The Legions of Fire (44 page)

The man to Frothi's left barked a surprised laugh, then bent his head away from the chief and pretended to be coughing. Corylus took a deep breath. He thought he was fully recovered from the wizard's spell.
I'd better be
.

“Sith, you're my wife!” Frothi shouted.

“Third wife,” a woman called. The men of the tribe formed an arc behind the chief and his three henchmen, but the women and children crowded close behind them.

“Aye,” said another in a feigned aside to her neighbor. “Maybe he should have stopped at two, do you think, Fiolswitha?”

“I sewed the case for Odd's knife myself,” Sith said, touching the scabbard. Like her garments, it was decorated with a pattern in bone needles dyed rose and saffron. “It's right that it return to the dwelling where I made it!”

“Slut!” said the chief. Like most of the men, he carried a spear thrower and three light javelins in his right hand. He lunged toward Sith, raising the bundle to flog her with.

Corylus picked up the staff and stepped between them. It was hornbeam, strong and supple. When as well cured as this, it became hard enough to dull iron tools quickly.

“No,” he said. He didn't raise his voice, but it rasped like the growl of a stiff-legged dog.

Frothi jumped back. “Bearn!” he said, looking at the men with him. “Todinn, Gram—hold this insolent puppy!”

The men looked away. Somebody back in the crowd sniggered.

Frothi grabbed the man on his right and shouted, “Bearn, didn't you hear me?”

Bearn had been slouching, looking at the ground. He straightened and met the chief's angry glare. He said, “I guess I figure a man's wives are his own business, Frothi.”

“Sure,” called someone behind them. “But that's if he's a man.”

For a moment, Corylus thought that Frothi was going to come for him after all. Instead the chief turned on his heel and strode back through the spectators. A young boy didn't get out of the way in time; Frothi batted him wailing to the ground with the sheaf of javelins.

“It looks to me,” said a woman archly to no one in particular, “that maybe Odd isn't dead after all.”

There was general laughter. Even Frothi's henchmen smiled, though their expressions turned back to concern when they eyed Corylus again.

“Come,” said Sith, taking Corylus by the left wrist. “My hut is the one with the stars woven into it.”

She tugged; she was very strong. Besides, Corylus couldn't see any reason not to do as Sith directed.

V
arus paused, staring at the new world. The woman took a few steps farther, then stopped and looked back at him. She said, “You said you wanted to gather fruit from the First Tree. Have you changed your mind?”

“I'm just looking around,” Varus said defensively. “I've never seen a place like this.”

The woman laughed. “Stay as long as you like,” she said. “I have only time.”

They stood in a rolling meadow. The fog and escarpment had vanished. The ankle-high vegetation seemed sun-drenched, but there was no sun in the bright sky to cast the illumination. A single tree with drooping branches stood silhouetted against the horizon.

Varus squatted to examine the ground cover. It wasn't grass or ivy. In fact it seemed to be—

He stood up abruptly. “Sigyn!” he said. “These are trees—little trees. Where are we?”

The woman shrugged. “On another world than that from which you came,” she said. “From another world than mine as well. We are not part of this place, though we exist in it for the present. Does that matter to you, wizard?”

Varus considered the question. He suspected that it
did
matter, though he wasn't sure how.

So far as Sigyn was concerned, all that mattered were the things that affected his present quest. He had a life beyond the quest, or he hoped he did. It would be pointless to ask the woman questions which she couldn't understand, let alone answer.

“We'll go on,” Varus said, starting forward again. Sigyn fell in beside him, since their goal was obvious.

The vegetation underfoot crackled slightly. Varus wondered what he was trampling besides tiny trees, but he had no choice. Carce and mankind depended on him.

The horizon was farther away than Varus had at first thought. After a time he looked over his shoulder and saw their footsteps stretching into the distance beyond where he could see. The Tree seemed little closer than it had been when they started, though now he saw that it was on an island. A strip of water separated it from the forest over which he and the woman walked.

“Sigyn?” he said. “How can we cross the water? Is it shallow?”

“Sigyn cannot answer your questions, wizard,” the woman said, looking at him with a smile that he couldn't read. “You must cross by your own powers … but the depth of the channel will not matter to you.”

That isn't as hopeful a statement as I might wish,
Varus thought.

He met the woman's eyes, then after a moment managed to smile.
I've always liked puzzles. Poetry writing is just a puzzle in words, after all; at least the way I did it. I'll figure out the puzzle of the water when we reach it; and if that means swimming, I'll hope that I swim well enough
.

Though any creatures that lived on the ground were too tiny for Varus to see without him putting his face down into the miniature trees, things like birds fluttered about the forest, lighting and pecking into the foliage. They kept at a distance from Varus and his guide, but even so he could tell that they didn't have feathers and their tails were serpentine. When they called to one another, they shrieked like angry mice.

Varus cleared his throat. “Sigyn?” he said. “What do they eat, those birds?”

“Birds?” said the woman. He thought she sounded amused. “They eat whatever they catch, wizard. Is it any different in your world?”

“I suppose not,” Varus said. He swallowed, hoping to work the feeling of discomfort out of his throat.

But it
was
true. He thought of his epic, of the dragon swallowing down the soldiers of Regulus in the wastes of Libya. That was a fantasy. In the waking world, his own world, it was generally men who devoured other men. Here, perhaps, the greatest danger was dragons. For those folk whom Gaius Varus and his guide didn't step on.

