Out of the Waters (56 page)

As before, Corylus had laid the weapons belt on the deck in order to take off the breastplate. He drew the orichalc sword in the same sweeping curve that sent its tip toward the African. He shouted and managed to twist in the air, reinforcing Corylus' belief that he had been a sailor.

The last hand's-breadth of the blade carved through the fellow's ribs and lung. Blood droplets sailed from the sword tip and the victim's mouth spewed a red mist.

The other westerner was older and less agile, but he chopped with the stone axe while Corylus was off balance. Corylus grabbed the railing with his free hand and jerked himself clear.

A large chip of wood flew from where the axe struck the deck. The fellow might not be a real warrior, but he was clearly strong and willing.

Corylus thrust. The orichalc sword didn't have enough of a curve to make it clumsy. The point entered above the westerner's breastbone and came out through his spine in the middle of his back. The blade was sharp and as stiff as a granite obelisk.

Corylus leaped to the quay to finish the business. Too late he saw that the third westerner, the one with a stuffed bird in his hair, was sucking on the stem of his murrhine pipe.

A puff of smoke wreathed Corylus. His muscles froze and he toppled backward onto the ship.

The magician sang a short phrase, smoke jetting from his mouth and nostrils with the syllables. Two Servitors reached down to grasp Corylus' upper arms.

“Stop them,” the sprite said.

The Ancient wailed. The sound started high and rose, a jagged edge of sound. The western magician shouted with surprise and leaped toward the ship.

There was a
crack!
like nearby lightning. A Servitor vanished in a shower of glittering dust.

There was a treble
crack!
All the glass figures were sand and dust finer than sand. The shrilling cry ended. Corylus still couldn't move.

The Ancient jumped to the railing. The westerner had teetered to a halt when the Servitors vanished. He blew smoke toward the Ancient and began chanting.

The Ancient reached out, gripping the magician's head with both long arms. He twisted sharply.

There was a muted pop as the victim's spine parted. The Ancient laughed and hopped onto the deck again.

Corylus got up. He didn't need the help of the long, golden-furred arm that the Ancient offered him, but he took it anyway.

Pandareus, gagged but sitting upright, watched from the back of the cart.

 

CHAPTER
XVIII

Alphena hadn't thought she could sleep, but of course she had. This time she must have slept through the herbal smoke when Uktena lit his pipe, but she awakened at last because her skin prickled and the hair stood up on her arms and legs.

She opened her eyes to a haze of crackling light. It shrouded a form that was not the shaman's. Then Uktena expelled a final puff of smoke and thrust the pipe stem under his sash.

Without seeming to notice her, he started up the ladder. Ghosts of his body hung in his wake when he moved. They grew paler and finally dissipated.

Alphena hadn't taken off her sandals when she lay down, but she had loosened the laces so that her feet wouldn't swell uncomfortably during the night. She tightened them now without waste motion and got up to follow. The copper axe was in her hand.

She couldn't have described how she felt. She climbed, ignoring the jabs and flashes of numbness where her skin touched the wood which Uktena had touched.

I don't feel any way. A thing happened and I am doing a thing in response. The rain falls and the seed sprouts; but the seed feels nothing
.

Clouds piled high in the western sky, red with the light of dawn. Lightning flashed within them, bringing out momentary shades white to dark gray; Alphena heard no thunder.

She caught up with Uktena. The ground around him popped and sizzled, and he dragged a train of glittering insubstantiality.

The three sages and some of the villagers watched from the edge of the forest beyond the planted fields. Wontosa's hair had been repaired with a weave shorn from someone else; the stuffed bird was different, also. He flinched when Alphena looked at him.

Does he think that
I
have powers?
she wondered. Although—

She wriggled the axe in her right hand. It wasn't a magical talisman for her, but it did give her power over such as Wontosa.

The crystal fortress had already split open. Procron lifted from it, bathed in purple light that hurt Alphena's eyes. She shaded them with her hand, wishing she had her broad-brimmed hat. She had lost it from the gryphon's back while battling the Minoi. If she'd been thinking, she could have replaced it as she had the sword which she lost at the same time.

The sword was important. The hat was not.

She tried to walk close beside Uktena, but the power spreading from him drove her back like a fierce wind armed with sand grains. Grimacing, squinting, Alphena lowered her eyes and turned her shoulder to the discomfort. Even so, she had to stay twenty feet away from him.

Uktena probably didn't notice. He hadn't paid any attention to her since she awakened.

They reached the shoreline; Uktena dropped the pipe as before. A gentle wave rolled up the sand. When it touched the shaman's bare feet, the water disintegrated in hissing sparkles—not steam, though the gleaming motes stung when they touched Alphena's calf.

Spreading, swelling, the shaman moved outward. He was no longer Uktena, and she wasn't sure that he was her friend or even mankind's friend.

He's our defender, though. He's putting himself between us and our enemy
.

Purple light ripped from the Minos, lashing the shaman and the sea. Water boiled away in a thunderclap, but the huge bulk continued to advance. The protecting white fire partially concealed the creature within, but Alphena could see enough of its writhing immensity to feel sick.

Clouds filled the eastern sky, coalescing out of clear air as suddenly as vinegar curdles milk. Black and lowering, they rushed toward the shore to meet the cloudbank that hung above the land. The storm broke in full earnest: rain and howling winds bent the tops of pine trees and sent a hut flying out to sea like a huge bird.

The thing that had been the shaman engulfed Procron despite the unrelenting sheets of purple flame spitting from the diamond skull. The monster had grown to the size of the island from which it came.

The white glow had dimmed so that Alphena could see clearly what Uktena had become. Some of the heads were of beasts she had never seen before, and some could only be demons.

Tentacles spread toward the Atlantean. Hissing purple light burned them away, but they regrew and redoubled like the Hydra's heads.

Alphena fell to her knees. Windblown rain slashed her, washing away her tears. Like the thousand arms of what had been her friend, more tears sprang from her eyes.

Inexorably, the monster's bulk forced Procron back. The painful purple light didn't slack, but its punishment no longer slowed the advance of what had been the shaman. Where the flame now touched the creature, flesh bubbled and swelled and changed still more horribly, but it continued to crawl on.

Alphena unlaced her heavy sandals. They would help to wading depth, but she couldn't swim in them. She would be ready.…

Procron burst upward from the encirclement. He began to accelerate like a dropping stone. A hundred tentacles rose and snatched him down. They stripped him of his armor the way a cook shells a crayfish, flinging away the gleaming bits. Even under a storm-covered sky, the fragments shone like the tears of the sun.

The fight is over
.

Procron suddenly blazed with shimmering violet energy. The gripping tentacles shrivelled and dropped away.

The Atlantean hung shimmering in the air for a moment. As fresh arms reached for him, he flung himself back into his spire.

The monster surged forward like the tide driven in by a storm. The doors at the top of the fortress slapped closed like the shell of a clam reacting to danger. What had been the shaman covered the spire and mounded above it.

How much larger can it grow? How much larger can my friend Uktena grow?

All the world grew transparent to her eyes. Alphena saw Procron in his crystal spire and saw the fortress in the monster's swollen body like a pearl in the oyster's mantle.

The crystal
shifted
. It could not break free in space, but it stretched into another dimension; fading, losing color and form, becoming a sparkling ghost of itself.

The creature made a convulsive movement like a whale swallowing. Even the ghost vanished. Procron and his fortress were cut off forever from Alphena's world.

The monster, swelling still greater, trembled. The storm paused, the clouds frozen in place and the winds still.

Alphena rose to her feet. She shouted, “Uktena! Come back to me, my friend! Come back!”

The monster slumped toward her like a wall of sand collapsing. She stood with her arms crossed. Heads and tentacles drew into the vast body and the body shrank.

“My friend!” Alphena shouted.

Uktena took a step toward her and collapsed into the surf. She thrust the axe helve through her sash and waded out to get him.

The sea spit light and occasionally stung her flesh like sparks from a bonfire. Uktena's compact body wobbled on the swell. He was facedown.

Alphena hurled herself against the water, but her tunic dragged her back. She should have taken it off with the boots before she left the shore.

The tide was going out. It was taking Uktena with it.

Alphena untied her sash and snatched the tunic over her head to drop on the waves. The axe was gone also. That didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she reach Uktena before he drowned. She swam toward him, wishing she had spent more time in the swimming bath even if that meant less at sword practice.

She didn't know how long it was before she reached the shaman. He turned his face to breathe, but she wasn't sure that he noticed her presence. She rolled him onto his back. Kicking and stroking with one arm, she began to return to the shore. The storm was passing, though the wind still whipped froth from the wave tops.

Alphena felt momentarily weightless; the water about her glowed white. Everything returned to normal, except that six flounders rose to the surface and began a round dance on the tips of their tails.

The fish dived back toward the bottom, their white bellies gleaming. Alphena continued to stroke shoreward. Maybe she had imagined the fish, and anyway it didn't matter.

She didn't realize how close they had come till her knees scraped sand and bits of shell from the bottom. She gasped in shock and managed to swallow water.

She squatted because she wasn't able to stand. She laid Uktena's head in her lap to keep it above water. He was breathing, but he didn't seem to be aware.

Awareness would come. He was breathing. That was all that mattered.

Alphena didn't know how long she squatted there with her eyes closed, getting her breath under control and easing the white ache of her right arm and shoulder. The surf only came to her ankles at its flux and retreated well out into the sound.

She heard voices. After a further moment, she raised her eyes. The three sages were coming toward her, chanting in unison. Forty-odd people, probably the whole village of Cascotan, waited at the high water mark.

“Help us,” Alphena said. “He's all right, he's just tired. Help us back to the kiva.”

Still chanting what must be a prayer, the sages lifted Uktena from her. Hanno and Dasemunco took the shaman's arms. Wontosa, carrying the pipe, walked ahead of them. They paid no attention to Alphena.

She got up and wavered. She should have put her hands down to help herself, but she hadn't wanted to appear weak.
I could scarcely appear weaker than I really am
. She followed the four men higher up the shore.

Wontosa said, “Here. The sand is dry, so he won't be able to take power from the water.”

He began to fill the murrhine pipe with herbs from the embroidered deerskin pouch. Uktena had left it behind in the kiva.

“What are you doing?” Alphena shouted. She stumbled forward. Arms caught her from behind—the women Sanga and Lascosa; the latter the mother of the thing Procron had created in the marshes.

“He's too dangerous,” Sanga said. “Don't you see? He has to be sent away or we'll never be safe!”

Uktena sprawled on his back on the sand. The sages squatted around him and continued to chant. Wontosa puffed on the pipe he had taken from the greater magician.

“He saved you!” Alphena said. Her vision blurred with anger and tears. “He saved you all!”

“He's a monster!” Lascosa said in a venomous tone. “He didn't save my Mota. He would destroy us all!”

The chant reached a crescendo. Wontosa blew a great jet of smoke over the torso and head of his exhausted rival. Uktena's form blurred.

“No!” Alphena shouted as she tore loose. She flung herself over her friend's body.

The world shifted like a mirror tilting. She was alone, falling again through the emptiness from which Uktena had rescued her.

But now he cannot rescue even himself
.

*   *   *

L
ANN RAN HEAVILY.
He was faster when he dropped down and used his knuckles as forehooves, but even then Hedia had no difficulty keeping up. He didn't seem comfortable on all fours, however. He regularly lurched upright and tried to run on two legs like a man.

He wasn't a man, poor dear, except in his mind. And not really all of his mind, though enough to satisfy Hedia. She focused on the virtues of the men whom she liked, and Lann had most of the virtues which Saxa lacked. Between them, they made a truly wonderful man.

Hedia smiled. She'd found over the years that if she tried, she could like most men.