To Corylus Tassk added, “We are pleased that you are willing to accept our aid.”
Corylus grinned broadly. “There are no men of any race,” he said, “whom I would rather have with me in this business than you and your warriors.”
Tassk translated that to his fellows. One of them responded. Tassk said to Corylus, “He says that since he saw you use your sword in defending the Princess, he is willing to accept that you are a man also. As for me, I will stand with the old one.”
He flicked his little finger toward Pandareus. “It is good for aged men to have companions.”
“It’s about time to open the proceedings,” said Corylus. “Alphena—Lady Alphena? I’d appreciate it if you kept close to me.”
Alphena nodded and walked behind the three Singiri warriors who were spreading to the left. She gave Hedia a glance with no obvious meaning in it.
Venus aid you, Daughter,
Hedia thought. Her face showed nothing, either.
The Etruscan priest had halted in the ruins of a small, round building, probably a temple, a tholos. It might never have had a roof. In any case, all that remained now were the bases of six columns. He was chanting.
Hedia eyed Paris and eyed the Ethiopes. Corylus’ attack would probably draw those who had slanted off to encircle the humans back to the direct line of approach. Hedia balanced the rock in her hand and started walking in a curving course. It would take her to the tholos if nothing intervened.
* * *
A
LPHENA WAS FRIGHTENED.
Not of death or injury, at least not those things at the top of her mind. What concerned her was that she would be fighting at the side of Corylus and three Singiri and that they would be depending on her to keep her end up.
Even without the respect Corylus showed the Singiri warriors, Alphena could see by the way they moved that they were veterans. Though the five defenders didn’t have a chance of success against the Ethiopes—even the ones already present—she didn’t want to let down her friends and allies as her last act in life.
“You needn’t worry,” First said in a rasping, cheerful voice. “With you as my helper, worshiper, we will amaze them all. Amaze them! Oh, I will drink
so
much blood!”
Alphena blushed to hear the bragging. It was like listening to gladiators before a bout.
“Don’t talk like that,” she said in a low whisper. It was so
plebeian
! What if Corylus should hear?
Alphena glanced at her mother, who was walking away from the group. Was she going off to die alone?
Alphena felt a flash of insight:
I’m as much a lady as Hedia is. I don’t want to be a gladiator; I just want to have the
right
to become a gladiator. I’m a lady of Carce and I should have the right to do
anything
!
First’s ugly face twisted upward. The shell eyes were looking at Alphena, and the iron tongue quivered with laughter. “That’s not a very enlightened view, my worshiper. What would your philosopher friend think of it?”
“I don’t care what Pandareus thinks!” Alphena snapped. As the words came out, she knew that they weren’t true: she respected the scholar, though it would be hard to imagine a human being with whom she had less in common.
“And anyway, Varus feels the same way I do,” she added, defensively, though with more truth. “He just wants different things.
He
doesn’t want to plow fields or whatever plebeians do!”
“You are my worshiper, little one,” First said through gales of grunting laughter. “Why should I care what you do with those who do not worship me? Cut the throats of all of them if you like, so long as you feed me their blood!”
The nearest Ethiope was still two hundred feet from the point at which Corylus had said he would order the defenders to attack. She risked looking over her shoulder.
The Daughters were chanting again. This time the words Alphena heard were,
“Of all things, Time is the wisest, for it brings everything to light.”
The old lizardman and Pandareus squatted on their haunches, facing each other. They seemed to be chatting. Varus had walked closer to the Daughters, holding the book that Hedia had given him.
The Egg was brighter and sharper than Alphena remembered seeing it before, but she still wasn’t sure how far away it was. Even more than before she had the impression that it was spinning very quickly, faster than motes of dust in a windstorm.
“The Daughters are trying to bring the Egg into the Waking World so that it will hatch,” the idol said. “But they are the Egg’s servants, not magicians. They will not be able to hatch the Egg before its time.”
“But the Egg will be safe where it is, won’t it?” Alphena said. “The Ethiopes won’t be able to smash it, will they?”
“The Ethiopes cannot harm the Egg,” First said. “But when it
is
time for the Egg to hatch, there will be no Earth for it to hatch onto.”
Then, in a softer, almost wistful voice, First said, “I will drink well today. But when the Worms of the Earth come, I will perish as all things will perish, for the Worms have no blood. But that will be a later time. Now I will feast.”
“Ready!” Corylus called. Alphena faced around.
* * *
V
ARUS SHADED HIS EYES
as he watched the Ethiopes advance from the east. It would be very hot on this shore soon, though he and his companions would probably be dead before the heat became oppressive. He wondered how the Atlantean settlers had dealt with the problem.
He didn’t know what he ought to be doing. Everyone else appeared to have a purpose. Hedia was walking away from the main group. Varus couldn’t imagine what she had in mind, but he understood his mother too well to doubt that she was planning
some
thing.
Even Pandareus watched the proceedings with bright enthusiasm for new information and new experiences. He was focused on learning: the use of what he learned and the length of time he survived to savor it weren’t his concerns.
I’m not enough of a scholar myself to take that attitude,
Varus thought. The teacher’s greater age was part of the difference but, on reflection, not the whole of it.
Pandareus was the son of a successful farmer on Melos, an island noted to history only because the Athenians had massacred its entire male population five centuries earlier. By contrast, Varus was the heir of one of the greatest families in Carce, a city that through the drive and determination of its citizens had risen from rural obscurity to rule most of the known world. He and Pandareus were equal in intelligence and in their love of learning, but differing heritages shaped their attitudes.
The leader of the Singiri, Tassk, wasn’t facing the Ethiopes with his fellows. He approached Pandareus, nodded politely to Varus, and said, “Since both of us are too old to fight, master, I wonder if you would help me with a spell?”
“A spell?” said Pandareus. “I’m not a magician, I’m afraid. Perhaps you were thinking of my colleague here, Lord Varus?”
“Lord Varus has more important business than the small things that old men can accomplish,” Tassk said, flicking his forked black tongue toward Varus.
I suppose that’s a friendly acknowledgment.
“I am not a magician, either, merely an old warrior who has learned certain sounds,” Tassk continued. “But if you can repeat sounds after me, our voices may be able to help where our limbs no longer can.”
“My limbs never could have helped, I’m afraid,” said Pandareus, smiling. “But sounds are another matter. I am pleased to join you, Master Tassk.”
They squatted facing each other. Tassk began to speak syllables that sounded to Varus like chickens settling in for the night. After he completed a phrase by flicking his little finger, Pandareus repeated it with a skilled orator’s ear for inflection.
Varus presumed they were speaking words, though not in the Singiri language and not necessarily in the language of any living thing. He grimaced, wondering what Tassk meant by the “important business” that Lord Varus had, since at this moment the most important thing Varus appeared to be doing was casting a shadow on the sand.
The fog was growing thicker. It was a moment before Varus realized that this was not the sea mist that must drench this coast nightly. He was drifting out of the Waking World into the Sibyl’s realm, while hundreds of murderous half men poured down on him and his companions.
Varus smiled in his dream vision as he started up the familiar trail. He would do the cause of his friends and humanity just as much good if his soul were here as if it were in his physical body at the moment it was smashed with a stone axe.
The climb seemed steeper than on some previous occasions, and the shapes half-glimpsed through the fog were threatening even if they were only odd-shaped rocks. He wondered if he would feel pain if his psychic body was devoured by the elephantine creature with the head of a lion that seemed to be watching him as he passed.
If the situation arises, I will try to be philosophical,
he thought, and smiled more broadly. He was sure that his friend Corylus would face such a death with perfect courage, but he might not find as much humor in the prospect as Varus did.
The Sibyl was sitting on a bench cut from coarse volcanic tuff, much like the seat Varus had seen in what was called the Grotto of the Sibyl in Cumae. He had always suspected that the grotto was of recent construction, but perhaps he did the current priesthood an injustice.
“Greetings, Lord Magician,” the Sibyl said. He thought she was smiling, but her wrinkled face had any expression the viewer thought he should see.
