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Chapter 13 - The Spell

 

Pierrette had never been inside the Burgundian's house, though she had watched the soldiers practice on the wide, sloping field in front. Mounted soldiers were practicing when she arrived. When she heard the clatter, she almost laughed: their swords were only wooden staves, like Marius and his friends used behind the marketplace.

Seeing the slender "boy" at the edge of the field, one soldier turned, kicking his horse's flanks. He raised his wooden slat as he charged. Had Pierrette been a boy indeed, she might have looked for a rake or other "weapon." Instead, as the scruffy horse and its straw-padded rider bore down upon her, she stood as if made of wood herself.

"What's wrong with you, boy?"

"I . . . I must speak with Jerome."

"Then mount up here." He was strong, for all that his face was as worn as her father's. Swept up, she barely thought to swing a leg over, so she did not end up draped across the horse's rump like a sack of grain.

"I haven't seen you with Marius and the others," he commented over his shoulder.

"I'm Gilles's son Piers," she said. The horse's stiff gait made her lower teeth clack against her upper ones.

"Your sister's marrying the smith's son, isn't she? About time, I say—Jerome's been a hard master these last weeks." He guffawed, and jabbed her in the ribs with a padded elbow. "Well, don't say I said so," he said as he swung her down in front of the tall open doors, "but we'll all rest easier when your sister's in her own bed at last."

Did everyone know what was planned for Marie's wedding night—and did no one care? Her errand was doomed.

A shed leaned against the inner wall, where fat brown rats scurried beneath open barrels of grain.

"What are you looking for, boy?" It was Jerome, just come—by the thick odor that followed him—from an oubliette, shaking his red wool kilt down from his waist. She glimpsed hairy calves and knobby knees. His uncombed hair stood in rumpled spikes.

"Please, Master Jerome . . . There is a terrible misunderstanding."

"Indeed?" he replied, lifting a bushy eyebrow. "Then tell me. Come. I am about to eat."

Beyond a narrow doorway lay a kitchen, with strings of onions and fat sausages hanging from pegs. A long table dominated the room. The remains of a crusty loaf lay atop scattered crumbs. Jerome sat.

"What brings you here, not your father?" he asked, tearing a chunk of bread and stuffing his mouth.

"The goddess Ma is not wife to the horned one," she blurted. "It's wrong for Marie to celebrate his rite. She is baptized in the Church. She must go with her husband on her wedding night."

"Is that so?" Jerome gulped wine. Red dribbles darkened his garment. "What does Father Otho say?"

"That doesn't matter. It's wrong to worship someone else's god, or to force her to."

"Are you a theologian, child? The god's blessing can do no harm—if indeed he lives, it might do good. Blood will be shed. That's my trade; Bertrand's is iron. Blood is a curse, and takes a strong god to purge it."

The strands of his mussed hair seemed to darken, to thicken, and the knight's breath was hot, sour wind. Pierrette tried to back up, but her legs failed to obey. Sunlight from the doorway flickered across Jerome's red clothes like flames. The air thickened with their heat.

"I'll show you what god rules here, boy," he said, pulling the cord at his waist. His garment fluttered to the floor in a shower of sunlit flame.

Pierrette could not move or speak. Spiked, branching antlers grew from Jerome's head. His chest and shoulders were a mat of coarse hair. His skinny legs performed a jittery little dance, and she heard the clatter of hooves on stones.

"No!" Her voice was thin and reedy, as if it never actually escaped her mouth. "You are not a god!"

"Who am I, boy? Who wears these horns now?" Hot light emanated from crimson eyes. "You know me, child. I consumed Lugh, and Teyrnon, and Pan. I've eaten the old gods, and soon the priests will feed me that tortured one who hangs on a cross. Who am I?"

"Satan!" she cried out. "That is who you are." A billow like thick smoke rose between her and the demon. Her head felt light, her arms and legs as if they did not belong to her at all. She felt herself falling. There was no floor, only a hole that went down and down, without a bottom.

* * *

"What's wrong, boy?" someone said. "Drink this." She felt a splash of coolness on her chin and chest, and tasted sour wine.

"Your father is wealthy now—doesn't he buy meat? A boy needs meat, you know." The voice was Jerome's. "You'll never be a soldier—you're skinny as a girl."

She felt the coarse rim of the pitcher against her lower lip, and another gout of wine splashed into her mouth. She choked, and pulled her feet beneath herself.

Backing away, coughing, she opened streaming eyes. Jerome stood there—not Satan. "Better now?" he asked. "Good. Tell your father to feed you. You can't be fainting in an olive tree."

She backed away until she was outside the door. "What's the matter with you?" the knight said, annoyed. "You look like you saw the devil himself."

Pierrette released an inarticulate cry, turned, and ran.

"Tell your sister she'll be happier with me than that pudgy smith!" Jerome called out after her. "She'll be sorry it's only one night."

Pierrette ran, the narrow streets a flickering of shadowed doorways. She ran, stumbling over loose cobbles, until she could run no more. Her breath came in gasps, and tears streaked her cheeks. She let herself fall against a wind-smoothed rock, and wiped her eyes clear.

