The Legions of Fire (45 page)

The twigs were heavy with fruit. No bunch was the same as any other that Varus could see. Those hanging closest to him ranged from something that looked like a hairy plum the size of a man's head, to a cluster of tiny glistening seeds which he saw as points of light instead of being distinct surfaces.

“You have reached your goal, wizard,” the woman said. “Your first goal. Take a sprig of the fruit and we will go on.”

Varus reached out, paused, and lowered his hand again. “Sigyn?” he said. “Does it matter which fruit I take? There are so many.”

She looked at him with a smile as cold as the frozen strait they had crossed. “Eventually, wizard,” she said, “you will learn that nothing at all matters. But because the Bride is under your compulsion—”

“I'm not compelling you!” Varus said. “I'm asking you a question as a friend!”

“Do the living have friends among the dead, wizard?” the woman said, her smile twisting oddly. “Nevertheless, all fruits are the same for your purpose. This is the First Tree.”

“Thank you, Sigyn,” Varus said, bowing formally. He considered for a moment, then twisted off a twig with a spray of berries. They looked like holly, but they were colored the purple-blue of juniper instead of being bright red.

Turning to her again, he said, “What do we do now, if you please?”

“Now,” said the woman, giving him the familiar cold smile, “we go to the Guardian of the Underworld. And you pass him, if you can.”

T
HE FOREST
M
ARON LED
H
EDIA
into was more open than what they'd been plunging through before the wolf attacked them. It was hard for her to keep up, even though the faun wasn't striding along as quickly as she knew he was capable of doing. It would have been hard for her even if her groin didn't ache.

Trotting on her own legs was still a better choice than continuing to ride the faun piggyback, putting much of her weight on the same aching groin. What had been a delightful titillation earlier in their association would now be screamingly painful. Maron was—Hedia smiled with memory—quite an enthusiastic fellow.

The faun muttered what she thought was a curse—the words were indistinct, but the tone seemed clear—and paused. He started off again, bearing to the left around a mass of broken boughs and splintered tree boles. The grapevines which had used the trees for support wove the whole into a tangle impenetrable even to someone of Maron's strength and agility.

Hedia heard the sound of women crying. All she could see were flutterings like ghosts of the winged minims who'd flown from the thorn tree as she and the faun had passed earlier. Sometimes the movements seemed clearer in shadows than in the light which flooded the jumbled wreckage now that there was no canopy of leaves to block it.

“Maron?” she said. They were skirting the wrack at a slight distance,
avoiding the tops of trees which had been thrown to the ground. “What happened here? A windstorm?”

“Watch out!” the faun said, sweeping her behind him with his right arm. He gripped his new club in both hands and advanced slowly. He'd broken off the thin end of the sapling and all the foliage.

Hedia hunched to see forward beneath his right elbow. Ahead was a waist-high wall of polished stone or metal. It trembled as if—

It has legs!
“Maron, that's a centipede!” Hedia said. “But it's huge!”

“It's pinned where it is,” the faun said in a grating voice. He prodded the leaf mold with the butt of his club, then bent and came up with a fist-sized rock in his left hand.

“What are you doing?” Hedia said, trying to hide the concern in her voice. She'd been bitten by a centipede when she was a child; her little toe had turned white and lost all feeling for a week. This creature was the length of a warship ….

“Hey, Manylegs!” Maron shouted. “Want to chase me now?”

The centipede twisted, shoving a crackling mass of branches with its head in a vain effort to reach the faun. Its eye-clusters glittered like huge topazes.

Maron's rock cracked off the headplate between them, denting the iridescent surface. A pair of scythelike pincers ripped foliage and squirted orange venom as they scissored shut.

“Maron!” Hedia said. “Why are you wasting time with this? We have to find Alphena.”

“Faugh, she could keep,” said the faun, but he started through the forest again. “It's not often you find one of these where it can't get at you.”

He looked back at Hedia with an angry frown. “Don't think I'm afraid, though!” he said. “I'm not.”

