Air and Darkness (12 page)

Bhiku looked at Varus and raised an eyebrow. Varus shrugged and said, “He's probably right. Or she is, of course. But I'm not sure I'd ever seen a datura vine before.”

He shook his head and added, as much to himself as to his companion, “There are so many things I ought to know about.”

Bhiku cackled laughter.

“Shouldn't we get to the portal soon, servant?” Lord Arpat said. Snarled, rather.

Varus looked back at the husky Indian noble, his face still.
I'm not a nobleman here,
he remembered before he spoke.
I'm a foreigner with no friends except for an old man of no status.

“We have arrived, Your Lordship,” said Bhiku, bowing low. He straightened and gestured ahead with his left arm. Varus could see a pile of reddish rock through scattered gaps in the vegetation.

Varus walked past the rock alongside Bhiku.
It's a pillar rather than an outcrop,
he thought. Then on the other side he saw the rock was carved with the huge beaming head of a man wearing a high headdress. The pillar faced a twenty-foot area in which the vegetation was stunted to ankle height or less.

“This stupa is our focus here in the Otherworld,” Bhiku explained. “We will return—arrive, that is, in your case—at a temple in the territory of Ramsa Lal, a dependent of Lord Govinda.”

Bhiku drew Varus to the side so as not to be in the way of the noblemen, who had broken into a trot at the sage's words. The three commoners lurched after them as quickly as they could without treading too closely on the heels of the men with swords in their hands.

The Indians—except Bhiku—were badly afraid, Varus realized. Thinking of Lord Arpat as a man lashing out in terror made him a less unpleasant figure that he had been as a surly brute.

Not that I would ever find Arpat a congenial companion.

Bhiku knelt in front of the stone face. “Would you help me prepare the ground, Lord Varus?” he said. He looked over his shoulder and added, “You're welcome to join us, Lord Arpat. There's no danger at this stage. Well, almost no danger.”

The three nobles rushed back to the edge of the clearing. The gardeners and the general servant would not have understood the Greek, but they reacted to the nobles' panic with similar haste.

Varus knelt and copied Bhiku in pulling little plants out of the dry soil. The vegetation close to the pillar was even more stunted than what grew farther back where the other Indians cowered.

“Danger?” Varus said quietly.

The sage smiled. “There is always the chance of danger, is there not?” he said. “But not as great a danger here as our companions seem to believe.”

He coughed. “I noticed your smile as you turned away from Lord Arpat,” Bhiku went on. “Were you amused by his belief that a wizard of your power could be threatened by a mere sword?”

Varus smiled again. “No,” he said. “I'm not sure that's true, and it
certainly
isn't the way I think. I was remembering that the soldiers who guard the frontiers of our Republic undergo terrible hardships and risks. Certainly worse hardships than anything we've undergone in reaching this place—”

He gestured to the stupa.

“—and probably worse dangers also, at least when the tribes are restless. But for the past century they've been volunteers, so they don't have reason to complain. From what my friend Corylus tells me, they
don't
seriously complain, though all soldiers gripe at all times.”

Varus smiled more broadly. “I came with you by my own choice,” he said. “I volunteered. I have met many men like Arpat in Carce. They treat me with deference because of who I am and who my father is. But I
chose
not to stay in Carce.”

Bhiku smoothed the dust with the edge of his palm. He looked at Varus and said, “It is a pleasure to meet a man with so similar a viewpoint. Though in my case, the humility came with my birth.”

Bhiku wore a satchel of coarse cloth over one shoulder. He hitched it around in front of him and took out a square of singed linen with a steel fire starter and a lump of pyrite. He dipped into the pouch a second time and brought out a bundle of barley straw—tied with a longer strand—and small roll of bark.

“Get on with it, servant!” Lord Yama called.

“Yes, Your Lordship,” Bhiku said without looking up from his work on the fire set. He hefted the bark and added quietly to Varus, “This is cinnamon.”

Holding the fire starter next to the linen, he scraped the pyrites down the ridged steel. Sparks sprayed out with a whiff of brimstone. The cloth smoldered, then flamed as Bhiku breathed on it and began feeding bits of straw.

When most of the bundle was alight, he set the cinnamon on the flames and stood up. Varus rose also and moved back a little distance.

Bhiku raised his arms at an angle before him and began chanting in a language that Varus didn't know. Varus frowned, because he didn't think—he couldn't be sure, of course—that the incantation was in the same language in which the sage spoke to his fellow Indians.

The smoke rose, thicker than Varus would have expected from dry straw and a thin scrap of bark. Bhiku stopped chanting.

For a moment Varus saw flames; then a pink blur replaced the fire set and began to expand. Though it was small at the moment, the disk was much like the one Varus had seen in Polymartium this morning. Bhiku backed away and joined him.

“There will be soldiers from Ramsa Lal at the other focus,” Bhiku said softly. “They will escort Arpat and his fellows to Lord Govinda, but I will take you to the palace of my own master, Raguram.”

“Will I be welcome?” Varus said.

Bhiku laughed. “No one will notice you,” he said. “No one notices me unless they have a need for magic. I hope you have a taste for lentils and barley, because in that case you'll have plenty to eat.”

Arpat shouted to Bhiku. The sage bowed and in Greek replied, “You may enter the portal now, Lord Arpat.”

The nobles rushed forward. Yama had sheathed his curved sword, but the other two still held theirs. Arpat was the first through the shimmering lens, and his fellows jostled to follow him. The servants ran through a step and a half step after them.

Instead of running to the lens at once, Bhiku said musingly, “I am a very slight magician, Lord Varus, but I like to think that I have gathered a good deal of wisdom in the course of a long life. Yet almost no one is interested in what I think is wisdom.”

“I haven't noticed…,” Varus said in answer to the implied question, “that the priorities are any different in Carce.”

Laughing, the two philosophers stepped into the portal.

*   *   *

H
EDIA LOOKED AT THE SLOPE
before her and pressed her lips into a moue. Her sandals were well enough suited for the hike—better than her thigh muscles were, she suspected.

Her long silk tunic, however, had been chosen to swirl attractively during the dance. It was not ideal for walking through brush. She'd had to gather it up as soon as she realized that the manager's wife would otherwise be walking on it and rip it off.

Hedia sighed and drew up the tunic again, tucking the excess fabric under her sash. That meant her shins would be scratched, but it was better than being constantly tangled
and
still scratched, for the thin silk would be very little protection.

“I was thinking, Your Ladyship…,” said a piping voice.

Hedia whirled around. The eddies had vanished from the water, and the voice didn't sound as the stream's had anyway.

“I'm down at your feet, Your Ladyship,” the voice said, sounding mildly exasperated. “As I said, I was thinking that you might—”

She looked down. “You're a toad!” she said.

“Yes, named Paddock if you care to know,” said the toad. He was about the size of her clenched fist and a rusty red color. “Now that we've taken care of formalities, I was thinking that you might carry me with you when you visit Boest.”

“Why did you think that?” Hedia said coldly. “Why in the name of
Venus
did you think that?”

“Perhaps because your aura shows that you are kindly person, always looking out for the downtrodden?” said the toad.

“You are either very stupid…,” Hedia said as she finished tucking up her skirt, “or you are mad.”

She strode off. The toad hopped clumsily along beside her. “Not stupid,” he said. “No no no, not that. And not mad, either, though I do have a very dry sense of humor. And I don't weigh very much.”

Hedia paused and looked down again. The toad looked up expectantly at her.

“Will you give me warts?” she asked.

“I will not,” said Paddock. “If you're worried, though, just squat and make a sling of a fold of your skirt. I'll get into it myself.”

Hedia tugged a pocket into the extra fabric. “I'm not concerned,” she said. She bent down and lifted the toad to the pocket. His skin felt rough but dry against her palm.

Instead of hopping from her hand, Paddock clambered into the sling. He really did seem clumsy.

“Why do you want to climb the hill?” Hedia said, pushing into the waist-high grass. There wasn't a path. The grass made her lower legs and bare arms itch, but it was more of an irritation than a serious hindrance. Higher up the slope, heather and a few palmettos replaced the grass. Farther down she could avoid the clumps of heather.

“Oh, I used to know Boest,” the toad said. “I haven't seen him in a long time, and since you were going that way I thought I would accompany you. With your permission, of course.”

Hedia paused. “Do you know where the Spring of True Answers is, Paddock?” she said.

“I never traveled much,” the toad said. “I was content with what I had. But when Boest moved to where he is now, I had to leave. It isn't a good place for a toad, you see.”

The heather bushes didn't grow as closely together as Hedia had thought when she was standing beside the spring. She found herself cupping her hand to prevent branches from slapping the toad, but it really wasn't a problem. A few prickles pulled tufts in her skirt, but that was of no consequence.

“What do you mean?” Hedia said. “Toads live anywhere, don't you?”

She had never really thought about the question. Varus probably had, though; the boy seemed to think about everything. And Publius Corylus was much the same. Toads were simply something you saw in the garden in the evening. They ate slugs, a gardener had told her, presumably imagining that she cared about toads, or slugs, or much of anything in a garden.

“Not really,” Paddock said. “We're almost to the valley where Boest lives, so you'll see.”

Hedia was winded from the climb, but she was forcing herself to breathe only through her nose. Gulping mouthfuls of air would be undignified. Though the only person present to observe her was a talking toad, the principle was a good one.

Her legs, however—her hamstrings—burned fiercely. She stopped for a moment just below the crest of the ridge, wondering if she was going to be able to climb the last twenty feet or if she would have to crawl on all fours.

“The dancing you did earlier strained your muscles,” Paddock said. “It isn't serious.”

Hedia looked down at him. “I didn't think it was,” she said sharply.

She strode to the top with no difficulty; the brief pause had been enough to relax the muscles. Then she said, “I suppose I was worried. I shouldn't have snapped at you.”

“I am just a toad,” said the toad.

Hedia looked down with a smile that would have soured wine. “What you are is of no consequence,” she said. “But I was lying to myself also, which is an offense for which I would flay anyone else.”

Paddock nodded. “Of course, Your Ladyship,” he said. She could not detect mockery in his voice, but she suspected it was there anyway. She continued to smile.

The valley into which they had crossed was beige, not green as the one behind them had been. For a moment Hedia didn't think that there was any vegetation. There was, but the heather bushes were widely scattered and nearly leafless. What foliage there was seemed almost as pale as the dry soil.

“Not a good place for a toad,” Paddock repeated sadly.

“I see,” said Hedia.

This was a horrible place. What little breeze there was picked up wisps of dust and curled them along. The dust was the only thing moving.
Venus! What a horrible place.

As Hedia looked longer at the scene, her eyes began to discriminate within the initial sameness. There were goats among the heather, small animals whose hair either was the same hue as the dust or was so dusty that the original color did not show through. The goats were browsing the bushes, but they moved so rarely that she could only identify them by shape.

“Where is the herdsman?” Hedia said, suddenly glad that she had brought the toad with her.

“Boest is midway below us on this slope,” Paddock said. “He can watch his herd from there.”

What Hedia had taken for a somewhat larger heather bush resolved into the figure of a seated man looking away from her, across the valley. He was wearing a goatskin garment. There was nothing on his head but his own shaggy hair.

She started down briskly, kicking grit into the toes of her sandals. She grimaced, but it was much the same as every other aspect of this place.

I chose to come every step of the way that has led me here,
Hedia realized. She smiled again. It felt good to have someone to blame.

Boest was a large man, though what must once have been a powerful build was now cadaverous. He looked up when Hedia reached his side, then resumed slowly scanning the valley and his herd.

“Master Boest?” Hedia said, puzzled but determined not to show it. “I am Hedia, wife of Gaius Alphenus Saxa, senator and former consul of Carce.”