Out of the waters

CHAPTER 15

Alphena laid the shaman down full length on the mat that he'd used to cover the entrance to the kiva. She sat beside him for a moment, waiting to catch her breath.

Nobody seemed to be coming from the village with food and her garment. She got to her feet. The axe was balanced in her hand, the shaft upright. She had gotten the feel of the weapon and was coming to like it.

Two women-Sanga and her companion from the field-immediately started from the huts carrying pots. Moments later a boy followed at a run with Alphena's tunic.

Alphena smiled in a fashion and sat down again. She supposed she looked foolish, muddy and nude, but these Westerners weren't laughing. That showed they understood the situation. She might not be the magician that they thought she was, but with this axe she could certainly teach a few barbarians to respect a citizen of Carce.

The women approached with their heads bent so low that they were looking at their own bosoms rather than at the ground. "Mistress," Sanga muttered. She didn't have her infant with her.

They had brought a pot containing maize and flat beans cooked into a porridge, a separate container of meat stew, and a skin bottle. Both pots were of red clay. They weren't glazed but they had been blackened during firing and were marked on the outside with herringbone scratches.

The women started off as soon as they delivered the food. Alphena said, "Wait!" to stop them.

She tried the skin. It was water, but some kind of berries had been crushed into it to counteract the brackish taste; it would do.

"You," she said, pointing to the woman whose name she didn't know. "Bring us a basin of plain water. I want to wash off."

The boy handed the tunic, damp but folded, to Alphena. He seemed about six years old, and as naked as she was. Unlike the young women, he stared at her in fascination.

Uktena rolled onto his elbow. Sanga wailed softly. She didn't disobey Alphena's order to remain, but she sank to her knees and turned her head away. The other woman scampered away.

The shaman's muscles bunched as though he were about to sit up. Instead he relaxed and smiled. He said, "You brought me out of the sound, little one."

"I said I would stand with you, my friend," Alphena said. "We have food. Is there anything else you want from the village?"

"No," Uktena said. "Sanga, was anyone from Cascotan injured when we fought?"

"No, master," the woman mumbled. Her eyes were closed. "We ran into the woods when we saw what was happening."

Sanga looked up cautiously-she seemed more afraid of Alphena than of the shaman. Perhaps she was right in her concern, because Uktena wouldn't deliberately hurt his own people.

She said, "Bocascat's hut burned. And trees near where we were hiding burned. It was like lightning, but purple and much worse."

She lowered her head again and whispered, "Master, will it happen again?"

"Yes," said Uktena. "It will happen until the Atlantean dies or I die."

"Sanga, you can go," Alphena said, hearing the rasp in her voice. Didn't they see what Uktena was risking for them?

"You too, boy," she added to the child. She wondered if the word meant slave in this language as it did in her own.

Sanga turned thankfully. The boy might have lingered, but the woman twined her fingers in his hair and dragged him yelping after her.

Uktena scooped porridge with three fingers of his right hand. He swallowed and said, "Will you go with me tomorrow, little one?"

"Yes," Alphena said. She was bone tired. She had been at the end of her strength by the time she got the shaman to shore; if he had fallen a little farther out in the sound, she would have been unable to help.

But she would go. She would try.

Uktena gave her a smile that looked straight into her heart. She blinked.

"We will eat," he said, "and sleep. I will be able to manage the ladder. And in the morning, my friend Alphena, we shall see what we shall see."

"Yes," Alphena said.

And every morning. Until Procron dies, or Uktena dies.

Or I die.

Hedia stretched luxuriantly while the ape-man resumed rummaging among the overgrown rubble. She ached, and she suspected she would ache still more by the next morning, but she wasn't complaining. No, quite the contrary…

The bird or one like it sounded its clear gong-note from the canopy again. Lann ignored it as he lifted a block of crystal at least half the size of the one Hedia now lay on. Apparently she wasn't the only one who had found the recent break to have been a much-needed relief from stress.

