Air and Darkness (45 page)

A pair of gossamer female figures, suggestions in the air rather than forms, drifted from the rocks ahead. They joined hands and swirled in a dance as light as spider silk in a sunbeam. They each opened a hand to Alphena as she approached, but she hugged herself closer and pretended not to notice them.

“Who were they?” she said in a soft voice to Janus as they passed on.

“Thoughts, perhaps,” said Janus. “Not my thoughts.”

They were my thoughts,
Alphena realized. Then,
I'm nervous because I'm going to see Corylus again.

She laughed and stood straighter as she walked toward Publius Corylus.
I've faced demons; I've faced monsters. I can face Corylus, and I can face the fact that I love him.

Aloud Alphena said, “You said Mamurcus made you in Anti-Thule. Is that in Italy, or is it farther away?”

Janus turned his iron face toward her. She noticed that though he appeared to be walking normally, his legs didn't disturb the sedges through which they seemed to move.

“Pandareus is not
your
teacher, is he?” Janus said.

“No, of course not,” Alphena said sharply. The question itself was neutral, but she could feel mockery behind it. “I'm a woman; I don't learn rhetoric. Master Pandareus teaches my brother. And Corylus, among others.”

“Ah,” said Janus. “Well, Pandareus said that I should not discount your resources, Your Ladyship. According to geographers Thule is a place far to the north, near the axis on which the world turns. Anti-Thule is therefore near the southern axis. Only philosophers talk of Anti-Thule in this day, for no one alive has been there.”

His caricature of a face smiled. “I am not alive, but
I
have been to Anti-Thule,” he said. “Mamurcus made me there.”

“How did you get to Sentius' garden?” Alphena said. A year ago she wouldn't have cared, let alone asked, but now she was thinking about what Pandareus and Varus would want to know, and Corylus would want to know also.

“Sentius is a dabbler, a fool,” said her guide. “He gathered all manner of magical paraphernalia and told himself that he was a wizard. Faugh! It was like you claiming to be a savant!”

“Which I do not do,” Alphena said deliberately. “Though I know savants, my brother included.”

She smiled at Janus and said, “You are a very insolent lump of iron, Master Janus. But one must make allowances for your rustic upbringing, I suppose.”

After a moment's delay, Janus burst into laughter like an armload of swords falling down a stone staircase. It was a more musical sound than Alphena would have guessed he would make.

“You are correct, Lady Alphena,” Janus said. “And Master Pandareus was correct. But I was saying that Sentius collected objects he was told were magical. Because he was ignorant, he didn't understand what he had. A load of things taken from the collection of Marcus Herennius got stored in a gardeners' shed here at the villa, myself included; and before it was found, an undergardener had used me to mark a row of chickpeas.”

He gave a metallic cough. “It was not a prestigious position,” he said, “but I like to think that I gave loyal service in it.”

“I'm glad you were where Master Pandareus could find you,” Alphena said. The statement was true, but she had made it because Hedia was teaching her to say positive things to the people she had to deal with whenever possible.

“I hope we find my mother soon,” she blurted, simply because the thought had struck her so forcibly. “Thank you for helping me, L … Lord Janus. Even if you don't want me to call you that.”

“I believe I had pretty thoroughly explored the nuances of marking chickpeas,” her guide said. “I was ready for new challenges.”

Alphena giggled. “I think you're really well suited to Pandareus,” she said. “I'm sure you were better as a garden marker than he would have been, however.”

Janus clanged a laugh again, then said, “I open ways and close them, lady. I don't know anything about causes or results … but you were fortunate that Lady Rupa did not notice me when she came to Sentius, because she would have known how to use me.”

“What is Rupa doing with Sentius?” Alphena said. “Minimus from Mother's escort said that Rupa made the light that Bacchus came through.”

A pair of frogs watched as Alphena and her guide approached. They suddenly shot straight up. They vanished higher into the sky than Alphena's eyes could follow.

“Ampelos, not Bacchus,” said Janus tartly. “But you weren't to know, so I shouldn't have mentioned it. I don't have any idea what Rupa intends, but Sentius is no more to her than one of your slaves is to you. She uses his villa and his wealth for her own purposes, whatever those purposes may be.”

