The Legions of Fire (38 page)

T
HE GLOWING FOG
which closed Varus off from the Appian Way and the rest of Carce abruptly shrank in upon itself the way fog vanishes when the air warms. He was in a chamber like the cell of a great sponge.

The structure was opaque though faintly yellow with internal light. A wall resisted Varus when he pressed it with his hand, but even so he wasn't sure that it was solid. The floor was of the same substance and felt faintly resilient.

There was a hole a few feet across in the ceiling and another hole in one of the walls. Varus crawled through the latter, into another cell of the same sort as the first. He didn't see other people or even other life. The wind sighed as though it were blowing through a funnel in rocks, and he felt the distant throb of dancers in his mind.

This cell was smaller than the first, but it had three holes at a level which Varus could reach without jumping and trying to pull himself upward. If there'd been reason to hope for something better at the higher level, Varus would have climbed, but he saw no hope for anything better
anywhere
.

He hesitated, wondering whether to keep moving blindly from cell to cell until he starved or to stay where he was and starve in one place.
I may as well keep moving. That way I can at least
feel
as though I'm accomplishing something
.

Varus started toward the hole he happened to be facing. As he did so, a woman wriggled through the opening to his right and stood.

“I was afraid you weren't going to come,” she said. He couldn't read the look on her face. “I was so afraid …. I'm Urash. You are welcome. You are so welcome.”

Varus felt a wash of relief, not because of what the woman said but simply because he wasn't alone after all. “I …,” he said. “I'm Gaius Varus. I—your husband sent me to you. Oannes? He said you could guide me to …”

He paused. His tongue was reluctant to frame the words, but the pounding in his mind increased.

“I'm to lead the Legions of Surtr,” he blurted. “You can guide me to them.”

Urash smiled and ran her fingertips along his right arm. “I guide you?” she said. “No, not me; I can't leave this place, Varus. But I will send you to a guide, and in exchange you will pay me.”

Urash was short and dark, with Levantine features and straight black hair. Her linen tunic was appliquéd with bands of leather cutwork: a repeated
pattern of trees of life and horned goats licking the outspread hands of a female figure on a dais. When she first entered this cell, Varus had thought her complexion was pale and her hair mousy, but that was clearly wrong. Perhaps it had been a trick of the light which bled through the walls.

“I have nothing to pay you with,” Varus said. Had Oannes misunderstood? But he'd
told
the man that he didn't have even his purse. “After I return to my world, I'll give you what you ask; but I have nothing now.”

Urash turned so that they stood side by side instead of facing each other, but she moved closer. Her hip bumped his gently, and her left hand traced from his waist to his shoulder.

“I should have died,” she said so softly that Varus wasn't sure she was speaking to him. “Oannes wouldn't allow that to happen. He has great knowledge, knowledge of all things, but even Oannes makes mistakes. He can turn every answer into a question and find each next answer, but this time he stopped when he found the answer which suited his desires.”

Varus would have edged away, but he was almost against a wall. He didn't like the feel of whatever this place was made of, and he didn't want to offend the woman whose help he needed.

“So I am here,” Urash whispered. “By my husband's choice and by his power. And then he asked the next question, but it was too late. Even for Oannes, it was too late.”

“Mistress Urash?” Varus said. “Where is this place?”

There was more sorrow in the woman's laughter than there could have been in all Niobe's tears for her murdered children. “This is no place, Varus,” Urash said. “This is the place between, and I am here forever.”

Varus's mouth was dry; he licked his lips. He didn't know what to say. After a moment, he said, “I'm sorry, mistress.”

“You came to me,” Urash said. He could barely hear her. “That's as much as anyone can do, and you did it.”

She turned to her right and gestured. The cell structure was that of spheres of varied size pressing against one another. One of the irregular walls brightened, then became a window onto a high knoll. It was night, but a full moon lighted an open cairn. Beyond, a forest stretched to the horizon in all directions.

Men with torches stood outside the cairn. They were clad in furs, and their bearded faces were as solemn as the cairn itself. Their eyes were on the open entrance.

Urash gestured again. The plane through which Varus watched swept toward the side of the cairn. For an instant he saw turf layered over a core of stones fitted into a corbeled arch; then he saw the inside, where two men held the arms of a tall woman with blond hair.

“She is Sigyn,” Urash said. “She will guide you.”

The men—one had a torch in his free hand, holding it out to the side because of the low ceiling—had forced the woman onto a bench made from a single large slab. She strained hopelessly to rise, but she kept her lips closed over her fury.

“Should we help her?” Varus said. He squeezed his hands together, trying to work out their sudden chill. “How do I help her?”

Sigyn wore a shift of thin wool. A third man stepped to her from the side, avoiding her barefoot attempts to kick him. In his hand was an iron dagger with a rounded tip.

She first pressed her chin against her chest, then tried to bite the man as he reached over her to grab a handful of her long hair. Forcing her head back, he cut her throat with a single powerful stroke. The blade sparked where it rubbed the stone.

A fountain of blood splashed the roof and all three men. Instead of trying to jump out of the way, they continued to hold the woman until she stopped thrashing.

The man with the dagger wiped its blade on her shift. All three left the tomb, ducking to clear the low opening. They didn't look back at their victim. Stones laid from outside began to close the entrance.

Varus took a deep breath. He looked at Urash and said, “You told me she would be my guide.”

“She must die to guide you to your destiny, Varus,” Urash said. She tugged the talisman out from beneath his tunic and stared for a moment. Her fingers caressed the ivory.

