Out of the waters

CHAPTER 14

Lann caught Hedia not only easily but gently; his hands were like a pair of leather pillows shaped perfectly to the contours of her body. He lowered her till her feet touched water. She twitched back for an instant, but the ape-man was standing so she straightened her legs.

The bottom of the channel was no more than six inches below the surface. The trickle down the wall of Hedia's cell had been fresh, but this was salt enough to sting her many cuts and scratches. The Minoi must use a constant flow of sea water to flush the sewer.

The current was noticeable but not hazardous. Lann set off against it, hunching as before. He looked as though he were fighting a fierce wind.

Hedia fished up the spear-Lann had dropped it-and followed. She wished that the ape-man could talk, though his strength was certainly more valuable an asset than speech would have been.

She visualized a frail, scholarly monkey declaiming to the crowd in the forum in a toga. The thought made her giggle and feel better.

As her eyes adapted, she could see that the walls of the sewer glowed faintly blue up to within a foot or two of the high ceiling. She scraped the spear butt along it, finding crystal beneath. She left a mark on the surface and lifted a blob of bluish slime which she flicked off.

Algae, she supposed, or perhaps moss like the sheets that grew on the ancient well in Saxa's back garden. About all the light showed her was Lann, sloshing on ahead, but he was a comforting sight.

Hedia couldn't see into the water, and there was no walkway to the side of the channel. She decided not to worry about what she couldn't change. Occasionally her foot squished instead of splashing, but that could happen in the streets of Carce. If she had been squeamish, she would have missed out on quite a lot of what life had to offer.

It was growing brighter. There was something ahead, a cross-hatched pattern glimpsed past the ape-man's bulk.

It was a grating across the sewer. Vegetation so dead and dry that Hedia couldn't tell what it had been originally clung to the bars. It was a solid curtain at the bottom, and stray wisps remaining almost to the top from when the channel had been flooded. Through gaps Hedia could see the end of the tunnel; open water gleamed in the moonlight.

Lann reached out with both hands and shook the grate. It was fixed so firmly to the crystal that Hedia couldn't hear the metal ring-though she told herself that she did.

The ape-man cried out in echoing rage. He took the bars in his outstretched feet and hands, trying to bend them toward the middle. He shrieked like a bull being gelded.

"Lann?" Hedia said. He ignored her.

She shouted, "Lann!" at the top of her lungs. He continued to shake the bars vainly.

Hedia knew better than to touch him. She had been around a number of very angry men, and had learned how bad an idea startling one could be. She had never known anyone as strong as Lann, however.

Hedia stepped to the wall and rattled the orichalc spear-butt across the grating, making a musical clamor that cut through even the ape-man's bellows. Her hands tingled on the verge of numbness from the vibration.

To Lann, the grate must have felt like the breath of nearby lightning. He shouted, "Waugh!" and leaped backward.

Hedia offered the spear to him. He stared at it for a moment in confusion; then his expression brightened into a smile that displayed fangs which could have cracked the joint of an ox.

Two bolts on either side locked the grate to the crystal wall. Lann thrust the spear between the grate and the left-hand wall.

Hedia stepped away as the ape-man worked. He knew his own strength, but she had the impression that he didn't fully appreciate the weakness of those around him.

The ape-man was clearly more than just a beast. He had entered her prison by coming down the air shaft, but even he hadn't tried to climb back that way while carrying Hedia. He had known the way the sewer was constructed-he had been one of the rulers, after all-and he had intelligently exploited that design to escape with her.

But though Lann had used a spear to break the cell door loose, he hadn't thought to bring it along in case he needed a lever again. His enemy Procron hadn't put a man's brain into an ape's body… but it did appear that he had put part of a man's brain into an ape.

The grating rang like anvils falling together. Hedia thought the spear must have snapped, but the orichalc shaft had held. The sound was the thick steel bolt breaking.

Hedia thought the obvious way to proceed was for Lann to use the lever to break the remaining bolt on that side. Instead he dropped the spear, gripped the edge of the grate with both hands, and set his feet on the wall.

The grating was taller than the cell, giving the ape-man more leverage on the upper bolt than he'd had on the door hinge. It flexed upward only a few inches when the bolt sheared with another ringing crash.

Water trapped behind the debris at the bottom of the screen gushed through. Grunting in thunderous triumph, Lann walked backward along the wall, dragging the grate with him.

At last he dropped to all fours in the water, snorting like a winded horse. He had bent back the grating so that it left a broad passage, but the ape-man was blocking it.

