The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 11

"This is intolerable!" fumed ibn Saul. "I must accompany Piers. Who paid for this trip? Am I to miss everything?"

"Unless you're invited, you'd better shut up," said the boatman. "They get nasty when they're mad."

"Piers!" shouted ibn Saul. "Make sure you demand they invite me ash.o.r.e."

Pierrette climbed over the rail. The water was only ankle deep, the boat solidly aground. She waded to the torchbearer, who nodded somberly and said only, "Follow me." Pierrette obeyed. Her guide strode purposefully through the almost-total darkness, as if every turning of the path, every root crossing it, were well known to her. The flatness of the island helped. Pierrette noted no ascent as they moved inland. The island, she realized, was as low as it looked from afar, with not a single hill or crag. When the winter storms came, did the waves wash over its entirety? Did such annual baths in brine explain the scruffynature of the trees and bushes, the apparent lack of clearings that might be construed as cultivated plots?

Ahead were shadows darker than their surroundings. They resolved themselves into buildings, all dark, with one exception. The warm light of oil lamps spilled from a single wide doorway at ground level.

Moving shadows showed that the chamber was already occupied. "Come," said the cowled one. "The Nine have gathered, and await you."

The Nine? TheGallicenae ? Pierrette did not know what to expect-the nine red-haired Gallic G.o.ddesses of legend, with the voices of sirens, who lured unwary sailors onto the reefs and shoals, or nine old, embittered priestesses of a dying or dead cult? She kept her eyes upon the illuminated doorway as she approached, so the light would not blind her when she stepped through it.

Back at the sh.o.r.e, the boat now lay fully on its keel and the turn of its bilge, its mast angled lamely. It had not been at all difficult for the donkey Gustave to chew through the leather lead that secured him in the bow. He had enjoyed the salty taste, much like sea purslane. He had not been fed since the previous morning and, as no one but Pierrette ever did so, he had no reason-if indeed donkeys had reason or reasons-to believe that would change. Only a little distance away were bushes and scrubby trees that would provide succulent browsing. Besides, there was an annoying itch between his shoulders, as if his pelt was crusted with mud or salty seaweed, and there was no room to roll about to rid himself of it.

Cautiously, he ascended the sloping planks, and stepped over the rail into the water. Just as his hind hooves were aswirl to the fetlocks, Lovi noticed him. "Hey! Where do you think you're going?" he cried.

He lunged for the trailing tether, but it was wet with saliva, and slid through his fingers.

He was about to vault over the rail after Gustave, but ibn Saul restrained him. "He'll follow Piers," the scholar said. "We've been bidden to remain aboard, and I don't wish to test the limited hospitality we've been offered. The cowled woman made no mention of donkeys, though."

"What's that on his back?" asked Gregorius.

"I don't see anything," Lovi replied. By then, Gustave was already ash.o.r.e, making for the shadows of the low trees.

The Nine stood in a half circle, all robed and cowled, and the light from the sconces along the walls did not-quite-illuminate their faces. "Welcome, daughter of our Mother," said one. Pierrette thought the voice came from the most central figure, but she could not be sure. Nonetheless, she addressed that one.

"Thank you . . . sister." What else call someone who had addressed her so? Someone who was not fooled by her boy's clothing.

"We have watched you for some time," said a voice-another one, somewhere to the left. "We have awaited you."

Watched her? Awaited her? "I don't understand. What am I to you? And how have you watched me?"

"You may be our last hope," said someone near the left, "though we do not know what you must do, because the Isles you seek are not open to our sight. Whether you obey the G.o.ddess, or your own heart . . ."

"How do you know about that? I haven't told anyone . . ." "We have seen you here and there-at Rhoda.n.u.s's mouth, as a child, and in Aquae s.e.xtiae Calvinorum, when it was only a Roman camp, and most recently, in the palace of Moridunnon."

"The Otherworld!"

"Of course. In the land-beyond, glimpsed in a crystal serpent's egg, in a bronze mirror, or the still waters of a pool . . . Twice now, you have saved us from the darkness that gathers, that would overwhelm us."

