Air and Darkness (30 page)

Teji stood up, still twisting the sash. At her full height, she was considerably shorter than Varus. He had taken her for fourteen years old, but close to her like this he realized she might be younger.

“I saw the way Ramsa Lal looked at me,” she said. She was facing Varus, but her face was pale and her eyes were unfocused. “My father! He said to his advisors, ‘If I plant a field, do I not have a right to eat the crop?' And they stroked their beards and nodded to him and said, ‘Yes, certainly, Your Lordship.' And I went to Rupa because she was a woman and I begged her to save me and she
did
!”

Teji began to cry. She turned away and flung herself on the couch, still sobbing.

Varus looked at the sage. He said, “Logic would point out that she could be lying.”

Bhiku raised an eyebrow. “Then logic would be a fool, would it not?” he said.

Varus grimaced. “That's certainly my opinion,” he said. “Though it leaves the problem of what we're to do now.”

Bhiku pursed his lips, then said, “Princess Teji? What would you like us to do? Ah. I have no power over my lord the rajah Raguram, but I'm sure that he would give you shelter to spite your father if for no better reason. Though Raguram has shown himself a decent man in the past, within the limitations of the flesh.”

“I don't want to go anywhere,” the girl said. She sat up on the couch and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I just wanted to stay here, but without Baruch to protect me I can't do that. Oh, I'm so unhappy!”

She flung herself back on the couch and resumed crying.

“I can probably free the demon,” Varus said, speaking to Bhiku just loudly enough to be heard over the muffled sobs. “Of course, he may tear us limb from limb if I do.”

Bhiku shrugged. “Well, we accepted that risk when we entered the garden,” he said. “Given that we came to make Princess Teji's situation better, and instead we appear to have made it worse, I think we're bound by justice to take the risk again.”

“That's my analysis also,” Varus said. He smiled wryly. “Unfortunately.”

“It is not unfortunate that you are an honorable man,” said Bhiku. Raising his voice slightly, he said, “Princess? My colleague is going to release your guardian.”

“We're sorry for our mistake,” Varus said as he walked out of the bungalow. To Bhiku he added, “I
am
sorry, but I honestly don't think I made the wrong decision on the information I had.”

“I see no way we could have gotten better information,” the sage said. “Nevertheless, it's an unfortunate circumstance.”

The demon continued to grunt and—to the extent he could—thrash in the rhododendrons. Varus grimaced and said, “Master Bhiku, there's no reason you shouldn't leave the garden before I do this.”

“I think the reasons for staying with a courageous colleague are better, however,” Bhiku said. “Who knows? Your rhetorical training may rise to this test as well.”

Varus managed a laugh, but he couldn't pretend that the irony of the situation amused him very much at the moment.

“You wizards!” Teji called from behind them. “Are you really going to free Baruch?”

“Yes,” said Varus. He halted close to the struggling demon. He gave off a musky odor.

Varus put his hands on his hips and stood arms akimbo. He was looking down from the vantage point high above reality. “Baruch!” he said. “Arise as you were before and go forth!”

The bonds of lightning vanished with seven distinct
pop
s. The demon shook himself and rose to his feet, doing further damage to the bushes.

“I suppose he put them here in the first place,” Bhiku said calmly. “Presumably he can replant if necessary.”

“My present concern is that he'll use bonemeal to nourish them,” Varus replied in the same tone. Corylus talked about trees and shrubs quite a lot, and Varus had learned to be interested in everything that came before him.

Even fertilizer, apparently, though I hadn't been aware of the fact until now when an opportunity to use the information presented itself.

Baruch turned to face them, flexing his six arms. He was even taller than he had seemed when Varus looked up at him on top of the terrace.

“Do you think you can bind me again before I tear your head off, wizard?” the demon said. He spoke in a quiet voice like the rumbling of a lion's throat.

“I don't know,” Varus said. “Under other circumstances I would apologize, but given your behavior at the moment I acted, you didn't give me much choice.”