Hedia smiled wryly. She didn't intend to go on without him, even if she had been able to get by.

Lann rose to his usual crouch, glanced at Hedia, and shambled past the grating. She fished out the spear again and followed. His strength was incredible, but even so his exertions must have taken a toll; he seemed logy, though- She was thinking of him as human. An ape couldn't be expected to be sprightly in human terms.

They sloshed from the inlet into a sea which got deeper very quickly. Lann hooted in concern and pulled Hedia with him to the muddy bank.

The water shone in moonlight. In the far distance she could see the opposite shore, not as a place but as a boundary to the shimmering smoothness. Occasional streaks indicated that things were swimming close to the surface, and the water slapped once.

They continued along the edge of the water. Behind them Poseidonis rose as a series of glittering angles beyond a band of jungle. Hedia didn't see guards, and she doubted whether human eyes could have sorted the escapees from flotsam and animals even if someone were watching.

Lann stopped. They had reached a mass of lily pads ten feet and more in diameter with upturned rims. They covered a portion of the sea and pressed onto the shore.

The ape-man walked cautiously onto the nearest, then crossed it to the next. The pad wobbled and deformed, but it supported his weight. Thick veins stiffened the leaves the way a wicker framework did the skin boats which Hedia had seen Gauls using in the lagoons at the mouth of the Po River.

She followed, puzzled but willing to assume that Lann knew what he was doing. The pads were so buoyant that she was sure-almost sure-that she and the ape-man could stand on the same one without overburdening it, but she chose not to test her belief. The mass of vegetation reached some distance out into the sea, but it would be at least a half mile from the edge to the opposite shore.

After crossing at least a dozen of the great leaves, the ape-man stopped on the last row of pads. He gripped the rim of an adjacent pad and manhandled it part-way onto the one he squatted on, then folded it over with a struggle.

The undersides of the veins were covered with finger-length spines. They weren't thorns, apparently, because they bent without drawing blood when Lann pressed against them, but Hedia shivered when she saw them. They brought home the alien nature of this place as nothing else had done.

A stem as thick as a man's leg connected the pad to roots in the floor of the sea. Lann began chewing on it about six feet below the pad.

Hedia didn't understand for a moment what was happening. Then she drew the dagger and called, "Lann? Can't you use this?"

The ape-man turned and blinked; then he went back to chewing on the stem. Hedia grimaced and got onto the same pad as the ape-man. Even with their combined weight and that of the pad Lann was working on, the edge didn't quite go under water.

Lann looked at her again and hooted in confusion. Hedia stabbed into the middle of the stem where he gnawing, then shoved the blade downward. It sliced through the tough fibers as easily as a cook would joint a chicken. She had seen how strong orichalc was; now she learned that it held a razor edge as well.

She severed the remainder of the stem with an upward stroke, then stepped back feeling pleased. She wanted to wipe the blade, but she hadn't brought the garment from her cell.

Still, she had the bandolier. She lifted it away from her body to use it for a rag. Lann had been chirping with delight. Now he caught her wrist and pointed with his free hand to the stem close to the pad itself.

"You want me to cut it there?" Hedia said in puzzlement-knowing as she spoke that she might as well whistle as speak for her chances of being understood.

But Lann did understand. At any rate he bit into the stem where he had pointed, then leaned back and gave her a broad, bestial grin. Hedia braced her left hand on his shoulder and cut the stem again, this time with a single stroke.

She grinned. She was used to not understanding what a man was doing but going along with it anyway. Not infrequently it turned out to be a pleasant experience.

Gurgling in delight, Lann unfolded the severed leaf and shoved it into the sea again. Holding it with one hand, he tossed the length of stem into it with his free hand, then motioned Hedia imperiously to get in also. When she delayed a moment to sheathe the dagger, the ape-man caught her by the thigh and tugged.

Her eyes narrowed though she said nothing. The ten-inch blade might not cut bone, but it was certainly sharp enough to slice even Lann's massive throat to the spine. He really needs to learn some courtesy when dealing with a lady of Carce…

Hedia walked carefully to the middle of the leaf. The surface was resilient but not really disquieting; it reminded her of walking up a ship's gangplank.

The ape-man got on behind her, making the pad sway dangerously. Hedia moved to the far edge. That helped slightly with the balance, and the veins proved to be strong enough to keep the leaf from folding downward and dropping them both into the water.

