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Authors: David Drake

Out of the Waters

BOOK: Out of the Waters
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T
O
S
HARON

Who read the galleys on
Hammer's Slammers
so long ago that they really were galleys, not page proofs

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dan Breen continues as my first reader. He catches typos and mental lapses—dropped plurals, subject and verb agreement, not infrequently missing words; that sort of thing. More important, he highlights some really clumsy constructions. I have tendencies to be both overprecise and elliptical, sometimes in the same sentence.

Dorothy Day and my webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, archive my texts in distant places and search them when I don't remember a name (for example, “What was the name of the night doorman?”). If an asteroid hits Pittsboro, Tor will still be able to retrieve my work in progress. (Unless it's a really big asteroid, of course.)

For the most part, I took my quotations of
The Book of the Dead
from the E. A. Wallis Budge version, which I've owned and used for many years. I needed one particular phrasing which did not appear in Budge. Karen found it for me in a Normandi Ellis paraphrase. I could cite many similar examples, from this book and from earlier ones, of how valuable it is to a writer to know a librarian.

While I was writing the very last sections of
Out of the Waters,
the screen of my first-line laptop got wonky because of a loose connection. A minor thing, I assumed. It isn't. My son, Jonathan, determined it was a job for factory repair and immediately ordered a replacement, which he then set up for me.

I have said that I'll continue writing even if I need to chip my words out on a block of stone—and I will. I am very fortunate that my family and close friends include professionals at all levels of the IT industry, making it unlikely that I
will
have to resort to chisels.

I don't care what anyone else thinks of the content of my fiction, but I run my nonfiction—including the author's note which immediately follows these acknowledgments—by Mark Van Name for a useful outside viewpoint. Mark is more circumspect in what he says than I am (almost everyone is more circumspect than I am), but he's very good at pointing out places where people who don't know me will misunderstand what I'm saying and also places where I might in a few days wish that I had chosen to be a little less brutally frank.

I do not always do what Mark suggests, but I listen to him. Only a fool would not.

My wife, Jo, continues to maintain the nest in which I live and work. The bills get paid, appointments are remembered, and I eat extremely well. When I'm working, which is most of the time, I focus very sharply on the work itself. That's good for the work, but it would be disastrous for life in the broader sense were it not for Jo's unflagging support.

My thanks to the people above and to all the other friends who make my life not only possible but worthwhile.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Out of the Waters
is set in a fictional city named Carce (pronounced CAR-see). Things occur in this novel and in all The Books of the Elements which did not happen and could not have happened in the historical Rome of
A.D
. 30. This is a fantasy novel,
not
a historical novel with fantasy elements. I'm trying to keep that fact at the front of readers' minds by referring to Carce (in homage to
The Worm Ouroboros
by E. R. Eddison, by the way).

That said, I have hewed closely to Roman culture and to events from Roman history in creating the background of the series. The literary works which occur in the series (including the
Sibylline Books
and
The Book of the Dead
), and the quotes from them, are real.

The Native American myths which form the core of
Out of the Waters
are real also. I found the story of Uktena very powerful when I first read it. In reworking the story for my use here, I at last understood why it resonated so strongly with me.

While you should not assume that everything in the series is historical truth—it isn't—you
can
be sure that I research the details which go into my fiction. This brings me to another reason for setting The Books of the Elements in Carce, not Rome.

Most educated people have an idea of what ancient Rome was like. Much of what they think they know is false. I find it distressing to have folks write (and even phone!) me to complain about some “mistake” in my fiction when in fact my statement was correct.

For example, I've learned not to refer to Roman shields as being plywood, though in fact they
were
plywood and archeologists use “plywood” to describe the material from which they were molded. If I say the shields were “laminated wood,” people don't complain (and I hope that I avoid breaking their suspension of disbelief).

Whereas I could say that the legions of Carce go to war wearing topcoats and tails without anybody claiming I was historically wrong. (They might think I was a complete twit—
I
would think I was a complete twit if I did something so silly—but that's a separate matter.)

My purpose in writing is to tell interesting, exciting stories that many people will take pleasure in reading; my role is not to educate readers. I hope, however, that those who read The Books of the Elements will get glimpses of a culture very different from our own—but which is nonetheless one of the major supports on which our culture has been built.

Still, I'll be satisfied if you tell me that you had a good time reading
Out of the Waters
. I certainly hope that you do.

D
AVID
D
RAKE

www.david-drake.com

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Epilogue

Air and Darkness
Teaser

Tor Books by David Drake

Copyright

 

CHAPTER
I

Varus sat upright at his father's side in the Tribunal—the patron's box—over the right edge of the stage in the Pompeian Theater, jotting notes in the waxed memorandum book on his lap. Staring at him from the vast bowl of the theater was an audience of thousands: perhaps twenty thousand all told, including the slaves standing—they weren't allowed to sit—in the aisles and the surrounding colonnades.

It was disquieting to look out at so many human faces, though he knew that only a handful of them were even vaguely aware of Gaius Alphenus Varus. Indeed, very few of the spectators would pay any attention to his father, Gaius Alphenus Saxa: senator of Carce, replacement consul, and destined governor of the province of Lusitania on the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

The spectators didn't worry Varus as much, though, as the vision forming in his mind: a very old woman, seated on a throne. He wasn't sure if she really existed or if she ever had existed; but he knew why he was seeing her.

Varus was too well schooled in philosophy to lie, even to himself, about his father's personality. Saxa was a cultured and well-read man, but not a particularly wise one. He had chosen to commemorate his consulate by putting on a mime written for the occasion:
The Conquest of Lusitania by Hercules
.

The replacement consul sat on his gilded, high-backed chair, beaming with pleasure. If the emperor had been present, the Golden Seat would have been his. The Tribunal wasn't the best place from which to view the three-hundred-foot-wide stage, but it
was
the best place in which to be seen by the audience.

The citizens of Carce would probably have preferred watching exotic animals being slaughtered by the hundreds and perhaps even convicted criminals being devoured by cats and bears, but Saxa was wealthy enough that the present spectacle was keeping the audience in its seats.

Varus had once imagined he could become a great poet, one whose readings would fill a hall and might even fill this theater. His first public performance had been a disaster, not so much in the eyes of those attending as in his own.

On that occasion, the audience had been of freedmen and hangers-on of his father's wealthy friends, sent as a courtesy. They had expected to be bored. Varus himself was too intelligent and too well taught …

He glanced over his shoulder toward his teacher, Pandareus of Athens; the scholar nodded crisply in reply. He sat in the Tribunal as a mark of Saxa's gratitude.

… not to understand how bad his epic was when he heard the words coming out of his mouth.

Under the careful direction of two handlers each, the Cattle of the Sun—big animals with bright bay hides—were marching across the stage. Though they had been gelded and their horns sparkled with gold paint for this show, they were of the same Iberian stock as the bulls which not infrequently gored to death the lions and tigers set to fight them in the arena.

While even more dangerous animals sometimes appeared on stage, these steers were nothing to have loose in the belly of the theater. That was especially true since the seats in the orchestra were reserved for senators and their families.

A steer bellowed peevishly and lashed its tail. The actor playing Hercules stood at the back of the scene on a “rock”; he twitched noticeably. It was unlikely that an angry animal would crash through the spiked iron fence protecting the orchestra, but one certainly might knock down the mountain of plaster on a wicker frame and then start in on the actor who had been standing on it.

The audience would love it,
Varus thought, smiling faintly. He wasn't the sort of aristocrat who sneered at The Many, the common people; but even at seventeen he was enough of a philosopher to be wryly amused by the difference between his tastes and those of his fellow citizens of Carce—including the tastes of many who were just as wellborn as the Alphenus family.

Varus gestured Pandareus to slide his chair up a few inches. The Greek had been careful to take a subordinate place rather than imply his equality with citizens of Carce, but that had now been established. Varus wanted to talk with his teacher, the only person in the box who shared his own passion for truth.

Saxa had a capacious mind, but it was like a magpie's and his learning was slanted toward the marvelous. The more remarkable a report was, the more likely he was to believe it.

Varus preferred sober facts. His smile quirked again. It disturbed him that some of the events he'd recently seen—and participated in—were more amazing than the fantastic myths which charlatans retailed to his father.

Pandareus advanced his chair to the railing. He and the others in the Tribunal sat on backless folding chairs with fabric seats. They were identical to the chairs of the senators in the orchestra, except that the frames were of oak or fruitwood instead of ivory.

BOOK: Out of the Waters
4.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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