The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 17

Minho's palace-black, white, vermilion, and scarlet, gleaming with highlights of polished bronze and gold-was the sole monument, the unique glory, the crowning beauty of this kingdom. Of course there were no temples to a dozen or a hundred G.o.ds, no monumental tombs of generations of emperors. There were no hippodromes, amphitheaters, or arenas where men and animals provided mincing dramas, deadly races, or blood sport. This was not Roma in its latter days, or even Ma.s.salia in the present. This was Minho's perfect kingdom, and all such imitations and imperfections had been banished from it long ago, when even Roma was an undreamed millennium in the future.

"Is there a more lovely prospect, anywhere?" Minho had arrived unnoticed. Now he stood beside her at the bal.u.s.trade, his gaze sweeping the intricate vista of islands, channels, roads, and bridges.

"I've seen nothing to equal it," Pierrette replied. "The panegyrists of Greece and Rome did not describe anything as lovely." She turned. "I'm glad you're here. I have so many things I must ask you . . ."

"Is that all?" He mimicked disappointment with a stylized moue. "I am, you know, more than just a walking library."

"Of course you are. You are the greatest sorcerer of all time, and you have dust on your kilt." She brushed a cobweb away. Light and linty, it floated over the bal.u.s.trade, was caught by an updraft, and drifted fitfully out of sight into the sun's eye.

"Dust!" He laughed as if in self-deprecation. "Of all the evils I banished when I wrested this land from fiery death, the one I forgot was . . . dust."

"Evil? I wouldn't consider so small a flaw evil. It is an annoyance at worst, when I'm in the aftermost cart of a dozen on the road, or when I lift a long-undisturbed volume from a shelf, and I sneeze." She felt an undefined tension. Evil? She imagined a film of dust on a polished table, and from it arising a darker shadow, that slipped over the edge and crept away-westward, or a bit north or south of that, depending on just what city she imagined the table to exist in.

"What of dung?" she essayed. "When a donkey defiles your cobblestones, what do you do?" She felt apang of guilt. What of Gustave, left alone? But he was resourceful. He wouldn't starve on this island rich with greenery.

"Again you're baiting me! Would you believe that I don't know? Perhaps it dries and blows away, or people collect it and spread it on their fields."

"When you cast your great spell, didn't you have to consider such details, at least once?"

"You call it a great spell. That hardly means it must be complex or c.u.mbersome. It was an elegant spell, only a few simple words, and everything you see before you proceeded from that. Such a spell needs no detail, because it is art, not mechanics. One does not build a spell like an edifice, laying one lump atop another. One creates it, a child of mind and spirit." Pierrette was inwardly dismayed, but did not let it show. Minho's high-flown words were like the air atop a mountain, offering little sustenance. Spells were not inspiration and spirit. Every last aspect of a spell was inherent in its premise, and followed logically from it.

Pierrette's heart sank in her chest. She felt no closer to the answers she had sought since first she realized as a child new to Anselm's tutelage that all magic proceeded from sets of initial postulates, and were thenceforth as subject to logic as were theorems of geometry.

In fact, her introduction to geometric theorems had provided the initial insight into the dilemma that had, by many circuitous byways, led her to this moment and this place: when people's beliefs changed, ancient postulates shifted their meanings, and a spell that had once given warm fire resulted instead in a cool, brilliant Christian light-or a sullen crimson glow with the stench of oily death. "I am fire," said an ancient G.o.d. "I give warmth and light, yet I sometimes rage unchained and destroy everything I touch." A later G.o.d, in earthly manifestation, said, "I am the Light and the Life . . ." and a postulate, a single line at the beginning of Pierrette's fire-making spell, was changed.

Minho's mellow voice recalled her from her racing thoughts. "Where did you go? I felt you depart."

"I'm sorry. Your words transported me. Show me your great spell. Let me study it and understand what makes great-and elegant-magic."

Once again he laughed indulgently. Again Pierrette reflected how different this experience was, in the flesh, from her visions. Once Minho's indulgent tone had seemed affectionate, doting. Here and now, Pierrette resented it, because it was condescending. "Dare I write it down, for you to peruse at your leisure? It exists here alone." He touched his forehead. "Every day, I must revise it in subtle ways, as I have done since your Christianity arose, and the old G.o.ds began to die." His mercurial face became charged with anger and frustration. "I have become a tinkerer, a musician ever tuning his lyre and never playing it! If only Anselm had been up to his task, and had quenched that religion's first spark!"

