One of my first hints of the nature of the Black Time was that in the vicinity of salt mills, spells failed. Later, I formulated the "Law of Locks," that states that machines of all sorts bend reality in direct proportion to the product of their complexity and mass. But machines are not the only works of man that shape the supernatural. I should have figured that out much sooner. All the evidence had been long in front of me.
The road from Massilia to Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum had been a trail between villages in 600 B.C., when the Greek traders established their emporium. It rapidly became a cart track as far as Entremont, then a gravel road. The via principalis that bisected the Roman camp, later Aquae Sextiae, was a segment of it. A generation after Calvinus's victory over the Gauls, it was paved with stone. Centuries of use had worn ruts in the Roman slabs and rounded their once smooth-fitting edges, but the road was far from worn out, and its influence upon the land was undiminished, as Pierrette would soon discover.
Seven miles beyond Massalia's north gate was a village called "The Seventh," after the milestone in the town square, an impressive square pillar that listed designer, architect, and the consul who had financed the roadactually who had financed the stone surfacing, a few culverts, and a causeway where the old road had skirted a marshbut the Romans had never been averse to taking entire credit for work they had merely put the finish on.
The first seven miles were the easy ones. Pierrette and ibn Saul strode ahead, engaged in their plans, and Lovi trudged behind in the company of an inarticulate donkey, his scowl deepening every mile. Was the boy Piers the apprentice, and he relegated permanently to this menial role?
The day was sunny, the clouds few and white, the sky intensely blue. The air was dry and cool, and walking a pleasure. But Pierrette's eyes crept often to the shadows of rocks and brush, as if sinister creatures lurked within them. She observed southbound travellers with an eye to the details of their clothing and demeanor: that carter's faded cloakwas it once a Celtic plaid? Was that glitter a priest's bronze pectoral, or the gold of a Gaulish torque?
But everything seemed normal. By the time they reached Milles, "The Thousand," a village whose name meant simply "milestone," they were only three miles from Aquae Sextiae, and there was no trace of the changes she had felt, seen, and experienced on her last attempt to reach the city. That should have been reassuring, but it was not entirely so: either the destruction of the fantômes of Heraclea had weakened the Gaulish "invasion," or the presence of skeptical ibn Saul suppressed its manifestations, or she was as delusional as the scholar suspected. There was no way to tell.
Beyond Milles were stands of old forest, orchards, and small fields on relatively flat ground. "Let's rest in the shade," suggested ibn Saul. "Better still, let's camp for the night, and approach the gates of Aquae Sextiae at dawn."
When they had gathered a meager heap of firewood and a few pats of cattle dung, Pierrette lit tinder with subvocalized words and a wave of her finger.
"Someday I'll figure out how you do that," the scholar said.
"I hope not," Pierrette rejoined. Of course he took that to mean she didn't want him to discover the trick behind itbut there was none, and if he found the truth, he wouldn't believe it. If he "explained it away," then wrote his explanation, the spell would no longer work. Given enough men like him, no magics would work, as long as their writings survived.
That reflection did nothing to ease Pierrette's troubled mind, because the failure of all magics meant the arrival of the Black Time, when everything was hard and mechanical. Her success could only be reached by one narrow, twisting path, but several great roads led to that dark Beginning and End. . . .
Ibn Saul seemed beset by uneasiness of his own, and Lovi as well. Though hours remained until dusk, they crowded close by the fire. "What's that?" Lovi whispered, eyeing the shadows beneath scrubby trees. "Something's watching us." For once, ibn Saul did not laugh at him.
Pierrette felt it tooas if the trees themselves had eyes, and dark, brooding spirits within. It was not an unfamiliar sensation. She eyed her companions, almost expecting to see an ornately convoluted Gaulish fibula where Lovi's simple cloak pin pierced his garment. . . .
She got up. The road, fifty paces away, was indistinct . . . almost as if it were not Roman stone, but a Gaulish cart track once more . . . but no. There were the worn slabs, only concealed by the grass on the verge. The uneasy sensations faded as she stepped out on them, solidly grounded in their long centuries of existence.
"Let's move our camp nearer the road," she said shortly later, picking up their firewood. "No telling what thieves might creep up on us, here."
Both her companions scrambled to comply. Lovi dragged the donkey's wicker panniers, and ibn Saul raked coals and smoldering dung into their single pot, then rebuilt the fire at their new campsite. "This is much better," he said, squatting.
It was, but only Pierrette knew why. The fantômes were not gone. The encroachment of that other history, begun long ago, had not ceased. Only the road, written in a different reality, resisted the change. Only the heavy permanence of stones cut by Roman hands, worn down by Roman feet and wheels, endured. Beyond it, in the magical shadows of ancient trees, there was nothing to anchor them to that comfortable existence.
