David Drake - Out of the waters

Still chanting what must be a prayer, the Sages lifted Uktena from her. Hanno and Dasemunco took the shaman's arms. Wontosa, carrying the pipe, walked ahead of them. They paid no attention to Alphena.

She got up and wavered. She should have put her hands down to help herself, but she hadn't wanted to appear weak. I could scarcely appear weaker than I really am. She followed the four men higher up the shore.

Wontosa said, "Here. The sand is dry, so he won't be able to take power from the water."

He began to fill the murrhine pipe with herbs from the embroidered deerskin pouch. Uktena had left it behind in the kiva.

"What are you doing?" Alphena shouted. She stumbled forward. Arms caught her from behind-the women Sanga and Lascosa; the latter the mother of the thing Procron had created in the marshes.

"He's too dangerous," Sanga said. "Don't you see? He has to be sent away or we'll never be safe!"

Uktena sprawled on his back on the sand. The Sages squatted around him and continued to chant. Wontosa puffed on the pipe he had taken from the greater magician.

"He saved you!" Alphena said. Her vision blurred with anger and tears. "He saved you all!"

"He's a monster!" Lascosa said in a venomous tone. "He didn't save my Mota. He would destroy us all!"

The chant reached a crescendo. Wontosa blew a great jet of smoke over the torso and head of his exhausted rival. Uktena's form blurred.

"No!" Alphena shouted as she tore loose. She flung herself over her friend's body.

The world shifted like a mirror tilting. She was alone, falling again through the emptiness from which Uktena had rescued her.

But now he cannot rescue even himself.

Lann ran heavily. He was faster when he dropped down and used his knuckles as forehooves, but even then Hedia had no difficulty keeping up. He didn't seem comfortable on all fours, however. He regularly lurched upright and tried to run on two legs like a man.

He wasn't a man, poor dear, except in his mind. And not really all of his mind, though enough to satisfy Hedia. She focused on the virtues of the men whom she liked, and Lann had most of the virtues which Saxa lacked. Between them, they made a truly wonderful man.

Hedia smiled. She'd found over the years that if she tried, she could like most men.

The ape-man paused, rose on his hind legs, and sniffed the air. He frowned in doubt. Turning, he looked back the way they had come. He didn't seem to see any more there than Hedia did-blank grayness-but he noticed the lens she carried.

"Hoo!" he cried, as delighted as if he were meeting an old friend. He snatched the device from her without ceremony.

Hedia felt her lips purse, though she didn't object. It was his, after all, though he might have been more polite.

Except that Lann couldn't be more polite. He was a beast, an animal, with major virtues. And, like Saxa, he was devoted to her.

The ape-man held the frame in one hand and touched the lens with his index finger. When he did so, he and Hedia stood on a pavement of dull metal in place of something firm but unseen in the universal grayness. She tested it with her toes.

This is what we've been walking on all the time. This isn't a mirage of the past, this is real.

Other paths branched from this one. Each was of a different material: brick laid in various patterns; concrete; a hard material as black as muck from a swamp; and uncountably many others. Some tracks were dirt, sun-baked or rutted or even grassy.

One of the paths was leaf-mold on which Hedia could see her own footprints pressed delicately onto the broad, splayed marks of the ape-man who had led her. An Atlantean airship flew above that side-branch and vanished through the portal at the end; the second ship followed only moments later.

The hunters who had chased Hedia and the ape-man on foot were also running back the way they had come, but it was too late for them. Typhon crawled on its many legs from the prison which Lann had breached.

The monster seemed deceptively slow because it was so large, but its tentacles swept fleeing humans into its slavering maws. Typhon had as many heads as it had legs. They were equipped with beaks and fangs and muscular gullets to squeeze and crush and swallow. Some of the victims turned to fight, but that was like watching mice bare their teeth at a forest fire.

None of the hunters reached the jungle path. Instead of stopping when it engulfed the last of them, Typhon swelled through the portal with scarcely a pause.

For an instant Hedia thought she saw not a monster but a man in a loincloth who wore his iron-gray hair in braids. Then Typhon again filled the path from its ruptured prison to the portal, flowing onward without seeming to diminish.

The ape-man hooted joyfully and resumed his journey. He held the lens in his left hand, walking on either his legs or his legs and the knuckles of his right hand. He continued to chortle.

Hedia swallowed. The Atlanteans weren't her friends, Venus knew, but… all of them, the Minoi and their servants and their little dogs and the very worms in the dirt of their gardens? Because she didn't imagine Typhon would halt while there was still something to destroy.

She mentally shrugged as she accompanied the ape-man. The pavement was wide enough that she could stay within half a step of him while keeping far enough to the side that they wouldn't collide if he stopped abruptly.

She wouldn't have chosen that end for the Atlanteans… but she hadn't chosen it. Besides, it was done now. In this world-in all worlds-women get used to making the best of situations which they can't change.

Hedia grinned. Men really weren't much better off, but they were less likely to accept reality. That was another case of the woman having the advantage, if she had wit enough to use it.

They had passed numerous branchings, but Lann continued to follow the central metal path. Now at last he bore to the right, onto flagstones of volcanic tuff which appeared to have been set in concrete. Though a byway, it was wide enough that Hedia didn't feel uncomfortable as long as she kept to the middle of it. She wasn't sure it was possible to fall off the path, but the thought of drifting forever in this limbo frightened her more than the risk of death.

The ape-man paused again and concentrated on his lens. Hedia bumped him because her thoughts were elsewhere. That was no harm done: it was rather like walking into a tree with furry bark.

For a moment Lann and Hedia were in a vision of a bleak waste on which Procron's fortress stood under an orange sun. The ape-man made an adjustment by changing the angle of his right index finger. Their viewpoint shifted to the air above Poseidonis as Typhon advanced on the city like a tidal wave.

In the distance was the ring island outside the one on which Poseidonis stood. The monster had torn a gap the size of itself in the land as it emerged on the site of Procron's keep.

Typhon was larger than that now. It would continue to grow for as long as there was space for it, spreading like the sea.

Nothing can stop it. Hedia swallowed again.

Ships were rising from the harbor as they had done in the vision of the theater, but in this reality they were not attacking the monster. Instead, heavily laden with liveried retainers, they wobbled toward a shimmering disk hanging above the pinnacle of the great tower. The portal rested on the orichalc finial, which blazed now brighter than the sun.

The Minoi and their households were abandoning Atlantis rather than struggle against an inexorable doom. Typhon would triumph, but not over them.

Perhaps some of the women have carried along their little dogs, Hedia thought. The worms and the common people could take care of themselves. Though as an aristocrat herself, who was she to object?