Air and Darkness (22 page)

Porticos encircled the inner face of the walls; the pillars on the upper level stood in slender pairs instead of the massive single columns below. The archways throughout were formed in multiple scallops instead of the single smooth arc with which Varus was familiar.

Hanwant was leading them to an exterior staircase at a corner of the courtyard. Two men with drawn swords—they might have been members of Lal's mounted escort—guarded the base of the stairs under a marquee of blue silk with gold tassels.

“This way, honored lord,” Hanwant said as they approached the stairs. He spoke to the guards in Indian. Their replies were curt, and the verbal temperature rose abruptly.

Bhiku leaned close to Varus and said, “Hanwant wants to take you in to the rajah. They say they're to admit the foreigner—the rajah didn't tell them you were a wizard—but he said they know nothing about rabble from Nivas' troop, which would be Hanwant. Let alone filthy beggar scum.”

Bhiku bowed to Varus, grinning.

“Then I'd best see if I can get us all out of the sun,” Varus said. Raising his voice, he said, “Noble Hanwant! Noble Hanwant, step aside if you please!”

Pandareus would be pleased with my tone of authority,
Varus thought. Training really did count.

Hanwant
did
step back, looking surprised. In a normal voice, Varus said, “Thank you, Hanwant. Your dedication will be noted.”

The guards were watching in puzzlement. To them Varus said, “You may escort me to the rajah.”

They looked at each other in hesitation.
Do they even speak Greek?

“You may guide me, or I will turn you into toads and find my own way,” Varus said, still calmly. He raised his hands at shoulder height, palms toward the guards. They scrambled in opposite directions. One of them dropped his sword in haste.

“Lead me and my colleague to Lord Ramsa Lal, Hanwant,” Varus said, nodding.

I'll be lucky if I don't burst out laughing when we meet the rajah,
he thought. And Bhiku seemed to be in the same state.

*   *   *

C
ORYLUS PLACED HIS LEFT FOOT
on one bridge hawser and drew his dagger upward in a sliding stroke with both hands. The dagger jerked free, having severed most of the several cords twisted to make the rope; a few strands remained, but Corylus ignored them to shift to the undamaged hawser.

He rotated the dagger to bring the other edge up. Sawing rope—these appeared to have been woven from rye straw—dulled a blade almost as quickly as trying to cut stone.

Since the light of the charioteer's torch had bathed him, Corylus saw everything with unnatural sharpness. The fibers of the rope were individually clear, as were the beard hairs of the Bassarid a hundred feet away.

The latter shouted, “Io, Bacchus!” between gulps from the wineskin in the crook of his left arm. His right hand held a thyrsus. Corylus was in no mood to mock that as a weapon, having seen a Maenad plunge her similar pinecone through a Praetorian's shield.

Despite the clarity with which he observed his surroundings, Corylus felt that his mind was clouded by a red haze. It brightened and sank back as his heart beat. He was keyed up, blazing with emotion but focused on his task. Nothing mattered but his task.

He was blazing with lust.

Corylus drew up on the dagger. For a moment nothing moved; a straight pull was useless on this hawser, even with a sharp blade wielded by a strong young man. He tipped the point slightly down so that the edge would saw upward, but his nervous jumpiness caused him to tilt too much. He cut through only half the rope's thickness. He replaced the blade to finish the cut.

“Io, Bacchus!” warbled a chorus of voices. Corylus looked up as he finished his cut. A Praetorian carrying a wineskin staggered toward him. His free arm was around a naked Maenad, and a blond-bearded faun hugged him close on the other side.

Behind Corylus, the bridge rattled into the gulley. The stream wasn't a real barrier, but the previous Bacchic incursion had stopped at running water. Corylus could at least hope that this one would also. Pandareus and Alphena would be safe.

“Drink with the god!” the Praetorian said, thrusting his wineskin toward Corylus. The man was in his mid-thirties. Though he had lost his helmet, he wore his sword on his left hip instead of his right like a common soldier: he was a centurion, very possibly the centurion commanding the company that the throng had overrun.

