Air and Darkness (15 page)

But Herennius and his servants no doubt expected more time before the troops arrived to execute their orders. Not for any factual reason, but just because it
couldn't
already be over for them. Corylus had seen the same despairing wonder on the faces of mortally wounded men.
This can't be happening!

But of course it was. It always did.

Everything changed again, but Corylus was observing almost the same scene in the bright white light of the present. Pulto and Lenatus had been leaning over the shaft; now they straightened.

“That's got it!” Pulto called. Corylus heard his voice as if through inches of green water.

The grave-faced nymph faded from Corylus' mind. He got up from the bench and walked over to Pulto. Alphena had now joined the soldiers.

“It's time for me to go down and find the Ear of the Satyr,” Corylus said cheerfully.

He hoped that no one could tell that he was thinking about the nymph's warning. He didn't know what the Blight was, any more than a Scout crossing the Danube knew what the Sarmatians might have waiting on the East Bank. That's why the Scouts were crossing, after all.

But he knew that if he found anything it would be trouble.

*   *   *

V
ARUS STEPPED INTO BRIGHT SUNLIGHT
and tripped on a tilted paver. He managed to stay upright by lurching forward, which almost made him bump Lord Arpat. Fortunately, the nobleman was too intent on the men outside the building to pay any attention to what was going on behind him.

Varus took in his surroundings. They were in a round temple. Eight columns of coarse black stone supported a domed roof twenty feet across; there were no connecting walls between the pillars.

The floor was paved with slabs of the same black rock as the pillars. Wooden beams formed the rafters, but the roof itself was of bronze sheets. Varus had never seen a building constructed in this fashion, but the
design
was familiar.

“This is a tholos,” Varus said, gesturing to the building. Domed temples were not particularly common, but the Temple of Vesta in the Forum and the Temple of Aesculapius at the healing god's original shrine in Epidaurus were merely two of the more familiar examples. “Was it built by Greeks?”

The rest of the Indian delegation had stepped outside. The nearby land in three directions was being farmed. Varus saw bent figures hoeing in the knee-high grain. At a little distance, a plow drawn by a pair of scrawny oxen raised a plume of yellow dust.

“The founder of King Govinda's line built the shrine,” Bhiku said. “Traditionally that was ten thousand years ago, but I believe a better translation of ‘ten thousand' in Greek would be ‘a very large number.' It was built a long time ago, certainly.”

He turned and gestured in the fourth direction, toward a mound of vine-covered trees. The mount was not particularly high, but it spread for a considerable distance. “That, however, is very much older. It is called Dreaming Hill, but it was a city. It is said to be haunted.”

Bhiku grinned sheepishly up at Varus. “
I
say it is haunted,” he said. “I do not believe all the things that others say they have seen among the ruins, but what I have seen myself is enough to convince me.”

A squad of troops stood outside the temple. They were dressed much the same as Bhiku himself—loose cotton vests and pantaloons, without caps. A few wore straw sandals, but most were barefoot. Their weapons were spears and longbows, both made of bamboo. The spear and arrow points were stone.

Arpat was talking with—mostly at—one of the soldiers. The soldier's responses were short and mumbled; his eyes were fixed on the ground as the noble harangued him. Arpat had sheathed his sword after returning from the Otherworld, but his hand returned to the hilt.

Varus moved with Bhiku to the edge of the building, but he stopped when the sage did. Bhiku cocked his head as he listened to the one-sided discussion.

“Arpat wonders why the escort from Ramsa Lal is not waiting for us here,” Bhiku said in low-voiced Greek. “The peasant says that they've sent a messenger to their lord, who is nearby. The main body of the escort is at a distance in case something other than the emissaries came through the portal.”

Varus thought about the Otherworld. On their way to the stupa, the party had met a bird that stood ten feet high. Its wings were curly stubs, but its hooked beak was shaped like that of an eagle.

“I wouldn't want to meet the bird we saw with only a bamboo spear,” Varus said. “I was glad that it decided to go off in another direction when it saw us.”

