Air and Darkness (21 page)

Pulto thumped along behind. Alphena knew the veteran's knees were bad, so this hike must be agony to him. He wasn't having trouble with the ground, though.

The creek must be nearby to the left. Corylus was following his sense of direction and going straight for the bridge, rather taking the paths.

Horns blew from several directions, one of them directly ahead. Alphena heard shouts and music from behind them. A flute skirled, but its notes were almost lost in a joyous harmony warbling from women's throats.

They burst out onto a tract covered in scrub grass and small bushes. The underlying rock was too close to the surface to support more substantial growth. Sheep-sized outcrops thrust up in several places, but the ground was closer to being flat than most of what they'd seen since they left the coach.

A company of Praetorians was forming on their standard to the right. Though the light was fading, their armor and the steel points of their weapons caught the sky's red glow. The cornicine, wrapped in the tube of his curved horn, blew signals to the other scattered companies of troops.

“They're treating this like a riot!” Corylus said. “They're in a single rank. From what Manetho described, there's too many coming for one rank to stop!”

“Who spread 'em out by companies?” Pulto said. He didn't sound winded, but Alphena thought she heard a touch of pain in his voice. “By Hercules' balls! In woods like this!”

The cornicine blew again as Corylus led his group around the right edge of the armored line. The Praetorians held their javelins ready to throw. Alphena heard non-coms snarling commands to individual soldiers, dressing the line.

They seemed ready for a fight. There was none of the nervous anticipation that had radiated from the company Alphena had seen earlier. Perhaps those troops had settled also, now that they had a real enemy to fight.

A wild whooping and yelling burst from the woods. Alphena looked over her shoulder. Pulto wore a grim expression and carried his sword openly in his right hand; he too was glancing back. Pandareus—
I forgot him!
—was only a stride behind the veteran. Though old, the teacher was wiry and in good condition. He walked between libraries in Carce and lived in a fourth-floor tenement. His expression was interested rather than concerned.

Pouring from the wood line was the horde that Manetho had described: humans wearing mottled animal skins, mixed with fauns, satyrs, and at least one centaur. They shouted in delight, waving pinecones mounted on fennel stalks—thyrsi, which Alphena had seen in processions to Isis through the streets of Carce.

Leading the mob was a man in a chariot. The pair of leopards that drew it were bigger than any lion that Alphena had seen in the arena.

The charioteer waved a torch that lit the whole scene as brightly as the sun, throwing knife-sharp shadows behind the Praetorians. Alphena threw her hand up to shade her eyes.

“There!” cried the charioteer. “That's the woman Rupa described. Bring her to me!”

He's pointing the torch at me,
Alphena realized. For a moment her eyes locked with those of the man in the chariot. A tiny jolt touched her mind, the mental equivalent of a spark jumping from silk to her finger on a dry day. She jerked her head around.

“Run!” said Corylus, but Alphena was sprinting for the woods ahead. She wasn't wearing a sword—her role today was to be Lady Alphena—but she would grab one when they reached the vehicles. There was one in the coach for her and a store of extra weapons in both the wagons.

She didn't think a sword would do much good against this army, but it would make her feel better.

The wind had sprung up from the east, bringing perfumes fuller than those of flowers. She had heard Corylus and her brother talk of Alexander's army marching back from India through fields of frankincense and myrrh. Perhaps that was happening here: the invaders had come from a land of incense, and the breeze carried the crushed memory of their passage.

“Ready spears!” shouted the centurion in command. Despite the uproar, his deep bellow was clearly audible. “Loose!”

From the corner of her eye Alphena saw the Praetorians' right arms swing forward; nearly a hundred javelins flickered out in flat arcs. A satyr leaped into the air, spinning end over end like a circus act before he fell back. A javelin had transfixed his body just below the rib cage; the point and half the shaft stuck out from his back. As he pirouetted, the metal butt spike protruding from his belly winked also.

