David Drake - Out of the waters

The Ancient stood at his post, unmoving and unconcerned. He met Corylus' eyes and let his tongue loll.

Corylus grinned in response. He absently touched his breastplate above where the glass amulet rested against his chest.

The Ancient's nonchalance would have been more comforting if he hadn't been willing to let a giant eel swallow them. It was time for a real answer.

"Cousin?" Corylus said sharply. "Stand up, if you will. Tell me what you see ahead of us."

The Atlantean ship had a chest-high shield over the far bow, like that of the small warships with which Corylus was familiar. In the squadrons of Carce, the shield would have been made of tightly-woven wicker, as much to turn waves as for protection in battle-though it would stop a javelin or slow an arrow.

This one was of some material Corylus couldn't identify, a resilient black film. He suspected it had something to do with the fire-projectors.

The sprite rose with her usual liquid grace. Corylus realized that he'd been expecting the ill-temper-or flat refusal-that he might have gotten from a human female. His-distant-cousin wasn't everything he might have wished in a companion, but she had a remarkably pleasant personality.

She looked at the sky ahead; it was by now as pale as lime-water. Frowning, she said, "But that's what you wanted, isn't it? You wanted to go back to the waking world."

Corylus looked from her to the sky, then back to the Ancient. He had been taken off-balance by what he had just heard. "That's what's happening?" he said. "We're returning to Carce?"

She shrugged. "I don't know where Carce is," she said. "Your world, though. What used to be my world before the meteor, and then you taking me with you into your dream."

The sprite's lovely face grew as thoughtful as Corylus ever remembered seeing it. "I wonder what will happen?" she said. "You're real, and the Ancient and I are real as long as you hold the amulet. But I wouldn't have thought the ship-"

They drove into the brightness. Corylus felt everything dissolve.

'Greetings, little one," Uktena said. "I am glad that you are visiting me again."

He walked down the three steps of the throne's base to join Alphena on the fiery pavement. He was dressed in gold and purple as in her previous dream, but he greeted her as warmly as if he were her brother.

"F-friend," Alphena said. Her dream body didn't feel tired, but mentally she was weary to death. "Please, where are we? Where is this place?"

Fish flashing with all the colors of parrots' plumage circled them at a distance. They always kept one eye or the other on her and the shaman. At the edge of Alphena's awareness she thought she heard them murmuring in frightened voices.

Uktena took her left hand in his and looked down into her eyes. He was not tall, but she was short for a woman.

"I do not know where you are, Alphena," he said. "Your soul visits me, but I cannot see into the waking world where your body rests. As for where I am-"

Still holding her hand, he looked about them. The fish scattered from the sweep of his cool, gray eyes, like minnows in a pool with a pike.

"I am in a world of my own," the shaman said. "I do not know how I came here, and I do not remember who I was in the waking world. Except that I remember you, little one."

His tone was musing, appraising. Alphena heard no anger or bitterness in the words, but she had the sudden feeling that she faced a crouching lion rather than a fit man who, despite his black hair, was as old as her father.

"You were a great magician of the Western Isles," she said fiercely. "You still are! You're fighting an Atlantean wizard named Procron. Your name is Uktena and you're beating him, you will beat him!"

Uktena touched her hair, tracing a tangled curl with his fingertip. He said, "I do not remember Procron or the Western Isles; I do not remember Uktena, child. But I remember you, and you are my friend."

"I am!" Alphena said. She turned away because she was afraid she was about to cry. "You're going to break out of here and come back home and crush Procron. You will!"

She felt the shaman touch the curl again; then he must have lowered his hand. "I will never break the bounds of this place, little one," he said quietly. "This is my universe. I would have to go outside everything that exists for me to escape it; which I cannot do, no matter how great a magician you think me. No magician, no god even, can do that."

Perhaps there was sadness in his measured tones as he added, "It is good of you to visit me, Alphena."

She blinked, then rubbed her eyes fiercely with the backs of her hands before opening them again. They still stung, but she could see.

Alphena could see people beyond where the fish circled. Their figures were hazy, and they didn't sharpen when she focused on them the way everything else in this place did.

They aren't in this place!

"Uktena!" she said in excitement. She pointed toward the figures, still visible though they were fading into a greater distance. "Who are they? Could they help you?"

The shaman laughed. "Little one, little one," he said. "They perhaps could, for only one who remembers much of the arts which the spirits whispered to him could even be in the place between universes. But they will not help me."

Alphena clenched her fists and squeezed her eyelids almost closed. "They might," she said. "They may!"

"Alphena, look at me," the shaman said in a voice of command. She turned without thinking.

The monster of heads and arms and legs beyond number filled her awareness. There was nothing in this place that was not it. Typhon was all.

Instead of screaming, Alphena closed her eyes and began to cry. Hands took hers gently; arms drew her cheek against a human chest.

"Don't cry, little one," Uktena said softly. "There is no reason for sadness. What is, is. What other kind of universe could you or I be content in?"

Instead of rubbing her eyes, Alphena put her arms around the shaman. It was like hugging a muscular tree trunk.

"I'll free you!" she said. "Some way, some how, I will!"

But her voice faded and her arms dissolved. Very faintly she heard, "Farewell, little one…"

Alphena awakened from her dream. It was dawn, and Uktena had risen to do battle.

Hedia saw nothing and heard nothing as she dropped into the blue light, not even the screams she tried to force through her throat. She felt Lann's hand, however, so she clung to it as a shipwrecked sailor does to a floating spar.

With a coldness in her heart beyond any previous fear, Hedia knew there were worse dangers in this place than mere drowning. How long could she be trapped in this place before oblivion replaced even madness?

Her feet touched-the ground? Something solid, at any rate. Her eyes flew open; she hadn't realized that she had closed them to shut out the terror of nothingness.

Lann was looking at her in concern, but he hooted cheerfully when she smiled. They stood on a plane that was the same almost-blue neutrality as the disk into which he had drawn her. She thought there were bulks in the far distance, but they had no more shape than clouds on a moonless night.

The ape-man grunted, then turned and started forward. Hedia felt an instant's terror when he let go of her hand, but she didn't vanish into gray limbo again. She caught her breath and strode after him.

I wish he'd warned me before he did that.

She grinned away her scowl. If he had given her any warning, she would have clung to him in fear and despair.

An arrow with red fletching and an orichalc point dangled from Lann's left hip, wobbling as he walked. It had pierced loose skin, apparently without touching muscle.

Hedia had been vaguely aware of a zip! zip! as the ship drove into the shielding canopy, but only now did she realize that bowmen aboard the vessel had been shooting at them.