Lann tilted backward at a thirty-degree angle and waddled to the edge of where the undamaged fortress had stood. He pitched the block outward. A simple beast wouldn't have bothered to discard it where it wouldn't get in the way of further excavation. His huge flat feet seemed to grip on any slope.

Someone so big should be clumsy. Hedia had known-briefly-a pair of acrobats, and they even in combination weren't nearly as flexible as Lann had proven. She grinned broadly and got to her feet.

The ape-man returned to the cavity he had opened in the foliage. He squatted, cooed with delight, and plunged his hands deep in the hole. Whatever they gripped resisted for a moment; then he lifted it to the surface.

Hedia went over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, both to warn him of where she was standing and-as she knew in her heart-to proclaim her ownership. She looked at the object Lann was cleaning with his thumbs, then tongue.

Blurs of light swirled about them. They sometimes seemed to resemble paintings viewed sharply from one side or the other.

Making tiny burbling noises, the ape-man displayed a circular orichalc ring holding a lens six inches across, ground from a material so clear that only the few remaining streaks of dirt on its surface proved that the frame wasn't empty.

The posts to which the frame had been attached, though barely wires, were orichalc; Lann had wrenched them apart. That was the most remarkable feat of strength Hedia had seen him perform yet.

Lann held the apparatus by one of the broken posts. He glanced toward Hedia to make sure he had her attention, then touched the lens with a finger of his free hand. Though the finger looked like a watercock from a public distribution point in Carce, the motion was precise and delicate.

Images appeared, this time vivid and complete. Hedia wasn't so much seeing them as existing in their midst in place of the jungle where she had been a moment earlier.

They were close to the keep of a Minos, a tall spire whose crystal walls were as black as the smoke rolling from a funeral pyre. Around it spread the usual village of huts, but the figures living in them were not human-or at any rate, were not wholly human.

A woman pranced on hind legs like a zebra's, and a man with the head of a deer turned the wheel of a pump. Many residents had the arms, legs, or head of monkeys like the one which had chittered in the canopy when Hedia sailed past in the grip of the Servitors.

One pair, an obvious couple, aroused her interest as well as her disgust. Each was half human, half goat: the male's upper half was human; his mate was human below the waist.

Hedia didn't see any hybrids with great apes like Lann, but she now knew what she was looking at. This was the keep of Procron, before the other Minoi grouped to drive him from Atlantis.

Lann moved his index finger slightly. Hedia was almost sure that he didn't actually touch the lens, but its viewpoint shifted slowly toward the smoky crystal walls.

She wondered if anyone else-herself, for example-could control the device, but it didn't really matter. That wasn't the sort of business that a lady, that a citizen of Carce, bothered with. There were slaves to handle mechanical things.

She and Lann entered the spire. About them objects moved with the detached silence of vultures circling in the high sky.

Procron, helmetless but otherwise bright in orichalc armor, was the only human or part-human figure present. Three Servitors-no, four; one stood in an alcove midway up the inward-sloping walls-waited motionless.

Are we actually present, watching this? Hedia wondered. Or is it a stage show, being acted by ghosts or demons?

Procron turned so that he would be facing Hedia if she were present in his reality. He had dark, narrow features, black hair, and eyes as fierce as an eagle's. He cradled in both gauntleted hands the skull of something nearly human. Either it had been carved from diamond or diamond had replaced the original bone.

Purple light crackled, blurring the edges of the orichalc armor and the surfaces of objects close to Procron, including one of the Servitors. The Minos began to rise gradually; for a moment Hedia thought that he was simply growing taller.

The diamond skull seemed alive. Fire blazed in its cavities and highlighted its complex sutures.

It's real. No sculptor could carve pieces of crystal so perfectly.

The spire was over a hundred feet high. The purple light brightened around Procron as he rose. As he passed, the Servitor in the alcove spread its glass arms, then let them fall to its side like those of a marionette whose strings had been jerked, then cut.

When Procron reached the peak, his gleaming form paused for a moment. Nothing in the tall room moved; the wheels and spirals and other spinning objects-Hedia wasn't sure whether they were glass or merely forms of light-remained frozen.

The top of the spire split open, the two halves folding down like black wings. Procron stood in open air. The sky had been clear when Lann took their viewpoint through the crystal walls; now it was a roiling black mass, sending down sheets of rain which splashed on the hovering Minos and dripped into the fortress.

Procron lifted the diamond skull. Lightning struck him. To Hedia everything went white, then shimmering purple. Lightning struck again, a huge bolt which boiled water from the surface of the spire and ignited several huts in the cantonments built at its base. The walls were dimly transparent from inside, making the smoky yellow flames visible.

Procron lowered the skull toward his own head. The third lightning bolt seemed to focus the whole sky onto the Minos. Sizzling fireballs spat out like blobs ejected from the heart of Aetna.

Nothing moved; there was no sound in all the world.

Procron raised his empty hands to the sky. Purple fire from his spreading fingertips split the clouds, shoving them away with the violence of waves bursting through a wall of sand.

Where Procron's human head had been, now the diamond skull rested. The mouth opened, and the Minos laughed. His voice was the thunder which had not followed the third lightning bolt. His armored form began to sink toward the floor of the fortress as the peak folded closed above him.

Hedia was transfixed. She was only dimly aware that the ape-man beside her had pointed toward the lens-now invisible-again.

They were back in the jungle. Lann set the lens on a section of wall which hadn't been thrown down during Procron's attack. He stepped into the cavity from which he had lifted the device.

Hedia looked around, disappointed to return to this wilderness of destruction but thankful as well. Procron was frightening, even when viewed from a great distance through time and space. Even without the transformation she had just watched, she knew that Procron wasn't a man whom she could expect to twist to her will.

The ape-man was straining at another large fragment of the ruin. Hedia frowned and moved a little farther away. People concentrating on a difficult task tended to forget everything else, and she didn't want to find herself under a slab of crystal because Lann didn't remember she was present.

The distant thump/thump she heard was a flying ship; probably several of them. The Minoi had found them.

"Lann!" she said urgently. "I hear ships coming!"

The ape-man straightened slowly, pivoting a block too large for even him to carry. His lips were drawn back in a grimace which bared his teeth.

There was a deeper blackness in the leaf mold over which the crystal had lain: the entrance to a tunnel. Lann had been aware of the approaching vessels long before she was.

The ape-man gave a great cry and with a final push sent the overbalanced block toppling into the surrounding vegetation. It had been almost too much, even for him. He fell forward, sprawling across the edge of the pit he had just created.

Hedia hesitated for a moment. Lann drew in whooping gasps that sounded as though he were being strangled, but the beating sails of the Minoi were drawing closer.

She jumped down beside the ape-man and put her hand on his shoulder. "Lann?" she said. "I'm ready to go."

The ape-man straightened as much as he ever did. It was like standing beside a horse: powerful, exciting, but for the moment not even marginally human.

"Wook!" he said. He took the lens in his left hand and wormed his way through the mouth of the tunnel.

His hand reached back to summon her, but Hedia was already poising to follow. She wore the dagger on the bandolier and dragged the orichalc spear behind her.

She didn't know where they were going, but she knew what it would mean to be captured again. That wasn't going to happen if she could prevent it.

The sails beat only fitfully, like the breaths of an animal in its death throes. Corylus looked back on their course, his face as blank as he would have kept it if he were on the wrong side of the Rhine and the bushes around him were rustling. He didn't see the giant eel, but by now it couldn't be far behind.

"There's an island," the sprite called from the bow. "To the west, see?"

A finger of stone thrust up from the horizon, casting its long shadow toward them against the glowing red water. Only a thumbnail edge of the sun was still visible.

"Yes!" Corylus said with a rush of relief. He moved to her side, calling, "Master, steer to that island, if you please. Ah, will you, will we, be able to rise to the top?"

It was another nearly vertical pillar, at least as tall as the first one, and again there was no beach at the base. The ship's keel was some twenty feet above the wave tops; not nearly high enough to land on the island, and probably not safe from the eel if it caught up with them either.

The Ancient chuckled but said nothing. Corylus felt the ship turn slightly. It moved like a piece of driftwood which had been in the water so long that it could barely float.

