The Legions of Fire (51 page)

Corylus felt sunlight and the moisture in the ground. The dance exhilarated him as wine never had. Not even his greatest triumph on the sports field could equal what Corylus felt now. He laughed and felt the world laughing in the voices of his companions.

The earth cracked. A split ran jaggedly through and beyond the dancing
spirits. Prairie grasses waved and shuddered southward as the rock continued to break apart. The river chuckled and bounced into a new channel, directed by the nymphs linking arms in the former stream.

“There, darling kinsman,” said a sprite as she squeezed his hand. “We've helped you, haven't we? As no one else could have done.”

The haze between Corylus and the waking world was clearing, and the willow sprites were beginning to fade from his vision.
Maybe I've been asleep after all
.

“Thank you,” he said. He wasn't sure what he'd seen and what he'd merely dreamed. “Did you … I mean, has the river really changed its course?”

Instead of answering, the nymph turned her head and called, “Canina? Come here, darling. Our Corylus is going to need a reed for his flute.”

A girl with hair the color of verdigrised bronze minced over, her full lips in a pout. “Do you think you can give me orders, Salicia?” she said. Though she was speaking to the other nymph, her eyes watched Corylus sidelong.

“Of course not, darling,” Salicia said mildly. “But he does need you, you know. I didn't think you'd mind helping him.”

“I
don't
mind,” Canina said. “I just don't like to see people getting above themselves.”

She turned to Corylus and gave him a warm, false smile. “Take a lock of my hair, darling,” she said. “Here, I'll step close to make it easy.”

Corylus reached for his obsidian knife. Canina pressed herself against him, almost pinning his arm to his torso before he got the knife out.

“Careful!” he said, feeling his body tense reflexively. He pinched a lock of the bronze hair against the flat of the blade with his thumb, then twisted the edge against the strands to clip them off.

“There,” he said. “I've got—”

Canina took the lock of hair from his hand and tucked it behind his ear like a stylus. She kissed him on the lips, then stepped away with a triumphant grin at Salicia.

“Remember me, darling,” she said.

Salicia didn't say anything aloud, but her eyes smoldered. Her fingers played with Corylus's neck for an instant; then she unbent and said, “Now, kinsman, I think you'd better join your human friends. After all, you've succeeded—because of our help.”

“Yes, because of your—,” Corylus said. Before he got the sentence out,
Salicia too was kissing him. He started to put his left arm around her by reflex, but she vanished. The landscape was in sharp focus again.

He stood beside icy water bubbling raggedly southward. The east side of the new channel was lined with willow trees; roots had crept into a fracture in the bedrock and dug down, splitting it wide. Out in the Ice River, more willows had woven their roots and branches into a mat which diverted the current into the crack.

The shadows surprised him. Corylus glanced toward the sun and realized it was already the middle of the afternoon. His legs didn't feel as tired as they should if he'd been dancing for six hours, but he was light-headed, the way that much exercise would have made him.

The tribe—it must be all or almost all the members, adults and children both—was streaming toward him. They weren't driving their animals. Frothi, unmistakable for his red-orange beard, was in the lead, but Corylus could identify Nemastes and the Stolo also by their unique builds.

One of the women would be Sith.

Corylus lifted his pack. He must have succeeded in filling the “cup,” the task that Frothi had set him, but that didn't explain why the tribe was rushing toward him in this fashion.

The plain rippled. The tribesfolk staggered, many of them thrown to the ground as it heaved up from behind them. Steam blasted skyward from where they had been camped. Corylus rode the shock wave with his knees flexed; a moment later he heard the hissing boom of the eruption.

He dropped the pack. Carrying only the hornbeam staff, he began jogging southward.

There was a louder crash when icewater flooded into the heart of the ancient volcano. This time fire shot upward instead of steam. The orange flames wrapped together into a squat giant, who lowered down from the heavens.

The fire god raised a blazing sword. The landscape rocked with his hellish laughter.

