The Legions of Fire (40 page)

The whirling figures closest to Hedia smiled and beckoned. She turned and walked on more swiftly.

The dancers' skin had a faint reddish cast, and their figures were too regular for Hedia to be confident that they and she were the same species. Besides that, she heard enough of the faint music to which they danced that she feared if she joined them she would never be able to leave.

Three purple herons, familiar to Hedia from the marshes near Baiae, strode from the heavy brush and trotted past her in the other direction, their necks stretching out and curving back with each step. Riding each bird was a chipmunk wearing a yellow cap, red vest, and blue trousers. They watched Hedia silently, their heads turning till they were almost looking back between their own shoulders.

The herons vanished into the undergrowth. The black feathers in the riders' caps mimicked the birds' crests.

Hedia walked on. Would her guide be a chipmunk? Not one of
those
chipmunks, at least … but she glanced back to be sure.

She wasn't afraid, exactly, but she was frustrated because she didn't know what was happening. Rather, she didn't know what was supposed to happen: nothing
was
happening.

Hedia trusted her late husband within the limits of their bargain, but he'd never been communicative. Death hadn't changed that for the better, though … she remembered the way Latus had seemed to be sinking into the foliage of that horrible forest when she left him. It might be that learning more wouldn't have made her easier in her mind.

To Hedia's left was a grove of maples. She glimpsed a patch of tawny hide within the undergrowth of evening olive and spiky, brittle viburnum bushes.

A deer,
she thought. The animal turned and looked at her with human eyes, then crashed out of sight deeper in the thicket.

The forest to her right had grown deeper and much darker. Sheets of gray lichen hung from the branches of great trees. Hoots from far in the distance could have been birds, but she didn't think they were.

Something large splashed into an unseen body of water. Hedia wondered for an instant if it or another behemoth would shortly burst out of the
screen of willows and mimosas, but nothing did. She took her hand off the little dagger.

Someone was playing a lyre among the oaks ahead. The shade was deep enough to thin the undergrowth, but saplings whose trunks were only the diameter of Hedia's finger nonetheless impeded the way. She held the spindly branches to keep them from snagging her garments as she walked by.

Occasionally she broke one off, but that was accidental. She had the feeling that it would be better not to leave more trace of her passage than she had to.

The music was coming closer—well, she was approaching it; the source hadn't moved. She didn't recall ever hearing a lyre played more beautifully. She stepped carefully past a holly tree and looked into a clearing without seeing the musician.

Drawn by the plangent tune, Hedia looked up. A web spread from the top of a hickory to a huge white oak. A spider whose body was the size of a pony hung from the silk by her back legs; with the three pairs remaining, she played the lyre.

The spider's multiple eyes followed as Hedia walked on at a measured pace, carefully avoiding any hint that she was frightened. She looked over her shoulder as soon as she was out of the clearing, but only the music followed her. It slowly faded, and even more slowly, Hedia brought her thudding heartbeat under control.

She was approaching a garden. It hadn't been hacked out of the forest; rather, the forest was encroaching into it. The wall of fieldstones laid without mortar was collapsing in the embrace of tree roots, and the plantings were bushy and overgrown.

A statue of Priapus, the traditional protector of gardens, stood at one end. His torso and bearded head had been crudely hacked from a length of tree trunk; his phallus was a separate branch of cedar as long and thick as a man's thigh. The wood still had a realistically ruddy tinge.

Hedia walked past. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the statue wink and waggle its enormous penis. She didn't turn and stare, but she smiled as she went on. She had enough experience to associate a
really
impressive partner—she'd known one or two—with pain, not a thrill.

A man stepped out of the forest. He was nude; his deep chest was covered with flat, distinct sheets of muscle. Black curls covered his head, and over his right shoulder he carried a stout wooden club.

His legs from midthigh were hairy, and the knees bent the wrong way; he walked on split hooves.
He's not a man after all
.

“My name is Maron, woman,” said the faun. “I am compelled to be your guide.”

V
ARUS TURNED HIS BACK
as he pulled on his tunic. He didn't know what to say, so for the moment he pretended that Urash didn't exist.

“Varus?” she said.

He looked over his shoulder, embarrassed by his own behavior. He hadn't even unlaced his sandals! “M-mis …,” he said. “Yes, Urash?”

She'd lifted herself onto her right elbow and was watching him. She was noticeably more solid than she had been when he first entered this … place between places.

“When will another come to me?” Urash said. Her need, her
longing
, were so vivid that Varus blushed with the memory of her body writhing under his.

“I don't know!” he said harshly, and hated himself as the words came out. The pulse in his mind was strong and growing stronger as he delayed in this place.

Varus knelt beside the woman and took her hands, then met her eyes. “Urash,” he said, “I don't know about, well, anything. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do, just that they say I have to do it or the world will die. I met your h-h-hus … I met Oannes this afternoon and he sent me here, but he didn't tell me anything.”

His face scrunched with misery. He wished he could make the truth something else than he knew it was. If this had been a poem, he could change his scheme and bring consolation to this ordinary,
nice
woman and her perfectly decent husband who had made a mistake out of love alone.

Homer had brought the goddess Athena out of the heavens to end the feud between Odysseus and the families of the suitors whom he'd killed. But Varus couldn't summon gods; and he wouldn't lie.

“Urash,” he said, “I'm sure that Oannes will do all that he can for you, as he has in the past. But I can't tell you any more than that.”

“I'm sorry,” Urash said softly. She got to her feet, bringing him up with her. She didn't put her clothing on. “You've been very kind. I know that it isn't anything you could control, but I needed, I need …”

Her voice broke off and she began to cry silently.

Shriveling inside, Varus stepped close to Urash and kissed her, tasting the salt. “Dear?” he said. “How do I reach my guide?”

Urash lifted her face and looked toward the window into the sacrificial mound. Though the men had taken the torches with them when they left and the entrance was blocked up, the corpse was still visible in a faint blue aura. Sigyn's blood was a deeper blackness on the stone.

“Open the way, Varus,” Urash said. She stroked his tunic where it lumped over the ivory talisman. “You have the power of Botrug. You have the powers of a god, Varus dear.”

Varus turned his head slightly to the side. “Urash?” he said. “Can I help you?”

He felt himself coloring again. “Can I help you leave this place, I mean?”

“Not even a god can do that, Varus,” she said. She touched his shoulders and gently turned him to face the barrow. “You have your duty.”

Varus drew the ivory head from beneath his tunic and cleared his throat. He didn't know how to proceed.
Do I just
…

As Varus hesitated, the now-familiar fog swept in to enclose him. He couldn't see Urash anymore. Either she'd taken her hands away from his shoulders, or he was no longer in the place where she must stay for eternity.

Varus walked into the mist. Was there really anything beneath his feet? Did he have feet or any material existence here, or was it a trick his mind was playing on him?

He came out in brightness. The old woman sat cross-legged on a stone plinth. Beside her was a brazier from which licked thin violet flames as long as a man's forearm. She smiled, forming new creases in her wrinkled face.

“Lady,” he said, making a slight bow. “I have to come to you when I need power. Magic, I guess I mean.”

They were on top of a bare sandstone knob. Below them—thousands of feet below—a brilliantly white cloudscape humped from horizon to horizon. The wind was thin and very cold, and it didn't appear to affect the lambent flames from the brazier.

“
I
don't exist, Lord Varus,” the woman said, smiling still more widely. “All power, all knowledge, are yours. I'm just the way you choose to assert your power.”

Varus narrowed his eyes. He started to say that he didn't believe what she had just said, but that would be discourteous. Besides, the mechanism
didn't matter. If his mind told him that he had to come to this plane, this cloud-world, that was perfectly all right so long as it permitted him to do what was necessary.

Which in this case …

“Lady,” he said, “I need to go to a woman in a tomb, Sigyn. She's … she will guide me.”

“Then go, Varus,” the woman said. “Open the portal. You know how.”

Her face worked over silent words.
“Out I go at once,”
Varus squeaked,
“flinging wide the doors! I have no fear—”

Varus felt his soul swoop into the ocean of clouds. He was blind and felt as though he were spinning. He was suddenly afraid that he was going to vomit.
At least that would prove I have a body,
he thought.

Varus was laughing as he stepped into the dank blue interior of the tomb. The stones were slick from moisture that had sweated through the cairn and frozen, but the worst of the chill was spiritual. The chamber stank of blood and death.

Sigyn lay on the slab, face upward. Her eyes were open, and her throat gaped raggedly; the knife had been dull, though the killer's strength and nervousness had made quick work of the task.

Sigyn was younger than Varus had realized.
She couldn't be any older than Alphena!
He swallowed.

How do I …?
Varus thought, gripping the talisman with his left hand. The ivory felt warm.

“Awake, good maiden!” he called in his own voice, surprising himself. “Awake, Sister Sigyn!”

The corpse stirred, but as mindlessly as a grapevine touched by a breeze.

“Awake, my friend!” Varus said. “You sleep in a cave of darkest night, but we must go forth together.”

The corpse's eyes were already open; now they focused on Varus. Her head lifted slightly. In a rusty voice she said, “Who is it that calls Sigyn? Sigyn is dead. Now there is only the Bride.”

Varus squeezed the ivory talisman with his left hand. His brow was sweating, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. “Awake, Sigyn,” he said, “and we will go forth together—or I will hedge you with fire and compel you!”

Sigyn sat up with the creaking deliberation of a wagon turning and fingered her throat with her left hand. Dried blood had matted her flowing hair.

“Who are you to command me, poet?” she said, eyeing him now with comprehension. Her voice was stronger, and her features were beginning to show animation.

“I am Gaius Varus,” he said, choosing the words consciously for the first time since he had entered the tomb. “I have the power”—he held out the talisman to the length of the thong around his neck—“and the need. I must lead the Legions of Surtr or the world will die, so you must guide me to them.”

The woman got off the slab, moving stiffly but without wasted motion. “You have the power,” she said. “You cannot compel Sigyn, but the Bride will guide you on your way.”

She looked at Varus; his hand tightened on the talisman. When he realized he was keeping it in front of him as a barrier against the woman's cold gaze, he let it fall and stood with both arms at his sides.

“You have a great task, Varus,” she said; her voice seemed without emotion. “Do you have the strength to complete it?”

“I have to try,” Varus said, trying to keep his tone calm. “Otherwise the world will end.”

The woman laughed like pebbles rattling. She took him by the right hand. Her flesh was cold, and he almost gagged on the stench of her fresh blood.

“Come, Varus,” she said. They walked together toward the end of the chamber, and the stones dissolved before them.

T
he back wall of the cairn had been a blur. It cleared, and Varus stepped onto a trail along a mountainside. To his left was a cloud-filled gorge, and above, the sky showed the smooth pearl of high overcast. A patch near zenith was brighter than the remainder, but the sun wasn't visible.