Air and Darkness (31 page)

The creature started to tumble as it plunged, toward the gully. It disappeared into the tall bamboo, then bounced briefly visible before it vanished for good. A distant crashing went on for some time, but the springy canes closed over the track the body had plowed through them.

“Hercules our protector…,” Corylus breathed. He wasn't of a religious mind, but a sincere prayer of thanks seemed the right thing to do at this point.

He stood up, feeling better—feeling exhilarated, even.
I'm alive!

Corylus walked to where his staff lay and examined it. Six inches of one end were smeared with blood and mucus; the other end was scratched from transmitting the shock of the monster's lunge to the sandstone. It remained perfectly functional, though: the tough cornel wood was essentially undamaged.

Corylus wiped the messy end with the leaves of a bamboo cane leaning on to the path. Then, holding the staff in both hands, he walked back to where Aura waited.

*   *   *

H
EDIA CAME TO THE END
of the fourth leg of the path she had been following through the woods. She wasn't back where she had started, as she would have been if the woods were in the Waking World. In fact, she wasn't in the woods at all.

“Good,” she muttered, because the visions of Anti-Thule had disturbed her. Although that might have been because she wasn't allowing herself to think about matters that were really disturbing, like being lost in the Otherworld with no clear way either to find her son or to get home.

Still, while Hedia cared even less about the Tyla than she did for the throngs of Levantine beggars clogging the Milvian Bridge, the Blight—as the voice had called it—was evil. Further, she had seen too much of the world and of this Otherworld to believe that she had been shown the visions for no reason.

Before her was a rolling grassland dotted with groves of trees, mostly in swales. The grass had been burned off within the past few months, but new growth had spurted waist high through the layer of soot.

Not far to Hedia's right, a track of dark green vegetation snaked toward the horizon. At first she thought she was seeing willows with stunted trunks, but after a moment's consideration she realized that the trees grew in the bed of a river.

At least there's water,
she thought.
Though I may have to dig down for it.

She looked up. A pair of birds—hawks or buzzards—wheeled slowly in the cloudless sky. When she lifted her face toward them, one bird and then the other also began to drop toward the ground.

Hedia grimaced. Well, if they thought she was dead she would convince them otherwise quickly enough. She shifted her little knife so that its hilt stuck out of her sash. This wasn't polite society, where people would be shocked to see her openly armed.

The trees in the grove behind Hedia were spiky and rough-barked, nothing like those of the wood through which she had walked a moment ago, and the track through them was low and narrow as though it had been worn by pigs. Well, she hadn't wanted to go back anyway.

There wasn't any obvious better direction for her to go, however. The choices were to slide down the bank of the watercourse—an overhang had collapsed nearby—or to strike off across the grassland to another stand of trees. The nearest grove was less than a mile away. Since the sunken river bent in that direction, she could easily try that option if there was nothing useful to be found in the grove.

As Hedia started toward the grove its side seemed to bulge outward as if a boulder had rolled through it. She paused and squinted to focus.

An elephant had just walked out of the trees. It had walked
over
a tree, though it took a moment for the crackling to reach Hedia. The beast was bigger even at this distance than the many hundreds of elephants she had seen—seen slaughtered—in the arena, and its heavy tusks pointed down.

A second and a third elephant followed the first. One lifted slightly on its hind legs, then lowered itself with a lesser crackling; it had hooked a large branch and broken it off to chew.

Well,
that's
not the direction I want to go,
Hedia thought.

A shadow passed overhead. She jumped back, fumbling for her knife. One of the birds settled in front of her. Its feet kicked up spurts of dust and soot.

I'm starting at shadows!
That was embarrassing, but the shadow could have meant
anything in
this place.

The second bird landed near the first; it hopped around a quarter turn to face Hedia as its fellow did. From their talons and hooked beaks they were hawks, but beak to tail they weren't as long as her forearm. Their backs and wings were rich chestnut, and their breast feathers were white with thin black ticking.

“Are you planning to steal those deinotheres?” the hawk on the left said. “We saw you looking at them.”

“She'd better not,” said the hawk on the right. “The herdsman wouldn't like it.”

“He might like
her,
though,” said Left. They were as similar as a pair of shucked oysters. Both birds cackled.

“I'm not going to steal anything,” Hedia said, emphasizing her upper-class accent. Could the birds distinguish Latin accents? Since they spoke cultured Latin, they very well might. “I am the Lady Hedia, and I'm looking for my son, Gaius Alphenus Varus. Have you seen him?”

“Is he dead?” said Right. “We only pay attention to people when they're dead.”

The birds cackled again.

“I trust that my son is not dead,” Hedia said calmly. She'd met this sort before, though they were mostly women and the poncy boys her first husband had favored.
I wonder if these birds are hens?
“And since you're talking to me, you do pay attention to living people.”

“Well, yes,” said Left. “But you're going to be dead soon, so it's all the same.”

Hedia sheathed her dagger. She was glad she'd snatched it out now, because putting it back with a flourish was a more effective way to show contempt than words would have been.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Where does the river—”

She gestured.

“—go, if you will?”

“There's hills to the north,” Right said. “A hundred miles or so. South it feeds into a swamp. That's about as far away.”

“There isn't much water at this time of year,” said Left. “A few pools along the way is all.”

“She won't care about water,” Right said. It bent its head back and combed its outstretched wing, its beak making little clicking noises as it did so. “The king will get her if she goes down to the river.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Left said. “The king won't leave anything for us.”

“Who is the King?” Hedia said, smiling pleasantly.
If my servants were here, I'd have them wring the neck of one and hold the other until it explained the situation clearly. And then I'd have its neck wrung also.

