Air and Darkness (5 page)

The big slave blinked as though he didn't understand the simple Greek. Varus realized that was possible, but it was more likely that Minimus didn't understand the concept of a chief wanting to meet strangers without a threatening entourage at his back. Furthermore, Varus hadn't shouted at him the way a chief was expected to do when he corrected a warrior.

“Go back to Lady Hedia,” Varus repeated, still without raising his voice. It was very hard to keep one's philosophical calm when people listened to a speaker's tone and volume instead of the words he was speaking.

Minimus blinked again. “Yes, Lord Varus,” he said reluctantly as he turned away.

To make sure that his would-be protector hadn't changed his mind, Varus watched for a moment then resumed walking toward the Indians. The gardeners were backfilling around the vine they had planted. To Varus' surprise, the old man stepped away from the delegation and came toward him.

“Good day, revered sir,” the old man said in good Greek. “I am Bhiku, in the service of the Rajah Raguram and his master, King Govinda. May I ask what brings a magician of your eminence to this place?”

“I beg your pardon?” Varus said, startled into saying the first words that came to his mind. “I am Gaius Alphenus Varus. Who told you I was a magician?”

Close-up the Indian was even older than he had seemed at a distance. He was barefoot, and his only garment was a thin cotton singlet that had been washed so often that it was almost translucent now. Varus could see Bhiku's ribs through the fabric.

The old man glanced down and chuckled. “I look like a victim after the sacrifice, don't I?” he said, plucking the singlet out from his scrawny chest. “Nothing left of me but the tongue and the guts. But as for you being a magician, Gaius Varus—”

Bhiku looked Varus in the face. His own brown eyes were bright and alert.

“—I am in a small way a magician also, a very small way compared to you. But I see you for what you are, as surely as I could see a burning village if I were standing beside it.”

“I, ah…,” Varus said. Memories stirred in his mind, demons and monsters and perhaps gods whom
someone
had seen and things that
someone
had done. The person seeing had been Gaius Alphenus Varus, and the person working the terrible magic had been that Gaius Varus also … but—

“That wasn't me!” Varus said, snarling at himself rather than at the little man before him. Bhiku gave no sign of having heard, save by an almost invisible twitch of his right eye.

“I'm sorry, Master Bhiku,” Varus said. “I think of myself as a scholar, a philosopher if you will. Things have happened in my presence that I could not explain better than as manifestations of magic, but I have no conscious power over such things. I don't, I certainly do not, hold myself out as a magician.”

For the most part, the members of the Indian delegation were ignoring Bhiku and Varus. The three richly dressed Indians looked profoundly bored. They stood apart from their own subordinates as well as from the half-dozen members of Sentius' household under the direction of an understeward.

The exception was the woman, who watched Varus intently. Her skin was as dark as aged oak and contrasted sharply with her white garment. She had no wrinkles or visible blemishes.

Varus started to break eye contact with the strange woman, but he caught himself before his muscles obeyed the thought.
I am a citizen of Carce,
he thought.
Why should I allow myself to be cowed by a stranger while standing in the ancient lands of my people?

“Who is the woman, Master Bhiku?” he asked without turning his head. After a moment she walked toward the pair of gardeners, putting her back to Varus.

“Our lords' lord, Govinda,” said Bhiku, “is not a trustful man. He is a great magician as well as the greatest of kings, but his duties prevent him from making the long sea voyage that was required to come here for the first time. Rather than send a magician to carry out the rites he wishes, he sent two of us.”

Varus felt his face stiffen. “What rites would those be, Master Bhiku?” he said.

“Govinda wishes the god Bacchus to be summoned to this place,” the old man said agreeably. “You might think that priests rather than magicians would be the proper parties to carry out the rites, but this is not the judgment of my master's master.”

Varus grimaced. “I see,” he said. “I don't set much store by religious rites myself.”

“In that,” Bhiku said, “you and I are of the same opinion as Govinda.”

The old man coughed, then continued, “He sent myself and Rupa, whom you asked about, to carry out the rite and to open a passage through the Otherworld by which we and our colleagues will return. Rupa is a member of the household of Ramsa Lal, a rajah subject to Govinda, but Ramsa Lal and Raguram, my master, are on terms just short of war. If indeed war has not broken out in the months since we sailed.”

The old man smiled. Varus found Bhiku's personality engaging, though their contact had been too short for him to be able to support his reaction with logic.

“Govinda thinks that because our masters are rivals,” Bhiku said. “Rupa and I will make sure that the rites are carried out as he wishes.”

The gardeners were watering the vine from a brass barrel. The container was certainly from India. Varus wondered if the water had been transported also, in furtherance of the “rites” to which Bhiku had referred.

“You told me what Govinda thinks, Master Bhiku,” Varus said. “What is
your
opinion?”

Bhiku laughed, a cackle that could have been threatening had it not been for the old man's cheerful expression. He said, “People rarely ask me what I think. They want to know what I can do for them, only that. But what I think, Gaius Varus, is that I do not need to be threatened to carry out the duties I agreed to do in exchange for my keep.”

He plucked the thin fabric away from his ribs and grinned like a frog. “Very modest keep,” he said wryly. “And as for Rupa…”

His eyes followed the woman. She appeared to be examining an outcrop on the slope above the altar.

“Govinda is a very great magician, beyond any question,” Bhiku said musingly. “But I would not care to guess how powerful Rupa is, or what her real purposes might be. I have heard it said that she is ancient. I am an old man, but it is said that she is older than I am by hundreds of years. To the eye she does not appear old.”

“She looks,” said Varus, “as though she were made of polished chert. Smooth and so hard that steel could strike sparks from her skin.”

“Yes,” said Bhiku. They were speaking with lowered voices, though there was no one near them, nor, in all likelihood, anyone who would have cared about what they were saying if they had been shouting. “It may be that her soul is that hard also.”

Then, in a still softer voice, Bhiku said, “I think that Rupa may be searching for a word that will split this world the way a knife cuts a pat of butter … and that if Rupa should find that word, she will speak it.”

The gardeners stepped away from the vine shoot. One spoke to the officials. The bearded man in blue made a peremptory gesture toward Bhiku, who bowed in obedience and started toward his fellows.

He turned as he walked away and said over his shoulder, “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Gaius Varus. I hope that we may meet again.”

 

CHAPTER
II

“Please sit down, Master Corylus,” said Saxa, gesturing him to one of the two backless folding chairs in the office. The curving legs had been carved from burl elm and polished to bring out all the rich figuration. Saxa's seat was ivory, the curule chair on which he sat in the Senate and at other public events.

“Thank you,” Corylus said quietly as he seated himself. Death masks of Saxa's more illustrious ancestors formed a frieze around the top of the walls. In many cases the wax had blackened with age. Against one sidewall stood a cabinet with drawers in the lower portion; above were display shelves protected by a bronze grating.

Bronze busts of Homer, Vergil, and Horace stood on top of the cabinet. Vergil's head was wreathed in laurel.
Today is Vergil's birthday,
Corylus realized.

He had met a man—a sort of man—who might have been the living remains of Vergil, the greatest of poets and according to rumor the greatest of magicians as well. That incident seemed now to have been a dream, like so many other incidents of Corylus' recent life. They had been real at the time, though, real enough to have meant his death and the death of the very world.…

“I'm in a difficult position, Master Corylus,” Saxa said, clasping his hands in his lap and then changing the grip as he clasped them again. “I suppose you know that I have the honor to be the Republic's Governor of Lusitania? Yes, of course you know that.”

Corylus lifted his chin in silent acknowledgment. He had rarely spoken with Varus' father. It had been a disconcerting experience every previous time, and the present occurrence was that and worse.

On the one hand, Saxa was wealthy even by the standards of the Senate. He had the power of life and death by virtue of his position, and his enormous wealth could gain him almost anything available within the empire over which the Republic ruled.

On the other hand, Saxa was a little man who dithered and babbled and whose great store of knowledge was as disorderly as a squirrel's nest of sticks. Saxa's worst punishment was that he had enough intelligence to understand how completely he lacked wisdom.

The latter Saxa was the man talking to Corylus at present, but the wealthy senator stood behind the speaker. Corylus was naturally courteous, but he had to remain aware that discourtesy, real or misconstrued, to this man might literally be fatal.

“I am carrying out my duties in the province through the agency of a vicar, Quinctius Rufus,” Saxa said, staring at his hands. “Rufus is a Knight of Carce with a great deal of experience in administration. He has commanded a legion on the Libyan frontier, so he's used to difficult conditions of the sort that service in Lusitania entails.”

“A wise choice,” Corylus said mildly. That was true in two fashions: Lucius Quinctius Rufus was well suited to govern a mountainous province on the Atlantic coast, and Saxa himself had no business trying to govern anything, not even a two-man board game like Bandits.

“Yes, yes, I thought so,” Saxa said, looking confused and increasingly agitated. “But I've been hearing rumors that Rufus is behaving badly, very badly indeed. That he's looting temples, stealing the wives and daughters of citizens of Carce, and doing all manner of awful things.”

“I don't…,” Corylus said, then paused to rephrase his words. “That is, I don't know Quinctius Rufus personally, but his reputation is that of a sober and trustworthy man. And besides, you have other agents in the province, surely?”

Corylus had checked with his father when he heard of Saxa's arrangements for the practical aspects of his duties—as opposed to ceremonial matters carried out in Carce. It wasn't something anyone had asked Corylus to do; nor did he mention what he was doing even to Varus. It had just seemed like the sort of precaution that you took when you were in dangerous country. Politics had as many potential ambushes as there were on the east bank of the Danube.

Publius Cispius had never served under Rufus, but his contacts in the army included many old soldiers who had. Rufus hadn't been enthusiastically liked—one veteran had said that the windblown desert sand had more personality than the commander did—but nobody complained about his honesty or competence.

“Well, that's
it,
” said Saxa miserably. “There are reports from Upper Spain that say Rufus has bribed all the officials in his province, even the Agents for Affairs who report directly to the Emperor. And if it's true, well, it would be very bad for me.”

Corylus lifted his chin in agreement. “Yes, I can see that,” he said. He still didn't know why the senator was talking to him, but he certainly understood the cause of the older man's agitation. “Everyone will assume that Rufus is funneling much of the money to you, and—”

“Oh!” said Saxa, sitting bolt upright in shock. “Oh, surely they wouldn't think that!
Me
steal
money
?”

His amazed innocence was quite real, but most people didn't know Saxa as well as Corylus had come to do through the friendship of Varus over the past few months. Saxa had as little concern for money as Pandareus of Athens, Corylus' teacher, did.

Saxa had more wealth than a team of accountants could figure in six months of working, while Pandareus owned little but the clothes he stood up in and a modest number of books. Despite what an outsider would have considered to be huge differences between the men, neither one thought in terms of money.

“There are evil-minded people in this world, Lord Saxa,” Corylus said. “Even, I'm afraid, in the Senate.”

“Oh, that's
so
true,” said the senator. “Atilius Priscus, a truly great scholar whom I'm proud to call a friend—”

Priscus was indeed a great scholar. His acquaintance with Saxa had come through his scholarly friendship with Pandareus and the respect the teacher had for Gaius Varus. Unlike his father with his magpie mind, Varus combined memory and organization with a wisdom that came from personality rather than age. For the son's sake, Priscus socialized with the father.

Saxa had seen his son save the world. To Saxa, however, the fact that Varus had gained him the friendship of truly learned men was a greater blessing still.

“Priscus, as I say, warned me that the stories originate with Lucius Sentius. The Governor of Upper Spain, Romanus Pulcher, is a colleague of Sentius in the Indian Ocean trade, and Sentius himself has been bribing people to spread rumors about what's going on in Lusitania.”