The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 21

"He betrayed me! Didn't you see it? A cross! A gold, Christian cross! He dared!"

"You can't destroy him for that, or a thousand of your own people, just for listening to him."

"My own people? No longer. They have become Christians. Traitors. I'll not have them in my kingdom."

"Then you'd better crush me first. Where do you think he got that cross? How did he know to abandon his useless hammer, a forgotten symbol, and pick up the emblem of Christianity today? I gave him that cross."

"Then you've sealed their fate yourself. They will all die."

"Why? Must everyone worship you? You're not a G.o.d."

His expression turned sly and mean. How had she ever thought him otherwise? "I will be," he said.

"What do you mean?" He was so confident. Pierrette felt sick with terror.

"You interrupted me. You were supposed to stay away another day. I would have been finished, then.

But I forgive you. Now you can watch as I sever the last ties that bind my kingdom to the world. We'll drift alone in a universe of my own." He laughed harshly. "Already I have the powers of a G.o.d. Life?

Death? Mine, to decide. In a universe where there are no kingdoms but mine, no rulers but me-I will indeed be not just a G.o.d, but G.o.d. And I will have no son. The Hermit and his foolish followers will have none other to worship."

"You're mad! Don't you understand that you've already unbalanced everything? You banished age, death, and pain from your realm, and gave the Eater of G.o.ds a pretext to exist, and gave him anundefeatable advantage in the world outside. You can't just sail away, now, and leave everything else to him! You must return to the world, to set things right."

"I'll hardly do that. When I and my kingdom are gone, what will I care what happens there? It won't happen inmy universe."

"No! You can't do that!"

"Will you stop me? Here. I'll show you . . ." Again, his hands reached within the sphere. Again, they attenuated, and stretched, reaching for . . . for a thread. The roof of the miniature palace was as immaterial as vapor, no barrier to sight or to Minho's hands. With a twist of distorted wrists, the sorcerer-king broke the tendril that linked a tiny harpist to his origins. Then he reached for another, a small figure still standing in the gloomy hallway where Pierrette had left her. Neheresta.

Why her? Why had Minho chosen her? She was a servant, unimportant, insignificant. Hatiphas hadn't even known her name. At that precise moment, Pierrette's last doubt fell away. Minho chose Neheresta because he knew. He had been there, a parasite in her old, jaded mind, using her-and using Pierrette.

"No!" Pierrette gasped. Minho's shoulders stiffened, and he turned. His handsome face was ugly now, twisted with the selfish destruction he had wrought upon those who trusted him, who were doomed to follow him, to serve him and his egotism forever. This was no longer the dark, charming king who had wooed her with sweet words and smiles. Anger twisted his features.

Someone gasped. The king turned toward the sound. His hands withdrew from the water-sphere, and Neheresta was safe, for the moment. There stood Hatiphas. Pierrette recognized him by his clothing, but little else was the same, except his knife-sharp nose. His face sagged and wrinkled as if he were truly ancient, as old as all the years he had lived. His skin hung in folds on his skeletal frame, raddled with angry red sores, mottled yellow, white, and brown. His hands were bony claws, his fingernails yellow, and almost as long as his fingers, like the nails of a corpse, that had continued to grow after death, in its sepulcher.

"You did this to me," he croaked. "You made me like this!"

"I did? No, you fool. You did it yourself, by choosing to live, when you could have died. I did not do that to you. Time did it."

"You're lying! I was not . . . like this . . . until now. It's your fault-what you're doing here."

"You dare blame me? Better you get on your knees and thank me for the two thousand years I've labored, and struggled, to maintain your illusion of youth and vitality, while in truth you aged and shriveled, and wasted away. Now you see what you truly are-and have been all along. You blame me for that?"

"It's true? This is . . . me?" Hatiphas held one hideously clawed, contorted hand in front of his face.

"Then he was right! I argued with him, because I didn't want to believe him, but he was right. He was telling the truth."

"Who is this that you're babbling about?" snarled Minho.

Hatiphas's rheumy, ancient eyes became evasive and cunning. His claw reached to his neck, and lifted a thong over his head. On the thin leather dangled . . . "My egg!" Pierrette gasped. Her own hand crept to her pouch, squeezing it, and something shattered within it. Her hand came away wet and slippery with oil, and the reek of distilled flowers filled her nostrils. It was not a crystal serpent's egg that had shattered.

"This is who," grated Hatiphas, as he swung the glowing serpent's egg by its thong and threw it against the stone wall. It shattered noisily, as if it had been much larger than it seemed, and made of brittle gla.s.s.

Minho's eyes strayed to the wall, where greasy black smoke now arose, shot through with an evil reddish light. Something even darker than the smoke loomed up, inflating like a pig's-bladder football, taking form-human form. Cunotar the Druid stepped forth. He wore the branching antlers and fur-covered deerskins of Cernunnos, the horned G.o.d, and he held his long, bloodied Gallic sword in his hand. His eyes met Pierrette's. "Now it's up to you," he said. "Only you can free my soul to wander." He clutched his side. Blood trickled between his fingers.

"Me? What must I do? What can I do?" Behind Cunotar, Pierrette saw something move-something dove-brown and white, with large ears. But it was only Gustave, who had followed her down the long, dark stairs.

"You've done enough!" spat Minho. "Did you bringhim too? Who-and what-is he?"

"He is the druid Cunotar," she said with a tremor in her voice.

Minho's eyes now filled with panicky brightness. "Have you gone mad? Or were you sent here to destroy me? How did you know, to do that?"

"To do what?" Pierrette asked, feigning innocence.

"A sorcerer! You brought another sorcerer here! There can be but one of us. And that Christian cross!

Do you mean to destroy my spell?"

"Can I do that? What else must I do to bring that about? Tell me, and I will do it."

His eyes gleamed with mad and angry light. "Your G.o.ddess sent you, didn't she? But she failed to tell you everything you must know-that a foreign sorcerer alone is not enough."

"She did not need to tell me. I kept the druid Cunotar entrapped in my jewel because I had no other way to confine him, and I dared not let him loose upon the world, or leave him where some innocent might accidentally free him from his prison. But I don't believe in coincidence: something greater than G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, or sorcerer-kings made it inevitable that I would carry Cunotar here . . ."

"Something greater? I think not, because it is not enough. I will destroy him."

Cunotar grinned broadly and raised his sword. "Then let's have at it, king. I've blood enough in me to last a while." His gaze fell on Pierrette. "Now's the time, little masc. Do what you must."

"I don't know what to do!" she cried out. Did everyone know but her?

"You had three things in your pouch, with your flints and coins," said Cunotar. "Three. I spent enough time in there with the other two." "Three things?" What was he talking about? Why wouldn't he say? Of course-he didn't want Minho to know, because . . . because he could still stop her? Then she knew what it was. There were three things Minho had forbidden: other sorcerers, anything Christian, and . . . and iron. She groped in her oily pouch among the shards of the broken vial, and felt the heaviness of her mother's ring. Now what was she to do with it?

Hatiphas had edged away from Cunotar, and now stood near Pierrette. "Give it to me," he whispered. "I know what to do." Could she trust him? His sense of betrayal by Minho seemed genuine enough. She had little choice. She un.o.btrusively slipped the ring into his clawed hand. He edged away, and toward . . . of course! The well. The entrance to a realm more ancient than this one, where beat the fiery heart of a deity Minho had not yet banished-a female deity, indeed, whose volcanic shrine this had been, long before the sorcerer-king had usurped it. Despite his crippled and hunched condition, Hatiphas made good time, and from the lip of the well he cast her a smile-in fact, an ugly grimace, marred by gaps between his eroded yellow teeth.

Minho had not seen the exchange, but he sensed something, and now lunged toward Hatiphas. The vizier's smile encompa.s.sed his erstwhile master now, and he held the ring over the well, tauntingly. Then, just as Minho would reach him, and knock him aside, he dropped the ring. Even over the sounds of the scuffle, Pierrette heard the clink and tinkle as it tumbled downward, bouncing off the hard, ancient lava of the well shaft.

Then several things happened all at once, and Pierrette had no clear image of any of them. Cunotar was coming for Minho, Hatiphas was scuttling away from him, and Gustave, panicked by all the sudden action, lashed out with his hooves, catching the king in the thigh. Minho staggered aside, and fell against the pedestal holding his water-sphere. The orb teetered, then fell sideways toward the floor. The entire cavern shook! Stone fell from the ceiling's darkness above with resounding crashes. The lamp flickered and went out, but a new glow illuminated everything: the fiery light of hot lava bubbling up from the well, and oozing over its edge. The cavern floor tilted, and Pierrette fell sideways, which had become down.

Scrolls poured from the shelves as the wall that held them became a ceiling. The enormous bronze axe, thelabrys , tumbled through the air. Minho s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

"You!" he snarled, raising it high. Pierrette tried desperately to scramble away. "You did this!"