Lann pushed off from the remaining vegetation and began lashing the water with the length of stem. It made an extremely clumsy paddle, but Hedia didn't have a better idea.

Wobbling, dipping, and rotating enough that occasionally the ape-man reversed his stroke to counteract it, the makeshift boat started across the sea. If things were ideal, I'd be sharing a dinner couch with a very stalwart young man, and we would be considering how to proceed after dessert, Hedia thought. But considering the alternatives, the present situation was just fine.

She leaned over the rim and looked down. All she could see was her own reflection, distorted by ripples from the pad's motion. Absently she trailed her fingertips in the water. It was cool if not cold, unlike the warmth of the Bay of Puteoli. She thought of the relaxing days she had spent in villas at Baiae, wondering if she would ever- "Waugh!" Lann shouted. The leaf bucked as he flopped across it and caught Hedia's leg.

He jerked her away from edge with the kind of violence he had displayed toward the Servitors. She let out a startled yelp, then broke into tears: a defensive reflex honed by the number of times powerful men had attacked her.

The pad lurched again. Hedia twisted around just as jaws clopped shut like the stroke of a battering ram. She didn't know what the creature was-fish or snake or something still worse-but it could have bitten Lann in half, let alone her.

It sank back and swirled off, brushing the pad with its tail. Hedia stopped crying. Now her fright was completely real.

Muttering to himself, the ape-man resumed stroking the boat forward. Onward, at any rate.

Hedia crouched, well back from the edge. She wanted to apologize, but she didn't know how to. At least she could avoid repeating her mistakes.

Though the sky wasn't visibly brighter, Hedia no longer saw the stars as clearly as she had when she emerged from the sewer inlet. She wondered what would happen if they remained on open water during daylight.

Under other circumstances she might have suggested to Lann that they climb into the water and kick their way along, using the leaf for flotation. The only value she could see in that now is that she would wind up feeding Atlantean sea life instead of becoming bait for an even larger monster as the Minoi planned for her.

Hedia looked forward again and to her surprise saw trees. We're going to make it! she thought, delighted that the shore hadn't been as far as she thought when last she strained her eyes to see ahead.

Lann rumbled a challenge from deep in his chest. The sound rose and fell as though its jaggedness caught his throat when it tumbled out. Hedia jerked around, wondering what she had done wrong this time; but the ape-man was looking beyond her.

She turned again. What she had thought were trees were walking off. The trunks leaned to the side and the roots-or dangling branches?-bent and lifted and set down again well forward of where they had been. She supposed they had to be walking on the bottom, but in the doubtful light it really looked as though they were skimming the surface of the water.

"I thought they were trees," she repeated, this time in a whisper. And perhaps they were trees…

Lann resumed paddling. Hedia watched him; in part because she was afraid to look at anything else in this terrible place, but also because she was beginning to appreciate the economy of the ape-man's movements.

She had thought he was clumsy, but she now realized his seeming awkwardness was a result of the sheer mass of his muscles and the skeleton that anchored them. She had seen warships carrying out combat maneuvers. Their long, slender hulls resisted turning, but even so a trained crew could send its ram crushing through the center of a target or could slip between pillars with only a hand's breadth of clearance to either side for the oar tips.

The boat jerked violently again: something was scraping along its underside. Hedia wailed, but she jumped up with the spear in her hands. If she plunged it straight down between her feet, whatever was under the lily pad would- Lann closed his hand over the spear shaft, preventing her from thrusting. He hooted in question. Hedia looked over her shoulder: they had grounded on the other side of the sea. The pad had been rubbing the sloped edge of the land.

"Oh," she said. "I'm very sorry."

Lann strode past her into the lowering jungle. Hedia, still carrying the spear, followed.

I'm almost back to where I started, she thought. Which meant she was was a great deal better off than she'd been a few hours earlier.

The sun remained above the horizon, but its ball had flattened and its light was deepening to red. Corylus pressed his hands together, wishing there was something he could do.

The sails continued to beat, but it seemed to Corylus that the strokes were slower and becoming flaccid. The ship was certainly descending, though the keel was still a hundred feet in the air. Almost a hundred feet.

Something thrust up from the sea about three miles ahead, or it looked like something did. Corylus grasped the sprite's shoulder and said, "There, isn't that an island, Coryla? Or anyway a rock. Is it big enough to land on?"

"Am I a sailor?" the sprite said. "Or a magician? I don't know what this ship can do."