There were other wounds in the Bacchic flood—a Maenad pinned to the Bassarid behind her in a terrible parody of lovemaking, a faun who continued to play his pipes for long seconds after a javelin had transfixed his skull. Half the spears twisted into vine shoots in the air, though, and struck harmless blows. When they fell to earth, they immediately began to sprout.

A seed of emotion had sprouted in Alphena's soul since she locked eyes with the charioteer. As she breathed the rich electric wind, the feeling inside her swelled like the branches budding in the woods through which they ran, pink and white and the tiny yellow-green flowerets of oaks.

“There's the bridge!” said Corylus. “The running water may help!”

“I'm not going,” Alphena said. She wasn't sure whether she spoke the words or they just formed in her mind. “I belong here.”

She turned and would have run back to the vine-crowned god in the chariot, but Pulto wrapped his left arm around her. “Careful, girlie,” he said.

Corylus grabbed Alphena's wrist as he'd done when they saw the portal begin to form. “Alphena!” he said. “Come on now!”

People, some of them Praetorians who had thrown away their shields and helmets, boiled from the woods. The men and women who had come through the portal waved thyrsi; some of the Praetorians brandished flowering branches that they must have ripped from trees as they danced past.

They know!
Alphena thought. She turned—Pulto willingly let her go; he must think she had stumbled—and threw her right arm around Corylus.

“Yes, take me!” she said. She tried to kiss Corylus. The red pulsing flame of lust was devouring her body.

Corylus let go of her wrist and caught her by the neck from behind. He peeled her off him one-handed and pushed her into Pulto.

“Get her out of here!” Corylus shouted. “Now! The spell has her and if we don't stop her I'll be
lucky
to be crucified when it's all over!”

“No, don't leave me!” Alphena said, straining toward Corylus with both hands. Pulto's arm had no more flex than an anchor line does.

Pulto sheathed his sword with a skill that Alphena would have appreciated in other circumstances. Holding her with both arms, he lumbered onto the suspension bridge, causing it to pitch wildly. Pandareus was already across.

Alphena screamed with frustration, but nothing she could do affected the veteran's obedience to his commander's son. When she last saw Corylus, he was on his knees beside one of the suspension hawsers of the bridge. He'd drawn his big army dagger.

*   *   *

R
AMSA
L
AL AND MOST
of the remaining troops trotted toward the structure ahead, but a horseman rode back to Varus. He said in bad Greek, “Come along, you. The rajah wants you in his private reception room when you arrive.”

“We will be glad to see the rajah when we arrive,” Varus said, deciding to be polite. “If you'll bring us a skin of wine, it will speed our steps.”

“If I tie your wrists to my saddle horn, it will speed your steps!” the horseman snarled. “Or perhaps I should borrow a lance and prick you on?”

“Did your master the rajah tell you why he wants to meet with this foreign wizard?” Bhiku said. He added something in Indian; Varus suspected that he was translating his own question to make sure that the horseman understood the warning.

“I am too pure to soil my spirit by riding on a lower animal,” Varus said, trying to sound lofty through a dry throat. “Therefore I travel at the speed of my legs.”

Bhiku's quick jingle of Indian was certainly a translation this time.

The horseman jerked his hand away from the pommel of his sword where it had strayed. “I will find wine,” he said. He rode after the remainder of the squadron at the best speed his tired horse could manage.

“I wonder if he'll be back?” Varus said. “Do you suppose he thought I was going to turn him into a toad?”

“I've never seen that done,” said Bhiku. He raised an eyebrow.

“You're not going to see me do it, either,” Varus said drily. After a moment's thought he added, “And I'm not too spiritual to ride a horse, either. I'm just too awkward to do it without falling off.”

The battlemented walls were eight feet high; the square towers on either side of the gateway rose four or five feet higher. The whole structure was built of red sandstone blocks a foot in either dimension.

The double gates were fully open, probably their normal state. The squad of spearmen on guard lounged under a marquee strung from three trees outside the gate; the only sign of anyone in the towers was the end of a long bamboo bow propped against the battlements.

To Varus' surprise, the horseman who had been their escort reappeared leading a pair of servants in bleached white garments. Their clothes were clean and new in contrast to the foot soldiers' garb, and silk sashes held up their loose trousers. They were carrying a brass bottle wrapped in what seemed to be sacking.

The horseman pirouetted in front of Varus and Bhiku, then drew his sword and gestured with it as he shouted to the servants in Indian. “They've brought wine cooled in wet moss,” Bhiku explained. “Apparently Hanwant, our escort, wasn't looking forward to the chance of seeing the world through the eyes of a toad.”

“There are so few enlightened men nowadays,” Varus said, taking the cup a servant offered him. The pale yellow wine made his mouth tingle pleasantly. There was only one cup, so he passed it to Bhiku still half-full.

“You don't need to do that!” the horseman said.

“I choose to share with my colleague…,” Varus said, wondering if Hanwant could catch the haughty tone he was using. “As we share the dangers of the powerful magic we work.”

The servants were ready to refill the cup. Varus checked with Bhiku by raising his eyebrow, then waved them off. They walked through the gateway together; Hanwant hesitated a moment, then rode past so that he could guide them through the courtyard.

“I was tempted to have another cup of wine,” Varus said quietly. “But that had been enough to clear my throat, and I don't want to be muzzy when I talk with our host. I normally drink my wine mixed with two or three times its volume of water.”

Bhiku laughed. “I normally drink my water stagnant,” he said. “I don't think I've had wine a dozen times in my life. But it certainly made me feel better today.”

The outer wall enclosed a grassy park in which horses grazed and trees of shapes unfamiliar to Varus grew. There were outbuildings—stables and sheds, but also a dome of colored marble supported by slender pillars. The massive two-story palace ahead would be the focus of any visitor's attention, however.

The horsemen were dismounting at the arched double-height gateway. Grooms led the horses toward the stables at right angles to the palace facade, while the soldiers themselves went inside.

On the ground floor the palace windows were small, perhaps only arrow slits. Those on the upper floor were larger but were shaped into twin arches separated by a pillar so that only a child or very slender adult could slip through the openings.

“Do you have any idea what Lal wants me to do?” Varus asked quietly. Hanwant was well ahead and anyway seemed completely disinterested in what the magicians might discuss among themselves.

“I do not,” said Bhiku. “I have been away for many months, remember, as we traveled to Carce by ship. Only after we reached Polymartium and planted the vine were we able to enter the Otherworld and return home more quickly.”

To the right of the palace was a low featureless wall that stretched over a greater width than the building proper. Bhiku noticed his companion frowning toward it and said, “That is the tank which fills in the monsoon season and supplies the palace now during the dry season. I didn't notice reservoirs in Italy, but I wasn't looking.”

“We have aqueducts from springs in the hills,” said Varus. “The winds don't bring rains to Italy as writers say they do here.”

I wonder if I'll still be in India when the monsoons come? I wonder what magic Ramsa Lal wants me to perform?

Varus laughed. He grinned at his companion and said, “I don't believe that I'm a wizard in the sense that Mistress Rupa is or even you are, Bhiku.”

Varus was answering a question the sage might have been too polite to ask. “I couldn't have opened a gate to the Otherworld as you did or one from it. But regardless of whether or not I'm really a wizard, I can say with certainty that I'm not a fortune-teller. The only way I can learn the future is by living into it.”

Hanwant waited for them impatiently at the courtyard entrance. When they joined him, he drew his sword and turned, bellowing something in Indian. Occasionally he used the flat of his sword to bat someone out of the way—or to bat someone who was possibly close enough to have gotten in the way.

“He's telling everyone to make way for the great foreign wizard,” Bhiku said. He wore a slight smile.

“I notice that he's picking particularly ragged spectators on whom to demonstrate his importance,” Varus said. “I've noticed similar things in Carce when my servants are escorting me through a crowd.”

The rectangular courtyard was bare earth, more than half-covered by shanties and traders' kiosks. The stonework on the interior was plastered white. There were only a few places where the covering had flaked away from the red interior.