The red tiles of Citharista's roofs were lost behind a screen of pines. Her feet had found a familiar path. Ahead loomed Eagle Cape. On her left a cleft led to Anselm's keep—the one place where she might resolve the terrible doubts that threatened to drive her mad . . . if she were not already so.

There was no need for hurry. The wedding was not until tomorrow. She could spend as long as she wanted with the mage, and still return in time for the mass.

What had really happened in Jerome's kitchen? Had she fainted? Had her own fears—her anger with Otho and Father, with gods and their adherents—overcome her?

Whether Jerome's transfiguration had been fleshly or only shifting sunlight and red cloth, it had been no pointless illusion. "Real" and "illusion" were only words. She was here on the path to the red scarps of the Eagle's Beak. Something had caused her to run. Where there was an event, there was a cause.

She distanced herself from terror by shaping an intellectual exercise, like a mathematical proof.

Gaulish priests had taken the burden of virgin blood on themselves to spare husbands its curse—yet neither Teyrnon nor Lugh was a god of war, reveling in blood shed with metal weapons. There was no one Celt war-god, only long-forgotten name-gods of each tribe. "Teutatis," from teuta, which meant "tribe."

Yet Jerome—or Satan—claimed the allegiance of all who shed blood. And had not Father Otho called war "the devil's work?" Anselm's histories told of Mithras, god of the Roman legionnaires. Had Mithras faded away, or had Satan "eaten" him too, and grown by the sum of his puissance? Was that what she had seen in the horned god's eyes during the mass? Satan's fires consuming the essence of the gentle Father of Animals?

The demon had seemed smug. How could he consume P'er Otho's Christ? Can evil consume good and not be sickened? It did not seem right. The image of Father Otho pouring oil from one jar to another passed before her eyes.

She was reminded of that other vision, seen by a magpie flying over a devastated landscape: the Black Time, as she had come to call it. Was there a connection between Satan's victory over the gods, and the degradation of Ma's earth?

Pierrette pushed on, her mind aswirl, as she considered one small possibility she might yet bring about. If Anselm would not help her save Marie, could she steal one of the mage's spells and do so herself? Was there time for her to study them, to discern just what ancient postulate no longer held true, and . . . and to rewrite one?

What kind of spell? She hardly dared trust the molten fluids of the Earth to obey her like fire caught in a jar. Would they consume just one evil Burgundian, or all Citharista, all Provence? She needed a smaller spell, one she could be sure was right before she tried it.

Yet would it matter—in the greater sense, considering Satan's burgeoning influence and the Black Time's approach—whether she, Pierrette, could save one insignificant village bride from a night with the . . . the Evil One? She did not know. Nevertheless, she had to try.

With new resolve strengthening her steps, and dark fears pushing her on, she reached the door to Anselm's keep in what seemed no further time at all.

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's Journal

Some places have more magic than others—ruins, woods, bogs, and lonely beaches. Places unworn by events cling to the past, when great magics were in the air. Perhaps, having changed little, they exist outside of time itself. That is what Anselm Girardel claims for his homeland, the Fortunate Isles. Walking in uninhabited places, could I actually pierce the fabric of time, and step into another age?
That day, sick at heart for my sister, I wonder if I did not push momentarily into some future when the stones of Anselm's stronghold are almost worn away.
The approach is forbidding; the cape narrows to a path, with steep, rocky cliffs plunging on both sides, like walking atop a wall. The fortress itself is as if carved from a wave-cut pinnacle. There is a single gate.
Townsfolk say it was built by Saracens, but tapered columns with fat capitals like round loaves are not Saracen, and the Moors were not fond of the black and vermilion pigments that still remain where the stone is protected from sun and weather.
The fort clings to the southernmost point of a hostile land. Waves have gnawed at the cliffs, and the path is barely wide enough to put one foot beside the other. Had it deteriorated even since my last visit? How much longer would it be here at all?

* * *

-

* * *

On that day the path seemed especially precarious, the painted pilasters even more weathered. Pierrette remembered black and vermilion, now weathered away. A silver bell rested in a niche. She rang to let Anselm know he had a visitor. Once she had just gone in, and had startled him atop the parapet. He had almost fallen.

"Ah, child," Anselm said. "Have you come for another lesson?"

"The castellan wants Marie!" she blurted. "Tomorrow she'll marry Bertrand and my father has sold her maidenhead to the Burgundian for a sack of silver and P'er Otho says he can do nothing and Jerome has turned into a devil and . . ."

"Slow down, girl. One thing at a time. Let us broach a bottle of cool wine, and sit in the sun atop the keep." She followed him. A narrow stone stairway wrapped itself around three walls of the small entryway, with landings at the corners, and doors that led to the further rooms. Just below the topmost level, she glanced into the room beyond. There! The forbidden books. She did not hesitate, or give the mage any idea of her budding plan.