“All right,” she said in a neutral tone. Of course he was afraid. Any sane person would be afraid of that creature! But that didn't mean it was a good use of time to torture an enemy simply because you could.

“Besides,” Maron said gloatingly, “it'll take days to die. It'll die of thirst, I shouldn't wonder.”

Hedia sniffed. Cruelty had always seemed a waste of effort to her. Ruthlessness was quite another thing. She could give lessons in ruthlessness.

“What smashed the forest like this?” Hedia said. She didn't bother mentioning that she'd asked him the same question before. “Was it a windstorm?”

The faun laughed. “How could wind crush trees into the ground, woman?” he said. “No, that was someone from the waking world walking past. Your world.”

“
My
world?” Hedia repeated. “How could that be?”

“They were in this world but not of it the way you are,” Maron said. “As a matter of fact—”

He didn't stop, but he raised his nose to sniff the air again. He looked back at her and said, “Does this girl of yours have a sibling, a male?”

“Yes. Varus,” Hedia said in puzzlement. “Her brother. My son, but not by blood.”

“Well, it was the brother who did that,” the faun said. “Be thankful that you weren't there when it happened.”

“And you?” she said, letting her irritation show. “Aren't you thankful too?”

“Aye,” Maron admitted sourly. “There wouldn't have been time for me to save you, but I'd have been compelled to try nonetheless, no matter how pointlessly. So yes, I'm thankful.”

“Is Varus searching for Alphena also?” Hedia asked after a moment. Then, regretfully, “Though I don't suppose you can tell that by sniffing the air.”

Maron looked at her again. She couldn't read his expression. After a time he said, “Not by sniffing the air, no; but I don't suppose there's any reason you shouldn't know the answer. There will be great disruption in your world, but”—he swept their surroundings with his right arm—“nothing here, so it doesn't matter. Nothing but the occasional passerby like this boy you call your son.”

Maron had obviously meant the gesture figuratively, but Hedia looked to the right as she framed her question. The trees here were poles without branches; stiff leaves slanted from the tops all the way to the ground, forming cones. Nearby grew brush with stiff stems and magenta foliage.

“What sort of disruption will this be?” she said, keeping her tone mild.
At least I'm no longer thinking about how much it hurts to walk
.

“It doesn't matter,” Maron repeated. “You can stay here.”

“But?” Hedia said, keeping her temper in check. She was by no means sure that the control her husband had given her over the faun would extend to demanding information that didn't conduce to finding Alphena.

“There was the Band,” Maron said equably. “Then there were the
Twelve and one, who was Nemastes. The fire god of the Hyperboreans will shortly loose his legions on the waking world. Nemastes and the Twelve who were his siblings are battling over whether the fire will burst through at the Horn or at Vesuvius.”

He looked at Hedia, grinning with a cruelty that seemed as natural to his face as lust was.

“Your son acts for the Twelve, woman,” he said. “He will succeed, so all your world save the Horn will end in fire. And the Horn is no longer of your world.”

Hedia licked her dry lips. Maron continued to pace forward, using his hooves to break off stems that would otherwise snap back at her. He was an excellent escort, but she was coming to understand the degree to which he wasn't human.

“The lava will reach Carce?” she said, forcing the words out.

“Are you deaf, woman?” the faun snapped. “Your
world
, your whole world, will die because the Twelve wish it. They'll be safe then, from Nemastes and from all interruption save that of time.”

“How …,” said Hedia. “How can these Twelve be stopped, Maron?”

He shrugged and smirked at her again. “Don't worry,” he said. “Time will end even the Twelve. And the First Tree will cover the waking world again, as it has twice in the past. I will keep you occupied, woman.”

All the world,
Hedia thought. She didn't have anything to say, and her throat was too dry for words anyway.

“We're close by the girl, now,” Maron said. “I'm compelled to take you both safely to the passage to the waking world, but don't worry. You don't have to go.”

All the world
…

C
ASSIUS TOOK
A
LPHENA
'
S
sword from the wraith, then grinned at her. She tried not to react.
I am a proud daughter of Carce
.

With the hilt in his right hand, Cassius flicked the blade with the nail of his left index finger. It rang like a golden chime, a sound as musical as the call of a linnet.

Is he going to stab me? Or will he rape me so that I have to stab myself like Lucretia?

Alphena choked down a hysterical giggle.
I don't have to be
that
proud a
daughter of Carce
. Though Cassius was disgustingly old; he must be sixty! Perhaps she could close her eyes and pretend that somebody younger, somebody attractive—

She blushed. She'd been thinking about a certain somebody. And it hadn't been disgusting at all.

“This is a remarkably fine sword, my dear,” Cassius said. “Where did you get it?”

He eyed her speculatively, the way Alphena had seen her brother view a well-made book. Varus looked at books more lustfully than anything she read in this man's expression, however.

“None of your business!” Alphena said. She was trying to be haughty, but she knew she sounded more like an ill-tempered six-year-old.

“The sheath,” Cassius said.

She looked down in puzzlement, wondering what he was talking about. There was nothing special about it, though it glittered a little more than the ordinary tin-and-enamel scabbard which it replaced.

He hadn't been talking to her. The third wraith unfastened the belt and handed it to Cassius.

The creatures looked like men who had begun to dissolve. Their flesh was slightly translucent, and their faces had no features.

Cassius snugged the belt around his own waist and sheathed the sword with a faint
ching
. He grinned at her. He wasn't a young man, but he was fitter than her father or any of Saxa's senatorial friends. The reflexive way he slid the sword home proved that he knew how to handle weapons too.

“Now, my queen …,” Cassius said. He was of average size, but his presence dominated the scene. “We will go to our kingdom. A return on my part, while you have before you the excitement of the first view of your new domains.”

“I don't want to be your queen,” Alphena said. She was afraid that she sounded like a pettish child about to cry. “I don't want to be anybody's queen!”

“No?” said Cassius with an arched eyebrow. She could
feel
the man's passion, but he gave no outward sign of it. She was sure that if he pulled the limbs off flies—or broke the bones of men, one rib at a time—he would do it with an appearance of complete detachment. “I don't really believe that, dear, but you already realize that it doesn't matter. Now, will you come with us on your own legs, or shall my servants carry you?”

She'd put the wraiths out of her mind. Now she shuddered, feeling the clammy grip on both her arms. It was like being stuck in cold mud.

“I'll walk,” she said to the ground. Then, trying to hide the desperation: “Make them let go of me.”

“Lady Alphena,” Cassius said, as sternly as a judge pronouncing sentence. “Look at me.”

“I said I'd walk!” Alphena said, raising her eyes to his. She caught movement in the background. At first she thought something was rustling the bushes from which sprays of white, bell-shaped flowers hung; then she realized that the bushes themselves were crawling away.

“If you give your word,” Cassius continued inexorably, “to me, in this place, you will keep it. Do you understand?”

“I will walk with you,” Alphena said, sounding each word distinctly. Voice rising she added, “Make them let me go!”

“Release her,” Cassius said mildly. The hands came off her wrists. She wasn't sure that the creatures had distinct fingers; it had been like being wrapped with blankets soaked in sewage.

“Now, my queen,” Cassius continued, “we will go to our kingdom.”

They set off along a trail which led out the back of the clearing. Had the whole business, including the Cyclops's apparently aimless flight, been planned to trap her?

“You made the statue of Tellus speak, didn't you?” Alphena said. She tried hanging back; a wraith's touch on the back of her neck made her scramble up alongside Cassius.

“I?” he said. “Not I, my dear. I have no power in the overworld, not since I was executed.” He laughed without humor. “In the courtyard of my own house,” he said. “As my colleagues of the Senate thought fitting.”

Cassius looked at her. Alphena had seen more merciful expressions on lions rending victims in the arena. He said, “I will not have colleagues now, Alphena. I will reign alone—but you will have all power under me.”