Out of the waters

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 something!

"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 ahead 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.

"But why?" Alphena whispered.

"Because he could," said Uktena. His voice was as calm as a frozen pond. "There have been others. There will be more, until someone stops him."

Alphena started to say something optimistic-and empty. She looked at Uktena and caught the words unspoken. There was no place for silliness around this man.

"How can I help?" she said. Trying to keep her tone from slipping into defensive anger she continued, "I know I'm a woman but I've trained, I can fight. I lost my-"

She didn't have a word for sword.

"I lost my long knife fighting the vultures, but if you have something here, a knife or an axe, I can help you fight."

Uktena looked at her. Instead of the objection-or worse, dismissive laughter-that Alphena was poised for, he said, "A battle with Procron will not be fought with knives and axes. It is always good to have a friend nearby in a hard place, though. I welcome your presence."

Alphena lifted her chin in understanding. She'd had to ask, though. She glanced toward the lagoon. Mota hadn't surfaced again, which was a mercy; but she was there.

"Uktena, who are the other men?" Alphena asked. "The sages?"

"Come, we will walk back now," he said. Turning, he continued, "They are the wise men of neighboring villages. Hanno was brought to our land by a spirit wind, which whispered secrets to him. He, Wontosa, and Dasemunco all think that I have great power because of the talisman that came here not long before Procron did."

He touched the murrhine bowl of his pipe.

"Are they right?" Alphena said, responding to the tone she heard in Uktena's voice.

"The talisman is a tool of great power," he said, smiling at her. "But it is half the tool it was before Procron split it and crushed the sage who had used it to fight him. Procron too has a talisman. He is the talisman himself. But tools do not win battles, little one."

"No," Alphena said. If you fail, I hope Procron kills me at once.

They had reached the Cascotan again. At least a dozen men were present. Most people faced her and her host, but those Alphena glimpsed from behind had three lines scarred into their left shoulders.

"My friend and I will eat now," Uktena said to the assembly. "Bring our food to my kiva."

Wontosa stood slightly in front of his two fellows. He said, "When will you fight Procron, Master? Tomorrow night will be the full moon. That is when he takes captives."

Uktena looked at him. "When the spirits inform me," he said, "I will try my knowledge against that of Procron."

He smiled. "You have an axe, Wontosa," he said. "An axe of copper that came from far to the west, do you not?"

"You know I do, Master," Wontosa said. He touched the stuffed bird woven into his hair, obviously nervous. The other two sages eased away from him. "The axe is my talisman, though not so powerful as your pipe. Not nearly so powerful."

"Give your axe to my friend Alphena," Uktena said, still smiling. "She may have need of it."

I've seen sword blades with more humor in them than the line of his lips.

"But-" Wontosa said, and stopped. Then he said, "Yes, Master. I'll fetch it at once."

"Send it to the kiva with our dinner," Uktena said over his shoulder as he and Alphena strode through the village.

Quietly, to Alphena, he added, "It is possible that you will need the axe tomorrow morning, little one."

Varus stood beside the Sibyl, looking over an escarpment toward the jungles of Atlantis. He didn't recall climbing the opposite slope to meet her this time.

He grinned. Perhaps I'm dreaming.

Below, flying ships made slow circles about a spire of black glass. "How many are there, Sibyl?" he asked. "There must be hundreds of them."

"One hundred and thirteen Minoi rule Atlantis," said the old woman. "All are here in their ships, and most are accompanied by other ships directed by Servitors who draw power from the talisman of the Minos they serve."

Unlike the other crystal mansions Varus had seen in his visions, there had been no ordinary human dwellings around the base of black spire. The nearby forest smoldered where flames from the ships' weapons had glanced. The spire, untouched, rose from bare rock like a toadstool.

"The Minoi have gathered to punish Procron, who is also a Minos and who defies them," the Sibyl said. "All are present, because even so they fear that they will not be strong enough to prevail. And there is Lann, who is no longer a Minos but still lives in a fashion."

"Why are they fighting?" Varus asked. As he spoke, three ships turned inward from the circle. A Servitor stood alone in the stern of each. Smoke rose from a dozen patches of forest, ignited when ships crashed there burning.

"Procron and Lann were neighbors and enemies," the Sibyl said. "The Minoi have always fought among themselves; they have no other recreation, save diddling their serfs and drugging themselves. But instead of burning out Lann's cantonments, Procron destroyed Lann's keep and practiced other arts on Lann himself. Procron sculpts human beings."

As she spoke, Varus saw as if at arm's length an unfamiliar animal hanging by all four limbs from a tree limb; the ground was at least two hundred feet below. Lichen streaked the beast's shaggy gray fur; if it had not been for the jaws' slow movement, Varus might have thought he was looking at a bizarre swelling of the tree bark.

The eyes and forehead were human, or a parody of human.

"That's enough," Varus said, his voice clipped. As the thought formed in his mind, the creature shrunk to a blur beneath the forest canopy over which ships maneuvered in battle.

"Lann's talisman was an amphisbaena which he had carved from murrhine," the Sibyl said. "It was hollow to concentrate the thoughts of the one who used it. No other Minos thought he could have stood against Lann and his talisman; but Procron broke the talisman and broke Lann, so in fear they attacked Procron together. And even united-"

A line of shimmering purple curved from Procron's fortress with the casual grace of a trout leaping. It arched above the three approaching vessels, reaching instead for a ship in the distant circle. In its stern a Minos hunched over a rod of balas-ruby.

The line halted just short of the ship in an explosion of sparks that spread to right and left, following the curve of the circling fleet. Not only the target but several vessels ahead of and behind it began to glow in a faint violet echo. A human seated along the railing of the central ship threw up his arms and jumped overboard. His body burned in the air like thistledown; ashes drifted onto the treetops.

The balas-ruby exploded into sand. The ship's stern vanished; molten blobs of orichalc armor flew in all directions.

The bow dived into the forest. The three ships which had been approaching the spire settled somewhat less violently, like driftwood flung onto a beach.

Line of yellow light began to reach inward from the encircling ships; some strands were brighter than others. They twisted as they stretched toward Procron's fortress, weaving a net that grew brighter as it extended.

Purple fire from the spire snapped like a whiplash, ripping the meshes of light for a hundred feet to either side of the contact. Trees in its path toward the spire sizzled and flared, but Procron's stroke faded into orange afterimages. The net rewove itself brighter and denser than before.

Light spat from the spire again, this time as a thrust toward a ship on whose deck a Minos spun a top turned from moss agate. The air along its track into the netting roiled into a spitting rainbow.

Almost, but not quite, the fire reached its target. It finally spluttered out no more than arm's length from the hull. The woman in orichalc armor looked up once, then went back to her stone spindle as it spun and spun back, and spun. The soil beneath was burning, and gobbets of molten bedrock bubbled along the track as from a volcano.

The net was near about the fortress, now; the ships of the Minoi closed in behind its protection, while the vessels captained by Servitors stayed behind, wobbling just above the treetops. The net's upper edge was higher than the top of the spire, and at the bottom it burned the rock clean.

Varus expected Procron to try at least once more to break through the closing meshes. The spire began to sizzle with fuzzy light, like fruit infected with purple fungus. Instead of spitting another bolt, the fortress rocked sideways, then ripped free of the mountaintop. It began to rise.

Many of the Minoi closed in when they saw what was happening: portions of the net's upper edge looped inward as the ships turned bow-on to the spire. At least a third of the great fleet hung back, however. Either the Minoi directing those ships were concerned for their skins; or, more charitably, the tightening circle didn't permit all the vessels to approach without fouling one another.

The spire lifted raggedly, like a wounded man trying to climb a palisade. Cords of yellow light, by now brighter than the sun, wrapped its base. Instead of slowing, the cone of black crystal steadied into a smooth climb. The cords of light stretched, and the nearest ships jerked nearer still. Their prows lifted skyward.

The black fortress was several hundred feet off the ground when it paused. Varus thought, Has Procron finally exhausted his power?

The spire began to slip westward, moving hesitantly. Two ships had been lifted to the crystal's height and were directly in its path. Varus expected splintering crashes. He had once seen a storm hurl a pleasure boat onto the cliffs of Capri. Instead he had a momentary impression of each ship intersecting with a mirror image of itself and vanishing.

The spire moved with gathering speed, leaving the net of light in tatters behind it. Several ships had crashed into the jungle, whipsawed by bonds of light which their directing Minoi had not loosed in time.

One vessel whirled in circles behind the spire to which it was attached by a vivid hawser of light. The Minos with the moss agate spindle had been directing it, but when it the vessel overturned the first time, it flung her and her talisman out. A dozen human servants had been aboard with her; all of them dropped into the sea or the jungle despite desperate attempts to cling to the railings.

Four Servitors remained on deck, as firmly fixed as the mast. Varus could see them as glittering refractions of sunlight even after the ship and the spire which dragged it had vanished into the West.

The edges of the vision began to blur. The images became fog from which the color bleached, filling the valley in which Varus had watched the battle.

He turned to the Sibyl. Her lined face smiled. She said, "You have seen Procron, Lord Wizard. Can you stand against him?"

"Is he my enemy, Sibyl?" Varus said. He had no way to measure the strength of one wizard against another-or against a hundred others-but he had seen rock melt and lush forest blaze at the touch of the powers the opponents were using. That he could understand.

"He is the enemy of all men and all life," said the Sibyl. "Can you stand against him?"

Varus wet his lips with his tongue. I am a citizen of Carce. "Sibyl," he said, "I will face Procron for as long as I can. I will face him for as long as I live."

"Then return to the waking world for now," said the Sibyl. "The time is coming. Strong necessity demands that these things-"

"Your lordship?" said Manetho. "I, ah, didn't hear all of your command. You were sayign that something needed to be accomplished?"

Varus sat up, disoriented for a moment. He had been lying on the couch in the library. On the floor lay the wax tablet from which he had been reading his notes on the manumission ceremony to the clerk transcribing them in ink to a scroll.

The clerk still stood beside the desk, though he looked logy and had almost certainly just been awakened. The windows were shuttered, but sunlight came through the louvers. The librarian, Alexandros, was also barely awake, but Manetho by the doorway looked brushed and alert. Varus wondered whether he and another deputy steward had been taking shifts so that one was sure to be ready when the young master woke up.

"Your lordship…," Manetho said carefully. "The decision was made not to awaken you when you nodded off. If that was a mistake and you should have been helped to your bed, I will personally search out the servant responsible and have him sent to the fields. Ah-or perhaps to your noble father's silver mines in Spain?"

Varus grimaced at the thought. Manetho wasn't joking, though he surely didn't-Varus hoped he didn't-think the young master would demand that sort of punishment for a servant who had simply guessed wrong about which of two equally probable outcomes Varus would prefer when he woke up. Not so long ago Alphena might have reacted that way, though Varus had the impression that she too was becoming more measured in her behavior.

"Of course not," Varus said. He was suddenly angry when he realized that Manetho might be looking for an excuse to send a rival to brutal labor and an early death. "Don't ever suggest something like that to me."

It had been bad enough to imply that the young master might be savage and unreasonable rather than the philosopher he strove to be. It was much worse to use him as a weapon against a victim who was not only undeserving of such punishment but even innocent.

Varus got to his feet. He said, "Open the-"

Before he got the rest of the sentence out, three servants were throwing open the shutters. His whole entourage-the day and night shifts together-was here in the library or in the corridor outside.

He bent to pick up the tablet which had slipped from his fingers, wondering just how far he'd gotten in his dictation. He had thought he was too tense to get to sleep and that focusing on scholarship would calm him. The plan had apparently worked better than he had hoped.

"Permit me, your lordship!" said the girl who had snatched the tablet from the floor. She put it in his hand, pressing his fingers as she did so. She must have been sleeping at the foot of his couch.

Varus didn't remember her name, though he had seen her repeatedly in the past several days. He couldn't imagine why she had been assigned to him. If in fact she had been: in a household as large as Saxa's, it was quite possible for recently purchased servants to float for weeks or months without being given specific duties.

He straightened abruptly without trying to hide his look of irritation. Just as he didn't want to be a tool of vengeance between servants, he disliked the notion of some illiterate girl using his favor to elevate herself among her fellows. She didn't even speak good Greek!

"I believe I'll go to the baths now," Varus said to Manetho. "Or-are the baths in our gymnasium warm, by any chance?"

Saxa's little exercise ground was fully equipped, though it had rarely been used before Varus invited his friend Corylus to visit. The attached bath had a steam room and a cold pool only big enough to sit in rather than swim, but that would be sufficient to relax the stiffness of a night spent sleeping awkwardly.

Manetho smiled. "When I learned your lordship was here," he said, gesturing to the bookcases, "I ordered the furnace to be stoked. The water should be ready now."

You just redeemed yourself, Varus thought. And after all, it was possible that the deputy steward hadn't had any evil motive in talking about punishments.

Aloud he said, "Have a fresh tunic brought there for me," and started for the door. Manetho whisked out ahead of him.

Frowning, Varus added, "Manetho, do you know what happened to the slaves whom my father freed, ah, yesterday?"

"They were enrolled in a section of their own," Manetho said. "Master Lenatus was appointed as the decurion who will lead them."

"Ah," said Varus, lifting his chin in understanding. His face was blank as he started downstairs toward the gymnasium at the back.

It would not do for the Emperor to hear a rumor that Gaius Saxa was raising a private army of former slaves. On the other hand, Saxa's new clients had to be dealt with in some fashion, and keeping them in Carce under Lenatus was probably as safe as any choice could be. Besides, they might come in useful again…

Varus thought of a wizard with the power to lift crystal mountains and to scour swathes of forest to bubbling rock. The Emperor wasn't the worst threat which Saxa and the world faced at the moment.

Instead of hanging its sail from a single spar, the Atlantean ship had two booms joined separately to the mast. When they began to flap like wings, Corylus looked up to see howe they were attached to the mast.

There was no joint: the booms grew out of the mast the way branches spread from a tree bole. Corylus laid his palm against the mast and felt the wood bunch and flex as though he were touching the flank of a running horse.

"Cousin?" he said. "Is this ship alive?"

The sprite turned from the bow, where she had been looking out to sea. "I suppose it's alive the same way a crystal is," she said. "Does that matter?"

"Perhaps not at the moment," Corylus said, a trifle sharply. The sprite's lack of curiosity disturbed him, but he had met no few human beings who also disregarded the world unless it had some immediate application to themselves. The soul of a tree which had been dust or ashes for untold thousands of years had a better reason to lack a sense of wonder.

They were far enough out over the sea that Corylus could barely see the land they had left. They had slanted upward until the keel was-he looked over the railing-about a hundred feet above the water, but they were no longer climbing. There was nothing ahead or to either side, as best he could tell.

The ancient wizard grinned at him. It didn't seem to need a talisman like those he had seen the Atlanteans in visions use when they propelled their ships.

The ship's wings beat with slow, powerful strokes like those of a vulture gaining altitude on a gray day. Corylus said, "How long can we fly before we have to land? Or-"

He knew he was being optimistic, but that didn't cost any more than anxiety would.

"-can we soar without flapping?"

The sprite looked puzzled. "How would we do that?" she said. "But we can fly as long as the sun shines. Why would you want to stop flying?"

There was no useful answer to that-because of her disinterest and his ignorance, they were talking at cross purposes-so Corylus said, "Will we get home-to my home, I mean-before sunset, Coryla?"

She shrugged. "You humans worry about time," she said as she returned to where Corylus stood at the railing just forward of the mast. "I don't know when we'll reach the waking world. I don't know if we ever will."

She slid her hand through the sleeve of his tunic and began fondling his chest. He took her wrist and firmly placed her arm at her side; she pouted and turned her back, but she didn't move away.

Corylus looked up. There were no clouds, but the sky itself had a pale cast that suggested haze. The sun remained bright, though not hot enough to make him wish for better shade than he had available.

"I should have thought things through before we left the beach," Corylus said. "Does, ah, your friend know how long we must fly to get back?"

The sprite turned and glowered for an instant. Then her mood broke and she said, "I don't think he cares any more about time than I do, cousin. You humans are hard to understand."

She walked toward the bow but threw a glance over her shoulder to show that she wasn't stalking away; he followed. "But there was nothing good about that island, not for me and certainly not for you. I'm glad you left. And-"

She raised her eyebrow.

"-what would you have done when another Cyclops came? Though I might have asked the Ancient to help. Even though you're not as friendly to me as you should be, cousin. Don't you think I'm pretty?"

"At another time I'd…," Corylus said. "Well, I might find you very pretty. But not now, please, mistress."

The Cyclops had almost crushed him to death, and in this place he wasn't sure he was alive to begin with. Is my body lying on the floor of Tardus' library, turning purple and cooling?

He grinned at the thought. So long as he could imagine things being worse, the way things were didn't seem so bad. Any soldier could tell you that.

"Well, I think you're being silly," the sprite said with a pout, but she wasn't really angry this time. "What else is there to do?"

"I'm going to check the food and drink," Corylus said, removing a pin so that he could slide the wooden bolt that fastened the hatch cover. He had spoken to change the subject, but as soon as he formed the words he realized that he was very thirsty.

The shallow hold was empty except for a tank with a spigot and a net bag holding hard, fist-sized lumps that looked like plaster. He supposed they were rolls. The tank wasn't metal, wood, or pottery of any familiar sort. It had flowed like glass, but it didn't have the slick hardness of glass when Corylus tried it with his fingertip.

He turned the spigot and ran fluid into the mug of the same material chained to the tank. It was water and too tasteless to be really satisfying. He drained the cup regardless, then took one of the rolls back on deck.

"Do you need something to eat?" Corylus said to the sprite. "And there's a cask of water, too."

She brushed the thought away moodily. "I don't eat; I can't eat. And I no longer have a tree."

She caught his glance toward the creature in the stern and laughed. "No, not the Ancient either," she said. "What a thought, cousin!"

At least I've cheered her up, Corylus thought. He wondered what it would be like to be imprisoned for millennia-imprisoned forever, very likely-in a bead of glass with an inhuman sorcerer. Of course the sprite was inhuman also…

He took a bite of the roll as he leaned over the railing, looking down. He started to chew, then stopped and spat out the mouthful. It tasted like stiff wax.

"Mistress?" he said. "What is this stuff? I thought it was food."

"It's the food that the serfs eat on shipboard," the sprite said without much interest. "The Minoi have fresh food, but that's probably all gone now. The ships were cast up many seasons ago, you know."

"I see," said Corylus. He leaned on the railing again, eyeing the roll again. His teeth had left distinct impressions, just as they would have done in wax. He might become hungry enough to eat the stuff; but though he was very hungry, he wasn't to that point yet.

Swells moved slowly across the face of the water, occasionally marked by flotsam. Spurts of foam suddenly flecked the surface well off to starboard.

Corylus focused on the flickers of movement: flying fish were lifting from the sea and arrowing above it for several hundred feet, slanting slightly to one side or the other of their line in the water. Following them closely were the much larger shadows of porpoises, curving up from the surface and back. Their motion reminded Corylus of a tent maker's needle as he sewed leather panels together.

He looked at the roll. "Mistress," he said, "we don't have fishing gear or any way to make it that I can see, but I think if we get right down on the surface ahead of those fish, some of them will fly aboard. I've seen it happen before, on regular ships."

He grinned. "Flying fish are bony," he said, "and I don't suppose there's any way to cook them, but even fish would be better food than these rolls."

"It doesn't sound very good to me," Coryla said, "but if that's what you want…"

She called to the creature in the language they shared. He barked in obvious amusement.

Corylus didn't see him change what he was doing-he simply squatted in the stern, occasionally looking over one railing or the other-but the ship slid downward as smoothly as it had risen. They were bearing to the right as well, putting them into the path of the school of fish.

Feeling triumphant, Corylus tossed the roll he held over the side. He felt a catch as the ship's keel brushed through the top of the swells. Spray flew backward on the breeze. Droplets splashed the creature, who calmly licked his golden fur smooth again.

A fish slapped onto the deck, wriggled, and flung itself back through the railing as Corylus tried to grab it. Almost immediately, two more fish came aboard. He hadn't replaced the hatch cover-from laziness, not foresight-but that allowed him to scoop first one, then the other catch into the hold.

They were each the length of his forearm. Corylus was more pleased at having come up with a clever idea than he was at the prospect of eating them raw.

"Cousin?" the sprite said. "Have you looked into the water over the stern recently?"

Corylus grimaced to be interrupted: another fish had landed on the deck and there was one caught on top of the port sail as well.

She didn't sound concerned-but she never sounded concerned.

Corylus leaped past the Ancient, looking back while holding onto the inward-curving stern piece. There was only swelling water, a translucent green that darkened- "Take us up!" he shouted. "Higher, by Hercules!"

The Ancient laughed like a chattering monkey. The sails slammed the air back and downward, thrusting the ship upward and making it heel onto its port side. Corylus grabbed the starboard railing with both hands and kept his grip though his feet skidded out behind him.

The sails flapped again. The ship wasn't gaining height-the port rail barely skimmed the tops of the swells-but they had turned at almost right angles to their previous course. The golden-furred creature continued to laugh.

It was going to let us die without saying a word!

But then, it was already dead. Presumably nothing would change for the Ancient and Coryla if the glass amulet was in the belly of a- The sea exploded upward where the ship would have been if it had continued dawdling along catching flying fish. The head of the monster was ten or a dozen feet long in itself, and its gape was wider yet. The fangs were a foot long, back-slanting and pointed like spears.

The jaws clopped shut on spray and air. If the ship hadn't twisted to the side, they would have crushed the hull.

The monster curled to follow its prey's new course. Its head and body were a tawny bronze, with darker mottlings as though brown paint had been dripped over metal.

The eyes, prominent and well forward in the snout, glittered with what Corylus read as anger. He knew he was projecting his fear onto a beast whose small brain likely had room only for hunger. Hunger was quite enough of a threat.

The ship was rising at last, describing a slow curve which would bring it back on the course which Corylus had left to go fishing. He looked at the magician in the stern. His right hand trembled toward his sword hilt.

The anger flooded out of Corylus; he laughed also. He leaned over the railing to see the monster which had almost devoured them.

Coryla's friend had done what he told it to do. If Corylus stabbed in the dark and cut down the wrong person, would he be angry with his sword? In the future, he would be more careful, but- He turned to the creature and bowed. "Thank you, Master Magician," he said. "By turning the ship instead of just rising as I ordered, you saved us from the danger I put us in by my ignorance."

The Ancient very deliberately touched the tips of his long fingers together, then put his hands on his thighs as before. Corylus didn't know what the gesture meant, but it was clearly an acknowledgment.

Corylus looked down at the giant fish which now was swimming near the surface. It had a fin the whole length of its back, but nothing else marred the serpentine smoothness of the several hundred feet of its body. The ship was drawing ahead, but it was clearly following.

"Our magic drew it from the bottom," said the sprite. "The eel isn't a natural creature, you know. Well, most of what I've seen in this place you brought me to isn't natural, as we know it in the waking world."

Corylus cleared his throat. They were a hundred feet above the water and leveling out. He thought of going higher, but- He smiled grimly.

– -experience had taught him to trust the magician's judgment over his own.

"Will the eel chase us far, mistress?" he said to the sprite. His hands ached from their grip on the railing; he began to spread and clench the fingers, working circulation back into them.

"Until it dies, I suppose," Coryla said, "or we leave its world."

She shrugged. "Or until it catches us and you die, of course."

"Of course," Corylus said. By squinting when he looked back along their course, he could see the eel as a long shadow rippling in the water.

The sun was past zenith. It would go below the horizon in five or six hours.

For now, the ship flew on.

Water trickled down a back corner of Hedia's cell. It wasn't because the walls sweated like those of the cells under the Circus during the winter: this stream was guided by a channel. When it reached the floor, it ran down a channel cast into a tile with a beveled hole in the middle.

A greater flow echoed hollowly in the sewer beneath the cells. Though the floor was probably nearly transparent like the rest of the building, there wasn't enough light below for Hedia to see through it.

She walked to the grating on the corridor side. Two Servitors stood against the far wall, watching her. Each held an orichalc spear; a dagger of the same gleaming metal was thrust beneath a sash of coarse fabric.

"I need food!" she said, not shouting but in a commanding voice. The glass men didn't move any more than she expected them to.

She rattled the grill. It was steel, or at any rate some gray metal. The hinge pins were discolored, but there was no rust despite the damp conditions. The bars were too thick for her to cut through in less than a month even if she'd had a saw.

Which she certainly did not. There was nothing with her in the cell except the garment which the Council of Minoi had given her after their decision. She had taken it off and used the wetted cloth to rub herself clean as soon as she had taken stock of the situation. She didn't need clothing, and she would feel much better to be rid of the filth and dried blood in which she was covered.

"Your masters don't want me to starve to death!" Hedia said. "If you don't bring me food, that's what will happen. What will they do to you then?"

The Servitors were as still as statues. She wasn't sure that they could understand speech anyway-or even hear.

A steel grating of about the size of the cell's floor covered a section of the corridor roof. It stood out as ridged black against the faint blue glow of the crystal in the walls, floors, and the rest of the ceiling. Air rose through it with a low-pitched whistle, drawing cooler air along the corridor.

A human servant shuffled down the corridor, carrying a nearly empty sack made from rope netting. He was a stooped old man with his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.

"Good sir!" Hedia called, pressing herself against the bars. "Come here! I will make it worth your while."

He ignored her as completely as the Servitors had done. Stopping, he rummaged in his bag and brought out a lump the size of two clenched fists. He offered it to a Servitor, who took it in his glass hand.

The human continued onward without ever having looked toward Hedia. The Servitor crossed the corridor and thrust the doughlike lump through the bars. They were set closely, but Hedia could have reached between them.

She didn't bother, since she knew from experience that she couldn't have overpowered a glass man. Even if she had, it wouldn't get her out of this cell.

She grinned. It would be satisfying, though. Throttling anything would feel good right at the moment.

Hedia bit into the lump as she walked to the back of her cell. It reminded her of overcooked octopus: bland, resilient, and tough. She chewed mechanically, wondering what it had been originally.

The cooks of noble households in Carce prided themselves on disguising the ingredients of their dishes, fashioning "roast boar" from mackerel and "rack of lamb" from peacocks' tongues. She doubted whether even the most experienced of them could create something quite so namelessly nasty as this, however.

Because she didn't have a cup, she held her lips to the groove in the wall and sucked the trickle which followed it. It was good water, at least.

She resumed eating. The situation was unpleasant, but the fact that she didn't like the food wasn't close to the top of the list of things she didn't like. If the guards had been human, she might have complained; though without expecting anything to change. Railing at the Servitors was as pointless as screaming at her bronze mirror.

A clang like a cartload of armor overturning sounded in the corridor. Holding the lump of food in one hand and her garment in the other, Hedia walked in a dignified fashion to the grilled doorway. Walking was about the only dignified thing she could do under the circumstances, and she didn't imagine that her moving faster would change anything that was going on outside her cell.

The Servitors had leaped into action. They stood beneath the grate in the corridor ceiling, pointing their spears toward the dark bulk that had crashed down hard enough to dimple it. Had a block fallen from the top of the airshaft?

Fingers from above thrust into the grating. It rocked, then lifted slightly. Hedia touched her own bars. If the grating was the same metal, it had to weigh five or six times as much as she did.

A guard thrust upward, nicking the steel. His orichalc point missed the gripping fingers.

The square grate lifted a hand's breadth higher, then shot down into the corridor. One guard dodged in time, but it struck the other squarely and slammed him back against Hedia's cell. His spear flipped into the air like a spun coin, bounced from the corridor ceiling, and landed ringing on the floor. The grating toppled to lie on the point and half the shaft.

Lann hung within the air shaft, his broad palms pressed against opposite walls. He had lifted-and thrown-the grate with his feet. Weight alone held it on studs cast into the sides of the bottom course of crystal blocks.

The ape's tattooed human face scanned the situation below; then he leaped onto the standing guard, catching his spear-shaft in his toes. They hit the floor together with Lann on the bottom.

Hedia pushed the rolled-up garment between the bars with her right hand and caught the end with the other hand, lacing it back through the next opening to the left. The guard had fallen with his back against the cell. He started to get up.

Hedia looped the garment around his glass neck and crossed the portions on her side around one another. She didn't have time to knot the ends, but even so the fabric took the strain instead of her hands and arms. The Servitor half-rose, then recoiled into the bars with a clang almost as loud as that of the grating hitting the floor.

Lann used his hands and feet together to fling the other Servitor against the wall of the corridor. The glass head shattered to dust; the Servitor's torso and limbs crumbled into gravel-sized chunks a moment later.

The remaining guard jerked forward again. The steel bar flexed noticeably outward, but to Hedia's amazement the makeshift noose didn't break: the fabric had made her itch, but it was clearly stronger even than silk.

The Servitor turned and reached through the bars. Hedia jumped back, avoiding a grip that she knew could squeeze her bones to powder. The glass hands pulled the loop open, now that she was no longer able to keep the ends tight.

Lann grabbed the Servitor by the ankles. The glass man reached for Lann's wrists instead of holding onto the bars. Lann swung him sideways like a huge club. His head hit the opposite wall and powdered like that of his fellow guard.

Hedia stared at the ape-man, scarcely able to believe what she had just seen happen. How strong are you? she thought. But unless he could tear apart steel bars as thick as her two thumbs together, killing the guards wouldn't change her situation.

Lann gripped the spear of the guard he had just killed and jerked it from under the grate. He thrust the point into the door's lower hinge. Gripping the shaft in his hands and the bars with his toes, he pulled. The slender orichalc blade didn't bend, but the hinge pin snapped and the lower corner of the door twisted noticeably inward.

I might be able to slip through, Hedia thought; though she knew that slim as she was, she wasn't really that slim. But if Lann would break the upper hinge also- The ape-man dropped the spear and gripped the corner of the door. With his feet braced on the crystal jamb, he used the bars' own length to lever them outward.

"There, I can squeeze through!" Hedia said. She got down on her hands and knees.

Lann continued to pull. Can he understand Greek?

The corner of the door squealed as it bent upward like a scrap of cloth caught in a breeze. The ape-man dropped to the floor again. He was breathing hard and the fur of his chest and shoulders was soaked with sweat.

Hedia started to crawl out. Lann pushed her back with the brusque gentleness a nurse uses toward an infant who insists on going somewhere she shouldn't. To Hedia's surprise, he crouched and squirmed into the cell, twisting part-way through so that his massive shoulders would clear. She hadn't thought he would fit, but the ape-man had a better eye for the problem.

Although that didn't explain why he apparently wanted to imprison himself. Hedia could think of one possible reason, but she supposed she should discount that because her mind always tended to run in that direction. So, however, did the minds of many men who came in contact with her.

The ape-man ignored her and shuffled splay-legged to the drain. He thrust his right hand into it and planted his left hand flat on the floor. The muscles of his shoulders bunched again.

Hedia thought for a moment that Lann's hand was trapped; then she realized that the tile was lifting. The ape-man straightened till his long left arm was straight; the tile wasn't completely out of the hole in which it had nested, but she could see the underside shimmering close to the level of the floor.

Lann leaned backward, using the weight of his body to balance that of the massive tile: it was square, three feet on a side and eight inches thick. He gripped the upper edge with his left hand and tilted it further upward; his right hand was clenched into a fist, creating a lump too big to slip back through the drain hole.

He rotated the tile in the opening, then gave it a slight shove sideways and unclenched his fist. The tile, aligned with the diagonal, dropped through the square hole and smashed into the sewer beneath.

Lann turned, grinning, to Hedia. His right wrist was ringed with blood. He pointed down into the opening, grunted, and then climbed through. He held the rim for a moment, then dropped.

Hedia looked into the hole. She couldn't see the bottom, but she caught the motion of the ape-man waving. He grunted again, louder and this time imperiously. The sound echoed like a lion's cough.

Hedia darted to the front of her cell and stretched through the bars for the spear Lann had used for a lever. She pulled it in with her, then managed to reach the belt from which the second guard's dagger hung. The previous wearer was now a pile of sharp gravel which spilled away when she tugged the scabbard. She hung the belt over her shoulder like a bandolier instead of bothering with the complex buckle.

Lann called a third time, obviously angry. She doubted he could climb up again to fetch her, but she had learned not to discount the ape-man's strength and resourcefulness.

Hedia thrust the spear through the opening butt-first and waggled it until she felt a powerful hand snatch it away from her. She slid into the opening, bracing her arms on the sides as Lann had done. Relaxing them, she dropped.

She hoped Lann would catch her instead of letting her fall onto the edges of the drain tile. Even if that had happened it would be better than being dangled as bait for a monster.

Besides, trusting Lann had proved to be a good idea this far.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC