The Veil Of Years - Isle Beyond Time Part 6

"Alone? Even if you came with me, it is a long row upstream, and I have no coin of my own for a boat or for sustenance. No, I will stay on. Perhaps, if there is substance to ibn Saul's Fortunate Isles, we will find refuge there."

They did not linger at Fleury. The city of Cenab.u.m was less than a day's drifting downstream, and Cenab.u.m had withstood Attila the Hun, and would not fall to mere Vikings, who were surely lesser warriors than had been the Scourge of G.o.d. There, in this city, the records and doc.u.ments of six hundred years-of Romans, Visigoths, and Franks-remained intact. There, if anywhere, ibn Saul might find accounts of merchants who had encountered those mysterious Isles he sought, or who had at least sighted their high, black crags from afar, rising from a mist that confused them and confounded their strivings to draw nearer.

The great gates of the city were closed for the night when they arrived. Seeing the flicker and glow of campfires on the far sh.o.r.e, beneath the ruins of a fort at the head of the stone bridge across the Liger, they rowed over. They set up camp amid other travellers, and shared a fire with a wool merchant, because they were too late to gather wood for one of their own.

Pierrette felt uneasy there. The tumbled building stones were stained not only with soot, but also with blood. Was it the blood of Gallic defenders, or of the Vikings who had destroyed the fort? She felt faint, and her head swirled with strange imagery: she perceived ghostly images of men wearing strange armor that was neither Roman nor Gaulish, Visigothic nor Frankish. Was this a vision of a battle recently fought, and could those be Nors.e.m.e.n? But no, beneath those helmets were smooth-shaven or well-trimmed faces, and hair finely brushed and coiffed. Who, then, were they? She was dizzy, as if she had eaten mushrooms and nightshade, and was about to enter the Otherworld, but she had eaten neither, and had not uttered a spell.

Men both on foot and on horses swirled around her, as if she were not there. Somehow, none jostled her, as if she was made of mist, or they were. High overhead loomed walls that she had not seen when they had crossed the river. There had not even been enough rubble on the sh.o.r.e to account for such walls.

This, then, was no vision of the past, but of something that had never been. But according to everything Pierrette had learned, that was impossible! In the most ancient ages, Time had been a wheel that turned, bearing the observer inexorably into the future. Spells allowed powerful magicians to resist the turning of the wheel, to return to earlier times, merely by staying where they were. But no spell existed that gave even the greatest of them wings to fly faster than the turning wheel, and thus to visit, or even to envision, what lay ahead.

But Time was a Wheel, its rim a circle, and any point could be reached by staying in one place while the wheel turned and, beyond the furthest past, lay . . . the future. Thus spells likeMondradd in Mon had allowed the future to be seen.

But the Wheel of Time was broken, long ago. The sorcerer whose spell had broken it was long forgotten, but the devastation remained. In the most remote past lay eons of empty desolation, that could not be crossed, because it consumed all magic, all brightness, all life. And in the future lay . . . the Black Time, equally desolate, equally dead, where loomed only the dull husks of towering machines in which allthe magic and wonder of the world were trapped.

Pierrette was afraid. If what she was seeing could not be, then was this a delusion? If so . . . was everything? Either this was the future, pa.s.sing before her eyes like mist, or it was insanity. If the great walls of the fortress she could see had fallen in the past, the tumbled stones would remain. If those walls had not yet been built, then she was seeing the future, and that could not be.

A battle horn brayed. On Pierrette's left, scores of men lifted tall, spindly ladders, and flung them against the walls. She heard a high, clear voice urging men to climb. She turned, and for the first time noticed the owner of that voice-a figure astride a war-horse, armed and armored, bearing a pennant and wearing no helm. Despite the armor, that commander of men was no bigger than Pierrette, and she was convinced it was not a man but . . . a girl. A girl, leading men to war, urging them to scale the fortress's walls?

For a moment, Pierrette felt relieved. This vision must be the past, because only ancient Scythians or Gauls had allowed their queens to bear arms, to lead them in battle. But no, never had Gauls worn armor like that, and the girl-general's words were almost recognizable, a melange of Latin and another tongue, perhaps Frankish.