Corylus turned toward the Ancient and bowed. The wizard didn't acknowledge his presence except by the focus of his golden eyes.

"Master," Corylus said. "Would you please take us toward that island-"

He pointed.

"-so that I can take a look at it. We're going to need to land, soon."

Corylus looked beyond the magician, back over the course they had travelled since leaving the Cyclops' island. They had outdistanced the great eel, but he didn't doubt the sprite's warning that it would follow until it died or it caught them. A night spent rolling on the surface would be long enough for the latter-and he didn't see any reason why the monster should courteously manage to die before that happened.

Corylus had taken his hand from the sprite's shoulder when he turned. She nuzzled close to him again. He eased back, though he didn't break contact. He said, "Is there anything alive on the island? It looks pretty barren to me."

He couldn't decipher the look that Coryla gave him. "It's barren," she said. "But there is life, of sorts."

The island was a square-sided vertical pillar that rose out of the sea to the level of the ship's keel. The top was about twenty feet on a side and slightly domed rather than flat. Grass grew in patches and there were occasional bushes, but it was mostly bare rock.

Because of the island's shape, Corylus wondered if it might be artificial. As they drew closer, he could see that the striations which he'd taken for masonry were actually natural rock layers. Some were reddish, darkened further by the setting sun. Iron had bled from them and draped rusty banners down the paler rocks beneath.

He estimated how difficult it would be to climb the rock face. He could still do it, he was pretty sure; but he'd been in Carce for long enough that he'd like to have a few days to train on lesser slopes first. He grinned.

The Ancient made a sound that started low but climbed in pitch and volume. Corylus had his sword out by the time he had faced completely around, expecting to see the eel or something worse rising toward them from the sea.

He almost didn't recognize the Ancient. The golden fur was fluffed out, making him look more like an angry bear than the starving cat Corylus would previously have used as a comparison. His mouth was slightly open: irregular teeth gave his jaws the contours of saw blades. He extended one long arm toward the island.

Corylus followed the gesture. A man with wild hair and a dark tunic climbed to the center of the dome. Could he have been hiding in the vegetation? That would seem impossible to a civilian, but Corylus had twice seen a hulking blond German lunge from a bush that shouldn't have been able to hide a coney.

A dozen more men appeared; they must have come out of the rock or condensed from the air itself. They were gesturing and speaking among themselves. Corylus could hear the sounds, but he couldn't make out words if they even were words.

The ship wallowed from side to side and lost way. They were sinking as well, though slowly. That wasn't what most concerned Corylus. This savage outbreak on the part of the magician he depended on mattered more than mere details of the ship's course.

The Ancient extended both arms and shrieked, still louder than before. His hands bent toward one another as though he were holding an invisible globe. Blue-white flashes glittered between his palms; then a line of sparks curved raggedly from them toward the island.

Scores of men stood now on the rock, impossible numbers to exist on so small an island. Several dropped to all fours and began to howl. Their companions took up the sound.

As swiftly as images change when a mirror tilts, human forms became wolves and as swiftly changed back to human. The top of the island seethed like water coming to a boil, and the howls seemed to Corylus to echo from the roof of heaven.

"Sheer off!" he shouted. He stepped between the Ancient and the wolfmen who had driven him to frothing rage. "Take us away! We can't land here, no matter what the choice is!"

For a moment, Corylus thought that the magician was going to ignore him-or worse, strike with the power which allowed him to lift this ship and drive it hundreds of miles in a day. The armor might protect me, but- The Ancient hunched back to the stern where he had been standing until the wolfmen called him forward. His fur began to settle, though hints lasted like the flush on the face of a man who had controlled his anger.

The sails beat more strongly; the ship rose sluggishly as it left the island behind. The wolfmen continued to howl behind them.

Only the upper half of the sun showed above the horizon. Corylus hugged himself.

How long? How long before the eel catches up with us?

Varus remembered talking with his father, but now he climbed the craggy, fog-wrapped hillside. He never took the same route to the Sybil's eyrie, though the differences were trivial: here white gravel had spilled across the path, marble chips perhaps; there was an outcrop which in the mist looked like an unfamiliar human profile.

He reached the top of the ridge. The Sibyl sat like a senator on a folding ivory stool. Beside her was a wicker basket from which she took peas. She was shelling them into an earthenware pot on the other side and tossing the hulls down the opposite slope. She turned to watch Varus as he approached.

"Mistress, I greet you," he said. "I hope that you are well."