From the shade of the parapet the magus drew earthen cups and wine. Had he seen her coming? She could see the roofs of Citharista, and the brilliant blue of the calanque, but the trail was hidden in trees. Magic? If Anselm had known she was coming, did he know what she planned? She still had to try. She told him everything—the Burgundian's lust, her father's betrayal of Marie, and the priest's indifference. Perhaps if he offered a solution to Marie's dilemma, she would not have to betray him.

Anselm nodded, jiggling the white curls that ringed his head. "If the castellan were here, I might dissuade him. But beyond the portal, I'm helpless. My magics don't work."

"Is there anything?"

"There's so much I would do, if the rules allowed. Let me tell you how it was . . ."

Pierrette had heard some of his tale. She knew she was about to hear more. Each telling lent insight or birthed new speculations. She was desperate, but the old mage would not be rushed. She forced herself to listen while he talked of ancient days, and poured more wine into his cup. That was part of her stratagem.

Anselm had not always been known by that name, he said, but the one his mother had given him sounded odd. He had changed when he was trapped in this savage land.

"I was arrogant, full of the wonders of my master's kingdom, trained in magic, but not common sense. The Isles had been moved many times since the great catastrophe that had freed them from time's erosion, thirteen centuries before my birth, and I don't know just where they were, not long after the crucifixion of the Christians' Jesus . . .

* * *

Rich tones of a sounding brass wrapped around the palace's vermilion and black columns. Ansulim knelt with his brother initiates in the presence of the Bull, their faces against the hard stone.

Had Ansulim dared look up, he would have seen Minho, priest of the bull-god, wrapped in the spotted cape, his human face hidden beneath the great helm of the Bull—the Bull of Minos, Minotauros. The master's voice echoed hollowly, amplified by tubes and chambers within the mask. Mask, cape, and ringing brass were not for boys like Ansulim. They had attained their twentieth year, and had worn the god's likeness themselves. The symbols were for the folk gathered at a distance, awed by the manifestations of Minho's wisdom, not knowing the wisdom itself.

* * *

When Anselm reached for his cup, Pierrette dutifully filled it. "You say Minho was—is—kind," she remarked, "and that his disagreement with the king at Knossos began over cruel taxes and sacrifices. Yet the result of his spell was still more suffering."

"It would have happened anyway." Anselm set his cup on the parapet, and she filled it, though it was but half emptied.

"I don't understand."

"The earth's might cannot be denied. Thera had been formed from fires beneath the land. Had Minho not acted, they would have burst forth anyway. The same ash would have fallen. The folk of Thera would have disappeared anyway—burned to foul steam in the catastrophe. Minho's spell saved the isles from that fate."

"Where did they go?" she asked. "And where are they now?"

"That is two questions," said Anselm, once Ansulim of Thera. "And there are two answers . . ."

* * *

Ansulim felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up . . . into the golden eyes of the bull. "I have a task for you," said the hollow voice. "Follow me."

Trepidation warred with pride. He alone had been called. Within the palace, blue dolphins sported on stylized waves, the painted sea a wainscot on plastered stone walls. Ansulim's eyes absorbed the splendor.

"Lift this from my shoulders," said Minho, ruler of Thera. Ansulim leaped to take the bull's head. "Now sit. Listen.

"You know the Jew called the Hermit?" Ansulim nodded. The Hermit had been a follower of the prophet Jesus. Following the holy man's death or transfiguration, he had sprung from obscurity to influence among the disciples. He had not witnessed the multiplication of loaves and fishes, the healing of Cedonius's blindness, or the raising of Jesus' friend Lazarus from the dead. His talent came to the fore after Jesus departed: he was a planner and organizer with contacts in Rome, Damascus, and caravan towns on the route to the East.

The nascent Church was scattered across the Roman empire. Years passed between visits by those who had sat at Jesus' feet. Confusions arose. "Jesus was the son of a carpenter, a carpenter himself," one Christian might say. "This hammer is sacred to him." Confusion could lead to grievous error. Hammers were hammers; there was no physical symbol of Christian worship. The Cross, representing both sacrifice and resurrection, was not revered until later.

The Hermit was a scribe. He wrote letters to erring communities, extolling the simple virtues of Jesus.

Among the Jews of the diaspora men called apostoli collected money for support of the Faith. Their visits were not always welcome, for few Jews felt themselves wealthy. The apostoli were thus hard men who did not take "no" for an answer. "We Christians can learn from the apostoli," the Hermit said.

"We don't need money," said one disciple. "The Master taught that what we needed would come in our time of need. We had a money-man once, and look what happened."

"This is not the old days," said the Hermit. "We are scattered the breadth of the empire. I envision a new kind of apostoli to guide our far-flung believers." Those disciples agreed that something was needed, but there was no central authority. Each followed the mission of Jesus in his own way.

Minho spoke: "I dreamed that in a hundred years the emperor himself would bow before the Hermit's priest-apostles. That was a nightmare.

