The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 2

Much later, well fed on bread, olives, and delicious fatty sausages spiced with pepper and thyme, they again descended. The pendulum, slowed by the stylus dragging in the sand, now hung motionless near the center of the bed. "See!" exclaimed Anselm. "It is not exactly over the center, as it should be. And the lines it has scribed are awry!"

"How can you tell?" growled Yan Oors. "It's only a pretty pattern in the sand."

"Once some of these lines would have intersected where I stuck those pegs in the sand. Now they are all shifted westward, and the pendulum has stopped somewhere at sea, south of the Saxon land, not over the great stone circle. And here"-he indicated a line of pegs trending north and south, on the Armorican sh.o.r.e-"there are great lines of stones that once matched perfectly with lines of power in the earth, but now do not."

"What lines of power are those?" asked Yan.

"The lines the pendulum has drawn-or rather, the lines in the earth that the pendulum's lines represent, on the map in the sand." There ensued a discussion of mystical lines that bound the entire earth in a web of immaterial forces, lines whose intersections marked places of great power. "They are like fulcrum points," Anselm said, "where the effect of even the weakest spell is magnified manyfold." Pierrette had never dreamed that the fluctuating nature of magic could be as symmetrical and elegant as those lines in the sand and their intersections. But something about them did not make sense to her. "I have often watched my serpent's egg sway on its chain, and it has never described such patterns. It only swings back and forth."

"Your bauble is not heavy enough," explained the mage, "and its chain is not long enough, and besides, you did not swing it here, inside my keep, where time marches to a different pace. Outside, a similar pendulum would take a full year to come to rest, and the pattern it drew would be entirely different."

Pierrette's head swirled. A year? And here, what? Two hours? A few thousand heartbeats. But though her beating heart marked time here, as it did outside, it measured nothing relevant, because outside not a single heartbeat would have occurred. No mind could encompa.s.s the contradictions. But then, if everything made complete sense, and could be explained, there could be no magic, and the dead world of the Black Time, shown to her in the reflections of the G.o.ddess's pool, would come to be. That brought her back to a new dilemma: one strong intersection of many lines in the sand was right where the pendulum had come to rest-offsh.o.r.e of the last point of land, beyond Sena, where lay . . . the Fortunate Isles.

FirstMa , then ibn Saul, then Yan Oors-and now this. It could not be coincidence. She was not going to be able to avoid the trap. She must go there. But kill Minho? Kill the one she was promised to? No G.o.ddesses, scholars, or scary old ghosts with iron staffs could make her do that. There had to be another way.

"So all of those alignments of great stones once marked such lines of power in the earth?" asked Pierrette, after Yan Oors had departed. "And the stone circles were where several lines intersected?"

"That is how it used to be. Where possible, roads followed the lines, and even minor crossroads were concentrations of magic-expressed, of course, as shrines to this G.o.d or that." Pierrette reflected that all roads, all crossroads, had magical influence, but that a road built of stone slabs, like the Roman ones, nullified spells instead. There were obviously two separate principles at work: a trail made by human feet, that followed the course of a mysterious line of power, partook of that influence, but a road expressly constructed according to the lay of the land was subject to a different rule. She called that rule the "Law of Locks," though it applied as well to water wheels, windmills-that is, to any complex fabrication of human hands, including roads. Near such constructions, no magic worked at all.

So what did this shifting of lines mean? Was the magical nature of the entire earth rebelling against the imposition of stone roads, of mills, of doors with locks, of man-made and mechanical contrivances?

The Black Time-or so she had long suspected-was in part the result of such building: wherever the land was bound in such a reticulation of artifices, no magic worked. When men built roads, mills, ca.n.a.ls, and cities, they augmented the natural barriers to magic, like rivers and watershed ridges, a restrictive network like the cords that bound a bale of wool.

Of course, the Black Time's coming was not driven by a single cause. When scholars like the voyager ibn Saul wrote down their prosaic "explanations" of why ancient rites and spells seemed to work, their writings, published and copied and distributed widely, were also counterspells, and destroyed a little more of the magic that had once been.