Alphena remembered the imperious woman she had faced in Sentius' garden. Rupa hadn't made her flinch, but Alphena remembered the fear that had knotted her belly as Rupa reached toward her.

She grinned and added aloud, “I remember the way Rupa fell back when she tried to touch me too.”

“The Godspeaker's ear threw her back,” Janus said with a note of gloom. “If you hadn't had that, well … Mamurcus himself would have had his hands full with Lady Rupa, and Mamurcus was a great wizard.”

After another jangle of laughter, Janus said, “Mamurcus made
me,
after all. And he had wit enough to bring what was left of the Godspeaker with him when he fled Anti-Thule after the disaster.”

“What about the Tyla?” Alphena said. “They were in Anti-Thule too, weren't they? Did they come here with Mamurcus?”

“He brought only me and the Godspeaker's ear,” said Janus. “No, I tell a lie, because he had another bit of the meteor that brought the Blight. He forged it into the case for the ear, what you wear around your neck. Anti-Thule wasn't a place to stand about looking for loot, let me tell you.”

His iron lips pursed and he went on, “The Indian wizard may have taken the Tyla magicians with him back to India, but I don't think so. He was trying to free the Godspeaker's tablet from under a stone, the last I saw him. Mamurcus was running to the portal to come home.”

“How did Rupa get her Tyla servants, then?” Alphena said. She lifted the borrowed sword to see how it moved in its scabbard. Quite well, she was pleased to find; Lenatus must have kept the lip smooth with beeswax.

“A wizard, a very great wizard, might go back to Anti-Thule after the disaster,” her guide said. “The Tyla priests would be glad to return with him, for they couldn't have gotten through the portal by themselves. It would be dangerous—for the wizard, I mean. He—or she—would have to be very powerful. Lady Rupa
is
that powerful.”

Alphena paused to look at the bird that was standing on an island in the middle of the stream. It looked like an ordinary kingfisher with a blue back and russet belly, but—

“It's twenty feet tall!” she said.

“Umm,” said the figure of Janus. “Thirty at least if it stands normally, I believe. It's squatting now, because I think it's getting ready to dive.”

The bird's head turned very slightly. Its eyes were on the sides of its head, so it wouldn't really have had to move to watch Alphena, but it was being cautious.

She was reminded of fights in the arena. Ordinarily when there were multiple gladiators on the sand at the same time, they dueled in pairs. Occasionally, however, a man who had quickly defeated his opponent would help a friend who was being hard-pressed. Fighters always kept an eye out, just in case.

“How deep is the water there?” Alphena asked as she drew her sword. She resumed her course along the bank, but she kept her torso cocked toward the kingfisher and let her peripheral vision keep her on the path.

“It would be over your head, lady,” said Janus. “If you like, I can find a ford upstream that will take you to a rock from which you might be able to wade down to this one. But why would you want to?”

“I just want to know what my choices are if the bird—” Alphena said. As she spoke, the kingfisher launched itself into the air and plunged down into the stream. The water sprayed into diamonds in the sunlight. Moments later the bird shot upward to perch again on the islet with a fish crossways in its beak.

A catfish,
Alphena thought,
a very big one.

The kingfisher tossed the fish in the air and caught it headfirst in its open beak. In the instants before the fish vanished wriggling down the bird's throat, Alphena saw that it had the head of a man.

“That was Sentius!” Alphena said. “That was the senator who's helping Rupa!”

“So it seems,” said her guide. “I would guess that he didn't expect to be used in quite that fashion, though. She needed a gift to pay her way into the Otherworld, and your Sentius was close at hand.”

They were past the rock where the kingfisher perched. Alphena glanced over her shoulder and saw the bird watching motionless. Its beak was as thick and cruel as the prow of a warship.

“The bird brought Rupa here?” Alphena said. She wanted to continue watching the kingfisher, but that would be undignified, and she would probably trip or fall into the water besides.

