David Drake - Out of the waters

Uktena dropped the pipe again. White fire wreathed him. He stepped forward, onto the surface of the water. Sparks popped and hummed about his feet. Alphena would have waded in also as she had done the previous day, but the sea threw her back with a loud crackle.

She fell onto the coarse sand. Her right leg was numb. She reached across to massage the calf with the opposite hand, but even seated she continued to hold the axe ready in her right.

Uktena, but no longer Uktena, advanced in a haze of sizzling light, changing and growing. The peak of the crystal fortress opened slowly. Procron drifted out with the stately majesty of an emperor being drawn in a triumphal chariot.

What Uktena had become gathered speed as it advanced. Its swelling mass concealed Procron from where Alphena stood.

Purple fire blazed, reflecting from the clouds and sea. The crack of thunder jolted the shore beneath Alphena and sent waves leaping across the sea in both directions.

Uktena staggered. His wrapping of light dimmed; Alphena saw clearly the tentacled, many-legged monster he had become. Hundreds of bestial heads lifted from the mass and bellowed in agony.

It-he-surged forward. Procron rose higher. A second purple bolt spat from his diamond skull. Uktena staggered, but the thunderclap jolted the Atlantean backward as well.

The white fire surrounding Uktena congealed, brightened, and swelled again. Like the sun settling off the island's shore, the shaman halted momentarily, then rushed forward. Great arms spread to right and left, threatening to envelope both the spike and the Atlantean himself.

Uktena's arms closed. Purple light flashed, through the white and from the clouds. The sea exploded from beneath the magicians, throwing out a wave as though a mountain had been dropped in into the water.

Alphena had risen to her feet. She had a brief glimpse of the shelving bottom before the wave knocked her down and tumbled her up the slope. She did not let go of the axe.

The water that had washed over her was hot. It recoiled from the shore, carrying with it hundreds of fish-bellies up and parboiled white.

There was silence for a moment. Alphena's ears rang, but she had felt the previous thunder through her sandals. Now there was nothing.

Procron broke free, rising unsteadily. The glow that had surrounded Uktena faded.

Wobbling, shrinking like a pricked bladder, the shaman spiraled toward the land. The Atlantean hovered for a moment, then vanished within his fortress again.

Uktena dropped into the surf, twenty feet from the normal shoreline. Alphena waded out, sliding the helve of the axe under her sash to free both hands. Waves from the battle slapped and gripped her, but the water was no more than knee-high in its resting state. The air was thick with the stench of death and burned ooze, but the deluge which broke from the clouds began to clear it.

The shaman was flaccid, a dead weight. Alphena lifted his arm over her shoulders and started back. Crackles of white fire licked the sea around them.

They reached the shore. Alphena thought of laying the shaman down now that he was out of the water, but she was afraid that she might not be able to get up again for hours if she paused even briefly

They staggered through a line of sea oats at the top of a ridge of sand. Where the heads brushed Uktena's body, they sparkled and were transformed to crystal, which as quickly crumbled to sand.

Alphena walked forward. Uktena's feet had been dragging. Now he lifted the right one for a hesitant step.

White light infused the ground. Three earthworms squirmed up, twisting into the air as though they had bones. Alphena grimaced but walked on. The worms sprouted wings and flew ahead of her and the shaman, making high, keening cries.

He is my friend. No matter what happens, he is my friend.

Uktena took his weight on his own legs, but his head sagged and his eyes were blank. Alphena guided him, though she was dizzy and her eyes blurred so badly that she could barely see.

"Food!" she croaked as they passed through the village, as clumsy as a dog with a broken back. "Bring us food or by Hecate, I'll kill you all!"

They reached the entrance of the kiva. As they sank to the ground, the boy who had brought Alphena's clothing the previous day now appeared again. This time he carried a pot of porridge.

"Eat, my friend," Alphena whispered. She dipped out porridge with her right hand and held it to the corner of the shaman's mouth. "Eat, warrior. We will need your strength tomorrow."

Hedia wormed deeper into the tunnel so that Lann could jump in behind her. She expected him to close the entrance to conceal them until the Minoi and their servants gave up the search. The ape-man jumped in all right, but instead of trying to pull the slab back over the opening, he gestured Hedia forward with hooting violence and a scooping motion of both hands.

She turned again and stumbled on. The six-foot spear was impossibly awkward in the twisting passage; she abandoned it regretfully.

The tunnel had been cut through the coarse limestone underlying the jungle. To Hedia's surprise, it wasn't completely dark beyond the dim light from the entrance. The water oozing through the porous rock had a faint green glow. Her eyes adapted to it the more easily because the forest itself had been so dim.

She reached a raggedly wider spot. Her feet crunched uncomfortably on what she thought was sharp gravel; then she saw the hand of a Servitor against one wall, and a little farther on was part of a glass skull. From the amount of glittering debris, at least a dozen of the not-men must have been destroyed here-by one another or by survivors.

There was a piece of apparatus also, but it had been melted into a mass that Hedia couldn't identify. It probably wouldn't have meant anything to her even if it were whole. The battle that shattered Lann's fortress had been conducted by Servitors advancing underground as well as by the ships which she had seen in the vision which the ape-man's lens had summoned for her.

Lann pushed past her, not harshly but with no more delicacy than to be expected from a beast. Hedia was happy to let him lead, though she was uneasily aware that the entrance in the ruin was open for those hunting her to find.

She smiled wryly. On balance, she supposed she preferred to have the ape-man between her and whatever might be waiting ahead of them. Regardless, she had no choice in the matter unless she decided to overpower her companion and force him to follow. She suspected that she would have more chance of breaking through the Minoi with her bare hands.

Not only Servitors had fought in these tunnels. Something rocked beneath Hedia's foot; when she looked down, she found she had stepped on most of a human pelvis. The right socket had been burned off.

Because Hedia was looking down, she almost ran into Lann when he stopped abruptly. She gave an unintended squeak and hopped back, placing a hand on his hip to steady herself and remind him where she was

The passage ahead had been blocked when a section of the roof caved in; apparently during the fighting, because a single glass arm stretched out from beneath a tilted block the size of a litter. Strong as the ape-man was, Hedia didn't think he could budge that, especially because it seemed to be wedged against the unbroken portion of the ceiling.

Lann gave a low hoot of dismay. He had the lens in his left hand, but he tugged at the block tentatively with the other. It didn't move any more than Hedia had expected it to. He hooted again.

She touched the ape-man's left wrist. When he turned to look at her with a frown of surprise, she touched the lens and gestured him to give it to her. His frown deepened for a moment-either he didn't understand or he didn't want to give it up-but he finally gave her the device.