The great religions had similar effect: when the priests first named ancient G.o.ds evil, that created an anti-G.o.d they called Satan, who drew sustenance from ancient, banished spirits. Named as evil, Molochwas eaten, and Satan acquired his fiery breath; he ingested Pan and the satyrs, and his feet became cloven hooves, his legs covered in s.h.a.ggy fur. When the priests named snake-legged Taranis Satan's avatar, the Devil grew a serpent's tail; when the horned Father of Animals was eaten, Satan a.s.sumed his horns.

When at last all the G.o.ds and spirits were named Evil and were consumed, then would Satan stand alone and complete. When all the magics were bound in a net of stone roads, every waterfall enslaved in a mill-race to labor turning a great wheel, every spell "explained" in a scholar's rational counterspell, then would the Black Time indeed loom near.

Even common folk contributed their share: when a child died, and bereaved parents no longer railed at unkind fate, at the will of the sometimes-cruel G.o.ds, but called it Evil, then Satan claimed the death, and all such deaths, for himself. Where would it end? Would the Black Time only arrive when house fires, backaches, and children's sneezes and sniffles were no longer merely devastating, uncomfortable, or inconvenient, but . . . Evil? Pierrette forced herself not to think of that. Her concern was-or should be-more immediate: "Can we transpose the new lines your pendulum has drawn onto a tracing of this map? It might be useful, on my coming journey."

"Oh-then you are going?"

"Do I really have any choice?"

Pierrette traced the original map onto thin-sc.r.a.ped vellum, carefully labeling features of terrain, rivers, and towns. Then, again using strings stretched between the marked points on the sand basin's rim, she transferred the curving, intersecting lines in the sand onto her chart.

"Look at that!" exclaimed Anselm when he examined her work. "See those four lines that intersect just below the mountainous spine of the land of Armorica? How strange. An old friend used to live near there. I wonder if he still does?"

"Master, you haven't left the vicinity of your keep in seven or eight centuries. Your friend is surely long gone."

"Oh no-Moridunnon was a sorcerer of no mean skill. I once believed him an old G.o.d in mortal garb, so clever was he. Besides, whenever he fell asleep, he did not wake for years, even decades-and while he slept, he did not age. Will you stop there, and see him? I'll write a letter of introduction and . . ."

"Master ibn Saul has planned a more southerly itinerary for us, I think. We will follow River Rhoda.n.u.s, then cross to the headwaters of the Liger, and thence downstream to the sea, where we will take ship to search for . . . your homeland."

"Surely a little excursion will not delay you much. And see? Not far from the mouth of the Liger, an earth-line marks the way. You'll have no trouble following it. I'll square it with the scholar."

"You'll do your old friend-Moridunnon?-no favor, introducing him to the skeptical ibn Saul."

"Then you go, while he makes arrangements for a ship. You'll have a week or so."

"Write the letter to Moridunnon, master. If I can deliver it, I will."

"Oh-there's something else. For you. Now where did I put it?" "For me? What is it?"

"Your mother left it for you-or, rather, she gave it to you, when you were little, and you brought it here . . ."

"I did? I don't remember."

"Of course not. I put a spell on it. Ah! Here it is!" He pulled a tiny object from between several scrolls.

"Your mother's pouch."

Suddenly, Pierrette did remember. She remembered a winding line of torches on the long trail from Citharista to the Eagle's Beak, and the terrible humming notes, sounding to a child like a dragon on the prowl, that was the Christian chant of Elen's pursuers. Elen: Pierrette's mother, a simple masc, a country-bred witch of the old Ligurian blood. She was thegens ' scapegoat for a failed harvest, a drought . . . for whatever sins festered in them, which they would not acknowledge.

She remembered Elen shedding the spell she had hidden behind until Pierrette and Marie appeared on the trail ahead of the mob, and she remembered being taken in her mother's arms for a brief, desperate moment. "Go now!" Elen had commanded them, handing Pierrette a little leather pouch. It held something small, hard, and heavy. "Go to Anselm's keep. There, that way!" Those were the last words Pierrette's mother ever said to her.

A shadow hovered in front of Pierrette's face. She took the pouch from Anselm. Her eyes were blurred with the tears she had never before shed. Marie had wept when it was clear that their mother was gone, but not Pierrette. Little Pierrette instead made a secret vow, that she would learn all that her mother knew, and more. She would be not just a masc, but a sorceress-and then, she would have her revenge on the murderers. Only after that would she weep.

Now she understood that she would never fulfill that vow. The townspeople had created their own revenge: they walked always in the shadow of their guilt, dreading the day they would die, for Father Otho had not absolved them from their great sin. Would he do so if on their deathbeds they asked? Who knew? No, she desired no revenge, and now, remembering, she allowed the tears to course down her cheeks.

She tugged at the leather drawstring. A seam broke, and a single dark object fell in her lap. It was a ring.

Her mother's ring. She held up her left hand and spread her fingers, blinking away tears, gauging where to put the ring . . .

"No! Look at it but, don't put it on!" said Anselm with great urgency. She looked. It was dark, heavy, and . . . and cold. An iron ring? There was no rust, but it could be no other metal. Now that her eyes were clear, she saw the pattern cast into it-the entwined loops and whorls of a Gallic knot, like a cord that had no beginning or end. A knot that could not be unraveled.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" she asked.

"You're a sorceress. You tell me. I just thought now was a good time for you to have it, since you're going away." He cleared his throat noisily, to conceal his sudden emotion. "I'm going to take a nap on the terrace. Don't forget to copy those maps, before you go. You may need them. Take a handful of gold coins from the jar in the anteroom. Fill your pouch. And don't go without saying good-bye." He departed abruptly, stumbling on the door sill because his own eyes were far from clear.

Part Two - Darkness

Pierrette's Journal

To resolve the dilemma the G.o.ddess has given me, I must understand the nature of Minho's spell. I have always a.s.sumed that it is a special application of the princ.i.p.al I know asMondradd in Mon , because genuine sorcery is only possible in the Otherworld, and even small magics part the veil between worlds to some elemental degree. Thus an essential, often silent, postulate of all spells is thatMondradd in Mon is always valid: that the Otherworld exists and can be entered.

Principles like the Conservation of Good and Evil denote a perpetual balance of underlying forces yet undefined, perhaps undefinable, and lesser ones like the Law of Locks suggest that the imposition of rational human design upon the natural world thickens the veil or obscures it.

However-by the very nature of the questMa has laid upon me-I must a.s.sume that the Fortunate Isles exist not in the Otherworld, but in this one. How can that be, if they are not subject to the rules of mundane existence? Immortality is not a natural state nor, if I read history aright, is the persistence of a nation, tribe, or way of life in perpetuity.

If I were to experiment with my master Anselm's lesser application of Minho's spell, the solution would surely surface, but I dare not risk it. Anselm's existence-like Yan Oors's, Guihen's, and that of every nameless and shadowy spirit of rock, forest, and watercourse-depends upon people's belief in it. That is also a premise, an underlying axiom that I dare not tinker with.

If I had an eon for study, I would know what I had to do, but even here, within Anselm's ensorcelled walls, the pressure upon me to act does not abate, as Yan Oors and the lines drawn by the pendulum have demonstrated. I can only hope that as I get nearer the focus of Minho's magic-that is to say, the great intersection of lines drawn in Anselm's sandbox-the relationship between all the spells and principles will become evident, and I will not be forced to choose between my lifelong mistress and my lifelong dreams.

Chapter 4 - A Journey.

Begins Pierrette could hardly slither through the small opening beneath the wooden stairs that led to her father's house. When she had been little, she had spent many hours in the dim s.p.a.ce the hole led to, between the broad floorboards of the house and the sloping, irregular bedrock beneath. There, she had experimented with the powders and potions her dead masc mother no longer needed-her mother's dying legacy to her youngest child.

Pierrette had not been in that secret place of late, but now . . . if she were to leave Citharista, there was one thing, one terrible, dangerous object, that she did not dare leave behind. Wiggling a small stone loose from the house foundation, she reached behind it, and withdrew a shiny bauble on a string. It was a globule of fused gla.s.s, mostly clear, but veined with red and blue, the patterns not painted on its surface but weaving through the clear crystal like a fisherman's net, tangled in the water.

The reticulations of that net held no fish, but something deadlier than a shark. The warmth of her hand, or the anxious tenor of her thoughts, set the droplet aglow, an orange light like the flame of a cheap, fatty candle. It illuminated her tense features. "Is that you, little masc?" The harsh, sc.r.a.ping voice was inaudible to the mice huddling in their shredded leaf nest in the corner, and to the old ladder snake (so called for the pattern on its back) that preyed on them. Only Pierrette heard it, and answered the speaker.

