Air and Darkness (11 page)

A few clumps of large shrubs grew on land near the shore, but their crooked trunks shouldn't have been able to conceal the bright clothing of the Indian officials. Other than the shrubs, the land seemed to be arid scrub with more bare dirt than vegetation.

A chicken-sized bird sat on a shallow nest of reeds. She was almost close enough for Varus to have stretched out his leg and tickled her with his sandal.

Even when he glanced that way, he might not have noticed the bird if she hadn't said peevishly, “Look, you don't belong here. Just get on back to land and leave us alone.”

“Good morning”—
is it morning?
—“Bird,” Varus said. “I'm looking for a party of seven men, some of them wearing bright clothing. They may have passed by here—”

Or simply appeared out of the air, as he probably had.

“—about ten minutes ago.”

The bird's back and breast were brown, but there was a bright golden patch on the back of her neck. Varus couldn't imagine why he hadn't seen the creature immediately.

“I don't know anything!” she shrilled. “Get out of here, why don't you?”

Varus pursed his lips. He didn't lash out the way his sister did—or anyway, as she used to do—nor could he make anybody believe the sort of cold threats that Hedia used when she thought they were necessary, but he had learned ways of coping with unreasonable and unpleasant people.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Bird,” he said. “Perhaps I should ask your eggs what they may have seen.”

There were three eggs in the nest, their shells the same glossy brown as the bird's feathers. They were so large that Varus could see them even with the bird brooding. When he spoke, it—she?—leaped to her feet. Her claws were very long. She shrilled, “What are you talking about! Can't you just leave us alone?”

Then, in the calmer tone that Varus had hoped to hear in the first place, the bird said, “There may have been some people that way—”

She extended a brown-and-white wing toward the near shore.

“—but it was way off on the horizon, and I didn't pay much attention. They weren't bothering me, so why would I bother them?”

“Thank you, Mistress Bird,” Varus said. He bowed slightly and started toward the shore.

“Say…?” the bird called after him. “Human?”

He looked back over his shoulder. She was still standing above her eggs.

“Yes, Mistress Bird?” he said.

“How is it you're able to walk on water?” she said. “You're not running across the lily pads like I do.”

Varus weighed the response in his mind. With a smile of self-mockery he said, “It may be because I'm a great magician, Mistress Bird.”

The bird bobbed her head quickly. “Thought so,” she said. “Thought so. Well, you go find your friends or whatever they are. I don't guess there'll be any reason for you to come back this way, right?”

“I do not think so,” Varus said.
I have absolutely no idea what I'll be doing in the future. For the moment, I'm walking in the direction you pointed.
“Farewell, Mistress Bird.”

When Varus walked beyond the surface of the pond, his feet squelched in the marshy ground. It was firm a few steps farther on, but his sandals and toes were muddy.

Perhaps the
Sibylline Books
contain a spell to clean the feet of magicians,
Varus thought. He couldn't accept intellectually the idea that he had magical powers. He didn't
really
believe that anyone had magical powers, yet here he was in a realm of magic.

A lizard raised its head from the slanting trunk of one of the shrubs. “If magic isn't real,” the lizard said, “then you must have gone mad. Have you?”

The lizard was nearly as long as Varus was tall, but he hadn't noticed the creature before it moved.
I'm not very observant of the world around me.
Its forked black tongue flicked the air when it spoke.

“I don't think I would accept myself as a reliable witness to that question,” Varus said politely. He walked on.

The Sibyl claimed she was part of his own imagination. If that was true, then his imagination could have invented the bird and lizard also.
And perhaps I am mad, but then are my friends who see the same things mad also? Or are they as imaginary as the bird and lizard?

Varus looked back the way he had come. The pond, which from this higher ground seemed to be a swelling in a shallow river, was at the edge of his vision. That meant the people the bird saw must have appeared near where he stood now.

He couldn't see the bird.
I didn't see her when she was in arm's length,
he thought wryly.

Slightly to the right in the direction Varus had been walking was what he had thought was a gray stump. Now that he was closer, he saw that it was a waist-high stone cone on a square base. The sides of the base were carved in high relief with figures whose supple limbs intertwined. The curves put Varus in mind of Scythian broaches, but Scythian work was stylized while these in stone were intended for real humans and animals.

“It's a spiritual focus,” said a rasping voice behind him. “A group of humans from the Waking World used it to enter here not long ago.”

Varus turned, pleased with himself not to have jumped. A lion peered from a clump of dry grass that Varus had walked past a moment before. The lion's mane was short and almost as pale as the cat's tawny hide, but he seemed a very healthy animal.

“Three of those humans had swords,” the lion said musingly. He stretched out his right foreleg and spread the claws. Varus had never looked so closely at a lion's paw. It was much wider than he would have imagined. “And at least one was a magician as well, or they wouldn't have been able to appear the way they did.”

“That's the party I'm looking for,” Varus said. His voice did not waver. “Can you tell me in which direction they went, Master Lion?”

“Well,” said the lion, rolling up onto all fours, “I'm not sure that the question really matters to you. You don't have a sword, do you?”

When the lion spoke, his breath stank of rotting flesh. His great teeth were mostly yellow but black at the gum line.

“I am a citizen of Carce!” Varus said. His voice was firm. Perhaps even a philosopher could be granted a final grain of pride in the last moment before he was devoured.

The lion gave a thunderous laugh. “No doubt, no doubt,” he said, “but again it seems a distinction without a difference to either of us.”

He hunched, his hind legs drawn up as tight as the arms of a cocked catapult.

In the back of Varus' mind, an ancient woman cackled,
You will be utterly devoured by fire!

The words didn't reach Varus' lips, but the lion snarled and sprang sideways, hitting on his shoulder in his haste to escape. He rolled to his feet and disappeared into the brush in a flat fifty-foot leap. His voice quavered back, “How was I to know!”