It was a long and uncomfortable night, and no one slept well. Pierrette lay awake, pondering the nature of roads. She pictured the land as a fisherman's net. The great roads, like the Via Tiberia, that stretched across Provence from Iberia all the way to Roma, were the main strands, and the tracks and trails the finer reticulations.
That gave her an idea. She got up, and stepped toward the road. "Where are you going?" Lovi muttered.
"I thought I heard someone coming," she lied. She muttered her firemaking spell, but the dry tinder remained unlit. Of course. Roads, locks, and salt mills bound the elements in one form: earth remained earth, air air, and water wetand none could be transmuted into . . . fire. Like mountain divides and rivers, well-made roads fixed the nature of things as they were. Unlike their natural counterparts though, roads were built and it was the builders' reality they supported.
She felt better. She had resented being forced to leave her studies in Anselm's keep, on a hopeless mission. She had thought the answers to her questions, true mastery of her profession, would be found in her mentor's books, scrolls, and maps. But she had seen the maps, the fine lines of roads, and had overlooked what they meant. Ma had been right. The answers lay not in the books but in what they portrayed.
It was a long night indeed, but her racing mind saw her through it. By sunrise, she felt as alert as if she had slept.
"What are you writing?" Pierrette asked the scholar.
"I'm saying what a miserable night I had. You want me to write everything, don't you? I saw no Gaulish ghosts, no capering horned forest gods or apparitions, but even among the savage Wends I never spent a worse night. Perhaps there's something to what you told me."
"There is," she agreed. "And it's important for you not to stray far from the road and from other great works of man unless you want to discover more of it than you wish to." For once, the ordinarily skeptical ibn Saul did not raise an eyebrow or smile condescendingly at her innocent superstition.
Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum. The locals called it "Aix," contracting the three words into one syllable. It was indeed a magnificent place, though smaller than Massalia. They entered via the south gate into a street lined with fine, tall stone houses that stood shoulder to shoulder, their doors and shutters gaily painted, the cobbles swept clean.
"This way," ibn Saul said, picking a narrow street leading northward. "Once these avenues were straight, but there's hardly a trace of the Roman camp's layout now. But ahead, by the basilica and baths, the old via praetoria hasn't been built over."
In the forecourt of the cathedral stood a fountain. Pierrette rushed forward to drink. "It's hot!" she exclaimed.
Lovi laughed. "Now you know why they built the town here: hot baths for even the poorest servant." But the fountain was not a bath. Pierrette glanced around herself.
"This way," the scholar said again, taking a narrow street Pierrette had thought was someone's doorway.
The Roman baths might have been magnificent, before dozens of houses had been built right up against them. Now the fine old marble walls were hidden behind other buildings, probably plastered over. Only a patch of dull veined stone was exposed, at both sides of a pair of wide oaken doors. They tied the donkey to a stone post, under the watchful eye of the bath's doorkeeper, whom ibn Saul paid a small coin.
Inside, though . . . the curving limbs of a vast, barrel-vaulted ceiling disappeared in darkness that flickering oil lamps could not dispel. Their voices echoed in the towering emptiness. Fat, polished columns streaked with rich red crystalsporphyry, ibn Saul saidmarched in long rows, and where they ended, daylight glowed. Separate bathing chambers lay behind doors in the shadowy recesses between columns.
Ibn Saul brushed off a solicitous attendant, slipping him a copper. "The old sanctuary stands in the courtyard ahead," he said.
Several steps led down to the court, which was well below the level of the building and the streets outside. "I suspect this was the original ground level," he said. "The present town is built on the rubble of generations past."
The Gaulish temple had been designed, Pierrette decided, by Etruscans. Originally it had been simply a roof supported on six square columns, but subsequently those bays had been infilled with rougher stonework, perhaps to provide privacy that the original Roman bathers had not required. The end nearest them had a heavy door.
Pierrette scuffed her feet. That pavement was not sandstone, but bedrock, the oldest floor of allthe earth itself. That, more than anything, convinced her that the shrine built on it was indeed ancient.
"There is an identical door at the other end," said ibn Saul. Pierrette walked around the little building, no larger than five by ten paces.
This, she decided, was perfect. "Now you must catch up on your writing," she said. "The accountboth copiesmust be complete right up to the moment I go inside." The scholar sat on the steps up to the more recent baths, and spread fresh vellum on his writing-board. He scratched rapidly, eager to find out what would happen next or eager to win their wager, and prove her to be mad.
Pierrette pushed the heavy door open. "Are we ready?"
"Lovi is watching the other door, so you can't sneak out," ibn Saul confirmed. "Here is your copy, which, like mine, is up to this moment. Only the door closing after you has not been written."
Pierrette took the sheaf of documents and rolled them. "Good-bye then." She stepped into the fane, and pulled the door shut.