Baruch laughed. “Missy?” he said to the princess. “I am here to serve you. What would you have me do with these men?”

“Give them whatever they want, Baruch,” Teji said firmly. “They came here to help me. They're friends!”

The demon smiled, a disquieting expression on a broad mouth with large fangs. “What is it you wish, friend wizards?” he said.

“Merely to leave, I think,” Varus said. “Unless…?”

He looked at Bhiku.

The sage smiled and said, “I would take a few oranges with me, if that were permitted. I rarely get an orange to eat.”

The demon laughed. “You have my mistress' permission to pick fruit,” he said. “As much as you like.”

Varus and Bhiku started for the gate. There was a heavily laden orange tree on the path, which was a further excuse to get farther away from the demon. Friendly or not, Baruch was
very
large.

“Young wizard?” the demon called.

Varus turned with an orange in his hand.
Has it been a trick to get me to take fruit?
“Yes, Master Baruch?” he said.

“When you speak your spells,” the demon said, “you have the voice of an old woman. Why is that, please?”

“I don't know,” Varus said. “I can only tell you that the old woman herself says that she is a figment of my imagination. I'm not sure that I believe her, however.”

The demon laughed again. “Go then, friends,” he said. “And may all your enemies be as unwary as I was. Though it seems to me that you could crush even the most cautious.”

“Thank you, Master Baruch,” Varus said. He walked toward the gateway and through them, with a feeling of relief. Behind him, Bhiku pulled the gate leaves closed.

“Well, we seem to be exactly where we were to begin with,” Varus said. “Except that I'm trembling and completely exhausted.”

“The oranges are good, though,” said Bhiku. He had bitten out a piece of the rind and was squeezing the juice into his lips. “Shall we make our way to Raguram's domains, now? He would protect you from Ramsa Lal regardless of justice … but it
is
nice to have justice on our side, isn't it?”

Varus laughed. “Yes,” he said, “it is. Now, how did you get the rind open? I am the child of privilege, you must remember, and I don't have your advantages in dealing with adversity.”

*   *   *

“
W
AIT A MOMENT, IF YOU WILL,”
Corylus said as he began stripping ripe—or almost ripe—blackberries from a bush growing beside a small stream. He needed both hands, so he leaned his staff into the crook of his left elbow. His right hand dropped berries into his cupped palm. “How far is the cave we're going to?”

“A few days, I suppose,” Aura said. “It depends on how fast we travel.”

She pointed up the stream. “We cross here and follow the path along the side of the cliff. It's a box canyon, but the path goes to the top.”

Corylus tossed the berries into his mouth in two half-handsful, then squatted to wet his palms and rub them together. He didn't care about the blackberry stain, but he didn't want his hands sticky if he had to change his grip quickly on his staff.

“I'll need something more substantial before long,” he said, “but for now let's get to the top of this cliff. How steep is it?”

“Not steep,” said Aura, hopping over the creek. “You won't have to use your hands to help you climb.”

The path slowly climbing the cliffside was six feet wide at the beginning but had soon narrowed to four. They were about twenty feet above the valley floor by the time they reached that point.

“I'll lead,” Corylus said, and stepped in front of the girl. They could have continued to walk side by side, but there was no reason to.

The slope to their right was almost vertical. On the left the rock—it was pinkish-gray granite with flecks of fool's gold—sloped downward sharply. It wasn't sheer, but only a chamois could walk on it.

“Did somebody make this path?” Corylus said. The surface wasn't glass smooth, but it was smoother than the roads leading out of Carce and into the large part of the world that the Republic ruled.

“I don't think so,” Aura said. “But I don't know anything about stone.”

The valley below was filled with bamboo. Sometimes he heard the creek trickling over its bed, but there was no birdsong or insect murmurs. Often the passage of large animals—and humans are very large in the natural world—silenced the local residents, but Corylus began to feel disquiet nonetheless.

He stopped, slanting his staff before him. He could see twenty feet up the path ahead.