"I dreamed next of carpenter-priests in Galatia who wielded hammers of gold, and shepherd-priests in Iberia who bore crooks decorated with crimson silk. I foresaw fisherman-priests in Ionia, and winebibbing charlatans in Gaul. I dreamed of the Christians fragmented, nothing in common except their Book—and that soon rewritten, retranslated, until each sect had its own. There was no Hermit in those visions. They were the ones I preferred."

"I don't understand, Master."

"I believed that without the Hermit, that last dream would transpire. As for why—we exist here only as long as folk outside believe, but Christians deny my magic. They name me sorcerer, in league with demons." He snorted. "Demons! Superstitious nonsense. . . . But they believe in demons, so demons there will be. I do not wish to live in a world with demons, so I tempted the Hermit, and had him brought here. Do you know what happened then?"

"What the Hermit would have done, the Apostle Paul did instead."

"Saul of Tarsus, Paul, was a nobody. He had not known Jesus, yet he united the Christians. Where he did not go in person, he sent letters . . ."

Ansulim nodded. Saul of Tarsus had been an enemy of the early Church, until he was converted—by a miracle, some said—on the road to Damascus. The bright, shiny threads of his words and letters had created a Church of tighter weave than anything the Hermit had envisioned, a tapestry in which the dark warp, the words of the Nazarene, were obscured by the brilliant weft he threw over them.

Warned by his dream, Minho removed the Hermit from the world of time, but what then transpired was even more damaging to the sorcerer-king's cause.

* * *

"So there you have it," said Anselm. "Saul of Tarsus was my mission. I was to draw him to the Fortunate Isles before martyrdom put the final fringe on his weaving. Had I succeeded—or so Minho believed—the entire fabric of his Church would have unravelled. I encouraged new thinking, new rituals and dissensions, but I failed in Corinth, in Thessalonika, in Galatia, Iberia, and Rome. The weave of Jesus and Paul was too sturdy, and my pickings and snippings were repaired, adding new strength and texture.

"And where am I now? Here on this forlorn cape, unable to find my way home to report my failure. I can't even beg Minho to free me to marry, sire children, and then die in good time."

Pierrette filled the mage's cup. "I'm sorry for you—but still, through this tale, you're saying `No, I won't help save Marie from the castellan's lust.' "

"How can I?" Anselm muttered, slurring his words. "I don't trust myself to utter words of change, for fear I'll create further turmoil."

"I understand," said Pierrette.

"Do you?" he replied. "Do you understand that I fear to disturb the fabric of things because the bubble of timelessness that surrounds this place could be pricked? You aren't asking for a simple manipulation, like stirring anxiety in the soul of an avaricious Greek to save your precious beech trees. I can't fight gods and demons."

"I understand, Master," Pierrette sighed. "Here, let me fill your cup."

* * *

Pierrette tucked a cushion under the mage's head. She draped a corner of his robe to shade his eyes. A guttural snore rattled in the back of his throat.

She tiptoed to the doorway, and snapped the lamp wick into flame with a spark from her fingertip, hardly having to think the words of the spell, let alone voice them. She descended the first staircase, then stopped to listen. When he snored too loudly, his roars startled him awake—but not now.

She had memorized the location of every tome and scroll on those shelves without touching one of them, afraid that the mage might have set a spell to warn him if she broke her promise.

Now that did not matter. If she failed to find a workable spell and to "repair" it, he would be angry about her meddling, and would probably ban her from the Eagle's Beak—but if she failed, she suspected he would not last much longer. She herself might not survive. How near was the Black Time? How powerful was the Eater of Gods?

She lifted a scroll and unrolled it, weighting it with polished onyx blocks. Anselm would not sleep in the hot sun for more than an hour, yet she dared not rush: the crabbed entries were written in Minoan characters; the ink had faded even as the parchment had darkened; it would be easy to miss what she sought.

She skipped over complex spells. The one she sought would be short and simple, not so powerful that it would disrupt the fabric of things if she got it wrong.

She did not find it on that first scroll or the fifth. Halfway through the eighth, she was successful. It was only seven lines entitled "Sweet Earth from Sour"—but she sensed that the principle it embodied lay at the root of powerful phenomena: it was a fertility spell.

The characters were Mycenaean, representing not vowels and consonants, but syllables. The words were not Minoan, but something was strangely familiar, when she muttered them aloud.

She repeated the first two lines over and over, not daring to pronounce the spell in its entirety. "Ma-ta-ro re-ka no-so-yo . . ." The language was her mother's, her ancestors'! "Matr' reka nosyo," she pronounced. "Matrosyo mykos." Mother who judges, mother of mushrooms. The words were truncated and distorted because Mycenaean characters could not express the sounds exactly. Even the scribes of Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Achilleus and Odysseus, had been forced to spell "Knossos" as "Ko-no-so." But once Pierrette knew she was reading known words, it was not hard.

She continued. "Ma-ta-ro-so-yo ma-e-do." That was Matrosyo maedoum—"Mother of strong drink." Mother of . . . of confusion? Of fermentation? Of course—the change from honey to mead, from waste to rich soil. Mother of mushrooms, mother of . . . compost.

