The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 23

When she at last returned the way she had come, it was the moon, not the sun, which cast a shadow ahead of her. She pa.s.sed through the east gate of Citharista unnoticed, and slipped shadowlike throughcobbled streets, pa.s.sing her father's house, where warm lamplight spilled from beneath the door-but she did not stop there. Her father Gilles was within, unchanged, she was sure, and she would let him wait a while longer before announcing her return. Morning was soon enough to greet him, once Pierrette had ascertained just how new this new world really was, from the books in Anselm's library.

Were there stillGallicenae on Sena, or were they now lost in the mists of forgotten history, never written down? Were the accounts of t.i.tus Livius, the tales of Homer and Virgil as she remembered them? After all, the destruction of "Atlantis" had sp.a.w.ned many legends and the lost Fortunate Isles many more.

Perhaps the former tales were still told, at least. She would have to see if Plato'sCritias still described that mythical land.

If that research took her an hour or a week, a month, a year, or a decade, it would make no difference.

After all, Pierrette was already very, very old-though not yet eighteen-and only she and the mage Anselm would notice that time had pa.s.sed, and would wonder how long it had really been.

Epilogue.

The land is no less vast and no less ancient, and the loss of a kingdom here, a city there, cannot change it much. I, of course, cannot know the true scope of the changes Pierrette has wrought, for I am part of them, changed along with all the rest. But sometimes I awaken in the night, my bedclothes damp with icy sweat, having dreamed that hard cloven hooves were clattering on the floor of my chamber, with the reek of the demon's sulfurous breath swirling in my sleep-dulled mind, if not in my nostrils.

At times like those I am most grateful the world is a different place, because those dreams are not of this world at all. Perhaps I (though no sorcerer, and unable to part the veil and step through into the underworld at will) was not quite "here" at the critical moment when what was real became unreal, and the world took the shape it bears today. Perhaps in such dreams I am remembering how things once were. In this world, the Black Time is far, far away, and may never arrive, and Satan's name may be spoken aloud without trepidation.

But all is not again as it once was, before the Wheel of Time was broken. As if it were yesterday I recall a very small Pierrette who considered it unfair that the past should be an open book accessible through scrolls and dusty tomes, inscriptions on stones, and the contemplation of ruins, while the future remained remote and unknowable. That remains unchanged. The spellMondradd in Mon still allows no single glimpse of the future. Neither mage, scholar, nor masc can penetratethatveil with spells, researches in libraries, or contemplation among the ruins of towering fortresses yet unbuilt. Only if some seer not yet born should look back upon this era and deign to speak might we be given a glimpse in that direction.

Still, sometimes, when I turn a corner or step from the gloom of a darkling wood, or open my eyes in the middle of an afternoon doze, I find myself in a magical place, where I spend an hour or two. Sometimes I meet a philosopher there, a saint, or even a pretty girl with no clothing but the luxurious fur G.o.d has given her kind, and a charming scut of a tail, like a doe's.

Pierrette tells me that was not always so. The Otherworld was not easily visited when a harsh and heavy cynicism bore down upon everyone and everything. But now-and don't ask me how I know-even if Pierrette's vision of a world dominated by great machines without souls comes to pa.s.s, I am convinced that there will still be corners to be turned, and naps to awaken from, and magical patches of sunny woodland where furry, uninhibited girls-and boys, as Pierrette insists-await us.

Otho, Bishop of Nemausus The Sorceress's Tale

Afterword.

I have already discussed the changing nature of myths, the mutation of names, and the sacred landscapes in the notes for two earlier books,The Sacred Pool andThe Veil of Years , so I'll confine myself here to a few specifics ofThe Isle Beyond Time . See the earlier books for a comprehensive bibliography of sources for the three stories.

Place Names

I have used the Roman names for places, when I could, thus "Burdigala," not "Bordeaux." I am sure that by Merovingian or Carolingian times the transition was already well under way, but whether it was p.r.o.nounced as "Bordala," "Burgala," or in some other intermediate manner is nowhere recorded. I have simply a.s.sumed that educated people might still be constrained by the older form, as written in sources available to them, if not to us today.

In other cases, such as the Ar Men Rocks out beyond Sena (modern Sein Island), I have chosen the modern Breton name, which sounds appropriate, whether its Celtic ring descends from the early Continental Celts or the much later "Briton" immigrants.

More or less

The Proto-Indo-European syllablemor had two meanings in Celtic languages. One meant roughly, "great," and the other "sea." Thus Morgana (mor + ganna, seeress) might mean either "great seeress" or "sea witch." Bishop Morgan (mor + geni, "sea-born"), Saint Augustine's opponent, latinized his name asPelagius, while remaining mor + gan, "Great Seer" among his own Celtic adherents. The Celts were masters of double entendre.

The noun "merlin," which is a pigeon hawk, was given to Welsh Myrddin in the French-language versions of the Arthurian tales because "Myrddin" sounded too much like Frenchmerde . The old shaman and sorcerer might not have minded being called "s.h.i.t," but a n.o.ble lady of the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine wouldn't have gotten the joke, that compost, like Merlin, is indeed the product of sun G.o.d father and earth mother. After all, theMorte d'Arthurwas Plantagenet propaganda, written to legitimize that Johnny-come-lately family's pretensions. Myrddin may derive from "Moridunnon" (mor + dunnum), which can mean sea-fortress, great fortress, or great strength, and his name is thus not unrelated to Bishop Pelagius as well.

The Tarasque

Pierrette's Christian tale about the monster of Tarascon is the local tradition. The pagan tale is my synthesis of a known element-that the Rhone River (Rhoda.n.u.s Flumen) contains the name of the G.o.ddess Danu (as do the Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, Don, Erida.n.u.s, and a score of other rivers), and my speculation that the similarity of "Taranis," a Gaulish G.o.d, and "Tarasque" is no coincidence. The Ligurian or Celtic word ending "asco" (alsoasca ,asci , etc.) means roughly "of," thus Taran-asco, Tarasque. The final tale comes courtesy of my friend Alain Bonifaci, an architect from Aix-en-Provence.

Taking Liberties

The cylinder seal Minho gives Pierrette is stylistically Minoan, but the superposition of a star chart, a calendar, and a map of the Breton Coast is, of course, fantasy-though the idea that the Minoans may have been better navigators and mapmakers than anyone else up to the nineteenth century is hardly new.

Needless to say, Pierrette's ability to determine lat.i.tude from the North Star requires a bit of magic as well as good eyes.

For the convenience of my readers I have used our modern convention of placing north at the top of maps. Map makers of earlier ages more oftenoriented their charts, that is, read them with east at the upper edge. The same motive led me to presume a "year" beginning at the winter solstice, roughly our New Year, so the "tenth moon" on the seal would fall in October.

The settlement of Iceland is conventionally dated to the latter part of the ninth century, its conversion to Christianity considerably later, but there are hints (Diciul's a.d. 825 tract, for one) of an earlier Irish hermetic or monastic presence. My "Thule" is not Iceland, not exactly, nor is it the first Thule recounted by Pytheas of Ma.s.silia in the fifth century b.c., but it partakes of the spirit of such remote places, wherestrange bedfellows might make common cause against a hostile land and an inimicable sea.

I combined several historic shrines (at Gennes, Behuard, and Pil de Mars) on the Loire (Liger) into one place, for the story's sake, and may have nudged some villages, streams, and islands a few miles from where they might turn up on a current map. But of course Pierrette's world is not ours, not exactly, and who's to say?

Maps

THE END.

Baen Books by L. Warren Douglas Simply Human The Sacred Pool The Veil of Years The Isle Beyond Time