“Aura, I smell something dead,” he said. He didn't look back at her. “Have you come this way before?”

“Yes, Zetes and I came this way long ago, before he died,” the sprite said. “I've come alone many times since. The path leads to the top of the cliff. Would you like me to lead?”

“Of course not,” Corylus muttered.

He moved forward, lifting his sandals only high enough that the soles didn't brush the surface; he set them down with no more sound than a falling leaf. He had once crept into a Sarmatian encampment to determine which wagon was the chieftain's. This was the same, though Corylus didn't know what the danger here was.

In the bamboo below was the body of a great spotted cat. The flesh had rotted away, but enough of the ragged hide remained over the bones to explain the miasma of old death. Its falling weight had splintered canes, but fronds now grew through the ribs and skin.

The cat had been bigger than any leopard Corylus had seen in the arena, and the fangs in its upturned jaw were six inches long.

Now that he was looking into the gully, Corylus noticed other skeletons and scraps of fur among the bamboo. Many of the bones were broken. The fall could have been responsible for some of the breaks, but some of the bones appeared to have been sheared through.

Corylus looked up. The cliff was bulged outward thirty feet up. The full height of the cliffs across the canyon was seventy or eighty feet higher yet. The rock was as smooth as sandstone ever was: a few cracks, a few knobs or pockets. There were occasional splotches of green where a plant had managed to take root, and Corylus saw a single stunted cedar tree.

He couldn't possibly climb the rock face, though. He didn't know a man who could.

Corylus eased forward, looking in all directions before he took the next cautious step.
All directions but back
—

He turned his head sharply. Aura was a proper six feet behind him, plenty of space for him to move fast if he had to … and too far for her to slip a knife into the back of the man in front of her. Her fingers were tented before her, and her expression was calm.

“I will lead if you like,” the girl said. Corylus looked forward again.

The bones of a human hand and forearm lay ten feet below the edge of the path. The bones were more or less articulated because, though the sinews had shriveled and cracked, ivy vines had wound around them. On the middle finger was a ring of sunbright orichalc set with a brilliantly blue stone.

“There's something here…,” Corylus said softly.
Or are the bodies being flung from the top of the cliff?

He looked up, then down. Perhaps something was crawling up from the canyon, a huge snake that slid out of the bamboo and crushed its victims' bones?

The corner of his eye caught the movement above: a dog-like head the size of a crocodile's was stabbing down at him on the end of a neck thirty feet long. The jaws were open.

Ambush!
But Corylus had been on the wrong side of ambush before. He ducked, holding the staff upright with his left arm while his right hand reached for his dagger.

The open maw slammed down on the end of the staff. The butt was resting on the sandstone trail, and the cornel wood didn't flex or split at the terrific impact.

“
Nerthus!
” Corylus shouted, not really a prayer to the Batavians' goddess but the reflex of surprise. He brought the dagger around and stabbed its twelve-inch blade through the base of the creature's skull where the spine entered. He jumped back, leaving both his weapons because he had no choice.

Aura had retreated a few steps, but she hadn't fled. Corylus looked up as the enormous neck swung side to side, banging the head against the cliff. It looked more reptilian and less like a dog when he saw it in profile. The staff dropped from the monster's palate; by good luck it fell onto the path where it might be retrieved.

Corylus knelt, trembling and gasping for breath. It had happened so quickly that he shouldn't have expended much energy, but his muscles wobbled like those of an old slave in a chain gang.

He'd driven the dagger in with the strength of desperation. It had sunk through spongy bone and brain tissue almost to the cross guard.

The head continued to wave back and forth, but more slowly now; the monster's neck was drooping. Corylus couldn't see where the animal's body was, but there must be a cave concealed by the bulge in the cliff face directly overhead.

The head and neck stiffened. Corylus heard scraping and clattering, like the start of a landslide; then the whale-great body to which the neck was attached launched itself outward. Its four legs were as broad and flat as paddles, but their black claws scarred the rock when they ticked against it.