No pig is that large! Varus thought. It would have to weigh more than a ton.
The ivory was yellow, and the tips had been worn by heavy use. He remembered rhat Apollonius claimed that Hercules sent the tusks of the Erymanthian Boar to Cumae.
"Why do you come to me, Lord Varus?" the old woman said. "The power is yours, not mine."
"Sibyl, I know only what is in books," Varus said, using her proper title. "Tell me what I saw in the theater."
Then, because he knew his body remained seated with his family in the Tribunal, he said, "Tell me what I am seeing."
The Sibyl turned her head, looking down the slope opposite to the direction from which Varus had approached her. He followed her eyes to the scene he had been viewing in the theater, but now he watched as if from a great distance above. The creature ravaged an island or rather a series of six rings, each inside the next larger and all touching or nearly touching at the same point of the circles.
Volcanoes, Varus realized. Or anyway, a volcano which had erupted six times on successively smaller scales. The craters were nested within one another, but cracks in their walls had let in sea to create a series of circular islands.
Even the most recent event must have been far in the past. Except where crystal palaces sparkled, heavy jungle covered the rims of the cones and their slopes above sea level.
The creature itself had grown to the size of an island as it demolished the linked cones. Varus remembered waves washing over the sand palaces he had built on the beach at Baiae when he was a child.
"You see Typhon destroying Atlantis," the Sibyl said. Her voice was as clear and unemotional as the trill of nightingale. "The Minoi, the Sea Kings of Atlantis, were not such fancies as Plato believed when he invented stories about them. But I know only what you know, Lord Varus."
I didn't know that! Varus thought. He grimaced. She knows what I think, whether I speak or not.
"Mistress?" he said. "Is it real, what we see? Is it happening?"
Spray and steam concealed whatever was left of the ring islands. Will the creature break through to the fires remaining under the surface of the sea? And if so, what then? He doubted that Typhon would be harmed even by a fresh eruption. As for Atlantis, it could scarcely be more completely uprooted than it was now.
"It may have happened, Varus," said the Sibyl. "There are many paths, and on this path Typhon destroyed Atlantis."
"What happened next?" Varus said. He looked into the old woman's eyes. Her skin was as wrinkled as that of a raisin, but her features nonetheless had a quiet dignity. "After, after Typhon destroyed Atlantis, what did it do?"
The Sibyl turned her palms up, then down again. "If Typhon destroys Atlantis, will it not destroy this world, Lord Varus? Who but Zeus with his thunderbolts could halt him?"
The linked islands were a sludge of steam and drifting ash. Typhon, larger by far than the monster of his first appearance, crawled eastward. The setting sun threw his shadow across a red-tinged sea.
"Mistress?" said Varus. In this place he no longer had his notebook. He regretted that, because holding it would have given him something to do with his hands. "Is Zeus real?"
The Sibyl laughed. She said, "I know only what you know, Lord Varus. Are the Olympian gods real, philosopher?"
Of course not, Varus thought, though he didn't open his mouth. I'm an educated man, not a superstitious bumpkin.
The Sibyl laughed again. "Then let your philosophy console you!" she said.
The mist rose, lapping Varus' waist and stretching wisps toward the Sibyl's chair. He could feel words of closure trembling in his heart. Before they could burst from his mouth he cried, "Sibyl, was the Erymanthian Boar real? Did Heracles kill it?"
Without turning her head, the Sibyl lifted her right hand and caressed the great tusk beside her head. She said, "You are a clever, educated boy, Lord Varus. Something was real, and someone killed it. If you wish to say they were the Erymanthian Boar and Heracles, who is there to stop you? Not I, surely."
"Open the Earth and the World to me!" Varus' lips shouted. His soul plunged through ice and fire until it filled his body again. He rocked on his stool and would have fallen if Pandareus had not caught him by the shoulders.
The illusion had vanished. The actor playing Hercules sprawled sobbing against the stone backdrop. Others of the performers huddled together or had fled from the stage.
The entire audience was on its feet, stamping and shouting, "Saxa! Saxa! Saxa!"
Father must be very pleased, Varus thought. I wish I knew as little about what happened as he does, so that I could be pleased also.
David Drake
Out of the Waters-ARC
CHAPTER 3
The vision disappeared as suddenly as a lightning flash, leaving nothing behind but memories. Hedia was so cold inside that she continued to sit in numb silence, oblivious of the change.
The spectators, all the many thousands of them, were going wild. That's dangerous! she realized. Fear for her husband and family broke her out of the gray chill that had bound her.
Hedia got to her feet. She wasn't fully herself-she knocked the stool over behind her-but nobody would notice in this confusion. Alphena glanced up as Hedia walked toward the back of the Tribunal. The girl looked as though she wanted to say something, but Hedia had no time for chatter.
Servants waited in the rear of the box. Though excited, they didn't seem worried-or anyway, not more worried than could be explained by the fact that their mistress was approaching with a hard expression
Hedia ignored her personal maid, Syra, and instead stepped close to Candidus, a deputy steward and the senior servant present. She gestured him to bend over so that she could speak into his ear and be heard.
I'll probably have to shout anyway. Shouting was undignified, but Hedia supposed that under the circumstances she couldn't complain about a minor indignity.
She smiled. She couldn't change how she felt, but she was too self-aware not to be able to view herself clearly.
"Candidus, find the impresario Meoetes and tell him in the Senator's name to draw the curtain at once," she said, holding the lobe of the servant's left ear between her thumb and forefinger. "At once, do you understand? And go yourself; don't pass this off to an underling who might be disregarded."
She wasn't pinching him, but her touch reminded the servant that he was dealing with Hedia, not her gentle, diffident husband. Candidus would obey, without question or hesitation.
The fellow made Hedia want to slap him. Well, cane him; she certainly didn't want her bare hand to touch his greasy skin. She had decided when she took charge of Saxa's household that so long as the servants obeyed her instantly, she would ignore any behavior that didn't directly touch the honor of her new family.
"At once, your ladyship!" Candidus said. He went down the stairs at the back of the Tribunal, taking each step individually but quickly.
Though a slave, Candidus affected a toga at public events like this one. The thick wool made him sweat like a broiling capon. In Hedia's present mood, the fellow's mere presence seemed an almost unbearable provocation.
She turned and almost cannoned into Alphena, who must have followed her. Hedia stifled a curse-she's following me to help, but this isn't the time for it!-and hugged her daughter by the shoulders and swung around her.
"Give me a moment, dear," Hedia said. "I must speak to your father."
Saxa sat with his hands on the arms of his chair, beaming and blinking. He no more understands the situation than a bull being led to the altar does! Hedia thought, then muttered a prayer that the metaphor might not be a prophecy.
Syra had righted the stool, Hedia leaned across it, graceful despite her hurry, and touched her husband's upper arm.