The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 12

Pierrette also saw it. This time, the shadowy apparition was not moving westward, unless her sense of direction was entirely awry, but directly toward her. She threw her head from side to side to dislodge the hand over her mouth and, abruptly, she was free. "No! Get away!" screamed red-hair. Her erstwhile captor was backing down the narrow street, her features contorted with horror and revulsion. Several heartbeats elapsed, between Pierrette's realization that she was no longer captive and her understanding that it was not she herself but the shadow-thing that the redheaded one feared.

TheGallicena 's fear undid her-backing away, her heel caught on an overlarge cobble. She fell-and the shadow scrambled over her. She screamed, and her desperate fingers attempted to push it away, but shadows have no substance, and it slipped past, and momentarily it covered her face.

Had she not screamed, then, would it have pushed past her closed lips? Un.o.bstructed, the formless darkness entered her open mouth, and . . . and was gone.

The woman now struggled silently, her red hair flaming in the gray light of impending sunrise. She clawed at her face. Then her long fingers-fingers as strong as a man's-clutched at her own neck, as if she were strangling herself. But no-she was engaged in one last desperate attempt to stop the invasion of her innermost being by closing off the shadow's route of entry. She failed. She convulsed, silently, then lay still, her garments collapsing like an empty sack that held nothing but . . . bones.

A few wisps of flame-red hair lay in contrast to the dark material of her garment, but the face that now glared up at Pierrette had no eyes, only shadowed, empty sockets. Teeth gleamed without lips to cover them. Then those last stray tresses grayed, crumbled, and were gone.

Gustave, who expected neither threat nor reward from dry old bones, now placidly tugged at a stubby thistle, his lips pulled back from his teeth to avoid its barbs, teeth larger and yellower than those in the bare skull that grinned up at Pierrette.

Somewhere nearby, several voices raised a high, keening wail. They knew, didn't they? The next night, at moonrise, would there be one more cowled and faceless figure within the lamplit room?

Pierrette shuddered. She grasped Gustave's trailing tether, and made her way down the empty street, past one doorway after another, set in walls that seemed to shrink as she progressed southward, until the last ones she pa.s.sed were hardly more than chest high, their dew-spangled tile roofs low enough for her to trail her fingers along the eaves, coming away wet as tears, but not at all salty.

Chapter 20 - The.

Storm-wracked Sea Reluctantly, Pierrette gave her companions an account of what had transpired ash.o.r.e. Gregorius seemed to believe her implicitly. Ibn Saul, true to his nature, was able to explain everything. "They drugged you,"

he decided. "Perhaps it was an herb in the lamp oil, whose fumes rendered you credulous. And the 'invisible woman' is an old charlatan's trick-had you been in the right state of mind, you might have seen the eyes of a much shorter person peering out from the 'empty' robe whose cowl was held up with smoked wicker." Pierrette was glad the scholar was only speculating. Had he been there himself, he would surely have seen just such peering eyes, and events would have taken a decidedly different course. "The 'city' whose streets you walked was indeed a place of the dead," ibn Saul continued, "a necropolis whose burial chambers are elevated above the winter storm tides that sweep this low island. You yourself said they were only chest high, when you left there, with the potion's effect wearing off."

"What of the wise scholars?" asked Pierrette. "What explains such a gathering of profound thinkers, on that barren, unlikely island?"

Ibn Saul laughed indulgently. "When I sit down with Anselm, Father Otho, and your father Gilles in Citharista's tavern, a few gla.s.ses of wine render even Gilles's talk of fish and olives profound. I find myself reflecting upon his wisdom, and comparing it to Hesiod-earthy, pithy stuff, but quite wise, for all that."

Was it possible? Could she have been deceived so completely? She felt as though she teetered on a precipice, like the narrow ridge-top trail that led to Anselm's keep, where a misstep to either side would plunge her hundreds of feet onto the wave-washed rocks below. If theGallicenae and the dead scholars were illusion, then what was everything else? When she met with the G.o.ddessMa at the pool, she always ate one of the tiny red-and-white mushrooms first. When she flew on a magpie's wings her hands and feet were numb from the effect of the blue-and-yellow flowers she had ingested. Were such visits, such flights, no more than drug-induced hallucinations? Was the G.o.ddess herself a delusion?

She tried to think of a single instance where she had done something in the Otherworld that had incontrovertibly affected the "real" world that she shared with other people. She examined every instance for a single proof, a solid example-and she found not one.

The sun had come up by the time she reached the boat, and the keel was already free of the strand. Soon they were miles away from the island. Stretched flat and sheeted close against the rail, the sail drummed on the mast. Pierrette glanced toward the sun, then toward the low, gray land astern, puzzled. The boatman gripped the tiller with a tenacity that would surely exhaust him in short order. Of course, no sailing vessel ever went directly from its starting point to its destination. More often than not, the shortest course was a long series of zigzags, first on one tack, then another, using not only wind but also current and tide, or fighting against them.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. "Shouldn't you slack the sail?"

He gestured westward with a toss of his head, and with his eyes. "See those clouds? If we're not clear of the island when they reach us, we'll be driven ash.o.r.e-on the rocks, not on a nice beach."

"Why not sail down the wind-northeasterly-into the Bay of Sins?"

"The bones of a thousand ships lie on the bottom there-and the bones of the captains who tried to do that. It's the tides." The tides. The treacherous tidal race had reversed its direction, or would shortly do so. "If we missed the rocks and shoals, we'd end up . . . who knows where? We have to be well south of the point, for the tide to carry us northward into shelter."

"Will we make it?"

"I don't think so." Just then, the wind shifted ever so slightly-or the tidal current, pushing against the keel, moved the boat-and the sail was taken aback with a resounding thump. The vessel heeled suddenly, precariously, to the other side. Cold salt water poured over the rail. The boatman saved them by letting the tiller have its way, so they fell off the wind. Ibn Saul, no stranger to boats, tossed the wooden slop-bucket to Lovi. "Bail!" he shouted.

Pierrette eyed the boatman, who shook his head and released the sheet. "Haul the sail down," he said.

"We'll be better off using it as a tarpaulin." Pierrette, who alone of the pa.s.sengers knew which ropes to release, and in which order, dropped the sail, and began unthreading it from the sprit without being told.

Gregorius and ibn Saul, at her direction, spread the ungainly sail from the bow aft, covering three-quarters of the open boat. The donkey Gustave viewed the cloth roof, now draped overhead, with his usual skeptical roll of the eyes, but to Pierrette's relief he did not protest or panic. Perhaps (such being the depth of his cynical nature, as she imagined it), he considered himself doomed already, and was resigned to it. She showed the others how to tie the sail down at the rail by bunching the material over a knotted cord and tying it there with strips torn from their clothing, then securing it to the boat with a loop between rib and rail.

The boatman, ignoring the useless tiller, held their empty water keg in the bilge until it was half full, pushed the end of the sheet rope into the bunghole, then drove the plug in tightly. He then scrambled forward over the spread sail and tossed the barrel overboard at the bow, securing the loose end of the rope.

"What did he do that for?" asked Lovi.

"It's a sea anchor. With luck, it will keep our bow into the wind when the squall hits. With a bit more luck, if the tide carries us northward faster than the wind blows us east, we'll clear the point. With a bit more luck . . ."

"Enough!" snapped ibn Saul. "What must we do now?"

The boatman pointed forward at the darkness under the makeshift tarpaulin. "Take the bucket with you, and try not to knock it over when you have filled it with your last several meals."

He then turned to Pierrette. "You too."

She shook her head, and pointedly looped a bight of a mooring line through the braided sash that held up her trousers, and secured it beneath a limber, a notch in one of the boat's ribs that allowed water in the bilge to flow freely back and forth. The boatman nodded, and then did the same for himself. They might drown, but they would do so with the boat, not washed overboard to die alone in the storm-tossed sea.

The wall of black clouds, reaching from the crests of the waves halfway up the sky, was almost upon them. The Isle of the Dead was somewhere within them, already lashed by the rain and waves the wind drove across that low land. As the first gusts struck the boat, it turned obediently into them, pivoting on the cord attached to the half-sunken keg.

Pierrette's glances darted between the cloud-wall and the sh.o.r.e astern: their lives depended now on the relative forces that commanded their frail nutsh.e.l.l of a boat. Try as she might, she could not discern their motion relative to the mainland sh.o.r.e, to the deadly rocks of Raz Point. Though the boat pointed west, the tidal race was driving them north, the wind pushing them east. If the wind were the stronger, they would be pounded and shattered on the rocks. If the tide prevailed, there was a chance they would get past them-if, of course, they were not driven broadside against one of the hundreds of jagged black crags that jutted from the water, the spine of the dragon she had seen from the headland so long ago that.i.t seemed like another life entirely.

The wind and rain struck them like a volley of rocks from the slings of an army, and Pierrette could see nothing, could hardly keep her eyes open enough to squint. She might as well have gone below with the others, for all the benefit her vantage gave her now, but being under cover in a small boat in a heavy sea was enough to make even the most seasoned sailor terribly ill, so she squinted and shivered, but did not have to add vomiting to her discomfort.

She had no sense of direction, except that she believed the wind was still coming out of the west. The horizon was no farther away than the crest of each approaching wave. Those crests were higher than any but the worst storm-driven billows of the Mediterranean, because this ocean was no bowl surrounded by land, and the storms that marched across it had an endless expanse in which to build up strength, to pile wave atop wave until . . .

How far did the ocean extend? Did it stretch all the way around the world until it reached some sh.o.r.e on the far side of India, where even Alexander had never gone? Despite her misery and the peril of rocks she would never see before they smashed the boat and killed her, she could not stop wondering. Were there many islands in that great sea, far beyond Minho's elusive land? Were they so isolated, so foreign, that even their magics would be incomprehensible to her? If so, were they immune to the malaise of the Black Time that would someday extinguish the last vestiges of magic from her own world?

Conversation was impossible while the storm beat about her, lashing her face with wind-flung spray, but thinking was still possible, and Pierrette had much to think about. Had the nineGallicenae and all the people she had spoken with been an illusion? She now accepted that ibn Saul had been at least partly right-the town had been a necropolis, indeed, and its inhabitants dead. That was what the one man had meant, that it was unfair she was pretty-he had considered it unfair that someone so pretty was also dead. She was not, of course, but he was, he and the rest of them, and he had a.s.sumed that she was like them.

That they were dead also explained the debate about the impossibility of learning anything new-not that everything in the world had been learned, but that only the livingcould learn. The dead, of course, were . . . dead.

Then, there was the Scythian. Scythians, as a people, had been gone for centuries. He must have died a long time ago. She wondered how he had gotten so far from his homeland by the Euxine Sea.

But theGallicenae remained unexplained. Were they all dead? Then how could they "die?" Was it possible to be deader than other dead? Of course bodies died, but did souls? Was that what had happened to the two-now three-who had encountered the slinking shadows? Pierrette was reminded of the Gallic belief in the triune nature of man-body, soul, andfantome, or ghost, all united only in the living. Was the "death" she had witnessed the destruction of afantome , or of a soul? That question was unanswerable and she dismissed it.

But the final question, the one whose answer she feared, still loomed in her thoughts. If what she suspected was true, then neither the G.o.ddessMa , Minho, nor the Eater of G.o.ds, really understood what was happening, or why.

Somehow she slept, or perhaps merely sank into unconsciousness because of the cold, the hammering wind. She awoke to a terrible stink and to the sound of someone cursing: it was Lovi, who had emergedwith the bucket.

"Not there, you fool!" growled the boatman. "Throw it over the lee side! And don't lose the bucket.

That's it. Now rinse it. As soon as we get the sail rigged again, you can use it to bail."

