Out of the waters

CHAPTER 19

The sprite looked in disgust from the flame projector to Corylus. "That?" she said. "It makes fires. Why would I know anything about that?"

She shuddered theatrically. "It's ugly," she said. "You shouldn't use it."

Corylus felt a wash of frustrated anger, then despair. He gripped the starboard railing hard, wondering if his gauntleted hands would leave dimples in the wood.

He had no power over the sprite, no threat to offer that could force her to do what he wanted. More to the point, the worst torture imaginable wouldn't give her knowledge that she didn't possess. He didn't imagine that she was lying when she said she didn't know anything about the apparatus. Why would a tree nymph know how to operate a flame projector?

The ship circled as it rose, banking slightly to the right so that Corylus could look straight down if he wanted to. Wholesale establishments and market gardens lined the road into Carce, interspersed with the occasional tavern for travellers.

People looked up and pointed. A sailor was lazing on his back as mules hauled his wine barge against the current. He stared at Corylus, then shouted, "Baali!" He leaped to his feet and dived overboard.

The Tiber was a textured brown flood, trailing occasional lines of bubbles. Corylus had never seen the river from high enough up to appreciate its whole presence before. It wasn't the Rhine, let alone the Danube, but it had a personality which compelled respect.

He visualized the river god rising from the stream with flowing brown locks and challenging him. Perhaps Father Tiber would know how to use this flame projector, Corylus thought. He felt better for the whimsy.

The Ancient spoke in a querulous, demanding voice, ending on an up-note. Corylus turned, clinking the flare of his helmet against his armored shoulder.

The sprite said, "I don't want-"

The Ancient spoke again, briefly but with a snap in his tone. He was glaring at her.

The sprite made a moue. "The place that makes it work is there in the back," she said to Corylus. She gestured with her elbow toward at six-pointed star with curving tips imprinted in the back of the apparatus. "You turn it sunwise."

The Ancient was grinning at him. "Thank you, master," Corylus said. He turned his attention to the flame weapon.

The ship had risen higher than it had in the past. The ground was at least a thousand feet below, and Carce spread like a mosaic of tile roofs in the northern distance.

There was an unfamiliar shimmering disk in the sky beyond the Citadel; it seemed to rest on the granite pylon which Augustus had brought from Egypt for the gnomon of his sundial. As he watched, a bump in the center of the disk grew into the bow of a ship; a moment later, the whole vessel flew free into the air above Carce.

Corylus touched the star on his weapon with the fingers of his left hand, then turned it. He felt a clicking through the gauntlets.

The device had been as rigidly fixed to the structure of the ship as the mast itself; now it quivered into life, moving with greasy obedience when Corylus touched the left handgrip. A triangle of light four inches to a side appeared over the forward-pointing spout, framing a section of sky.

"When you push down with your thumbs," the sprite said grudgingly, "fire comes out the front."

She looked at the deck and shook her head. In a barely audible voice she said, "I don't know how you can think of doing that, cousin. Using fire!"

Corylus closed the mesh visor of his helmet. The thin orichalc wires cast a soft blur over his vision, but they didn't blind him as he feared they might.

He thought about what the sprite had said. For a moment, he visualized a world in which men recoiled in horror from the thought of burning other men alive; a world in which the Batavian Scouts didn't dry the ears of Sarmatian raiders whom they had tracked down east of the Danube.

That world was almost real to him, but not quite. Now he sighted along the spout of the weapon as their ship slid down through the sky of Carce. A second Atlantean vessel was pressing through the disk of rainbow light.

The wings of Corylus' own ship stroked hard, lifting the bow slightly. He tugged on the handgrips to keep the first of the two Atlanteans in the lighted triangle. The weapon was perfectly balanced, but it was heavy enough that adjusting the aim took some effort.

He kept the snout swinging, judging the Atlantean's course and their own. It was a matter of figuring out where the target would be and aiming there. Like launching a javelin at a Sarmatian riding across our front…

The decks of the Atlantean vessel were crowded with people. Most of them wore brightly colored off-the-shoulder tunics, but there were also archers and spearmen in simpler garb and a handful of exquisites-women and children-who glittered like spider webs frosted with dew.

Many Atlanteans stared at Corylus, but they didn't seem concerned. They must think he had come through the portal ahead of their ship, that was all.

A Servitor stood beside the armored Minos in the stern; another held the grips of the fire projector in the bow. The glass men were looking down at the plaza between the sundial and the Altar of Peace where citizens of Carce were gathering to see the wonders despite the threatening clouds. The Servitor in the bow slanted his weapon to sweep the crowd.

In another world, the Minoi would meet the Senate in peace and their people would settle in this world, another nation among the hundreds already within the boundaries of a peaceful empire.

In another world. The Atlantean ship was within fifty feet, proceeding parallel to Corylus' craft but not as swiftly.

The Ancient howled a word. Corylus didn't wait for the sprite to translate-if she intended to-before he squeezed with his thumbs. Nothing moved beneath them, but there was a loud roar, a blast of heat on his cheeks despite the mesh visor, and a throbbing vibration through the hull.

A spray of flame washed across the sails of the Atlantean ship; they vanished into puffs of ash drifting on the breeze. The vessel rolled over on its side, spilling its passengers and crew before plunging after them. The Minos dropped like a blazing meteor.

Corylus lifted his thumbs. The Ancient was keening something as he brought their ship around to engage the second Atlantean. The Servitor at the weapon of that one was no longer concerned with the civilians below, though the projector's inertia slowed him.

A third ship was squeezing through the disk. Behind it were scores of others, more than Corylus could begin to count in a brief glimpse.

He adjusted his flame projector. He thought he heard the sprite sobbing, but that was a concern for another world, a world that didn't exist today.

Hedia saw a brighter patch in the blur ahead of them. There had been an omnipresent buzzing, like that of many distant insects; now it began to congeal into voices. To her surprise, Lann first slowed, then stopped and stood erect.