"It wasn't his fault," Pierrette objected, ever loyal to her mentor. "He brought you the Hermit, who first spread Jesus' words among the gentiles, and you subverted him. Is he still here, somewhere, living perhaps in luxury, ever regretting that he had abandoned his Cause?"

"He is here, but Anselm failed to subvert the one who arose in his stead: the one born Saul of Tarsus, who wrapped his master's simple precepts in chains of mystery, symbols, and Greek logic-with magic almost as strong as mine. Now the Christian emblem itself sickens me; I have forbidden it, in all its forms.

But how can I prevent two twigs from falling upon the ground, one over the other? How can I order two shadows not to make a cross on a sun-washed wall?" Almost as strong? thought Pierrette, though she did not dare say it aloud. The Christian domain had now spread to the furthest known lands, and every crossroads shrine now bore a crucifix or a Chi-Rho sign scratched in a stone. Every ancient sacred pool but one was now a Christian font, and the holiness of one saint or another emanated from its waters-usurpers, to be sure, who often partook of the aspects of the earlier G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses that they had supplanted, but firmly in control of the sacred places and the people who visited them. Almost? The religion of Saint Paul grew, now spreading among the Saxon tribes and-as she had seen, on that remote skerry only a few days' sail away-among the Nors.e.m.e.n, the most savage pagans of all.

The Hermit was still here. Like his successor, Saul of Tarsus, he was a weaver of words and concepts that shaped the very fabric of reality. Was he, perhaps, a key already thrust into the lock, but not yet turned? A key to the destruction of Minho's kingdom not by violence or competing magics, but by . . . conversion? Somehow, she felt, she must get free of the king and his palace, and must find the Hermit.

That thought led to others: she must find poor Gustave, too, before some woodcutter or mason caught him and put him to work carrying bundles of f.a.gots or heavy stones. Gustave was spoiled, stubborn, and independent, and she could not endure imagining him bruised and beaten by a harsh new master who did not tolerate his ways.

There were other reasons to find a way out of Minho's direct purview also. Just as the Hermit might provide a way for her to obey the letter of the G.o.ddess's command without supporting the spirit of it, there might be other solutions as well, ones she could not imagine until she knew more, and they presented themselves.

But she was not finished here, not yet. . . . "Hatiphas said you were down in your archives, working.

Will you show me? May I watch you work?"

"No one has gone where I go. Do I dare show you my most secret retreat?"

"Did you call me here to condescend and deny? Though I was attracted to you as the subject of my childhood fantasies, I hardly know Minho the man, and Minho the sorcerer not at all. Could I stay here and marry you, without becoming jealous of your other mistress, hidden away, never knowing her?"

He sighed. "I must blindfold you."

"You trust me so little?"

"I would trust my wife, my queen, with all my secrets."

It was Pierrette's turn to sigh. "Then I will endure momentary blindness. As for the future, I cannot see it.

It must unwind in its own time."

Minho clapped, and Hatiphas appeared almost instantly. Had he heard all they had said? Hearing his master's desire, he then rushed off, returning moments later with a strip of jet-black, heavy silk. Minho gently-and carefully, and snugly-wrapped Pierrette's eyes. Not a glimmer of light got through.

"Come," the king said, placing her hand on his forearm as if she were a crippled crone. He led her inside the palace-the changing echoes of his sandals and hers told her that. First came a short pa.s.sageway, then a long one where the returning sound of footsteps was ever so slightly delayed. At each intersection (and perhaps other times as well) the king put hands on her shoulders and turned her several times, todisorient her. Still, some sense not blocked by the blindfold allowed her to believe they had gone in the direction of Minho's quarters, and when she heard the sigh of a heavy door opening on well-oiled hinges, she believed it was his own chamber they entered. But she could not be sure.

He muttered soft words, too softly for Pierrette to understand, but the cadence of his speech seemed oddly familiar to her, as if she should recognize what he had said. "What was that?" she asked. There was, abruptly, a chill in the air, as if a cloud obscured the sun or a cellar door was opened, releasing the dampness.

"It was nothing," he said offhandedly. "Stand here a moment. I must . . ." She heard the dull sound of something heavy being pulled or pushed across the floor tiles. "Now step carefully," he said. "A staircase lies ahead."

