhere, and even Lann chose to skirt a tangle of fallen branches which reached over the wall to the right.