“You'd better hope you don't learn!” said Right.

“We hope you don't learn!” said Left.

The birds cackled together.

Hedia squeezed her lips into a grim line. She could see a grove beyond the nearest one, another mile or so distant. She could bear left to skirt the elephants. There was no reason the big beasts should pay any attention to—

A man with one large eye in the middle of his forehead stepped out of the nearer grove. He was taller than the elephants and broad in proportion. His staff had been roughly shaped from a tree; the branches had been broken away, but much of the bark still remained on the trunk.

The cyclops looked at Hedia, then stepped between two of the elephants and started toward her. The smallest elephant started after him, but one of the larger pair screamed and swatted it back with her trunk.

A calf and its mother,
Hedia thought. Which didn't matter, but it kept her from focusing on the speed at which the cyclops strode toward her.

The giant moved with the jerky awkwardness of a jagged boulder bouncing down a hill, but he stood fifteen feet tall and his legs were half his height. Each clumsy step covered more ground than Hedia could have run in the same time.

“Oh, good!” said one of the hawks. “The herdsman leaves as many scraps as a lion does. We'll eat well!”

Running is unladylike,
Hedia thought. She turned and trotted to the fallen bank. As with showing her dagger, propriety could be buggered under these circumstances. The dagger would be useless against a giant, but she'd manage to scratch him for all that.

The slope to the streambed hadn't been packed down. Crumbs of dirt got between her sandals and the soles of her feet, but she didn't sink in.

Hedia looked left and right. Willow saplings grew in the dry streambed, but they didn't form a real barrier. The cyclops wouldn't be able to run between them, but he didn't need to: like the elephants of his herd, he could crush his way through without slowing.

Hedia saw a darker patch in the far bank beyond the screen of willows. A cave?
Some
thing's cave, no doubt, but she would take her chances with a hog rather than wait for the cyclops to catch her.

She ran through the willows, trying not to leave footprints. Her sandals scuffed the dry, sandy soil, but the marks were nothing more than the wind had done at various places on the surface.

The cave opening was tighter than Hedia had thought; she would have to crawl and perhaps to squirm. Still, it was better than what the cyclops had in mind.

Men have generally been friendly with me,
she thought—and grinned. The cyclops was certainly male—he wore only a skin cape, so there wasn't any doubt about that—but his member was in scale with the rest of his body. There wouldn't be much difference between being torn apart to be eaten and being torn apart by sex.

Though I've always said that I'll try anything once.…

Hedia thought of backing into the hole, but she decided that she would rather meet a possible resident face-to-face. The point of her knife might at least provide enough delay for her to back out again.

She crawled in. Her body didn't fill the tunnel, so she could breathe, but the interior was pitch-dark. When she was some distance in—she couldn't really judge, but perhaps twenty feet—she became certain that she had been curving to the right.

Hedia stopped, panting more with relief than exertion. The cyclops wouldn't have been able to enter the tunnel, but he might have thrust his staff in if he suspected his prey had come down it. She was past the length of his arm on the end of the staff now—she thought—and anyway, the tree trunk couldn't bend.

Her eyes had adapted, but there shouldn't have been any light where she was. Instead there was a soft yellow-green glow, much like the flash of a firefly. It was very faint and came from farther down the tunnel.

Dim as the light was, Hedia could see that the cave was much enlarged. She could stand without ducking, and she probably couldn't touch both sides at the same time.

She rose to her feet, feeling uneasy again. The illumination wasn't the right color to be sunlight through holes in the ceiling.

At least I can turn around,
she thought. She had been expecting to have to back down the tunnel, which would have been even less pleasant than it had been to enter with her shoulders rubbing the dirt.

The tunnel continued to curve beyond where Hedia stood.
I wonder where it leads?
It could scarcely be worse than to follow the river in either direction if the hawks were to be trusted. The birds had irritating personalities, but they hadn't lied about the one statement she had been able to check: the elephants' herdsman certainly was hostile.

The light from farther down the tunnel brightened. A snake crawled around the bend twenty feet from Hedia. The front part of his body was raised so that his head was on a level with hers. There was no way of telling how far back the creature stretched, but even where his neck joined the triangular skull the snake was thicker than Hedia's torso.

The snake wore a crown of yellow-green light, the source of the illumination. His forked tongue sipped the air twice as his eyes held hers.

“I am the King,” he said in a soft voice. She expected the snake to slur his words, but his diction was perfect. “You are very welcome in my realm, human.”

He started toward her like a river of hot tar.

Hedia turned and threw herself into the tunnel back the way she had come. Dropping to all fours, she scrabbled down the narrowing passage.

Like a frightened rat,
she thought.
And that's just what I am!

She expected the King's fangs to close on her trailing leg before she reached daylight. The tunnel had narrowed and she wouldn't be able to turn and stab the snake.
But as I go down his throat I'll be cutting a furrow as deep as the blade reaches!

The blade was only the length of her little finger, of course, but she would do what she could.

Hedia slithered onto the streambed and scrambled around saplings while still in a crouch, rising from all fours only when she had reached the fallen stream bank. The King was behind her, chuckling in a bass voice.
I wonder if he's deliberately playing with me?

She climbed to the plain. She had forgotten about the cyclops until she looked up and saw him twenty feet away.

He roared with triumph through yellow, ragged teeth. The cape tied around his shoulders was the skin of a shaggy bull of some type. The hide had not been tanned or even cleaned properly, and the stench of rotting flesh shoved her back like a wave.

The sky in the east had turned to dark golden clouds rising from the horizon to far into the heavens. Lightning shot through the roiling mass as it rushed toward Hedia and the cyclops.

“Mine!” said the giant. He raised his club.