The Legions of Fire (57 page)

Hedia closed her hand on the binding again, feeling only a slick coldness this time. She gripped as firmly as she could, but the colors raced along the shape undeterred. She tried to lift it away from Varus so that she wouldn't nick him with her blade; it didn't budge.

Shapes like reflections of Nemastes quivered in the air. She couldn't see them clearly, though she was sure they were there. They reminded her of when she'd walked into the garden and seen Alphena disappearing. These bald, lowering figures had the same almost-presence to her eyes as Persica had had at that moment.

Grimacing, Hedia jabbed her dagger's needle point at the fetter, planning to lift the blade and saw through the upper half while she tried to figure out what to do with the rest. Keen as the dagger was, it glanced off as though from polished granite.

The boy seemed remarkably calm for someone who was bound in the path of monsters which would destroy him as soon as they'd disposed of his sister. Brave as Alphena was—and skilled, judging by Hedia's glance as the sword the girl had insisted on digging up sliced through a pair of demons—it could be only a matter of time before they bore her down.

Varus's left hand clutched the ivory head he'd been wearing since his poetry reading. He paid no attention to Hedia, though a flick of his eyes as she bent over him showed that he wasn't in a trance. He was chanting the same stanza over and over:
“Where the twisted horn is hid, the Wizard knows!”

Was Varus the wizard? If so, Hedia certainly wished he'd do something to end this,
this
!

If she couldn't cut the shimmering bonds, perhaps she could pull Varus out of the way. Suiting her action to the thought, she grabbed him by the feet and tried to drag him toward the nearer side aisle. He slid easily on the polished mosaic floor, but her slippers didn't grip well either. In struggling at the unfamiliar task—this was the sort of thing that
servants
did for her, by Hecate!—she almost stabbed her son through the ankle.
This is no good!

Hedia dropped the boy's legs in a flash of insight. She'd been so focused on freeing Varus that she hadn't been thinking about the
real
problem: the demons.
Nemastes is calling them with that hellish flute music!

Hedia turned abruptly and paused, swaying. She supposed she'd moved
too quickly after her long climb up the ramp; that, and maybe the brimstone stink of the air here in the hall, were making her dizzy.

Collecting herself, Hedia strode toward Nemastes with crisp, steady steps instead of risking a fall by trying to run. The wizard continued to play, watching her. He backed up a step, pressing against the shoulder-high plinth that supported the god's throne. His expression was anguished.

“Give me that!” Hedia said. She grabbed the flute with her left hand. She'd thought it was made of black wood, but the feel showed her it was bone.

Nemastes held on to the instrument, but she'd pulled it away from his mouth. “You mustn't!” he said. “I can turn back Surtr if I can only find the tune! Surtr will destroy your whole world unless you let me play!”

“Give me the flute!” Hedia repeated, trying to jerk it away from him. “You're raising these demons, you barbarian!”

He tried to push her away. Hedia stabbed him in the left armpit; she'd almost forgotten that she still held the little knife. Nemastes bawled and tried to grab her arm. She jabbed him in the face. Her point skidded upward from his molars; a severed flap of his cheek sagged away.

He let go of the flute and put his hands in front of his face for defense. Hedia pressed close and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest. She lost track of how many times the blade punched in; she even forgot what she was doing.

There was no science to this, none of the calculation with which she had killed the faun. Hedia was white with fear and anger, striking blindly at the thing that she was afraid of. She gripped the flute in her left hand, but she'd forgotten about it.

“Surtr …,” Nemastes whispered. He coughed a bubble; it burst, smearing his face with blood. Foam oozing from his punctured lungs covered his torso. He slipped into a sitting position, his back against the plinth, then toppled onto his side. In death, the wizard looked even more like a stick figure than he had when he was alive.

A hand touched Hedia's left shoulder from behind. She whirled, her bloody dagger poised to strike.

C
ORYLUS HAD TRADED HIS SANDALS
for the boots he'd taken from Odd's body. They were gone now, along with Odd's bandolier of equipment. He ran toward the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, feeling the stone flags
of the building's plaza cool on his bare feet. From inside came roaring and the shrieks of the damned.

The double doors at the top of the staircase were ajar. As Corylus slipped between the valves, he heard the cypress nymph call, “Good luck, Cousin. And be careful!”

Corylus stepped into an angle where worlds met. The hall of the temple was a faint outline overlying a vast pit of sour yellow-green light. Demons—the same squat fire demons he had seen marching across Thule—were climbing out of the abyss, by handfuls at present but with unnumbered legions following.

Above circled the Twelve like vultures, watching and waiting above their sibling Nemastes as they had done in Thule. That time they took the head of Botrug. Now—who knew? Perhaps they wanted the talisman back from Varus's clutch.

The pit was the present reality, but the Temple of Jupiter still existed as a sort of crystal scaffolding over it. At the edge of the chasm, Alphena faced fire demons with a sword which, to Corylus's amazement, cut them apart. The weapons he'd seen in Thule had ignited like chaff, even the stone dagger Frothi had used in his last moments of life.

Behind Alphena sprawled Varus, tied with rainbow loops. Pandareus, faceup with a bloody welt on the forehead, lay nearby; at the base of the seated statue of Jupiter, Hedia in a torn tunic struggled with the wizard Nemastes.

Skirting the pit—and, in the waking world, keeping to the edge of the hall, just inside the pillars separating the side aisle—Corylus ran to Hedia's aid. When he found a weapon, he'd try to help Alphena or perhaps cut Varus loose, but for now his task was clear.

As Corylus reached the struggling couple, Hedia stepped back. The wizard fell against the dais, then slumped to the floor. His chest was a mass of blood, and his face had been brutally sliced.

Corylus touched Hedia's shoulder and said, “Your ladyship?” She whirled, cocking back the little dagger in her hand. All he could see of the weapon was its point, glinting like a serpent's fang through the gore.

“Hedia!” he said. She was all blood too. Her face and hair were spattered, her silk tunic was stiff with it, and her right arm to the elbow dripped red … but it wasn't her blood. Hedia was all right; physically, at least.

Corylus thought he'd seen hell when he looked down into the pit, but
the look in the eyes of this cultured, attractive woman froze him. He'd been reaching for her right wrist, just in case, but his hand stopped.

Hedia's expression became human again, changing as completely as water differs from ice. She held out the flute—Odd's flute!—in her left hand and said, “Here. Do you know how to play this? I don't think anything else can help this”—she gestured generally with her right arm; some of the blood was still wet enough to fly off in droplets—“
affair
.”

“I might,” said Corylus. They were shouting to be heard over the roar from the pit; it sounded like the shore of the German Ocean during a winter storm, but there were keener, crueler noises within the brutal thunder.

He examined the flute, ignoring all else that was going on around him. It looked exactly the same as it had when he'd played it in Thule; though of course
he
hadn't played it, not really.

Smiling, Corylus plucked out the reed that Nemastes had fitted to the knuckle end and replaced it with the one he'd stuck behind his ear when Odd returned it. He lifted it toward his lips, whispering, “Canina, are you still—”

“And why wouldn't I be, Cousin?” the tawny nymph said. She ruffled his hair with one hand. “The sun still rises and the rain falls, don't they? Here, let's see what we can do.”

Canina reached
into
him as before. He felt his fingers shifting on the flute, touching the stops. His head bent slightly, and his lips began to play.

Corylus couldn't hear the music, but he heard the nymph in his heart laughing. Light flooded the hall, as clear as the sun glinting from ice. In it, risen from the pit and brandishing his flaming sword, stood Surtr just as Corylus had seen him dominating the landscape of Thule. The fire god roared, but now his raging cruelty held an undertone of fear: though Surtr was a deity, the cool light of the flute cut him.

Cut him, and bound him. The pit and the creatures crawling up its slope froze into crystal while Canina played through Corylus's lips. His fingers moved with elegance on the stops, movements that mimicked the high steps of the Twelve as they danced. But the Twelve—

Corylus lifted his eyes to where Nemastes' siblings were circling. He half expected them to descend the way they had in Thule when Nemastes abandoned the ivory head.