The Sibyl gave a broken chuckle. "I am the creature of your mind, Lord Magician," she said. "There is no well or ill for me."

Varus felt his lips wrinkle as though he were sucking a lemon. She knows things that I do not know, he thought, and I'm not a magician.

Then he thought, But if I were a magician and afraid to admit it to myself, I might know things that I allowed myself to see only in these visions.

The Sibyl smiled as Varus argued silently with himself. Embarrassed, he looked into the valley beyond. Instead of a landscape, he saw a globe hanging in blackness. Its surface was moving.

"This is the world, Lord Magician," the Sibyl said. "Not today, but one day."

"It's a sphere," he said, not asking a question but voicing the statement to file it in his mind. "Then Eratosthenes was right."

Varus didn't have a mind for mathematics, but Pandareus told his students that they should attend the lectures of Brotion of Alexandria who was visiting Carce. He and Corylus were the only members of our class who did so.

He grinned at the memory. Corylus seemed to understand what Brotion was saying. Varus himself was pleased just to have remembered Brotion describing Eratosthenes' calculations.

He looked at the globe. As before, the object of his attention became clear. For an instant he saw the tossing sea; then the surface of the world became a single throbbing creature: a myriad of heads, arms, and legs, but only one monstrous body. The whole world…

Varus jerked back with a shout, though there was no was no need to react physically. The globe and its pullulating surface first blurred, then vanished completely as fog filled the valley.

If I even have a body in this place.

"That is Typhon?" Varus said, trying to prevent his voice from trembling.

"That will be Typhon," the Sibyl said. "Not today, but one day."

Varus swallowed. "Sibyl," he said, "how do I stop him? How do I stop that?"

He nodded toward the vanished image. He didn't want to point, and he particularly didn't want to describe what he had seen in words.

"Typhon will rule the world," the Sibyl said. She took more pea pods in her right hand. "No one has the power to change that. Not even a magician as powerful as you, Lord Varus."

Varus made a sour expression again, but he didn't argue pointlessly. "Sibyl," he said, "what should I do? What can I do?"

"What did the sage Menre tell you, Lord Magician?" the old woman said. She resumed shelling the peas, dropping them one at a time into the jar on her left.

"That was a dream, Sibyl," he said, thinking back to his vision in the shrine of Serapis. "I dreamed that Menre gave me a book, but when I awoke with Pandareus, it was all as it had been when we entered the chapel. There was no book."

The Sibyl's jar was decorated with a single long band which wound from the base of the vessel to the rim. People of all ages and conditions walked up the slanting field. When Varus looked at the figures closely, he saw that they were moving, and he thought that some of them were looking out at him.

The Sibyl smiled. "Was there not?" she said. "What are you holding, Lord Magician?"

Varus held the winding rods of a large papyrus roll, open before him. He looked down and read aloud, "I remember the names of my ancestors. I speak their names and they live again!"

A causeway stretched before him, over the mists which hid the valley where Varus had watched the triumph of Typhon. The Sibyl crooned softly as she resumed shelling peas, paying Varus no attention.

He walked onto the causeway. He glanced over his shoulder once, toward the Sibyl. He wondered whether she was counting years or lives or some further thing… but it didn't matter to him.

Gaius Varus was going to meet with his ancestors; and perhaps he would one day return.

Alphena woke suddenly from a fitful sleep. Throughout the night she had been dozing off and on. Whenever she wakened, Uktena remained sitting cross-legged in the center of the chamber, smoking his pipe and mumbling rhythmically under his breath. Now he had gotten to his feet.

"Is it time?" she asked. Her voice caught. The acrid smoke-dried willow-bark mixed with some broad-leafed local herb-had flayed the back of her throat. She coughed to clear it.

Uktena thrust the stem of his pipe beneath the cord of his breechclout and stepped to the simple ladder. Either he didn't hear her, or he was ignoring her.

Alphena got up. She had sat, sleeping and waking, with the copper axe in her lap. She gripped the haft firmly as she waited to follow the shaman. She wasn't used to the way the axe balanced in her hand, but it was lighter than a sword and she ought to be able to handle it without strain.

Uktena lifted the mat away from the kiva's entrance. His movements were slow and exaggerated, as though he were performing a ritual dance.

Alphena scrambled to catch up as the shaman strode through Cascotan. Villagers watched silently; no one was working.

The sky seemed bright after the smoky kiva. Though Alphena couldn't see the sun from where she stood, dawn had turned the tip of Procron's fortress to black fire.

