David Drake - Out of the waters

He touched the murrhine bowl of his pipe.

"Are they right?" Alphena said, responding to the tone she heard in Uktena's voice.

"The talisman is a tool of great power," he said, smiling at her. "But it is half the tool it was before Procron split it and crushed the sage who had used it to fight him. Procron too has a talisman. He is the talisman himself. But tools do not win battles, little one."

"No," Alphena said. If you fail, I hope Procron kills me at once.

They had reached the Cascotan again. At least a dozen men were present. Most people faced her and her host, but those Alphena glimpsed from behind had three lines scarred into their left shoulders.

"My friend and I will eat now," Uktena said to the assembly. "Bring our food to my kiva."

Wontosa stood slightly in front of his two fellows. He said, "When will you fight Procron, Master? Tomorrow night will be the full moon. That is when he takes captives."

Uktena looked at him. "When the spirits inform me," he said, "I will try my knowledge against that of Procron."

He smiled. "You have an axe, Wontosa," he said. "An axe of copper that came from far to the west, do you not?"

"You know I do, Master," Wontosa said. He touched the stuffed bird woven into his hair, obviously nervous. The other two sages eased away from him. "The axe is my talisman, though not so powerful as your pipe. Not nearly so powerful."

"Give your axe to my friend Alphena," Uktena said, still smiling. "She may have need of it."

I've seen sword blades with more humor in them than the line of his lips.

"But-" Wontosa said, and stopped. Then he said, "Yes, Master. I'll fetch it at once."

"Send it to the kiva with our dinner," Uktena said over his shoulder as he and Alphena strode through the village.

Quietly, to Alphena, he added, "It is possible that you will need the axe tomorrow morning, little one."

Varus stood beside the Sibyl, looking over an escarpment toward the jungles of Atlantis. He didn't recall climbing the opposite slope to meet her this time.

He grinned. Perhaps I'm dreaming.

Below, flying ships made slow circles about a spire of black glass. "How many are there, Sibyl?" he asked. "There must be hundreds of them."

"One hundred and thirteen Minoi rule Atlantis," said the old woman. "All are here in their ships, and most are accompanied by other ships directed by Servitors who draw power from the talisman of the Minos they serve."

Unlike the other crystal mansions Varus had seen in his visions, there had been no ordinary human dwellings around the base of black spire. The nearby forest smoldered where flames from the ships' weapons had glanced. The spire, untouched, rose from bare rock like a toadstool.

"The Minoi have gathered to punish Procron, who is also a Minos and who defies them," the Sibyl said. "All are present, because even so they fear that they will not be strong enough to prevail. And there is Lann, who is no longer a Minos but still lives in a fashion."

"Why are they fighting?" Varus asked. As he spoke, three ships turned inward from the circle. A Servitor stood alone in the stern of each. Smoke rose from a dozen patches of forest, ignited when ships crashed there burning.

"Procron and Lann were neighbors and enemies," the Sibyl said. "The Minoi have always fought among themselves; they have no other recreation, save diddling their serfs and drugging themselves. But instead of burning out Lann's cantonments, Procron destroyed Lann's keep and practiced other arts on Lann himself. Procron sculpts human beings."

As she spoke, Varus saw as if at arm's length an unfamiliar animal hanging by all four limbs from a tree limb; the ground was at least two hundred feet below. Lichen streaked the beast's shaggy gray fur; if it had not been for the jaws' slow movement, Varus might have thought he was looking at a bizarre swelling of the tree bark.

The eyes and forehead were human, or a parody of human.

"That's enough," Varus said, his voice clipped. As the thought formed in his mind, the creature shrunk to a blur beneath the forest canopy over which ships maneuvered in battle.

"Lann's talisman was an amphisbaena which he had carved from murrhine," the Sibyl said. "It was hollow to concentrate the thoughts of the one who used it. No other Minos thought he could have stood against Lann and his talisman; but Procron broke the talisman and broke Lann, so in fear they attacked Procron together. And even united-"

A line of shimmering purple curved from Procron's fortress with the casual grace of a trout leaping. It arched above the three approaching vessels, reaching instead for a ship in the distant circle. In its stern a Minos hunched over a rod of balas-ruby.

The line halted just short of the ship in an explosion of sparks that spread to right and left, following the curve of the circling fleet. Not only the target but several vessels ahead of and behind it began to glow in a faint violet echo. A human seated along the railing of the central ship threw up his arms and jumped overboard. His body burned in the air like thistledown; ashes drifted onto the treetops.

The balas-ruby exploded into sand. The ship's stern vanished; molten blobs of orichalc armor flew in all directions.

The bow dived into the forest. The three ships which had been approaching the spire settled somewhat less violently, like driftwood flung onto a beach.

Line of yellow light began to reach inward from the encircling ships; some strands were brighter than others. They twisted as they stretched toward Procron's fortress, weaving a net that grew brighter as it extended.

Purple fire from the spire snapped like a whiplash, ripping the meshes of light for a hundred feet to either side of the contact. Trees in its path toward the spire sizzled and flared, but Procron's stroke faded into orange afterimages. The net rewove itself brighter and denser than before.

Light spat from the spire again, this time as a thrust toward a ship on whose deck a Minos spun a top turned from moss agate. The air along its track into the netting roiled into a spitting rainbow.

Almost, but not quite, the fire reached its target. It finally spluttered out no more than arm's length from the hull. The woman in orichalc armor looked up once, then went back to her stone spindle as it spun and spun back, and spun. The soil beneath was burning, and gobbets of molten bedrock bubbled along the track as from a volcano.

The net was near about the fortress, now; the ships of the Minoi closed in behind its protection, while the vessels captained by Servitors stayed behind, wobbling just above the treetops. The net's upper edge was higher than the top of the spire, and at the bottom it burned the rock clean.

Varus expected Procron to try at least once more to break through the closing meshes. The spire began to sizzle with fuzzy light, like fruit infected with purple fungus. Instead of spitting another bolt, the fortress rocked sideways, then ripped free of the mountaintop. It began to rise.

Many of the Minoi closed in when they saw what was happening: portions of the net's upper edge looped inward as the ships turned bow-on to the spire. At least a third of the great fleet hung back, however. Either the Minoi directing those ships were concerned for their skins; or, more charitably, the tightening circle didn't permit all the vessels to approach without fouling one another.

The spire lifted raggedly, like a wounded man trying to climb a palisade. Cords of yellow light, by now brighter than the sun, wrapped its base. Instead of slowing, the cone of black crystal steadied into a smooth climb. The cords of light stretched, and the nearest ships jerked nearer still. Their prows lifted skyward.

The black fortress was several hundred feet off the ground when it paused. Varus thought, Has Procron finally exhausted his power?