The ape-man hooted in concern. He started to go on, then stopped without warning and squatted over his disk.
One of her first husband's friends had an ape trained to play the dice game Bandits. Lann looked so much like that animal peering over the game board that Hedia half-expected to see him react as the ape had-by suddenly flying into a rage and hurling the board, the counters and all in every direction.
That had been unexpected and exciting; and dangerous, but danger added spice to life. She giggled, as she had giggled when she watched the screaming ape knot a bronze lamp stand as easily as a man might have done a blade of grass.
New images appeared around Hedia and the ape-man, replacing their gray surroundings with a blankness indistinguishable to her-save for the pair of Atlantean ships which flew out of a spiraling blur. Their sails beat, driving them forward here just as they had on the other side of the portal.
The Minoi pursuing Hedia in the jungle had not given up when Lann took her through the portal. They would never give up.
Armored figures stood in the sterns of the vessels. The human servants holding wooden bows and spears were huddled against the railings. Their eyes were closed and many seemed to be mumbling prayers. Several even curled their knees against their chests and wrapped their arms around them.
The Servitors-four on one vessel, two on the other-were upright and alert; their weapons were orichalc. Hedia couldn't imagine that even Lann's strength would prevail against those odds.
The ape-man dropped his lens; its images dissolved like sand ramparts in the tide. Facing the Minoi in the unseen distance, he rose into a bandy-legged posture of threat, his head cocked forward and his great fangs bared. He roared loudly, even with no walls to echo from. He roared again, then drummed his broad chest with fists like mauls.
There was no response. That would come soon enough, Hedia knew, in the form of fiery swords or arrows.
The ape-man dropped to all fours. Hedia thought he planned to run in his chosen direction until the ships caught them; and perhaps that was all that had been in his bestial mind until his knuckle touched the crystal disk.
Lann paused, as motionless as a statue covered with shaggy fur. Then, with the deliberation of a torturer raising the poker he had heated, he turned with the disk toward the unseen barrier between them and Typhon.
Hedia wrung her hands. She shifted her eyes from the crouching ape-man, back to the way they had come. She couldn't see the Minoi, but expectation of their arrival frightened her less than what the ape-man was doing.
She couldn't bring herself to look at what was happening beyond the barrier. Even so she was aware at the corners of her eyes that something twisted and flowed. It moved like a serpent or a thousand serpents, and she knew what it was even without looking; what it was, and how huge it was.
The ape-man grunted with angry satisfaction. He was using both hands to force the edge of the disk against nothing. The crystal suddenly lurched forward against his pressure.
He drew back quickly and got to his feet. The lens swung in his left hand; it appeared unharmed.
"Lann, what have you done?" Hedia said. Tiny cracks were running across the surface of the unseen, like tendrils of mold through bread.
The ape-man grunted and gestured her on. When she hesitated, he caught her shoulder with his free hand and dragged her. She stumbled for a dozen steps before she properly got her feet under her so that she could keep up. Lann released her only when he was sure that she would follow at his own best speed.
Hedia glanced over her shoulder as she trotted beside the ape-man. The cracks were expanding swiftly.
And the immensity beyond writhed closer.
Varus stood in a corner of the Forum, looking up at the Citadel and the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest. It was past the close of business, but the pavement was still crowded.
The son of Gaius Saxa wasn't being jostled, of course. A contingent of servants faced outward around him, shoulder to shoulder. That kept him clear to the length of his arm.
No one, including Candidus who was in charge of the escort, had asked Varus why he wanted to stand by himself in the Forum. He wasn't sure that any of the servants had even wondered.
Everyone in Saxa's household knew that the master's son was a literary sort who pondered things that no ordinary person could even imagine. A reputation for being unfathomably strange seemed to buy one a degree of tolerance for acts that would have aroused comment if committed by someone normal.
Varus smiled wistfully. He wasn't sure himself why he had chosen the Forum for what he had come to do. This wasn't where Carce had first been settled: traditionally, that had been the Palatine Hill, behind him. The Citadel would have provided a better view of present-day Carce, and it had been the religious and military core when the city first came to prominence.
But the Forum had been and to a degree remained the civil heart of Carce, and a city was its citizens. The first great act of the citizens of Carce had been to drain the Forum through the Cloaca Maxima, transforming a marshy pasture into a plain in which they could assemble and decide their laws. Rather than to look down on the Forum from the Citadel, Varus had chosen to stand where his forefathers had gathered in times of peace.
His vision had shown him Typhon engulfing the Forum. But Typhon, the Sibyl had told him, was not the business of Gaius Varus…
Varus unrolled the book of Egyptian magic in his mind. He found the verse and read in a loud voice, "I open the doors of heaven!"
A jagged gash tore soundlessly through the sky, splitting it down to the pavement beside Varus-where the Sibyl was now standing. There were no stars in the gaps between halves of cloud-swept blue.
"Sibyl?" he said in surprise. "I thought… that is, you've never come to me this way before. In Carce. I thought I'd be climbing the hill to see you as usual."
The Sibyl sniffed. "All this is mummery, Lord Varus," she said, gesturing toward the crack in the sky. "I am a shadow of your will, no more. How shall a shadow direct the wizard who casts her?"
She gave him one of her unreadable smiles and patted his arm. Looking about the Forum, she said, "In my day, Evander pastured his cows in this valley. Everything changes, Lord Varus. Everything changes, and eventually everything ends."
If you're not real, then how can you talk about Evander? Varus thought.
He grinned in sudden realization. The statement had brightened his mood by posing him the kind of question he understood: a literary question. Now he could smile as he considered the matter that had brought him-brought them-here.
"Sibyl," he said, "what is Procron doing that I should stop? If he simply lives in that barren world, what harm can he do to Carce?"
"That place, that barren world…," the Sibyl said. She turned away from him to view the huge hall which Aemilius Paullus had built from the spoils of conquered Greece. "Is this world, this Earth, Lord Varus. In the distant future when there are no men save Procron himself in exile, but still the Earth. He hates his fellow Minoi, because they drove him out of Atlantis."
She paused to look up at the Citadel. Seemingly off the subject, she said, "You thought Evander was a myth, did you not, Varus?"
Varus felt his smile spread wider. "I thought you were a myth, Sibyl," he said. "I have made other mistakes besides that."
"If it is a mistake," the Sibyl said musingly. "If it really is."
In a businesslike, relatively firm, voice, she went on, "Procron cannot return from his place of exile, but his powers gain him agents in other times. He works to loose Typhon from the place he was bound. Typhon will destroy Atlantis and the Minoi; but he will destroy all things, save Typhon himself."