Uktena walked with deliberation toward the shore. He didn't look to either side.

The three sages waited midway between the village and the salt water. As before, Wontosa stood a half step ahead of his companions. He said, "Greetings, Master! Are you ready to drive the monster away from our shores?"

Uktena did not speak, but for the first time since he emerged from the kiva, he turned his head-toward Wontosa. The sage stiffened and his eyes lost focus momentarily.

Alphena followed Uktena. As she passed, Hanno called, "You, girl." He didn't shout, but he managed to put a threat in his tone. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to stand with my friend," she said, pausing to look squarely at the sages. The axe head rose slightly as she spoke. "Come with us, why don't you? Aren't you all magicians?"

Hanno didn't respond. Wontosa and Dasemunco were looking out to sea, pretending that they weren't aware of Alphena's presence. She spat on the ground and hurried on to join Uktena.

The shaman had reached the shore and stopped; his bare feet were just above the tide line. He dropped the murrhine pipe on the beach behind him. The surf was sluggish, like the movements of the chest of a sleeping dog.

Lightning flashed in the far distance; no thunder accompanied it. Alphena looked up in surprise. The morning had been clear when she saw the sky from the mouth of the kiva, but a scud of clouds was racing in from the west.

The sun rose, throwing the shadow of the black spire toward Uktena. He lifted his right arm, the palm toward the east.

Alphena, to the shaman's left side and a pace behind him, glanced at his shadow. It was elongated but as sharply chiseled as the reliefs on a temple facade, then- Something squirming and huge spread across the shoreline and beyond, covering the land. It was not a shape but a blackness too pure to have form.

The shadow was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Uktena faced east.

The top of the black fortress split open. Procron, a figure in orichalc armor without the helmet, drifted out like a wisp of gossamer. In place of his human head flashed a diamond skull brighter than the fiery metal.

Uktena walked forward with the same awkward determination as before. His feet touched but did not sink into the slowly moving water. He raised his right arm, bent at the elbow; his left hung at his side. He was chanting, but Alphena could not make out the words.

She went out fifty feet from the shore, trying to follow. There the low waves caught the hem of her tunic and with that purchase threatened to pull her over. She lifted the garment, preparing to fling it away, but she stopped when she thought about what she was doing. Grimacing, she backed to where the water reached only to mid-shin.

Alphena had seen many gladiatorial battles. Splashing in water that would shortly be over her head, she would be completely useless in a fight against an enemy who walked on air.

Worse, if Uktena took notice of her, she would handicap him. She didn't mind risking her life, but she dared not risk the life of the friend she was supposedly helping.

Brilliant purple light flashed from Procron's skull, sizzling against a clear barrier an arm's length short of Uktena's chest. The bolt dribbled off like rain blown against a sheet of metal.

The sea beneath Uktena hissed. Alphena-near the shore now, a quarter mile behind him-felt her legs tingle and the hair rise on her arms and the back of her neck.

Uktena continued forward. Alphena thought she heard his voice in the thunder rumbling overhead.

Procron drifted closer, his arms folded across his chest. He slammed out another bolt, brighter than the sun at noon.

Uktena staggered, half-turning. Alphena fell backward in the water from the visual shock. She blinked furiously, trying to clear the orange afterimages flaring across her eyes.

Uktena resumed his advance. His form was shifting, swelling.

Alphena squeezed her eyes closed, pretending that what she saw was because afterimages were distorting her vision. She whispered, "Vesta, make him safe. Make him not be changed."

Huge, tentacled, and many-legged, the thing that had been Uktena approached the Atlantean. Both hung in the air. Procron loosed a series of dazzling, crackling bolts, flinging Uktena back. Tentacles shriveled and the swollen body seemed to deflate, though the purple haze which spread about the scene blurred the forms of both combatants.

The sea beneath them was bubbling. Dead fish and stranger creatures rocked on the surface, many of them boiled pink or red. Alphena's skin itched as though she had gotten a bad sunburn.

Uktena surged toward Procron again. A purple flash and thunderclap drove them apart short of contact.

Procron tumbled, his armor flashing brightly, but he regained control above the water. Wobbling, dipping like a skylark instead of rising smoothly, the Atlantean took an aerial post midway between the shore and his gleaming fortress.

Black and smoking, the creature Uktena had become dropped into the sea. Spray and steam spouted fifty feet in the air.

The wave from the impact sent Alphena tumbling. She got to her feet and began sloshing toward where the shaman had hit. She screamed and raised her axe to threaten anybody who came close to her.