Hedia made a quick choice and stepped around him, striding briskly. She couldn't hear words, but the rhythms of the speech ahead were those of Latin.

The ape-man gave a plaintive chirp. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was shambling along behind.

The air changed and the brightness gained texture. When Hedia looked straight ahead she saw only the flagstones, but there were other movements in the corners of her eyes: a pair of sheep, long-legged and shaggy, stared at her with their jaws working in a circular motion. Again, a young man made a half-turn to loose a discus. His muscles were so chiseled and perfect that Hedia almost missed a step.

The vision faded. The athlete was gone with the sheep.

Without conscious transition she stepped from the path onto the pavement within the marble screen of the Altar of Peace. Around her marched in low relief the sacrificial procession with which Emperor Augustus had inaugurated the altar.

A huge storm boiled in the sky around the horizon, but shimmering light held clear the air directly overhead. The light blazed from the orichalc sphere on top of the pointer of the sundial which Augustus had erected at the same time that he built the Altar of Peace.

A portal almost a hundred feet in diameter balanced above the monolith. From it, as Hedia watched, struggled a flying ship.

The Minoi were here. They had caught her.

Hedia walked out through the west doorway of the marble screen. Directly ahead, the Egyptian obelisk rose above the heads of the spectators.

She was stark naked, with nothing to hide her cuts, bruises and general grubbiness. At least she had gotten used to going barefoot, so the hard pavement didn't bother her now.

A ripping sound, not loud but savage, drew Hedia's attention to the sky. Two Atlantean ships flew past one another in opposite directions. A cone of flame, bright orange on the edges but a lambent white at the core, spewed from the bow of the more distant ship. It bathed the sails of the nearer vessel, setting them to blaze like gossamer.

The victim turned belly up like a dead fish, then dived toward the river. The pair of Servitors clung to the bow. The Minos was flung out with his screaming retainers. His orichalc armor caught light from a thousand angles. He smashed into the facade of the Temple of Saturn and slipped down broken.

The ship that had attacked rose into the air, its sails beating strongly. Hedia looked at it sharply. An armored Minos controlled the flame weapon in the bow instead of guiding the ship as had been the case every previous time she had seen the Atlanteans flying. What on Earth is that animal in the stern?

Lann came out of the enclosure behind Hedia, putting his knuckles to the pavement and swinging down the steps like a man on double crutches. He nuzzled her hand and made a deep moaning sound.

People nearby had begun to notice them, though the only one who seemed really frightened was a little girl who grabbed her mother's tunic and babbled in a high-pitched Eastern language. A naked woman and a huge ape must seem minor in comparison with flying ships battling in the sky.

"Make way for the noble Consul, Gaius Alphenus Saxa!" shouted a deep voice coming from behind.

Hedia spun around. She hadn't been thinking about her husband, but of course he would come here. Saxa wasn't what anyone would call a man of action, but he was dutiful to a fault. As consul-for another few days before his brief appointment ended-he would immediately have rushed to the site of the great wonder taking place on the Field of Mars. Household servants followed him, but his lictors led the entourage, adding official status to their husky presence.

The storm that filled the horizon rippled with nearly constant lightning, but the thunder was muted by the distance. Clouds seemed to strain at the bubble of clear air the way surf rolls against a cliff; but again like the cliff, the bubble cast them back.

Even the powerful voice of Saxa's chief lictor seemed thin against the background of crowd, storm, and the battle in the sky, but his men had opened their ceremonial bundles. Saxa's servants were carrying the loose rods and axes, but each lictor had kept out a rod which he used freely to open a path through the crowd for the consul.

The man who walked as the point of the advance, swinging his rod with both hands, saw Lann. He shouted, "Watch it there! Axes! Axes!"

"My lord husband!" Hedia said, stepping toward the procession and waving her right arm in the air. She wasn't sure that Saxa could see her through the press of his escort, and she was nearly certain that none of the lictors would recognize her in her current state. "Saxa, my heart!"

"That's her ladyship!" cried Callistus, forcing his way out through the lictors. Though soft, he was a tall man and more alert than Hedia would ordinarily have given him credit for. "Your ladyship-"

He paused to stare at her. Without a further word, he whipped off his ornate toga and settled it over her shoulders.

Lann growled and surged toward the steward. Callistus shrieked and fell back. Some of the lictors had retrieved their axes; they sprang forward. There was nothing symbolic about the axe blades now.

Hedia threw her arms around the ape-man's head and covered him. "He's a friend!" she shouted over her shoulder. Then-because in fairness to the lictors, they had every reason to be concerned for the consul's safety-she said, "Lann! No! These are my friends! Sit down and be good!"

"Dear heart?" Saxa said, forcing his way with some effort through his entourage. "What's happening here? You know, don't you? Tell me what I should do."

By Hercules, husband, how could I possibly know! Hedia flared; but that was exhaustion and frustration reacting, and the emotion-it wasn't thought, not really-didn't reach her lips.

The lictors had drawn back, allowing Callistus to get to his feet again. The ape-man unwrapped his head from folds of the toga, looking puzzled. His anger at the steward had passed, and he didn't seem to regard the men with axes as a danger. His only concern had been what he perceived as a threat to Hedia.

Stroking Lann's shoulder, she glanced up at the sky. The ship whose Minos was in the bow had climbed and was circling the other vessel. That second ship tried to keep its bow and the weapon there toward its pursuer, but it wallowed uncomfortably. There were at least a hundred people standing on its deck, a crowd that would have sunk a vessel of its size on the water and was threatening to do the same for this flying one.

Hedia did know why the Atlanteans were appearing over Carce. That was so obvious that she was embarrassed to remember her flash of unspoken anger at being asked the question.

She had watched the ape-man loose Typhon on Atlantis. The Minoi who could flee before the monster were of course doing so.