“She will guide you,” Urash said, “because you will compel her. Your verses have power in this place.”

In a whisper she added, “You have the power of Botrug in this amulet.”

“What do I do now?” Varus said. His mouth was so dry that he could barely speak. He already knew the answer. His back was pressed against the wall of the cell, and Urash was untying his sash.

“Now,” Urash said as she drew his tunic up over his head, “you pay me, Varus.”

S
hort though the night had been, Corylus awakened at dawn. To his surprise, the sun was rising in the constellation Gemini, not Pisces as it should have.

He'd known that he was far to the north even of Germany. According to the astronomer Manilius, whom he'd heard lecture in the Forum, the sun moved through the zodiac at the rate of a house in 1,950 years. That meant Corylus was many thousands of years distant in time from his home. That didn't seem possible, but much that was happening would have been impossible in the world in which he had lived a week ago.

Odd's Vengeance was nowhere to be seen. Had Corylus really met him in the night? His memory was very clear, but that didn't mean he hadn't been dreaming.

He smiled, working his limbs to take out the stiffness of the chill night. Even if it was a dream, the ghost—or whatever—could have been real. Corylus simply couldn't rationally judge possibilities in the present world.

Rather than eat the remaining trout immediately, Corylus started hiking south, generally paralleling the creek. He would have a better appetite for breakfast after he'd warmed his muscles back to suppleness.

He left the tumbling river of ice and meltwater behind almost immediately; after a half mile, there wasn't so much as a faint rumble to remind him of its existence. The volcano, though, would remain unchanged for a long time yet. Every time Corylus glanced over his shoulder, the cone and the plume of smoke were fixed against the pale sky.

Groves of small trees punctuated the rolling grassland. Corylus decided to eat his trout in a stand of rowans on a hump too small to be honestly
described as a hill. It was slightly out of his way—it stood above the creek, which had borne east while Corylus decided to walk straight south—but not so much that it mattered.

As he approached the rowan copse, a woman with reddish hair stepped out from behind a trunk and smiled. He half stumbled. More women appeared.

They couldn't have hidden behind trees whose boles were no thicker than his forearm. Corylus swallowed but continued walking toward them.

“Hello, Corylus!” called the first woman he'd seen. They were all of a type, slender and russet-haired, but he thought he could tell them apart. There were six of them, just as there were six rowan trees.

“You have the advantage of me, mistresses,” Corylus said. Then, because he decided that he really wanted to know and asking was the best way to learn, he said, “Mistress? Are you dryads?”

“Of course we are, silly,” said the first woman. “I'm Sorba and these are my sisters.”

The women smiled and murmured. Though young—they seemed young—they were poised and their manners were courteous.

“I, ah, I'm Publius Corylus,” he said. He shook his head at his own words. “But of course, you knew that. I, ah, didn't expect to meet you.”

“And why not?” said Sorba cheerfully. “Since you were coming straight toward us. We're glad of your company, Corylus.”

“And you should be glad of ours too,” another tree nymph said. “If you keep going in the direction you're headed …?”

She raised an eyebrow in question. Corylus swallowed again and said, “Yes, I want to meet a chief named Frothi. I'm told I will if I keep going south.”

“Frothi doesn't matter,” said Sorba. “But he has Nemastes with him, and Nemastes will serve you out the way he did Odd, Frothi's brother.”

“Frothi and Nemastes murdered Odd,” said a nymph.

“We saw them go past,” said another. “And when they returned, they boasted about it.”

“Nemastes urged Frothi to kill his brother,” said a fourth. “Odd had a flute, which he would not give to Nemastes.”

Corylus set his slight gear down and stood among the rowans and the dryads. He placed his right hand on the trunk of the nearest tree, simply to have something to do. A nymph giggled.

Blushing, Corylus jerked his hand away.
All
the nymphs giggled. He continued to blush.

The dryads were the sort of girls that Saxa wished his daughter would be: pretty, pleasant, and above all
proper
. Even gladiators' equipment couldn't prevent Alphena from being pretty, but she seemed to make a point of being unpleasantly improper.

Corylus cleared his throat. “I, ah, come from a long way away—,” he began.

He stopped because the nymphs broke into peals of laughter.

“We know where you came from, Corylus!” a girl laughed.

“There are rowans then too, silly!” said another.

They seemed to be trying to compose themselves, but every time they allowed their eyes to rest on his stricken expression, they began to laugh again. Finally Sorba turned to her sisters and raised her hands. The nymphs quieted, though with the occasional gurgle of amusement.

Sorba faced him again and said contritely, “You'll have to pardon us, Corylus. Mostly we have only our own company; and that of the animals, of course. We ought to behave better when a gentleman like you visits.”

“I was at fault,” Corylus said. He supposed that was only half true—he hadn't had any way of knowing how much information the dryads had—but it was how he always felt when things went wrong. “What I was going to say, though, is that there's a wizard named Nemastes where I come from also.”

“The same man,” said a nymph.

“If he's a man,” objected another.

“Well,” said a third. “As much as Corylus is a man, don't you think?”

“Only not nearly so nice!” objected two together.

“Nemastes was one of the Band,” said Sorba, who seemed to have a leading if not dominating position among her sisters. She pointed behind them to the cone smoking on the northern horizon. “They live there, on what the nomads in Thule call the Horn.”

“They're Hyperboreans, like Nemastes?” said Corylus.

The nymphs tittered behind raised hands. Even Sorba smiled. She said, “We're all Hyperboreans to your people, dear Corylus. We live above the north wind. But Nemastes and his siblings live on the Horn, and that is true of them alone.”