M
ARON WAS SLIGHTLY IN THE LEAD
. When he stopped abruptly, Hedia put out a hand reflexively to keep from walking into his back.

“What is it?” said Alphena. “Ooh! Look at the flowers!”

Hedia
was
looking at the flowers. She could hardly avoid that, coming as she had from what was virtually a tunnel through the trees. The forest's foliage hadn't been uniform, exactly—out of curiosity, she'd begun to count
distinct shades of green and had quickly identified more than she could note on her fingers alone—but it had become as depressing as a foggy night would.

Here were red and orange flowers, purple and yellow flowers, and pink and white flowers. Their size and profusion were beyond anything Hedia had seen before.

Butterflies more than a foot across fluttered over the meadow, bearing stems down when they lighted to drink. Their wings were entirely golden, but the light showed whorls and points as though they were made of stamped foil. When the insects lifted, scales drifted away in glittering clouds.

“They're beautiful!” Alphena said, stepping farther into the meadow. She bent to sniff a flower, though the air was already sweet with mingled perfumes.

Maron shook his head as if to clear it. He'd been walking in a near stupor since they'd left the outskirts of the wizard's tomb. Hedia's smile held a touch of satisfaction: the faun may not have reached his limit, but he'd come closer to it than he'd probably ever expected.

“Come along,” he said gruffly. “This place may be harmless now, but it wasn't always so. We're best away from here.”

Hedia walked into the meadow. The great flowers bobbed about her waist, and the stems of the mixed grasses tickled her. The gorgeous insects fluttered off when she came too close, but they didn't seem to be inordinately afraid of humans.

There was—there had been—a house here. Two walls still stood to shoulder height, and the foundation course of the other two remained as an angled furrow through the flowers. The interior of what had been the building was overgrown, but Hedia glimpsed painted potsherds among the foliage.

“What's this, Maron?” the girl asked, walking toward the walls. Here and there a touch of painted plaster remained on the stones, but they appeared to have been set without mortar. “Who lived here?”

“Didn't I tell you to come away?” the faun said. He started out shouting, but the loud noise must have made his headache worse. He'd half lifted his club in frustration, but he relaxed before Hedia had to take a hand.

Still—

“Yes, leave the house alone, Daughter,” Hedia said sharply. “The sooner we're back in Carce, the better I'll like it. We don't have time for sightseeing.”

“Oh, all right,” said Alphena. She sounded disappointed, but she knew perfectly well that Hedia and the faun were correct.

She turned; as she did so, her elbow brushed what looked like a giant primrose. The butterfly which had been drinking there rose from the flower and circled above her, showering wing scales like droplets of sun. Alphena's face went blank.

“Daughter!” Hedia cried, running to the girl.

Alphena collapsed into her arms. Her pulse beat strongly, but there was no consciousness behind her eyes.

A
LPHENA FELT DIZZY
. Starting to topple forward, she put an arm out to catch herself. Instead of sinking into the sod, her fingers came down on a gravel path.

The dizziness passed; she straightened. The field was covered with thistles, not flowers, and the building in front of her was whole. She looked around: Hedia and the faun were nowhere to be seen, and the forest behind her was now of oaks and beeches rather than unfamiliar trees.

The walls were covered with beige plaster and the roof was shingled—which Alphena had never seen before. In Carce roofs were tiled, while the poorer sort of huts in the country were thatched. The windows to either side of the door were shuttered, but the door itself was open.

The woman who lay on the floor of the single long room had been stabbed repeatedly. The wall behind her, plastered like the exterior, was splattered with blood.

Storage jars had been leaning against the wall. All but one had been smashed, spilling their contents—grain and oil and beer. The insides of the terra-cotta jars had been painted with black resin to seal them. Dried vegetables, hams, and flitches of bacon which had hung from the roof beams had been slashed down onto the general ruin.

Alphena looked back. The attack must have been recent, because the odors of beer and fresh blood were still pungent. The enemy was gone, however, or at least wasn't creeping up on Alphena from behind.

Should I bury the woman?
Alphena thought. There weren't any tools inside, but there might be a shovel or pick in an outbuilding. She hadn't had time to look.

The woman's eyes opened. Alphena screamed, jumping back as she might have done if a spider had dropped from the ceiling onto her.

“Well, since you're here now, girl,” the woman said, “you must do me a service before you leave.”

“You're
dead
!” Alphena repeated.

The woman laughed. Blood that had oozed from her lips formed little bubbles during the horrible sound. She said, “Freyr's sword is in the celadon jar, girl. Take it out and cut my head off with it.”

“I don't understand,” Alphena said. “Why do you—”

“Do what I say, girl!” the dead woman said. “Do you want me to stand up and put the sword in your hands myself?”

“No …,” Alphena whispered, but she was speaking to the image in her mind rather than responding to the threat. She stepped into the house for the first time.

The transom was low because of the steeply peaked roof. When Alphena ducked to clear it, she felt dizzy again. Nothing changed around her this time, though.

She walked across the floor. Wheat kernels crunched beneath her boots; she tried to concentrate on that to take her mind off the stickiness of the blood. The woman's eyes followed her as she passed.

The undamaged jar was the same shape as the others, but it was made of pale green ceramic instead of terra-cotta. The wax which sealed the wide stopper had been impressed with a symbol Alphena didn't recognize: the series of spiky verticals could have been letters in an unfamiliar script.

She picked with her thumbnail at the wax; it had darkened with age and seemed as hard as the jar itself. Alphena thought for a moment, then found a fragment broken from another jar. She was careful not to get a bloody one nor to look back. She was very much afraid that the dead woman would have turned to watch her.

Alphena took a deep breath, then used a corner of the pottery to chip at the wax. She gouged out a thumb-sized chunk before the point of the shard broke off; she turned it and with a different corner broke out more.

The old woman laughed behind her. “You could smash the jar, you know, girl,” she said. “Do you think it matters in this place?”

“I'm doing what you said,” Alphena snapped. “Just be quiet, won't you?”

The woman laughed, but she didn't reply.

When Alphena had cleaned out the wax, she dropped what was left of the potsherd and tried to lift the stopper. It still resisted. She hit it with the heel of her hand. It loosened with a
clink
; then she could remove it.

The jar was empty except for a sword whose scabbard and belt seemed to be metal. Alphena lifted the hilt, expecting friction from the blade to bring the accoutrements along with it. Instead the sword slipped out alone, startling her with its beauty.

The room's only light came through the doorway, but the blade seemed to glow from within. As Alphena raised it toward the roof peak, a serpent of shadow ran from the rounded point to the hilt, then writhed up to the point again. She didn't know what metal it was forged from, but it wasn't heavy enough to be steel; it was perfectly balanced and looked sharp enough to cut a dust mote.

“What is this?” Alphena whispered. She had never seen anything so beautiful.

“It's Freyr's sword, girl!” the old woman said. “Just as I told you. Now, get on with it, won't you? Or do you want to stay here with me forever?”

Alphena turned, feeling her face go hard. She brought the sword back, judging the distance. The blade was longer than that of the infantry sword she normally practiced with, longer even than the cavalry-pattern weapon that it more closely resembled.

The old woman grinned. Alphena struck through her neck with a single clean blow, barely nicking the earthen floor the corpse lay on. Neck vertebrae crackled faintly. The sword edge was so keen that it could have whisked through cobwebs for all the effort the stroke required.

The head bounced away. The flesh sloughed off before it hit the floor the first time, and the skull crumpled to dust at the second. Where the body had been was a faint gray silhouette, rather like what would remain after a dummy stuffed with chaff had been burned.

Alphena felt herself slipping out of consciousness. She thrust her arm out so that she wouldn't fall onto the sword. Hedia was holding her, saying, “Daughter! Are you all right?”

Alphena opened her eyes; she was surprised to find that they had been closed. She was standing in front of the ruined house, and her hands were empty.

“Where's the woman?” she said. Had she been dreaming? “Hedia, was there a woman here? A dead woman?”