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Chapter 25 - A Hideous Light

Taciturn Agathe accompanied Marie and Pierrette when they left the nunnery. She hoped to stay in Saintes-Maries, perhaps hovering in silence over the Marys' graves. Sister Clara's boy Jules, who had found a cart for Gustave, had begged to go, but his mother would not hear of it. "There's nothing to see but rocks and dark forest, until the lagoon—and then nothing but water and swamp." Agathe was not daunted.

Mother Sophia Maria drew Pierrette aside. "I took the liberty to reveal your secret to Agathe. You need a sympathetic companion who knows your secret." Pierrette was not so sure—but it was done.

Beyond Massalia, their road—a real road, paved with stones—led through fields not yet greened with new growth, through clumps of trees larger than those of the forests Pierrette had traversed before, the more somber for their majesty. Still, in flashes of sunlight that penetrated the canopy, she glimpsed an occasional low-lying bush of a comforting, silvery hue, and felt reassured.

At nightfall, they camped near the foot of the last mountains they would see, according to Cullain. There, when firelight glanced from brush and trees, she caught glimpses of another glow, as if unseen eyes watched, and she felt comforted, not afraid.

Marie, as she had promised, was obedient, even subdued. Though she did not help prepare beds or cook, she rubbed Gustave down with pine needles—an unaccustomed luxury he accepted without biting her.

Pierrette and Sister Agathe sat late by the fire. Marie had fallen into exhausted sleep. "Don't relax your guard," the nun advised. "I've seen her like this before. As soon as you think she's become reasonable—whish! Off she'll be."

* * *

The ascent and descent of the rocky range consumed the daylight hours. The winding trail was so steep that Gustave had difficulty pulling the cart even when Marie got out and walked.

With others present, Pierrette had not dared essay a spell to test her conviction that watersheds were magical divides. The abbess had accepted her mutated fire-spell in its "Christian" form, but Agathe would not be so tolerant. Still, she sensed a change in the air as they ascended, and a corresponding shift in the nature of things as they descended toward the broad expanse of blue water to the north.

They took a room at an inn by a shoreside wharf, a mean place kept in business only by undemanding salt merchants like Cullain, who had recommended it. "The smallest copper will be enough for the two of you," he had said. Two coins got them supper and breakfast, and oats for Gustave. The odd, round grains were not what Pierrette called "oats," but the donkey was not displeased.

"Whose boats are in?" Pierrette asked the innkeeper. Cullain had given her several names.

"My own boat will carry the three of you handily."

"Your boat hasn't been hauled in three years," Pierrette said. "My donkey would kick through its planks, and then where would we be?"

"Ah! I had thought you'd trade the beast for passage. Of course mine isn't large enough for him. The big red boat belongs to Caius. The blue one is Flavio's. Either will suit."

"I wouldn't trust Flavio to raise sail on your watering trough," she replied, depending on Cullain's assessment to make her seem informed—and thus not to be cheated. "Speak to Caius. I'll pay two pennies to be set ashore at Ugium."

Caius was a large man with red-brown hair, boarlike, though without a sanglier's tusks. He glanced toward the three travellers, made count upon thick fingers, and held up four—just as Cullain had said he might. He winked.

"Three," Pierrette rejoined, smiling broadly. Caius looked as if he wished to join them at their table. "Tell him I'll speak with him when I've eaten," Pierrette commanded the innkeeper. She could speak softly in a manly tone, but as her volume increased, so did her pitch. Her masquerade would have ended right then.

Being three, they had a room by themselves, with reed pallets that smelled fresh. Had they not, Pierrette would have hesitated to use their own blankets, for fear of carrying biting things with them. While Sister Agathe and Marie settled in, she returned to the common room, and spoke with the boatman, and gave him one coin. She showed him two more, but kept them for now.

* * *

Pierrette awakened in the middle of the night. Something was not right. She heard only air whistling within Sister Agathe's large nose. What she did not hear had awakened her: from Marie's pallet came no breathing. Marie was not there.

Pierrette willed herself to be calm. Where could she have gone? Back to Massalia? Marie was not that mad. The beach to the west degenerated into reedy morass. East and north were salt pans and the River Arcus's delta, impossible to cross.

