David Drake - Out of the waters

Blurs of light swirled about them. They sometimes seemed to resemble paintings viewed sharply from one side or the other.

Making tiny burbling noises, the ape-man displayed a circular orichalc ring holding a lens six inches across, ground from a material so clear that only the few remaining streaks of dirt on its surface proved that the frame wasn't empty.

The posts to which the frame had been attached, though barely wires, were orichalc; Lann had wrenched them apart. That was the most remarkable feat of strength Hedia had seen him perform yet.

Lann held the apparatus by one of the broken posts. He glanced toward Hedia to make sure he had her attention, then touched the lens with a finger of his free hand. Though the finger looked like a watercock from a public distribution point in Carce, the motion was precise and delicate.

Images appeared, this time vivid and complete. Hedia wasn't so much seeing them as existing in their midst in place of the jungle where she had been a moment earlier.

They were close to the keep of a Minos, a tall spire whose crystal walls were as black as the smoke rolling from a funeral pyre. Around it spread the usual village of huts, but the figures living in them were not human-or at any rate, were not wholly human.

A woman pranced on hind legs like a zebra's, and a man with the head of a deer turned the wheel of a pump. Many residents had the arms, legs, or head of monkeys like the one which had chittered in the canopy when Hedia sailed past in the grip of the Servitors.

One pair, an obvious couple, aroused her interest as well as her disgust. Each was half human, half goat: the male's upper half was human; his mate was human below the waist.

Hedia didn't see any hybrids with great apes like Lann, but she now knew what she was looking at. This was the keep of Procron, before the other Minoi grouped to drive him from Atlantis.

Lann moved his index finger slightly. Hedia was almost sure that he didn't actually touch the lens, but its viewpoint shifted slowly toward the smoky crystal walls.

She wondered if anyone else-herself, for example-could control the device, but it didn't really matter. That wasn't the sort of business that a lady, that a citizen of Carce, bothered with. There were slaves to handle mechanical things.

She and Lann entered the spire. About them objects moved with the detached silence of vultures circling in the high sky.

Procron, helmetless but otherwise bright in orichalc armor, was the only human or part-human figure present. Three Servitors-no, four; one stood in an alcove midway up the inward-sloping walls-waited motionless.

Are we actually present, watching this? Hedia wondered. Or is it a stage show, being acted by ghosts or demons?

Procron turned so that he would be facing Hedia if she were present in his reality. He had dark, narrow features, black hair, and eyes as fierce as an eagle's. He cradled in both gauntleted hands the skull of something nearly human. Either it had been carved from diamond or diamond had replaced the original bone.

Purple light crackled, blurring the edges of the orichalc armor and the surfaces of objects close to Procron, including one of the Servitors. The Minos began to rise gradually; for a moment Hedia thought that he was simply growing taller.

The diamond skull seemed alive. Fire blazed in its cavities and highlighted its complex sutures.

It's real. No sculptor could carve pieces of crystal so perfectly.

The spire was over a hundred feet high. The purple light brightened around Procron as he rose. As he passed, the Servitor in the alcove spread its glass arms, then let them fall to its side like those of a marionette whose strings had been jerked, then cut.

When Procron reached the peak, his gleaming form paused for a moment. Nothing in the tall room moved; the wheels and spirals and other spinning objects-Hedia wasn't sure whether they were glass or merely forms of light-remained frozen.

The top of the spire split open, the two halves folding down like black wings. Procron stood in open air. The sky had been clear when Lann took their viewpoint through the crystal walls; now it was a roiling black mass, sending down sheets of rain which splashed on the hovering Minos and dripped into the fortress.

Procron lifted the diamond skull. Lightning struck him. To Hedia everything went white, then shimmering purple. Lightning struck again, a huge bolt which boiled water from the surface of the spire and ignited several huts in the cantonments built at its base. The walls were dimly transparent from inside, making the smoky yellow flames visible.

Procron lowered the skull toward his own head. The third lightning bolt seemed to focus the whole sky onto the Minos. Sizzling fireballs spat out like blobs ejected from the heart of Aetna.

Nothing moved; there was no sound in all the world.

Procron raised his empty hands to the sky. Purple fire from his spreading fingertips split the clouds, shoving them away with the violence of waves bursting through a wall of sand.

Where Procron's human head had been, now the diamond skull rested. The mouth opened, and the Minos laughed. His voice was the thunder which had not followed the third lightning bolt. His armored form began to sink toward the floor of the fortress as the peak folded closed above him.

Hedia was transfixed. She was only dimly aware that the ape-man beside her had pointed toward the lens-now invisible-again.

They were back in the jungle. Lann set the lens on a section of wall which hadn't been thrown down during Procron's attack. He stepped into the cavity from which he had lifted the device.

Hedia looked around, disappointed to return to this wilderness of destruction but thankful as well. Procron was frightening, even when viewed from a great distance through time and space. Even without the transformation she had just watched, she knew that Procron wasn't a man whom she could expect to twist to her will.

The ape-man was straining at another large fragment of the ruin. Hedia frowned and moved a little farther away. People concentrating on a difficult task tended to forget everything else, and she didn't want to find herself under a slab of crystal because Lann didn't remember she was present.

The distant thump/thump she heard was a flying ship; probably several of them. The Minoi had found them.

"Lann!" she said urgently. "I hear ships coming!"

The ape-man straightened slowly, pivoting a block too large for even him to carry. His lips were drawn back in a grimace which bared his teeth.

There was a deeper blackness in the leaf mold over which the crystal had lain: the entrance to a tunnel. Lann had been aware of the approaching vessels long before she was.

The ape-man gave a great cry and with a final push sent the overbalanced block toppling into the surrounding vegetation. It had been almost too much, even for him. He fell forward, sprawling across the edge of the pit he had just created.

Hedia hesitated for a moment. Lann drew in whooping gasps that sounded as though he were being strangled, but the beating sails of the Minoi were drawing closer.

She jumped down beside the ape-man and put her hand on his shoulder. "Lann?" she said. "I'm ready to go."

The ape-man straightened as much as he ever did. It was like standing beside a horse: powerful, exciting, but for the moment not even marginally human.

"Wook!" he said. He took the lens in his left hand and wormed his way through the mouth of the tunnel.

His hand reached back to summon her, but Hedia was already poising to follow. She wore the dagger on the bandolier and dragged the orichalc spear behind her.

She didn't know where they were going, but she knew what it would mean to be captured again. That wasn't going to happen if she could prevent it.