"Lovi?"
"I'm here, master. I'm watching the door. Has Piers gone in?"
"He has."
"How long must we wait here? I'm hungry."
"I agreed to wait before opening either door. Then, if Piers isn't there, we'll wait a month to see if he returns. Now be silent. I wouldn't want him to argue that his magic failed because your complaining distracted him, when it's time to pay off."
Inside the small fane, Pierrette heard their words. But now both were silent. Enough light crept in under the door to see that there were benches along both walls and a rectangular pool of steaming water in the center, cut into the bedrock itself.
Would this work? Nervously, Pierrette murmured the spell Mondradd in Mon, envisioning a time when this fane stood alone, just inside the dirt berm and wooden parapet of a Roman camp. . . .
How could she tell? Would the stone-filled column bays be suddenly open to the glory of summer sunshine? Always, the transition was gradual, deceptive. She reached for her pouch. There. A brown, dried mushroom taken from Belisama's cave. A pinch of dried flowers, once yellow and blue. She ate, and sat on a bench to wait. At Sainte Baume, and on the Crau plain, she had not needed such aid, but this was a more difficult endeavor, and if anything could help . . .
Time passed slowly, and Pierrette felt a sense of wrongness: there had surely been no benches in the original Gallic fane. She got up. The steam from the pool failed to obscure the wooden seats' sharp outlines. She sighed.
"Is it noon yet?" asked Lovi, outside. This was not going to work. The skeptical presences of the scholar and his apprentice were as good as a counterspell.
"Shut up until I say you may speak. Only minutes have passed." Ibn Saul sounded annoyed.
Pierrette shifted from one foot to the other. The steam made her feel drowsy. She eyed the pool. Why not? Setting her bundle of clothing and vellum on the stone pavement, she undressed and eased into the warm water. Ah!
Her aches melted away. Sweat sprang to her brow. She shut her eyes, and leaned back, resting her head on the stone rim. It felt soft as a pillow. . . .
"You'd better get dressed, girl," someone said. "They'll be back any time."
"What . . . who?" Pierrette said. Billows of steam rose from her skin. She wiped sweat from her eyelids. "Ma?" she gasped. "Belisama?"
"Call me what you will, child. But get dried off, and quickly. You don't want to be here, and naked, when half a legion returns from the siege."
"The siege? Then I did it! I'm . . . here."
"Of course you are. If you weren't, I wouldn't be urging you to hurry and be somewhere else."
"NoI mean, I'm . . . in the fane inside the Roman camp. Not in the baths, in Aquae Sextiae."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Figure it out later. Here." The woman held out Pierrette's tunic. She took it, and pulled it on.
The woman looked middle-aged. There was a resemblance to the goddess Mawho sometimes appeared old, sometimes notbut it was more of a family resemblance than anything else. Was there once indeed a goddess, a spirit, for every pool and source? Not just one, who appeared wherever she wished? She wore a crimson dress with a bright border embroidery of gold and yellow threads, and a gold torque's bulging ends almost met between her collarbones. Her black hair was bound with a crimson scarf.
She handed Pierrette her bracae, and frowned in distaste. "You're pretty. It's a shame to hide the mother's gift under man's clothing."
"It's served me well. But I have a skirt in that bundle."
"You'd best wear it now. There are Celt women in the camp, but no urchin boys. In trousers, they'll think you a spy."
Pierrette put the skirt over her trousers, and draped a plain, light woolen mantle over her shirt. "Better?"
"It will do. Now go."
Pierrette had a dozen questions, but the woman was adamant. "You'll have answers in good time. But not now. Go."
Pierrette stood in front of the door, afraid to open it. What would really be there, on the other side? Then she noticed that the wood was raw and newand that it was not even the same door. It was made of roughly split planks. And the walls . . . the mortar between the rude infilling of stones was new and white. She pulled the door open.
"Lovi! It's noon. Are you ready?"
"I could eat a goatan old buck. I'm so hungry."
"Then open your door. I'm opening this one." Ibn Saul gave the door a push. He peered into the steamy gloom. Then light flared as Lovi opened the other door.
"Where is he, master?"
"He didn't slip by you? You're sure?"
"I'm sure. He is not here. How did he get out?"
"I can't say." Ibn Saul circled the pool, waving away steam to peer into the water. No Piers. And he wasn't under the benches. "Examine the walls for loose stones," he ordered Lovi. "Wiggle them all."
"Can't it wait until after we eat?"
"We'll eat when I'm satisfied there's no way from this building except those two doors."
While Lovi examined the walls, ibn Saul pried at stone flags with his dagger. There were no loose ones. At last he stood straight, and rubbed his back. "That's that," he said. "The boy's won half his wager. We'll see if he can win the other half." He hefted his roll of documents. There was no possibility that Piers would win that bet.