Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 26 - A King's Conscience

"Can you keep Marie aboard?" Pierrette asked Agathe and Guihen. "I need to walk about, and get a feel for this new land." Her footsteps felt light, as if she were floating whole inches above the ground, and the air smelled sweet and salty, yet not at all like the sea.

Guihen nodded. "Take all the time you wish. If Marie is wise, she won't want to go ashore at all—not that we'll give her a choice."

Pierrette strolled away from the boat. There were still cobbles embedded in the brown soil, but this was no longer the Crau Plain; it was the Camargue, where all magics worked. Did she dare essay a spell? A little one? The light spell, the fire spell, was her measure of things magical. An essential principle of inquiry was to maintain consistency in all things except one, so that when she wished to see the result of a change, she introduced no deceptive unknown elements.

She whispered the incantation, as if the softness of her words might mute the effect she sought to bring forth. She pointed to a straggling tamarisk as she uttered the last syllables—and leaped back as the entire bush burst into flame. She smelled burnt hair and eyebrows. Dry tamarisk crackled and popped merrily, spraying sparks afar.

Amazed and elated, Pierrette stared into flames made transparent by morning sunlight. Fiery tendrils formed elusive shapes like figures dancing upon the charred, crumbling branches. She kicked dirt at the blackening bush, but only dirtied her feet. Flames resumed their happy celebration a few inches away. Even when the embers were entirely smothered, tiny dancers flickered atop the heaped dirt.

Pierrette had no spell to put out fires. When the spell gave light, it always faded by itself. Candles burned down. She remembered being trapped as a scrubby tree. Her magic might be stronger here, but that did not solve problems; it only made the solutions more dangerous.

* * *

Agathe led Marie ashore. Marie's face was a mask of girlish puzzlement, as if she did not remember who she was, or why she was in this place.

"Has the demon fled?" Agathe asked.

Guihen answered her. "In this land the fiend's influence is limited. The spirits don't accept its claims. But it hasn't departed."

"Spirits?" Agathe glanced around as if the reeds and low bushes might conceal things worse than beasts.

"You need not fear," the sprite said. "The one you call `Mary' knows you."

"Don't say that. The Mother of the Lord isn't a pagan spirit."

Guihen shrugged. "She is mother of all. How could she not be the mother of one—or One?" He said that softly. Pierrette did not think Agathe heard. She believed Guihen; here the Christian grip on the old spirits was weak. Besides, they were not deities at all, in the sense that Agathe thought of such.

"I don't think it matters what you—or Guihen—call them, sister," said Pierrette. "Pray to whom you choose. The spirits of this place won't fault you for it." Her conviction reassured her that Ma indeed had heard, and did not disagree.

Pierrette wandered off by herself. She had perceived the spirit of the sacred pool first as someone much like herself, but older, and then more clearly as her dead mother. Later, there had been "Ma-who-was-not," a crone, the spirit of a far future time, haggard and worn; at other times again, Ma was merely kindly and middle-aged, resembling Pierrette in a tribal way. How could she, who was all women, not be Agathe's Mother of Christ? Yet the reasoning seemed convoluted. Though built upon axioms as small and basic as "two points determine a line," or "God is," theology was a vast, confusing edifice.

Pierrette's hypothesis would be unacceptable to Sister Agathe—but Ma had existed from ancient times. Where had Mary been? Though Agathe feared and loathed "false gods," the converse was not true. They hated her no more than she, Pierrette, would hate Mary.

