The Legions of Fire (27 page)

If these are really birds
.

“Friend ravens?” Corylus said as he approached the waiting birds again. “What are your names?”

The ravens hopped to face him. “You ask a great thing, youth,” one said.

“A greater thing than you know,” said the other. “A greater thing than you have any right to know!”

Corylus stopped, still-faced. “I am Publius, son of Publius, Cispius Corylus,” he said, raising his voice so that it rang through the silent trees. “I am a citizen of Carce, born in the province of Upper Germany. What are your names, fellow creatures?”

Their croaks rattled like stones bouncing down a cliff face. Corylus thought they might be laughing.

“You may regret it later,” said the one to the other.

“Regret, regret,” replied the other. “And yet I will still speak my name. Corylus, I am Wisdom, and my companion who worries about what might have been—”

“I am Memory,” said the second raven. “Others may forget the past if they wish to or must, but the past will not forget them.”

“Are you content, Corylus?” said Wisdom.

“Yes sir,” said Corylus.
How do you tell the sex of a raven?
But the birds were already airborne, curving toward him to gain height and then swooping off in the direction they had been going before.

The ground rose as they went on. The whole surface glittered, as if the crust of snow had grown thicker. It didn't feel cold, though, and Corylus didn't crunch through it as he had initially.

He wondered if his feet were growing numb. He could still feel the shock of each stride, though.

The ravens arced up and down, often crossing in the air. When they landed they took a hop or two; they were heavy birds and didn't stop where they first touched. Their eyes gleamed like polished coal when they looked back.

The rhythm of the run numbed Corylus's mind. His consciousness blurred into a tunnel directly ahead of him; the edges were at first white and gleaming like ice, then gray, and finally a pastel aura that shifted as his heart beat.

The trees were shapes that he avoided. The snow on their crinkled bark sparkled like diamond dust. The trunks became crystalline pillars, then columns of light. Eventually their light merged with greater light and vanished.

Corylus jogged on. He would run until he dropped. He would run forever.

The ravens were no longer flying; they appeared ahead of him, then were gone and reappeared. “Once the Midworld ended in ice,” said one. “Stopping all, burying all. Ice could rule forever.”

“But not this time,” said the other raven. “The Midworld will burn. Fire will lick the heavens, fire will drink the seas. Everything will burn.”

“Unless Corylus prevents it,” said the first. “But he won't. His memories of friendship will prevent him from saving the future.”

“And the fire will rule all,” said the ravens together in croaking laughter. “All things, forever!”

Corylus saved his breath for running. He didn't have anything to say, not really; until he knew more.

He knew nothing. And he had to run.

The ground had become a surface of pastels that wobbled into one another so subtly that Corylus was never sure when one color became another. He thought he was still climbing. His legs throbbed and his breath rasped through his mouth like drafts of fire.

The fire will rule all
…, he heard, but that might have been memory.

Ahead was a white haze, unguessably distant. The ravens flickered present and gone, barely distinguishable from the black spots that fatigue sent dancing across his vision.

Corylus glanced over his shoulder, careful not to lose his stride and trip.
How far could I fall?

At first he saw nothing behind him but stars and the blackness of night. When he blinked, he noticed the blue dot—no bigger than a lentil but still larger than the hard spikes of the constellations.

Corylus faced the bright haze before him again and ran on. The ravens were just ahead, close enough for him to call to. He had nothing to say, and he had no breath to say it with.

His legs were logs of wood. He was afraid to slow to a walk, afraid that he would think about where he was and what he was doing. There were no answers, but he was a citizen of Carce, a soldier of the Republic, and he would go on until he died.

Corylus burst through the whiteness into a forest of larches. The twigs had their spring buds, but the air was chill and melting traceries of ice overlay the leaf litter.

Before him was a hillside whose thin soil had slipped in gray patches from the rock beneath. A cave entered it. The ravens waited to either side of the opening.

“I told you he could follow,” said the bird on the right to its companion.

“Enter the cave now, Corylus,” said the other. “You won't come so far and not go the last of the way, will you?”

“He might be wiser if he did,” said the first. “But he will go in, and the future will come. The fire will come!”

“The fire will come!” repeated both birds together, then slipped into croaking laughter.

Corylus strode forward. He had to keep moving or his legs would stiffen into agonizing knots. He
had
to move.

The cave opened about him. Its walls were so full of light that the interior was brighter than the forest outside. The ceiling was higher than the hill outside.

The only furniture within the cavern was a high-backed chair in the far distance; on it sat a figure in a gray cloak. His features were largely hidden by his wide-brimmed traveler's hat, but the spill of his full gray beard left no doubt of his gender.

The ravens flew past Corylus, rising on a flurry of strong wing beats before gliding in interwoven curves toward the distant throne. They croaked, the sound diminishing as their black shapes faded against the light. When they croaked again, it was in a harsh whisper.

Corylus had paused in shock when he passed the entrance. He sighed and started forward, wondering how long it would take him to reach the seated figure. The air of the cavern had a bluish tinge as though the light were passing through thick ice as Corylus had occasionally seen on the Rhine, but he no longer felt cold. Perhaps that was a sign that he was freezing to death, though—he smiled grimly—he didn't feel sleepy, and his lungs still burned with the effort they'd just expended. He wouldn't mind a little numbness there, and in the throbbing muscles of his thighs as well. Then—

Corylus was standing at the foot of the throne. There hadn't been a transition: in the middle of a step he was facing the seated man, who glared from his one visible eye.

He was tall but not a giant. He gripped the cross-guards of a long sword, still in the scabbard; its round point rested on the floor between his feet. Though the cloak hid his body, his fingers suggested gnarled tree roots rather than the bulging muscles of a bull.

Wisdom and Memory perched on the chair-back to either side of the man's head. They opened their beaks as though they were ready to laugh, but neither words nor croaking issued. Their tongues were black.

“Sir!” said Corylus, bracing himself at parade rest. “Why have you brought me here?”

The bearded man laughed. The sound boomed like surf during a winter storm and there was no more humor in it than that.

“I haven't brought you, boy,” he said. “You came of your own choice. If you want to go back without hearing me, I'll let you do so now.”

“You asked
our
names, Publius Corylus,” said Memory. “Other guests have asked the name of our lord, and he has told them.”

“But he put a forfeit on them in exchange for answering their question,” said Wisdom from the other finial of the chair-back.

“They paid the forfeit and rued every moment of their lives to come,” said Memory, cocking one eye and then the other toward Corylus.

The birds laughed. The sound reminded Corylus of the croaking he had heard one winter when he'd found ravens feasting on the carcass of a deer.

“Your lordship,” he said in a clear voice to the bearded man. He didn't bow. “I am Publius Corylus. What is it that you can tell me about the danger facing the Republic?”

“A wise youth,” the fellow rumbled. He smiled, but the expression was one that might have better fitted a wolf met on a forest trail. “How wise are you really, though? Will you take my advice?”

“Your lordship,” said Corylus. “I will do whatever I believe most benefits the Republic.”

The man laughed again, but with even less humor than before. “I thought I had summoned a warrior,” he said, his voice growing louder. “But here it seems I have a lawyer instead. Is that true, boy? Are you warrior or lawyer?”

“Your lordship,” said Corylus, swallowing, “I'm both. Or—trained as both. I will not take a stranger's judgment over my own and the judgment of those whom I have learned to trust.”

“If he weren't a warrior, One-Eye,” said Wisdom, “he would not have dared be a lawyer to your face.”

“Offer him the mead,” said Memory. “Men sometimes find fellowship in drink.”

“And sometimes drink brings death,” said Wisdom. The ravens laughed together.

The bearded man shrugged with a grim smile. He reached to his side with his left hand; a drinking horn, gold-banded and studded with smoothly polished jewels, suddenly rested on it. He drank from the horn, then held it out.

“Take it, warrior,” he said to Corylus. “Drink your fill. Drink it all, if you can.”

The horn was twisted and heavy in Corylus's hands. If it came from a ram, it had been bigger than any sheep he'd ever seen.

He sipped. The liquor was dry and very strong, carrying the aroma of the herbs it had been brewed with. It and the word which the raven had called it by, mead, were unfamiliar.

Corylus found it difficult to handle the drinking horn without spilling. He'd seen such forms before—and had also seen human skulls mounted as cups by German chieftains—but he'd never tried to use one before.

“A sip for fellowship,” he said as he handed the liquor back. Being drunk wouldn't help him in this situation, whatever the situation was. “Your lordship, why are these things happening to me? I'm no magician or priest.”

The bearded man lifted the horn and turned his hand, sending the mead out of the present. He bent forward slightly and said, “Twelve wizards of Hyperborea plan to loose the Sons of Muspelheim on Midworld, smothering you and all men in fire.”

“Nemastes!” Corylus blurted.

“When the Band was thirteen, Nemastes was among them,” said the bearded man. “Now they are the Twelve and Nemastes fights to block their plans.”

Corylus rocked back on his heels. “Sir,” he said, “then Nemastes isn't our enemy? He wants to save us?”

The bearded man grinned. “Save you for cattle,” said Wisdom.

“Oh, he's
your
enemy, Publius Corylus,” said Memory. “He believes that you're the agent the Twelve have sent to stop him, as their bodies cannot leave the Horn.”

“But why would he think that?” said Corylus in puzzlement. “Why would any man want to stop him? That would mean to spread Vulcan's fires across the earth.”

“Why indeed, Corylus,” said Wisdom. “And yet your friend Varus is the tool of the Twelve.”

“You are active and resourceful,” said Memory. “So long as Nemastes thinks that the wizards whom he deserted are working through you, he will not pay attention to your friend. Until too late, while your world burns.”

There was no transition. As the words rang in his ears, Corylus stood over a sea of bubbling lava, orange and red and licked with the blue flames
of sulfur. In every direction, fire lapped the horizon. The rock roared deafeningly, and the sky was a pall of black destruction.

Corylus was back in the cave again, staggered by the vision.
Was this what Varus saw in the temple?

“Midworld will burn,” said the bearded man, leaning back on his throne. “All who worship me in all times will burn. So, lawyer who is a warrior, you must act now: you must kill this Varus, for your own sake and your world's.”

“I won't kill my friend!” Corylus said. “I won't kill anybody because you say to!”

“Then you'll watch Midworld die!” the bearded man said. “You'll watch
your
world die. And your friend will burn with you, you fool!”

The walls of frozen light shivered to his booming voice, their color changing from bluish through green and yellow to red. When he fell silent, they trembled back to their cool resting state.

Fear made Corylus want to run or to strike, but it was his duty to learn how to save his world. Not by killing his friend, though.

“Your lordship,” he said. “I'll talk to Varus. He must not realize what he's doing. When he does he, well, he
won't
.”

“Will he believe you?” Wisdom asked. The ravens laughed.

The bearded man didn't speak for a moment, but thunder boomed within the great cavern. The eye Corylus could see beneath the hat's broad brim glittered like a light-struck sapphire.

“The Twelve have caught your friend, boy!” the bearded man said. “He won't listen to you. He
can't
.”

“If Gaius Varus dies now, the Twelve will not have time to find another cat's-paw …,” said Wisdom. The bird's tone was musing, not imperative. “Nemastes will shift the fire onto them instead.”

“Many men have died,” said Memory. “Throughout all time, every man born on Midworld has died—”

“—or will die,” Wisdom concluded.

“This Varus will destroy Nemastes,” the bearded man said, “and the Twelve will destroy Midworld. Unless you act, warrior!”

“Your lordship,” said Corylus. He swallowed; his mouth was very dry. “I will not.”

“Fool!” said the bearded man.

“And yet,” said Memory, “you have not always acted on the knowledge that you yourself bought at such a price, One-Eye.”