The woman stopped; they were at the edge of the water. Varus wondered how long he'd been musing. It hadn't seemed long enough for them to have come this far, he would have said.

The water was gray and speckled with flotsam. It rose and fell heavily, like the chest of a sleeping giant. There was no current that Varus could see.

He looked at the woman. He knew that distances were deceptive here, but he was sure that the strait couldn't be more than a few hundred yards across. At his father's villa near Baiae, he'd swum a full mile and been sure he could have gone twice that distance if he'd had to.

Perhaps if I call her “Bride,” she'll give me a real answer
.

But Varus wouldn't do that. That would put him in league with the barbarians who'd murdered her. He
wouldn't
.

“Sigyn?” Varus said. “Should I swim across the channel?”

She had been staring into the distance. Now she turned and focused on him; and smiled again. “The Bride cannot tell a wizard of your power what to do,” she said.

She extended her finger, pointing toward a bird rising from the stunted forest thirty feet away. It squealed angrily, dropping something from its beak. The woman's finger gave a flick; the bird snapped toward the island, tumbling over and over as its wings beat in an attempt to regain control.

A tentacle slashed from the turgid water, looped the leathery bird, and vanished below the surface again. Bubbles swirled briefly, then dissipated. The sea returned to its previous appearance of gelid calm.

Varus closed his eyes and rubbed them, trying to erase the memory of what he'd just seen. “Thank you,” he said softly.

The woman laughed. “I did nothing,” she said. “All the power is yours, wizard.”

Varus opened his eyes and stared at the water, his face going hard as he concentrated. Words swirled just beyond the boundaries of his mind, but they wouldn't come clear. He strained and, straining, slipped into the fog of his memory again. He forced his way forward, willing himself to have a body.

Abruptly Varus stood in a cave which echoed with the sound of waves. The old woman sat on a bench carved into the stone wall, reading by the light of a single oil lamp. She lowered the palm-leaf book in her hand and smiled at Varus.

“Greetings, Lord Varus,” she said. “I didn't think you would come back to see me again.”

“I have to,” he said uncomfortably. “I tried to cross the water without your help, but I need you. Please, help me. For the world's sake.”

“Will you tell me about the world, wizard?” the old woman said. Her smile was a thin line within the wrinkles of her face. “But I said to you before: the power is yours to use or not use.”

Varus screwed his face into a grimace. “I would—” he said. He broke off.

The old woman's mouth worked, but he heard the words coming up through his throat:
“The heavens split! Sweeps down the great wind—”

Lightning ripped into a crown of thorns hanging in the sky. Varus was back on the edge of the strait, his hands raised and Sigyn beside him. A wind from nowhere howled over the water without ruffling the First Tree or the miniature forest.

“—and with it the frost!”
quavered from Varus's lips.

The strait rocked like a kettle coming to a boil. Varus felt a gush of unexpected warmth; the water turned dazzlingly white.

The sky cleared like moisture wiped from a sheet of silver. What had been gray water was now an ice waste lifted into hummocks by the pressure of its creation and shattered into brilliant crystals.

Is that a tree?
Varus thought when he saw the twisted lump a hundred feet away. The strands weren't branches but tentacles like the one which had snatched the bird moments before; they had frozen as the strait itself had. They issued from an elephantine conch shell which projected just about the surface of the ice. At the base of the tentacles was an eye, huge and filled with icy hatred.

“How long …?” Varus said, but he didn't finish the question. Even if Sigyn told him how long the strait would remain frozen—which she probably wouldn't—the answer didn't matter. He needed to cross to the Tree. Even if he became next to certain that the ice would give way before he started back, he had to try.

“Let's go,” he said, stepping onto the ice with the care so slick a surface deserved. He grinned. It was liberating to be in a situation where he had to go forward to succeed. It didn't matter if he was afraid of being hurt or even of dying: he had to go on.

He looked at the woman. “Thank you for guiding me, Sigyn,” he said.

She turned her head, but she didn't smile as he'd thought she might. “I have the time, wizard,” she said. “I have all eternity.”

She didn't mention the compulsion he'd used to force her from the
cairn. Varus wondered if he would do that again, now that he'd, well, spent time with her. She'd saved his life when he was about to try swimming to the island. She hadn't had to do that.

He tried to peer into the ice, but the fractured crystal was as opaque as a similar thickness of marble. How many tentacled creatures were hidden in it? Though one would have been enough.

The surface wasn't smooth, but its irregular humps and sheared angles were slick. Varus spread his feet wide and took small steps so that his weight generally came straight down onto the surface.

Corylus must have a lot of experience walking on ice. He'd do better here
.

Varus grinned. His friend lacked one necessary attribute for success in this situation: he wasn't a poet, and Varus was. Varus was an extremely
bad
poet, granted; but his mind had the trick of looking at things which poetry required. It didn't matter in this world that he executed his understanding so poorly.

Varus had to watch where he was putting his feet; even so he almost fell several times. He risked a glance toward Sigyn. Despite being barefoot, she walked with the same poised nonchalance as she had when crossing the miniature forest.

She's probably used to ice,
Varus thought. In his heart he suspected that the fact she was dead had more to do with her aplomb, but that thought made him uncomfortable.

Varus stepped onto grass. That was so unexpected that he almost fell. They'd reached the island.

He looked up and stared in wonder at the Tree. “Oh,” he said.

It wasn't a tree from this angle. Instead, it mounted stage by stage like a mural of an impossible landscape. Each level was perfectly clear to Varus, a mass of distinct branches merging in a curved surface which mounted to the next level.