The Legions of Fire (52 page)

Hedia stepped back but continued to hold Alphena by the shoulders as she decided whether the girl was all right. Only then did she release her and
say, “You walked toward the house and seemed to faint. There isn't anybody else, alive or dead. Now, are you ready to go on?”

Alphena looked from her stepmother to the interior of the ruin. “Wait,” she said, stepping inside. “Give me just a moment.”

“Are you mad?” Maron said. “This is a dangerous place, a very dangerous place. I'm compelled to bring you safe to the path to the waking world, but I can't do that if you won't listen to me!”

“Did something happen when you stumbled, Daughter?” Hedia said. “If so, then we
really
need to get away from here.”

Hedia was trying to hide her concern, but Alphena heard it in her tone. Not long ago she wouldn't have noticed anything in her stepmother's voice except anger—filtered through Alphena's own resentment.

“Please,” the girl said, “just a moment. I'm all right, really.”

She worked a large piece of jar from the dirt and began using it as a trowel. It was a fragment of rim, thicker than the shell of the jar and well shaped to her grip. The soil filling the ruin had been blown in by the wind; though light, the roots of grasses bound it and made it hard to remove with no better tool than Alphena had.

Hedia knelt beside her. “Alphena?” she said. “What's wrong?”

“Both of you, come along!” Maron snarled. “Must I force hellebore down your throats to cure your madness? Were it not for the compulsion, I'd flee this place as quickly as my hooves could take me!”

“Really nothing, Mother,” Alphena said, scraping furiously now that she'd broken through the matted roots. Dust flew. “It's just that I want to see if—”

Her potsherd clinked, breaking on something harder. Alphena tossed it aside and brushed at the soil with her fingertips, uncovering pale green ceramic.

The celadon jar was still where she had seen it when she found the dead woman. Alphena had thought that if she found the jar, she would search for the sword where she remembered dropping it. Instead, the stopper was back in place. Its wax seal had dried to a stain on the ceramic.

“What have you found, dear?” the older woman said. “Is this jade?”

“Come away!” the faun repeated desperately. “You don't know what you're dealing with, either one of you!”

Alphena thumped the stopper with her hand to break the seal, then
opened the jar. The sword was inside, just as she remembered. She grasped it, this time by the top of the scabbard, and drew it out.

The belt and sheath were of silvery metal which occasionally woke into rainbow highlights. Alphena drew the sword. Seen in open air the blade was the dull gray of tin, but a power beyond reasoned explanation lurked within it. The double edges were too sharp to make out clearly, even in the light.

“That's beautiful,” Hedia said in a hushed voice. “However you came to find it.”

“Put it back, girl!” Maron said. “You don't understand. Things of that ilk aren't for you!”

Alphena looked at him. “I think I was meant to have it,” she said in sudden resolution. “Perhaps it was payment for a service I did someone.”

She sheathed the sword, then wrapped the belt around her waist. It fit, though she had to wind the excess over itself.

“I'm ready to go,” she said calmly to Maron.

The faun shook his shaggy head. “Only a madwoman chooses to get involved with the gods,” he said. He set off across the meadow at a quick pace.

A
S SOON AS THEY ENTERED
what Varus had thought was a cave, he began to follow Sigyn instead of walking at her side. Illumination moved forward with her; at every step a further stride's length of rocky downward slope extended ahead.

The rhythm in Varus's mind had a fiery intensity. He thought the chant of the wizards had grown stronger recently, but he couldn't be sure. It seemed as much a part of him now as his skin or the color of his eyes.

The woman moved with the same dead calm as she did everything. A tiny smile played at the corner of her mouth, but Varus was afraid to read anything into that. He might have been imagining the expression anyway, because of a trick of the light.

The cave wasn't black but a gray which Varus found menacing rather than neutral. Anything beyond arm's length to either side of Sigyn's path remained shadow without form.

The illumination was dim, sourceless, and disquieting. The sound was odd also.

“Sigyn?” he said. “Our footsteps don't echo. How big is this cavern?”

“It is no more a cavern than I am Sigyn, wizard,” the woman said. “And it is the size of all time.”

The slope grew steeper. The woman turned sideways but continued to walk with apparent confidence.

Varus grimaced. He didn't want to look silly, but he wasn't any kind of athlete, and it wouldn't help if he missed a step and plunged into the nothingness beyond. He turned and continued down backward, gripping out-crops from the slope whenever he wasn't sure of his footing.

He grinned. The only person who could see him now was his guide. He didn't imagine that she thought he was silly—or cared.

Varus heard cries as they went—crawled, in his case—deeper. He wasn't sure whether they were made by humans or animals; perhaps they were even of natural causes. He'd given up thinking anything was impossible, so it could be that what seemed to him wails of agony was really the sighing of the wind.

The slope flattened. Varus hesitated for a few steps more, then stood and resumed walking normally again. The light had color now, or he thought it did: a bluish tinge where there had been only gray.

This place was cold as well; cold mentally. His arms didn't have goose bumps, but his mind shuddered.

The woman stopped. Varus walked to her side and waited, wondering what to do with his hands. Eventually he clasped them behind his back for fear that he'd otherwise strike a rhetorical pose with his right arm lifted. He was nervous, and his reflex was to fall back into the forms he'd been trained to use.

The region of blue radiance expanded, stretching away on all sides. They were standing on a plain, rocky and as barren as the surface of the sea.

Varus was cold. He was as cold as death, and his mind throbbed in the rhythm of the dance. He couldn't see the slope they had descended.

“S-Sigyn?” he said. He swallowed. “What do we do now?”

The Cold replied, “P
UBLIUS
V
ARUS
,
YOU HAVE BROUGHT MY
B
RIDE TO ME
. F
OR THAT
I
GRANT YOU A GIFT
: I
WILL SEND YOU ON THE WAY TO WHAT YOU SEEK
.”

Varus licked his lips. His mouth was dry, but he was no longer afraid. He
knew what to do, and the realization freed him despite the hammering pressure in his mind.

“Sigyn,” he said, “You can leave here with me. This isn't a place for anyone, not for
anything
. Come, we're going.”

“D
O YOU THINK YOU CAN BALK ME, HUMAN
?” thundered the Cold through every atom of Varus's body.

He didn't speak.
I'm going to try,
he thought. His lips pursed to speak a verse to rip a path out of this place. He didn't think that he'd succeed, even with the help of the old woman, but Sigyn's fate wouldn't be on his conscience.

She touched his cheek with the fingers of her left hand. “You have removed the compulsion from me, Publius Varus,” she said, “but the truth remains: this is where I belong. I will stay.”

“Sigyn?” he said. He wanted to say more, but he didn't know what more he
could
say. The rhythm behind his temples almost blinded him with its angry insistence.

He felt the woman take his hands. “Go back to the waking world, Varus,” she said, “but not as the tool of the Twelve. They lied to you for their own safety, and my husband supports them because of his perversity. Go as your own man.”

She smiled. The ragged wound still gaped in her throat, but Varus no longer found it disfiguring. He supposed he'd gotten used to it.

“You will probably die,” she said. “But you will find death preferable to fulfilling the task the Twelve set for you.”

“What am I to do?” Varus said through the pain. His head might burst. He wished it would, spilling his life out with his brains on this cold stone. The pounding would stop then,
must
stop then.

“Do as seems right to you, Varus,” the woman said. Her smile grew wider but softer as well. “Your instincts have served you well before.”

“Yes, Sigyn,” Varus whispered. He hurt and he was afraid, but he would go on. He was a citizen of Carce.

“Now,” said the woman. “As you took the compulsion from me, so do I take the compulsion from you.”

She kissed Varus on the forehead. The pounding stopped. He wavered, feeling as if all the bones had been snatched from his limbs. Sigyn held him, feeding strength through her cold hands.

She kissed Varus on the lips and stepped away. She had the same smile.

“Sigyn,” he said, reaching toward her. He felt a relief beyond anything he could have imagined before this moment.

“That was Sigyn,” she said. “But now and forever I am the Bride.”

Her form faded, all but the smile; and at last the smile as well. In her place brightened a path of rosy light slanting upward.

T
his is quite fast enough, Maron,” Hedia said sharply as he started to lope ahead.

The faun turned with a petulant scowl. “Come!” he said. “The gate's not far ahead now.”

Then, “I can carry you again, woman. Here, I'll do that.”

He knelt with his back to her, his head turned over his shoulder. He placed his hands on his hips as before so that his wrists were ready to support her thighs. Alphena looked from the faun to Hedia, then back again.

“We will not,” Hedia said. “We will walk as we've been doing, and if this gate is close by, then we'll get there shortly.”

Maron glared at her, then burst into unexpected laughter. “Yes, great lady,” he said. “I am yours to command and keep safe, as I will continue to do.”

He held out his right hand to her and his left to Alphena. The girl made a moue and brushed the offer away, but Hedia touched her fingertips to the faun's for a moment before lowering her hand again. This wasn't terrain to stumble through linked to a neighbor, but she was willing enough to accept the gesture.

Alphena wasn't up to moving quickly either. The girl's footgear was more suitable for rough country, but it was heavy and would pull on groin muscles unused to hiking. Hedia's objection saved her stepdaughter from having to admit weakness.

There were red hills to either side, barren but wind-carved and not especially steep. The soil of the valley was largely sand that had worn from those rocks. The only vegetation was yuccas; they bunched their leaves in star-bursts
on the ground and sent up a single spiky stem from the center. On some of the stems were small yellow flowers.

Boulders ranging from the size of a man's head to the size of an ox were scattered across the plain. Bright green and ocher faces had been painted on several. As Hedia proceeded at the faun's side, faces appeared on other rocks as well. The features were stylized, with square mouths, four-pointed eyes, and a single thick brow.

“Mother?” Alphena said. “I think that rock just turned around. It's
looking
at me.”

“It doesn't appear to have arms to grab us,” Hedia said, keeping her tone carefully cool. She herself thought that the faces were appearing on what had been blank surfaces, not that the stones themselves were moving. “Maron, are these painted rocks dangerous?”

“Painted?” the faun said in an ironic tone. “But just keep away from them, why don't you? You can manage that.”

Hedia looked at him appraisingly. Maron wasn't her servant, and she had to admit that the task of guiding and protecting her had been a considerable burden to him. Though she hoped there'd been what the faun considered fringe benefits.

She grinned wickedly but quickly hid it behind her hand. It wouldn't do for Alphena to see the expression and wonder.

“Mother?” the girl said. “What do we do when we get back to Carce?”

Hedia bent forward to look at her past the faun's muscular torso. “I hadn't thought that far ahead,” she said honestly. “Nothing until we've talked with Anna, certainly. And, ah, we don't know what else might have happened while we were gone.”

She thought about Corylus having vanished, which the girl didn't know about. And Maron saying that her brother had smashed down the forest, including the giant centipede. She didn't—

Varus had disappeared when he chased the sacred chickens. He came back that time, and likely he would this time also.