Pierrette thought back across the evening. They had eaten, Pierrette had spoken to the innkeeper, and later with Caius . . . Wait. Caius had smiled across the room, and . . . had winked. Had he winked at her, or at Marie, sitting next to her? She knew where her wanton sister had gone—or at least who Marie had gone to find.

She quietly pulled on her clothing. When she found Caius, she would find Marie.

In the common room, she heard snores—rattling old men's breathing. She crept past long tables, benches overturned atop them, guiding herself with a trailing hand. The inn sprawled along the stone wharf, and could not contain more than a hallway and a row of rooms facing the sea.

The hearth fire was banked, and she did not dare crawl over sleeping men to ignite a candle. Did she dare a spell? She was afraid that she was not far enough from Massalia, that the range of hills were not high enough, and that she could not evoke light without some clearly Christian purpose. Still, she had sensed change as she crossed the divide, and this place had no Christian feel.

She uttered old words . . . and recoiled, gasping in shock and dismay.

Light. An oily red glow, rank as burning, rancid fat, emanated not from her fingertips, but from every object in the room. There was no smoke, but the ugly light made the air seem thick. The corridor at the far side of the room yawned most brightly, and she knew where she had to go—down a glowing tunnel lined with the embers of an undying fire.

Pierrette's breath caught in her throat. A trick of perspective made the hallway seem too narrow, the ceiling too low. The floor seemed to rise, so that she would have to crawl to reach the door at the end of it. Her bare feet were lumps of wax that adhered to the tiles. She forced herself toward the rectangular opening, hunching as if its black wood frame was a farrier's hot iron. The corridor seemed to stretch, the dark door at the end to recede.

At last she stood before it. A latchstring dangled. The wrought-iron strap inside had not settled into its slot. Hesitating as if the string were hot wire that a smith might cut into nails, she tugged the door open.

A single candle warred with the crimson light of her spell, casting sharp highlights on the moving shape in the floor's center. Low moans made her ears tingle. Slowly, her eyes untangled the twined bodies: a broad male back and white buttocks, and slender raised legs with small feet whose heels drummed irregularly between jutting shoulder blades.

She heard Caius's quick, panting breaths and Marie's small cries, and she stopped in mid-step, caught up in the scene, horrifyingly aware that she was admiring the breadth of the boatman's shoulders, the play of muscles . . .

Marie had not run away, nor was she going to, that night. As Pierrette backed out of the room, she pushed the door firmly shut.

* * *

Pierrette heard Marie slip beneath her covers. At least she had not stayed past dawn, and Sister Agathe did not know she had been gone. "Psst! Pierrette! I know you're not sleeping."

"I'm awake."

"You were spying on me. I saw you in the doorway."

"I wasn't spying. I didn't stay, once I knew you hadn't run away."

Marie giggled. "Perhaps you should have. You're as stuffy as a nun."

Was she? Pierrette had not been disgusted, just angry. Marie could do whatever came into her head, yet Pierrette had forced herself to deny Aam. She remembered the dream of herself, weeping for the fate of her own daughter—the unchild of her selfishness, who would have had to suffer in her stead, with even less chance of succeeding. She remembered Elen, who had made the easy choice.

"I'm not a prude, Marie," she said, as if the shadow on the pallet next to hers were no more and no less than her sister. "I envy you your . . . freedom." But only in the most limited way was Marie free.

"You don't have to envy me, sister. I didn't use Caius up. Go to him. Yes—go." Her voice conveyed feral eagerness.

"I'm tired, Marie, and tomorrow may be a long day." She rolled over and pulled her thin blanket over her head. It did not muffle Marie's scornful chuckle.

* * *

The most important industry on the lagoon was salt. Salins, shallow salt pans walled with rock and earth, were flooded. Sunlight drove off moisture, leaving a crust of red-brown salt. Caius made his living transporting that raw salt to the mills. There, it was crushed, redissolved, and refined in pools.

Pierrette shuddered, remembering last night's oily, evil light. What was the nature of this place, that her spell had changed so? The very air, though clean and clear, seemed to carry an invisible taint.

Caius's boat was larger than Gilles's fishing craft, designed for hauling cargo. Uneasy with her thoughts, Pierrette kept to herself by the boat's stem, where she could watch Caius at the tiller, or rushing about to trim the heavy lateen sail.

Gustave was tethered nearby. He had stepped willingly across a plank between boat and wharf, and settled, hooves widespread on the sole planks for stability. Had the beast sensed the malaise of the place, and welcomed the chance to win free of it?

Pierrette glanced at Sister Agathe, dozing in the sail's shadow, and watched Marie play the coquette for her lover, as if she had never seen better seamanship. That offended Pierrette, who had sailed with her father in rougher water, in a frailer craft.

When Sister Agathe awakened, and saw Marie's fingers snake lightly up the inside of Caius's inner thigh, Pierrette laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. "Now isn't the time, or this the place. Here neither of us have the strength to best her demon."

"Saint Paul said we must confront the error of our fellow," the nun replied.

"Only wait. What couldn't be done in the sanctity of Mother Sophia's chapel can't be accomplished here, on this pagan lake. Consider the damage long since done, and forebear."

"What demon peers from behind your eyes, child?" asked the nun—though with the slightest of smiles. "Or what wise old woman? You make me feel like an impetuous child."

"Sometimes I feel old, sister," Pierrette replied cautiously. "Some say experiences age us more than years."

That night they pulled ashore near the extremity of the Arcus's delta. The next day they sailed for Ugium on two long tacks that took them first to the northern shore of the lagoon, then southward as close to the wind as the clumsy craft could sail.

Caius, deciding he could sell his salt for a higher price in Arelate, volunteered to take Pierrette and her companions further than originally agreed. Pierrette suspected his desire to keep Marie close accounted for his generosity.

"Ugium is there," said Caius, nodding toward a deeply rutted dirt track. "Tomorrow we'll be towed through the marsh to the Fossa, the Roman canal."

The moment Pierrette's foot touched soil, she knew something was terribly wrong. It was as if she had stepped in crusted dung, but the reek did not assail her nostrils alone: it seemed to penetrate her very soul, and a curtain of darkness dropped between her and the bright Mediterranean sun. She gasped.

"What's wrong?" asked the nun.

"Yes, sister, what troubles you?" echoed Marie, though without genuine concern.

Pierrette could not explain. In that brief moment she had sensed corruption, a hideous taint worse than the carmine light of her spell. Were she even to think words of magic here, she might be consumed by the spell's evil heat.

"A sudden nausea is all. The last tack enured me to the boat's motion, and now . . ."

Marie laughed. "You were like that as a child. You'd wobble ashore from father's boat, and demand everyone's attention. Stay aboard. We'll tell you about the town when we return."

Sister Agathe looked from Caius to Marie to Pierrette. "I'll stay also. I've seen towns before."

"Not like this one, sister," said Caius, chuckling. "Ugium is special."

"I don't doubt it. That's why I'll remain." The couple laughed, and strolled off arm in arm.

"You're pale as a fish," Agathe told Pierrette.

"I felt evil in that soil, evil so profound that I should sink in it and never again see the sun."

"I don't think Ugium is for the likes of us," Agathe said thoughtfully. She squeezed Pierrette's hand. "Never mind. I saved bread and cheese from our last meal."

They ate before sundown, and Agathe made up her bed. "I'll stay here a while," said Pierrette, eyeing the bloody red sky over the unseen town. A vast malaise oozed from the russet clouds like the stench of things long dead, and the rattle of twigs in the evening's last breeze was the rattle of old, dry bones.

In her mind's eye she saw Ugium not as it was, but in its glory days, when Greek engineers had built its thick walls, when it rivalled Massalia as the queen of the Salyen ports. It had been called Heraclea then.

In her hesitant vision, she threaded narrow stone-paved streets that changed and became more ancient even as she walked, putting whole centuries behind her with every turn and twist, as if she had accidentally parted the veil of time. Stiff sandals with crisscrossing thongs chafed her feet; a soft wool dress brushed her ankles, and a veil of lighter stuff puffed out from her face with every breath. Her hair felt tight and heavy, bound atop her head in a coif that reeked of strong-scented oil.

A low, stone building presented a lintelled doorway to the street . . .

Pierrette shuddered, and the vision shattered—but not before she had seen dark decorations adorning the portal: niches, each holding the shrivelled, blackened remains of a man's head with an iron pin driven through it.

