David Drake - Out of the waters

Serdain was motionless also, but the stone in his hands spat light which occasionally seemed to coat the stern. It faded from Hedia's sight as it wicked forward along the deck. She felt the hair on the backs of her arms rise for just an instant.

She grimaced. Alphena would understand-or at least experience-whatever was going on to make the ship move. The girl had a natural talent for magic, according to Anna.

To Hedia it was all a blank, like the literature Varus got excited about or the mathematics that the engineer planning an irrigation tunnel at her first husband's estate in Calabria tried to interest her in. She smiled, remembering the engineer; she hadn't thought of him in years.

Hedia had talents of her own. She wouldn't trade them for magic or literature or mathematics or anything in the world… nor, she was sure, would any of the men she'd gotten to know want her to trade.

The sails were carried on a pair of booms butted to opposite sides of the mast. Hedia hadn't paid much attention to ships, but that was unusual enough to have caught her eye when she first saw the ships flying above the city of the vision. There was a double thump above her and a gust of wind. She twisted-her body was free-and looked upward. The sails were beating like a bird's wings, just as she had seen them in the vision.

The ship hopped once and a second time on the ground, then lifted from the glade. The "wings" weren't big enough relative to the hull to do that, at least not as slowly as they were flapping.

But the ship is flying, she realized, looking over the side. There's no question about that.

Hedia itched. She was extremely hungry, and she would have liked something to drink. Thirst during the night had caused her to slurp water from the up-turned leaves of a plant rooted in the trunk of a great tree, but there hadn't been much even of that.

She wasn't going to beg, though; not yet. And if Serdain's apparent concentration was real-as it may well have been, if he was responsible for the ship flying-he might not have been able to respond to any request she made anyway.

She rubbed the deck with her big toe. It appeared to be ordinary wood, though with an oily slickness. Its broad grain showed sharp contrast between the white softer wood and the almost black divisions.

Does the kind of wood help the ship fly?

Hedia quirked a bitter smile. That question didn't matter in the least; except that it saved her from thinking about the questions that did matter.

How can I escape? How can I get back to Carce even if I do escape? Am I going to spend eternity being tortured in the Underworld alongside Calpurnius Latus…?

She had no answers to those questions either, of course. Still, her worst enemies-and there was a long list of them, for one reason or another-had never claimed Hedia was a coward. She would focus on escaping, and after that on return to Carce.

What happened after she died could take care of itself. As no doubt it would.

When she had been stumbling among the lightless tree trunks, Hedia had thought of the forest as degrees of blackness and greens so dark as to be black themselves. Looking down on the same expanse, she was delighted by the amount of color.

Several of the giants emerging from the canopy were sending up spikes covered with bright yellow flowers. Butterflies with blue, transparent wings flitted among them like chips of brilliant glass.

The second ship was paralleling theirs about fifty feet to the side. A tiny monkey looked up at them and flung itself to cover deeper in the foliage. The ships were so quiet that Hedia could clearly hear its cheep! of alarm.

They were flying at about the speed of a trotting horse-faster than Hedia had ever been carried on a ship, though within the capacity-for a brief dash-of the triremes she had seen exercising in the sea off Misenum. Under other circumstances, this could be a pleasant, mildly exciting interlude.

She giggled, causing the nearer servants to look at her with concern. It would be interesting to see what Serdain looked like stripped to the buff. He can't be more than forty, and he moves well despite that clumsy armor.

They passed within a long bowshot of crystal buildings surrounded by ordinary huts which spilled down the hill from them. People, dressed and looking like Serdain's human servants, were at their occupations in the terraced yards between the ordinary dwellings. Most of them didn't bother to look up at the ships.

One of the crystal structures was a squat dome. The other, attached to it, was a tall cylinder whose thin walls fully displayed the contents. A sloping ramp wound from the bottom to the top of the interior. In layered beds grew grains, vegetables and fruit, often of types which Hedia had never seen before.

She sniffed. Of course, to her food was something that appeared on serving tables, frequently in forms so modified that a farm manager wouldn't be able to determine the original.

Hedia turned to look off the right side of the ship; to starboard, seamen called it, though she had never understood why. She saw glints on top of a hill in the distance. Those must be the ruins where I escaped.

"What are those?" she said to Serdain in a crisp voice, pointing as much to emphasize her question as to indicate the shattered crystal.

The Minos seemed oblivious of all except the pebble in his hands. That continued to spit sparks like amber rubbed with silk.

As I expected, Hedia thought. She gestured to the servants along the railing. The ship was so narrow that if she had bent over and stretched out a hand, she could have touched several of them on the shoulder.

"You!" she said. "Why are those buildings broken that way? What happened there?"

The servants didn't move away-perhaps they couldn't without making the ship wobble in a dangerous fashion-but they lowered their eyes. One began singing a counting song as if to block out Hedia's voice.

"Do you want me to turn you all into toads?" Hedia said on a rising note. She was afraid, and she let that come out as anger in her voice. "Is that what you want? Is it?"

She straightened and pointed her right arm toward a hunter slightly astern of where she was fastened; her index and middle fingers were extended. He turned his head, but he couldn't help seeing the threat in the corner of his eyes.

I'm going to look like a complete fool if he calls my bluff.

"It's Procron's keep!" the servant blurted. Fear made his wretched dialect almost unintelligible, but at least he was trying. "Don't turn me into a toad. Don't turn me into a toad."

The rest of what he was trying to say was lost when he began to blubber. Hedia thought she could guess the words easily enough, though. She lowered her arm.

"It's not Procron's keep," said the hunter just ahead of Hedia's target. "It's Lann's, that Procron destroyed before the Council drove Procron out. Procron was a mile farther west."

He cleared his throat and risked looking directly at Hedia; from the scars on his chest and right shoulder, he must have tangled with a lizard like the one that she saw just before she was recaptured. The hunter added, "I was in the Council fleet."

I wonder what happened to the ape that saved me? Hedia thought. Aloud she said to the hunter, "Thank you, my good man."

That tiny bit of information raised her spirits enormously. The Minoi fought one another… and she already knew that at least some of the Minoi were male. She smiled kittenishly at Serdain, though he was too lost in his magic to notice her; for the moment.

There would be other times and other male Minoi. Hedia was no longer without resources.

They slanted out over water-one of the bands of water which separated the ring islands she had seen as she approached with the Servitors who had snatched her from her bed. That certainly provided Saxa with an unexpected thrill, she thought. She snorted a laugh which she throttled with her hand. I do hope Saxa is all right.