Why had speakers of the ancient tongue written the spell in such clumsy characters? Because they had none of their own?

The last two lines were "Pa-qwo do-no e-na-pa-ne-te-ya and Ma-ta-ro-so-yo pa-qwo." Pa-qwo? Bhago, the beech tree. Bhagos dono infantia, matrosyo bhago. The incantation, in its entirety, was: "Mother who judges us, mother of mushrooms, mother of mead, beech tree's children, mother of beech trees."

The simple, wholesome prayer seemed clear: first an address to Ma, who gives life to the soil; then a gentle reminder that she was the giver of fruits, the mother of trees. Ancient words that did not beg the goddess or command her, but set one image after another in the hope that she would understand what was needed, and would give it freely. The spell was all postulates, with only an implied conclusion.

Yet Anselm had marked the spell as dangerous. How could that be? He would not sleep forever. She had to figure it out. What had the ancient sorcerer presumed that was no longer true?

The part of the scroll where the spell was written was darker than the sections above and below, the ink more faded. Had the scroll lain open to this exact spell long enough for light and air to affect it? How long had Anselm pored over it? Hours? Days?

That was a clue. She was the mage's student, and thus might be expected to think enough like him that when they considered a single problem—the erratic working of magic—they might gravitate to similar sources. And if Anselm had studied this spell . . .

She rushed to the forbidden shelf, and lowered a heavy bound volume: Anselm's notes. A flurry of dust motes filled the air. How strange. How could dust gather where time stood still? She flipped through pages of dense Minoan interspersed with Latin and Greek. The notes represented years of work. How could she find what she wanted in the time left?

She had to assume that she thought enough like her mentor that he would also have come upon the spell early on, near the beginning of his work—and of the book. She looked for key words—soil, rot, and fertility.

There! "The spell does nothing!" he had written. "I observed no change in the sour soil. I will get back to this when I have bathed and changed undergarments. The itch I contracted from these dusty experiments is affecting my concentration."

Below, he had appended a copy of the spell in the Roman alphabet, seemingly from a later scroll.

 

NETROS REX NOSIO
NETROSIO MIKOS
NETROSIO MEDEOM
BAGOS DONO INFANTIO
NETROSIO BAGO.

 

That was all wrong. Matr' was "mother." Netros meant "snake." And reka, "she who judges," was misinterpreted as rex, "king." The whole spell was rendered meaningless . . . Or was it?

The Latin abruptly took on sinister meaning. Think not of the gentle mother, mediator and judge, but of the Gauls' Taranis, a thunder-wielder with the lower body of a snake. With a snake between his legs. Think not of a sweet, white mushroom for soup, but of red amanitas that erupt after rain like erect penises—like the member of Cernunnos/Satan. Amanitas, that drive men to fatal, erotic madness.

Snake and mushroom, the banes of women who fall asleep in the woods and find themselves with child—the trees themselves great wooden stiffnesses—NETROS BAGOS, wooden snakes . . .

She understood. As language, perception, and religion had changed, someone had substituted "na" for indecipherable "Matr'," or Ma. "Judge" became "king." Furthering the confusion, "Netr" was "king" in Egyptian while "ma" was represented by a hieroglyphic sword, and meant "to destroy."

The new spell—no longer a prayer—had three postulates and a conclusion. Still a fertility ritual, it commanded a male god and the male member. Manly madness. No wonder it had made poor Anselm itch.

But dangerous? She studied both versions, prayer and spell. When she saw it, she laughed—a crone's cackle, not the musical ripple of a young girl's delight.

The unwritten postulate was that serpents, male organs, and mushrooms functioned similarly. Anselm's reference to undergarments informed her of the locus of his particular itch. Had she been male, it might have affected her too.

What god did the spell entreat? What had happened to him? She remembered Cernunnos, his eyes glaring with fire that consumed from within. Had this god too been . . . eaten? Were the last lines of the spell now directed to a different power?

She wrote the spell again, changing a word in line one, and another in line five. Now it would work—though differently.

She folded her page. From a storeroom she took powdered mushroom from a clay jar. She glanced up the stairs. Something seemed odd about the light that diffused down to the landing, but she had no time to think about it.

Hurrying down the rough trail, she snatched a pinch of dry soil and a sprig of a succulent herb: earth and the life that sprang from it. She was driven by an undefined sense that something was wrong.

Nearing the Burgundian's residence, her sense of wrongness intensified. She felt displaced, as if this were not the Citharista she had grown up in but some almost-identical duplicate in which cobblestones, differently placed, made her stumble where ordinarily she would have unconsciously avoided them. Yet she herself, not Citharista, was out of step.

She approached Jerome's gate, and heard the castellan's voice raised in anger. Close against a chalky limestone wall, she peered around the corner.

Jerome was berating his soldiers for something. It was as good an opportunity as she would get. He was in view; the materials for her spell were ready. She whispered the first line. As she spoke the second line she sprinkled dry earth, and throughout the third and fourth crushed the succulent sprig and rubbed it with dirt and mushroom spores until it formed a dark ball. She broke it into crumbles, then scattered it before her feet.