Dust swirled around Pierrette, but she could not feel its grit, nor smell it. The dust, like the horses, soldiers, and walls, was in some Otherworld she could see, but not touch or feel. Again, she heard that clear voice, but this time it ended abruptly in a cry of pain and dismay-and the bold rider fell backwards from her mount, a thick bolt protruding high on her chest, by her shoulder.

Pierrette felt herself moved-not walking, but drifting, as if she were dust borne on air churned by rearing horses and running men. Nearer she came, until she hovered over the wounded commander, and heard her begging someone to break off the arrow and push it through her flesh.

"You will bleed to death, Jehanne," protested a gruff soldier, his words coa.r.s.ely accented and strange.

"If G.o.d wills it, I will not," said the maid-for indeed she was a girl. But who was she? And where, or when, was this?

Pierrette watched the soldier remove the arrow. The girl arose shakily, a crumpled cloth bound over her wound. Two men helped her mount her horse. A third handed her the banner she had dropped, and from the ranks arose a cry: "For G.o.d, Francia, and Jehanne la Pucelle!" The a.s.sault on the walls gathered new force, and even as Pierrette watched, a banner like the one that girl bore rose atop the wall, and black smoke arose from fires within . . .

Chapter 11 - Darkness from.

the Land Pierrette got to her feet, shaken, but saw around her only the fallen stones of a lesser fortress, grownover with woodbine. There, beyond, was ibn Saul's canvas pavilion and their fat boat, and across the river the Roman walls of the city of Cenab.u.m, which the Franks called Orleans.

"Are you well, little witch?" asked Yan Oors, who had come upon her when she was still lost in her vision.

"Oh, Yan. I'm glad you're here. You've known me since I was a small child. Tell me now: have I been mad all this time, thinking I'd deciphered the nature of magics-those of the past that work no more, and those pitiful few spells of the present that have not been destroyed by the great religions, or by the likes of Master ibn Saul?"

"If you are mad, then I am a figment of your madness-and I consider myself real. I suppose you could be imagining that I am speaking to you, but couldI ? I think you must a.s.sume that what you perceive is real, and then freely infer everything that stems from that a.s.sumption."

Pierrette nodded. "I must, mustn't I? But then I must throw out other principles I have depended on, because . . . Oh, how can I do that?"

"Explain it to me. Even if I don't understand, sometimes explaining things makes them clearer for the explainer."

"I'll try. A vision came upon me here, though I uttered no spell to call it forth. It was an overwhelming seeing, a terrible scene of a battle that may someday be." She described everything she remembered of the vision. Then: "You see? If I saw the future, then I must discard the a.s.sumption that the Wheel of Time is broken, or else that those few spells that allow their worker to travel upon the Wheel, in mind or in body, all point into the past, and never the future."

"If the sprite Guihen were here, he might have another conclusion," said Yan Oors. "You once used the spell called 'Mondradd in Mon' to go back to an age where he was a youth, and there prophesied a future he could not see, but which you knew would come to pa.s.s. In that past, you knew the future-and did you not conclude that all oracles must be as you were then: minds from future times, prophets in ours, able to 'see' our future because it was really their own present?"

"But I am not from a future time. I am from . . . now."

"Yet you neither strode upon that future ground on your own feet, nor viewed it from the eyes of a magpie, as you have done before. You yourself said you drifted like dust on the wind, bodiless. Perhaps you were but a dream in another mind, and thus you circ.u.mvented the rules you have gleaned from other experiences."

"That is not elegant, Yan Oors. It presupposes someone in some far future, to whom the events I witnessed are in the past. It presupposes that the spellMondradd in Mon , or something like it, is known, will still be known, and . . . it is all too perplexing."

"Then let it be so, for now. You did not begin your seeking, as a little girl, with full understanding-are you perhaps growing impatient at the 'old age' of eighteen?"

"I am not yet eighteen, and you know it!" she said, chuckling, realizing the truth of what he said.

"Then wait until your birthday, at least, to worry that you are mad, just because you do not understand everything." "I will," she promised. Her girlish smile endured a moment longer, then faded. "What of the dark shapes you saw, all travelling westward? Have you seen more of them?"

"I have been sleeping on the boat, guarding it. I think that like magic, unnatural things do not easily abide moving water. But even now, standing ash.o.r.e, I sense them without seeing them. They are still about."

"I wonder what they could be?" Pierrette mused. In truth, she was not sure she wanted to know.

Early the next morning the scholar ibn Saul left the camp. About noon, he returned from the city of Cenab.u.m, wearing a sour face. "All the city's archives are now buried in secret places, walled in with old stones, to hide them should the Vikings ever breach the walls. There is nothing for us there." He barked commands at Lovi, Gregorius, and Yan Oors, who dismantled his tent and stowed it aboard the boat. By mid-afternoon, they were many miles downstream.

At Sodobrium they spent one night in the shadow of a stone church. "We're lucky this place is unburned,"

said Lovi. "Perhaps these brothers are more holy than those of Fleury, and have thus been spared the Vikings' scourge." The priests and monks were eager for news, and plied the party with fine wines surely intended for sacramental use, which Pierrette did not think was especially pious of them. Eating little from their table, she excused herself early and went in search of Yan Oors, who refused to tread Christian sanctified ground.

Outside, in the little street of half-timbered houses surrounding the church, she saw for herself what the gaunt one had described: a shadow, like a stain upon the dirt street, but no object stood between it and the waning sunlight. It was a shadow, but it hovered above the dirt, as if stuck in it, and straining to be free. Pierrette drew back from a whiff of corruption like old blood spilled, or a dead rat. The shadow was intent upon its own struggle. In absolute silence, it writhed and twisted, now connected to the ground only by a tenuous thread.

Her thoughts receded to another place, another church, where she had seen something all too similar: her sister Marie lay on a stretcher of cloaks and poles, struggling in the grip of the demon that possessed her.

Around her huddled Father Otho, Sister Agathe, Anselm, her father Gilles, the castellan Reikhard, and Marah, Queen of the Gypsies. The same low, westerly sun sent tenuous fingers of golden light among the church's columns, light that was absorbed by the darkness emerging from Marie's mouth, her ears, her very pores, darkness that strained against the ligature of virgin's hair that constrained it, that drew it forth . . . Marie's demon had fought to remain within her, while this smoky apparition strained to break free-but otherwise they were all too similar, and Pierrette trembled now with the fear and revulsion she had felt then.

With a soundless gasp, the shadow broke free. It spun around as if seeking its bearings, then scurried off, hugging the walls of houses, tracing the niches of doorways like the shadow of a bird flying down the street-yet there was no bird.

Then it was gone, leaving behind only a sense of its avid craving, it's mindless urge for . . . for whatever it craved. It had gone west, like the ones Yan Oors described. West, into the setting sun. But why? And had it been a demon? It had been so small, so . . . unformed. Marie's demon had a.s.sumed one shape, then another, in its struggle: it had fought Reikhard as an ancient warrior, confronted Anselm as an eagle, battered Gilles like a storm at sea. No, what Pierrette had just seen was no powerful demon, shaped by the evil in men, and in Marie herself. It was tiny and weak, shapeless and mindless, but . . . it was stillevil. Of that much Pierrette was sure.

She made her way to the boat, where Yan Oors stood solitary watch. "I saw that of which you spoke,"

she said, leaning on the wale. "It broke free of a foul stain in the dirt, as if it had taken form there. It went westward just as you said." Yan Oors nodded, having nothing to add. "Why westward?" Pierrette asked, not expecting an answer. "What evil draws them? What are they seeking? The Nors.e.m.e.n come from the west. They pillage, rape, and burn. Are the apparitions only seeking their like? Are they formless demons, newborn in filth and corruption, seeking amenable hosts? If so, then are the Nors.e.m.e.n who plague this country truly infested with evil?"

"I suppose any explanation will do," rumbled the gaunt one, "for want of a better."