Heraclea's honored dead. Flesh mummified by sun and hilltop winds drew back from teeth in joyless grins—yet despite death and decay, from those dead eyes emanated fierce protectiveness. Their warlike spirits watched over portal and town, joining seamlessly with the thoughts of living warriors atop the protecting walls.

Yet there were others, angry spirits not Heraclea's own. She peered at the wizened face of a Greek merchant soldier. He raged within his spiked head, forced to lend the power of his death to his enemies. He yearned for a ransom that would not be paid—his head's weight in gold—and for a funeral pyre that would free his captive spirit.

* * *

Shudder after shudder racked Pierrette's slender body. What, exactly, had she seen? Gauls had kept spirits, ghosts or fantômes of their dead heroes, in such sancta. They were the strength of the tribe, wisdom and succor in war and trouble. They were not themselves evil. But surely, in this present day, the niches in the pillars of the sanctum were empty? Her vision had been of a time long past. It did not explain the noisome evil she had felt earlier.

What postulates had changed, that her spell evoked crimson light and a soul-polluting stink? Had the ancient Gaulish rite been perverted through time and misunderstanding? Thinking of the nunnery garden, and its snakes, she hesitated even to imagine what serpents dwelled in this land.

There were no more mountains between here and the Camargue. Were there boundaries of another sort? If not, then as she journeyed toward that watery plain, would the stench of evil only thicken? But if the blended magics of land, river, and sea nullified this curse—would the old magics be revived, as she hoped?

What then of Mother Sophia's hopes for Marie? She shook her head. The Christian saints' intervention was a last resort, for to depend upon them was to surrender—to save Marie at the cost of giving up all hope of averting the black time at the beginning and end.

Pierrette sensed she would find no answers now. She sought her blanket, but instead of lying down, leaned against the boat's rail, and wrapped herself against the night's chill.

* * *

Caius and Marie returned at first light with teamsters and four horses, who towed the boat through a narrow, reed-choked channel. Perhaps because their placid progress bored her, Marie became talkative. "Where does the pagan land begin? When will we be there?"

"I'm not sure," Pierrette admitted. "We must cross the gulf to the Fossa, once we're free of these reeds, and then make our way up the River Rhodanus. Perhaps it begins on the far shore of the river."

"Isn't there a quicker way?" Marie chafed with impatience. Just who was so eager—Marie or that other entity within her? Which stood to gain? Pierrette had dangled the temptation of a land free of Christian strictures, hoping to ensnare the demon with false hopes of unlimited license, but Marie's eagerness had no evil edge. Was it indeed Marie herself who questioned her?

Pierrette was afraid that the demon might sense the trap. "If we were rich, and had hired a fast galley, we would have sailed right past it by now. But the open sea belongs to Allah—or so I'm told. Men like Caius know channels among the sandbars, where Saracen vessels can't go."

"I'll be glad when we get there," said Marie, in a little-girl voice Pierrette could not but believe was her own. "This land frightens me."

"And me," Pierrette admitted—though not sure they spoke of the same fears.

The channel opened onto a lagoon whose waters were blood-red with salt-loving algae. Caius's heavy craft floated inches higher than before. "I think it's magic," he said.

Pierrette did not; she remembered Aristotle—how the tonnage of boats could be measured by the weight of water they displaced. If this water was heavier than the sea because it was saltier, the boat would displace less, and would ride higher. She giggled.

"What's funny?" Caius demanded. "It's true."

"I don't doubt it," Pierrette responded. "I was laughing at myself, not you."

She now understood ibn Saul, and the seductiveness of "natural" explanations. Perhaps the death of magic everywhere was prefaced by just such realizations—that most phenomena could be explained without it. It was not a comfortable thought for someone who aspired to become a sorceress.

They tossed the tow rope ashore, and raised sail. Southward toward the gulf, trees gave way to reeds, sand, and tamarisk, and daylight surrendered to dusk. Caius guided them through shallow backdune waters. Pierrette slept, and thus had no way of knowing when they passed beyond the influence of the red-lit blight. When she awakened with sunlight on her face, she could feel the difference, as one felt the absence of a toothache.

"Let me walk on shore," she pleaded with Caius.