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's Journal

There may come a time, on the way to the ashy blackness of the Beginning or the End, when all the wise old women, the mascs and crones and witches, are forced apart from Ma by Christian believers. Unable to reach the gods, banned from that Mary locked in a pretty church, where will they turn? I am glad I do not live in that time. I fear that with all the chapel doors closed and Ma locked inside, I would find myself in the arms of that dark spirit who owned Marie.
Sometimes, I despaired. Were my plot and plan doomed by the weight of time past and yet to be? I was only one girl, despite my years of study, and had not made much impression on the village of Citharista. But the great religions spread wider every year. What hope that I could force the uncaptured spirits of this vast, watery land out into the world, in defiance of the writers of rules and builders of churches?
True, I caused the tamarisk to burn with a "small" spell magnified by the nature of this land; true, Marie's possessor seemed stunned, and she herself had no memory of events since her wedding; but could I call upon Minho of the Isles, and prevail upon him to transport poor Anselm home? Could I—with the help of the spirits of this place—drive out Marie's demon? Or would I have to take her to the Christian shrine at the edge of the sea?

* * *

-

* * *

Dancing sprites lurked in the light of the cooking fire, though no one remarked them. Pierrette squirmed as if a sharp stone prodded her buttocks, though the silty delta soil had no rocks, and the ground was clear of twigs.

Agathe noticed, but said nothing. Marie was hardly aware at all—her condition had worsened; in the afternoon, she fouled herself; her chin glistened with drool. Had her possessor been all that had animated her? Was this frail husk all that was left of Pierrette's sister?

But no—Pierrette had caught flashes of the old Marie all along; her laughter had been her own. Even her lust was no more and no less than what the two sisters had imagined in the safety of their bed, before there were demons, voyages, or great, fearful magics in their lives.

Marie was not gone. Just as the demon had given her strength when it had been strong, now it sapped her in its weakness. It had to be driven out, but was Pierrette strong enough? Her spells were stronger here, but she did not have one to drive out evil spirits.

In the afternoon, plagued by stinging insects, she uttered the ancient bane she and Mother Ars had shared in ibn Saul's house, and the voracious creatures vanished. Yes, spells would function properly—but was she ready? An exorcism was a battle of strengths, wits, and weapons, and though she felt strong, she had only plodded one spell at a time, and doubted she would be quick enough.

She felt like an ignorant farmer given sword, shield, and dagger. How would she know which one to use, and when? How would a body used to a scythe's rhythmic motion adapt to a sword, or plowman's eyes to the dagger's thrust and slash? There was no way she could practice to become proficient.

If she drove the demon out, what would become of it? It had been made in the drawing of distinctions between good and evil, from the offal priests rejected when they butchered the land and its spirits, taking only the sweet morsels and calling them good. It would not be enough to exorcise the demon, and leave it to prey on another, but it could not be destroyed, because it had not been separately created, only assembled from the pagan leavings of the Church's feast.

What was the use? If she scattered its parts, how would she prevent them from reassembling? She could not. Not by herself.

Guihen brought her back from the brink of despair. "Come, girl," he commanded. "A walk will do you good. The flowers are blooming by moonlight." Pierrette rose, but did not think a walk would ease her.

She would never have found dry ground between the reedy hummocks, but Guihen leaped like a hare over soft, wet places. Stepping in his footprints, she kept her sandals dry.

It looked no different than any pool, at first glance. "Wait," Guihen said. A cloud drifted past the moon's full face, and then she saw . . . stars, in the water. A thousand thousand white blooms scattered over the pool twinkled like starlight.

Like a gold ring around the moon, yellow irises emerged from clumps of dark, swordlike leaves at the margin of the pond.

"They're beautiful," Pierrette exclaimed. Breeze-driven ripples caused every white bloom to bob and flicker, every iris to nod. A different ripple caught her attention—a green snake, bright as spring's growth, disappeared among the reeds.

"These flowers bloom in a pool in . . . the Fortunate Isles," he said. "They took root long ago, when the Isles were here."

Pierrette's delight disappeared. She knew why Guihen had brought her here. "I'm not ready," she protested.

"You never will be," he countered. "But you need to trust your magic. Haven't simpler conjurations obeyed your commands here? You're as ready as you can be."

