Air and Darkness (10 page)

Alphena's father was wealthy, of course, but the girl didn't carry cash. Besides the guards, her entourage was limited to her maid and the librarian. Alphena must have rushed off without the understeward who would ordinarily have accompanied her with a purse—which underscored the degree to which this wasn't an ordinary affair.

Even with the main doors open, the interior of the temple was dim to eyes that had been in the sunlight of the Forum. Tablets of thanks hung along the walls. Some were shaped to suggest the help the god had provided the dedicator: a ship saved from wrecking, a leg that had healed.

The limestone statue at the end of the room was of Saturn seated with a real sickle inset into his right hand. It was very old and had not been replaced by bronze or marble in the rebuilding that both Caesar and his adopted son, Augustus, had carried out in central Carce.

Corylus set the basket on the floor. He and Pandareus each pulled a scroll out to read as their eyes adapted.

“They all say about the same thing,” Alphena said. “A circle of light appeared near the altar where the rite had taken place. An uncertain number of men and women came out of the light wearing skin garments or no clothing at all. There were horsemen or perhaps centaurs with them, and there was a chariot.”

She took a deep breath. “There was confusion for many hours,” she continued. “Then the intruders went back through the light, and the light vanished. Afterward the servants couldn't find Hedia or Varus. Most didn't remember seeing them after Mother had finished dancing the rite.”

Pandareus finished reading the report he had taken at random. He waggled it and said, “This one is from Abinneus, a clerk with Manetho who was in charge of the entourage. He says there was a group of Indians in company with members of Senator Sentius' household and he thinks they caused the red light to appear. Then he became unconscious.”

Corylus started to repress his chuckle, then realized there was no need to. “This,” he said, tapping the report he'd been reading, “is from Minimus, one of Hedia's guards.”

Corylus remembered the big Galatian as an individual. The fellow's deposition read oddly because the scribe who'd taken it down had put it into grammatical Greek—the Greek of ancient Athens, in fact. It was disconcerting to visualize the words coming from Minimus' lips. Corylus didn't doubt that account was accurate, though.

“What Minimus says is that Bacchus led a procession out of the rosy light and that there was an orgy like nothing he'd ever dreamed of,” Corylus said. “Minimus is clearly worried that Her Ladyship disappeared—and worried that he'll be punished for letting her get out of his sight—but he's not embarrassed about the orgy. Rather proud of how well he acquitted himself, in fact.”

Alphena's face had frozen. Pandareus gave a tiny smile and said, “It may be that Abinneus was not unconscious as he claims to have been, but for the moment I would accept his claim that he remembers nothing useful about later events.”

He coughed into his hand and added, “When I was younger, that might even have been true of me under similar circumstances. Not that I was ever fortunate enough to find myself in similar circumstances.”

“Mother may…,” Alphena said. She swallowed and went on, “It may be that Lady Hedia is quite all right and is simply taking advantage of opportunities.”

“A Bacchic procession bursting out of thin air means that something potentially dangerous is happening,” Corylus said. “Lady Hedia would regard it as her duty to report this. To us, because of what's happened in the past. Your mother would never shirk her duty.”

“Quite right,” said Pandareus, lifting his chin in approval. “And even granting that your brother is a young man, I do not believe that anything but knowledge would entrance him for more than perhaps a few hours.”

The two men smiled. Alphena swallowed and bobbed her head in agreement.

“There's something else there…,” Corylus said. He realized that he was hesitating to discuss Gaius Saxa's problems publically. These were two of the people Corylus had intended to discuss his
own
plans with after Saxa had offered him the job, however, and it was the same information.

“That is,” Corylus said, “you mentioned Lucius Sentius. Sentius apparently believes that Senator Saxa owns a magical object which Sentius wants. If Sentius' household was involved, is it possible that they kidnapped Varus and Lady Hedia to force Saxa to give up the object, the Ear of the Satyr? Saxa says he doesn't have the ear.”

Corylus had been speaking to his teacher. He realized the implications of what he was saying and turned to Alphena. “
I
believe Lord Saxa,” he said. “But Sentius apparently doesn't believe him.”

“Lucius Sentius has the reputation of being interested in occult matters,” Pandareus said. “A number of nobles do, of course.”

“You mean my father,” Alphena said sharply. “You don't have to hide his name.”

Pandareus looked at the girl and smiled faintly. “I was thinking of the Emperor,” he said in a mild tone. “In this company, I don't have to hide his name, either. Besides which, I am an old man and childless, so even imperial anger is not much of a threat to me.”

“I'm sorry,” Alphena said. She was expressionless, but her cheeks looked hot again. “I don't know what to do. There must be
something
to do. Should we take armed men to Polymartium?”

“I don't see what they could do, Your Ladyship,” the teacher said. “I'm more interested in the fact that Sentius was looking for the Ear of the Satyr.”

Pandareus looked at Corylus and raised his eyebrows in question. Corylus nodded and said, “That's correct. Lord Saxa is very precise about minutiae of this sort. Have you heard of it, the ear?”

Corylus and Pandareus were being very careful to avoid offending Alphena. Despite her recent campaign to control her behavior, the girl was used to giving free rein to her spiky emotions. In her present state she might react very badly to a perceived insult to a member of her family.

“Heard of it, yes, but only as a myth,” the teacher said. “Atilius Priscus and I were discussing the relationship of music to speech. He said that in his grandfather's day a Marcus Herennius had claimed to have an iron locket which he called the Ear of the Satyr. With the ear he could hear birdsong as speech. Herennius was proscribed by the Second Triumvirate, and no one had heard of the ear since.”

“Is that possible?” Alphena said. “Listening to birds speaking?”

“Judging from bird behavior,” Pandareus said, “they are very stupid. I suspect one would have a more interesting time arguing philosophy with a group of gladiators. It seemed to me that the object was a myth which Herennius invented to raise his reputation. In certain circles.”

“I remember Father talking about buying a collection that had belonged to someone named Herennius,” Alphena said. She had recovered her composure. “He wouldn't tell me what the collection was, though. He gets, well, he
got
very ‘I've got a secret' sometimes, and it was always something silly. It made me really mad.”

“Pandareus?” Corylus said. “Do you know where Herennius was arrested?”

“He was at his country estate near Aricia,” Pandareus said carefully, obviously wondering what Corylus meant by the line of questioning. “He'd rushed there from the city, hoping to go abroad. He grabbed up a saddlebag of gold and ordered his servants to hide the rest of the valuables, which included his collection. A pair of centurions caught him a few miles from the estate and cut his head off.”

The old man smiled at the memory. “The reason I know that,” he explained, “is because the servants threw the collection in the well. Priscus had acquired a parchment that was supposed to be the words and musical annotation that priests of Isis used in raising the dead. It was in a beautiful golden box decorated with jewels and enamel … but the manuscript itself had been completely destroyed by soaking. The box could be duplicated for a few thousand coppers, but the manuscript was irreplaceable.”

Corylus laughed in sudden excitement. “A manuscript wouldn't have meant anything to common soldiers,” he said. “Soldiers wouldn't have paid any attention to an iron locket, either. Which means if the Ear of the Satyr really did exist, I think I know where to find it.”

“Let me talk to Father,” Alphena said. “If we have to buy the whole estate, we can. I'm sure he'll be willing to trade this locket to get Mother and Varus back.”

“That is a way to proceed,” Pandareus said, starting for the outside door. “But I have my doubts about Sentius having kidnapped the pair by magic. Your brother has demonstrated magical power which I would rather not admit to believing.”

“And Lady Hedia,” Corylus said as they walked out of the temple together, “has proved considerably more dangerous than any magician she's faced.”

*   *   *

H
EDIA STEPPED THROUGH THE LENS
of rosy light and found herself in what appeared to be a well-kept park. The lens had vanished.

She had expected to be in India. She had
feared
that she would be somewhere in the Otherworld facing a screaming mob of demons, monsters, and Who-Knew-What-All, like the band that had charged into Polymartium, only worse.

Hedia looked about her. She was certainly in the Otherworld. She had no real idea what India was like—she didn't know what Lusitania was like, except that she didn't want to go there any more than her husband did—but she was confident that in India a tiny human face wouldn't peek from beneath dock leaves. As she watched, the creature flew away on butterfly wings.

On the other hand, she wasn't in the midst of demons or even a Bacchic revel. The low brick wall in front of her seemed to have been the foundation of a building, but apart from the single wall there was nothing left, not even rubble. A line of junipers on the other side might have been planted, but the trees could as easily have grown from seeds dropped by birds sitting on the wall when it was higher.

Hedia turned to her right and began walking parallel to the wall. She saw no sign of a road or path, though there may have been one when the bricks were part of a building.

After fifty feet or so she came to a face of rock layered like a fancy dessert, purple-red and pale beige stone separated by thin bands of dark brown. Water bubbled from it. The flow seeped between the layers, she supposed, because there was no visible opening.

Hedia paused, then turned left to follow the course of the rivulet instead of continuing in the direction she had been going. She would have liked a guide—

Venus! I'd simply like someone to talk with!

—but that wasn't available. Hedia would walk as long as she could, and now at least she had water when she became thirsty. She looked at the stream, wondering what the best way of drinking would be. Probably from her cupped palms, but she supposed there was no reason not to bend over and suck water in directly. It would be undignified, but there was no one here to laugh at her for sticking her buttocks in the air.

The surface of the small creek eddied. One of the eddies looked like an ear, while the other could almost be a pair of lips.…

“Well, you could talk to me, Hedia,” the lips said.

Hedia missed a step. The eddies hung in place while she hesitated, then moved downstream beside her as she walked on.

“Where are you going, anyway?” the lips said. “There's nothing
you
want in this direction.”

Rather than answering, Hedia snapped, “How do you know my name?”

The stream laughed. “Oh, I know much more than that, Hedia,” the lips said. “I know that there's a fellow named Boest on the other side of the ridge beyond me—to your right, as you're walking now.”

Hedia looked in the direction indicated. The slope didn't look impossibly steep. The terrain was similar to that outside Polymartium where she had danced to Mother Matuta; Hedia wondered if she was in the same place—but in the Otherworld.

“Why should I care about this Boest, Stream?” she said, continuing to walk.

“Why indeed?” chuckled the stream. It was less than two feet wide and shallow; she could step across it easily. “Perhaps because Boest knows where the Spring of True Answers is. Aren't you looking for true answers, Hedia?”

Hedia raised her left arm to sweep aside the fronds of a weeping willow that hung across the path. Before she touched them, the branches supporting the tendrils swept upward and cleared her path.

“Do you know where this spring is, then?” Hedia said, looking down into the clear stream.

“You should ask Boest,” the lips said, wobbling as they spoke. “He's a water spirit. He'll know.”

“All right,” Hedia said, stepping over the water as easily as she had expected. “I will. Good day to you, Stream.”

Because of the outdoor ceremony, she had worn sturdier sandals than she might otherwise have done. The circle around the altar had been raked clean of pebbles—almost clean—so the soles of her feet hadn't been badly bruised even during the barefoot dance. Hedia had no immediate problems.

As for Boest …

Hedia smiled. Spirit or not, he seemed to be male. She'd generally gotten along well enough with males.

*   *   *

V
ARUS STAGGERED AS HE ALWAYS
DID
when he returned to the Waking World after visiting with the Sibyl. Unfortunately—

He looked around to be sure, but there could be no question.

—he wasn't in the Waking World this time. He stood on a pond covered with water lilies. The three women watching him flicked their fish tails as they dived.

Varus waggled his toes; the water didn't ripple. He was standing in the air
over
a pond. The shore was a hundred feet away at the nearest and much farther in all other directions. He must have followed the Indian delegation into the Otherworld as he remembered telling the Sibyl he would, but the Indians were nowhere to be seen.