Corylus had tied his helmet to the base of the mast, using a cord clipped from the netting which held the bread. He slipped it on, though he didn't close the face guard yet. He lifted his sword and let it fall back, just making sure that it was free in the scabbard.

"Are you afraid of what's on this island?" the sprite said. "Nothing lives here. Nothing for longer than you can imagine."

Corylus lifted his chin in understanding. "I'm glad to hear that," he said.

And he was. But they were going to land anyway, even if it meant battling wolfmen until he or all of them were dead. There was at least a chance with that, but an eel several hundred feet long was an adversary as hopeless as an avalanche was.

If we can land, that is.

The ship suddenly plunged at a steep angle. Corylus grabbed the railing, certain that the Ancient had lost control of the vessel. The sprite gave him a mocking smile, standing arms-akimbo on the deck. The antics of the hull didn't affect her any more than a branch feared to be shaken off a swaying tree-trunk.

They heeled as the ship curved upward. The sails slammed convulsively, once and again. The vessel lurched like a horse on its last strength. Corylus, looking over the bow, could see land beneath him but the stern with the Ancient was a hundred feet back: much lower and over the sea.

The keel ground on the lip of the tor. The bow tilted down and they scraped to final safety. Only the curved sternpost stuck out over air and the clashing waters.

The sun had dimmed to a bloody smear on the horizon. The ship toppled onto its starboard side. Corylus jumped to the ground, clumsy because he hadn't been expecting what had happened.

I expected to crash into the side of the pillar, drop into the sea, and drown. If the eel didn't get me first.

The moon was low but already so bright that it cast black shadows now that the sun had set. Corylus surveyed the top of the pillar where they rested. It was circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, and as flat as a drill field. In the middle was a tumble of rocks which must have been brought there: nothing else marred the sandstone surface.

The sprite stepped away from the tilted vessel with far more grace than Corylus had managed. Reassured that she was right about the island being untenanted, he walked to the cliff edge and looked down. The helmet felt awkward, so he took it off and held it in his left hand.

The sea around this spine of rock glowed. At first Corylus thought it was only froth from waves hitting the hard stone, but as he watched, he realized that the water was covered with luminescent seaweed. Eddies formed whorls which curled several hundred yards out from the base. He had a feeling that they formed a pattern, but it was beyond him what it might be.

The great eel rose from the shimmering foam, its jaws open. The monster was silent save for the roar of contact as the huge body slid up along the stone flank of the island. Corylus shouted and drew his sword.

The eel lifted halfway up the sheer rock face. It wriggled for a moment as the sinuous body lashed the water for purchase, then hurled itself another thirty feet upward.

That was all. Still twenty feet short of the top, the jaws clopped shut. The eel arched downward and struck the water sideways with a cataclysmic splash. It dived for a moment, then rose to curl sunwise around the rock with another flick of its tail.

Corylus stepped back from the edge, sheathing his sword. He looked critically at the ship and said, "If we could drag the stern in a little so that it wasn't visible from below, maybe the eel wouldn't be so agitated."

The great body hit the rock again and again slid back. Corylus wasn't watching, but the splash as the eel returned to the ocean didn't seem as loud. He presumed-he hoped-that it meant that the creature was tiring and hadn't risen as high on its second attempt.

The sprite shrugged. "I don't think anything you can do would make the eel less angry," she said. "Why? Do you suppose it can reach the top of this rock?"

Corylus laughed-at himself, really. "I hope it can't," he said. "And I'm pretty sure that we can't move the ship until daylight regardless, so it doesn't matter. Except that it's one more thing for me to fret about, which I'm good at doing."

The Ancient was prowling among the rocks, dropping occasionally to all fours. Is he searching for bugs? But that couldn't be, because neither he nor Coryla ate.

The Ancient squatted and turned his face toward the rising moon. He howled with bleak misery.

The sound chilled Corylus, though he wasn't disturbed by the splash and slapping waves as the eel tried again to mount the rock. He half-drew but released his sword as he ran to the rocks in the center of the island; the sprite was beside him.