Uktena bobbed into view. For a moment he lay sprawled face-down on the slow swell; then his head lifted and he shook himself.

Treading water, Uktena looked out toward his opponent. Procron showed no signs of returning to try conclusions again. Carefully, painfully, the shaman began to stroke for shore.

Alphena, waist deep when the sea was at rest, watched for a moment in hesitation. She bent and took off her sandals, throwing them to shore. Holding the axe helve with her knees, she pulled her tunic over her head. After rolling it into a loose rope and retrieving the axe, she walked in the shallows toward the line Uktena was taking.

Overhead, the clouds were breaking up again. Alphena thought it had rained briefly, but the swirling battle had whipped the sea to froth; the spatters she felt might have come from that.

Uktena had paused. A swell lifted him; when it dipped away again, he lay as motionless as a mass of seaweed.

Alphena sloshed forward. "My friend!" she called. "My friend Uktena!"

The black spire had closed again. Procron must have returned to his fortress; at any rate, Alphena couldn't see him any more.

Uktena roused and splashed feebly. Alphena shouted, but it wasn't a word. She bobbed out as far as she dared and flung the end of her rolled tunic toward the shaman. For a moment she was afraid that he wouldn't take it; then one of his sinewy hands twisted itself into the fabric.

Alphena's feet didn't touch bottom when her nose was above water. She dipped, digging her toes into the sand as she pulled hard on the makeshift rope. With the slack that gave her, she fought a foot or two closer to shore and repeated the process. She could swim, but not well and not while holding the axe. She wasn't going to let go of the axe.

After a very long time, she could walk normally. Uktena tried to get to his feet. His eyes were blank. Alphena threw his right arm over her shoulders and gripped that wrist with her left hand. Staggering-she was exhausted, and the shaman was a solid weight, not large but all bone and muscle-she started for the kiva.

She saw the pipe. Bending carefully she retrieved it and held the reed stem alongside the axe helve.

Smoke hung over the village. The end poles of one of the huts stood at the edge of a blackened oval. In the center, the ground had been blasted into a waist-deep pit on whose edges grains of sand in the soil had been fused into glass. Several other fires lifted coils of smoke from the pines in the near distance.

The three sages squatted with their heads close together, whispering among themselves. They didn't call to Alphena, but their eyes followed her and the shaman. The villagers watched also, in silence.

"Bring us food and water!" Alphena shouted. "At once!"

She didn't know whether she would be able to get Uktena into his underground chamber. There was time enough to decide that when they reached the entrance.

"And bring my sandals and tunic!" she added. "I left them where we came out of the water."

They would have been that much more to carry. She still had the axe, though.

Alphena walked slowly toward the kiva under the weight of her friend. She tried to forget the image of the monster which had battled the Atlantean wizard.

A bird-or frog, or lizard, or Venus knew what-squealed imperiously from the canopy above them. Hedia didn't bother to look up. She was numb from stress and from stumbling through the jungle.

And from lack of sleep, now that she thought about it. She hadn't slept since the previous morning when she was on the run from the Servitors, and she hadn't slept well then.

Lann gave a sharp bark and halted. Hedia stopped also, but she lost her balance and almost toppled into the ape-man. She lifted the spear-with difficulty; the muscles of her arms didn't obey any better than her legs were doing-and tried to look in all directions to find the threat.

There was no threat. They were back in the ruined keep where Hedia had first escaped from the Servitors. It was Lann's keep, she had been told by one of the hunters on the ship. Now Lann was squatting, pulling apart the vegetation that had grown through the blocks of shattered crystal.

Hedia looked for a place to sit. An oval slab of roof had fallen without breaking further. Its longer axis was greater than she was tall. Vines had squirmed up from around its edges, but no shoot could penetrate crystal which was nearly a foot thick. She used the dagger to saw through a few stems, then pulled them out of the way and seated herself.

She had wanted to get off her feet even more than she wanted something to eat, but she was hungry enough to eat a snake raw. She looked around hopefully, then reminded herself that she might better watch what the ape-man was doing. Her chances of escaping the Minoi-not to mention her only realistic chances of getting something to eat-depended on him.

Lann raised a piece of charred wood. A branch flung burning into the fortress when Procron shattered it? Hedia thought. Then she noticed that the underside of the wood had been carved in the supple likeness of a woman's calf. It was part of a wooden statue; the fragment had been perfectly modeled.