"What else could they seek?" asked Pierrette. "What other evil lies in the west?"

"We are going that way also," Yan replied. "When we get there-wherever 'there' is-perhaps we will see for ourselves."

"I'm going to stay on the boat with you for now," Pierrette said. "Perhaps if you let out the lines, so the flowing river is all around us, I will be able to sleep."

"I never sleep. I will watch over you," Yan Oors said, leaning on his rusty iron staff, brown as old wood.

Chapter 12 - A Close Call.

Sodobrium to Turones was a day on the river. Turones, city of miracles, where Saint Martin had brought Christianity hundreds of years before, was the goal of pilgrims from as far as Rome itself. Its shrines and streets had witnessed the saint's appearance long after he was in his grave. In Turones, a Bishop Gregorius had written a history of the Frankish kings for the edification of those Merovingian louts, now themselves long in their graves.

Now the great city stood surrounded by a wall half wood, half stone quarried from its own ruins.Here , Pierrette saw a broken column carved by Roman hands and tools, now embedded in the city wall.There , she saw laborers sliding another great stone on sapling rails. It had once been part of an arch in the cathedral whose charred walls stood bleak and useless. Turones, city of miracles, was now a city of ashes and ruins, from which dark, shapeless shadows arose and set off westward, ever westward, seeking what hideous goal no one knew.

The ashes were no longer fresh. The blood in the streets was old and black. But still, Pierrette sensed the dark ent.i.ties that rose from the ferment of ashen lye, old blood, and human tears. She did not see them, but they were there. Even Lovi and Gregorius treaded lightly in those ruined streets. Only ibn Saul, impervious in his disbelief in such things, strode unheedfully to the bishop's temporary quarters, an unburned house that had belonged to a cloth merchant slain by Nors.e.m.e.n two years before.

"Oh, no," said the bishop, "the archbishop has moved away. What records and books remained unburned, he took with him for safekeeping. You'll find nothing here but ashes."

Disappointed but unsurprised, the small company returned to their boat, intending to camp downstreamwhere the water's flow had diluted the stink of mud, ash, offal, and sewage that washed down from Turones, city of miracles.

On an island in the river stood an ancient shrine, miraculously unharmed. "The Vikings have destroyed everything else," muttered ibn Saul. "Why not this also?"

Pierrette examined the stone monolith, a dark column set on a white marble base of Roman design. "The whole story is here," she said. "See the pictures?" She pointed.

"That appears to be a saint standing in a boat."

"For a while, it was. But look how someone has battered the cross, and has scratched lines at the boat's prow and elsewhere."

"What meaning do you attach to that?"

"First, the bishop's miter and cross were added, perhaps when the original pagan stone was elevated on its Roman base. The carvings' styles differ. Before the figure was a Christian saint, he was a pagan river-G.o.d. Now the Vikings have freed him by hammering away his cross, scratching horns on his hat, and adding a serpent's head to the boat's prow. Now this is a pagan shrine once again."

"The way you say it, I almost think you believe that there are G.o.ds and saints, all vulnerable to the whims of their worshippers."

"They are vulnerable, aren't they? The stone attests to that. As for what I believe, I am only one person, and my convictions do not affect the world very much."

Pierrette liked the little island, and wished they could linger there. The day was bright and sunny, the shade of old, gnarled willows was cool, and whether by some magic of the once-again-pagan shrine or of the river, there were no slinking shadows, no ominous mists. But ibn Saul wished to press on. "We have many days' travel before this river debouches in the sea. Besides, the sh.o.r.es are flatter here, the banks are broad beaches with no place to hide our boat. I don't wish to linger."

"And this is the favored season for Nors.e.m.e.n," added Gregorius, now constantly on edge. Whenever his arms were not required at the oars, he sat in the bow, afraid that Yan Oors and Pierrette, who had never been owned by a Viking, might be less alert than he, who had, and might delay for the s.p.a.ce of a dozen vital heartbeats before crying alarm. He urged that if any large boat were spotted, they ground their own craft and flee inland, leaving their baggage to occupy potential pursuers.