The Ancient cried out again. He remained oblivious of his companions when they reached him. Corylus looked at the ground to see if there was a material cause for the misery-a scorpion, some sort of trap that gripped even the being of an ancient ghost.

The rocks had once had squared edges, though Corylus had to bend close to be sure of that after the long ages they had weathered. He couldn't tell what the structure had been. There weren't enough blocks to construct a dwelling, but a pillar or an altar could have been constructed from what was present. There might have been more originally.

He reached down to turn a block over to see whether its protected underside was ornamented. Coryla stopped him with a hand and pursed lips.

Oh, of course!

Corylus backed away cautiously, then bowed low to the Ancient before turning to the ship. He hadn't eaten-hadn't wanted to eat-while it looked as though they would have to land on the waves at sunset. The rolls weren't appealing, but he was very hungry; and anyway, he had to eat to live.

The Ancient wailed again. Corylus could only guess, but he would bet his life on that guess: the magician's golden-furred race had raised the structure from which the present ruins had crumbled.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to stand in the Forum after the surrounding buildings had fallen and goats browsed among the scattered blocks. He couldn't really feel that, but he could come close enough to shiver at the thought.

Before he clambered aboard the ship, he looked down into the sea again. The eel was some distance out in the weed, but it drew a serpentine curve toward the rock when Corylus reappeared. Its leap was half-hearted, though; scarcely more than lifting its wedge-shaped head from the sea.

A fragment of verse returned to him, from a manuscript Varus had found in the library of the Raecius family which had links to Gades and Spain more generally, going back before the Second Punic War. The document was very old and had been written on leather rather than parchment; it seemed to be a geographical description written in archaic Greek.

Here weed floats in the water and great beasts swim, bringing terror to mariners…

Corylus mouthed the words as he remembered them. Then he climbed over the railing to get food.

Varus heard the music of pipes and sistrums, wishbone-shaped rattles whose bronze disks clinked together on the double arms. He might be imagining the Egyptian instruments because the book from which he had read the phrase was Egyptian also.

He thought he heard the wind sighing also; but down where he walked on a stone pavement, the air was dead still. The light was like that of the moon above a thin overcast, enough to see the path but not to make out distant shapes.

I wish the Sibyl were here to tell me what all this means.

Varus laughed. He said aloud, "I even more wish Corylus were here. There probably won't be anybody to attack with a sword, but I'd feel better if I knew I had a friend who could do that if needed."

His words didn't echo, but they had a fullness which suggested he was in an enclosure rather than in the middle of a barren wilderness. That made him feel better, though as a philosopher he knew that the grave was an enclosure also.

He could just as easily wish for a cohort of the Praetorian Guard. Though from comments he remembered, Corylus would probably protest that the Batavian auxiliaries were better combat troops.

Varus walked on, his sandals busking against the flagstones. He grinned.

A group of men stood to the right of the path. They wore togas and were arguing. He paused, but the men didn't seem to notice him. Beyond them he could see the forms of buildings, softened as though by thick fog. The men talked on the steps of the Aemilian Hall, but the Julian Forum which Caesar had built more than seventy years ago wasn't beside it.

One of them turned from the group, hesitated, and stared at Varus. His features could have been the original of an ancestral death mask on the walls of Saxa's office, but it was hard to compare flesh with age-blackened wax.

The man shrugged and stepped away. He and his companions vanished into the grayness. Varus nodded and kept on walking.

He had learned that to keep on going was often the only choice. Well, the only choice besides lying down and waiting to die. Resignation to fate was a proper quality for a philosopher, but giving up most certainly was not. Not for a philosopher who was also a citizen of Carce, at any rate.

The road had become a rural path. Varus walked beside a single track which had been worn by animal hooves. Not even a country cart with solid wooden wheels could navigate this hillside.

A vista opened, this time to the left. A man struggled behind a crude plow being drawn by a single ox. The animal was small and shaggy, with a blotchy red-and-white hide and forward-curving horns. The farmer wore a simple woolen tunic and a broad leather hat with a low crown; he was barefoot. Between the field and the path was a wall piled from stones plowed out of the field in past years.