“Not tonight, friend,” Corylus said, pressing the man back with his left hand. Corylus already felt drunk from the perfumed atmosphere; the gods alone knew what a draft of this magical wine would do to him.

Corylus sheathed his dagger without looking down at it, then groped for the cornelwood staff he'd dropped to free both hands. He felt no desire to kill anything at this moment. Logically considered, being given wine was only a slight problem compared with what could result if he offered lethal violence to a thousand or so drunken revelers—but logic had nothing to do with what he
felt
.

“Well, put this in your mouth, then!” the Maenad cried, lifting her right breast and pushing the erect nipple toward him. She wasn't young, but she was fit and her eagerness itself was a drug.

Lust overwhelmed Corylus. He stood, shoving the centurion so fiercely that the fellow fell backward. Corylus wasn't conscious of what his arm had done.

The Maenad pressed against him, raising her mouth to his. For an instant Corylus saw and felt not the woman groping him now but rather Alphena: her face and naked body, and the eyes hot with lust.

“No!” he cried, breaking free. He turned to leap the gulley—he could do that in his current state—to find Alphena and give her the violent rogering that he now wanted as much as she had.

“No!” Corylus shouted again, to himself this time. If he'd still had the dagger in his hand, he might have plunged it into his own chest in horror.

Corylus ran along the edge of the creek, toward where the throng had entered the Waking World. Just now he didn't trust himself to rejoin his companions on the other side of the water.

Scores of Bacchic revelers capered and called as they filtered through the broken woods. The light was bad and nobody seemed to pay particular attention to Corylus anyway—he was one more running figure in a landscape filled with assorted figures running. A handsome youth in a fawn skin tried to kiss him as they passed in opposite directions, but that was the sort of thing that might happen any afternoon at a public bath.

The effect that the Maenad's passion had on Corylus was wearing off, though there was a dull ache in his groin. His head was buzzing also, but that had been true since the charioteer's torchlight had fallen on him. He was thinking clearly, but his mind lay beneath a surface of seething emotion.

Corylus dodged behind a vine-covered maple to avoid a centaur who was galloping toward him. As the centaur swept past, hooves hammering the ground, Corylus realized that the creature hadn't been attacking. A woman—worn and not young; probably a farmer's wife—rode the centaur with her arms around his human torso. The centaur had twisted around so that they could kiss passionately as they charged off in whatever direction they happened to be going at the time he turned.

“Hello, Cousin,” said the woman at Corylus' side.
A Maenad and I didn't know she was there!
he thought as he turned, not frightened but angry with himself for not having seen her before she spoke.

She was the maple sprite, not a Maenad. She looked like a slender woman and was very beautiful. Her shift of green/scarlet/gray was translucent from an angle, transparent when the light of the rising moon fell on the fabric squarely.

“Hello, Acer,” Corylus gasped, leaning forward. He braced his hands on his bent knees. He glanced back to make sure no one was chasing him—there were scores of people in sight, but none of them seemed interested in Publius Corylus—and began to gasp through his open mouth. He was weak and trembling, though he knew from experience on the Danube that his strength would rush back the instant he needed it again.

The sprite ran her fingers lightly through his hair and gave a throaty laugh. She said, “I'm glad you came tonight, Cousin. I'm in the mood for company. When Ampelos visited a few days ago I met a satyr who was a lot of fun, but I think you might be even more fun.”

Corylus straightened, though he continued to breathe through his mouth. “I can't do that now, Acer,” he said. He had his gasping under control, or almost under control.

The sprite laughed again and reached under his tunic to caress his erect member. “Of course we can do that!” she said.

Corylus moved her hand away. “I mean I have to get back to my friends, dear one,” he said. “Who's Ampelos?”

Though Corylus' body was certainly ready—he was a healthy young man;
of course
his body was ready—lust no longer lay so heavily on his mind that its weight warped all his thoughts. He seemed to be getting back to normal, or he hoped he was.

“Ampelos is leading the troupe,” Acer said. She tried to wriggle her hand past Corylu's again, though she wasn't fighting his strength. “He's usually with Bacchus, but he's come himself this time and before.”