"Leave my instruments?" objected ibn Saul. "Leave my notes and commentaries? Never!" Every night, the scholar unpacked his devices and took sightings of certain stars, then made cryptic notes in a wood-covered codex. If clouds covered the stars, he took an ornate bra.s.s bowl, its rim inscribed with symbols, and filled it with water, then floated a skinny splinter of black rock on it, resting on a flat disc of pine wood. However cagey he was not to let the others see exactly what he did, Pierrette had a fair idea: the bronze tool with its sliding arc and movable arrow measured elevation above the horizon, and when sighted on the pole star, indicated how far north they were. The stone in the bowl was a lodestone, of which the ancient Sea Kings had known. It always pointed north. When she mentioned it to Lovi, he said that Gregorius had seen Vikings use something similar, though he had never gotten close enough to see if it was exactly the same. "Your chest is not large, Master ibn Saul," she said. "Were you to repack its contents in my donkey's panniers, they would be ready on an instant's notice." He resisted her suggestion at first, because the chest's clever internal part.i.tions kept everything secure and in order, but when the river broadened further and hiding places could no longer be found, he at last acquiesced. Now Pierrette's own belongings were rolled in her Gallic greatcloak, and the scholar's tools rested in Gustave's panniers.

Where the river Meduana entered the Liger, they saw columns of smoke rising somewhere upstream, and rowed quickly past. "That is the town of Juliomagus," said Gregorius, "and that smoke is not from bakers firing up the bread ovens."

Just then a shout echoed across the water, and Pierrette saw a dozen men scrambling to drag a long, narrow boat into the water. "Vikings!" squalled Gregorius. The quick efficiency of the boatmen a.s.sured the party that they were not fishermen or traders-already the craft was afloat, and oars were in the water. Round shields painted in garish colors hung from pegs at the sheer rail, and helmets gleamed-iron, gold, and polished bronze. "Row!" shouted ibn Saul. Lovi and Gregorius scrambled to unship their oars. Pierrette grasped the steering oar's shaft and ibn Saul went forward where Yan Oors already had his pole over the side. With each tremendous push-he had room for several long strides aft before he had to lift the pole and reset it-the heavy craft seemed to surge ahead, and Pierrette felt her own oar become alive; the boat responded to her slightest push or pull. But despite their best efforts, the Vikings, with six oars in the water, each pulled by a strong, fit warrior, gained rapidly on them. When Pierrette looked back, she saw the gleam of their helmets, the bright paint of their round shields, the glimmer of spearheads, broadaxes, and unsheathed swords.

"Ash.o.r.e!" Gregorius yelled at her. "Steer us ash.o.r.e!" Instead, Pierrette pulled sharply on her oar, sending the craft further from the near bank into the middle of the river.

"Go back," shouted ibn Saul from the bow. "We're too deep, and the poles cannot reach bottom."

Ignoring him, Pierrette steered sharply across the river's course, into the muddy brown ribbon where the Meduana's current had not yet lost itself in the main stream. Propelled only by Lovi and Gregorius at the oars, the boat lost steering way. Pierrette had to pull her oar over sharply to make the boat turn at all. A spear splashed in the water beside her. Another thumped against the sternpost, but it did not stick. The Vikings were so close she could see beads of sweat on the brow of the big man in the prow of their skinny boat.

Ahead was a bend northward, where both currents swirled against a steep, eroded bank. Pierrette forced the ungainly craft toward it. She felt the boat tremble as the swift water took it. Gregorius and Lovi's efforts at the oars hardly seemed to matter; the steering oar lay limp in the water, but when Pierrette looked up at the willows along the bank, only an oar's length away, their branches were rushing past so quickly she had no time to distinguish leaves or limbs. A quick glance back show that the northmen's boat no longer gained on them-in fact, the rowers had raised their oars. They had avoided the confluence of the waters, where green met brown, and now they swung completely around. She heard the Viking helmsman's cries and watched oars splash into the water, then pull in time with the chant. The distance between the two craft widened quickly now.

In moments, the Vikings were out of sight as the heavy boat rounded the bend, moving swiftly, only a scant few fathoms from the south bank. When they were sure that the pursuit had ended, ibn Saul asked Pierrette to explain what she had done, and why the Vikings had broken off. "I steered us to the outside of the approaching bend," she said. "Our pursuers thought to cut across the inside, overcoming the slower current there with their superior force of oars, but the combined power of the two streams and theriver's rush to continue in a straight course despite the shape of the bed that constrains it gave us the lead.

Perhaps, too, the heavy sediments of the Meduana, all acc.u.mulating where the current was slowest, made their keel drag and their oars foul. Besides, every mile they chased us downstream, they would have had to row back against the current, in the heat of the day. Perhaps, also, they realized that our craft rides high in the water, even with five aboard, and thus could not be loaded with rich plunder."

"Next time, I won't question your decisions at the helm," said the scholar.

Chapter 13 - The Burning.

City They went ash.o.r.e before dusk, when a mist on the river shortened visibility downstream. "Were we to encounter Nors.e.m.e.n, we would not see them until it were too late to escape as we did today," ibn Saul said. Pierrette did not remind him of the special conditions-the confluence of two streams and the bend beyond-which had made their escape possible.

When Pierrette, as was her custom, went off to her isolated bed, she observed the last glow of sunset reflected on the water downstream. But no-the sun was long set. What she had observed was . . . fire.

Somewhere, not far, raged a great conflagration. She roused ibn Saul, and when his eyes had adjusted, far from the campfire's light, he too saw the glow reflected on the water. "It is a city burning," he said. "It can be nothing other than an attack by Nors.e.m.e.n-and judging by the extent of the flames, they must be inside the walls, for no buildings but great abbeys and churches would provide fuel for such a blaze. We are trapped between Nors.e.m.e.n upstream and down."

Pierrette observed that the fire's reflection was now redder still, and had there been more than a sliver of moonlight, she would not see it at all. "We must get aboard our boat now," she said. "By dawn, we'll have no chance but to take to the woods. Afloat, keeping to the south bank, we may be able to slip by the Nors.e.m.e.n, whose eyes will be dazzled by the light of the burning city for some time still."

Lovi and Gregorius m.u.f.fled their oars' shafts with woolen cloth. Only Yan Oors took up a pole, because only he could wield one with strength and dexterity enough to keep it from clunking against the boat's side.

This stretch of the river had many islands, and it was not easy to decide which channel to take at any divide in the stream. Every one would be narrower than the full river, and any might, in this season, peter out in reeds or skim so shallowly over a sandbar that they could not remain afloat. Any might narrow so much that a watchman ash.o.r.e might not only see them, but also cast a spear at them, with deadly result.

Generally choosing the southernmost channels, they drifted downstream, as silent as a log, huddling low unless required to steer, pole, or row. The red stain of firelight spread across the water. Now a column of spark-littered darkness blotted out the stars downstream. Ahead loomed a greater blackness. "It's a bridge," whispered ibn Saul from the bow. "There is a great arched bridge spanning the entire river."

Soon they could all see it. Each arch straddled a thirty-foot channel and stood easily that high above it.Pierrette counted four such spans-there might have been more-and steered for the leftmost, furthest from the burning light. Crenellated walls loomed high-forts commanding both ends of the bridge. The water's surface was no longer smooth, but riffled as if sharp rocks lay just beneath it.

A hoa.r.s.e shout echoed across the water, and Pierrette saw movement on the bridge ahead-but it was too late to turn aside. The accelerating current had them in its grip, and they could only plunge ahead.

"Row!" Pierrette cried out. "Row as hard as you can!"

Lovi and Gregorius put their backs and arms to it. The boat groaned and grumbled as it slid over a submerged rock, but hardly slowed. Now several voices shouted from ahead and above. Something splashed alongside-a thrown cobble. They would pa.s.s close by the south abutment, directly beneath the fort's wall. That wall wobbled: the Vikings, loath to throw away good spears in the water, were rocking a crenel, a great ma.s.s of stone whose mortar had perhaps been loosened by fire. It teetered ominously as several men wrestled with it.