"Down or up?"

"Why, down."

Pierrette cautiously extended one foot, and did not place her weight upon it until it was firmly planted on the first tread. With one hand again on Minho's arm, she felt rough stone brush her shoulder, and she understood that the stairway was narrow, or the king would have moved over to give her more room.

She counted each step as they descended, and when they reached the end of them, memorized the number. The rough, irregular floor underfoot now felt like plain stone, not tile, and grit rasped under her soles. Again, Minho spun her around, then led her forward. In places the floor was slick, in others gritty, like the drying stone of a tide-washed sea cave.

Again, Minho bade her stand alone. She heard a rasp and swish as of heavy cloth being shaken out. She smelled the oily odor of a just-snuffed lamp wick. But why would Minho put out a lamp? Entering a room, it was more usual to light lamps, not extinguish them. She tracked his footfalls back and forth several times, and at last felt his hands behind her head, loosening the blindfold.

She blinked. One dim lamp flickered on a worn table. A single backless stool stood close by. Something large and round-topped stood beside the table, draped in dark cloth. Was that what Minho had covered with cloth, to hide it? If so, she wanted to see it. All she could tell was that it resembled a round-bottomed pot, upended and resting on its rim.

The single lamp's glow only illuminated the near wall. She then understood Minho's actions: had more lamps been lit, she would have seen farther, and might have observed . . . she did not know what, except that there were things the king did not want her to see. What she did see were banks of shelves packed with round objects-the ends of hundreds of scrolls, most without wooden shafts or handles, or tags to identify them. "This is it?" she asked, dismayed. What was so special about this ugly, gloomy place? But there was something . . . it was a diffuse, tingling sensation not exactly unfamiliar. What was it? When had she felt it before?

It was the aura of magical power. She had felt something like it in Moridunnon's lair, and on other occasions as well: in a Gallic fane where a hot spring bubbled up from bedrock crevices into a pool, and . . . with the G.o.ddessMa . Was it Minho's power she felt? Then why wouldn't she have sensed it before? No, it was the power not of a person, even of a great sorcerer, but of this place itself. This place, and specifically . . . there.

The ancient rough-hewn stones were almost outside the lamp's range. A moment or two earlier, before her eyes had adapted, they had been so. Now she sidled toward them. She placed both palms on thewaist-high rim of what appeared to be an ancient well. Of course. This cavern was not only a magical place. Like the grove outside Citharista, it was also a sacred one-or once it had been. Minho had not created this place. At most, he had rediscovered it. No Minoan had hewn those ancient stones. No metal tools had ground them like that, irregular, but fitting seamlessly. They were far older than metalworking.

They enclosed a basin just large enough for a small person to bathe in, had that been their purpose. But they were neither a Roman bath built over a sacred spring, nor a natural pool. She could not see far into the well, but she sensed that it went down, and down.

"Come away from there!" Minho had noticed her leaning over the well. "Be careful. That hole is deep-and dangerous."

"Where does it go?" She did not move away, but continued to peer downward. A waft of warm air brushed her face. Its acrid odor made the inside of her nose tingle, and reminded her of a forge, of glowing charcoal and hot metal.

"Come." Minho grasped her arm, firmly enough to hurt. "It's nothing important. Just a hole." She would learn nothing more from him, so she allowed herself to be guided away from the well. She knew enough.

It was very deep, threading its way into the very roots of this island. And the heat, the odor? Was that a relic, a remnant of the ancient volcano that had-in the world of Time-destroyed everything of the Minoan kingdom except what Minho's spell had saved? Did molten rock still seethe at the core of his realm?

"This is a frightening place," she said. "I can feel its magic."

"The real magic of my isles is not in this place," Minho said. "It is all here." He tapped his forehead.

Pierrette was sure he believed that-or wanted to.

"But Hatiphas said you must work to maintain your kingdom," she protested. "You yourself complained of being a tinkerer. Where are the tools of your trade? If this is your workshop, then show me your work."

"It is not glamorous," he replied, pulling the stool out, and sitting on it. "I sit here, like this, and cast my vision outward, into the darkness, and I see before me . . . my kingdom. I look here, and there"-he demonstrated, moving his head from side to side-"and when I see something amiss, I reach out and . . . and I repair it. If I see a woodcarver making something lovely that pleases me, I reward him with good thoughts, and he basks in the glow of my affection. If a weaver has begun a cloak of black-and-yellow threads that disturbs my eye, I chastise him. That is all."

"I do not understand how you do that. Do you go upstairs and find Hatiphas, and order the one man given gold, and the other one whipped?"

"Of course not! Didn't I explain? I reach out into my . . . my vision . . . and I touch the one who has pleased me, and he feels my pleasure. The other feels my distress."

"That's all?" Pierrette did not feel that he was lying, not exactly, but she was even surer that he was not telling all the truth.

His expression said nothing at all. "Being ordinary people, they cannot readily encompa.s.s my emotions, and their joy or suffering is intense. It is reward and punishment enough."

Pierrette's dismay was undiminished. Was that all there was to it? Was the great spell that had created,and now maintained, the Fortunate Isles so intuitive, so lacking in structure that she with her postulates, premises, axioms, and rules of logic could not possibly learn it? Her mind rejected that. If it were so, then nothing made sense, and there was no hope. Then indeed the Black Time would come, for nothing could stand against it except the intellect, spirit, and elan of a great sorcerer-of whom, besides Minho, there were none.

Still she persisted. "And if you see something less abstract than poorly chosen threads-an instability that threatens your kingdom? I cannot imagine what it might be, but surely your labors are not all for causes as trivial as carved wood and woven cloth. What, when something serious happens, do you do about it?"

His expression was smug. "In those scrolls, that vast collection of spells, there is one for every contingency. I simply reach for the one I desire, and . . ."

"But how? There are no labels, no order to them. Have you memorized the stains and flyspecks on each one, that you can grasp the right one without opening it and seeing what it contains?"

He was smug indeed. "I feel them," he said. "It is a talent. My hands go immediately to the proper scroll.

My eyes immediately fall upon the exact words I must utter. It's simple-for me."

Simple, Pierrette reflected, for an innate talent, for someone with two thousand years to hone instincts entirely undistracted by logic or common sense. Was there nothing she could learn from Minho except the fact that she was incapable of learning anything at all?

He surely saw the dejected slump of her shoulders, for he arose, and put his arm around them. "Don't be discouraged," he said softly. "I will take care of you. You need never fear anything. Marry me, and you will have no need to struggle for mastery you cannot attain."

That was not what Pierrette wished to hear, but she steeled herself not to snarl at him. "I've seen enough here," she said. "Take me back now. I yearn for the warmth of sunlight on my face. Later, perhaps, we can discuss things magical again."

He was happy to accommodate her. Of course, he apologetically said, she would have to be blindfolded again. Again, she tried to figure out where he led her, but with no more success than before. When he removed the blindfold, she found herself again on the terrace.

"If I stay with you, I want to be your helpmate and partner," she said. "If you cannot show me how you do things, in a way that I can understand, then how can I learn your magic?" She sighed softly, "If I cannot do that, then how could I possibly bear to stay?"

"Can't you just enjoy it? Else you will have to wander my islands, road by road, crossing every bridge and causeway until you have learned every detail of what I have wrought, and then work backward from that to the essential nature of my spell." He shook his head. "Come now. Even if my spell cannot be shared, much else can. I still hope to persuade you, and there is something you must see."

Chapter 27 - An ImperfectVision.

The narrow path led northward. It reminded Pierrette of the causeway across the red rocks of Eagle Cape, which led to Anselm's sanctuary. On either side, a single misstep would mean tumbling to destruction on the jagged rocks far below. Pierrette followed Minho as if in a dream-for only in dreams were such symbols accreted, jumbled, and juxtaposed.

The path broadened between an olive and a lemon tree, both heavy with fruit and flowers-surely a dreamlike manifestation, because olives and lemons did not bloom simultaneously, and neither bore bud, flower, and ripe fruit all at once. But this was no dream. This was the reality that had engendered her visions-for there, on a verdant promontory draped with moss, stood . . . two thrones.

"Mine," said Minho, pointing, grinning broadly. "And the other one is . . . yours!"

Pierrette gasped. Thus, then, were dream, vision, and otherworldly flight made real: this was the time and circ.u.mstance she had longed for since she had been small. The throne was as she remembered it . . . And yet it was not. It was stone, ivory, and gold, but she remembered no sinuous band of lapis lazuli and garnet about its base, nor the face of an open-mouthed G.o.d with hair full of eels and fishes that adorned its back.

