David Drake - Out of the waters

Straight ahead were a pair of larger, diffuse, blobs which didn't appear to be coming closer though the gryphon's wings beat strongly. Alphena thought she saw detail in what at first had been featureless blurs, however.

By leaning forward carefully, clamping her knees, and gripping the longer feathers above the eagle head, Alphena was able to look past the wings and see that her mount had folded its legs beneath it like a cat. Which it was, she supposed, so far as its body and hind legs went.

The gryphon turned its head to fix her with his right eye. "If you fall," he said, "you will probably fall forever. Unless I should manage to turn and catch you in time, which has its own-"

He stretched out his right foreleg and extended the claws. They were thicker at the base than Alphena's thumbs, and the points were vanishingly sharp.

"-difficulties for you."

The gryphon laughed, a croaking sound from deep in its throat. If a man had behaved the way this creature was doing, Alphena would have struck him. That wasn't a practical response here.

She felt her expression softening into a grin. I take myself too seriously. By now I should realize how little I matter to the cosmos.

Aloud she said, "I appreciate your concern, Master Gryphon. Do you have a name?"

The gryphon chuckled again. "Who is there who could name me?" he said. "And I have not chosen to give a name to myself."

The creature's wings were relatively short and broad, like those of a raven. Though they beat powerfully, Alphena didn't feel the slap of air that she would have expected if a tame pigeon had taken off from her wrist. She seemed to be breathing normally, but she was beginning to wonder whether this was real or a dream.

"Is the light ahead of us Atlantis, master?" Alphena said. She knew she was speaking to occupy her mind. She had decided it was better to react to her nervousness than let her thoughts about the near future spiral down into paralysis.

"It will be Atlantis," said the gryphon, glancing back. "And Poseidonis. And then my task is completed, is it not so?"

Alphena felt her chest constrict with terror. How will I get home?

She let out her breath slowly. Because she hadn't immediately reacted aloud, she'd had time to realize that blurting, "You have to take me and mother back to Carce!" would be as useless-and possibly as dangerous-as a similar shrill demand directed to the Emperor.

"I will not venture to tell you your duty, Master Gryphon," Alphena said. "You will act as your honor requires you to act."

The great eagle head faced front again; the gryphon chuckled. "Such a clever little chick you are," he said. "Such a clever little wizard."

Alphena swallowed. That could have gone very badly wrong if she'd reacted as she would have done a few weeks ago, before she really started observing the way Hedia moved in a world where men had all the public forms of power.

She whispered, "Thank you, mother."

The stars moved visibly though still without forming familiar combinations. The vague light directly ahead became a view of a glade in which women in flowing garments stood or walked, sometimes hand in hand. Alphena didn't recognize the place or the faces, though she scanned them intently, hoping to see Hedia.

A spring-fed pool sent a trickle out into the forest. Eyes watched the women from the leaf-dappled water, but nothing moved except the ripples.

The gryphon flew on; the scene blurred to a desert under moonlight. Trees as large as temple pillars threw shadows onto sand, rocks, and thorny brush. Their trunks and upraised limbs were covered with needles.

A slight, stooping figure walked across the landscape. It had a fox's head and was covered with lustrous fur. It reached out a startlingly long forearm and snatched a scorpion from a rock. It snapped off the tail with delicate jaws, then swallowed the remainder of the scorpion like a moray eel taking a shrimp.

"Master?" Alphena said. "What is that beast?"

"Do you pray, little wizard?" the gryphon said. "If you do, then pray that you never get close enough to him to learn what he is."

The scene blurred to a village near the seashore. Fields hacked from the forest were turning green with spring crops.

Alphena's focus swooped from the rounded huts to a reed mat at the edge of the clearing, then beneath it into an underground chamber. The light that seeped through the mat-covered entrance shouldn't have been enough for vision, but Alphena saw a man squatting in the center of the room. He wore only a breechclout, and his iron-gray hair was bound in two braids. He held a reed pipe to his lips as if he were playing it, but there were no finger holes in the tube.

At the other end was fitted a murrhine cylinder. If it wasn't the artifact from Saxa's collection, it was the mirror image of it.

The man lowered the reed and looked at Alphena, still-faced. Smoke curled from the end of the reed and from the murrhine cylinder in which chopped herbs smoldered. There was no threat-no emotion whatever-in his expression, but for an instant Alphena had the feeling that she had stepped around a corner and found a tiger waiting.

He's the man I saw in the theater! When the others said they saw a monster!

The man smiled at her. His lips barely quirked, but the change was as profound as that from cloud to full moonlight.

Then he and his chamber were gone. The crystal city, by now a familiar image, formed in the globe of light.

"Little wizard," said the gryphon, "we have company, and I do not think they are friends."

Alphena had been concentrating on the window into other worlds toward which the gryphon was flying. If she was honest, as she tried to be at least with herself, she was doing that not only because it interested and affected her, but also because that allowed her to forget all the other things that were happening.

When the gryphon called her into the wider present, she saw that what had been the second blob of light now had the face of the moon; it was silvered over with light that seemed to come from inside. On the sphere, like a statue on a rounded plinth, stood the cold, angry woman who had appeared when Anna chanted over the basin.

The woman no longer held the leashes of her vultures. Alphena wondered for a moment where they had gone; then the woman faded away and two specks rose from the moon's cratered surface.

As they swelled toward her, Alphena saw that they were the three-headed vultures and that a figure in orichalc armor rode astride the middle neck of each bird. She didn't have to wonder any more.

"Your magic won't help you against the Minoi, little wizard," the gryphon said. "Not while we are between worlds."

"I'm not a wizard!" Alphena said. She drew her sword. "Can we fight them?"

This time the gryphon's chuckle was deeper and there was a catch in it. He said, "Of course we can fight them. Of course."

The gryphon shifted. Alphena swayed with her mount, gripping the feathered neck again with her free hand.

The vultures and their riders were becoming rapidly larger. Judging from the size of the armored figures, the Minoi, the birds were at least as big as the gryphon.

The hanging image of Poseidonis rotated into one of raw jungle. Alphena couldn't tell if it was the forest beyond the crystal city or if the scene was as distant as that of the desert minutes before.

She supposed it didn't matter. Nothing mattered until they had settled their account with the vultures.

The birds were approaching from above and below. The higher one banked slightly, allowing Alphena to meet the stare of the rider. The Atlantean's mesh-fronted helmet blurred her view of his features, but she could see that he had a moustache.

The Minoi had proper saddles, and they held reins to their mounts' middle head in their gauntleted left hands. They had drawn their swords also; the orichalc blades curved slightly upward at the tips. Alphena wondered how that fiery metal would fare against the demon-slaying blade she had brought back from the land of dreams and spirits.