What did she mean? Pierrette did not have time to ask, when another spoke: "The black spirits gather together ash.o.r.e-water holds them back, but some have gotten here, once upon a floating log, another time hidden in a fisherman's craft. Each time, one of us died."

But Pierrette still counted nine: four to the right, four left, and the first one who had spoken, in the middle. One of the cowled figures must have noticed her eyes moving from one side to the other, counting. "Let's not toy with our guest, sisters," said the one on the far left. "She has not come all this way to see the show we put on for ordinary visitors." With that, she tossed back her cowl, and revealed . . . nothing. She had no face, no head, and no hair. "I was the first to die." The words came from the proper place, but Pierrette saw only a shapeless robe hanging as if upon something solid, but unseen.

"Then is this the Otherworld? I was not aware that I had pa.s.sed through to it."

"Who can tell?" said another, removing her cowl to reveal an ageless face, smooth, but not young, framed by pale hair neither gray nor blond. "Here we exist between the lands of man and the boundless sea, between the spirits of the air and the unfathomable deep. Here, the dead speak, and we the living, often as not, are silent."

Her bitter tone prompted Pierrette's next question: "It has not always been so, has it? Can you say what is behind the change?" The answer to that question had come to her even as she voiced it, but did these women, living or dead, know what it was?

They did not. The rightmost, who had red hair and an old woman's sharp bones, but the smooth, freckled skin of a girl, shook her head. "It came slowly, as mortals measure things. A generation, a single lifetime, no more. Though our ancient records hint that the changes began slowly, they have only now gathered enough momentum to be readily observed."

"What do you know of . . . of the Fortunate Isles?" That question might seem a non sequitur but, as Pierrette came only now to realize, it pointed toward an answer to another question, one so formidable she might not dare ask it.

"They are a myth," said red-hair. "There is no evidence for their existence."

"But didn't you-one of you-just say . . ."

"I said that they aren't open to our sight. I say now there is no evidence. I did not say, first, 'They exist,'

and then 'They don't.' My speaking is exact, but your hearing wants refining."

Pierrette might have chuckled, had the setting been less serious. Evidence. She sounded just like ibn Saul, or like Anselm, criticizing his pupil's methodology, urging always that she examine her a.s.sumptions, lest error creep in unannounced. "They are said to lie not far from here, behind a bank of fog," shepressed, "or just below the horizon. Surely you have had visitors-storm-driven or shipwrecked-who made claim to having set foot on them, or to have seen them from afar."

Another woman laughed sourly. "Many that have comehere believed they had arrivedthere ," she said, tossing back blond braids from a face far too severe for such a girlish coiffure. "We give them a day and a night in the Otherworld, and send them on thinking they've glimpsed their heart's desire, and found it wanting."

Pierrette thought of Moridunnon and his evanescent realm, and believed she understood: once having been deceived, and having seen as well the bleak reality, such men would depart with divided hearts, believing that the Fortunate Isles existed only within the spells of the druidesses, not in the harsh world of storm-driven ships with ice on the rigging and cold filth slopping back and forth below the decks.

She sighed. "I must return to my companions," she said. "Soon the tide will turn, and our boat will again be afloat."

"But no-stay. We have not yet shown you our realm. Who knows: when you are done with your seeking, when you become disillusioned with the world outside, you may wish to return here-once you see what we offer you."

"I've seen enough. Will you show me towering mountains on this flat island? I've seen your houses, where the ground floors are unoccupied because the storm waters wash over them. I've seen your salt-loving scrub forests. Will you show me tall maples and beeches, and springs gushing sweet water?"

She turned her back on the Nine.

But where the broad portal had been was now a wall of unbroken stone. Pierrette voiced a spell for the clearing of a deception, but the unwavering wall remained. She whirled around angrily. "Am I a prisoner?"

"You are a guest. Now come. The way in is not always the way out. Besides, we are not the only ones who live here, and many others clamor to meet you. You must speak with them, if only a few words on your way back to your boat." She gestured at a bronze-bound door that now stood open, where no door had been. It was a small, low doorway, but as Pierrette approached it, it seemed to expand, and by the time she pa.s.sed through into clear, cool moonlight, it was as grand as a city gate.

