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Chapter 3 - The Episkopos's Ultimatum

At the sound of the tinkling silver bell, Pierrette raised her eyes from the scroll. Anselm looked up from a Coptic inscription from the second century. "Tell them to come back later."

"If it weren't important, master, they would not have braved the path. Shall I bring them to the rooftop patio, or the large hall?"

"The rooftop."

Pierrette had avoided making decisions for seven sleeps. As long as she remained in the keep, nothing would change in the world beyond. She would not have to go on the trail of Ma's vision; Diodoré would remain short of proposing marriage, and no new Celtic apparitions would arise from ancient graves.

She opened the door. "P'er Otho," she gasped. "What are you doing here?" It was hardly a Christian place—though not exactly pagan, either; Anselm gave little thought to any gods.

"Episkopos Theodosius wishes to speak with magister Anselm," Otho said. Then she saw his companion. Bishop Theodosius—lean, ascetic, of middle years—wore a calf-length brown cloak over ordinary wool trousers. But for his bronze pectoral cross, he might have been a merchant. Pierrette eyed him uneasily.

"I'll fetch a light." She could have taken the candle from its niche, and lit it with a flick of her fingers but, under the churchman's eye, she fetched an oil lamp. "Magister Anselm is enjoying the sunlight on the terrace." The sky outside was clear, and it was close to midday; the bishop would not emerge from gloomy evening into the glare of sunny day.

Anselm, unlike his apprentice, was not disconcerted by the eminence's visit. "Bring us wine," he commanded her. "The good episkopos and I have many things to discuss."

He assured himself that Theodosius was comfortably seated on a pillow. "I've read your treatise on daimonion and diaballein—slanderers and spirits. Masterful logic. You must explain your premise."

The old mage's enthusiasm for discourse disarmed the churchman. "I'll be happy to. A man of your learning will have no trouble accepting it, once enlightened."

Pierrette set fine Rhodanus red wine between them. She sat to listen to what promised to be an interesting discussion, but Father Otho gripped her arm. "We must speak." He tugged her down the stairs, toward the library.

"What's so important? I wanted to listen."

"You wouldn't like what you heard." He frowned. "I don't think you'll like what I have to say, either." He nodded to the other bench. She sat.

"His Eminence is the knight Diodoré's uncle. Your suitor has asked him to come."

Pierrette felt a cold weight form deep inside her. "I can't marry anyone! I must remain virgin."

"You're past the age to marry, and too pretty to be ignored. Men don't understand. They strive to bring the wild mare to stud."

The wild mare. Pierrette envisioned a stocky white horse of the Camargue breed—the goddess Epona's own. Would that she were in the Rhodanus's vast delta now, the wild wet plain of grass and reeds where river met sea. "Epi-skopos," she pronounced. "Over-seer. I'm not a slave. Tell him—and Diodoré—to look elsewhere."

"Theodosius intends to perform your baptism himself—and Anselm's."

Pierrette feared baptism, which she had concluded was a powerful spell. It would close the doors to her future as firmly as would loss of her virginity. "What can I do?"

"If you leave Citharista, the bishop, a busy man . . ."

She sighed. "Everyone wants me to leave. No one asks me what I want."

"I don't think you have a choice," Otho said, eying the door and the stairs leading upward. "I wonder how the mage and the bishop are getting along?"

* * *

Anselm paced in deep thought, his hands in the small of his back, fingers interlocked. He only did that when upset. "I consort with no demons—I don't even believe in demons. Why demand empty words of me?"

"The credo is fundamental truth."

"Your truth! `I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth . . . `Define `God.' Define `Almighty,' and `Heaven.' For that matter, define `believe.' Until you're sure that what I `believe' is `Almighty' is what you believe, they're empty words."

Theodosius sighed. "You're a difficult man. Credulous farmers find salvation easy. Nonetheless, you must be baptized. You must confess, and attend mass—and above all, you must publicly avow that your magecraft draws only upon God."

"We have not defined `God,' " Anselm protested. "Your Christian magic draws upon the universe at large, and the credulity of witnesses. Will you accept my profession, if that's how I define `God?' "

"If not from God, then your powers stem from Evil."

"I'm neither good nor evil! Have you drawn so firm a line across the world that every creature must choose a side and jump across? Is an osprey God's, because he's graceful and beautiful—or Satan's, because he kills his prey?"

"Fish hawks have no souls. You are a man."

"Define `soul.' See? We don't speak the same language. You'd have to trust that I meant my words as you define them."

Theodosius nodded. "I'll accept that as given. We need not haggle as long as you know what I mean." He got to his feet. "I won't pronounce upon the matter at once. I'll come back in a month. Are you ready, Father Otho?"

"I'll see you to the gate," said Pierrette.

