Then the silver azoth that Si.lk had taken from a drawer in Hyacinth's dressing table, on the night of the same day that the Outsider had revealed to Silk the essence of the universe in which he existed, fell from Lemur's tapestried sleeve and skittered across the floor.
And Crane dove for it, bumping hard against one of the medical machines that surrounded the dead councillor's bed and sending it crashing down on its side; but quickly and deftly, gray-bearded though he was, he snatched up the axoth.
Its terrible beam shot forth, and Lemur exploded in a ball of flame. Silk and Mamelta staggered back, covering their faces with their arms.
Crane dashed past them and was out the door by the time that Silk could see again.
Mamelta screamed.
Silk held her arm and dragged her behind him, conscious that he should silence her but conscious also that it would probably prove impossible and that there was not a second to waste in any event.
The soldiers at the door were firing when Silk opened it. Before he could draw back, they charged down the broad corridor, running at thrice the speed even a fleet boy like Horn could have managed and ten times the best that Silk, handicapped by his ankle and the shrieking Mamelta, could hope to achieve; the two of them had not covered half the distance when there was a flash from the companionway and a double explosion-horribly painful, though not loud to ears still shocked and ringing from Lemur's detonation.
'We must get there before he shuts the hatch,' Silk told Mamelta, and then, when she still would not run, he (to his own later amazement) picked her up bodily, and throwing her over one shoulder like a rolled mattress or a sack of flour, ran himself, stumbling and staggering, once crashing into a bulkhead and nearly falling headlong down the companionway. Someone was shouting, 'Wait! Wait!' and he had reached the hatch before he realized that it was himself.
It was shut, but he dropped Mamelta and wrenched around the handwheels. A roaring wind from below lifted it as he did.
'Doctor!'
'Help me!' Crane shouted. 'We can get away in the boat.'
Haifa dozen slug guns boomed in the corridor as Silk and Mamelta stumbled down the short companionway into the boat hold, and a slug slammed the hatch like a sledgehammer as he retightened its fastenings.
Wlien he reached Crane, the little physician was heaving at the longer hatch that covered the boat hole. The three of them threw it back, with chill lake water gushing in after it, helping to lift it as air pressure had opened the much smaller hatch above. For a moment Silk was conscious of floundering in rising water. He spat, managed to get his face clear, and gasped for breath.
The flood slacked, then held steady for a second or two that seemed a minute at least; he was conscious of the full-throated hoot of the air valve, and of someone (whether it was Mamelta or Crane he could not be sure) struggling and splashing nearby.
The flow reversed. Slowly at first, then swifter and swifter, sweeping him along, the flood that had practically filled the compartment rushed back to Lake Limna. Helpless as a doll in a maelstrom, he spun in a dizzy whorl of blue light, slowed (his lungs ready to burst), and caught sight of another figure suspended like himself with splayed limbs and drifting hair,
And then, dimly, of a monstrous mottled face-black, red, and gold-far larger than any wall of the manse, and a gaping mouth that closed upon the splayed figure he had seen. It passed below him as a floater rushing down some reeling mountain meadow might pass a floating thistle seed, and the turbulence of its wake sent him spinning.
Chapter 13. THE CALDE SURRENDERS
'Patera? Oh, Patera!'
Maytera Marble was waving from the front steps of the old manteion on Sun Street. Two troopers in armor stood beside her; their officer, in dress greens, indulgently exhibited his sword to little Maytera Mint. Gulo hurried forward. The officer glanced up. 'Patera Silk? You are under arrest.' Gulo shook his head and explained. Maytera Marble sniffed, a sniff of such devastating power and contempt that it burned to dust all the pleasure the young officer had enjoyed from Maytera Mint's wide-eyed admiration. 'Take Patera Silk away? You can't! Such a holy-'
A soft snarl came from the crowd that had been clustered about Gulo. Gulo was not an imaginative man, yet it seemed to him that an unseen lion was awakening; and the prayers he had chanted each Sphigxday were not nonsensical after all.
'Don't fight!' Maytera Mint returned the officer's sword and raised her hands. 'Please! There's no need.'
A stone flew, striking the helmet of one of the troopers. A second whizzed past Maytera Marble's head to thump the door, and the trooper who had been hit fired, his shot followed by a scream. Maytera Mint dashed down the steps into the crowd.
The trooper fired again, and his officer slapped down the muzzle of his slug gun. 'Open these,' the officer told Gulo. 'We had better go inside.' More stones flew as they fled into the manteion. The trooper who had been hit fired twice more as Maytera Marble and the other trooper swung its heavy door shut, his shots so closely spaced that they might almost have been one. There was an answering rattle of stones.
'It is the heat.' The officer spoke confidently and even smiled. 'They will forget now that we are out of sight.' He sheathed his sword. 'This Patera Silk is popular.'
Maytera Marble nodded. And then, 'Patera!' 'I have to go.' Gulo was sliding back the bolt. 'I-I shouldn't have gone in here at all.' He struggled to re- member the other sibyl's name, failed, and concluded lamely, 'She was right.'
The officer snatched at his robe an instant too late as Gulo slipped out; angry yells invaded the manteion, then muted as the troopers shut the door and bolted it again. Faintly, the officer could hear Gulo shouting, 'People! People!'
'They won't hurt him, Maytera.' He paused to listen, his head cocked. 'I do not like arresting . . .'
He let the apology trail away, having realized that he no longer had her attention. Her metal face mirrored faint hues: lemon, pink, and sorrel. Following the direction of her gaze, he saw the swirling color of the Sacred Window and knelt. The dancing hues created patterns he could not quite distinguish, glyphs, figures, and landscapes half formed, a face that swam, melted, and coalesced before the goddess spoke in a tongue he almost understood, a language that he too had known in a long-past life in an unimaginable place at an inconceivable time. In this, he was a maggot; her utterance proclaimed that he had once been a man, though the memories she woke were perhaps no more than the dead thoughts of the man he devoured. I will, Great Goddess. I will. He will be safe with us. Behind and above him he heard the chem talking to the fat augur. 'A god came while you were outside, Patera. Honored us without a sacrifice. There was no one to inter- pret. I'm so terribly sony you missed it-' And the augur, 'I didn't, Maytera. Not all of it.'
The officer willed them to be quiet. Her divine voice still strummed in his ears, far and sweet; and he knew what she desired him to do.
To breach the surface of the lake as Silk did, to rise from suffocation and see afresh the thin, bright streak of the sun and draw one's first breath, was to be reborn. He was not a strong swimmer, and indeed was hardly a swimmer at all; yet exhausted as he was, he managed to stay afloat on the long, slow swell, kicking spasmodically, dimly fearful that each kick might draw the attention of the huge fish.
There was a distant shout, followed by the clamor of a pan wildly beaten; he ignored both until the swell heaved him high enough to see the worn brown sails.
Three half-naked fishermen pulled him onto their boat. 'There's someone else,' he gasped. 'We've got to find him.'
'They already have!' And Crane was grinning at him.
The tallest and most grizzled of the fishermen slapped him on the back. 'Gods look out for augurs. That's what my paw used to tell, Patera.'
Crane nodded sagely. 'Augurs and fools.'
