David Drake - Out of the waters

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?"