And she knew what Saxa must do. Unfortunately she didn't think that would be enough to save Carce, though.

"Husband!" she said. Her voice was crisp and her back straight. Nothing in Hedia's manner suggested that there was anything unusual in her presence or costume. "The ships full of people are Atlanteans trying to leave their island before it sinks. They'll destroy Carce to make a place for themselves-you saw in the theater what their weapons do, the way they spew fire."

The sky ripped as one ship sent a cone of flame across the other, lighting the sails and touching the passengers packed on the forward deck. People shrieked and threw themselves over the railing, their clothing afire.

Their clothing burned, and also their flesh: the smell of meat cooking was unmistakable. The Emperor had lighted the Circus for a beast hunt one night with the households of four plotters, dipped in tar and hung from poles before being ignited. The screams had sounded the same that time.

Perhaps because the passengers in the bow jumped away from the jet of fire, the ship reared like a horse, then plunged into the ground stern first, It landed on a line of clothiers' booths toward the river. The hull shattered, killing those still aboard as well as spectators.

"But why are they fighting?" Saxa said. He rubbed his lips with his left hand as if trying to muffle the admission of his ignorance.

"I don't know and it doesn't matter," Hedia said. "You have to summon troops with artillery."

Did the garrison of Carce have ballistas and catapults? The Watch certainly didn't, but the Praetorians might have some. Some.

"We have to be ready to fight the Minoi when they stop fighting one another."

Another ship was pressing through the portal. For a moment the scene reminded Hedia of a bubble on the surface of swamp, swollen about the stem of a reed. The defending vessel was climbing again.

"My dear!" Saxa said in obvious surprise. "I have no authority to do that. The Watch comes under the authority of the Emperor's prefect, and as for the Praetorians-my heart, you know they wouldn't take orders from a senator. Any senator, but I'm afraid they would find me less impressive than most of my colleagues."

"But we have to fight them!" Hedia said, weak-kneed with horror that her husband had just corrected her on a question of political practicality. Of course the Praetorian Guard wouldn't take the orders of a senator. The Praetorians existed largely to keep the senators themselves in check. "Husband, look at the flames they shoot! If a hundred ships start lighting fires across the city, we'll all burn. Everything will burn!"

The people nearest Hedia were listening to the argument with frightened incomprehension. The words didn't mean anything to them, but anger and fear were obvious in Hedia's voice. Even a slave freshly dragged from the interior of Spain could understand what that meant.

Lann looked, perhaps for the first time, at the portal which seemingly balanced on the point of the granite obelisk. He hooted softly, then bared his teeth and boomed a challenge. Hedia had heard before: in the forest immediately after her escape from the Servitors, when the ape-man confronted the lizard which was about to leap on her; and toward the Minoi pursuing them in the passage back to Carce, before he loosed Typhon.

Lann put his head down and bulled his way on all fours into the screaming crowd. The spectators were too closely packed for him to shove them out of the way: rather, he crushed them down or hurled them into the air like spray from the prow of a ship.

The warships in the sky continued to maneuver. Two more had struggled through the portal and a third was on its way. Carce's sole defender slanted toward them, but it couldn't forever stop a fleet as big as the one Hedia had seen in the skies above Poseidonis.

And when it lost the unequal struggle, Carce had no other defense.

Varus stood at what he thought was a safe distance from the spire's double doors. He expected them to swing outward and possibly to swing very fast, because he couldn't assume that they would be bounded by the constraints of the material world.

Instead of opening, the black crystal valves dissolved into a thin haze. Through it he could see figures moving.

Varus grinned wryly. He had been correct in realizing that the doors might not open like those of the Emperor's townhouse. He had been wrong in his unstated assumption that they would open in the material plane. Pandareus would be disappointed at the blinkered viewpoint his student had demonstrated.

I wonder if I'll ever see Pandareus again?

A sheet of lightning covered the sky for long moments, pulsing among the clouds. Beneath the shadowed gloom that followed, Varus walked toward Procron's fortress. The Sibyl was at his side, her expression unreadable.

She looked toward him and said, "There are many futures, Lord Wizard. In some of them you meet Pandareus again. Do you wish to know which of the Fates' threads you walk?"

"It doesn't matter," Varus said. Until he spoke, he hadn't realized how completely true the statement was. "This is my duty, so I'll carry it out to the best of my abilities."

It was easier to get on with life when one disregarded questions of personal survival. Zeno of Citium and those who had developed his Stoicism would be pleased that a young scholar had achieved such understanding.

The Sibyl made a sound like a pour-spout gurgling. It was probably meant for a chuckle. Anyway, it allowed Varus to smile at himself as he walked beneath the pointed crystal arch and felt gray fog enter his bones.

Varus paused. He had expected-without consciously framing the question; Pandareus will be disappointed-the fog to be a membrane, a permeable replacement for the solid doors. Instead it was a dim cave which branched in more directions than he could count on his fingers.

The Sibyl pointed her right arm forward and said, "Grant me a path-"

"-over which I may pass in peace…," continued Varus in the same high-pitched voice. He was reading the scroll open in his mind. "For I am just and true!"

Despite the situation, he felt his lips rise in a smile. Every philosopher should be just and true. I at least strive for those ideals.

A tube of rosy light snaked through the fog, wide enough for two to walk in. It went farther-much farther-than should have been possible within the crystal spire, which Varus had judged to be no more than a hundred feet in diameter at the base.

Still, he couldn't be in doubt as to his path; he strode in and walked as briskly as he would have done in Carce, passing from his father's house to the Forum or perhaps to a temple whose library he wanted to consult.

In Carce Varus would have had a guard of servants, to keep his surroundings at bay; here the light did the same. Occasionally something came close enough to the glowing boundary to give him a good look at it. He passed three slender forms in flowing tunics who stood arm in arm, watching him with wide eyes. They were as supple as the Graces themselves; he couldn't guess at their gender or even- "Sibyl?" Varus said. "Are they human?"

"What is human?" the old woman said. "Many scholars including Aristotle have debated that. None of them came to a decision that you were willing to accept, Lord Varus."

Then in a less whimsical tone she said, "Their ancestors were human. Whether or not they remain human is a question for philosophers, not for a soothsayer."

I can be a very frustrating person to talk with, Varus thought again. If I'm really talking with myself.

He smiled again. He was amused at the insight-and he was amused that he had found a purely philosophical question to take his mind off the problem of what lay in his own immediate future. Both problems were insoluble, but considering the definition of "humanity," wasn't emotionally trying.

For a moment, Varus saw vast machines beyond the faint rosy membrane, deeper shadows bulking in the purple-gray dusk. They moved repetitively, the movement visible though the forms were only blurs. He could not tell how distant what he saw was, or even if he was truly seeing anything.

As suddenly, he stared upward at horror: Ocean given physical form. A thousand ravening maws slavered toward him, tens of thousands of limbs kicked and clawed and coiled-and then storm-tossed water surged down, a sea greater than the world itself. Froth flicked from the whitecaps. Monster or ocean met eye-searing purple lightning and vanished into haze, through which the reborn terror drove to vanish in turn. The roar was deafening.

"Perhaps, Gaius Varus, you should consider preserving your fine mind by leaving this place," the Sibyl said. "You are still able to, you know."

Varus glanced at her in irritation. "To go where?" he asked. "Back to Carce, where Typhon will be driven if I don't stop Procron here?"

She gave him another enigmatic smile. "You don't mind my suggesting that you are a coward," she said in a musing tone, "but flawed logic offends you. Does that make you a brave man, Lord Wizard, or a fool?"

"Nothing historians have taught me about battles," Varus said, "makes me think that one man cannot be both. Publius Corylus has many stories of the army which have caused me to wonder if it's possible to be a brave man and not a fool."

"'It is a sweet and proper thing for a man to die for his fatherland,'" the Sibyl quoted. "Was Horace a fool, Gaius Varus?"

"No," said Varus. "Because he threw down his shield and ran instead of dying."

He paused, rolling the thought around in his head. Very precisely he went on, "Horace was not a fool; but he was worse than a coward to urge others to act and therefore die in what he thought was a foolish manner."

Varus cleared his throat and continued, projecting as though he had an audience beyond monsters and a figment of his imagination, "I honor Horace as a poet, perhaps the greatest of our poets. But I would prefer to die at the side of my friend Corylus than to live with the soul of Horace."

The Sibyl chuckled. Unexpectedly, she reached out and squeezed his hand. "The men of Carce have not changed since my girlhood," she said.

Which is a puzzling thing to hear from a figment of my imagination.

They were walking down a tube through darkness again. Varus hadn't missed a stride beneath the threat of Typhon-or of the sea, if there was any difference-but he felt more comfortable in this neutral setting. Well, he felt less uncomfortable.

He glimpsed movement to the side and turned, wondering if he would see another of the androgynous maybe-humans. Instead he frightened into scurrying panic a handful of the rabbitlike animals which he had seen scampering outside on the moor. They disappeared into the shadows of the low, black vegetation.

"Their ancestors were human also," said the old woman. She was watching Varus, perhaps to see how he took the revelation. "The world grows old, and her children age with her."

"I see," said Varus. The only emotion he felt was wonder. He was beginning to understand the passage of long ages, which had been only a concept to him in the past.

The Sibyl gestured toward flickering brightness ahead of them. "There is your goal, Lord Wizard: Procron the Atlantean. Are you his master, do you think?"

Varus sniffed. "It doesn't matter what I think," he said.

The light was a doorway barred by sizzling lightning; the smell of burned air made Varus sneeze. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and said, "Grant me a path over which I may pass in peace!"

And stepped through, into Procron's sanctum. The Sibyl had vanished as though she never was.

Procron stood upright in the middle of a vast room. He was nude: an aged man whose chest had sunk and whose limbs were withered. Violet light flickered in the depths of the diamond skull which had replaced his head

The firmament of heaven formed the room's walls; a needle of light from each star pierced the magician's body. Varus' presence blocked a few of the beams, but they shifted and reformed as he walked forward.

"Why do you come here, infant?" a voice boomed. Procron wasn't speaking, or at least his body wasn't; the words came from the air.

Four Servitors walked toward Varus at a deliberate pace. He didn't know whether they had just appeared or if he had failed to notice them when they stood motionless in the light of stars as blinding as a dust storm. The glass men were bare-handed, but they scarcely needed weapons to deal with a young scholar.

Varus continued forward. The scroll written in Egyptian holy symbols was unrolling in his mind.

"Look above you, infant!" the voice said. "Look! Is this what you want to bring upon yourself?"

Varus looked up, though he knew what he would see. Typhon and Ocean, the presence flicking from one to the other more quickly than his mind could process… or perhaps they were the same, infinitely huge, ravening against the barrier of hissing light; a pressing, roaring, mindless fury oblivious of pain.

Varus walked on. The Servitors stepped close, their arms lifting to seize him.

"May the gods be at peace with me…," Varus said. "That I may crush my enemies!"

He started to raise his hand to point at the Servitors in turn. At his words alone they shattered into dust so fine that it seemed to sink through the solid floor.

Varus smiled grimly. Sometimes being a scholar was better than being a swordsman.

He had walked to within a few paces of the Atlantean wizard.

"What do you think to accomplish?" the voice thundered. "Even if you are willing to feed yourself to Typhon, still you cannot affect me. My soul is one with my talisman in a universe nothing can reach; the wizard Uktena slew my body thirty million years ago. What escaped to this time is dead and immune to further harm!"

"May the gods be at peace with me," Varus said, "that I may crush my enemies!"

A ripple quivered through the chamber, like heat waves stirring the stars on a summer night; the dust that had been the Servitors danced in fitful eddies. There was no greater result.

Procron's laughter echoed like mountains crashing. "You cannot harm me," the voice said, "because I am dead!"

As my ancestor, who gave me her jaw, is dead.

Varus held the splinter in his left hand. He didn't bother taking it in his right, his master hand, because he was certain that physical strength and dexterity had nothing to do with this.

He thrust the jawbone toward Procron's chest. It slid through the wizard's ribs like a spear driving into loose sand. There was a sound as if the world itself was screaming.

Above, the net of lightning that held back Typhon vanished; the monster began to pour down through the sky. The myriad lights around the vast room went dark.

Procron's body crumbled like rotten wood, but the diamond skull blurred. It was vanishing by becoming more diffuse, the way fog lifts as the sun climbs higher.

The scream grew fainter also, but it continued for a very long time.

Varus turned and walked back toward the entrance. There he would wait for horror to engulf him. I am a citizen of Carce.

"Where are we going?" Alphena asked. "Ah-that is, if you please, Lord Gryphon."

The gryphon's muscles rippled over his bones with the rhythm of a dance. His fur lifted and settled like the surface of a pond when something very large swims beneath it. Even as keyed up as Alphena was, she found the movement entrancing.

"To your world, little one," the gryphon said, cocking his eagle head just enough that he could look at her with his right eye. "To your world, though not to your time."

He gave a throaty chuckle and added, "We are going to your brother; or to where your brother died, if we are not in time."

Alphena tried to prevent her muscles from tensing. She couldn't, of course; and even if she had, the gryphon would probably have smelled her sudden fear.

"Thank you, lord," she said, proud that at least her voice didn't quaver. "I'll hope that we arrive in time."

Images began to pick themselves out the hazy light ahead. As before, their destination became clear but did not swell as her mount's wings beat.

At first Alphena thought the gryphon had made a mistake: the bleak world before them was nearly featureless. It was the Moon glimpsed in the moments before the Atlantean guardians lifted from it on their vultures, not the blue seas and green continents of the Earth.

The fortress of Procron the Atlantean stood on a plain covered with plants whose leaves were the color of charcoal. Alphena tensed again; then she smiled.

Uktena saw you off once, she thought. Since apparently my friend didn't finish you, I'll see what I can do to what's left.

She thought again about the axe, lost off the shore of the Western Isles. She flexed her fingers in the gryphon's fur. Perhaps she could find a rock when they landed on that stark plain. If not, well, she would do what she could with her hands and teeth.

"Such a brave little warrior," the gryphon said affectionately. "It is not Procron with whom you have to deal; your brother has settled that."

The world before Alphena changed. A mesh of glittering fire surrounded it, the violet fury which Procron had used to lash his enemies. As suddenly, the shield of lightning vanished and-unseen till that moment-a torrent of fangs and claws poured down to cover the stark plain on which the Atlantean's fortress stood.

The crystal spire itself remained untouched for the moment. As Alphena watched, her brother stepped through the gateway and stood facing his monstrous doom.

"I can try to snatch him up," said the gryphon. He sounded reflective, not frightened. "I will not be able to rise before Typhon catches us, however; and I'm not sure that your brother will survive the haste with which I will be forced to act."

He added, "I am not sure why Typhon hesitates. Typhon is destruction; it has no purpose but to destroy."

"No," said Alphena, her lips dry. "He isn't destruction. Set me down beside my brother. If-"

She sat up stiffly. She had been about to say, "If you dare."

"If you please, Lord Gryphon," she said. Since he knows my thoughts, he knows that my apology is sincere. "I regret the danger that I cause you to face."

The gryphon's laughter was cruel and triumphant. "What warrior expects to die in his nest, little one?" he said in a voice so rumblingly deep that the words were scarcely distinct. "Did I not know who you were when I chose to accompany you?"

His broad wings fanned and his forequarters reared, halting him in mid flight. Alphena hugged herself to the feathered neck. With no transition that she could see, the gryphon's hind legs touched the narrow strip between Varus in the gateway of the crystal spire and Typhon's looming presence. The wings beat once more; then the cat torso settled and Alphena slid to the cold ground.

"Sister?" Varus said. The gryphon, stretching his great body in studied unconcern, was between them now. "Alphena, what are you doing here?"

She ignored him. "Uktena?" she said. Before her, surrounding her and now dwarfing Procron's fortress, rose a solid wall: it was snarling flesh where she focused but in the corners of her eyes the foaming, high-piled ocean. "My friend Uktena!"

The wall trembled toward her: a cliff crumbling, a wave breaking. Alphena stood, looking up: scratched, naked; her eyes on the verge of tears, but she wouldn't cry, she wouldn't.

The shaman Uktena brushed a lock of her hair out of her eyes with his left hand. "I did not expect to find you in this place, little one," he said.

"You're back," Alphena whispered, the words choking her throat. She gripped the shaman's hand and held it to her cheek with both of hers. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."

She couldn't see him now, because of the tears. She squeezed harder. Uktena's hand was as firm as a hickory root.

"I will never come back, child," he said quietly, stroking her hair with his free hand. "What I was in my home is gone forever, just as the wizard Procron is gone."

"Uktena," she said. "Please. Please, my friend. Let my brother go and the gryphon too. He's a brave warrior, you'd like him."

She drew a deep breath. She didn't open her eyes because she was afraid of what she would see.

"Let them go," Alphena said, "and I will stay. My life for my brother's. That's fair, isn't it?"

Uktena laughed the way thunder boomed when he fought Procron in the sea. "Fair?" he said. "What is fair? Everyone dies and everything dies, and I destroy all things. I am the destroyer!"

"You are my friend," Alphena said against the shaman's hard chest. "You are my friend, no matter what anybody says. I don't care!"

"Little one, little one," Uktena said. "You stood by me in good times and bad. Indeed-"

He chuckled again, but this time there was humor in the sound.

"-a person less fearless than yourself might have said that there were only bad times. Go, take your brother and the mount who glares at me like a frog preparing to fight a stork. You will all die, for all things die. But not today, and not at my hand."

"Uktena, you deserved better," Alphena said. Her voice was so low that that she heard the words mostly in her mind.

"I have the world to myself, Alphena," he said. "Who is there greater than I?"

He laughed, but the humor was missing.

"Sister?" said Varus at her side. "You might be more comfortable wearing this."

He offered Alphena his tunic. He must have taken it off, then put his toga on again with the coarse wool directly against his bare flesh as though he were a sturdy plowman of ancient Carce.

Which he was, Alphena realized, in the fashions that mattered. She had learned what a man was in these last few weeks; and her bookish brother, to her astonishment, was a man in all the best senses.

"Anyway," he said, smiling as though he were unaware of the horror poised over him, "I would be more comfortable if my maiden sister weren't prancing around as naked as a plucked squab."

"Your brother," said the gryphon, "cannot hear your conversation with the person whom you call your friend. I heard, however. May I suggest that this would be a good time for me to deliver you to your stepmother in Carce?"

"Yes," said Alphena, her voice muffled as she pulled the tunic over her head. She turned. Varus was staring at the shaman. She said, "Brother, what do you see?"

"I can't describe it," Varus said, wetting his lips with his tongue. It was a moment before he met her eyes and forced a weak smile. "But part of the time I'm seeing Ocean, if that's what you mean. I don't know why the wave doesn't fall on me. On us."

"Get on the gryphon's back," Alphena said, swallowing. "I'll get up behind you. He has kindly agreed to take us to mother, who is back in Carce."

Varus looked doubtfully at the gryphon, who said in a tone of drawling boredom, "Or if the boy would prefer to stay, I won't object to leaving him."

"I don't know how-" Varus said tartly. He was probably going to say something about not knowing how to mount so large an animal.

He jumped up before Alphena could offer to help, throwing himself across the gryphon's back like a pair of saddlebags. He must have realized that this wasn't a time for debate or the decorous behavior of the Forum, though he really wasn't much of an athlete. Alphena grabbed his right ankle to keep him from sliding completely over their mount and landing head-first on the other side.

Varus spread his legs on opposite sides of the gryphon's back. Uktena watched with a slight smile; his arms were crossed.

Alphena forced her lips together and hopped onto the gryphon, folding her legs under her. The other choice would have been to seat herself behind the wings, where she wouldn't have anything to hold onto unless she grabbed handsful of flight feathers. She gripped her brother's waist with both hands, hoping he had enough sense to cling to their mount's neck.

"Lord Gryphon," she said, "we are ready."

The gryphon turned his head to stare at Uktena, then dipped it in what must have been a sign of honor. He rose onto his hind legs and sprang upward, slamming his great wings down with the same motion.

Varus rocked violently, but he managed to hang on. Alphena suspected that the gryphon was deliberately keeping his back more level than he had bothered to do when she alone rode him. She wasn't used to riding, but she was an athlete and had a sense of balance.

They rose swiftly, curving away. Alphena looked back over her shoulder.

The world behind them tossed and turned in the grips of colossal violence. Procron's spire shattered under what must have been an enormous impact from all sides at once. Reduced to powder, the crystal walls spurted upward like the flume of a spouting whale.

Uktena, a giant standing astride the world, looked up at Alphena from the midst of the destruction. He raised his hand in salute; then the scene became a spherical mirror and faded into the distance.

Goodbye, my friend.

Corylus waited. His thumbs were consciously raised above the triggers as his ship slid toward the stern of the vessel which had just come through the portal. The target slanted downward, trying to reach the ground under control instead of plunging from the sky as a flaming wreck.

The Servitors in the bow had rotated their weapon as much as they could, but that was only sixty degrees off axis, and the ship itself couldn't turn quickly enough to face the renegade vessel which had already destroyed the two preceding Atlanteans. Escape was the best choice, but it wouldn't be possible.

The Minos controlling the ship looked back at their pursuer. Corylus triggered his weapon, touching the top of his target's mast but not igniting the beating sails. Most of the jet sprayed across the passengers crowding the bow. The humans burst into screaming flame, but fire ran off the Servitors without affecting them.

Corylus let their speed carry him closer, then squeezed the triggers again. The muzzle spat a fiery gobletful. It splashed the right-hand wing of the sail which blazed like dry grass. Still forty feet in the air, the Atlantean vessel rotated to starboard and spilled its human freight before nosing down into field.

Corylus turned. "The flame stopped!" he shouted to the Ancient. He didn't know whether the fox-faced magician could understand Latin-or any other human language-but he was pretty sure that he could figure out what was going on even without words. "We don't have any more fire!"

The sprite sat disconsolately on the deck between Corylus and the mast. She didn't look up when he shouted. Violence didn't disturb her, but the use of fire had obviously affected her the way wanton destruction of books would have done Pandareus, who stood at the railing near her.

The scholar wore a look of bright interest at present. Corylus knew that Pandareus wasn't a cruel man, but witnessing unique events was of more importance to him than the fact that the events involved hundreds of strangers burning alive or being smashed to jelly.

The Ancient looked at Corylus from the stern. He raised his right hand, crooked the fingers into claws, and with a terrible scream ripped them down.

Corylus grinned through his mesh visor. He and the Ancient didn't share a language, but they could communicate well enough. He drew his sword.

The ship was climbing again to get higher than the portal. A pair of Atlantean vessels were squeezing through together. The Minoi understood the danger now, but their ships were too overloaded for nimble maneuvers.

"Master Corylus?" Pandareus said. "Is there a way I can be of service?"

Corylus took a deep breath. His nose and throat were dry because of backwash from the fire projector. Even with his armor, he had found it unpleasant to use. No wonder the glass men crewed the weapons on Atlantean ships.