“Greetings, Sibyl,” Varus said, looking down the other side of the ridge, toward the half bowl in which his body and his companions waited for death. Foreshortened and viewed from such an apparent distance, the Ethiopes looked like a column of ants swarming from their nest. “You have said that you are a creation of my mind. What will happen to you when my body dies there below?”
The Sibyl cackled. “Not all men die, Lord Magician,” she said. “Perhaps you will be one of those who never die.”
“Like Tithonous?” Varus said bitterly, thinking of the wrinkled grub to which the Dawn’s lover had shrunk because she gave him eternal life but not eternal youth. “That’s a myth.”
“Or like Herakles, who became a god,” the Sibyl said. “What is myth, Lord Magician? Can there be no truth in myth?”
“I’m not Herakles,” Varus said curtly. He was embarrassed to have implied that it was a fact that myths were meaningless rather than that he
believed
they were meaningless. That was bad logic, though he still believed he was correct in his assumption.
He could see the Egg more clearly than his physical eyes had done in the Waking World. It wasn’t spinning as he had thought, but something was moving inside the translucent shell. It cast sparkles of light like an array of polished jewels.
The Sibyl gestured toward the mountains forming the alcove. Varus followed her hand.
The sky changed. Two huge crystal forms, the Worms of the Earth, writhed beyond the black rocks, gnawing at something unseen. The beams of the rising sun passed through them unimpeded, but their bodies blazed with a foul internal light.
“They are not of the Waking World,” said the Sibyl. “Yet. But the magician Paris will break the barrier soon.”
“But why?” Varus said. “He’ll die too, won’t he? Won’t everyone die?”
“His Etruscan tribe had its time in the world,” said the Sibyl. “But that time is past. He knows he cannot return his people to greatness, and he chooses to destroy all men and all life rather than accept that reality.”
She laughed again. “The Etruscans were never as great as he imagines,” she said. “I well remember when their scouts reached the valley of the Tiber and found my kinsman Evander already there. But the destruction he envisages, that is real enough.”
Paris raised both arms as though praying to the mid-sky. To Varus’ present eyes, a ghost image of the round temple surrounded the Etruscan priest.
The sky cracked. The Worms, each a river of living crystal, flowed through. Plumes of dust rose from the desert beyond the black rocks as they began to eat their way toward the Egg. In the basin, Corylus was leading his band of defenders into the oncoming Ethiopes.
“Then I will be with my friends when that happens,” Varus said.
“Let the blessed man come down from the expanses of Heaven!”
cried the Sibyl.
Varus staggered as his spirit returned to his body. He could already see the glittering backs of the Worms above the surrounding cliffs; the shouts of the fighters came to him over the sea breeze.
The Daughters were chanting. Suddenly aware of what he should do, Varus walked toward them, holding the
Book
in his left hand.
It fluttered open by itself. All sound ceased. The Daughters became faint shadows as though Varus saw them from within a globe of smoky quartz. With him were the Egg, brilliant now, and, across the Egg from Varus, a slender female member of the Singiri.
“I am Princess of the Singiri,” she said, speaking Latin with perfect inflection. “Your friend the warrior Corylus saved me from torture. If you are willing, Lord Magician, I will help you save him and save your world, though it is no longer our world.”
“Your help is very welcome, Princess,” Varus said, remembering how Corylus had accepted the help of the Singiri warriors. He raised the
Book
a little higher.
The
Book
thundered words in two separate voices. The world beyond the globe shuddered with their power.
* * *
C
ORYLUS HAD PLANNED
to launch his sally when the leading Ethiope reached a particular protea growing about a quarter furlong in front of him. The plant was a clutch of fat green leaves on top of a stem that rose knee-high from the sand: it even looked like a marker flag.
The straggling Ethiope column plodded forward, reminding Corylus of a line of Sarmatian ox wagons rather than a squadron of cavalry. It was maddeningly slow. He remembered that the Ethiopes had two horny toes like cows, not a horse’s single hoof.