“
I
was glad of your presence, Lord Varus,” Bhiku said. “But the bird could not have opened the portal as I did, let alone broken the barrier between the Otherworld and our world the way a
very
powerful wizard might.”

He cocked an eye at Varus. Varus grimaced in embarrassment and shook his head. “Not me,” he muttered. “I
know
nothing of magic. I accept evidence that it exists the way I accept that lightning exists.”

Bhiku believes that
I
am the lightning,
he thought.
And he may be right.

A squadron of brightly dressed horsemen rode toward the shrine. There was a path between fields, but the horsemen spread widely to either side of it, trampling the grain and raising a pall of dust that hid the total numbers of the party. There were twenty or more in the leading rank.

Arpat and his two companions strode to meet the newcomers. Bhiku turned instead toward the jungle-covered ruins in the other direction.

“The ancestor who built this shrine,” he said, “was a great wizard, and his descendents were still greater wizards. Govinda is the greatest of all. But…”

He looked at Varus and said with a wry smile, “The inhabitants of Dreaming Hill, when it was a city and not a ruin, must have been great wizards also, because
feel
the magic which still emanates from this place. I think the ancestor built his shrine here so that it could tap the power of the ancient city.”

“But for all the inhabitants' power,” Varus said, finishing Bhiku's thought, “the city
is
in ruins.”

He smiled slightly and shrugged. “Perhaps,” he went on, “because your King Govinda taps only the residue of the power of Dreaming Hill, he won't fly high enough to fall so far. If there is a fall.”

“Sometimes I've seen people walking in the ruins,” Bhiku said, as though he hadn't been listening. “Sometimes those I saw were not people.”

He shrugged and smiled at Varus. “I used to come here frequently,” he said. “Never coming closer than we are now. You can enter Dreaming Hill and often people do, woodcutters chopping brush from the edges of the ruins and sometimes treasure seekers. But they don't always come back.”

“Do you wish to see the interior of the ruins?” Varus asked, allowing no emotion to enter the question. It didn't appear to him that Dreaming Hill was connected with Govinda and the threat that the Sibyl had warned of, but he didn't know enough to be sure.

“I haven't come to this place in many years,” Bhiku said. “Until you and I returned just now from the Otherworld. I decided that while I was sure that there was a great deal to be learned from Dreaming Hill, it was not a place in which I would find wisdom. I still think that.”

“I bow to your analysis,” Varus said, as lightly as if he were joking. “What do we do next, then?”

Bhiku nodded in the direction of the path, where the horsemen—several hundred of them as the dust settled—had met Arpat and his fellows. The small party of footmen and the servants from Arpat's delegation were gathered a little distance from the wealthier contingent.

“We'll let our betters go off to Lord Govinda,” the sage said with gentle irony. “Then you and I will go to my quarters in Raguram's compound. If asked I will introduce you as a student from a distant country, though I doubt that will be necessary. After you've had a chance to view the situation, you will tell me as much of your intention as you're willing for me to know. Then I will help you achieve your wish with such knowledge and strength as I have.”

“You don't know what my intent
is,
” Varus said.
I don't really know what my intent is.

“I believe that you are a man who would do as I would do under that same circumstances,” Bhiku said. “Since you know the circumstances and I do not, I defer to your judgment.”

Neatly turning my comment about Dreaming Hill on its head,
Varus realized. The men smiled at each other.

Instead of leaving as Bhiku had predicted, the body of horsemen walked to the shrine where Varus and the sage remained. All of them were dressed in loose silks and carried curved swords. A number also carried slim lances with streamers dangling below their steel points. Arpat and his companions were mounted now also.

The man in the center wore scarlet with a sash and turban of cloth of gold. His sword hilt and the bridle of his mount sparkled with jewels.

Bhiku whispered to Varus, “That's Ramsa Lal in person!”

“You, servant of my enemy!” Lal said in Greek. “Where is the magician Rupa whom I sent with you at the command of my lord Govinda?”