The ape-man put the leg down beside him and dug again into the pile before him. The fortress had crumbled into chunks of varying size, ranging mostly from as big as Hedia's fist down to sparkling sand. No more wood appeared, though his spade-like hands came out blackened by charcoal. His palms were longer than a man's whole hand, with relatively short fingers.

Hedia wondered if Lann-when he was human-had carved the statue himself, and who he had used for a model. Absently, she rubbed her own right calf.

The ape-man rose to a half-crouch, not quite as erect as even his normal bent posture. He walked splay-footed a few paces further into the ruin. Bending, he began to tear out saplings with spindly trunks and a few broad leaves.

The bird called again. Lann leaped erect and screamed a challenge. Sweeping up a block as big as his own head, he hurled it toward the sound. The missile crashed against a tree trunk as loudly as a ballista releasing, but it must have missed. The bird gave a startled squawk and flew away. It sent back a diminishing series of complaints.

Hedia rolled her legs under her so that she could leap off the slab in any direction if she needed to, but she continued to smile. She was confident that none of the men she'd met in the past would have realized how tense she was, although Lann might smell it in her sweat.

She was watchful rather than afraid. This wasn't a new experience for her, though it was unusual in that the ape-man wasn't drunk.

Lann gave a final growl, then pulled up another sapling. Its roots bound a piece of garnet or ruby, a fragment of a triangle which would have been have been four inches on a side when it was whole. Lann buffed it clean with his thumbs and set it on a woody runner thick enough to have been the trunk of a small tree. He went back to work.

Hedia wondered how long ago the destruction had occurred. Her first thought would have been "decades," but the night she had spent in this soggy jungle had shown her how quickly plants sprouted here.

Cooing with excitement, the ape-man came up with two more crystal fragments. He rubbed them clean like the first piece, then licked the mating surfaces with a black tongue the size of a toilet sponge.

He fitted the parts together with care that Hedia wouldn't have thought his broad fingers were capable of. Holding the recreated triangle in his left hand, he touched it in the center with his right.

The crystal buzzed and turned a brilliant, saturated red which didn't illuminate the ape-man's hand or anything else. Music played and dancers, both male and female, whirled about the jungle with high steps and complicated arm movements.

Hedia would have said they were real human beings with identifiable features, but they danced unhindered through trees and piles of rubble. The music was bewitchingly unfamiliar, similar to that of an organ but much finer and more clear.

The pieced-together crystal gave a pop and shivered to sparkling powder. The dancers vanished, leaving only ruins and the jungle.

Lann gulped, then gave a series of gulps like nothing Hedia had heard from him before. She looked closely, afraid that the toy had injured her protector when it burst.

The ape-man squatted on his haunches, his head bowed and his fingertips touching the dug-up soil in front of him. He was crying.

Hedia got to her feet and went to Lann's side. She placed her hands on his shoulders and began rubbing them. His long, reddish hair was softer than she had imagined, more like a cat's fur than a horse's. The ape-man's skin was loose over the muscles, but those muscles were as firm as a bronze statue.

She squatted, still massaging him. She would rather have kneeled, but she didn't want to chance lumps of broken crystal in the dirt.

"There, now," she said. He wouldn't understand the words, but he could hear her tone. "We're alive, dear Lann. You saved me. You're so strong, darling. I've never met a man as strong as you. No one could be as strong as you."

The ape-man turned his head to look at her; his biceps rubbed her breasts. She smiled.

His broad, flat nostrils suddenly flared. He stood, taking Hedia by the shoulders.

His member protruded from its furry sheath. It was not, she was glad to see, nearly as much out of ordinary human scale as the remainder of Lann's physique was.

Lann turned Hedia around and started to bend her over. Not on this ground, not even if you were no stronger and heavier than I'm used to.

She wriggled free of his hands. He hooted in obvious surprise, but he followed when she touched his fingertips and led him to the slab where she had been sitting.

It took a series of gestures and pats for Hedia to convince the ape-man to sit on the edge. She was about to straddle him in a sitting position when a whim struck her. She touched Lann's shoulders again, then mimed shoving him backward. Still puzzled but willing, the ape-man lay flat.

About time, Hedia thought as she stood over him, because I'm really ready!

She lowered herself, carefully at first but then driving herself down with a scream of satisfaction.

The last time I did this… Hedia thought. She burst out laughing.

It would never have been like this with poor dear Saxa. Even if the Servitors hadn't appeared.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC