Air and Darkness Page 6

  Varus was a scholar and philosopher. He would prefer any explanation other than magic to account for some of the things he had done, but his rigidly logical mind could not find one. He would keep looking; perhaps a natural explanation would yet appear.

  On a plain below the ridge wheeled an ivy-crowned figure in a chariot pulled by a pair of leopards. He held a torch. Following him were hundreds of men and women, half-dressed or dressed in animal skins. They waved thyrsi, pinecones stuck on fennel stalks, and shouted exuberantly.

  Those are horsemen, Varus thought, noticing torsos rising above the milling crowd. At closer look he saw that they were centaurs.

  “This is the Otherworld,” Varus said to the Sibyl. “You’re showing me the god Bacchus in the Otherworld.”

  “It is the Otherworld for now,” the Sibyl said with another crinkly smile. “This is not Bacchus, however, but rather his companion Ampelos leading a small part of Bacchus’ train into the Waking World.”

  “But why?” said Varus.

  The Sibyl didn’t respond immediately. A lens of reddish light glowed in the air before Ampelos’ chariot, then swelled to twenty feet in diameter. Vaguely through it Varus saw the rocks and slopes of Polymartium where his physical body remained.

  Ampelos shouted and lashed the air with his thyrsus. The leopards sprang forward, dragging the chariot into the lens. The hundreds of cheering celebrants, male and female and unhuman, surged through behind their leader.

  “But what are they doing?” Varus said, amplifying his unanswered previous question.

  “Watch,” said the Sibyl, and the scene below them changed.

  A battalion of troops, Praetorian Guards according to their standards, advanced in close order across broken terrain of glade and outcrops. Varus saw the altar around which Hedia had been dancing; this was the countryside near Polymartium, but the Sibyl was showing it under bright moonlight. The ceremony to Mother Matuta had followed the night of the new moon.

  Figures swept through the woods surrounding the Praetorians, swinging their thyrsi and raising their faces to the sky. Their mouths opened in silent whoops. Ampelos led the band Varus had seen in the Otherworld, disciples of Bacchus dressed in ivy and hides of dappled fawns, but there were others as well, hundreds and perhaps thousands of men and women capering in the moonlight.

  Some were peasants and many were slaves, but Varus saw also the garish finery of farm managers. There was even a woman in pastel silks riding on the back of a centaur and followed by a group of well-dressed servants—a great lady of Carce with her personal entourage. His breath caught, but she was not Hedia.

  They swept over the Praetorians like surf reaching ramparts of sand. Vine lassoes wrapped soldiers and dragged them from their ranks; pinecones struck like thunderbolts, shattering shields and breastplates. Soldiers hurled away their weapons and fled while others joined their attackers. The Bacchic throng danced and laughed and drank from wineskins that they brandished like military standards.

  The Sibyl made a small gesture with her hand. In place of the routed Praetorians, Varus saw the outcrops where his physical body gazed down on the Indian delegation and the other spectators.

  The Indian woman, Rupa, remained apart from her fellows. Turning, she looked at Varus—at his spiritual form on the ridge with the Sibyl. Rupa’s eyes were as bright and as cold as the stars. For a moment Varus felt pressure, but it was so slight that after it vanished he thought he might have imagined it.

  Rupa turned and walked in the direction of the road to Viterbum. The vehicles had been parked beside the road, so as not to pollute the rites with animal dung and because the track to the ceremonial grounds was at best doubtful.

  The lens of faint light had appeared here in the Waking World as well as in the Sibyl’s vision of the Otherworld. The male Indians strode toward it. Bhiku brought up the rear. The spectators including the members of Sentius’ household gaped at the lens and chattered among themselves.

  The Indians stepped one by one into the lens and vanished from the Waking World. The Sibyl said, “They are returning to King Govinda through the passage they have opened. Their work here is finished.”

  “Sibyl,” said Varus, hearing a hint of desperation in his voice. “What am I to do?”

  “I cannot advise so great a wizard as yourself, Lord Varus,” the Sibyl said. Her voice sounded like the rasp of a locust’s legs on its wing cases. “But if Govinda’s plans go ahead, riot and madness will rule your world.”

  I am a citizen of Carce. The authority of those words came with responsibilities for every citizen.

  “Then I had best see this King Govinda,” Varus said. His spiritual form walked forward. In the vision of the Waking World before him, his body was stepping toward the disk of rosy light.

  * * *

  VARUS IS IN A TRANCE, Hedia thought as she watched her son tramp toward the lens. He moved with the rigid calm of a priest leading the procession of Isis. Hedia was too far away to reach him unless she ran, which would require her to either hike up her dress again or simply strip it off.

  It probably wasn’t necessary to do either of those things. In the past Varus had stumbled when he came out of a trance, but that would be at worst an embarrassment. All other things being equal, Hedia preferred that she avoid the loss of her own dignity above protecting her son from losing his.

  “Lady, what’s that light in the air?” Minimus shouted. He grabbed Hedia’s shoulder and pointed with his other hand, as though he imagined she wouldn’t have noticed it on her own.

  He must be very frightened to treat me that way, Hedia thought. To her surprise, her flash of anger—I’ll have him crucified!—replaced her own fear and settled her.

  She prodded the Galatian’s hand away with two fingers. “Remember who you’re speaking to, Minimus,” she said calmly. “And as for the light, it’s harmless. It appeared because of our prayer to Mother Matuta.”

  That was nonsense or at least probably nonsense, but it was as likely as any other cause Hedia could think of at the moment. It served to calm Minimus, which was the important thing.

  At least it calmed the big slave until he realized what he’d just done. He grabbed his right hand—the one that had touched his mistress—with his left and jerked it to his side as though he were trying to crush it. He cringed away from Hedia, his eyes staring at her in horror.

  Hedia smiled faintly. She was no longer angry, but it was just as well that Minimus would be careful not to repeat that panicked mistake.

  Varus had reached the lens. Hedia watched without concern, expecting her son to stop and chant a phrase from the Sibylline Books as she had seen him do before. Varus remained the quiet, bookish youth whom Hedia had met when she married his father; that he was a powerful wizard as well seemed to surprise him as much as it did her.

  Varus stepped forward again. “Varus!” Hedia shouted, grabbing her tunic with both hands and running toward him.

  Too late! Varus vanished into the lens while Hedia was still fifty feet away. For an instant he remained as a shadow against the faint light; then that too was gone. She continued to run.

  The morning sky was cloudless, but an east wind had begun to blow. Hedia lowered her head slightly against it and slitted her eyelids.

  A capering army flooded through the lens. With them like the perfume of a spring garden came an indescribable onrush of emotion, lust and joy in a mixture beyond human imagining.

  Hedia shouted in delight. The chariot that swept past was drawn by great spotted cats, larger than the leopards she had seen in the arena. The charioteer was lithely muscular, with flowing hair bound by a chaplet of vine leaves. His only garment was a dappled fawn skin fluttering about his waist.

  The charioteer’s expression was as haughty as a god’s, and he himself was as handsome as a statue of Adonis. He glanced at Hedia as he passed; a rush of desire filled her, heated her. Then he was gone, but hundreds of revelers followed him, male Bassoi and female Maenads, dancing and whirling.r />
  A young man as shaggy as a faun caught Hedia’s arms and tried to pull her away. She kissed him, feeling the tickle of his beard, but she used his momentary relaxation to swing out of his grip. He made a moue of disappointment, but he was gone into the rout in an instant.

  A few of those who had attended the ceremony to Mother Matuta were turning to flee. Most, however, stood transfixed for a moment before joining the riot that flowed about them. It was like watching wax figures melt in an oven.

  Around the altar to Mother Matuta danced a pair of men in fawn skins, six local men, a goat-footed satyr, the priest Doclianus, and the matron who had been treading on Hedia’s heels throughout the ceremony. Skins of wine were passing around the circle as they danced.

  The manager’s wife drank deeply, handed the skin to the satyr behind her, and began to twirl out of her clothing. She kept time perfectly, in contrast to her performance earlier in the morning. The satyr, his member suddenly erect, mounted her like a cockerel treading a hen. The matron began to laugh raucously.

  Hedia felt a surge of lust, but orgies were familiar ground to her. Though never so many participants at the same time, she qualified. She had learned to keep control, to keep a sliver of reason that was always aware of what everyone about her was doing. Hedia took risks, but she took them after judging those risks against the urges of her body.

  Other women—and most men, judging from her experience—acted in response to the fire in their veins. Hedia had made cold choices. More recently she had killed men after giving the situation the same icy consideration.

  The chariot made wide circles. Vines grew in its wake, winding about tree trunks and draping themselves from branches. They moved with the speed of snakes in the summer’s heat, leafing out and setting fruit more quickly than water could drop from an upturned bucket.

  Revelers snatched grapes into their mouths and spun onward, laughing and shouting, “Io Bacchus!” and throwing themselves into one another’s arms. The delicately aesthetic understeward who led the contingent from Sentius’ household was locked in an embrace with a farm laborer, probably a slave.

  He’ll hate himself in the morning, Hedia thought. Perhaps they both will. But at this moment there’s no tomorrow, only lust.

  She looked for members of her own entourage. The only one she saw was Minimus with a thyrsus-wielding Bacchante on his shoulders and a woman hugged close to either side. On his right was another Bacchante, but the woman to his left was local and was at least sixty. She looked eighty, but Hedia knew that rural women aged quickly from a combination of work and the harsh weather.

  “Io Bacchus!” someone shouted from behind. Hedia turned. A handsome youth and a girl rode toward her on the back of a visibly male centaur who whirled a vine lasso; leaves and bunches of grapes dangled from the loop. The centaur’s ruggedly handsome human face was transfigured by lust.

  Why not? Hedia thought with a flush of excitement.

  The answer was as sudden and shocking. Because my son may need my help and the world certainly needs his help.

  Hedia turned and stepped through the glowing portal to the Otherworld.

  CHAPTER III

  “Have my usual breakfast brought to the summer dining room,” Alphena said as she started up the stairs to the roof alcove. She’d eaten a scrap of bread in wine lees when she got up, but she preferred to wait till after her workout for anything more substantial.

  And a good thing I waited yesterday, she thought, or I’d have sprayed the meal all over the gym when Pulto clocked me behind the ear.

  Florina loudly—and needlessly—relayed her orders. The food had probably started for the roof as soon as Alphena stepped out of the bathing annex. It was likely enough that the same meal would be waiting in the inside dining room, just in case Her Ladyship chose to eat there instead.

  Alphena reached the top of the stairs. This was a normal business day, so Saxa, surrounded by a cloud of servants and clients—hangers-on—would have gone off to a session of the Senate. Pandareus and other teachers would be holding classes in the Forum; Corylus had said that he was preparing an oration to deliver this morning.

  “Did my mother and Varus return from Polymartium yesterday?” Alphena said as she reclined on the masonry bench prepared for her with pillows. By mid-morning the air was warm enough for anybody, and she wanted the fresh air of the rooftop after exercise and a bath. “I didn’t hear them come in.”

  “No, Your Ladyship!” Florina said. “Do you suppose there’s something wrong?”

  “No,” Alphena said, “I don’t. I think my brother found some grandmother with stories about the way the ceremonies used to be held and Mother stayed to help him.”

  Or Hedia might have stayed because she had met a man she wanted to get to know better. Alphena tried not to think about that, but sex was as surely part of Hedia’s character as the disdainful sneer with which she had faced demons. The complexity of her character was beyond Alphena’s ability to fathom; but Saxa accepted the mixture, and his daughter owed her life to it.

  A servant set a footed bowl before Alphena. It was filled with milk and raw egg whipped with spices. Another servant offered a tray of bread cut in varied shapes. Alphena took a thickish crust and used it to scoop a mouthful of milk and egg.

  Other servants waited with covered trays holding fruit and whatever else the chef thought Her Ladyship might call for. An underchef waited to rush down to the kitchen with any unexpected requirement.

  This is silly, Alphena thought. I always eat the same thing for breakfast.

  Neither Saxa nor Hedia set much store by fancy meals, either. As for Alphena’s brother, Varus would be perfectly happy with a plowman’s diet, sour wine included. He didn’t seem to notice food. But for the kitchen staff to accept that would mean that their very existence was pointless, so they continued to try.

  And what’s the point of my own existence?

  Alphena laughed, almost snorting milk gruel out of her nostrils. Servants froze, afraid that they had done something or should have done something.

  Alphena swallowed and wiped her lips with a napkin. “I should get more exercise,” she said mildly. “I found myself worrying about philosophy, which is my brother’s business.”

  From the open doorway of the stair cupola, someone—Alphena thought it was Charias, a recently promoted understeward—said on a rising note, “You shouldn’t be here! If Her Ladyship wishes to go out, she will call you!”

  “If you don’t get outa the way…,” snarled either Rago or Drago—the Illyrian cousins spoke Greek with indistinguishably bad accents—“you’re going down the stairs headfirst.”

  Alphena jumped to her feet. “It’s all right, Charias!” she called. “Send them up!”

  “It’s two of the outside escorts, Your Ladyship!” the understeward called back, which Alphena could see for herself now. At least Charias had shown the sense to jump out of the way. That pair of Illyrians didn’t joke about mayhem.

  Rago was leading. They were comparably but not identically scarred, and Drago’s missing left ear set him apart from his cousin.

  “Your Ladyship,” Rago muttered, grimacing. The bravado that had carried him through the house, ignoring rules and propriety, had deserted him in Alphena’s presence.

  Drago stepped forward. “Lady,” he grunted. “Minimus and mosta the others just come back. It all went to shit somehow up there with the mistress and your brother, only nobody’s got the balls to come tell you. So we come.”

  “Who is Minimus?” Alphena said, as much to give herself time to recover from shock as because she really cared. She felt her knees wobble, but staggering to a seat would give the wrong impression at this moment.

  “He’s honcho on the mistress’ guard,” Rago said. “They went up to some bloody place two days back.”

  “The big Galatian,” Alphena said, placing the man. Hedia chose good-looking men for her escort. Minimus was unscarred, but he had been trained as a gladiator and would give a goo
d account of himself if anyone attacked Hedia.

  “I kilt plenty men as big as that ’un,” Drago said with satisfaction. “Plenty.”

  That was likely enough. Rago and Drago were former sailors—and doubtless pirates—who’d been bought to work one of Saxa’s farms in leg irons. Before they were transported, Agrippinus had diverted them to string awnings over the central garden when Hedia decided to give a summer fete for other senatorial wives. The pair had remained at the town house as much as anything because nobody had bothered to send them away.

  “A whole mob come out of the air, Minimus says,” Drago said. “Whoop! Right outa the air. And when things settled down, they, whoever they was, went back where they’d come, but the mistress and your brother was gone.”

  “Out of the air…?” Alphena repeated.

  She saw Charias standing at the stairhead, quivering with interest and concern. “You!” she said. “Get all the secretaries in the household to write down what the servants who’ve returned from Polymartium are saying. Everyone who can take dictation, I don’t care whose suite they belong to.”

  The understeward’s lips pursed in hesitation. “Now,” Alphena said. “If anyone makes a problem, tell him I’ll come down and deal with him at once.”

  “Hey, send us, lady,” Rago said. He smiled so broadly that Alphena could see that half his teeth were missing. “You told him nice, so give us a turn.”

  “I doubt I’ll need to do that,” she said. “But a crowd of people out of the air? You mean magic?”

  “Dunno,” said Drago. “Sure sounds like it, don’t it?”

  “Are we going up there to sort it out, lady?” his cousin asked.

  “The first thing I plan to do,” said Alphena, “is to discuss the business with Master Corylus and Master Pandareus. Once we know what the business is, as best Mother’s escort can describe it.”

  She looked at the cousins. Both wore clean blue tunics, but apart from that they appeared to be dangerous roughs—which of course they were.