Moonlight shone on dew-polished cobbles, on fine bronze balconies and roofs of silver slate. Pears hung rich and ripe like golden teardrops from lush branches tied against polished marble walls.

The donkey Gustave had lost his mistress's trail at the doorway to the well-lit building, which stank of smoke, lamp oil, and people. A fringe of sweet, soft gra.s.s grew where street cobbles met walls, and he followed it around the building, nibbling as he went, occasionally reaching back over his shoulders to nip at the uncomfortable clinging sensation that still plagued him, which now seemed to be centered on the back of his neck, where he could not reach it.

Though it was night, there were people in the street-men in calf-length togas, women wearing blue skirts and crimson shawls. Gold glittered everywhere-the horned or flared torques around men's necks, the women's necklaces and armbands, and upon one man's head, great golden antlers that seemed to spring from his skull, for he wore no leather cap to support them. "Come," said her guide. "This way." The street opened on a broad market square, whose centerpiece was an artesian fountain, raised three steps above the cobbles, where a dozen men and women, perhaps a score, sat, stood, or squatted in animated discussion. As they approached, heads turned and conversations ceased, but not before Pierrette had heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of what they were saying.

"Your premise is flawed, Cadmos," a scholarly elder said, shaking his head. "You a.s.sume the synchronicity of the Great Year with Lugh's waxing and waning, when in fact the shadows on his face appear every eleven years, not nineteen." Pierrette wanted to push into the discussion, to interject that the Minoans had claimed the sun was a sphere, and sunspots appeared at regular times in its eleven-year rotation.

Nearby, two women sat face-to-face, and Pierrette overheard one say, "The elements are indeed four, but fire is only a shadow of true light. Combustion requires matter to burn, while the sun does not, so . . ."

Pierrette wanted to add that combustion also required air, and thus that fire could not really be considered elemental at all.

And from the fountain's lip, where a man dangled long, ringed fingers in the moon-silvered water: "Attribute the theorem not to the Greek Pythagoras, but to Diviacos, who was his teacher, and to the generations of mages who laid out the great stone circles. What the Greeks learned of philosophy and numbers, they learned from us Gauls."

Pierrette's head spun. All around the fountain, people were discussing not gossip and scandal, as might the people of Citharista or Ma.s.salia, but deep concepts of natural science, of philosophy, of cosmology and history . . .

She yearned to say to young Cadmos's tutor that he must not forget that the cycle of sunspots also ruled the patterns of storms, and painted those great curtains of colored lights that explorers ever since Pytheas had seen above the northernmost seas. She wanted to mention to the man with his hand in the water that the concept of transmigration of souls, that the Pythagoreans had adopted, also sprang from druidic thought, and reached its culmination in the far East, where Brahmin scholars sat in similar converse, themselves descendants of the earliest druids before the great migrations of all those who spoke Aryan tongues. She wanted to discuss the four elements with the seated women, and to add her own observation that they distinguished themselves also as fluid and not-fluid, and that only earth was inherently stable, and . . .

"Who are these people?" she whispered. Not since the time of Socrates had such colloquia, such gatherings of obviously brilliant minds, occurred in one place.

"They are refugees from the turmoil of the world beyond, where the ignorant and superst.i.tious would scorn and persecute them for seeking to understand the universe and everything in it. Here, among them, you may find the answers you seek."

Pierrette almost trembled like a high-strung horse in the starting lineup of a race. Someone on her left was holding forth on the geography of the land beyond the Indus. She wanted to nose in on that conversation, to compare what he was saying with her memories of Anselm's ancient maps and travelogues.

Most of her life had been spent within the loneliness of her own head. Conversations and lessons with Anselm, though they expanded her intellectual horizons, were only brief excursions outside that confinement. With her father Gilles, she discussed fishing or olive groves, subjects he knew well. With Claudia the baker she might speak of yeasts and flours, with Father Otho of the scriptures. With ibn Saulshe might study the geographies of far places, and the customs of the savage Wends. But put all of them in one room, and they could speak together only of commonplace things.

Her own interests spanned the breadth of what could be learned, theirs only what they already knew, and she herself was the only element they had in common. But this: " . . . the Isles of the Blessed are no mere rumor," said a burly man wearing the course plaids of the far islands beyond Britannia. "There are monks who inhabit an island far to the west of my own, who traffic regularly with them, and Nors.e.m.e.n gather black grapes there, and dry them for trade with the fur hunters of the sunless north."

"The Blessed Isles?" interjected Pierrette, pushing forward into the small group gathered around the islander. "If those monks traffic regularly with them, they must be able to find them consistently, and not get lost in the trackless sea."

"Ah! The newcomer. We heard murmurings of your arrival. But you are so young! That seems unfair. So handsome a youth, so pretty a girl-you are a girl, aren't you, despite your baggy pantaloons?"

What was unfair about it? "I am. But please continue-you were speaking of . . ."

"Ah, yes, that mysterious, elusive land. It is said the Nors.e.m.e.n have a magical stone that always points to it. They have only to sail according to the stone . . ."

"A lodestone. I know of such things. But they point only approximately north, and a captain must judge the degree of deflection his course must take, to bring him to a particular destination."

"Is that so?" He turned to the others. "You see? It is possible to learn something new. I told you so."

Pierrette thought that statement a truism, but several others nodded, grudgingly, as if they had hitherto truly disputed it. But why? Unless everything was already known-and even among such a gathering of knowledgeable heads as this, that could not be so. There were always new experiences, fresh experiments, and unseen horizons-weren't there?

"The Blessed Isles," she prompted.

"Some equate them with Ultima Thule," reflected a bearded fellow dressed as a Greek, in a short kilt like those Pierrette had seen on the vermilion-and-black vases that adorned Anselm's sitting rooms. "There is no other explanation for what Pytheas describes . . ."

Pierrette listened, and when she could, attempted to steer the rambling discussion back to the specific location of the Blessed Isles, which had to be the very place she sought. She glanced frequently up at the moon, concerned that she might linger too long, that the boat with her companions aboard would float free and she would be stuck here, but the moon had hardly moved from high overhead. There was still time.

But though the islander was right (it was of course possible to learn new things) the course of such learning was often tedious, and never more so than now, when Pierrette wanted not only to find out how to locate Minho's Isles, but how she was going to get back to the boat as well.

Despite her efforts to guide the speakers in fruitful directions, each one went off on tangents of his own.

It was really little different than listening to her father and his friends in the wine shop. Glancing around herself surrept.i.tiously, she decided that this town was of no great extent, without walls or gates at the ends of the four streets that converged on the fountain. When it was time to go, she would have only to sidle away from this gathering and make her way along the southerly avenue, and she should emergewithin sight of the sea and the stranded boat. There was no sign of the woman who had led her here.

Getting away should pose no problem, so . . .

Gustave had picked up his mistress's scent at the rear of the building, having nibbled his way around it.

He set off at a walk, his nose low to the cobbles. There were few scents to distract him-the aroma of storm-washed salt and a faint reek of carrion, not strong enough to make him uneasy. As far as his nose was concerned, this city was entirely unoccupied, though his eyes reported the presence of numerous people conversing on street corners and in the moonlight. They were not entirely real, as far as he was concerned.

Being a donkey, having experienced all the vicissitudes that might plague a lowly beast of burden, Gustave had a low opinion of people in general, who seldom carried bowls of tasty oats with them, but often bore sharp sticks and resented his innocent nibbling in their dooryard herb patches or upon the espaliered pear trees against their garden walls. Thus he kept to the shadows, even though he was not convinced that the people he avoided were really there. For a person, perhaps, seeing was believing, but for him, smelling came closer to the truth.

The topic had shifted while Pierrette was considering other things. "There have been many such cataclysms," said a tall woman whose pleated cotton gown and smooth, dark hair reminded Pierrette of the Egyptian paintings on the inner walls of ibn Saul's house in Ma.s.salia. "Several Roman towns were destroyed when Vesuvius became angry, and the great mountain of Sicilia is never entirely quiet. Such things are surely entirely natural phenomena."

"The Fortunate Isles are said to have been born in such an eruption," Pierrette interjected.

The sleek woman seemed annoyed at her interruption. "Nothing but a Phoenix could survive such burning heat," she said flatly.

"Ah, yes-the Phoenix," said a man dressed entirely in a patchwork of furs, with a necklace of huge teeth around his neck. "Did you know that not only the Phoenix, but 'Centaurs' as well, all originated among my own Scythian people?"

"Again, I say, those are mythical things, not seen in nature," the Egyptian snapped.

"Not so, not so," said the furry one. "The myths arose to explain the actuality. The centaurs were really hors.e.m.e.n, observed and described by peoples who had never seen men astride animals. The Phoenix was the 'magic' of flint and steel, observed by ignorant folk who could not make fire, but had to keep it always burning, or lose it."

"Bah! We are not discussing how nature's clarity becomes twisted by ignorance. Tell that to the druid Boromanos over there. He and his friends are interested in that kind of nonsense."

Pierrette, who was very interested in the evolution of myths, and the changing realities they seemed to represent, wanted to draw the man Boromanos aside, but she got no chance. A bra.s.s bell was ringing somewhere down the street. "Dawn comes!" someone cried mournfully. "Dawn, and the hours pa.s.s. It is time. It is time."

Everywhere the babble of animated voices that had been a constant underlying music, like the rushing of a nearby brook, ceased abruptly. "What's going on?" Pierrette asked the Egyptian woman. "Dawn comes," she said, as if that were explanation enough. She walked away. Everywhere, others were doing likewise. The fountain square emptied rapidly as people strode briskly down the streets and into the close-packed buildings. Pierrette looked this way and that. She was alone in the plaza.

Dawn? But because the moon was almost full, and was still high overhead, morning must be hours away.

Or was it? She glanced upward, but now clouds scudded overhead in the darkness, and she saw no moon or stars at all. She felt a hand on her arm. "Come," said her red-haired hostess. "It is time for rest."

"Rest? If it is almost dawn, then I must go. The tide is turning. I am not going to sleep all day and get left behind!"

"Come. You must. At nightfall, everyone will be back, and you will find the answers to all your questions." She intensified the pressure of her grip on Pierrette's arm. Pierrette tried to pull away-but could not.

"Let me go!"

"Come."

"No!" Pierrette writhed and twisted, but could not break that grip. She felt herself being pulled along the cobbled pavement, back the way she had come-eastward, where the silhouettes of roofs were dark against the sky's dim, gray light. There was enough light, already, for her to see her shadow.

Somewhere, not far off, she heard a donkey's braying, a strange, foreign sound here, where-she suddenly realized-there had been no sounds at all but human ones. A donkey-and it was not just any donkey-it was Gustave. Her donkey. He almost never bellowed like that unless he was angry or afraid.

"Come! Hurry!" her captor urged.

"Gustave! Gustave! Come here!" Pierrette saw him emerge in the square. He shook himself as if he were wet. "Here!" she yelled-just before a hand clamped itself over her mouth. But theGallicena was too late. Hooves clattered on cobbles. Gustave galloped toward her. Even as she struggled to break free, her mind raced. She had seen something, when Gustave had shaken himself-something dark and formless that the beast had flung aside.

Gustave scented his mistress's distress, which had greater impact upon him than merely seeing her struggling with the dark, scentless non-person. Donkeys were not noted for loyalty or n.o.ble behavior but, more often than not, when Pierrette called him to her, she rewarded him with some tidbit or another. He gave one good shake that at last dislodged the annoyance between his shoulder blades, that p.r.i.c.kled like a burr in his pelt against his tender skin. For the first time, he saw what it was, as it humped and slid over the cobbles toward Pierrette: one of those tasteless, scentless creatures that had startled him a few times, until he learned to ignore their constant, slithering pa.s.sage. Then, as now, they were irrelevant-to a donkey.