Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth (30 page)

The noisy rending continued for minutes longer. The demon was still, and Melino made no attempt to intervene.

At last the dog finished its business and stalked stiff legged back to the cave. One, then the other, outer head glanced back at Hedia and her companions. Each time the throats growled counterpoints like three saws cutting stone.

The dog disappeared into the cave’s interior. The mantis was spread over a wide area, mangled almost beyond recognition. Only the head and a few leg sections could be identified.

Looking around the clear area, Hedia saw fragments of previous victims: wing cases, bits of chitin, a giant stinger ripped from its place and lying forlorn with a portion of the poison sac still attached.

Hedia let out the breath that she had been holding unconsciously. The stench of the carnage was unfamiliar. It was no worse than an afternoon in the amphitheater, but it was different.

She looked at Melino and said, “Well? Can’t we just go around the dog? Keep outside the chain’s stretch, I mean?”

The demon looked at her.
She would be smiling if her face ever changed,
Hedia thought.

“The cave is Zabulon’s tomb,” the demon said. “The
Book
is with Zabulon.”

Hedia lifted her chin, showing that she understood the situation. She looked at Melino, expecting him to explain the next step. He said nothing; he even turned his face away to avoid meeting her eyes.

“Well, what are you going to do?” she said. Her voice was slightly strident. That wasn’t deliberate, but she didn’t attempt to polish away the overtones. “Strike the dog blind with your ring? Or kill him?”

Again it was the demon who spoke, saying, “Zabulon brought the dog to guard his body and to guard his
Book.
This one”—her eyes flicked over Melino—“cannot undo what Zabulon has done.”

“Well,
what
then?” Hedia demanded. “You have some plan, so what is it?”

“The cave was Zabulon’s workshop while he lived,” Melino said in a low voice. He seemed to be gazing up the sloping outcrop, but Hedia was certain that the magician’s mind was in a different place entirely. “It became his tomb when he died. He sits on the throne from which he worked his magic and his
Book
is in his lap. The dog which guarded the workshop while Zabulon lived now guards his tomb in death.”

“And?” said Hedia. “What do we
do
?”

“Demon, tell her!” Melino said.

“The dog cannot be harmed,” the demon said. Again Hedia caught a hint of something that convinced her that the demon was not so emotionless as Melino believed—or, anyway, as Melino stated. “Yet it is still a male dog. If a female in oestrus should run into the back of the cave, then the male would follow to the length of its chain. It would mate with the female for long enough that this magician could remove the
Book
from Zabulon’s hands and retreat to safety with it.”

Hedia looked from the demon to Melino. “You said ‘a female,’” she said. “But a dog, surely?”

“I can change you into a dog,” said Melino to the forest through which they had just passed. “For long enough, anyway, and change you back.”

He turned and cried in a fury of anger and embarrassment, “You won’t be harmed! It’s a dog, and if you’re a dog … Anyway, you won’t be harmed.”

Hedia looked at them both: the demon impassive, the magician wringing his hands in misery. She burst out laughing.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve been called a bitch in heat,” Hedia said, “but often enough, certainly. I suppose it’s only fair that I should become one in truth!”

She continued to giggle as Melino and the demon prepared their spell.

*   *   *

V
ARUS WATCHED AS THE OARS
dipped and swung back, sending swirls of bubbles through the clear water. The looms creaked in the rowlocks and water pattered as it dripped back into the sea. No one, nothing visible, was pulling the oars, but the boat slid forward.

Lucinus stood in the stern, holding the tiller of the steering oar. He didn’t seem to be aware of what his hands gripped. He was murmuring softly, but Varus couldn’t hear the words.

Varus didn’t want to hear the words. Lucinus was a magician; Gaius Alphenus Varus was accompanying him because he too was a magician. The thought offended him as a rational man and as a philosopher, but because of magic—and in part his own magic—he was here on a sea that
could not
exist.

Varus sat amidships, just ahead of the shelter of linen cloth carried on hoops of reed. The few clouds were as sharp edged as blobs of clotted cream. The sun at zenith was redder and larger than what he was used to except at sunset on a misty day.

Varus rose to look out over the bow; he touched the shelter with one hand, but he didn’t put his weight on the flimsy structure. Though he was careful to stay over the centerline, the boat wobbled.

Lucinus didn’t seem to notice. If the oarsmen did—Varus smiled—their concern was as invisible as their bodies.

There was nothing on the horizon ahead, but now that Varus was standing he saw what might have been an island far to the left.
To port,
he corrected himself, recalling the technical term. The black smear might have been anything, even a shadow, but surf against the shore raised a lacey white froth.

Varus shielded his eyes with both hands, trying to make out details in what was a blur no matter how hard he strained, though perhaps a greenish blur instead of simply black. They were going to pass well wide of the island, so it didn’t matter except as an object on which he could concentrate. Concentrating allowed him to trick himself into feeling that he was doing something productive.

Because his focus was so complete, it wasn’t until he felt the boat rock that he looked down into the water. Swimming through the swells within twenty feet of the rail was an animal with tan fur, a dog’s head, and a neck as long as a giraffe’s on a bulbous body.

It looked back at Varus with warm brown eyes. Flippers at the front guided the creature like rudders, but broad hind flippers drove it forward in up-and-down undulations like a whale.

Varus resisted the reflex to
Do Something.
There was nothing he could do except possibly overset the boat; and anyway, there was no need to do anything. The creature looked so friendly that perhaps the greatest risk was that it would swim closer and try to nuzzle Varus like a friendly puppy.

The creature lowered its head and dived into the sea. It was visible in the clear water for over a minute, shrinking and blurring but never deviating from its arrow-straight line. Had it been a long-necked seal?

Lucinus continued to mumble in the stern. He hadn’t noticed the creature, or at any rate he hadn’t shown that he’d noticed.

The oars continued to dip and slant and rise. Their shafts were long and bisected the small semicircular blades. Nothing, not even shimmers in the air, indicated the oarsmen, but Varus remembered the mowing horrors that had guzzled blood from the trench.

Will I ever see Carce again?
But that was a question anyone might ask while taking a sea voyage, and it was unworthy of a philosopher anyway.

The seal—the swimming animal, anyway—had seemed as real as the boat or as Varus himself, but the rock nearing to starboard had a misty outline and didn’t kick the sea away from its shore. A woman sat in a niche on the slope. Her lips moved as though she were singing, but Varus heard only a faint susurrus.

The woman’s mouth opened wider. Her teeth were blades with spikes at the corners of the upper jaw. Varus turned away. Even though he wasn’t looking, the almost melody rippled like fingertips on his backbone.

Varus wanted to ask Lucinus about the boat, about the great seal, about the siren if she was a siren, about everything that was going on. He couldn’t, because Lucinus was lost in a trance. If Varus
could
shake the magician out of his trance, the most likely result was that something undesirable would happen to the boat.

Varus grinned. The question of which particular undesirable thing would occur was at least as worthy of his attention as whether a rape victim should choose to marry her attacker without providing a dowry or if she should have him executed. That had been one of the subjects Pandareus had set for class debate a few weeks ago.

That world—the world in which Varus stood on the steps of the Temple of Venus the Ancestor and tried to convince his classmates of a point that he and they had no interest in—was a lifetime ago. It was farther from him now than this sea was distant from Carce and the Forum.

The sun was lower in the sky than it had been when they set forth from Sulla’s garden. Varus wondered whether a day here was the same length as a day in Carce. He was in a kind of reverie also. It wasn’t a trance like that of Lucinus, but Varus knew that his mind was in a state as unfamiliar as this sea.

Lucinus adjusted the tiller. Varus noticed that only because he happened to be looking sternward at the moment the magician’s hands drew the bar slightly back. Lucinus continued to mumble. His eyes were empty, though he blinked occasionally.

They would be passing a wooded island close to port. It would be so close, in fact, that if Lucinus hadn’t adjusted their course they would have piled up on the sloping shore.

Varus watched the island closely as they approached. There were bright flowers on the trees, some of them belonging to lesser plants that grew on the branches, and he thought he saw fruit as well.

The sun was touching the horizon. Even if the boat could continue through the darkness, Varus wasn’t sure that Lucinus could. He was wobbling where he sat, as much supporting himself with the tiller as guiding it; his lips were barely moving. It would be risky to rouse the magician from his trance, but it might be more risky still to let him go on in this state.

Varus ducked to pass under the shelter so that he could put a hand on Lucinus’ shoulder. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Straightening, he looked at the island again.

It crawled with serpents. There were thousands of them, wrapped around branches and writhing on the ground. Their wedge-shaped heads were lifted, and their eyes formed glittering constellations as they turned toward him.

“Ah!” Varus cried. He flinched back against the shelter and had to grab it to keep from falling over the rail. The boat wobbled, then steadied.

Varus got his breathing under control. Lucinus didn’t seem to have noticed either the snakes or his companion’s reaction to them, but Varus no longer doubted that the magician was aware of his surroundings.

The sun had set, leaving a red smear on the starboard horizon and smooth purple-blackness to port. Neither stars nor moon was visible, at least this early in the evening.

They were approaching an island covered with pine trees. As best as Varus could tell in silhouette against the dark sky, it was larger than the isle of serpents.

The magician was motionless. Varus pursed his lips and half-knelt, gripping the railings. He could only assume that Lucinus knew what he was doing. Certainly shouting in panic wasn’t going to improve the situation.

The invisible oarsmen shipped their oars. The boat crunched up a shingle beach and stopped. Varus rocked forward, but the impact was gentle.

Lucinus let go of the tiller and slumped forward. Rather than crawl under the shelter, Varus climbed over the railing and splashed to the magician through the water. The sea was no more than knee-deep even at the stern.

“Help me,” Lucinus whispered. His head and forearm rested on a thwart. “Carry me into the woods.…”

Corylus would be better at this,
Varus thought as he lifted the magician as high as he could. He backed away from the boat. Lucinus tried to swing his legs over the railing, but in the event Varus simply dragged him.

Varus staggered upward, supporting the magician as best he could. The trees made a thick wall at the tideline, ten feet up from the edge of the sea at present. Varus pushed between what he thought were two of the smaller ones, crackling through branches that scratched his arms and calves.

He tripped over a tree root and fell. After panting on the ground for a moment, he lifted himself onto his elbows to take stock of the situation.

The magician’s feet were into the brush, though barely. It would do.

The sky was purple velvet, but the sea was taking on a yellow-green phosphorescence. The boat rocked slightly now that the weight of its passengers no longer weighed it into the gravel.

I’ll have to pull it higher up the beach,
Varus thought.
In a moment.

He was seeing images in the ship’s hull. They were becoming clearer and beginning to move.

*   *   *

“
Y
OU CONFER A GREAT HONOR
on our ancient family, Lady Alphena!” said Aulus Collinus Ceutus, bowing as deeply as his paunch allowed. He was short, broad, and—despite having put on weight since the time he stopped commanding his own grain ships—looked impressively muscular. “Whatever your noble self desires will be done!”

Ceutus was his Illyrian birth name. He had tacked it onto the name of his wife’s undoubtedly ancient family, while Aulus would be the first name of the citizen of Carce who had freed the slave Ceutus, or possibly the citizen who had freed the slave ancestor of Ceutus.

To receive a senator’s daughter, Ceutus had dressed in a scarlet cloak with gold tassels, a toga—an uncomfortable garment that hardly anyone wore except in Carce, and even in Carce only on formal occasions—and cutwork sandals of red leather. The leather verged on orange and clashed with the cloak, which had a purplish cast.

Mother would say Ceutus looks vulgar—as of course he is,
Alphena thought. She grinned. I
like the outfit. And so would most gladiators.

“My father and I thank you, Ceutus,” Alphena said, hoping to sound dignified if not regal. “I believe you already know my colleague, Master Pandareus? And Master Paris, of course.”

Queenliness was for dignified beauties like Hedia, but Alphena had begun trying to act like a lady instead of a tomboy. Or like a gladiator, if she’d been having a bad day.