The man looked up as Varus passed, then dropped his plow handles and lifted the brim of his hat. "Varus?" he called in accented Latin. "Gaius Varus?"

His voice had become thin by the last syllable; the grayness was returning. Varus waved, but the fog grew thicker yet and there was nothing more to wave to.

He trudged on. That was the only acceptable choice.

Varus no longer had even a path to follow, so he kept to the center of the terrain that opened before him. For a time he walked through woodland, even crossing a narrow brook, but very shortly he found himself skirting the edge of a dry lake. A yellow-gray dog, scraggly and thin, ran off with its tail between its legs. It glanced back over its shoulder.

There was a tree ahead. Someone sat at the base of it, apparently waiting. The trunk and branches curved, and the leaves dangled in long double rows from central stems. Corylus would know what it was…

Varus continued straight. The ground was a thin layer of leaves and yellow clay over limestone, with frequent outcrops and spreading roots.

The seated figure was the corpse of a woman with a heavy jaw, prominent brow ridges, and black hair over all her exposed skin. The right half of her body was skeletal; it had been picked as clean as if it had been boiled. Ants might have been responsible; no beak nor jaws bigger than an insect's could have done so neat a job without disarranging the bones.

The woman's arms and torso had been tied-wrapped-to the tree with vines. Her legs, one of flesh and the other bare bones, splayed out in front of her. Between them were a few fist-sized rocks which had been broken to a crude point on one end.

"Greeting, child from the children of my womb," the dead woman said. She chuckled.

Her jaws worked normally though only half of them were clothed with flesh; Varus could see her black tongue moving; it had been sectioned lengthwise as neatly as a razor could have done. Her voice was low-pitched and rough, but not really exceptional.

Varus swallowed. "Greetings, mistress," he said. His mouth was dry. "Should I, that is, may I release you?"

She laughed again. "Release me from death?" she said. "Do my descendents have such power, then? I think not, though I see that you are a great wizard. You are my worthy progeny, child."

"Mistress," said Varus, "why have you brought me here? I will do whatever you wish, if I'm able to. But I don't understand."

"Take a piece of my jawbone, child," the corpse said. She couldn't move either arm because of the way she was bound with vines, but the tip of her half-tongue thrust to the side and licked the bare mandible. "Take the bone, for the time will come when you will need it."

Varus had been standing at arm's length. The dead woman wasn't threatening, but the situation was too uncanny for him to approach unbidden. He stepped forward and squatted, putting his face more or less on a level with hers; he didn't know what to do next.

"Crack it, child," she said in a testy voice. "Use the hand axe at your feet."

"But…," Varus said.

"Do it, boy!" the woman said. "End this business for both of us. Crack my jaw and take the splinter!"

"Yes, mistress," Varus said; meekly, as he would have responded to Pandareus when he was being called down for an error in class.

There were several stones, all of a size to fit in the cup of his hand. He picked one that seemed to have started as a stream-washed pebble, dense and black. It had been egg-shaped, but the small end had been flaked to a point which was irregular but surprisingly sharp.

The dead woman opened her jaws wide. "Forgive me, mistress," Varus muttered as he moved to the side to get a better angle on the task. She chuckled.

He struck. The axe clocked loudly, but it didn't break the heavy bone.

"Harder, child!" the corpse said. "End this!"

Varus struck again with the full strength of his arm. The jaw cracked and a splinter flew away. Varus dropped the hand-axe to catch the spinning bone. He held much of the right mandible including the teeth. It had split from front to back across the jaw hinge, forming a long spike beyond the massive final molar.

"Well done, my child!" the dead woman cried. "You are worthy of me indeed!"

She began to laugh again. The sound echoed as Varus felt himself spinning into gray fog.

"Mistress?" he cried, but he could no longer hear her. He lurched bolt upright.

He was on a couch in the library. The book he had been reading was on the floor; the lamps were lighted. His father was looking at him in concern while the servants kept to the background.