She sank to her knees amid dry reeds. He was right. The only way she would gain confidence was to stretch herself . . . to dare. "Will you stay?"

"I won't be far away," he replied, "but it's not my spell—and the sorcerer-king Minho is a stranger to me."

"And to me," Pierrette said.

"I'm not convinced of that," he replied. "Didn't you meet him once—and didn't he know you?"

"That was a dream!"

Guihen chuckled. "And what is not?"

* * *

What is the difference between calling forth a storm cloud, a sea mist, or a confusion upon one's enemies? Is the sun a fire or a plate of polished gold? Those are concepts. If the sun is fire and gold, can a gold coin burn a hole in one's pouch? Can a mist be not vapor, but confoundation, or confoundation veritable fog?

A spell is an equation; is an equation a spell? Just as one phrase, one side of an equation, can be substituted for what lies on the other side, so can a spell be altered by the insertion of equivalent terms. Just as a mage might seek to define the universe in one grand equation containing all the rules for everything, so might a sorcerer strive, but with spells and concepts.

Guihen pondered things beyond the competence of a wood-sprite. He watched from a tamarisk bush as Pierrette prepared a new kind of spell.

A man may curse his neighbor's strayed sheep or the neighbor, but that does not make him a magician, only angry. A masc may know a few spells, and herbs that bring fever or allay it, but a spell or two do not make a masc a sorceress.

Feathers, smoke, and powders focus the thoughts of witch and bewitched. But Pierrette gathered ideas, concepts, and similitudes from one language or another, from nations a hundred leagues or a thousand years apart.

In the frown lines of her forehead, the plump bittenness of her lower lip, Guihen read her effort—not just to remember a spell, but . . . to create one. No existing spell would do, for who would have written one to call out to a mad king who had placed walls of unreality between his kingdom and the world—a king who ruled a land that did not exist in time or place, and where no evil, none at all, was allowed to exist?

At last she beckoned to Guihen. "What's that for?" he asked, touching the furrow between her dark eyebrows.

"I hope to pay a call upon a man who asked me to be his bride. Are these boy's clothes right for such an occasion?"

"Get rid of them. You'd look fine in nothing but sunbeams."

She blushed. "How about moonbeams? Ibn Saul says everything that we see is light bouncing off what it touches." She reached skyward, curling her fingers as if teasing a wisp of wool from a dense fleece. "Light is what we see, and what we see is only . . . light." She teased a moonbeam from a fleece of cloud, and spun around, wrapping herself in silvery light.

"The stars are twinkling jewels," she said softly, creating a necklace—stellar brilliants on a shiny wire drawn from the bud of an iris—a yellow iris men called golden.

"The moon's path," she murmured, "is a goddess's silvery footprints," and she pulled on pointed shoes woven of water and silver.

Her dress coalesced into shimmery silk, and she bound her waist with a tamarisk branch, emerald and gold of early spring. "There!" she exclaimed, pirouetting for his approval. "How do I look now?"

"You're lovely," he said, amazed. Then his ears twitched. "But you'll look a foreigner to Minho, who is of Cretan birth."

"Oh!" She blushed again as the shimmering gown shifted and bared small pink-tipped breasts in the Cretan fashion of Minho's day. "No!" she said firmly, covering her chest with a handful of tiny flowers plucked from the pond. Her bodice became delicate lace.

"You did that on purpose!"

"I wanted a look at your pretty bosom," he said. "But be warned. Just as I put a thought in your head that changed what you wore . . . Don't let others suggest things. Don't let them change . . . what you are."

"This isn't all play, is it? Thank you for reminding me." Seeing how far the moon had ridden across the sky, she said, "I must do it now." She turned away and began to chant . . .

All her years of study went into the careful phrases. Guihen understood only a passage here, a word there, for she spoke in tongues of sorcerers past. It was not a language. Here was a phrase of succinct Latin, subtle meanings compressed into a few inflected syllables. There was a fulsome word in rolling Etruscan, followed by a sentence in the harsh Greek of Odysseus's time, a clause in a Galatian Celtic dialect long extinct, and an exclamation barked in the Salyen tongue.