"Thank you, master, no," Corylus said. "We'll come alongside their ships now and I'll kill the Minoi who control them. You wouldn't-well, you don't have armor."

Pandareus laughed. "A matter of no present significance, as we both know," he said.

Corylus coughed into his hand. He had seen how many ships were lined up on the other side of the portal. Speaking as much to himself as to the scholar, he said, "There's a lot of them, but they're very sluggish. They should have landed the civilians when they realized they were going to have to fight."

"Do you think any of the passengers would have been willing to disembark, my student?" Pandareus said, arching an eyebrow in question. "Since they know what surely awaits all who are left behind in Atlantis."

"Ah," said Corylus. "Sorry, Master. I wasn't thinking."

"You were thinking as a soldier, Master Corylus," Pandareus said. "As you should be, in the present circumstances."

The pair of ships wallowing through the portal would have been an ideal target if the flame projector were still working. The Atlanteans had to crawl even more slowly through the portal than usual so that the ships didn't smash one another even before they met the enemy.

Without the flame projector, though, it meant that Corylus had two enemies to deal with when they finally did arrive. The Minoi were using bad tactics, but they'd gotten lucky.

Corylus smiled grimly. That wasn't the first time such a thing had happened in battle. A pity that it was working against the defenders of Carce now, but it wasn't the first time for that either.

The Ancient had lifted them well above the portal and to the starboard side of their enemies. Their flame projectors would be lethal; Corylus could only defeat the Atlanteans if he approached them individually from the stern, and even then there were still more coming through.

Spectators on the Field of Mars was shouting with enthusiasm. Even the greatest fool born could see how dangerous it was to stand on ground where warships, each weighing as much as several elephants, were likely to fall, but the field was if anything more crowded than it had been when Corylus first arrived over Carce.

On the other hand, the spectators were likely to survive longer than he was. He balanced the sword in his hand as the Atlantean ships turned sunwise together toward their enemy.

The Ancient slanted down like an eagle stooping on an osprey, using their advantage of speed and maneuverability to curve toward the enemy's sterns. The Minoi weren't used to real combat. If they had turned against one another instead of in parallel, one or the other would be prow-on to the attack.

There was a new commotion in the crowd. What at first Corylus thought was a bear pushed its way out of the crush and loped through the relatively fewer spectators close to the obelisk. The portal gleamed and sizzled above him.

The creature ran with an odd rocking motion, swinging its forelegs together, then its hind legs. Only when it leaped to the obelisk and began climbing did Corylus realize it must be an ape. The pink granite was carved with Egyptian picture-writing, but he didn't think he would be able to climb it with such handholds. The bears he had frequently hunted on the frontiers couldn't climb as well as he did.

The ape was a question for another time, and probably for another person-a living person-to ask. Corylus gripped the railing with his left hand, then remembered that Pandareus might not understand what was about to happen.

Turning his head slightly-he didn't dare look away when they were running up on the enemy's stern so quickly-Corylus shouted, "Brace yourself, Master! There'll be a shock!"

Bare-chested bowmen on the Atlantean vessel were shooting at them. An arrow hit Corylus' helmet squarely and clanged off; another buried its head in the railing beside his left gauntlet. The archers were less accurate than he expected, perhaps because they were so crowded on the ship's deck that they couldn't draw their bows to full nock.

The Minos in the stern dropped his crystal talisman to dangle on the golden chain about his neck; his vessel lost way. Drawing his sword, he turned to face Corylus. The ships would glance against one another, port bow to starboard quarter. At any moment- The sails of Corylus' ship, of the Ancient's ship, stroked back and down with unexpected force. Their bow lifted over the Atlantean's rail and coursed through the screaming passengers. It struck the mast-which held-and the boom supporting the starboard sail, which snapped off short.

Corylus rocked back, then slammed forward. His breastplate took the impact, but even spread across his whole torso the shock was bruisingly severe.

Driven by one sail alone, the Atlantean ship rotated on its axis, then broke loose and fell away. It was upside down when it hit the ground. The crash sent man-sized splinters spinning high in the air.

The remaining Atlantean vessel had turned and was approaching from the port side at the speed of a fast walk. Corylus ran toward that railing, forgetting in the stress of the moment his fear of a ship's wobbling deck. The Ancient swung them down and to the right, using the collision with their most recent victim to aid the maneuver.

The Atlantean wizard tried to follow, but his ship wobbled badly and nearly overturned from the excessive weight on its deck. Several of the passengers fell over the side to starboard, and the rush of the panicked survivors to the port railing almost precipitated a reverse disaster.

The Minos shouted something which Corylus couldn't make out because of the excited cheering from the crowd below. The Servitor in the bow sprayed fire more or less toward the defenders. The jet burned out far short of its target, as the glass man must have known it would.

Corylus was breathing hard, although he hadn't been called on to really do anything. He was sweating furiously under the breastplate, and he half considered taking off the helmet for a moment to let his head cool.

He wouldn't do that: he didn't understand the situation well enough to predict the dangers accurately. Which was what the sprite had told him beside the body of the Cyclops on the beach.

He turned to her. Lifting the visor, he said, "We're done with the fire, cousin."

Pausing half a moment to choose his phrasing, he added, "I'm truly sorry for the situation."

The sprite rose by curling her legs under her in a movement more like that of a serpent than a human being. To Corylus' surprise, she gave him a cheerful smile and said, "Well, it all ends, doesn't it? I've been in that bead-"

She ran her fingertips over the orichalc breastplate where it covered the amulet.

"-for so long that it will be a relief. We hazels aren't like those ugly gnarled desert pines, you know."

She raised her hand and caressed Corylus' face instead. It felt like a butterfly walking on his cheek.

"I feel sorry for the ship, though," she said, looking up at the mast. "The magicians took the souls away from all the pieces when they made it, but the ship was starting to talk to me. It's broken now, and that lot-"

She glared at the Atlantean vessel turning toward them.