Outside, on the narrow path, the bishop turned to her. "Urge your master to reconsider. If he refuses, he won't have to wait for Hell to suffer."

* * ** * *

"What did he mean?" Pierrette demanded of the mage. "What will he do?"

"He'll destroy me. Can this fortress, preserved in the eternal moment, survive if I deny its premises—set by an older god than Theodosius's?"

"It's my fault," cried Pierrette. "Had Diodoré not become infatuated . . . Oh, I wish I were ugly. Must I go away, master? That's what everyone wants."

Anselm eyed her pensively, without rushing to reassure her. "I don't think our good bishop will let go, now that he's got my soul in his teeth. But you might be wise to disappear."

"What will happen to you?"

"Theodosius and I will talk again. He won't act in haste because, just as I enjoy debate, so does he. No victory is as sweet as the battle itself. Take what time there is, and discover the source of what plagues us."

"The source?"

"Isn't it apparent? Our side can never win, you know. As long as people like Theodosius keep drawing lines in the sand, they will place more on evil's side than good's. I hear it all the time, from people who ask my aid. At Easter they say `Sell me a bane to drive away the evil fox. It killed my favorite hen.' Then at All Saints, they demand that I furnish poison to kill the evil rabbits that have eaten their garden—the rabbits no fox was there to eat. Definitions of evil expand. The Black Time will arrive when the last wart and toothache have been declared not unpleasant, but evil."

"It's him, isn't it? It's a new trick, to bring the Black Time." It was true. She had seen it. Priests called old Pan the Devil's disguise, and he acquired the old god's cloven feet. They called Cernunnos evil, and Satan grew horns. Name a thing evil, and feed the appetite and growing power of the Christians' other god.

"You must find out how it's being done. I don't think the answer is in my library."

* * *

Pierrette did not want to believe that. She did not want to tread the path to Ugium. Seeking an alternative, she spent long hours with her maps and scrolls, and went through several thick tomes before she found the clue she sought. It was in Titus Livius, Book LX:

* * *

124 B.C.: C. Sextius, proconsul, having failed to destroy the Salluvian capital, retired to Rome in ignominy.

* * *

That was clearly wrong. The siege of Entremont had not been lifted. C. Sextius Calvinus defeated the Salluvian Gauls and Ligures, and overran the oppidum of Entremont—not in 124 B.C., but in 127. He founded Aquae Sextiae Salluviorum on the site of his camp, by the thermal springs that gave the colony its name.

Just as Diodorus's scroll had faded, so had Livy's book—as if all history following the critical siege had itself faded. Or, she realized with cold dread, as if the new history that resulted from the revision had not yet been written.

She awakened Anselm from his doze in the sun. "It's now clear. Marius lost his battle against the Teutons because Calvinus did not take Entremont and remove the Salluvian threat. With no secure base, his rear was unprotected. He only dared put half his infantry in the field."

"You speak as if things actually happened that way," reflected Anselm. "But we know otherwise, despite what those books now say."

"Do we? I fear that the history we remember has been falsified, and that the Eater of Gods is writing a new one, in which Rome never won Provence and Julius Caesar, having no secure Province west of the Alps, did not conquer Gaul, and founded no Empire."

"How can you be sure?"

Pierrette laid her hand on a thick tome whose green leather covers were inlaid with silver and garnets. "Do you recognize this?"

"It's Virgil's Aeneid—his mythical tale of the founding of Rome."

Pierrette opened the book. "What do you see?"

"It's blank! Where has Virgil gone?"

"Virgil, Rome's foremost propagandist, was a Gaul, from the Padus Valley. In this new history, he never wrote it. Without a victory at Entremont, Calvinus did not found a colony. Without a colony, Marius lost Provence. Without a base for his legions, Caesar never came, saw, or conquered." Pierrette did not have to pull De Bello Gallico from the shelf to know it too would be blank.

What else would change? She pictured Entremont as a stone tossed in the sacred pool, ripples spreading, changing the world she knew, effacing first written histories, then events themselves, until a strange new present emerged without Rome. Without Rome—and thus without Emperor Constantine to legitimize Christianity. Without saints to convert Gauls and then Germans to the new faith.

In this new history, had the Eater of Gods found a better source of sustenance than pagan gods and Christian sinners?

"You're right," she said, slapping Virgil's cover. "You, Guihen, and Ma. I have to find out what's behind this, before the world changes to match what we've read."

"You'll go to Ugium?"

"I'll go where the Gaulish fantômes are thickest. Where this all began—Entremont." She felt herself clever. The ruins of Entremont were a short walk from the bishop's city of Aquae Sextiae, which was said to be lovely, with fountains that jetted warm, healing water. Whatever she found there would not be as bad as Ugium.

 

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