A shadow interposed itself between her and the king: Cunotar. The druid warrior's sword caught the axe haft and hung there. "Now let's fight, king!" he bellowed, laughing. "Let's trade a few blows before my soul flees this body and the opportunity's lost. Who knows whether I'll be a warrior in my next life?"

Even as he leaped back and wrenched his sword free, he said to Pierrette: "Flee, little witch. Leave before it's too late."

Too late?

"Come," said Hatiphas. "There's a way out, a tunnel. There's not much time." She hesitated. "Look there," he said, pointing. There: the water-sphere lay on the floor, upright again-and the floor of the cavern was again down, and no longer trembled. Within the sphere, she saw the tiny kingdom as a whole, its rings of islands. From the central island, the very isle beneath which lay this cavern, rose a great column of smoke, and tiny sparks of glowing white, yellow, and crimson that flung themselves outward from the black billows. On all the other islands, smaller columns of smoke also rose, as fires swept away forests, fields, and villages.

"It has begun," cried Hatiphas. "You must go." "What has begun?"

"The end. The eruption that will destroy us."

Then she understood. She understood many things, but she could not put them all together, not then. She glanced again at the microcosm. There, atop the central island where Minho's palace had stood only minutes before, rose a great black cone of ash and glowing melted rock. From its peak spewed roiling clouds of black and sickly yellow smoke, shot through with flying chunks of glowing red lava, with white-hot gobbets that flew outward and away, and started fires wherever they landed.

She heard the clank and clatter of weapons, and saw that Minho and Cunotar fought on. Neither seemed to have the advantage. Could the dying druid hold out long enough, until it was too late for Minho to save anything? She could only hope so. She had seen what Minho could do, when he reached inside his water-sphere, and feared he might yet be able to quench the flames. She felt Hatiphas tugging at her arm. "Gustave!" she cried, and was rewarded with an alarmed bray. "He's already ahead of us,"

said Hatiphas. "Hurry!" He pulled her through a pa.s.sage she had not seen before, hidden in shadows, a tunnel whose stone walls glowed dull red. Along the floor behind them flowed a sluggish ma.s.s, lava, its surface cracked and black, but glowing from within with deadly heat.

Acrid smoke swirled around her. The earth itself groaned and heaved, above and below. She intermittently heard the clatter of Gustave's hooves ahead, and the fall of rocks from above. She staggered on, Hatiphas half dragging her. With her eyes blurred with tears, Pierrette hardly noticed when they emerged in the light of day, on the rocky, wave-lapped sh.o.r.e, not more than two hundred paces from her boat.

Pierrette wiped her eyes. What great, dark clouds were those, looming in the gaps beyond the outer ring of islands? Pierrette rushed to her boat; if a storm were rising, she might not be able to get away in time.

She scrambled down the sharp rocks, and tumbled into her little craft. The once-smooth water rose and fell rhythmically, and the boat's masthead thumped and sc.r.a.ped against the overhang. Gustave already stood braced in the bow, his brown eyes wide, the whites of them yellow in the glow of lava from above.

"Hatiphas," Pierrette shouted over the rumble and roar. The vizier still stood on the sh.o.r.e. "Get aboard!"

He shook his head. "I'm already lost. Minho has trapped me here with him. Cunotar's soul can still fly free-wherever it will end up, and so will the others. Perhaps the new-made Christians' souls will find their Heaven as well . . . but mine? The cord has been cut. I am what I am-what you see. So will I remain.

"But . . ."

"It must be. Minho was right. I chose, long ago. I chose long life, and this hideous form is what I got. I chose to serve Minho, and I'll still serve him, in whatever h.e.l.l remains of his kingdom. But you must be beyond the furthest islet before all is lost. Hurry!"

"Good-bye!" she shouted over the crash of rocks, the roar of the fiery spume. But Hatiphas was already gone-back into the tunnel, or crushed by a bolt of flaming lava. She would never know. Likely, it would be the same, one way or another, in the end.

In the trough of one wave she pushed desperately against the rock, and the boat edged outward, only to be pushed back on the next crest. The mast flexed ominously between solid rock above, the buoyancy ofthe sea below. Again, she pushed, and on the next crest the masthead slipped from beneath the rock.

The contrary wind blew first from one quarter and then from another. Pierrette raised the yard and sail with little hope that the fickle air would favor her. She unshipped the heavy steering oar and used it like a paddle. Slowly, the clumsy boat moved away from the sharp, black rocks of the sh.o.r.e.

On the high ground above, where the walls of the cavern had fallen away down the slope, amid the growing thunder of the eruption, she heard bellows and shouts of rage. By some trick of the heat-distorted air, she saw Minho raising the great axe, and there, facing him, was Cunotar, wielding the sword that had pierced his guts and was still killing him. He showed no sign of being weakened by his ancient wound. He parried the broad, swinging blows of thelabrys , and the serpent tongue of his sword darted in and out. Was that blood from Minho's injuries or his own, that spattered the rocks, or was it molten lava? Pierrette could not tell. Neither apparition seemed to have the advantage of the other.

Pierrette did not dare linger. Now out of the wind shadow of the sh.o.r.e, her sail filled. She remounted the steering oar and set her course toward the gap between two inner islands. It would not be easy to get away in time; the route to the open sea was circuitous, and already glowing chunks of pyroclastic rock were screaming down from above, splashing into the sea around her, raising billows of steam. If one of those struck her boat, it would shatter it.

The wind held steady. In a while, Pierrette dared to look back. There was Minho, a giant astride the ruins of his palace, and there was Cunotar, fallen upon his knees, his sword a broken stub. The great battle-axe swung down in a sweeping arc, and buried itself in Cunotar's head. Its weight and momentum carried it through the druid's body, and it only came to rest halfway down his chest. Slowly, the two halves of his upper body sagging to either side, he tumbled over, out of Pierrette's sight.

Had Minho won? What would happen now? Was he really as huge as he seemed? The Otherworld, Pierrette knew, distorted such things-and she had not yet uttered the spell that would bring her back from it. Could he stride across the channels between his islands, and confront the Hermit, step on him and crush him like an ant beneath his foot? Could he still be victorious-and drag Pierrette with him into some impossible netherland, where she would never again see Anselm, or Father Otho, or even Magister ibn Saul?

But the great black clouds billowed ever larger above their growing peak. The heavy, sulfurous yellow smoke drifted ever more thickly down the flanks of the island, and spread like a heavy blanket across the water. Surely Minho could not prevail against that with a battle-axe.

Either way, there was nothing Pierrette could do. Silently urging the winds to cooperate, to push her ahead and away, she trimmed her sail as she rounded the first headland and emerged in the outer channel. Fiery projectiles still fell all around, undiminished by her greater distance. Now, when she looked back, the black conical peak jutted high above where Minho's palace had stood. Of the sorcerer-king, there was no sign.

One desperate hour pa.s.sed thus amid the hail of fire, and then another. A rain of glowing gobbets splashed into the bilge, sizzling, burrowing into the moist wood. Pierrette slopped salt water on them from her cedar bucket. Some fiery morsels exploded when the cold water touched them, pelting her with jagged, stinging bits. She threw bucket after bucket of water on the sail, which was already riddled with black-edged holes. If the wind strengthened, the weakened cloth would be torn to shreds.

At last, Pierrette could see the gleam of the open sea ahead. Amazed, she saw what she had thought from a distance were black storm clouds; they were much more solid. Rising up from the sea were greatcliffs, cliffs that were not a part of the Fortunate Isles. Furthermore, they were familiar precipices; she had sailed past them, and had even stood upon them, at Raz Point: the cliffs of the Armorican sh.o.r.e.

When the water-sphere and Minho's miniature kingdom had fallen from its pedestal to the floor (and when the cavern below the palace had turned topsy-turvy) the entire kingdom had been moved. Just as Minho had once lifted his kingdom from the microcosm and floated it in a tidal pool to protect it from the cataclysms that destroyed ancient Thera, so the fall to the cavern floor had nudged Minho's floating realm toward the sh.o.r.e.

Now she stared in horror. The beaches nestled between the cliffs were not warm and sandy any more: they were black, and they pulsed with a horrid semblance of life. All of the shadows, all the stinks, corruptions, aches, pains, and annoyances of the world beyond, declared evil by Minho and banished from his kingdom, awaited their moment of return. Now Pierrette knew for sure that the sorcerer-king was truly defeated. Now she knew that she indeed had won-but she knew also how much she had lost: the dream that had sustained her through her childhood and youth, the promise that someday she would be queen of the most wondrous realm of all, the Fortunate Isles, and would sit beside the king her lover and laugh, and tease him by calling up a storm.

Her eyes filled with tears-selfish, self-pitying tears-and for long moments she did not realize what would soon happen: the gap between the Fortunate Isles and the sh.o.r.e of Armorica grew ever narrower, and soon the two lands would come together in a clashing and gnashing of rocks only slightly less tumultuous than the spitting, spewing, smoke-and-lava-belching eruption behind her. She, in her tiny boat, could not survive that.

With the strength of desperation, she pulled the sail around and hauled on the steering oar. Evil black clouds scudded across the sky overhead. There was no sun to show her direction, but if the Armorican sh.o.r.e was on her left, and the doomed Isles on her right, then she was headed south-and that was the only direction of possible salvation. South of Raz Point were hundreds of miles of open sea without a reef or skerry.

Pierrette pulled the sheet as tight as she dared, and the little boat jumped ahead. The mast leaned far over, and racing water streamed by scant inches below the wooden rail. Pierrette heard a great roar like the gnashing of demons' teeth or an immense landslide. She hardly dared look back. One glimpse was enough: the Fortunate Isles had come home. The opposing sh.o.r.es had come together with a great crash and rumble, shattering cliffs and promontories into rubble and gravel as they met.

The water caught between them now rose in an enormous wave that made the treacherous tidal bore seem no more than a ripple. Tossing and turning on its great crest were timbers and whole trees torn up and shattered in the cataclysm. Still several miles away, the wave seemed to Pierrette to tower above her mast, to block out half the sky. It seemed to grow even as she watched, coming nearer, travelling much faster than her little boat. She clung to the steering oar and the sheet, gritting her teeth.

It was not a wave like any other wave. As it approached, it did not suck water from ahead and beneath to add to its height and momentum. It was as if it were pouring out of some immense jar-which, in a sense, it was: there was no room for it between the landma.s.ses, so it was pouring southward like slops dumped in the gutter. It had no long, easy leading slope that would lift a boat before it and carry it over its crest unharmed. Instead, it would crash down upon Pierrette's vessel, bludgeoning and shattering it, grinding the fragments apart between the huge thrashing logs and tree trunks it carried.

The roar of its approach was deafening, but Pierrette could not let go to cover her ears. In that final moment, almost too late, when the darkness of its shadow flung itself across the water ahead, sherealized what she had forgotten: this was still the Otherworld, and if she died here, she had not the slightest idea of what her ultimate fate-and that of her immortal soul-would be. Desperately, unable to hear her own words over the all-consuming roar, she repeated the spell:

Mondradd in Mon, Borabd ora perdo.

Merdrabd or vern, Arfaht ara camdo.

The tumbling water struck her frail craft with immense force, tearing away the sail and shattering the mast. With a hoa.r.s.e squeal, Gustave was swept overboard by the flailing sail. The steering oar jerked from Pierrette's hand and spun away. The boat broke apart beneath her, and she was thrust deep under the salty water. Something struck her chest, hard, and she instinctively wrapped her arms around it, clutching it to herself. The impact of the rushing water drove the breath from her lungs, but even as she tumbled deeper and deeper, she stubbornly resisted the urge to fill them.

The silence of the deep was as deafening as the thunder of the wave above. She could hear the tumult recede into the distance. Then suddenly she found herself thrust to the surface, and she drew in a gasp of cold, salty air. She heard a roar, then another, but the brilliant flash of lightning that preceded the second sound told her it was not another wave, but that she had emerged within a storm.

The object she still clung to was her little cedarwood chest. But for its buoyancy she would never have risen to the surface in time, with her lungs empty of air. She was exhausted, and several times opened her eyes suddenly, realizing that she had lost consciousness or had dozed, but she never let go of the box.

Though the water was so cold that she could not feel anything below her waist or beyond her shoulders, the sharp, uncomfortable edges of the wood against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s a.s.sured her that she still held it.

Chapter 33 - The Way.

Home She slipped between awareness and deathlike sleep. When she heard voices, she tried to wake up, because that was surely a dream, but she continued to hear them. One, deep, booming and male, she recognized. Another was sharper, harsher, but no less familiar. "Pull her up, you great ox!" cried the latter.

"She won't let go of the box," said the other. "I'm afraid I'll break her fingers trying to pry it loose."

"Then bring it aboard," said the harsh, accented voice of Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul. Pierrette felt strong arms lift her from the water, and at last relinquished her hold on the chest, which fell to the deck, its thump inaudible over the noise of the storm. She opened her mouth to the sweet, pounding raindrops that fell on her face. "She's thirsty! Lovi! Bring fresh water immediately."

"Master ibn Saul?" Pierrette whispered weakly. "And Lovi? What are they doing here?"

"Hush now," said the first voice, the deep one. "You're safe now, and there will be plenty of time for questions when you have recovered."

Yes. Pierrette knew she was now safe. "Gustave!" she muttered.