Light flared as the chariot bounced toward them through the brush, accompanied by scores of leaping figures. “That one!” cried the charioteer, and pointed with the torch.

He's named Ampelos, not Bacchus,
Corylus thought, but that didn't matter at the moment.

He wasn't concerned. He had his breath back. The chariot couldn't jump the gulley, and Corylus was sure he could outdistance any of the throng except possibly the lightly built fauns. The cornelwood staff was an answer to them, needs must.

“Got to leave!” Corylus said, turning as he spoke. He intended to take two strides and then leap the gulley. He jerked to a halt an inch into the air over where he'd started.

The grapevines that hung from the maple tree were wrapped around his torso and left ankle. He hadn't felt their touch until they brought him up short. He reached for his dagger with his left hand, but another vine was about his wrist. His right hand was bound to the staff.

“Acer!” Corylus cried, but there was nothing the tree sprite could do. The throng encircled him. The chariot drew up. Ampelos leaned over the side, holding out the torch.

Acer put her arms about Corylus, ignoring the vines wrapping his limbs and torso. “I think I'll send you to my sister, since you're such a sweet boy,” she said, and kissed him on the lips.

Light flashed like the sun from a silver mirror. Corylus gasped.

He was in the arms of a different sprite. The maple tree was free of grapevines, and the sky above the woods was a richer, sharper blue than ever in the Waking World.

Corylus was in the Otherworld. There was no sign of Ampelos and his minions.

*   *   *

H
EDIA AND
B
OEST HAD WALKED DOWN
from the top of the ridge in silence until they were within fifty feet of the house and the tree from which Gilise hung suspended with his back to them. There Boest paused, digging his toes into the green turf. He stretched his arms out and back, keeping his right hand cupped so that Paddock didn't have to move.

Hedia stopped a pace farther and looked back. “Would you like me to release him?” she said.

“You've come back?” Gilise called. “You took long enough! Come, let me down!”

He flailed his arms, apparently trying to rotate so that he could look at her. Mostly he jounced up and down, making the branch quiver.

“No, I'll take care of that,” Boest said quietly. He set Paddock down on the damp grass and walked with a long, easy stride to the hanging man. The toad hopped after Boest, moving in flat hops that covered ground more quickly than Hedia would have guessed.

“Listen, you bitch!” Gilise shouted. “You gave your oath! Demons will gnaw your bones in the Underworld if you don't free me!”

Hanging hasn't improved his temper,
Hedia thought, smiling faintly. Or his senses, since he obviously hadn't heard Boest's reply.

Boest took the sash between the thumb and forefinger of his big right hand. He rotated his grip slightly so that Gilise turned to face him.

“Boest!” Gilise said.

“Hello, Gilise,” Boest said. “I've come to take my valley back. Is the handcart still in the shed?”

“Boest, you can't kill me!” Gilise said. His voice was as shrill as the north wind through the tops of frozen fir trees. “The woman swore she'd let me go! I gave you your soul back!”

Hedia joined them. Paddock sat nearby on the grass, looking more alert than she had imagined a toad could look.

“I'm not going to kill you, Gilise,” Boest said. “You and I are going to give back all the souls you've stolen, not just mine. Lady Hedia says the bottles are in the lean-to, is that right?”

“Yes, that's where they are!” Gilise said. “We'll take them back, just as you say. But let me go now, darling; this is agony, what she's done to me!”

“I'm going to the shed,” Boest said to Hedia. “I'll be back in a moment. But leave him as he is, please.”

Hedia nodded. She watched Boest stride toward the outbuilding. She felt uncomfortable with the situation, though she didn't think Boest was the sort of man to lie.

“Lady, you have to let me go now before he comes back!” Gilise said. “He'll kill me, you know he will, and you promised you'd let me go!”

He made a desperate attempt to grab her garment, but shooting his arms out made him rock back on the silken cord. She took a half step backward.

“He'll kill me!”

“You deserve to die,” Hedia said.

“Boest will not kill you, Gilise,” said Paddock. “He gave his word, and his word is good.”

Boest returned from the shed, pushing a handcart. It squeaked abominably: the wooden axle was rubbing the hubs of the two wheels without lubrication.