“I doubt it,” Janus said. The iron man didn't bother to turn his head as he walked, but Alphena already knew that the figure she saw wasn't really a material being. “Someone, something, did, anyhow. Rupa would have had a much easier time of it if she had used me the way you did.”

He grinned at her. “You find ways to manage things, don't you, lady?” he said. “That's what the teacher meant. You don't look like much, but things work for you.”

I haven't been eaten by a kingfisher, anyway,
Alphena thought. Other than that, things didn't seem to be working particularly well at the moment.

Aloud she said, “Why does Rupa want to be here anyway? What's she doing, if she isn't helping Sentius?”

Alphena remembered the woman's cold eyes as she reached toward her in the garden. She touched her tunic, pressing the amulet firmly against her chest.

“Rupa intends to bring Bacchus back to the West,” said Janus nonchalantly. “A western empire brought her soul mate to her but then took him away despite her magic. She thinks the reign of Bacchus will churn the West to chaos, and that would be so were it not for the Blight. Rupa cares nothing about the Blight, but her actions will open the world to it.”

“I won't let her,” Alphena said, touching her sword again and jerking her fingers away when she realized what she was doing. “We won't let her.”

But how will we stop her?

Aloud Alphena said, “But the Blight would kill her too. Wouldn't it?”

“Rupa doesn't care,” said Janus. “The Blight cannot invade the Otherworld, but I'm not sure Rupa will bother returning here after the Blight is loosed. She lives for her revenge, and she will have it.”

His calm certainty was more chilling to Alphena than screaming panic would have been. She could not get the vision of the world covered in bubbling black filth out of her mind. It stuck to her thoughts and fouled them.

“I shouldn't care, either…,” said the figure of iron. Alphena heard an undertone of sadness in his voice, but she knew she might have invented that because she was herself so desperately sad at the thought. “The Blight won't affect me, after all. But when the Blight covers everything in the Waking World there will be no ways to open and no one to open them.”

He looked at Alphena. “I will miss you humans,” he said.

“I'll be dead before that happens,” Alphena said. In another mood she would have made that a boast. In her present bleakness it was closer to being a prayer.

*   *   *

V
ARUS WAS VERY COLD
as he walked the corridors of a library, a wonderful library. Baskets of scrolls stood shoulder to shoulder on the floors. On marble shelves above the baskets were codices bound in wood, leather, and a variety of other materials.

A line of palm leaves, bound at one edge and written in cuttlefish ink, had no covers at all. Varus glanced at them as he passed. They were in Sanskrit, a language that his waking eyes wouldn't have been able even to identify.
Thou shalt do the deed and abide it, and sit on thy high throne
…, he read from a random glimpse as he passed by. He wondered how he he could understand the words.

A old man, bald and bent over, was walking beside Varus. He was naked, wizened, and as brown as an acorn. He seemed vaguely familiar.

How long has he been there?
Varus thought. Aloud he said, “I am Gaius Varus. Who are you, sir?”

The old man laughed like crickets chirping. “I have no name,” he said. “Not one that anybody remembers.
I
don't remember it.”

“I recognize your voice,” Varus said. “You're Govinda's ancestor. You live in his speculum. I saw you when you came to Raguram's palace and helped him to find me.”

“Govinda holds me in the speculum,” said the ancestor, “but I do not live anywhere. Except perhaps now with you as we travel to Anti-Thule on Govinda's business.”

Varus looked at the pry bar in his right hand. He had been holding the speculum also, but his left hand was empty.

“That's why I'm cold,” he said. “I drank the poison. Am I dead?”

The ancestor laughed. “Not now,” he said. “You are alive and I am alive. If we succeed you will return and re-inhabit your body, but I will be a spirit in a disk of cannel coal. If we fail, we will both die utterly, body and spirit together.”

Varus did not reply. He considered the situation. He wasn't afraid of dying—oblivion was a cessation of human emotions, fear of course included—but under the present circumstances it would suggest that he had been defeated by Govinda.

I should be enough of a philosopher not to care about that, either,
he thought. He smiled.
Perhaps after I have crushed Govinda I will become more enlightened.