"Who else, Cunotar? Did you hope it was some innocent you could charm into breaking my 'serpent's egg' and freeing you to devastate this world and time as you strived to do to your own?"

"Why do you disturb me? You aren't seeking pleasant conversation, I warrant, though you must be bored with your trivial life, and surely crave conversation with someone wiser than yourself."

"Wiser? You've been locked in that egg for eight centuries. Events have pa.s.sed you by, and the world outside is like nothing you remember. You have nothing worthwhile to say."

"But you're here. That's cause for hope, isn't it?"

"I've come for you only because I dare not leave such evil unguarded. I-we-are going on a trip."

"How lovely! Will you let me see what ruin you and your kind have made of the countryside, or must I ride in the darkness and sweat between your b.r.e.a.s.t.s?"

Ruin, indeed. For the most part sunny Provence was a lovely place, and people didn't give much thought to ghosts, demons, or creatures of darkness. It had not always been so. In Cunotar's day, druids like him had ruled with terror, commanding a legion offantomes, dead Celtic warriors who served because the druids owned their heads, and kept them preserved in cedar oil.

But Pierrette did not like to think of that. Long ago, the druids' plans had been foiled, the heads burned and thefantome souls freed, and only Cunotar was left to remember. Struggling with Pierrette, she had tricked him into falling on his own sword, and Pierrette's bauble, a G.o.ddess's gift, had been his only refuge: confinement forever, or death. Carefully wrapping the "serpent's egg" in cloth, she crept out through the opening into the bright, clear Provencal sunshine.

She carried her meager belongings to the stable behind her father's house. In her guise as the boy Piers, she always travelled lightly burdened; her donkey, Gustave, was as stubborn as a root, as skeptical as the scholar in ibn Saul, and bore his wicker panniers with less and less grace, the heavier they were loaded. "But we've been through a lot together, old a.s.s," she said. "I wouldn't dream of going anywhere without you." One of Gustave's panniers contained oats to supplement his grazing, and to bribe him with. The other contained Pierrette's own things: pens, ink, and a leather-bound sheaf of blank paper for her journal, a pouch of coins and the Celtic "serpent's egg" that held the trapped soul of Cunotar. So much for his hopes of seeing her world. The less he knew of it the better.

She packed a pale blue dress of ancient Gaulish cut, a tan leather belt with goldphalerae mounted on it, engraved disks whose patterns changed when one looked at them, from snakes to a maiden's long hair, to leaves and branches . . . She rolled those in a tight bundle in her white woolsagus , her cloak; together those comprised her "official" wardrobe.

She tossed a wheel of cheese in the pannier along with several fat loaves of bread, two dried, salted fish, and a flask of oil from her father's olive grove. She made sure the pannier's clasps were tight, proof against Gustave's mobile lips and strong teeth.

"Are you ready, Yan Oors?" she asked. No one answered her. John of the Bears would not be seen unless he wanted to be, and he most definitely did not want Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul to see him.

Even worse would be if hedid want to be seen, and the scholar could not see him-would he cease to exist on the spot, in a withering blast of the scholar's disbelief? But outside, something metallic clanked against the cobbles, as if someone's horse had stamped an iron-shod hoof.

Ibn Saul did not travel lightly. Two horses were hitched to heavily laden carts; three others, saddled and bridled, stood with their reins tied to posts. There were three unsaddled remounts as well. A glossy black mule stood by them, lightly burdened with the scholar's carefully packed and padded instruments-devices, he said for measuring the earth, the sky, and everything in between. Pierrette shuddered when she thought about that.

Pierrette's father Gilles came to see them off. So did the village priest, Father Otho. She wished she had some token of her father's, to carry with her. Whether things went right or wrong on the upcoming voyage, it was not likely she would return here, or see Gilles again. She would be dead, destroyed along with Minho's kingdom (in the unlikely event that she succeeded with the G.o.ddess's task) or lost in distant enchantment or, as in her childhood visions, sitting on a gold-and-ivory throne, far away. But Gilles was poor, and had nothing to give her, and would not have thought to do that anyway. She carried Gilles's heritage in her blood, and that would have to be enough.

But Father Otho? He had been her first teacher, and had (unknowingly, of course) prepared her for her apprenticeship with Anselm, by teaching her Greek and Latin, and by stimulating her small mind to feats of thinking. Perhaps she uttered those thoughts aloud, or perhaps Otho needed no such urging. "Take this," that priest said, holding up something small and glittery. It was a cross on a delicate Celtic gold chain, and she knew at once that it was something ancient. "It was my mother's, and her mother's before that," the priest said, his eyes downcast as if embarra.s.sed. Pierrette had known Father Otho all her life.

He had consoled her when her mother died. He had helped drive a demon from her sister Marie, now a nun in Ma.s.salia. But . . .

"Father Otho, that is a cross, and I have never been baptized."

"It won't harm you, child. It's not magical-only a token. Take it. Wear it-for me." Frankish kings in the north might issue Christian edicts against pagan practices, but here in the dry, remote southlands, where broken Roman G.o.ds still pushed marble arms and heads from the soil, an uneasy tolerance reined.

And besides, if rumor was true, Otho had known-and loved-her mother Elen before he took vows, and she married Gilles. He would not willingly do Pierrette harm. Did she dare? He said it was not magical, but what did he know? Christians had made baptismal fonts of ancient sacred pools, and the G.o.ddesses that had inhabited them fled, or were now worshipped as Christian saints. Priests chopped down ancient sacred trees, and built chapels of the wood. They placed little shrines and crucifixes at every crossroads-which had always been sacred to the ancient spirits.

Only the pool ofMa was left, because n.o.body knew of it except Pierrette. Once she had feared that Christianity was consuming all the magic in the world, and that it was almost gone. When it was gone, she feared, the Black TimeMa spoke of would come. Now she was not so sure, because the world was much more complicated than that, but still . . .

She sighed, and lifted the chain over her head. It nestled between her small, tightly bound b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she did not even feel it there. She didn't feel any different either.

Travelling, in an age when Roman hostels had crumbled, when Roman roads were overgrown with veritable trees pushing up between their great paving slabs, was not undertaken lightly. But if one were rich-as was Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul-it was not uncomfortable or terribly risky. The carts carried tents, folding cots and soft featherbeds, pots, pans, and jars of spices. Ibn Saul and Lovi went armed with long swords and lances.

Because Pierrette wanted to maintain her disguise as the boy Piers, she made her own camp a bit apart from the others. The role came easily to her because she had been raised as a boy, inbracae and tunic, her hair cut short. An inheritance dispute over her father's lack of a male heir, long since settled, had been the initial reason for the deception, but now it was a convenience: girls could not travel as freely as boys, and were subject to the importunities of male l.u.s.t. Besides the necessity for privacy for her female functions, her secluded bed allowed a secret visitor once dusk had fallen. . . .

"He is like an uneasy draft," said the gaunt one, squatting, leaning on his iron staff. "He himself is preposterous-neither Jew nor Moor, or perhaps both. Why should I fear his chill gaze?"

"Ambiguity suits him-not knowing what he is, neither Christians, Moslems, nor Jews inconvenience him in his travels. I, too, find such deception . . . convenient."

"It seems unfair. If my bears were real, not ghosts, I'd give him such a scare he'd have to accept me."

"If he decided you were a clever peasant with trained animals, and wrote of you in that light, you would be trapped in that guise, because the written word is a terrible, powerful spell. You must continue to avoid his attention. Have you given thought to how you'll do that, when we board ship in Ma.s.salia?"

"I'll think of a way," said Yan Oors.

Chapter 5 - Beggars andSacred Wh.o.r.es.

Ma.s.salia: the great city, five centuries old when the first Roman legions set foot in Provence, showed her years. She lay nestled in a bowl of mountains that had protected the Greek colony from marauding Celts and Ligures, and from the Gaulish Salyens against whom she had once enlisted Rome's aid (and lost her freedom because of it). After that, the fine Greek temples on the north hill overlooking her pretty harbor were joined by Roman ones, and by an amphitheater cut into the native rock. Now the temple pillars were eroded by dust blown out of Africa and by mad Mistral winds that swept down River Rhoda.n.u.s's long valley, and the amphitheater was frequented mostly by wh.o.r.es and their customers.