David Drake - Out of the waters

"Varus?" Tardus said. "You're Gaius Varus, aren't you, Saxa's son?"

"Yes," said Varus, puzzled at the nervous doubt in the older man's voice. Austerely he went on, "You dined with us the night before last. And after dinner, you abducted Master Pandareus."

"That wasn't me!" Tardus said, but the denial was a prayer rather than angry disbelief. "Please, you have to believe me. I-"

He paused and looked around him. "Please, Lord Varus," he said. "Can we speak in private without these soldiers around?"

"No," said Pulto. He didn't sound angry, but there was only flat certainty in his voice. "Not when my boy's gone somewhere and I figure this fellow had something to do with sending him there."

Lenatus lifted his chin in silent agreement. Neither of the old soldiers had sheathed their swords, though at this point that was probably a matter of theater rather than real concern that they would have immediate use for the weapons.

"Sending who?" Tardus said. "I've only been allowed out myself when the Sages sent me somewhere."

Varus gestured the thought away with his left hand. "Come," he said to Tardus. "This incense makes me want to sneeze. You and I will go into the library, but we'll leave the door open so that the centurions-"

He nodded to Lenatus. He and Pulto probably wouldn't have minded him using their names, but Varus felt that the less detail he gave about the others involved in this criminal enterprise, the better. He was doomed if things went wrong, but it was at least possible that the false Praetorians might escape.

"-can watch us, but you can speak privately."

Pulto snorted; Lenatus gave Varus a wry smile and said, "As your lordship wishes."

Varus remembered what Corylus had said about his behavior in the crisis after Hedia was abducted. Soldiers approved of clear, forceful orders, even if the orders themselves weren't what they wanted to hear. Confusion and hesitancy got people killed faster even than bullheaded courage.

He led Tardus across the hall and gestured him to the only couch in the library. That was partly out of respect for a man far his senior, but still more because that resulted in Varus looking down at-scarcely at his host; say rather, looking down at his potential enemy-as they spoke.

"Witnesses watched your servants abduct Master Pandareus outside my father's house," Varus said. He let the anger he felt as he spoke the words peek through in his tone. "There would be no point in you denying it, even if we hadn't seen them and Pandareus across the hall-"

He gestured.

"-a moment ago."

"They're not my servants!" Tardus insisted with a hint of fear. "They're Sages from the Western Isles. They're magicians, and they were-"

He gestured with both hands as if trying to pull words out of the air. His expression was anguished.

"They were working me like a puppet. You must believe me!"

Varus didn't speak for a moment while he considered what Tardus had said. Is that true? And whether it's true or not, what does it mean?

"I could see and hear what was happening," Tardus said. He sat rather than reclining on the couch and he rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. "Mostly I could at least, but it was as though it was all behind a wall of glass. And what I remember seemed to be happening to someone else."

"Where did they go, the Sages?" Varus said. "And where did they take Pandareus and Corylus?"

"I don't know," Tardus said, speaking with apparent satisfaction. "So long as they were controlling me, I saw what they were doing and heard what they said, even among themselves when I wasn't present. But when you broke in on them, I was freed. Thank Venus and Mercury, I'm free again!"

The goddess from whom Carce's founder Aeneas was descended, Varus thought, and the god of luck. Good choices.

Then, smiling slightly, he thought, A pedant even now. Well, a scholar.

Tardus frowned and lowered his hands. Apparently realization that he was his own man again had freed the senator from some of his terror… which might make him less cooperative.

"Who is this Corylus?" Tardus said. "I saw Master Pandareus, of course, but I don't remember a Corylus."

"Never mind," Varus said with another dismissive flick of the hand. He had no intention of letting the older man take charge of the discussion. "How did you meet these Sages? Or how did they meet you?"

"I didn't-" Tardus said, alarmed again. He stopped and licked his lips. He was obviously willing to lie to Varus, but he seemed to be afraid to do so. "Well, perhaps I did… That is, I carried out some, ah, researches to gain knowledge about Atlantis. I didn't learn anything and thought I'd failed, but it may be that by asking in certain fashions, I lit a beacon of sorts for the Sages. They sailed here from the Western Isles and left their ship at Ostia."

He frowned and added, "Their ship flies through the air, like the ones I saw during your father's entertainment. I, ah…"

He lowered his face again and wrung his hands. In a barely audible voice, he continued, "They asked me questions. I couldn't deny them. Couldn't, no more than I could walk on air. They wanted to know who the magician was who caused the vision in the theater. I told them Pandareus did. I didn't realize it was you, Lord Varus."

Tardus gestured for words again, then locked his fingers together and stared at them. He said, "I had seen Pandareus in the Temple of Jupiter the night I was in charge of the Sibylline Books. I was asleep so I didn't see what happened, but I thought Pandareus must have been the cause. He's a great scholar, you know. Your father arrived, but he wasn't, well, wasn't a magician, and I never thought of a youth like you. So the Sages took Pandareus."

This is actually funny, Varus thought. Though he wasn't sure his father would have thought so.

He wondered what would have happened if these Sages had tried to abduct him. Varus had a considerable escort at any time he went out of the house, but these were magicians. He remembered how the Hyperborean wizard had put everyone in the Temple of Jupiter to sleep; including Tardus himself, now that Varus thought about it.

Instead of speculating about what had drawn the Sages to Tardus in the first place, Varus asked, "Why did they want Pandareus? Or me, or anyone? If they're magicians themselves."

As they clearly were, given the way they had vanished-and taken Pandareus with them.

"They're afraid of a monster named Uktena," Tardus said. "He has a connection with Carce, but I don't know what it is. I don't mean they hid it from me-I couldn't understand what I saw in their minds. Your father has the other half of the talisman that they use in their own magic, the murrhine tube. Perhaps that's what drew them."

He appeared to be getting his mental bearings again, but Varus no longer feared that the senator would be uncooperative. It seemed that imagining Saxa's son was a magician of untold power had frightened him as much as his earlier concern for the Emperor's torturers.

Tardus half-raised his arm, an orator making a gesture of emphasis. "When you showed a vision of the monster," he said, "they thought they could force you to help them. They thought Pandareus could, I mean. So they took me-forced me to take them-to Saxa's house when the teacher was present."

"Uktena?" Varus said, frowning. He knew what the monster of the vision was. The Sibyl told me… "You mean Typhon?"

Tardus shrugged with a look of irritation. "They called it Uktena," he said. "Called him Uktena; they said he used to be a man. But he's a monster, now, and they think he's about to break out of the prison they put him in."

Varus wished that Pandareus were here to discuss this with, for his wisdom. And I wish Corylus were here, because he's sensible and he makes the world around him seem solid. Even when the world clearly wasn't solid.