Bhiku bowed low. “Rupa told us that she had business in Carce and that I should take the delegation back, Your Lordship,” he said. “I assumed that the business was yours, but I did not enquire.”

“That's right, Your Lordship,” Yama said, looking less awkward on horseback than he had been during the trek through the Otherworld. “We had planted the vine as the king directed, so it was no affair of ours what your servant chose to do.”

Ramsa Lal considered Varus. Because the floor of the shrine was raised, their eyes were on a level.

“The fellows who traveled with you say that you're a wizard, foreigner,” Lal said. “Is that true?”

“Not in the way Master Bhiku here is,” Varus said. Lal seemed to be in his mid-thirties. Though he wasn't fat, his puffy face suggested dissipation. “I may have powers, but I don't have control of them the way a true magician would have.”

“Never mind that,” Lal said, flicking the air with the end of his reins. “You're coming back with me. I have a task for a wizard.”

“Your Lordship, the stranger must come with us to our master Govinda!” Arpat said. “This business is under his auspices, and he is your master!”

“I bow to Lord Govinda,” Lal growled. “His mission is completed, as you have already said … and while I bow to Govinda, your master and mine, I will have his flunkies dragged by the heels if you use that tone on me again, Arpat!”

Bhiku stepped from the pavement and said, “Your Lordship, I'm afraid that our lord Govinda's officials have misstated the situation. This young man is a noble in his own country and has come here to share his considerable wisdom—”

“Be silent!” Lal said. His Greek was accented but easily understandable. “You are in my territory at the behest of Lord Govinda, but do not test my forbearance further, scum!”

To Varus he continued, “Can you ride, foreigner?”

Horsemanship was a common exercise for noble youths, but Varus had never found exercise interesting until he began joining Corylus in the gymnasium over the past year. Varus walked between libraries all over the city, however, as that was the easiest way to get around in Carce. Neither horses nor vehicles were allowed within the sacred boundaries until after dark.

“Not well,” said Varus. “I'd better walk.”

“As you please,” said Lal. He turned to the man on his left—Arpat rode on his right side—and snapped something in an Indian tongue.

“He has ordered his aide to take a squadron and escort the officials to our lord Govinda's palace,” Bhiku said. Varus hadn't needed the whispered translation to understand what was happening.

The aide nodded and raised his arm, then shouted an order. A hundred or so men rode away at a walk, which rose to a jog. The members of Govinda's delegation went with them. The servants walked at the end of the file. Arpat turned twice in the saddle to look back with a troubled expression, but he had apparently taken Ramsa Lal's warning seriously.

The horseman who had taken the place at Lal's left shouted a similar order and the remaining body of men moved off. “If you hold us up,” Lal said, “I'll have you lashed to a saddle. Do you understand?”

Varus nodded curtly. As he had told Bhiku, there were many of Lal's sort in Carce. Varus didn't like the Carce version, either.

“With your permission, Lord Varus…,” said Bhiku, walking at Varus' side, “I will accompany you. For my own interest, that is. I would willingly help you, but I can't imagine how I could.”

“I can't imagine, either,” Varus said. Lal was holding his horse to an amble. The sage took shorter, quicker steps than Varus, but neither of them had trouble keeping up. “But I can't imagine how I can help myself, either. I am very glad of your company.”

It was really the only thing in this business that did please Varus, but it was a major thing.

 

CHAPTER
V

Hedia had been walking with her head down to avoid stumbling on rocks sticking out of the dust. There was nothing to see in the sky, and it had a bronze tinge that made her feel hotter and even more out of place.

The change was as sudden as if she had stepped into a pond. There was no immediate difference on the ground, but the air felt refreshing and the sky—she
did
look up—was a saturated blue with a few ragged-edged clouds.

Hedia looked back. She couldn't see the valley where she had left Boest and Paddock. Three steps farther forward and she was gazing down on to a spread of varied green, a mixture of meadow and groves. The grazing sheep had three-colored wool, irregular patches of black, brown, and white.