The Legions of Fire (34 page)

Aloud she said, “I saw you with my daughter Alphena, so don't bother telling me that you don't know where she's gone. I want you to bring her back
now
.”

“How am I supposed to do—,” the nymph began. Hedia stepped toward her, bringing her left hand back for another swipe.

Persica cowered down, crossing her forearms before her face. “Don't!” she said.

“Listen, girlie,” Hedia said, hearing her voice rasp like a stone saw. “I could find an axe somewhere in the house, I'm sure, but I won't do that: I'll have the scullery maids peel your bark off with paring knives, working down from the thinnest branches.
Or,
you can tell me where Alphena is and how to get her back.”

Persica straightened warily. She looked at her palm, then the silk shift. The wound was no longer bleeding, but it had stained the fabric in a broad wedge.

She glanced at Anna, then looked away quickly. The old soldier's wife was at least as determined as Hedia herself.

You're not dealing with little girls, now,
Hedia thought.

“She's in the spirit world,” the nymph said in a chastened voice. “But she could be anywhere. She—”

She gestured toward the spring enclosure and saw the blood on her palm again. She clenched her fist.

“I sent her from there,” Persica said; she dropped her eyes during the admission, but she raised them again. “She wanted to find Corylus, and I said the stones are a gateway and he might have used them to go to another world.”

“Did he?” said Anna. “
Is
that what my boy did?”

“I don't think so,” the nymph whispered. “I think he might have used the mammoth tusks instead.”

She nodded briefly to the great curves of ivory sheltered under the portico.

“That Hyperborean might have been responsible, don't you think?” Persica said.

No, I do
not
think Nemastes was responsible,
Hedia thought.
Not when you were here and we know what you did to my daughter
.

But first things first. However much Hedia liked young Corylus, Alphena was family.

“All right,” she said. “You sent my daughter into this spirit world, so you can now go bring her back.”

Persica opened her mouth to protest. Before she got a word out, Hedia added, “Otherwise, you're of no use to us.”

“But I
can't
,” the nymph said in a tone of desperation. “I can't leave my tree, don't you see?”

A man might feel sorry for you, missy,
Hedia thought. Aloud she said, “If you can't bring her yourself, how do we return Lady Alphena to this world?”

She didn't bother to add a threat. Persica certainly understood by now that if Hedia couldn't get her daughter back, the nymph and her tree would die after several days of agony.

Persica turned her head so that she looked at Hedia through the corners of her eyes. “I can send you after her,” she said in a small voice. “But I can't send you exactly where, I
can't
. You'll need a guide when you get there, and I can't help with that either.”

Hedia looked at Anna and raised an eyebrow in question. The old woman shrugged. “She can't leave her tree, that's true,” she said. “Which doesn't mean we shouldn't have her turned into firewood, but that won't help with either of the children. I wouldn't be much use in the dreamworld myself”—she lifted a cane to waggle it, then planted it firmly on the ground again—“which leaves you, milady. Unless you think perhaps Lord Varus …?”

“No,” said Hedia more curtly than she had intended. “How will I find Alphena after I've done this, gone to this dreamworld?”

“I can send you there!” Persica said. “No one else can!”

Hedia looked at Anna again. The older woman gave her a slight smile
and said, “I might manage, but it'll be easier if she's helping. If anything goes wrong, I have my own paring knife. I won't need your maids to help me.”

“I didn't hurt the girl,” the nymph said, hugging herself. “I didn't hurt anybody. I just did what she wanted!”

Both women looked at her. Anna said to Hedia, “You'll need your own guide, your ladyship; it requires the help of the spirit of somebody close to you. Do you have a lock of your mother's hair, perhaps, or a ring that your father always wore? Something like that?”

Hedia thought for a moment, then laughed like ice tinkling down onto a tile roof. “Not hair,” she said. “And not a parent. But yes, I have a part of someone who owes me more than he can ever repay. I'll have my husband's ashes brought from his tomb.”