"Ahead, a mile or two, the banks are firm gravel. Wait another hour."

The land on the left was dense, grassy marsh—the beginnings of the Camargue—yet on the right, beyond a margin of reeds, she saw a flat plain that supported only sparse grasses. It was littered with rounded boulders. "Is that the Crau Plain?" she asked Caius.

"Indeed," the boatman replied. "It's said to be made of stones thrown down by a god upon Herakles's enemies."

"I don't wish to hear it!" exclaimed pious Agathe, covering her ears.

* * *

Marius's canal was a ditch with stone walls. The towpath blocked the view across the Crau Plain, but to the left was the river, behind tall, old trees. Light flickered oddly there, stray sunbeams where no sunlight should fall, and shadows darker than they should be. Both observations made her feel less helpless and alone.

There was just enough wind for Caius to nurse his boat northward. Alone in the bow, Pierrette risked whispering the words of her small spell . . . But nothing happened. It was as if she had uttered the incantation upon a mountaintop—no spark, no fire, no blue or white light . . . and no oily, emberous glow.

Pierrette smiled. "Q. E. D." Rivers—and even this broad canal—were like mountains, barriers against magical forces. Whatever lay on the other side of the waterway would not be the evil light of some festering underworld. What would it be?

They landed on the right bank. Pierrette stepped ashore on the cobbled verge. A cool breeze stirred hairs at her temples, so cool and refreshing it felt misty, but there was little moisture. "The Crau!" she exclaimed. "The breeze is off the plain of stones."

The others stared as if she, not Marie, were possessed, but Pierrette did not care: with the breeze had come a sensation, a yearning to step across the sun-warmed stones and stiff grass of the plain, as if Aam himself awaited her there, tall and bronzed, his sun-colored hair blown by the breeze. Out there, in that bleak desolation, something called, something cool and sweet, hot and exciting, giddy and sad. "Not now," whispered a voice borne on the soft air, "but soon . . . But soon."

She shook her head to clear it of silly notions. Aam was miles east and south, and indeterminable years away. Across the Crau Plain lay Ugium's Greek walls, the long-gone streets she had trod in ill-fitting sandals, her face half-hidden behind a veil. Yet the air that caressed her sunburnt features held no trace of corruption, as if the flat, treeless plain had purified it.

Caius pointed. "The teamsters! Soon we'll be moving again." He strode to meet them and their beasts; short, scruffy oxen, this time. Soon the party was back aboard, and Pierrette's strange yearning faded. She stared across the plain when the towpath dipped low, and over the reeds that passed slowly rearward. "Gustave," she said, "couldn't you pull us faster?" The donkey eyed her, as if he were not so stupid as to be trapped into any such admission.

Nonetheless, miles passed beneath the boat's keel, and by sunset the canal and the River Rhodanus were only paces apart. Tomorrow morning was going to be difficult. According to Cullain there was a boatman to ferry them across the river, where the Camargue began. Them: Pierrette, Agathe, and Marie. Not Caius. Would Marie willingly leave her lover? Would Caius resist her leaving? Pierrette decided to say nothing until morning, lest she awaken to find Marie gone, or herself left behind.

* * *

At first Pierrette thought the noise was the anchor chain, as the boat rocked—but Caius's anchors were secured on deck. The boat was moored to the wharf. Clink-pat, pat. Clink-pat, pat. What was it? Where had she heard that sound?

Then she smiled. She had not been wrong when she had seen the green glow of animal eyes in the gloom beyond a fire's light, and shadows darker than dark. A friend was near—and it was time to spring her trap.

She heard Marie stir. Had she heard it too? Her eyes were wide. "What is that?" she whispered breathily.

"Wake the nun," Pierrette commanded tensely. "We must slip ashore." Could she use Marie's fear? Marie's—or what lurked inside her?

"I'll wake Caius."

"No. That's Yan Oors. Caius can't stand against the Starved One. Hurry—wake Agathe. Do you want to mate with a bear?"

Marie scuttled away. Pierrette wondered if indeed the demon were afraid of the ghostly starved man. Who ruled here? They were not in the Camargue, but neither were they in a Christian land. What influence did the horned one have?

Marie returned with the nun. "She heard it too! What must we do?"

"There's a boatman. The creature won't follow over open water. Come! Once adrift, we'll be safe." She did not want either Marie or the nun to have time to think. She had not planned this, but she intended to use it.

"Come!" she repeated, slipping over the rail. She heard the faint clank twice—the pat of footsteps was lost in the sounds of their own movement. "This way." She quickly untied the donkey Gustave, then led him and the others between the trees that separated canal from river. "The boatman can't be far." They drifted like shadows along the river's cobbled bank, beside mirrorlike water unbroken by a ripple—or by the shape of a boat drawn up on shore.

"Stop!" said Marie. "This can't be the way. We can cut Caius's boat loose, and push away from shore. The canal is water, too."

Pierrette had hoped Marie would not think of that. If she got back to the boat, it would be impossible to force her across the river. Pierrette paused, listening, hoping . . .

"Oh no!" her sister gasped. The dark apparition was between them and Caius. Pierrette gestured upstream, where the gleam of the river was cleft by a dark shape. A boat. Marie saw it too. Its owner was awake, waving what appeared to be a rusty sword. "Keep back!" he said in a high voice. "I'll defend my boat!"

"We don't want your miserable boat, you old fool!" snapped Marie. "That is, we don't want to steal it."

"We'll pay for passage," Pierrette added.

The boatman caught sight of Agathe's tightly coiffed hair. "A Christian sister?" he exclaimed. "Very well. Get aboard—but show me your coin first."

Pierrette waved a Massalian drachme. "This, for all of us—and no argument." The boatman reached for the coin. "When we're in midstream!" Pierrette snapped, pulling it out of reach. Would the boat hold all of them? "Now help me get this intractable beast aboard." For all his stubbornness, Gustave got himself aboard with almost no persuading. He, too, must have sensed something . . .

She turned to grasp Marie's arm, but her sister had backed away. "What's wrong? Come on!"

"His ears!" wailed Marie, her eyes flashing like a cornered, wounded deer's. "You tricked me! Caius! Caius! Help!"

Pierrette lunged, but Marie eluded her. Ears? What had she seen?

The elder girl turned to run back the way they had come—and grunted as she came up against a tall, dark, shadow. Yan Oors's great arms enfolded her. The boatman threw off his night-cloak, dropped his sword-shaped root, and darted forward to help. Guihen's ears were now obvious to all.

Agathe, in the narrow boat, stared wide-eyed at the apparitions who held the struggling Marie. Too frightened to flee, she shrank low on the sternmost thwart. Her weight caused the boat's bow to lift clear of the bank.

Guihen and John of the Bears tossed Marie into the boat. Pierrette leaped after. "Hold her, Sister Agathe!" she gasped, grabbing handsful of Marie's dress. Guihen pulled free the oars and seated them between the forwardmost pins. The boat slid into open water. The sprite, with a neat thrust and tug on the oars, turned the overburdened craft around. John stayed ashore, and was indiscernible among the shadows of overhanging willows.

Agathe's knuckles were white with fear—and the effort of holding the thrashing Marie.

"Bitch! Whore! Sow's leavings!" spat Marie.

Pierrette was not sure whom she addressed, but suspected her sister's—the demon's—anger was directed at her. It was not Marie, but her enemy, whom they struggled to hold.

"Let go of me, woods-witch!" snarled Marie.

Sister Agathe snorted. "Just who is she talking to?"

"It's the demon saying those things, not Marie."

"Of course, child. I know that." She glanced behind Pierrette, looking at . . . Guihen.

"Don't be afraid of him, sister. Guihen won't harm you."

Marie mouthed foul expletives at the forest-sprite, and Agathe, having enough, stuffed her mouth with a handful of her dress, and held it there. "That's better," she said, smiling.

They reached the middle of the stream. "Guihen?" inquired Pierrette, "can you keep us here while I decide what to do next?"

"The current is slow. A few strokes will keep us in line with the landing on the far side. As for what to do—you've done well enough, so far. Why should it be different now?"

"I don't know what magical postulates are in force. I don't know what Marie . . . what Marie's parasite . . . will be capable of, in the Camargue."

Guihen chuckled. "I'm not worried," he said. "I only wonder what you will be capable of."

"So do I," Pierrette admitted. "So do I."

 

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