There was, Guihen reflected, no one spell, and no one tongue to express the subtleties of time, distance, and unreality Pierrette wished to bridge. A single phrase, translated into a language less flexible, or more, might change meaning and effect, so Pierrette spoke each one in the original words that expressed exactly what she wanted.

That was why no ordinary man understood great spells. That was the barrier so few could cross—between mere magic and genuine mastery. Guihen gazed with awe at the girl who uttered the words, and considered with cold trembling the power she drew into herself.

He watched mist coalesce upon the pool and gather at her feet, a carpet thick as moss by a holy spring. He watched her step delicately onto it. It rose, and bore her upward and away.

* * *

This, Pierrette marvelled, was no magpie's flight. Mist was vapor was cloud—and clouds scudded across the sky, wind-driven. Clouds were white pillows, and she reclined at her ease, her moonlight dress shimmering, her dark hair one with the blackness between the stars.

She flew on unseasonal wind, north over Arelate, glimpsing Nemausus's roofs on her right, and then over bare highlands cut by immense gorges. Beyond the high country the land was green with the first leaves of spring, then turned russet and brown over lands still locked in winter's grasp.

Her course shifted westward over dark forests of the Frankish domain. She drew a wooly cape of cloud about her shoulders, against the moist chill, without a word aloud to make it so.

Still far, but visible from her great height, was the moonlit glitter of the western ocean, her goal. At last the steely water was beneath her. Ahead only groping fingers of black rock reached into that emptiness that few ships dared sail. The tide rushed like a river in full spate between a rocky point and a low, offshore island. The tide was the ship-breaker that swelled the cold population of Sena, Isle of the Dead. Her conveyance of moonlit cloud began a long, gentle descent.

Beyond that island was a wet hell, home to unimaginable beasts, and souls in lonely torment.

Yet looming up from the sea where no land should be, surrounded by a veil of mist (or merely confusion) were black scarps in concentric circles—islands and harbors, houses, wharves, and green, green fields abloom with the colors of summer and sunshine. The Fortunate Isles were aptly named.

She drifted toward a small central island. A pillared temple with fat black and vermilion columns reminded her of the portico of Anselm's keep. There in a courtyard with tiles painted to match the cloudless sky, she alit. Her misty conveyance drifted away. Where were the priests and acolytes Anselm had described?

"I sent them away," said a warm, resonant voice, "when I was sure you were coming." Minho. The king. The sorcerer. "Welcome, Daughter of the Moon."

". . . Of the moon? Oh, no—I only borrowed a few threads of moonlight for this dress."

"Don't be offended if I doubt your modesty," he said, smiling. "But come—I have mixed water and wine, for the end of your journey." He was as handsome as she remembered him from her childhood vision, and though his hair and clothing reminded her of the young Anselm—the kilt longer in back than in front, black hair in oiled ringlets—he was not the same. There was strength and confidence about him, calm assurance that stemmed from aeons of unquestioned rule.

His smile was easy and unaffected. "I missed you," he said. "It's been so many centuries. Have you come to stay?"

How could she answer? She had never been here, except in a dream. As if expecting no answer, Minho led her into a cool chamber. A table was laid with platters of summer fruit. He spoke as if they were old friends—immortal friends. Missed her? Who did he think she was?

"It hasn't been that long," she said, fishing for information, selecting a slice of crisp apple from a wooden platter inlaid with gold. How long was it? Six years? Seven? She could not remember exactly.

He offered her a graceful folding chair in the Egyptian style of a thousand years before. "Not long? I've yearned for you while nations rose and fell."

Pierrette was amused by his hyperbole. Few nations rose and fell in the span of a girl's childhood. Still, his intensity flattered her; she was hardly more than a child, and he was as handsome as Aam—though his curls were dark and his skin had an olive cast, whereas Aam's had been golden.

"I came for your help," she said tentatively.

"And if I help you?" He grinned. "Then will you stay? Will you claim the throne that has awaited you all the hundreds of years, since last we loved on the Plain of Stones?"

He knows I won't stay. He's teasing me. And where is the Plain of Stones? It sounds like the Crau, but I only glimpsed that from afar. She thrust curiosity aside. "My sister is terribly ill, and unless I return, she'll die. And there are poor Guihen, and Anselm, and Yan Oors . . . Yes—Anselm, whom you sent out as a boy, and who now cannot return."

"Anselm? Who is that?"

"Ansulim?" she essayed. "The boy you sent to subvert the Apostle Paul. He pines away in Provence, and longs to come home."

A shadow crossed Minho's ageless countenance. "Ansulim," he said softly. "A fine boy. I sent out only the finest. But he failed. Paul's Church flourishes, and the opportunity to nip it in the bud is gone. The distance between my kingdom and the world grows." He shook his head. "Ansulim couldn't return now even if I allowed it. You are the first visitor to my shores in half a century, and his magecraft is less than yours."

Pierrette put a hand on his forearm. His skin was smooth and warm, his muscles distractingly hard. "If I succeed in my own task," she said, "then perhaps your islands' eloignment can be reversed."

Though infatuated, Minho was nevertheless a king. "How?" he asked, his eyes hard.

She explained her hope to undermine the terrible conformity of the great religions not from within, but from without; not through the encouragement of schisms and subversion of apostles, but by strengthening small gods and goddesses, magics of special places, and the nymphs, sprites, gnomes, and faery creatures that inhabited them.

She laid out her vision of the Dark Time coming, that had once been. She told him of the broken wheel, and the Eater of Gods.

Minho paled. "What hope can you offer, in the face of doom? Why shouldn't I simply wait until the distance between my Isles and the world is infinite? Then I and mine will be exempt from the universal degradation you foresee." He sighed. "If I can't have you, why not simply allow things to finish their natural courses?"

"You flatter me," she replied shyly, lashes masking her eyes. "But wouldn't you want the opportunity to remain, even if unfulfilled for the present?"

"Go on," he said at length. "Tell me more of your hypotheses."

She explained that she would not try to counter priests or churches, with which she had no quarrel, but would confront the Dark one whom their worship fed. She told him what she hoped to accomplish. If Anselm—Ansulim—were free to move about at will, he would help her, and thus himself and Minho also.

"I won't leave these isles to aid him," said the king.

"Will you allow him to be his own man?"

The king smiled. "I can. Will you stay?" He put his hand on hers.

"Only long enough to write a letter," she said. "If, that is, you will deliver it for me."

"How can I? I've said I can't leave these isles."

"You said you will not—but there's a way, isn't there?"

He nodded reluctantly. "I'll deliver it—if only because while you write it, you'll remain here a little while."

He led her to a tall room with shiny tables and walls lined with shelved scrolls, a hauntingly familiar room—the original after which Anselm's library had been patterned. Minho did not have to show her fresh vellums, or where was a cabinet of inkpots and quills. Even the furniture was identical to her own master's.

She wrote, explaining what had to be done to drive the demon from Marie, and to keep it from the world.

Minho put hands on her shoulders and smiled down at her. "I wish you would reconsider."

She enjoyed the warmth of his touch, and would have been glad for more of it—but shook her head. "Would you give up your kingdom and come with me into the much-changed world beyond?"

"You know I can't."

"You will not. You could. As I could linger here."

"I'll wait for you to finish your task. Come back, when you can—and will."

"And Ansulim?" she asked.

"I'll see what can be done. Now go, before I weaken and create a spell to hold you here—a spell to make you want to stay."

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, a mere brush of her lips—but he turned his head and held her for a protracted kiss. His lips were feverish. Long moments elapsed before she even thought of pulling away.

