The right corner of the stage had gotten darker. Corylus frowned. He couldn't see the rope dancers any more, and the water had become the dusty gray color of old lead.

Indeed, Corylus couldn't see the back of the stage: a sea covered with an angry chop seemed to stretch into the distance. The serpentine neck that lifted momentarily and disappeared again certainly didn't look like a bobbing flat.

"By Hercules!" Pulto said. "That looks bloody real!"

The oath had nothing to do with this mime. Hercules was the common man's god, a good-natured fellow who drank too much and got into fixes, and who therefore could understand the problems of an ordinary soldier or farmer.

Corylus looked at the Tribunal. Saxa was beaming. There may have been a touch of surprise in back of his pleased expression, but he didn't appear concerned.

Varus and Pandareus leaned forward transfixed. Varus continued to jot notes with a stolid determination which delighted Corylus but didn't surprise him.

Varus consistently displayed as much physical courage as anyone Corylus had witnessed on the frontiers. There were plenty of men in the legions who could stand before a charge of screaming Germans, but there were very few who could have done what Varus was doing now. Not if they knew what Varus-and Corylus-knew about what was really happening.

The "city" of painted canvas took on depth. The walls shone brighter than the armor of Hercules, who now cowered on his rock, and the tiled roofs had risen into high crystal towers.

"How are we seeing this?" Corylus said. Pulto might have been able to hear him, but he knew he was really speaking to himself, attempting to impose reason on something beyond all reason. "It's too clear!"

He wished he were with Pandareus and Varus now. They were talking in the Tribunal, two learned men discussing in the light of their philosophy the events they observed.