V
ARUS LOOKED AT THE
S
PRING OF
E
GERIA
, flowing through rock at the base of the Aventine Hill. A century or two ago it had been ornamented with a semicircular curb of polished limestone, but graffiti defaced the stones and trash choked the pool.

When Carce was young, the region was rural, and according to legend the nymph Egeria lived in the spring. She had become the mistress of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Carce, and had whispered her wisdom to him on their couch.

The Appian Way entered the city here, and now two huge aqueducts crossed just to the north and brought water to the southern half of the city. Traffic was heavy and constant, and nobody had time for legends.

Varus sighed. He wished that someone would whisper wisdom to him. The rhythm pounding in his mind was—

He shied away from the word “maddening.” But he was very much afraid that the beat was driving him mad.

The spring was adjacent to the Temple of the Muses, a simple structure where ordinarily no one was present except a caretaker. Varus had come frequently to sit on the temple steps and write when he was fooling himself that he was a poet. It wasn't peaceful, not alongside the busiest highway in the empire, but he enjoyed the association not only of the Muses but also with Carce's legendary history.

A troop of gladiators swaggered through the Capenan Gate, up from their training school to the south. Sea bathing was part of their regimen, so
many of the schools were on the Bay of Puteoli, where Corylus's father had his perfume factories.

They were singing a bawdy song about the king of Syria in what was meant to be Latin. Each of the dozen gladiators had a different accent. Apart from the fact that the king's private parts were improbably large, Varus couldn't understand much of the burden.

The gladiators wore richly embroidered tunics, and a small army of servants attended them with food, drink, and shades against the sun. A stranger might have mistaken them for foreign royalty. In the minds of the crowd which would cheer them in the arena, that's what they were.

Varus thought about his sister and her sword practice. He grimaced, but he'd been wasting his time just as thoroughly with his poetry. At least Alphena hadn't made a fool of herself in public!

A bareheaded man with white hair had left the highway and was coming toward him. Varus frowned in surprise; then he remembered that he was alone. Ordinarily when he came to the temple, he had a dozen servants. He directed them to keep well away while he was writing, but they nonetheless made sure that beggars and hawkers stayed at a distance also.

After the living vision on the Capitoline Hill, Varus wanted to be
really
alone. There were people passing by constantly here, but nobody knew him and nobody would pay him any attention. He'd even insisted that Pandareus not join him. He wanted to think.

He smiled faintly. He hadn't been doing much thinking, at least not in any useful fashion. He wondered if he'd expected Egeria to pop out and speak to him. She would have to struggle to get through the potsherds, the broken wheel, and assorted other rubbish which people had tossed into the pool over the years.

Varus turned to the white-haired man and said, “I haven't a coin to give you, even if I wanted to do that. And if the servant who normally would accompany me with my purse were present, I fear that he'd have cracked you over the head before you got this close to me. Go your way, sir, and leave me to my thoughts.”

“I'm not a beggar, Lord Varus,” said the stranger. “I shouldn't have thought that I looked like one. Certainly not as much as you do in your present state of disrepair, if you'll permit me to say so.”

He paused. The smile that quirked his lips had more of sadness than humor in it. “My name is Oannes,” he said.

Varus looked down at himself. He'd been so lost in his mind that he hadn't paid any attention to his physical presence.

He had left his broad-striped toga with the servants at the temple because he didn't want the wool rubbing on his various injuries. Balaton had sponged off the blood with a mixture of water and sour wine. The temple stores also provided a very soothing ointment made from herbs crushed into the grease of raw wool: apparently it wasn't uncommon for suppliants to manage to burn themselves while tossing pinches of frankincense on the altar.

“As you say, Master Oannes,” he said with a smile, “I
don't
look like an obvious person from whom to solicit alms.”

He coughed to indicate the delicacy of what came next, then said, “My name is Gaius Varus, which you already knew, and I apologize for my insulting presumption about your motives. But I really don't want company now.”

“I suspect you came here for answers,” Oannes said. “It would be natural for a man of your antiquarian bent to wish that Egeria would speak to you as she is said to have done to your ancient king.”

He stood beside Varus, just over an arm's length away. He was facing the spring, but he turned his head slightly as he spoke. His knee-length tunic was simple; over it was a short cape with a fringe of leather tassels, a fashion Varus had never seen before. He wore a leather satchel on a shoulder strap as though he were a traveler, but he had neither hat nor staff.

Smiling at Varus, he said, “Do you believe that Egeria was real, your lordship?”

Since he knows who I am, this isn't a chance meeting.

Aloud Varus said, “I believe that my ancient ancestors had divine guidance, yes. I find that less improbable than that a gang of shepherds and bandits founded the city that became Carce
without
divine guidance. But—”

Oannes watched with the detached calm of a man observing a beehive.

“—I don't know if one of those divine spirits was named Egeria. Or for that matter, if one of the men was named Numa.”

Oannes smiled faintly. “If she—whatever her name might have been—had ever been here,” he said, nodding toward the pool, “then I fear she's long gone. Even so, I think it would be polite to clear her precincts. Perhaps I'll do so after I've finished the business that brought me here.”

Varus faced the stranger. The traffic on the Appian Way flowed back and forth, more people in an hour than there were in most country towns;
singing, jabbering, praying. None of them paid any attention to him and Oannes. Every traveler or group of travelers was a separate world, sufficient to itself.

All Carce was like that. All the
earth
was like that, a gathering of elements each as discrete as a grain of sand. Gaius Varus was alone, except for the maddening drumming in his mind.

“What is your business, Master Oannes?” he said stiffly. “And what do you see as my part in it?”

“I'm a magician,” Oannes said, looking toward the pool. “Of a sort—I don't want you to mistake me for your Nemastes.”

Varus straightened in surprise. “Why do you say that?” he demanded. He tried to be commanding, but he noticed with embarrassment that his voice wavered on the last syllable.

“I was told by the stars,” Oannes said simply. “I saw your need, and I know my own capabilities. So I came to you.”

He faced Varus again with a slight smile. “My abilities differ from those of Nemastes, you see, but they're real nonetheless. You need a guide to bring you to the Legions of Surtr, which you're to lead. My wife is in the spirit world, and she will supply you with that guide.”

What are the legions of Surtr?
Varus thought.
And who would want me to lead anything?

Aloud he said, “What am I to pay you for this?”

“For me, nothing,” Oannes said. He grimaced and turned toward the pool again. In a changed voice he continued, “You will pay my wife in the coin she requests. The charge will not be exorbitant.”

“Why am
I
to lead legions?” Varus said, hoping to find wisdom if he worked the words around in his mind for a while. “Why should I lead anybody? Not me!”

But as he spoke, he felt the insistent rhythm in his mind. He knew that the stranger was right.

“I don't know the purpose,” Oannes said. “I don't know if anything has purpose, Varus. I know only the means.”

He looked directly at the younger man. “I love my wife more than life itself,” he said, “but I cannot go to her. When I die, no one will send her visitors. She will wear away to hunger; nothing but hunger. Therefore—”

Oannes smiled. Varus looked into his eyes; for an instant he saw a skull, but only for a flash of time.

“—I must live even longer than I have lived already.”

“What if I don't want to go?” Varus said.

Oannes shrugged. “I was told you needed my help,” he said. “If the stars were wrong, shall I protest to them? But the stars are never wrong.”

The rhythm pressed and pressed harder. Varus felt his mind strain, trying to squeeze out of his eye sockets and through his ear canals.

“All right,” he said. “What am I to do?”

“Stand where you are,” Oannes said quietly. He opened his satchel and took from it what looked like a handful of ground millet. He walked around Varus, dropping pinches of the dust on the ground as he went.

Oannes seemed to be chanting under his breath, but Varus couldn't be sure that he wasn't hearing the dancers in his mind instead. There was a haze between him and the traffic of the busy highway. No one was looking at him and Oannes, but no one had looked at them earlier either.