The Twelve still hung in the air, but their pattern had shaken into wild chaos like the play of raindrops on a pond. There was power in their movements, but they no longer directed that power.

Corylus's lips played and his fingers danced. Alphena dropped to her left knee. She gasped through her mouth, expelling her breath in racking sobs. Her right arm lay on her thigh; her hand kept the sword forward, waiting for demons to burst through the barrier enclosing them. Until then, she would rest.

The ropes of shifting light had dropped away from Varus. He sat cross-legged, still holding the ivory head in his left hand as he recited. It didn't seem to have occurred to him to run away now that he could.

In a way Corylus supposed that it didn't matter—from what he'd seen in Thule, there was no real escape unless Surtr was stopped. Still, he didn't want to watch his friend incinerated if the flute player ran out of breath and strength. Most likely Corylus wouldn't have long for regrets in that case, however.

Corylus couldn't grin while his lips were pursed on the reed, but he smiled in his heart. Canina was a good companion for however long he could hold out, cheerful and unflagging. His fingers or lips might cramp, or he might simply fall asleep and not even feel the demons whose release doomed him and the world, but the nymph would remain faithful for—how had she put it? For as long as the sun shone and the rain fell.

Surtr bellowed in balked fury from the high clouds. Soon enough the god would be loose, but for now the icy trills of the flute bound him. Corylus played, and he smiled.

W
HEN
N
EMASTES
' spell bound Varus, he fell with his face toward the statue of Jupiter. There the wizard fitted a reed to the flute and began to play. Ice shivered through Varus's mind when he understood what Nemastes was doing.

He realized that the wizard didn't understand it himself, because he couldn't possibly have wanted this result. The notes of the black bone flute gouged deep into the cosmos, opening layer after layer until they finally cut down to where Surtr crouched in white-hot splendor. That wasn't Nemastes' intention, but the Twelve were twisting the music to their ends rather than his.

Surtr didn't so much swell as come into focus. His figure rose, piercing the crust of the world and the very clouds in his blazing magnificence. The fabric of the cosmos eroded, spilling down into the pit which spread at the
god's feet. His fiery minions began to climb toward the waking world, mindless and inexorable agents of destruction.

“Sibyl?” Varus said as his body chanted. “What do I do?”

“You have opened the way, Lord Varus,” the old woman said. “Follow it, and when you reach your goal, act as you will know to do.”

That's not very helpful,
he thought; which was silly, when he really thought instead of reacting in his mind. Varus continued to see through the eyes of his body lying on the floor of the temple, but there was now a path leading down from the cloud-wrapped hilltop on which his soul spoke with the Sibyl. Varus followed it.

He remembered Sigyn guiding him on a route much like this one; now he was alone. His lips drew tight as he thought about Sigyn. He wasn't responsible for her state, but he wished he'd been able to do more for her. And there were the others he'd touched and who had touched him, and whom he couldn't help either.

That wouldn't have bothered him in the past—he wouldn't have thought about it in the past. Gaius Alphenus Varus hadn't been cruel or even callous, but he'd been almost completely detached.

Varus stepped into the cloud; his skin felt damp, but this time the fog was warm, almost hot. He walked on with long, firm strides, even though he couldn't see where his feet would come down.

The Sibyl had told him that he'd opened this path. If it was open, then he was fine; if it wasn't—if it ended in a chasm and he fell to his doom—then he had done a bad job and deserved to die.

Perhaps the waking world deserved to die also, for having picked an inadequate representative. Would a cause of action before the praetor—presumably the praetor for foreign cases—lie against the agent, Gaius Varus, who had failed in his fiduciary duty?

Varus smiled faintly. It helped to imagine Sigyn at his side. His fancies had amused her.

Varus could hear himself chanting the stanza from where his body lay on the temple floor:
Where the twisted horn is hid, the Wizard knows! Under the heaven-touching tree that is the world, the tears from Othinn's eye fall on it
.

Were the verses from the
Sibylline Books
? Their rhythms were wrong and he didn't think the words were even Greek, though they were easy enough for his tongue to form and perfectly clear to his ears.