Varus blinked. Dust was settling where the lion's feet had kicked it from the ground. Other than that—and a remaining hint of rotting meat—the beast might never have existed.

I suppose that was a line from the
Sibylline Books, Varus thought. Which he would not be permitted to see unless and until he became a senator and was appointed to the Commission for Sacred Rites.
I wonder whether my being told the contents by the prophetess herself is a violation of religious law?

That was the sort of whimsy Varus used to discuss with Pandareus and Corylus. Good training for the mind, he supposed, like the formal subjects set for declamations.

He felt a stab of nostalgia for that time a few months past when he dreaded having to make presentations before the class.
I was more afraid of my classmates in the Forum than I was to face demons not so very much later.

Varus continued walking in the direction he had followed from the pond.
A pity that the lion didn't take my question seriously, but on balance I can't complain about the way matters had worked out. It might have been a great deal worse.

He reached better-watered country with frequent palm trees and stands of supple-limbed bushes. Ivy covered the soil between the larger vegetation.

The palms swayed as Varus approached.
Breezes?
he thought, though the air at ground level was still. When he came close to a palm, he saw that it was crawling away on tiny roots. They wriggled like handfuls of worms at the base of its trunk.

It's afraid of me!
he realized, suddenly furious at the injustice. He wouldn't hurt trees; he
couldn't
hurt them!

I will burn up mountains and rivers!
chirped a tiny voice in Varus' mind.
I will dry up springs with my fire!

He thought that the Sibyl's voice sounded coldly amused, but he might have been reading too much into what was barely a whisper.
I've been ignored for most of my life, even by servants,
Varus thought.
Now I'm a monster.

And he thought,
I'd rather be ignored.

The brush ahead swished as Bhiku pushed through it.

The old man smiled to see Varus, then bowed deeply with his palms pressed together in front of him. “Lord Varus!” he said. “I hadn't realized you wished to come with us. I'm delighted to see you again, delighted!”

“I…,” Varus said. “To be honest, I didn't make up my mind until you and your party had already gone through the portal. Ah—will I be welcome with your companions?”

Bhiku laughed cheerfully. “I left them in a safe place, an outcrop surrounded by a flowing stream,” he said. “They're terrified of being without me in the Otherworld, even Lord Arpat. They'll fall all over themselves when I tell them that you are a magician of such power that we have nothing further to fear in this place.”

“I would be pleased to accompany you,” Varus said. He thought of adding that he didn't claim to be a magician, but he had already told Bhiku that back in Polymartium. It irritated him to be told the same thing repeatedly by someone, since it implied that he was too stupid to have understood it the first time.

Besides, given the way the lion—let alone the palm tree!—had reacted, it seemed that Varus
was
a magician in this place. Suggesting a lie was the same thing as lying, which he would do only if it was necessary.

As the old man led them through the shrubbery, Varus said, “How did you find me, Master Bhiku? I was at a loss as to where you had gone.”

Bhiku chuckled, sounding disturbingly like the Sibyl. “I suppose that to a magician of your power, other students of the art are invisible in your own glare,” he said. “For me to notice you, however, is like seeing that the sun has risen. Even with my eyes closed, your presence is unmistakable.”

“I see,” said Varus. He didn't, of course, but it was the polite thing to say.

Bhiku pushed through the last fronds of brush and onto a slope of ivy leading to a stream. Varus thought he saw human faces looking up from the vines, but the figures could only have been a finger's length tall if they really were people.

The rest of the Indian delegation crowded together on a barren rock. The two gardeners and the general servant were at the narrow tip, while the silk-clad nobles shared the remaining two-thirds of the space. All six looked unhappy.

The blue-clad leader snarled something in an unfamiliar language. There wouldn't have been much doubt about his meaning, even if he hadn't rested his hand on the pommel of his curved sword.

“It was time well spent, Lord Arpat,” Bhiku said in Greek. “This is the great wizard from Carce, who can protect us as only Lord Govinda himself could. We will be perfectly safe under his escort.”

“Can we get off this rock now?” said another of the nobles.

“Indeed you can, Lord Yama,” the old man said. “We will go immediately to our entrance to the Waking World and to the enlightenment of Lord Govinda.”

The Indians hopped to the shore. Arpat's right sandal landed short, wetting the silk. A trio of frogs raised their heads from the stream and began laughing, only to duck underwater again when Varus glanced toward them.

“I'm looking forward to discussions with you when we've reached home, Lord Varus,” Bhiku said brightly as he set off at a brisk pace. “To be honest, I'm not comfortable here in the Otherworld myself. A magician of your power probably can't imagine that.”

“Oh,” said Varus. “I think I can.”

And I'm not very comfortable about what I'll find in India, either. But I'll deal with that when I come to it.

 

CHAPTER
IV

Varus walked directly behind Bhiku along the path worn through the forest.
Worn by what?
He wondered if the trees would be any more familiar to Corylus, who had a real knack for the subject.

“Is this vegetation the same as that from where you come?” he asked Bhiku. “The same as India's?”

The sage paused beside a palm tree. A vine curled up the trunk and dangled scores of brilliantly white flowers from the crest.

“I can't really say,” Bhiku admitted, walking on again. “I'm afraid I never studied plants, interesting though I'm sure they are. We could ask the gardeners if you like.”

“Of course they're the same!” called a voice from above.

Varus and Bhiku stopped again and looked up. The three noblemen had held their swords in their hands ever since the path had led them into the jungle, but they jumped into a posture of defense. Yama even slashed his curved blade twice through the empty air.

“
We're
not the same, though,” said one of the white flowers, its petals forming lips as it spoke. “You've never seen a datura vine as handsome as we are.”