Her breath caught in her throat as she uttered the final line, and she had to begin again. Ugly words rasped across her tongue like coarse sand, and the name of the god she commanded was not some forgotten deity, but was . . . Baal-zebab, Moloch, Satan. Pagan god or demon, usurper or master, it was too late to draw back the hideous names.

The knight did not collapse nor cry out in agony. Had she failed? The rebukes he heaped upon his soldiers did not change in tone or content as he scratched idly at his crotch.

Pierrette's shoulders slumped. Had it been for nothing? Had she overlooked some key element of change? Her tongue felt coated with foulness, and smeared dirt on her palms itched as it dried. Jerome turned on his heel and disappeared.

* * *

Gilles's house seemed strangely altered too, though Pierrette could not say why. She mounted the stairs cautiously, unsure of the origins of her feelings. The door was latched from the inside, and she had to knock.

Not Gilles, but Father Otho, opened it. "Pierrette." He closed and latched the door after her.

"Where have you been?" her father whispered angrily.

"I went for a walk," she replied. "I haven't been gone long."

"A day and a night and a day? That's not long?"

His face reddened, and Father Otho put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Hush—remember Marie!"

Two days? Of course it seemed like that to Pierrette, but she was used to the timelessness of the Eagle's Beak.

Then with a terrifying rush, the small oddnesses she had seen and felt all came back to her: the faded crumbling paint on the gate pilasters, dust on the books in the library—and not least, her own sense of displacement as she walked through the town. Anselm's spell of timelessness had failed. And that meant . . .

"Marie? What happened?" she blurted. If she had been gone two days, then today was the day after the wedding.

"Come," Otho said softly. "I'll take you to her. Perhaps your presence will have some good effect." He took her arm.

Marie lay on father's bed. She still wore the glorious wedding dress, but the hem was brown with dust, and the fabric was blotched, as if she had fallen. Her bare knee was exposed by a rent in the skirt.

Her eyes were open, but she stared fixedly at the wall, where Pierrette saw nothing but plastered stone.

"Dear sister," she murmured, dropping to her knees. Marie's hand was cold and stiff. Pierrette recoiled.

"She's not dead," Otho said. "Look—her chest rises and falls. She blinks once in a while, too."

Again Pierrette lifted her hand. It remained raised when she let go, then slowly lowered itself to the bed, like a candle sagging in hot sunlight. "Oh, Marie, what's wrong?" She turned accusing eyes on Father Otho.

"She seemed resigned. I performed the rite, not knowing the hidden depth of her distress. Afterward, the knight led her away. She was smiling, so I thought . . ."

"That she had resigned herself to whoredom?" Pierrette spat the words angrily, without a care that she might disturb Marie—who was beyond mundane concerns.

The Greek physician Galen had written of "a quiet madness of women," stating two possible outcomes: that the patient recovered, retaining no memory of events leading to her deathlike condition, or that the waxy semblance of death continued until the victim wasted away and died of starvation and thirst.

What else had Galen written? She berated herself for having skipped blithely over words now vitally important for Marie.

"She must be removed from here," she said at last. "Perhaps in a place where nothing she sees reminds her of what has transpired, she'll decide that it's safe to return to this world."

Otho eyed her strangely, because her words were at odds with her appearance: a slight child, wavering between girlish- and boyishness. His eyes focused on her tightly drawn, delicate face, and then on her boy's garb. Perhaps he reacted because she spoke as if she understood Marie's condition in a way he could not.

Where could Marie be taken that would not remind her? Every wall and stone in Citharista would evoke images that eventually led, by whatever circuitous path, to the moment when she had withdrawn her consciousness.

At last, Otho spoke. "The convent in Massalia," he said. "The nuns can spare someone to feed her and . . . and change her undergarments."

As he said that, Pierrette became aware of the stink. "Bring warm water and cloths," she said to Gilles. To Otho she said, "Find a cart and an ass. We must leave as soon as possible." He nodded, not questioning her authoritative tone at all, and left the house. Gilles brought tepid water and rags, then backed away from Pierrette's glare.

What little she knew about rape had been written by men, who dismissed it as inconsequential. She could not imagine it without injury—but Marie showed no bruises, no scratches, only deathlike repose.

"You withdrew to your deep refuge before anything happened, didn't you?" she murmured. "Where are you now, sister? Will you come back? Will I hear you laugh again?" Bathing Marie and struggling to remove the torn, stained dress, she continued to talk, though Marie did not respond.

She bundled the dress and laid it on the embers of the fire Gilles had made to heat water. He stirred as if to protest—then thought better of it. The old cloth smoked briefly, then burst into flame. In hardly any time it was consumed, and only fluffy ash remained. Had Pierrette's subvocal incantation sped the fire's course and encouraged the completeness of its consumption? The flames had perhaps been unnaturally bright, but Gilles's eyes and hers had been blurred by tears. Perhaps his had been tears of regret, seeing the dress burned—the same dress his wife, mother, and grandmother had been wed in. Perhaps they were tears of guilt for his inaction, that had led to the burning.

* * *

The carter Augustus, whom the villagers called Gustave, refused to leave before dawn, afraid of spending one more night than necessary on the high trail to Massalia. The valley road, with remnants of the Romans' limestone paving, was less steep, but farmers became brigands when they saw strange faces, and though he feared the ghosts of the dragons who had left their bones in high places, he feared robbers more.

Pierrette slept on her pallet. Gilles made do with a coverlet by the hearth. Once Marie cried out, a wordless keening. Pierrette climbed on the bed and held her as she writhed and moaned in some terrifying internal battle. Her eyes darted about, seeing things Pierrette could not.

When the shaking ended, she was as before—skin cold as tallow, body stiff. Pierrette had to pull her eyelids closed as if she were dead, but they fluttered as if in true sleep.

In the morning, Gustave arrived with a clatter of iron-tied wheels and the bawling of his donkey. Marie got up by herself, walking hesitantly as if blind, yet without stumbling. She stared straight ahead, even on the steep stairway.

She climbed into the cart. "She's getting better," Gilles stated. Pierrette scowled, but hid her expression from her father. "Perhaps by the time we reach the edge of town, she'll speak, and bid us turn around." He, no less than Gustave, dreaded the journey ahead, and grasped any sign of improvement hopefully. Yet had Gilles not been "cautious" he might have suggested that he and Pierrette take Marie to Massalia in his boat—braving that tortuous coast to get his daughter there sooner.

Pierrette knew Gilles's rationalizations for what they were—and she knew Marie had not taken one step toward recovery. Once seated, she made no attempt to pull her shift down over her thighs, or to keep the folded blanket between the hard planks of the cart and her buttocks. Something within had commanded her steps from bed to cart, but withdrew when no longer needed, leaving her unwanted body unprotected against slivers, grit, and the jolts of the cart as it rolled over rough cobbles and unpaved streets.

* * *

As they passed the soldiers' practice field, someone at Jerome's gate cried out, and Gustave halted the cart. The knight himself approached, waving an unsheathed sword and shouting. He was clad in a nightshirt that fluttered about his bony knees. Pierrette cringed, remembering the last time she had seen those hairy legs.

Otho sprang between Jerome and Marie. "A pox!" the knight howled. "The dog's brood gave me a pox!" Otho wrested the sword from his hand. "She has unmanned me!" Jerome wailed. His garment was stained with blood and other fluids. "This is what she has done!" he cried, pulling the hem of his nightshift up. Pierrette covered her eyes, but not before she saw his swollen member and the fat, wet boils that covered him from navel to mid-thigh.

She did not hear P'er Otho's words, but when she peered between her fingers, the priest was leading the stricken knight away.

Cold bumps sprang up on her skin. The spell had worked. It had produced just what she had intended—yet she was not elated by her success, because it had come far too late for Marie. Perhaps later she would contemplate the transposition that linked snake and mushroom, that caused Jerome's poor useless member to appear not as the red prong of a horned beast but as the white-flecked, poisonous red amanita mushroom instead.

Perhaps someday she would write in her journal her discovery of why the spell had changed in the first place, as spellsayers themselves grew in understanding that fertility was not wholly the province of females, but of the snake, the male, as well.

* * *

Otho drew Pierrette aside, and they spoke heatedly for several minutes before returning within earshot of the others. "I must stay," he said to Gilles, "but here is a letter to the abbot in Massalia. I hope he'll recommend that Marie be taken in until she is healed."

"If she heals," Pierrette said silently. Gustave lashed the ass with his long cane, and soon Father Otho was out of sight. Pierrette held her sister as the cart jounced and clattered over the cobbles, then onto the softer gravel and grass of the road leading upward and away.

When they reached a branching trail, Pierrette leaped from the slow-moving cart. "You go ahead," she told her father. "I'll catch up tonight." Gilles did not protest, and Gustave did not care. The donkey snorted, as if to say "good riddance." One less human meant one less he had to keep a perennially suspicious eye upon, and a lightened load as well.

It felt good to be away from brooding Gilles and silent Marie, though she dreaded what she might find, if Anselm's spell had failed completely. Would she find only dry, old bones in his bed? She could not help but suspect that her attempt at magic had caused the time-binding spell to go awry. She was half-convinced that Marie's condition was her fault too.

She scrambled up the final leg of the trail to Anselm's door. The vermilion and black paint-flecks were there. Actually, she could see pigment even where the stone had always been bleached white. Despite that optimistic sign, she picked up the handbell with great trepidation. What if Anselm did not answer?

"Ah, child," he said cheerily, swinging the door wide. "It seems like only minutes ago we were drinking wine and I was telling you of—"

"Master! You look . . . different." She stared. Having experienced negative change in Citharista, she was in no mood to anticipate that some change could be positive—but the dark strands in Anselm's once-white beard could not be interpreted otherwise. "Won't you use up your magic, making yourself look younger like that?" Deep lines in his face had smoothed, and the tip of his nose seemed less red.

"Do I look younger? I feel it. I have no idea why, but I woke up without an ache. Do you know how long it's been since I couldn't find a sore spot?"

Had her spell something to do with it? How could that be? But if Anselm were well, she could hurry to catch the travelling party. "What's your hurry?" the mage asked her. "Rest first."

"Then the time-binding spell is not awry?" she asked.

"Why should it be? See for yourself. The sun is at high noon, as always." And so it was. Seeing her delight at what should have been of no consequence, the mage became suspicious. Before long, he had the whole story, and he put her fears to rest.

"Marie's curse lies within her own mind," he said confidently. "It is not magical, but escape from something unbearable. She'll hopefully—with time and peaceful surroundings—recover entirely."

He shook his head then. "As for your purloined spell . . . I feel no pity for the knight. He deserves what he got." Then he scowled. His moods changed so fast that Pierrette couldn't keep up. "Satan? You took a great risk, uttering that Christian deity's name. I haven't met him, but he seems to be doing all too well for himself. You must promise not to do that again."

That was not hard to promise. "But he's not a god, Master. There's only one Christian God."

"Is that so? You could have fooled me. Don't people avoid dark places and graveyards for fear of him? Just because smart ones don't pray to him doesn't make him less a god. Since Christians insist their God is entirely good, they needed somewhere to put the evil—and that is their other god."

Pierrette, who had heard Father Otho's explanations, was sure there was some distinction she was missing, but she could not explain it.

* * *

After a long "night's" sleep and a meal of crusty bread, cheese, and juicy figs, Anselm accompanied her down the stairs, carrying a cloth-wrapped package. He had thrown a black woolen cloak over his shoulders, and wore the kilt that was longer in back than in front. His sandals were so new they squeaked. "I'll walk a way," he said. "I have too much vigor to be contained."

"Is that wise, Master? If your strength fades as you get farther away from this place . . ."

"It may. Yet something has changed, and I wish to test the limits of my confinement." He smiled indulgently. "Besides, I may be able to contribute to your sister's welfare, now that your meddlesome priest is not around to watch."

* * *

At that moment, Father Otho was thinking of the mage also—if there was any way to define "that" moment which, for the mage and Pierrette, stretched on forever in the world outside. Perhaps the moment did not occur until Anselm stepped outside his gate into Otho's world.

Strange things had occurred. Not just Marie's ailment or Jerome's—though the knight's pox defied remedy. It was no ordinary pox; it was far too horrible.

Did the hermit mage have something to do with it? Once a week, sometimes twice, Pierrette walked to the cape, yet never lingered. He had been curious.

He spoke with an old woman. "We bring the old fellow bread and fruit in exchange for powders an' such—things hard to find hereabouts." She smiled, as if a priest had no need to know what "and such" was. "Always at noon, too. He never opens his gate any other time." In all her years, the old man never aged a day.

Pierrette never took a lunch or drink, yet never returned hungry or thirsty. Otho reached conclusions of his own. She did not go there for nothing. She had learned things far beyond his ability to teach, which took time. Much time. And the old women had been welcome only at noon. What would they have noticed if they had been allowed to stay? That it was always noon there? Otho's conviction came slowly, but was all the more firm for that.

What other magic did the old man practice? Otho should have written to his superiors in Aquae Sextiae or even to the archbishop, but he had no evidence of evil—no evidence of anything except that the old man had been there as long as living memory, and perhaps longer.

Jerome's pox put things in a different light. New red swellings appeared, spotted with pustules, as soon as old ones scabbed and healed. Jerome's agony continued. Otho drew two conclusions: primus, that the lore the old mage taught was not innocuous, for Pierrette had surely caused the pox; secondus, that she had not ensorcelled Jerome to prevent his taking Marie, but only afterward, as revenge. That was evil.

He had begged her to exercise Christian charity—even her pagan mother would not have objected. She said only, "The pox is not mine. It belongs to one of yours—to Satan." Otho still shuddered at the conviction behind her words. "You Christians created him by pouring all the oil but a drop into one jar. Pour half back, and Jerome's boils will dry up." What had she meant? Otho did not then remember his own poor explication of Good and Evil, when he had poured oil between two jars.

* * *

-

* * *

Pierrette's Journal

Otho was wrong; the lapse of Anselm's time-binding, and my failure to recognize it, caused me to cast the spell too late. Only later did I clear myself in his eyes. Only later did I realize also the effect his speculations had upon the reality I inhabit: his reasoned belief in Anselm's sorceries rejuvenated my mentor at the very time when his continued existence was in doubt. The unquestioning belief of a lesser person than a priest, unsupported by doubts and skepticism overcome, would not have turned the ebbing tide.
But that was before I had begun defining the changing nature of magic, my life's work, and I did not know why Anselm suddenly felt strong enough to leave his fortress and accompany me. My experiences on that voyage to Massalia set the stage for that realization, and others . . .

 

 

 

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