David Drake - Out of the waters

He shook his head. "I wasn't myself, you see," he said. "That is, the Sages were me; but that means I was them too, I suppose. But-"

He shrugged. "But I can't tell you where they took Master Pandareus," he said. "From what you describe, they must have acted in the crisis. Certainly they didn't plan anything of the sort when I was with them."

"I understand," said Varus; and he did, though he'd hoped that Tardus would be able to help them. "Well, we'll have to find Pandareus-"

And Corylus, but no reason to emphasize that.

"-in some other fashion. Will these Sages stay here in Carce, do you think? If they do, perhaps they'll reappear and we'll be able to find them."

"I suppose they will remain," Tardus said. "Their business is here, after all."

"Their business?" said Varus, irritated at himself for not having asked the most obvious question before Tardus reminded him of it. "What are they doing here, your lordship?"

"They don't think they can hold Uktena where he is for very much longer," Tardus said. As he spoke, his voice became thinner and his face began to look gray. "They plan to gain time by releasing himhere in Carce, a long distance from the Western Isles, while they either create defenses or find a way to bind the monster again."

The manumission ceremony had just concluded. Hundreds of servants shouted, "Yo, hail Lord Saxa!" waving caps and pieces of cloth in the air.

The cheering smothered Tardus' voice, but his lips and the obvious logic left Varus in no doubt that Uktena terrified the old man.

It terrifies me as well.

Corylus couldn't move and he couldn't see his own body. He wasn't sure that he had a body in this place.

"Where am I?" he said to the slim, straight woman. Her hair was a lustrous dark brunette, but there were green highlights in it.

She laughed with friendly amusement. "You're here, cousin," she said. "That's all one can ever say, I think. Though I know you humans have other ideas about it."

That was the answer I should have expected when I asked a dryad about geography, Corylus realized. Though he wasn't sure that "geography" was the right word.

The inhuman creature squatted on its haunches. Its narrow mouth opened enough to let its tongue loll out between hedges of small, sharp teeth. It rested its arms on its thin thighs; its hands stuck out before it.

"Mistress…," Corylus said, looking at the woman but really concentrating on the creature beside her. Standing, it would be no taller than the sprite and it wasn't nearly as heavily built as Corylus himself. Its bite could be unpleasant but no more dangerous than that of one of the mongrel dogs which lived on Carce's streets, and its claws were as blunt as a dog's also.

Despite that, Corylus really hoped that the creature wouldn't decide he was an enemy. He recalled Caesar's description of Germans laughing the first time they saw the soldiers of Carce who were so much smaller than the barbarians themselves.

They didn't laugh after the first battle, though; those who were still alive. Corylus wasn't laughing at this creature.

"I am Gaius Cispius Corylus," he said. "May I ask your name?"

"Of course you're Corylus, cousin," the woman said with another trill of laughter. "And I'm Coryla, silly. My tree was struck by a rain of burning glass from the moon. The rest of it perished in the fire, but the glass sealed the air away from one nut, so I still survive. As for the Ancient-"

She ran an affectionate hand through the fur over the creature's spine. It writhed toward her touch but continued to keep its unwinking eyes on Corylus.

"-I don't know what his name is; I don't know if he has a name. My tree grew over his grave, but he wasn't with me until the glass fell."

Corylus would have touched the tektite amulet if he could have moved his hand. Or if he'd had a hand to move, which might be closer to the real situation.

"Is the glass, ah, magical?" Corylus said. He was speaking and she was understanding him, but he couldn't feel his lips move.

"What?" the sprite said. She bent to rub the base of the creature's ear. It tilted its fox-like head toward the touch, but it never took its eyes off Corylus. They had the same golden cast as its fur, but the pupils were slitted horizontally instead of vertically like a cat's. "I shouldn't think so, no."

She gave the creature a final pat over the ribs and straightened. "But he is, of course," she added. "He's a great magician. Did he bring you to him, do you suppose? I'm not always sure what he's planning, even though he's part of me, in a way."

"Him?" said Corylus in amazement. "It? But it's just an animal, isn't it?"

The sprite's laughter was as sweet and musical as a nightingale singing in the dusk. "Of course he's an animal, cousin," she said. "You're all animals, you and him and the squirrels in the branches of my tree. Didn't you know that?"

"I mean…," said Corylus. "It doesn't think the way a man does. Or you do. It, he, isn't he your pet?"

The creature made a clicking sound at the back of its throat and stood up. It continued to stare at Corylus. Its hind legs folded the way a man's did, not a dog's.

"Pet?" said Coryla. He thought she would laugh again, but the look she gave him had nothing of humor in it. "Him? Are you mad, cousin?"

The creature reached toward Corylus; toward where his face should be, if he had a face. It had four slender fingers. One was opposed to the other three like the hind claw of an eagle, not a human thumb.

I am a soldier of Carce. I will not flinch.

Fingertips as gentle as a fly's wing touched Corylus' cheek.

I can feel it! he realized, and as he did, light bloomed around him. He was lying on his back on the cliff top where he had fought the Cyclops. He breathed with a gasp of surprise-and shouted with the sudden pain of it. My ribs are broken!

Coryla and the creature were looking down at him. She seemed sympathetic and perhaps a little concerned; the creature…

It wasn't safe to read the expression on a face as inhuman as that of the creature, but it certainly seemed to be laughing at him. How did I ever imagine that it wasn't intelligent?

"You can sit up, can't you?" the sprite said. "Because there are other giants besides the one you killed. And worse things."

"I don't know," Corylus said. He touched his chest gently, trying not to move his body. He must be bruised as badly as he ever had been in his life, but there wasn't the stabbing, grating pain that would have meant that he had broken ribs. "You said I killed the Cyclops?"

Coryla offered him her hand. He took it carefully, expecting the lightly built sprite to stagger forward when he started to put real weight on her. Instead, she remained as fixed a support as a deeply rooted hazel tree.

After a flash of blazing agony, the pain in Corylus' chest subsided to a throbbing ache, as though he were sitting too close to a hot fire. Several of the catches of his breastplate had popped. He undid the remaining one, then dropped the dented armor to the ground. That done, he turned slowly. He was looking for the Cyclops and hoping to see its body.

"Well, you did and he did himself, I suppose," she said. "He stumbled after you stabbed him and broke his neck. But if you hadn't stabbed him, he probably wouldn't have fallen, don't you think? So I said you killed him."

Corylus walked cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked over. His chest hurt and his left leg was as stiff as a statue's, except for the hip joint. That felt like the blazing pit of Aetna.

Two ships lay on their sides just above the water; their decks were tilted at a thirty-degree angle. That much was the same as the mural he had seen in the instant before the smoke swept him here. Close up he now saw that the vessels were winged craft like those of the vision, not ordinary fifty-oared galleys as he had assumed.