The sail? Through salt-encrusted eyes, Pierrette saw that the boat rocked on a short, choppy sea. The sun was cloud-free, only a hand's breath above the horizon, in what must be the west. The rope leading out to the bobbing water keg was slack. Wisps of fog floated just over the water.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"I can only say where we are not," replied the boatman. "We are not on the rocks. Neither are we ash.o.r.e. There is no land in sight, and unless the wind shifted and combined with the current to drive us far to the north and west, there should be."

"There must be land over there," Pierrette reflected, indicating a flight of distant seabirds.

"I think so too. That's where we'll head, when we get under way."

With Pierrette's help, he got the sail up in short order, and they were soon about on a broad reach that would get them to where the seabirds wheeled overhead, without changing tacks. "It's a skerry," the boatman granted when the wave-washed rocks came in view. "It's no proper island at all, but we'll find nothing better now, because the fog is thickening. At least we can moor there. It's better than drifting onto other rocks we won't be able to see.

Pierrette was the first one ash.o.r.e. "The storm must have swept right over this place," she said.

Everything was wet, and tasted salty. She had hoped for a puddle of rainwater, or even raindrops on leaves that she could lick, but her thirst went unsatisfied. There was no fresh water. Even Gustave, expert forager that he was, found nothing he would deign to consume. Pierrette sat on a rounded boulder, sucking on a bit of gravel to allay her craving for something to drink. Was this where it would end, here on this scattering of rocks between high tide and low, between empty sky and fog-wrapped sea?

Chapter 21 - An Improbable.

Encounter A shout echoed off the rocks. Ibn Saul had climbed the tallest one he could find, and had set up his instruments, hoping to gain some clue as to their whereabouts. Now he was jumping up and down, and pointing. "A ship! People!"

Pierrette and Lovi scrambled up beside him. When Gregorius joined them, he put an instant damper on their elation. "That," he said, "is a Viking vessel."

"But there's no dragon-head at the prow," Lovi protested. And the boat was not long and skinny, likethe ones they had seen drawn up on the Liger's banks.

"That's because it is aknorr , a workaday vessel, not adrakkar , which is a warship. But a Norseman is a Norseman, whatever deck he treads."

"But who are those men wearing brown robes?" asked Lovi. "Isn't that a cross hanging from the tall one's neck? They must be Christians, but they are far too well dressed to be slaves."

"Those are Thuleans," said the boatman, just joining them on the high rock. "They are Christian Nors.e.m.e.n from a remote island, who trade widely. They are only distantly related to the Danes, Jutes, and Frisians who raid and pillage."

"Christians? Traders? Then surely we can get some water from them," said Lovi.

"And what would you trade for it?" said an unfamiliar voice behind them and below. They spun around as one, almost knocking each other off the rock. The brown-robed man, they realized by the contents of his basket, had been collecting mussels. Hearing ibn Saul's shouts, he had come to investigate.

"I have never heard of Christian Vikings," said Gregorius. "You don't look like a Viking at all, with your dark hair. You look more like a Hibernian."

The fellow laughed. "Theyare Christian Vikings," he said, "and yes, I am Hibernian. I am a priest, and they are my flock-just as I a.s.sume these people are yours." Gregorius had long since abandoned his priestly garments, but he still maintained his tonsure-the Roman cut, which was only a bald patch at the crown of his head. The brown-robed one affected the "Celtic" tonsure, his head entirely shaved forward of a line from one ear over the top of his head to the other ear. It was, Pierrette reflected, actually a druidic tonsure, out of favor in all but the most remote Christian lands. The transition from pagan druid (or Pythagorean philosopher) in the Celtic lands had been almost seamless, as had that of Brigantia to Saint Brigid, and Madron, the G.o.ddess, to Mary, Mother of Jesus.

"Perhaps I am mistaken," the Irish priest said, taking Gregorius's silence for negation. "Still, come down to our camp and be welcome. You look like people who have a tale to tell-a fair trade for ale and steamed mussels-or water, if you really prefer it."

The "Thuleans" had made the most of their makeshift camp amid the rocks, stacking many small stones between the larger ones as a windbreak, over which they had spread a large square sail. A cheery fire blazed in front of the shelter. Its fuel was great chunks of hewn wood-the ribs and planks of a wrecked vessel half-buried beneath washed-up seaweed and gravel.

Some of the Nors.e.m.e.n spoke rough Latin, some only their own guttural language, so everything that was said, when the newcomers were settled by their fire, had to be translated either by the priest or by Gregorius. Ibn Saul was first to begin the evening's entertainment, detailing their journey from the warm Mediterranean sh.o.r.e. That took quite a while, and when he finished, a big Nors.e.m.e.n stood up. "The Fortunate Isles? My Uncle Snorri was there once. They lie a long way south and west of here. Their ruler lives at the top of a man-made mountain, in a red, yellow, and black house from which he surveys his domain. One of their G.o.ds lives in a very deep well, and four times a year the king puts on a robe of songbirds' feathers, and delivers a virgin bride to him. And the gold! Even the meanest peasant has a gold ring for his nose! Snorri came home with enough to outfit six ships for a voyage back there again."

"Where is he now? I must speak with him," said ibn Saul. The Nors.e.m.e.n laughed. "If you can find him, tell him to come home sometime. He left again when I was just a sprat. He'll be an old man now, cosseted by a dozen young wives down south . . . unless there's a tunny nuzzling his bare bones, somewhere on the bottom of the sea."

Ibn Saul sank into apathetic silence, now believing that his goal was immeasurably far away, and that even if he knew the way, as had Snorri, he would have a hard time getting there, and a harder time still returning home alive. But Pierrette was not so sure. A black, red, and yellow house? Minho's palace had black-and-vermilion columns, and she supposed the limestone of its walls might seem yellow, but nothing else sounded like the Fortunate Isles she knew-or thought she did.

Gold? Of course. Minho was rich. But sacrificial virgins? Not unless the story about Theseus was literally true and the Athenian youths sent to the Minoan capital had been sacrifices, not hostages. No, the Norseman's Fortunate Isles were not hers, but let ibn Saul go on thinking so. When it was time for her to go her own way, that might make things easier. One of the brown-robed men-there were three of them, and only one ordained priest-rose. "Friend Egil's uncle may have found the Fortunate Isles," he said, "but there may be more than one such place. My ancestor Brendanos visited a place called Hy Brasil, west and south. It bore little resemblance to what Snorri found, but that was a long time ago-over three hundred years-and things change, so it may be the same place.

"At any rate, schooled in the druidic arts and Christian scholarship, knowledgeable, as all Hibernians are, in the ways of the sea and the guidance of the stars, Brendanos and fourteen other monks set out to find a place called 'The Isle of the Saints.' The first island they found, after long weeks at sea, had nothing but goats and sheep, but they were able to reprovision their boat and fill their water skins. At Easter time they discovered another island, little more than a smooth rock, which sank beneath them as soon as they lit a fire for a cooked meal. Ha! It was no rock, but a whale-a very annoyed whale indeed. They survived their immersion, and regained their boat without further mishap, and soon found a third island, where dwelt a solitary monk who had gone mad, and who claimed he was Judas Iscariot, exiled for his great sin. Eventually Brendanos became the first man to discover our own home island, which he called Thule, after a legendary kingdom in the far north.

"That voyage took seven years. Returning home to Hibernia, Brendanos lingered for many years, before setting out to sea again, though some of the others took their families to Thule. But at last Brendanos, having become rich, outfitted a fine oak ship with trade goods and a crew of sixty men. After visiting his people on Thule, he sailed west, and during the fourth moon after Christmas, encountered an island entirely of ice, in the shape of an arched doorway. It must have been a wandering island, because no one ever saw it again.

"The first land southwest of the ice island was home to great beasts with cat's heads and tusks bigger than an old boar's. The crew killed some, because they had eaten their last pigs, then prevailed on Brendanos to sail more southerly, in hopes of finding warmer seas and more hospitable lands. Indeed, in the weeks that followed, the sea became warm enough to swim in, and the air itself smelled of spices and honey. On one small island, seeing smoke, they found an elderly monk, a hermit, exiled from a colony of Hibernians to the west. He gave them directions, and that is how Brendanos found the Fortunate Isles."

The tale-teller paused, grinned, and held out his horn cup for more ale. Several Viking sailors hooted and urged him on, but he waited until his cup had been filled, then downed it in two great quaffs. "The land next encountered, eight days to the west, was ripe with fruits and flowers, and when they found the monks' colony, they were feted like returning sons, and their ship was restocked with everything the land could offer. The monks told of a lovely city inland from their colony, whose king lived on top of a mountain, though they said nothing of G.o.ds living in wells, or of feathered cloaks. If the people of that city were rich in gold, no one ever said so-nor would they, if they were smart, and wanted to get as much ofthat as they could, for themselves.

"Brendanos and his men sat out afoot, for there were no horses in that land, and they hiked northward.

They searched for forty days, and though they found villages aplenty, there was no city, and when they encountered a river too wide and deep to cross, they turned back.

"Brendanos returned home by sailing directly east, on strong winds that bore him almost to his own doorstep, and his next voyage was in a different direction-to Rome, with a letter from Festinus, bishop of the Fortunate Isles, and from there he went to the Holy Land . . ."

The tale continued, but Pierrette lost interest. She pondered everything she had heard. The two accounts, different as they were, did not discourage her. Neither place was her destination, but both mysterious lands contributed to the legend, and thus served what she believed was the G.o.ddess's end.

Not only that, the stories implied that should the earth prove as vast as Eratosthenes of Cyrene had calculated, the unexplored portion was not all just trackless ocean, but included islands, perhaps whole continents, untouched by the malaise that threatened the known land-the Black Time.

How that could be was not clear. Had such undiscovered lands always existed, or did they somehow-spontaneously-appear, just over the horizon, off the bows of the first ship to sail toward them, or just over the next hill but one from the intrepid explorer by land?

So lost was she in thought that when the tale-telling was over and the gathering divided itself into multiple centers of conversation, she alone remained uninvolved, until the big Nors.e.m.e.n-Egil-sat next to her and proffered a wooden tankard slopping with fresh-drawn ale. "Are you morose?" he asked. "Ale is the cure for horizon-struck eyes." One of the two untonsured Irishmen also sat. Close up, Pierrette saw that he was still a boy, no older than she purported to be.

"You speak Gaulish?"

"It's near enough to the Hibernians' tongue," Egil replied, "and my family has long traded in Brittany."

Brittany? Oh, yes-that was what immigrants from old Britannia called Armorica, "Little Britain."

"Traded? Not raided?"

"Is every Roman an emperor? Is every Hibernian a priest? It only seems so."

"Tell me about your island-Thule? I had not heard of that, except in the most ancient accounts of Pytheas's explorations, over a thousand years ago."

"I doubt it is the same place. My island was only discovered a lifetime ago, by Hibernian monks fleeing the fleshpots of their own green land. For want of a congregation to listen to their preaching, they induced my father and others of like mind to settle there. Until then, there was nothing but smoking mountains and thornbushes-and the ice bed that covers all the central lands."

"It sounds like a formidable place."

"Formidable indeed, but kind as well. In winter we bathe in hot water that springs from the rocks, and in the long days of summer, the sun hardly sets before it rises again, and crops grow so fast we harvest the near end of a field before we've planted the far." Pierrette recognized hyperbole when she heard it. She laughed. "Are you recruiting settlers to farm your ice fields? How many such crops can they take in a year?"

"Well-that is a difficulty. The summer days are long, but the summer itself . . . three months from snow to snow." He grinned. "But think of this-all winter we need do nothing but lie around our houses and drink ale."