"Good-bye," she said, her cheeks flushed, her legs shaky. She did not recreate her misty conveyance. Instead, a magpie fluttered upward with a great commotion of feathers and cries.

* * *

A magpie on silent wings alit beside the sleeping Guihen. "You're back!" he exclaimed, immediately wide awake. Then he glared. "You said you would speak with the king. You didn't tell me you were going to . . ."

"Oh, hush. I tried to send a voice on the wind, but my whispers echoed from the rocks of the coast, and only sea birds heard them. You can't imagine how difficult it was. I combined seven spells to carry me, and seven more, ones never before spoken, to slip past the confoundations that lie like mist around the Isles."

"Was Minho surprised that you defeated his defenses?"

"Guihen, it was so odd. As if he knew me; not just in Ma's dream, when I was a child. He asked me to wed him. And I don't believe that his spells alone isolate him—the working of events in this world wall him away, though he won't admit it, and he said he'll try to help Anselm, and . . ."

"Ah, child, take a moment to breathe. Even my ears can't take in so much, so quickly. Now tell me—one thing at a time."

* * *

"We must return to camp," Guihen said, rising. "Time hasn't been stilled while we talked, and the others will be concerned."

"Oh. Should I have . . ."

"No—no more spells. You've amazed and frightened me enough."

Pierrette had not thought her effort frightening. The magic had been complex, but here where all magics adhered precisely to their original postulates, precision was enough. There had been no need to dodge shifting, changing premises, constantly on watch for the slightest unpredictable result.

"I fear your blindness," he added, "not the inconstant nature of spells."

"Blindness? What do you mean?"

"You call what you have done `magic,' as if any masc could do it, but you did what few could—making new spells on the wing, and shaping reality to your requirements. That's not magic, and you're more than a mage. You are a sorceress."

Was it true? Was that the difference—shaping new concepts and connections instead of reusing old? If so, she had realized her childhood goal . . . but she felt no different. There had been no clear crossing from one state to another. She had grown. So had her abilities, and the scope of the challenges she took on, but there had been no qualitative change, only a continuum of learning, study, and practice, of making connections between widely separated parts of a greater whole. Everything had begun when she first opened her eyes and made a simple association between her mother's face and the sweet milk from her breast.

If there were no clear divides between child, masc, maga, and sorceress, how far could one strive? Could even death limit her, or could she continue to grow, reaching mental fingers into every nook and cranny of the universe, encompassing all that was, that had been . . . that could be?

She shuddered, envisioning herself a fat, black spider with legs uncountable, each one touching a person, an idea, a single grain of sand, until the entire universe was in her grasp and gods twitched with her touches—and she created that Dark Time she most feared.

She was terribly cold. Guihen saw that she understood his warning, though he had not seen what she envisioned.

"Fear for me," she said. "Fear that I might learn so much that I cannot grow old and die."

"Your own fear will keep you safe," he replied softly, "and I trust you to remain as frightened as needs be."

"Minho is ageless," she mused, "yet he is no eater of gods. Why is that?"

Guihen, not privy to her revelation, shrugged helplessly.

"I think he has limited himself by his fear," she mused. "When he pulled his islands and people from the cataclysm, he was for one moment as a god—and he dared no more. Now he is trapped in the consequence of his withdrawal, and will let it destroy him rather than become . . . something . . . he cannot control."

"But that's good, isn't it? After all, his islands are already long gone, destroyed in a burst of earth's fire—in this world."

"I'm not so sure. I can't believe his role will end with him simply fading away."

"Is that a prophecy?" he asked.

"Only a suspicion," she replied, thinking how sure the king had been that all was not over between them. She shrugged. She could not see how it could be so, and there was much to do. Above all, there was Marie—and sorceress or not, she did not think she would ever be completely prepared for the confrontation that awaited her.

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed