She felt the shaman touch the curl again; then he must have lowered his hand. "I will never break the bounds of this place, little one," he said quietly. "This is my universe. I would have to go outside everything that exists for me to escape it; which I cannot do, no matter how great a magician you think me. No magician, no god even, can do that."
Perhaps there was sadness in his measured tones as he added, "It is good of you to visit me, Alphena."
She blinked, then rubbed her eyes fiercely with the backs of her hands before opening them again. They still stung, but she could see.
Alphena could see people beyond where the fish circled. Their figures were hazy, and they didn't sharpen when she focused on them the way everything else in this place did.
They aren't in this place!
"Uktena!" she said in excitement. She pointed toward the figures, still visible though they were fading into a greater distance. "Who are they? Could they help you?"
The shaman laughed. "Little one, little one," he said. "They perhaps could, for only one who remembers much of the arts which the spirits whispered to him could even be in the place between universes. But they will not help me."
Alphena clenched her fists and squeezed her eyelids almost closed. "They might," she said. "They may!"
"Alphena, look at me," the shaman said in a voice of command. She turned without thinking.
The monster of heads and arms and legs beyond number filled her awareness. There was nothing in this place that was not it. Typhon was all.
Instead of screaming, Alphena closed her eyes and began to cry. Hands took hers gently; arms drew her cheek against a human chest.
"Don't cry, little one," Uktena said softly. "There is no reason for sadness. What is, is. What other kind of universe could you or I be content in?"
Instead of rubbing her eyes, Alphena put her arms around the shaman. It was like hugging a muscular tree trunk.
"I'll free you!" she said. "Some way, some how, I will!"
But her voice faded and her arms dissolved. Very faintly she heard, "Farewell, little one…"
Alphena awakened from her dream. It was dawn, and Uktena had risen to do battle.
Hedia saw nothing and heard nothing as she dropped into the blue light, not even the screams she tried to force through her throat. She felt Lann's hand, however, so she clung to it as a shipwrecked sailor does to a floating spar.
With a coldness in her heart beyond any previous fear, Hedia knew there were worse dangers in this place than mere drowning. How long could she be trapped in this place before oblivion replaced even madness?
Her feet touched-the ground? Something solid, at any rate. Her eyes flew open; she hadn't realized that she had closed them to shut out the terror of nothingness.
Lann was looking at her in concern, but he hooted cheerfully when she smiled. They stood on a plane that was the same almost-blue neutrality as the disk into which he had drawn her. She thought there were bulks in the far distance, but they had no more shape than clouds on a moonless night.
The ape-man grunted, then turned and started forward. Hedia felt an instant's terror when he let go of her hand, but she didn't vanish into gray limbo again. She caught her breath and strode after him.
I wish he'd warned me before he did that.
She grinned away her scowl. If he had given her any warning, she would have clung to him in fear and despair.
An arrow with red fletching and an orichalc point dangled from Lann's left hip, wobbling as he walked. It had pierced loose skin, apparently without touching muscle.
Hedia had been vaguely aware of a zip! zip! as the ship drove into the shielding canopy, but only now did she realize that bowmen aboard the vessel had been shooting at them.
Shooting at the ape-man, more likely. Though the Minoi might have been willing to cripple Hedia in the hope that they wouldn't nick an artery in the process.
The arrow was a quivering reminder of how nearly she had been recaptured. It was possible, of course, that before long she might think being in the hands of the Minoi would be preferable to having escaped to this place.
Hedia grinned again. That seemed unlikely. And so long as she was with Lann, there were compensations.
She had believed that they were walking along a level plane. That might be true, but the strain on her thighs suggested that she was climbing. There was nothing to judge their progress against; she had only her faith in the ape-man that they were actually going somewhere instead of just going on.
Movement jerked her attention to the right. What had been foggy distortion when she first reached this side of the disk now resolved to people, or- Hedia started back. "Lann!" she said.
She tugged the ape-man's wrist till he turned to face her, then pointed with her whole arm. "What is that? I thought I saw-"
She would either have finished the sentence with "-my daughter Alphena," or with, "-the terrible monster I saw in the theater." In the event she said neither, because Lann snatched her arm down with a haste that was just short of violence. Hooting, he swung her around him so that his body was between her and the shifting images. It was the closest thing to anger that he had yet displayed toward her.
He's afraid of that, whatever it is, Hedia realized. Or anyway, the ape-man was afraid of what might happen if she called attention to them by pointing. That might be a real concern or just the sort of superstition that made a peasant unwilling to claim that his crop was shaping toward a good harvest.
She wouldn't make that mistake again.
Lann released her and started forward again. Hedia followed submissively, keeping her arms by her side. When she had reached out to point, her hand had met a resistance which it couldn't feel. There had been nothing visible between her and the beings that she glimpsed, but she was sure that the place her arm went was not really toward what she saw.
After a dozen paces, Hedia became sure that the ape-man wouldn't turn around to check on her. She glanced to her right.
Alphena was no longer present. Where there had been a monster indescribable in its vastness and complexity, now stood a man in a loincloth who wore his hair in two braids. He wasn't young, but he was very well set up. Large fish of varied colors circled him at a distance.
A reflexive smile started to lift the corners of Hedia's mouth. The man's eyes flicked toward her. She could see him as clearly as if they were facing one another at dinner.
She stiffened; her face, unbidden, set itself into regal lines. I am Hedia, wife of Gaius Saxa and a noble of Carce…
For this man was a noble also. She didn't know where he came from, but she accepted at a glance that he was her equal in every fashion; and, being male, was possibly a little more equal in some fashions.
That was all right with her. Hedia's smile was slight but real. In its place.
When she focused on the man, Hedia had the impression of courtiers standing nearby in obsequious silence. Her eyes followed the motion.
She saw fish, the same colorful fish as before. When she didn't focus on the nobleman, she saw around them, filling existence, Typhon: a writhing, swollen horror which hungered to grow for all eternity.
Hedia faced away, grimacing. All this business had started with the vision of Typhon destroying what she now knew was the city of Poseidonis. If that had really happened instead of it being a mirage in the bowl of the theater, she would have been spared these recent days of unpleasantness.
Though she would have missed Lann also, which would have been a shame. Not tragic, but a shame nonetheless.
Lann turned. Hedia gave him an impish smile, her reflex when she feared she had been caught in some wrongdoing, but the ape-man wasn't concerned with whether she had continued to look at the figures to their right. Instead he stared past her, back-she could only assume this, as she saw empty gray on all sides-the way they had come.