The inexact.i.tudes troubled her but, true to the script she had learned, she smiled and, twirling her skirt, seated herself, and placed her hands on the throne's carven ivory arms. "Join me, King of the Isles," she bade him, batting her long, dark eyelashes shamelessly. "Stretch out your arm and tell me the names of those islands, that city . . ."

Minho sat. His strong, slender hand covered hers-the thrones were quite close, though she had not noticed it before. "The first island," he said, "is called 'Pierrette's footstool,' because it lies at your feet."

"Stop that!" His facetiousness annoyed her-but this was the culmination of her dream, and she should not be annoyed. "What do the farmers who till its fields call it? What would the olivier who attends his gray-leaved groves say, if I askedhim its name?"

"He'd say 'This is Pierrette's Island,' and would direct you to its most ancient wharf, where your name was carved in the mossy stones so long ago it is almost worn away. It has been so named since first I knew you would come to me."

Pierrette believed him. Now, in retrospect, she could imagine his eyes hiding behind those of her lovers past-Aam the hunter, who shared her kill, in the hills above Sormiou, who had shouldered the gutted doe, her sacrifice, the other self that she had slain to feed the people. Minho had peered out from Alkides's eyes on the Plain of Stones, when that cattleman (who would later be named Herakles) had taught her how to defy the will of the G.o.ds without disobeying their commands, by loving him without losing the maidenhood that the G.o.ddess required she keep.

Had Minho truly lurked behind the dark Roman eyes of Caius s.e.xtius Calvinus, consul and general, when she dallied with him in hispraetorium by the sacred hot springs below Entremont, on the eve of the battle that opened Gaul to the legions, and the world to Rome's might? Those three encounters-the totality of her romantic life-had all taken place in the long-ago past, made accessible through the Otherworld by the spellMondradd in Mon . She had visited Entremont in the one hundred and twenty-fourth year before the Christian era, had dallied with Alkides six centuries before that, and hadhunted with Aam in a past so remote that no memory of it remained. Yes, Minho could claim to have known her for a thousand-or fourteen thousand-years.

Resenting Minho's sorcerous meddling in her private momentsthen , Pierrette's brow wrinkled into a frown,now . What right had he to know her intimate moods without having labored to woo and seduce her? What claim had he on the recollection of her cries of delight, her struggles to release the lovely heat her lovers' hands, lips, and loins had engendered? Then she thought of . . . Neheresta. That had been-because of its very nature-more intimate, more private even than the other times. Had Minho been there? The other times she could forgive: they had been men, as Minho was, and she almost felt sorry for him, unable to venture out in the great world on his own. But last night-even if it had been only a dream-had been different. There was no place for a man, any man, in it; male eyes and male mind could not comprehend it, and male l.u.s.t could not parallel it. Such an intrusion would be . . . unforgivable She lifted her eyes from the vista of islands and gleaming sea, and her gaze locked with Minho's-his, doting and smug, hers, resentful, angry, and cold. She forced a smile. "Are you sure you are ready for me?" she asked. "Can these sweet, peaceful isles withstand the wind of my breath when I cry out, or my laughter, that will shake your mountains free of every loose stone and cause ripe and unripe fruit alike to tumble from your unnatural trees? Are you sure you want me, King of Hy Brasil, ruler of Thera, brother of Minos of Knossos?" Even as she uttered those scornful words, they shocked her, because they were not sweet or flirtatious, as in her dream. Her challenge was not playful, as she had once believed it would be.

But Minho smiled indulgently, thinking her charming, her questions a coquette's ploy, her anger a child's petulance or a wh.o.r.e's pretension. "Shake my mountains with the waves of your lashing hips when we join as one, queen of my islands," he crooned. "What fruit would I not sacrifice for a taste of yours, when I peel away your innocence?"

She saw how his kilt had risen with the strength of his antic.i.p.ation, and she imagined not the slender gold-framed member of Aam, or a Roman consul's stiff pride projecting from curly darkness, or the great, swinging bullishness of Alkides, but instead she envisioned . . . the hot, red shaft of Cernunnos, the forest G.o.d, his form and semblance now only a vestment worn by the Eater of G.o.ds.

That terrified her. That was not her vision. This scene was right, and the words, but her rage, her fear, her disgust, were not! In desperation, she raised her hand and uttered the words she had spoken before, when this moment had been lovely and flirtatious, when she had called up the storm . . .

Then a child, she had not known what she knew now. Then, she had thought of magic as Minho now appeared to: a vast puissance that welled from the soul of the magician, a talent, an art. Now she knew otherwise: at the foundation of every magical utterance was a principle that could not be proved or denied. Combined and juxtaposed with lesser axioms, words became a spell that influenced what was-and here, in this kingdom wrested from time's grasp, no Christian axioms had written over the existence of ancient G.o.ds. The essence of the spell she formulated was something like this: Taranis is. His lower half is a squid, but his head is a man's and thus has ears. He is a storm G.o.d. Storm G.o.ds command the elements. Like men, G.o.ds are capricious and jealous. . . . She did not need to state such concepts aloud. The spell framed a reality in which, when she cried out Taranis's name . . .

She whispered words of great power, and upon the western horizon grew great clouds, first as wisps, then billows that turned dark and flashed ominously with b.l.o.o.d.y light. "Come, Taranis," she murmured between clenched teeth. Those clouds reached like eager arms, arching across the sky toward the island kingdom. The leaves of willows, olives, and lemon trees trembled with their approach, and darkened as the clouds blotted out the sun. The storm winds whipped leaves from the trees as they came ash.o.r.e andmounted the cliffs. They swept Pierrette's long dark hair slapping and streaming across the back of her throne. "Come, G.o.d of thunder," she said (the wind drowned her voice, and she might as well have whispered), "and show this little king your might."

She saw his lips moving and knew he was reacting almost instinctively, intuitively, wrestling from his millennial memory one spell after another that might mute the power that lashed his kingdom. There were axioms that could nullify his spell: the Christians stated that all power stemmed from one G.o.d, one Creator, and appealed (as it were) over the heads of lesser deities. But Minho did not a.n.a.lyze. He only reacted, and his wild, undisciplined spells had no effect. . . .

She raised her hand, and sparks crackled at her fingertips, ebbing and surging with the lightning that leaped between the oncoming clouds. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her host, his face distorted into a grimace by the battering wind, his hair lashing his eyes. Squinting, Minho grated out words between clenched teeth: "Enough! Send it away!"

For a long moment Pierrette hesitated. What if she did not do so? What if she changed the script learned in childish visions by simply not saying the words that would quell this tempest? Would the storm winds sweep every living thing away, leaving only bare, black rocks? Was this the moment the G.o.ddess awaited? Would Taranis's wind pluck Minho himself from his throne and fling him into the sea? But no, she could not allow that. Minho was petulant, condescending-but he was not evil.

She waved a hand as if dismissing a servant. The wind abated. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Minho slump against the back of his throne, and she knew she could have destroyed him. She could have changed what was written, what she remembered-and she would have been swept away herself on those terrible winds. But now the sky lightened, and the clouds dissolved wisp by wisp, first gray, then white, reversing the order in which they had appeared. Anon, the horizon was again clear, the waters unroiled and blue. "There!" she said, remembering to say the words she remembered saying before.

"Now your Fortunate Isles are again at peace. See what a terrible disruption I would be?"

Minho responded exactly according to the script in her mind: "Better storms with you than sunshine without. Marry me. Rule with me." His words, she thought, sounded hollow-empty bravado, the words a king would have to say-but he had seen her power now, and he knew she was no simple girl to be overwhelmed by pretty, shallow words.

The script ended here. She had no further dreams to guide her. Beyond this moment all was new, uncharted territory, and the pretty visions she had cherished were gone. She sighed, and turned to face Minho.

"Now you've seen what I tried to tell you," she said, not ungently. "An eon of thinking men have struggled to define the principles of logic and magic, and philosophy, and all that time you have been here, in this timeless place. Pythagoras, Aristotle, Saint Augustine . . . they all have something to say.

Won't you listen to them? To me? No? Then show me your spells, King. Give me a glimpse of the power you wield, that you would share with your bride."

His eyes were hard and unloving, his smile brittle and false-but his words continued the charade. "I'll give you seventeen days in my villages and fields, seventeen nights beneath my stars. Go among my people. See what gifts I have given even the least of them. I'd not scant my bride by giving her but seventeen times more. Besides, if you would know my spell, you must know its subject. Go."