That thought made Hedia smile wider and more harshly. Most men wouldn't have agreed with her assessment of the real reason women weren't allowed in the Senate chamber, but she had no doubt that she was correct. Men demeaned what they feared, and they were rightly afraid of women's power over them.
"And she is linked to Typhon," said another voice, male and elderly as best Hedia could judge. "She is best suited, perhaps uniquely suited, to draw the monster away from Atlantis and to that bourn from which it cannot return."
Why in heaven do they think I'm connected with that monster? But Hedia had to consciously smooth the frown from her forehead. Am I connected with it? There's so much I don't understand.
I don't understand any of this!
"We don't know that," said what was certainly the female voice which had objected to Hedia's aura-whatever an aura was. "The link is to the place but not to the person except by conjecture. I say the Servitors took the wrong person."
"The link from Typhon to her home is clear," said what must have been a majority of the Minoi present. "It is certain that this is the one whom the Servitors tracked back from the Underworld, where only a wizard could go and return. Logic indicates that one and the same person is responsible for both. We will offer her to Typhon and lead the monster to the Underworld."
"I am Hedia, daughter of Marcus Hedius Robustus, consul and descendent of consuls!" Hedia said. The vastness seemed to drink her voice; she didn't know if anyone, even Serdain and Kalpos a few feet away, could hear her. "I am a lady of Carce! Return me to my home or face the anger of the gods who have raised Carce to the throne of nations!"
Instead of a response, she heard a burst of unintelligible chittering, like that of a frog pond during an evening shower. After a moment-a few heartbeats, no more-a chorus said, "The Council of the Minoi decrees that this female shall be offered to Typhon, then brought to the Underworld where she and it shall be sequestered forever. It shall be done!"
"I am Hedia, wife of Consul Gaius Alphenus Saxa! Release me and take me home!"
"She should be clothed," said the female voice. Hedia didn't know whether the woman was an ally in some fashion or if she simply enjoyed disagreeing with her peers. "We must provide her with a garment."
There was a further brief interval of wordless chirping. A number of voices-many, but not the great consensus of Hedia's condemnation-said, "She shall have a garment."
Almost immediately the Council in unison said, "Then she will be taken to the cells and held till we have made the necessary preparations. It shall be as we decree."
A youth, a commoner in a bleached white kilt, stepped between a pair of armored Minoi and trotted toward Hedia with his head lowered. He held a bundle which he tossed at her feet, turned, and scurried back the way he had come. He never looked up.
Hedia considered for a moment, then bent and opened the bundle. It was a shift folded from a single piece of cloth, with arm-holes in the sides and a head opening cut at the top. It was off-white with a dingy blue cast, but it seemed clean; its straight lines could be made attractive with a sash and a few judicious gatherings.
She shrugged it over her head. Though the garment was obviously utilitarian, the fabric itself was as soft as cobweb.
Hedia stood straighter, wondering if the female voice would demand that the prisoner be given a bath. Instead, and without warning, the floor beneath her feet began to sink. Her stomach flipped twice; for a moment she was afraid that she would disgrace herself by vomiting in public.
She wasn't in public. The floor of the hall was high above her; she could see only a glint of brighter light when she turned her eyes upward. The shaft in which she fell was as smooth and featureless as ice.
Hedia's descent slowed; weight threatened to buckle her knees. She stopped in a rotunda, facing two glassy Servitors.
"Where are you taking me?" she said.
Instead of answering-could they answer?-they bent and shifted the bonds from her ankles to her waist again. That done, they marched her down a corridor with cells to either side. Through the door gratings Hedia saw shapes moving. She didn't think they were all human, or at least fully human.
"When will I be released?" she shouted.
The Servitors shoved her into an empty cell. The flowing fetters vanished.
The door of the cell clacked shut before Hedia could turn around.
Alphena couldn't see very much from the gryphon's back. The sky was black and filled with stars, but they weren't the constellations of Carce. Indeed, they didn't seem to be grouped at all, just scattered as randomly as a field of daisies.
Straight ahead were a pair of larger, diffuse, blobs which didn't appear to be coming closer though the gryphon's wings beat strongly. Alphena thought she saw detail in what at first had been featureless blurs, however.
By leaning forward carefully, clamping her knees, and gripping the longer feathers above the eagle head, Alphena was able to look past the wings and see that her mount had folded its legs beneath it like a cat. Which it was, she supposed, so far as its body and hind legs went.
The gryphon turned its head to fix her with his right eye. "If you fall," he said, "you will probably fall forever. Unless I should manage to turn and catch you in time, which has its own-"
He stretched out his right foreleg and extended the claws. They were thicker at the base than Alphena's thumbs, and the points were vanishingly sharp.
"-difficulties for you."
The gryphon laughed, a croaking sound from deep in its throat. If a man had behaved the way this creature was doing, Alphena would have struck him. That wasn't a practical response here.
She felt her expression softening into a grin. I take myself too seriously. By now I should realize how little I matter to the cosmos.
Aloud she said, "I appreciate your concern, Master Gryphon. Do you have a name?"
The gryphon chuckled again. "Who is there who could name me?" he said. "And I have not chosen to give a name to myself."
The creature's wings were relatively short and broad, like those of a raven. Though they beat powerfully, Alphena didn't feel the slap of air that she would have expected if a tame pigeon had taken off from her wrist. She seemed to be breathing normally, but she was beginning to wonder whether this was real or a dream.
"Is the light ahead of us Atlantis, master?" Alphena said. She knew she was speaking to occupy her mind. She had decided it was better to react to her nervousness than let her thoughts about the near future spiral down into paralysis.
"It will be Atlantis," said the gryphon, glancing back. "And Poseidonis. And then my task is completed, is it not so?"
Alphena felt her chest constrict with terror. How will I get home?
She let out her breath slowly. Because she hadn't immediately reacted aloud, she'd had time to realize that blurting, "You have to take me and mother back to Carce!" would be as useless-and possibly as dangerous-as a similar shrill demand directed to the Emperor.
"I will not venture to tell you your duty, Master Gryphon," Alphena said. "You will act as your honor requires you to act."
The great eagle head faced front again; the gryphon chuckled. "Such a clever little chick you are," he said. "Such a clever little wizard."
Alphena swallowed. That could have gone very badly wrong if she'd reacted as she would have done a few weeks ago, before she really started observing the way Hedia moved in a world where men had all the public forms of power.
She whispered, "Thank you, mother."
The stars moved visibly though still without forming familiar combinations. The vague light directly ahead became a view of a glade in which women in flowing garments stood or walked, sometimes hand in hand. Alphena didn't recognize the place or the faces, though she scanned them intently, hoping to see Hedia.