"-won't fix it. Well, they'll probably burn us all, won't they?"

"Yes, I suppose that's likely enough," Corylus said. He had shut down emotionally. The logical part of his mind had addressed the question which the sprite had asked and agreed with her analysis.

For the first time Corylus realized that they weren't climbing as quickly since the most recent attack as they had before. In fact they were scarcely climbing at all, and the sails beat with an irregular rhythm.

"The mast is breaking, I think," Pandareus said, looking upward. He spoke with the interest he showed in everything new. "I was holding onto it when we hit the other ship, and it shook very hard."

He touched his cheek with a rueful smile. It was swollen, and there was a pressure cut over the bone. The bruise would close his eye by tomorrow.

Corylus looked up. The collision didn't appear to have damaged their hull, but the mast had whipped violently at the impact. It must have struck Pandareus a short, massive blow where his face was pressed against it.

The yards grew from the central pole like branches from a tree. When they flexed with the weight of the sails added, the starboard one had started to split away at the crotch just as a fir bough might break in a heavy snow. It labored now, and as it did so the crack spread further down the mast. At any moment the yard and sail would tear away completely. The ship would overturn and drop like the one it had rammed.

Unless, as the sprite had suggested, they burned instead. Corylus let his visor drop and trotted back to the bow.

They weren't going to be able to circle around their opponent this time. They were only slightly higher than the Atlantean ship, and it was moving faster than they could. Two more ships were coming through the portal. It was unlikely that they would be required to deal with the only defender of Carce.

The Ancient swung toward the prow of their opponent: there was no choice. The Servitor lifted the spout of his fire projector, and several archers began shooting. One arrow thunked hard into the hull and another zipped not far overhead.

"Watch out, Master!" Corylus said. His orichalc armor had shrugged off an arrow, but the teacher wore only a tunic. Not that it would make much difference. An arrow might even be merciful.

When Corylus turned his head slightly to shout the warning, he noticed movement on the obelisk. The ape had reached the top and was wrenching at the metal ball that Novius Facundus, the astronomer who erected the sundial, had placed there to diffuse light around the top of the granite shaft. The portal throbbed and pulsed just above the creature's head.

But that wasn't a present concern.

The Ancient lifted their bow an instant before the Servitor spurted fire toward them. Coupled with their existing slight advantage in height, the jet washed across the timbers of the forward bow and the lower hull instead of bathing Corylus and the deck beyond him. He wasn't sure that flames would affect Coryla and the Ancient so long as the amulet remained intact, but he knew from watching the victims of his own weapon what would happen to Pandareus and-despite the armor-himself.

The ships crashed together, not a glancing blow like the previous ramming attempt but a bow-to-bow collision between vessels which were each proceeding at faster than a walking pace. Timbers broke, scattering burning fragments. The flame projector and the Servitor crewing it had been crushed by the impact, but the hull of Corylus' ship was already alight.

The ships were locked together, rotating widdershins around their common axis. Their anchor flukes had become tangled; the sterns were swinging together. Both pairs of sails continued to beat, but the ships were sinking swiftly.

The crash had thrown many of the Atlanteans overboard, but the Minos in the stern gave a roar of fury and stumped forward. He used armored elbows and even his sword on his own retainers in his haste. Blood streaked his bright armor.

Corylus paused. The Minos was as big as a German warrior, and he held his sword with the ease of familiarity. Corylus had practiced with a sword also, but his real skill had been in throwing javelins.

He had never used a sword without a shield on his left arm. He wasn't afraid of the Minos or of any other barbarian, but if he were advising a friend how to bet on the match- A thought struck him. He unbuckled his chinstrap, then pulled off his helmet. With the chinstrap in his left fist, he presented the helmet like a buckler. Given his training, being without a helmet wasn't nearly as great a handicap as being without a shield would have been.

"Ears for Nerthus!" he shouted. He leaped across to the other ship's deck to meet the rush of its commander.

The Minos was poised for another stride, thinking that his enemy would wait for his charge, but without hesitation he slashed overhand at the base of Corylus' neck. Corylus met the edge with his makeshift buckler. The shock numbed his left hand to the wrist and dented the orichalc, but the helmet's curve deflected the blade to the side.

Corylus thrust. His blade was slightly curved and longer than the cut-and-thrust sword was used to, but principles were the same. The point slipped in beneath the Minos' chin. When the point pierced the back of his skull, the tip lifted off his helmet with a clang.

The ships hit the ground together, throwing Corylus up in an unexpected backflip. He lost both sword and helmet, but his knees had been flexed for the thrust and the hull timbers breaking had absorbed the worst of the shock.

Corylus hit the deck again on all fours, then bounded to his feet. I couldn't have done that once in a thousand tries if I'd been training, he thought.

The whole world seemed to be shouting. Some of the Atlanteans may have been alive, but they were no danger to Carce now.

The two ships coming through the portal and the scores behind them, though. They would be enough.

Corylus looked up. As he did so, the ape wrenched the metal ball from its socket on top of the obelisk. The portal wavered, and an Atlantean screamed in terror.

The ape gripped the obelisk with both legs and smashed the ball down on the wedge-shaped granite point with the strength of his arms and upper body. The metal deformed with a hollow boom.

The portal shrank. The storm rushed from all sides as the bubble of clear heaven reduced. Lightning and thunder overwhelmed the sound of the crowd.

The ape swung again, ripping the ball open. The portal vanished like mist in the sun. The bows of the ships on the way into this world tumbled downward, their hulls sheared more neatly than a saw could have done.

The ape stood on the peak of the obelisk, shrieking a challenge to the sky. The thunderbolt that struck him was blinding in its intensity.

The ape froze where it was for a moment, its fur blazing. Then it tumbled, and rain from the breaking storm hissed on the flames.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC