David Drake - Out of the waters

Nobody had ordered Gaius Varus to take on this duty either, but he was a philosopher: he knew that the flesh was of no importance. He didn't imagine that the squad of bruisers was nearly so blase about questions of being and non-being… but they were willing to stand with him

Varus swallowed. He was beginning to understand what it meant to be a man. And perhaps that was because he was becoming a man himself.

He took a deep breath. He didn't have a weapon, just a splinter of bone. He had his mind and the knowledge in it. Those, not steel points or edges that would be more danger to him than to an enemy, were the tools with which he would fight Procron.

Varus wore a toga and leather-soled walking shoes. Remembering the terrain in which Procron's fortress stood, he had been tempted to get a pair of cleated army sandals. He wouldn't find them comfortable, though. He instead put on a pair of the shoes he would wear if he were going out on the streets of Carce.

"May the doors of heaven…," Varus said, reading aloud from the book which unrolled in his mind. "Be opened to me!"

It was the same phrase he had used to escape when Procron attempted to hold him. He was coming to realize that the words he used were not important. Hundreds or even thousands of Egyptians must have read the same phrase in past years. The words had power when he read them, because he read them with a particular intent.

The garden darkened. Varus stepped forward into a dark valley. The Sibyl waited for him at the base of a track up the hillside..

"Greetings, Lord Varus," she said. Crinkling her face still further in a smile, she added, "Intent is important, of course; but it would mean nothing if you were not a wizard."

She's replying to what I thought.

"Why would I not know what goes on in your mind, Varus?" she said. "Since I am a part of your mind."

Varus nodded politely. "Good morning, Sibyl," he said, ignoring her question. "I am glad you have joined me. I've come here again, because if I'm to stop Procron, I know of no better way to do it than by facing him."

Pandareus would appreciate the delicacy of his phrasing. Varus didn't believe that facing the Atlantean would enable him to defeat him-but he knew of no better way. Sitting in the library and pondering endlessly would lead nowhere. Choosing to face his enemy at least meant that Varus would by dying avoid having to watch the results of his failure.

"Come then," the Sibyl said. She started up the track, as she had done before.

She said, "Procron loosed Typhon on Atlantis in revenge for his exile, but he opened all paths when he did so. Typhon has chosen to attack Procon's enclave on this aged world, putting Procron on his mettle to prevent the monster from entering."

She cackled with amusement. "It is a struggle like no other in the history of the Earth," she said. "But there is no one to watch it except you and me, Lord Varus; and I do not exist outside your mind."

They reached the top of the low ridge. The sky was black with clouds congealing from the thin air. Procron's keep rose from the chill moorland in the near distance. The air was clear directly above the tower's peak, but a writhing mass of flesh tried to force entry against a net of violet lightning.

There was a continual thunderous hiss; the plain shuddered. Typhon's heads and limbs lashed at the lightning. They blackened, vanished, and were replaced as quickly by others swelling from the gross body.

"What-" Varus said. He stopped, smiled grimly, and began hiking toward the beleaguered fortress.

I already know what to do: enter Procron's fortress and stop him. Or die.

"Sibyl?" he said. "How long will this-" he waved. "-last if we don't take a hand?"

"For eternity, Lord Wizard," said the old woman, walking at his side. The air grew warmer as they approached the center of the struggle. The hoarfrost had melted, and the low vegetation was wilting. "Procron has pulled this world out of time, save for the one portal which his mind holds open to gain vengeance on the world that expelled him. Not even Typhon has the power to force that gate. Typhon will never cease trying, but-"

She shrugged.

"-if Typhon is blocked for very long here, it will enter Carce through another portal."

"But I will be able to leave?" Varus said. He licked his lips. "As I did before when Procron tried to hold us?"

"If you slay Procron, whose power holds the portal open, his power vanishes," the Sibyl said. "Then only Typhon and Typhon's power remain, and Typhon destroys all things."

Varus was breathing fast as they approached the high arched doorway of the crystal fortress. The air is thin. I breathe quickly only because my lungs don't fill as they ought to.

"I see," Varus said. I am a citizen of Carce. I will carry out my duty.

He faced the spire and read out in a strong, steady voice, "May the doors of heaven be opened to me!"

If I had my axe, Alphena thought, I'd take care of all three of those Sages! Even without the axe, I'd- Through the red haze of her anger, she glimpsed herself as she was: not only unarmed but stark naked. The hobnailed boots she had imagined grinding into Wontosa's face lay on the shore. Her waterlogged tunic had probably sunk to the bottom of the sound, where the copper axe certainly was. And ever since the vulture-riding Minoi had attacked her, her hat and her sword drifted in the eternal gray between worlds.

Where she was now.

"How could they?" she shouted. No one but herself would hear, but the words were empty anyway. "He saved them all, he saved us!"

Alphena felt mild pleasure as she realized that she was angry but not afraid. Fear might come later; she supposed she would be here until she starved. For now, though, she was furious with the Sages and the whole village of Cascotan for what they had done to Uktena.

To cast her into this drifting prison-well, she was a stranger and she had never pretended to like any of them. What they did to her was fair, though of course she would know how to repay them if she ever got the chance.

But Uktena was their champion. He had saved Cascotan and probably the whole Western Isles from what had been done to Mota… and instead, Mota's mother blamed Uktena for not saving her daughter.

It's not fair!

The Earth, or Alphena supposed it was the Earth, was the pale ball which she had seen reflected in the basin when Anna chanted her spell. That seemed infinitely long ago; everything that had happened since she mounted the gryphon's back was another lifetime.

Alphena smiled again: a lifetime which had lasted longer than the life which had followed was going to. She had heard Lenatus talking about the army with Corylus and Pulto; so long as she kept quiet, the old soldiers had treated her as though she wasn't there. At the time she hadn't fully understood the stories of sudden death which they told, generally with laughter.

Now she understood. Alphena, daughter of Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa, would never listen to stories in the exercise yard again.

She looked at the Earth, wishing that she could see it in detail as she had when the gryphon carried her toward Atlantis. Perhaps the omnipresent gray wouldn't disturb her brother or Pandareus; they seemed to live in their minds more than she did.

More than I ever wanted to, Alphena thought; and smiled, but she wasn't very cheerful at the moment.

Because she had nothing else to do save drift in emptiness, she considered again what had happened Uktena. Resignation had replaced the anger, allowing her to look dispassionately at the situation.

No, what the villagers had done wasn't fair, and the Sages who led them had certainly acted out of envy as well as fear; but Alphena no longer pretended that they had no reason to be afraid. Uktena was her friend and he had saved them all from a cruel monster; but the thing Uktena had become to win the battle was a monster as well. Nothing and no one would have been safe if that monster had remained in the world he had saved.