"Son?" Saxa said. "What's that in your hand? It looks like a bone."

Varus stared at the fragment of jaw, just as he remembered it from his dream. "Yes," he said, "it is. But-"

He smiled lopsidedly at his father.

"-I'm not sure why I need it, my lord." He took a deep breath and added, "Just that I do."

Alphena walked into her dream, a perfectly flat pavement that flickered red/orange/yellow as though it were the heart of a fire. It seemed boundless, but in the far distance a group of people stood about a throne. Almost before she could wonder what they were doing, she was among them.

The people-women as well as men-with her at the base of the throne were dressed as imperial servants in vividly dyed tunics. Alphena didn't recognize any of them, but they nodded and bowed as though she were known and respected.

She felt awkward: her tunic was much the worse for wear, and even clean it had not been intended to be seen in august company. For that matter, her person was scarcely fit for the public either. Coiffeur had never been Alphena's concern, but she knew that the events since she mounted the gryphon in her father's garden had left her hair in a state that would have embarrassed a whore at the gate of the gladiator barracks after a hard night.

The throne was made of ivory and gold. Its frame and high back were carved with the greatest delicacy. Alphena raised her eyes to the man seated on it in imperial splendor.

"Uktena!" she said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

Then, as she heard her initial words, she added, "Where is your pipe, your talisman?"

The man enthroned leaned toward her with a frown of wonderment. "I know you, do I not?" he said. "Or I knew you once, I believe. Who are you, little one?"

"I'm your friend Alphena!" she said. Being called "little one" without any recognition in the shaman's tone, hurt her to hear. "We fought-"

That isn't true.

"I was with you when you fought Procron," she said. "The Atlantean."

As Alphena spoke, a vision of Poseidonis formed to her left. She turned. This was a closer view than she had gotten when she approached on the gryphon's back. Something was rising from the harbor- Alphena stifled a scream with both clenched fists. When she focused on the image of the city, the silent courtiers in the corner of her eye became brightly colored fishes swimming in a sea of fire.

Beyond them was a horrific monster, all tentacles and heads and huge beyond fathoming. It was the creature other people had in the Theater of Pompey.

It was the monster Alphena herself had seen Uktena turn into when Procron's magic lashed him. It was horrible, horrible…

"Alphena?" the shaman repeated. Her name rolled softly from his tongue. "I have heard the name, or I think I have. Do you know how I came here, Alphena? I was in another place, but I cannot remember where that was."

"You were in Cascotan, my f-friend," Alphena said. She had closed her eyes. Even when she forced herself to open them, she couldn't bring herself to look up from the pavement to the enthroned figure. "You fought Procron. You fought for your people and for the world."

She looked up. Uktena's was the same stern, steady visage that she had first seen in the theater. He looked puzzled but not worried. She wondered if anything could really worry him.

"You fought for me, Uktena," she said. "You drove the Atlantean back."

And almost died…

"I don't remember," Uktena said sadly. "But you are welcome here, Alphena. Anyone who says she is a friend of mine is welcome. I do not think I ever had friends; or not at least for many ages. Instead I have power."

His words echoed about her. Vast though it seemed, this was an enclosure, a prison. But as the sound trembled to silence, the shaman's form began to quiver in turn. The human shape blurred and spread and became again the foul immensity of Typhon.

"I am your friend, Uktena," Alphena said. Her eyes stung with tears, but she wouldn't look away, wouldn't permit herself even to blink. "I am your friend!"

"Little one?" said a voice from outside her. "Are you having bad dreams?"

Alphena sat upright. She had been curled on the floor of the shaman's kiva; the promise of dawn brightened through the reeds of the mat over the entrance. Uktena was looking down at her, his pipe in his hands.

She got to her feet. "It was nothing that matters, Uktena," she said. She looked at the axe in her right hand, then hefted it. "Is it time to go?"

"Yes, child," Uktena said with a faint smile. "It is time."

He paused to light the herbs in his pipe bowl with a pinch of punk which he kept smoldering in a hollow gourd.

"And perhaps it is the last time," Uktena said.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC