Air and Darkness (42 page)

Without warning Ampelos swung the chariot to a halt at what Hedia had taken for a circular pond. It was a pit with no water in it, though the shimmer over the opening continued the illusion even at close range.

Ampelos got down without acknowledging Hedia's presence. “Brothers!” he called, facing the pit. “I have come for the Lamp of Darkness!”

A figure climbed through the opening, followed by his near twin. The screen of light at the opening blurred their figures, but under the sickly moon the Cabiri were even uglier than the distorted versions had been.

“So, you've come back, handsome,” said the first. “You're ready to meet our terms?”

From a distance the Cabiri would have appeared to be dwarfs, but either of the pair was as tall as Ampelos; they were actually giants with stumpy legs. They had long faces with shaggy beards and hair; they wore leather aprons, and their arms were as muscular as the forelegs of lions. Wherever their skin was exposed, sparks had scarred it. A stench of burned hair clung to both of them.

“Yes,” said Ampelos. “After I've delivered the woman—”

He nodded toward Hedia without ever letting his eyes rest on her.

“—to the vine.”

“Now,” said the second dwarf. He held an oil lamp of ordinary shape—a flat pitcher with a hole in the middle for filling, a spout where the wick would lie, and a loop handle opposite the spout. It was iron, however, rather than molded earthenware or bronze. “We don't trust you, handsome.”

“Why should we?” said the first. “We will turn over the product of our labor, after you pay us for it.”

“I will come back and pay you,” Ampelos said. “I swear.”

“What do you swear by?” said the Cabiri together. Their voices were like rusty iron.

“I swear by my lord and god Bacchus!” Ampelos said. “I will come back and pay my debt to you. I swear it!”

“An earnest,” said the dwarf holding the lamp. His hands were broad and long, suggesting paddles when the fingers were closed together. “A kiss to each of us, and then we will wait for your return.”

Instead of replying, Ampelos stepped to the first brother and kissed him on the mouth. The dwarf hugged Ampelos closer; his dark, scarred arms encircled the youth like streaks of tar over an ivory statue.

The arms opened. Ampelos stepped away, his face as stiff as that of a badly carved bust. The second dwarf gave the lamp to his brother and kissed the youth in turn. He released Ampelos, chuckling deep in his huge chest.

“Take the lamp, handsome,” said the first of the Cabiri, offering it on the shelf of his fingers.

“Give it to her!” Ampelos said, again without looking toward Hedia.

“Our arrangement…,” said the other dwarf, “is with you. Take the lamp … or complete the bargain and leave it. That's fine too.”

“What would we want with a woman?” said the first. They laughed again.

Ampelos accepted the lamp. He turned to Hedia and said, “Here, you'll need it.”

Hedia took it by the handle with her left hand alone. She would need one hand for the railing if they were going to travel in the chariot.

“How does it work?” she said. The lamp was heavier than earthenware would be, but it wasn't too heavy to easily hold.

“I'll light it, missy,” said one of the Cabiri. He leaned forward and snapped his fingers over the spout. The
crack!
sounded like an oak limb breaking.

Where the flame should be Hedia saw a distortion like that over the mouth of the cave, but that was all. “Is it working?” she said. “Nothing has changed?”

The dwarf who had lit the lamp held his hand out flat again. “Set it here for a moment, missy,” he said. “You will see.”

“She will not see,” said his brother.

Both Cabiri laughed.

Hedia put the lamp on the dwarf's palm, wondering what she was supposed to see. Or not see. When she released the loop, the lamp and the dwarf holding the lamp vanished. All that remained was the shimmer at the spout.

She reached forward very carefully, felt the iron loop, and lifted the lamp again. The dwarf reappeared, smiling broadly. A spark had burned his lower lip; the sore oozed pus.

“Get back in the chariot, woman,” Ampelos said, his voice too thin to be a snarl. “You have what you need. We'll finish this.”

“See you soon, handsome,” said one of the Cabiri to their backs.

As Hedia stepped into the car after Ampelos, the other called, “Don't forget, sweetheart. You swore, you know!”

“Are you aboard?” said Ampelos.

“Yes,” said Hedia, her arm gripped tightly to the railing. As the leopards jolted off, she added in a falsely sweet voice, “I hope you three will be very happy together … handsome.”

The youth hunched and slapped his reins against his team's necks. He didn't speak.

The landscape they bounced over was grassy and spotted with circles of large, vividly colored mushrooms. The fungi were larger than Hedia had seen before.
Our cooks would love them. They'd turn them into a whole village for a banquet centerpiece.

As the thought formed, the chariot passed close to a stand of mushrooms. A gathering of mice wearing tunics and caps scattered on two legs into mushrooms, snapping doors closed behind them.

Indeed, they're very like a village already.

On the horizon ahead was a mound of deep green, a striking contrast to the yellowish grass and the brightly polka-dotted fungi. Ampelos drove into it without slowing the chariot.

He didn't explain to Hedia what was happening.
He didn't speak when he could see me, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

They drove down and into a spiraling aisle between walls of oversized versions of ordinary flowers: foxgloves, hollyhocks, delphiniums, and a score of varieties that Hedia didn't recognize. In the center of the spiral was a circular wooden bench built around a grapevine with the diameter of a large oak tree. Unsupported, it reached up to a hazy blur.

Ampelos drew back on the reins and the leopards cantered to a halt. They were breathing through open mouths, and their tongues lolled. Hedia wondered how fast the chariot had been driving, though distance wasn't always a useful measure in the Otherworld.

“Get out here,” said Ampelos. “This is the vine. Climb it until you find yourself in King Govinda's courtyard, then enter his sanctum and take the tablet. The sanctum is only twenty feet away from the vine. No one will be able to see you.”

Hedia paused. “How do I get back?” she said.

“The same way you got there!” Ampelos said. He glared at the vine, not the sound of her voice. “Is that so hard?”

“And how will this help Varus?” Hedia said, still in the chariot.

“He won't be fed poison!” Ampelos said. “You'll be able to trade the tablet to Govinda to get the boy back and then you'll both be able to get home. Isn't that what you want?”

“Yes,” said Hedia. At last she stepped off the back of the car and walked to the vine.

She looked down at her legs scissoring crisply across a bed of moss as soft as velvet, but the Cabiri had demonstrated that the Lamp of Darkness really did work. She didn't think the dwarfs would have helped Ampelos trick her, at least not without an additional payment.

Hedia grinned. It appeared that Ampelos was already paying with everything he had.

Tendrils sprouted from the vine at frequent intervals. Each one reached upward to where it, like the main stem, vanished hazily in the air. This would probably be a simple enough climb for someone who was used to climbing—no doubt there were such people—but it a was daunting prospect to Hedia, and she had the lamp in her left hand besides.

It wasn't going to get easier if she stood staring at the prospect, though. Besides, Ampelos was watching from the chariot, though he presumably wouldn't know what Hedia was doing so long as she held the lamp.

Hedia stepped onto the circular bench, then put her left foot on the next wrist-thick tendril above it. She grasped a higher tendril with her right hand and raised herself enough to put her right foot on a tendril on that side. Though her left hand was occupied, she managed to brace that elbow on another branching tendril.

The vine's outer surface was smooth, so she wasn't tearing her skin on bark as she had feared.
I won't say this is fun, but it isn't as bad as I thought. And it's almost fun.

A pair of little eyes glittered at her from over the edge of the tendril she was about to grasp. “Go away!” she said, shouting because she was surprised. A perfectly formed man the length of her middle finger flew off on two pairs of wings like a dragonfly.

Hedia wasn't looking back or looking down. She wondered how she would know when she had reached her goal.
Perhaps Ampelos intends me to climb into thin air and vanish.

She looked up—that wouldn't give her vertigo or cause her to topple backward—and to her surprise saw just above her the cross timbers of a gazebo over which grapevines wrapped like knots of vipers. Gripping with both arms and her right hand, she dared to look down. The bench seats on the inside of the gazebo were within an inch of her toes.

Hedia tested the wood; it held her weight. She stepped onto the bench, then down to the ground.

Though the grape leaves shaded her, the dusty courtyard beyond was dazzling in sunlight. The air Hedia breathed was hot and dry.

The opening in the gazebo faced a separate building of much the same size but with a tile roof and walls of polished alabaster. A score of soldiers wearing curved swords guarded the closed door. With them were four of the furry dogs-on-two-legs the voice of the spring had called Tyla, when it showed Hedia visions of Anti-Thule.

The guards didn't look especially alert, but neither would Carce's legionaries in heat like this. An awning bleached to a pale cream protected them from the direct sun, but it would do nothing for air that could have come from an open oven.

Hedia stepped out, holding the lamp firmly in front of her. This was the first real test of the lamp's power. She realized that her gut was tense in expectation of shouts and a sudden rush by the guards.

They ignored her. One squat man with a scar across his forehead was facing directly toward Hedia, but his eyes were as unfocused as those of a painting.
I really
am
invisible.

Hedia walked briskly toward the hut, the sanctum, as Ampelos had named it. Her sandals kicked up dust, but not appreciably more than the cat's-paws of breeze.

The palace itself was huge. The courtyard made her think of the Forum and the dozens of buildings surrounding it, but this was a single structure.

Hedia paused at arm's length from the troop of guards. There was room for her to step through them at several places, but she would have to be careful.

One of the Tyla was restive, looking about and sniffing the air. Occasionally he chirped querulously, but his fellows ignored him.

Hedia took a deep breath and strode forward. A guard turned to speak to his neighbor as she passed between them, but even then they didn't notice her.

Hedia slid the door handle to the left and heard the bolt withdraw. She opened the door and stepped in, closing the panel behind her as guards gabbled in surprise. She moved to the side so that if they burst in they at least wouldn't trample her, but nothing happened except that the chatter—they sounded like a cage of startled birds—died down after a moment.

Hedia let her breath out.
I wonder if they're telling themselves that they only imagined that the door had opened?
She had seen things herself that she found hard to believe.

She hadn't really registered the hut's interior until she started to relax. The couch on which Ampelos had shown her Varus drinking the poison was empty, but so was the table on which the magical tablet was supposed to be.

The boy hanging by his hair across from the room opened his eyes and stared at Hedia. He had been so still that until that moment he might have been a statue.

Hedia met his stare. The boy did not speak or otherwise react to her presence. She swallowed and decided to ignore him.

Since the tablet wasn't on the table, she had no obvious way to proceed. She might try to search the palace itself, but there must be a thousand rooms and no reason to believe that the prize was in any of them.

Hedia examined the walls. She had taken their different scenes as paintings on the alabaster. Close up she could see leaves shivering in breezes; the men and women lolling around the vine newly planted at Polymartium were eating the oversized grapes that festooned nearby trees. One of the men was a member of the entourage that had accompanied her to the rites for Mother Matuta.

The images didn't bring Hedia closer to finding the tablet.
Nothing
was helpful.

She turned toward the door, planning to search the palace until some better plan occurred to her. A creak behind her made her look back. A section of floor was lifting on hinges. Govinda's head and torso rose through the opening. He held the inscribed tablet in his left hand.

Govinda shouted a word. Hedia's left hand stung and the lamp flew out of it.

She grabbed the handle and shoved the door open. The guards all faced the doorway; many had drawn their swords. Two Tyla pointed at her.

Without bothering to think about what she was doing, Hedia flung herself into the nearest alabaster panel. Instead of shattering the thin stone, she fell onto a small circular temple set in high grass.

 

CHAPTER
XIV

Hedia's feet landed in a round shrine. The floor was unexpectedly a foot higher than that of the room from which she had leaped to save herself from Govinda, so she stumbled. She was very nearly as supple as a professional dancer, however. She righted herself without falling and sprang out onto the grass rather than grabbing a pillar to halt herself.