Saint Antony's Fire Read online

  At first he could only stare. One by one, the others followed his stare and, like him, were struck dumb by the manifest impossibility their eyes reported.

  But then he saw that the flying metal boat had changed course and was headed in their direction.

  "Run!" he cried, shaking off his paralysis.

  "Take shelter in here!" urged Lieutenant Fenton, indicating a large burned-out building across the way, its roof largely fallen in. Winslow wasn't sure how much good that would do . . . but, on reflection, it was far from clear that running would do any good either. He joined with Fenton in herding everyone through the great building's wide entryway and the gaps where its walls had crumbled.

  The sorcerous flying boat swooped in on them with soul-shaking rapidity, coming to a halt above the street and hovering by the same magic that allowed it to fly (for it had no masts or sails). Then, its humming sound rising to a whine, it settled to the street in a cloud of disturbed dust. Its size now became evident: perhaps sixty feet long and twenty wide. It was in the form of an open-topped raft, so its occupants also became visible . . . and all at once the terror aroused in Winslow and the others by the uncanny vessel itself was as nothing.

  "The Gray Monks!" gasped John Dee.

  Winslow had never met a member of the dread Order of St. Antony, but he had heard enough stories to recognize the diminutive hairless beings with the huge dark eyes. Yet these were not wearing the gray habits that had given them their name. Instead, they wore close-fitting garments of some unfamiliar silvery material, seemingly all one piece, from neck to toe. If they have toes, thought Winslow in a flash of supreme irrelevance. As the raft settled to a halt and the whining sound diminished and fell silent, several of them hopped down onto the street. The tubular implements they carried looked like no guns of Winslow's experience, but they held them like guns as they deployed in a crescent facing the ruined building. Behind them, a larger version of those implements was lowered over the raft's gunwale and set up on a three-legged base under the supervision of one of the oddly dressed Gray Monks. But the drably brown-clad pair who did the work, and who behaved in the unmistakable manner of slaves, were . . . something else.

  They were no taller than the Gray Monks, standing no more than four and a half feet, but size was their only point of resemblance. At first glance, they looked like miniature men, wirily built, with long hair in shades of reddish brown. But their arms and legs were longer than those of men—not absolutely, but in proportion to their bodies. And their beardless faces—whose color was a lighter reflection of their hair's, as though the latter's pigments had seeped into it—were of a strange cast: narrow jaws, tilted cheekbones and eyebrows, and large pointed ears.

  The word elfin entered Winslow's mind even as he heard Owain stammer, "See, I told you!"

  "Stand fast!" Fenton commanded his men. They formed a line inside the barn-door-wide entryway and hurriedly measured priming powder into the pans of their arquebuses. Then they clamped the slow-burning matches into the serpentines. The sailors flanking them gripped their assortment of weapons. Winslow—slowly, so as not to precipitate anything with an abrupt motion—drew his blade. In keeping with his social pretensions as a ship owner, it was a gentleman's backsword: straight, basket-hilted, single-edged to give the blade enough weight and strength to chop bone.

  One of the Gray Monks, with gold insignia of some kind on the chest of his silvery garment, stood at the rail of what Winslow thought of as the craft's quarterdeck. He had always heard that they spoke in a thin, whispering hiss that did not carry well. This one spoke into an implement like a squat horn, which amplified his words. It didn't make them understandable, however, for they were in a language like none Winslow had ever heard in even the most cosmopolitan seaports. But he knew a demand for surrender when he heard it.

  "I wonder why they don't speak to us in Latin?" Dee sounded puzzled.

  "We'll try answering them in that tongue," said Walsingham, who proceeded to do so.

  The only result was that the Gray Monk in the ornamented garment, with an unmistakable gesture of exasperation, gave an order to his subordinates in another, even stranger-sounding language. They began a purposeful advance on the ruined building.

  Winslow wasn't sure exactly what happened, for Fenton gave no order. Maybe a soldier's nerves snapped, or maybe a stray spark caused an accidental discharge. But an arquebus crashed out, and the rest of the soldiers, their nerves already stretched to the snapping point, fired a deafening volley. Heavy lead balls smashed into several of the approaching Gray Monks, who staggered backwards. But, even through the rotten eggs-smelling cloud of smoke, it was clear that there had been no other effect. The strange silvery suits had a magical quality of invulnerability.

  Then the Gray Monks began to return fire. But it was not gunfire as the Englishmen knew it. Winslow saw a line of crackling light from one of the strange weapons spear a soldier's chest, which emitted a burst of pink steam through the hole that had been burned in his armor, as though the blood and water of his body had been instantaneously superheated beyond the boiling point.

  There was no time for thought. With a wild cry, Winslow sprang forward, and the sailors followed him. So did the soldiers, dropping their useless firearms and drawing their short swords. The Gray Monks' fire wavered, as though the sudden charge had caught them off balance. Winslow struck the weapon of one of them aside, recovered from the swing, and brought his backsword around in a slash across the Gray Monk's torso. The blade sliced through the silvery material, and a fluid that did not look like normal Christian blood spurted. As the Gray Monk collapsed, squalling, Winslow spent some very tiny fraction of a second wondering how his sword had done what arquebus balls had not. Was the potency of the suit's magic somehow related to the speed of that which struck it?

  There was no time for further speculation as he charged into the melee. The Gray Monks were recovering from their surprise and bringing their magic weapons to bear. But at knife-range they had little time to aim them. And the English were mad with sudden release. They had found themselves powerlessly in the grip of a situation they could not comprehend, with no useful way of striking back. Here, at last, was something they could understand.

  Winslow saw Fenton leap past him and thrust his sword through a Gray Monk where the heart would have been on a man. There was none of the gush of blood that such a thrust should have occasioned, but it seemed to serve well enough as the Gray Monk sank to the ground. Their eyes met for an instant and Fenton flashed Winslow a grin as he sprang forward again . . .

  And then they were face to face with the large weapon on the three-legged stand. And the Gray Monks had plenty of time to aim it.

  Winslow saw it swinging toward Shakespeare, who was emerging from the fray with a bloody boarding pike.

  With a cry, Fenton sprang forward, interposing himself, seeking that weapon's crew with his sword.

  There was a dazzling flash, and Fenton's head and chest cavity simply exploded into a grayish-pink shower that sprayed Winslow's eyes.

  But he could still see, blurrily, as the weapon swung around and one of Heron's sailors ceased to be. And then another . . .

  He stumbled to his knees under another shower of gore, and squeezed his eyes shut. This is the end, his innermost soul cried from the pits of despair. We cannot prevail. We were foolish to try. England is gone . . .

  Then, penetrating to the depths to which his soul had sunk, came the sound of wild cries.

  He opened his eyes. Warriors were leaping up behind the line of Gray Monks, attacking it from the rear with mad abandon. Warriors of two kinds. Some were of the elfin sort he had previously seen as slaves . . . but these were obviously anything but slaves. A few of them were armed with the same weapons as the Gray Monks, whose magic silvery garments evidently provided no protection against them. The rest carried a kind of two-handed slashing sword with which Winslow was unfamiliar, but which they wielded with obvious skill. They cleared the Gray Monks away from the
heavy weapon and wrestled the slaves of their own sort down, tying them with no more force than was necessary to overcome their strangely listless struggles.

  But the other attackers were human—human and to all appearances Englishmen, even though they wore the same sort of odd tunic-and-trousers outfit as their allies, in the same range of earth tones, and were armed with the same combination of weapons, although their edged blades seemed designed to exploit human reach and strength.

  But what Winslow mostly noticed about the new human arrivals was that their leader was a woman.

  She leapt into the Gray Monks' midst with a two-handed curved blade calculated to maximize the effect of its wielder's upper body strength. And she leapt with a twisting midair motion and a series of slashes he could not follow. Then she landed on her feet . . . and a Gray Monk to her right was clutching the blood-spurting stump of his right arm, while another Gray Monk to her left was sinking to his knees trying to hold in his spilling inhuman guts.

  With the barest pause, she was in motion again with the same blinding speed, bringing her blade around in a wide, flashing figure-eight . . . and the two Gray Monks' heads were sliding down from their severed necks and falling to the dust before their lifeless bodies slumped down to join them.

  For a moment Winslow simply stared, with a non-verbal thought that could only have been rendered as, What a woman!

  But then he remembered that a battle was still in progress. He sprang to his feet and led a final charge. The Gray Monks still aboard the flying raft started to take it aloft. But the elflike beings aimed the heavy weapon they had captured at its underside, toward the stern. The sizzling tunnel of light that marked the weapon's passage stabbed forth, and with an internal explosion the vessel lost control and crashed into the foliage of the ruined city.

  Winslow found himself face to face with the female leader of his new-found allies. She looked to be about nineteen or twenty, with a body that was fully female but whose litheness could only be the product of years of strenuous campaigning. Her hair was a very dark chestnut, pulled back into a thick braid lest it blind her eyes in combat. Her features, while regular, were too strongly marked for conventional prettiness, and her skin was unfashionably tanned. Her eyes, green with only the slightest flecks of hazel, met his boldly.

  Unable to think of anything else to do, he smiled.

  She smiled back . . . and, with the same incredible speed she had shown before, whipped out a throwing knife from her belt and hurled it at his head.

  He didn't have time to blink, much less to duck. But as soon as he was aware it was happening, the knife had flashed past him, and the woman, still smiling, was indicating with a jerk of her chin that he should look behind him.

  He turned around. A Gray Monk, who had been pointing a weapon at his back, was sagging to the ground. The knife hilt protruded from his left eye.

  He turned back to the extraordinary young woman and spoke with no expectation of being understood. "It would seem you've saved my life."

  "So it would seem," she answered dryly, with a nod.

  His jaw dropped. "You speak English!"

  "I am English! So are we all, who found ourselves here after coming through the wound the Grella ripped in creation at Croatoan."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Winslow saw John White stiffen.

  "Then, my child," came the Queen's voice as she approached from the ruined building, "perhaps you know who I am."

  Winslow fell to one knee, followed by others around him. The young woman stared with huge eyes. "The Queen? No, it can't be!" But she fell to her knees. "It must be true. You are as the elders described you. I was brought up on tales of England. Only . . . shouldn't you be older? And how can it be that you are here?"

  "I am here seeking refuge. It's a long story."

  "Then I fear it must wait. We cannot remain here. We barely have time to do what must be done." She indicated her followers, who were methodically splashing each of the dead Gray Monks with some fluid and setting them afire, as though it was necessary that they be consumed and not merely killed.

  One of the small, wiry beings ran up to the young woman, and they conversed for a moment in what Winslow recognized as the language the Gray Monk had first used to hail them. Then she turned back to the Queen. "We have less time than I thought. The Grella are returning."

  "You used that word before," Winslow said. "Do you mean . . . ?" He indicated the silver-clad bodies around them, and she nodded.

  "We know them as the Gray Monks," said Walsingham.

  "So the elders have told us. But whatever you call them, they're coming in greater force. And this time they won't land. They'll stay aloft and sear the area with fire, and drop bursting shells that turn the air to poison. We must take shelter with the Eilonwë." She gave the Queen a beseeching look. "Your Majesty, we must hurry."

  "She is right," the Queen nodded. "Lead on, girl!"

  They followed their new nonhuman allies—the Eilonwë, as they were evidently called—through the overgrown ruins. The sun was low in the sky when they came to a low half-collapsed structure so covered with vegetation as to be almost indistinguishable from a hill. A vine-shrouded entryway opened onto a ramp that slanted underground. Two of the Eilonwë produced small torches that produced light without fire—Winslow was rapidly growing inured to magic—and led the way downward.

  Presently they came to an open space whose boundaries were lost in the shadows. "We should be out of danger now, and can pause for a rest," said the young female warrior, who didn't seem to need it—she wasn't even breathing hard.

  "Then explain something to me, before we accompany you any further," said John White, stepping in front of her. "You claim to be one of the English settlers who went to Croatoan. But I knew all of them. I know what every young woman in the colony looked like. And I don't recognize you. I don't recognize any of your companions. Who are you?"

  "First, answer this," said Dee in a voice that countenanced no denial. "You spoke of 'the elders.' What did you mean by that?"

  "Why, our parents. The generation who brought us, their children, into this world where we have fought the Grella for nineteen years."

  Surely, thought Winslow, she must have meant something else. I couldn't have heard that correctly.

  But Dee must have heard the same thing, for he was staring at her. "Nineteen years? What lunacy is this? The colonists disappeared from Croatoan less than a single year ago!"

  A stray memory awoke in Winslow. "And didn't you say something about how the Queen ought to look older? What did you mean by that?"

  She nodded slowly. "So it's true after all. The Eilonwë must be right about the nature of time. We've had trouble believing it, for seems like madness. But it must be true. I myself am living proof of it, for I was carried into this world as a babe in arms."

  "Who are you?" White asked again, barely above a whisper, speaking like a man who must ask a question even though he fears the answer.

  "Who am I? Why, sir, the Eilonwë call me Alanthru rael'Khoranie. But my English name is Virginia Dare."

  Eight

  "Why do you stare at me, sir?" Virginia Dare finally asked, shattering the silence.

  John White fell to his knees, and a convulsive shudder ran through him. "Because I last saw Virginia Dare on the twenty-seventh of August, 1587—only a little over a year ago. She was nine days old. Her mother, Eleanor Dare, was standing in the surf at Roanoke Island, waving farewell to me as I departed for England, for she was my daughter. She held my granddaughter up, giving me a last glimpse to store in my memory. And now you tell me you are she!" He buried his face in his hands. "God, God!" he moaned.

  Virginia Dare went to her knees facing him, and took his hands in hers. "You are John White, my grandfather? All her life, Mother told me of you."

  White winced as though from a pain that was not unexpected but nonetheless cruel. " 'All her life'? You mean . . . ?"

  "Yes, she is dead," said Virginia Dare in the voic
e of one to whom death was a commonplace. It was a voice that accorded ill with her youth. "So is my father Ananias Dare. They were killed by the Grella, although their bodies were never found. Most of the elders are dead by now. We've had a hard life here, hunted like animals. It's only thanks to the Eilonwë that any of us still live." Her expression softened, and a sad smile trembled into life. "If Mother was alive now, she'd be almost as old as you!"

  "But how can this be?" spluttered Dee. "Insanity!"

  "I tell you, we're under Elf Hill, where time stands still!" Owain's voice quavered.

  "To the contrary," said Walsingham, who could no more stop his brain from applying logic than he could stop his lungs from breathing. "It would seem that time moves faster here, if Mistress Dare has lived nineteen years, growing into a young woman, while less than one year has passed for us."