One of the first principles of magic that I discovered was that the relationship between belief and perception was like a street—it went in two directions. A strange old man, Breb, taught me that "seeing is believing," and that seeing the wrong thing could destroy a cherished belief—and the reality it assumes.
Now I see that the opposite is also true: belief can influence perception. Bellagos and Sabinos saw an old woman, and their belief altered not only their perception of my ability to climb stairs, but my own as well.
In this credulous age, where few doubt that magic is as real as sunlight or stone, the perception of age was enough to render me incapable of ascending the nemeton's staircase unaided. Was I physically unable to do so? I cannot say, because I could not at the same time perceive of myself as old, and act otherwise. I have no doubt that had I been able to mount the staircase like a girl, my entire illusion of age would have melted away, and Sabinos would have recognized me.
Bellagos's quarters were small, one room of a two-story building, but at least that room opened onto the street, so they would be able to leave without passing through occupied rooms. There was a single pallet on the floor, a single pine chest, a fat jug, unglazed and almost full of water, and a table with one plate and one bowl. A few clothes hung from pegs near the door
Pierrette dipped water into the bowl, and peered into it. Her eyes were definitely blue—she could see colors again. She turned away from Bellagos and murmured soft words.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"Your voice sounds funny. Are you sure you're not ill?"
"If anything, I'm getting better every minute," she said impishly. "Are you ready for that surprise I promised you?" She turned around, and let her shawl fall to her shoulders. She did not have to look into the bowl to know that she was again herself. Bellagos's wide-eyed stare was all she needed.
"Magic!" he exclaimed. "Why are you doing this?" He backed toward the door.
"Wait. This is not magic. This is who I am. The old woman you saw before was the deception."
"No. I can't believe it. You are a succubus, a witch . . ."
"I am a sorceress—but if you stay here five more minutes, and talk with me, you'll see that I have no designs upon you, except to see you and your future wife safely away in time." She laughed. "I thought I was frightening before. But from your expression . . ."
"You surprised me."
She grinned. "I keep my promises. And I can climb ladders, too."
"I'll bet you can."
She was pleased with his resilience. It would have been awkward at best, if he had run away. A succubus? A backhanded compliment—but at least he considered her pretty enough to seduce him.
"What do we do now?"
"We wait for darkness," she replied, picking at her shawl. "Help me unravel this. I need to make a long cord."
It was not engaging work, but unraveling the woolen yarns and twisting them into a thin rope passed the time. Outside, shadows lengthened, until the street was murky and indistinct.
"Now," she said, rolling the last of the cord onto her fist-sized ball. "If we can make it down the block without anyone seeing us . . ." The houses behind the nemeton were not far—right, then twenty paces to the end of the street, then right again a similar distance. The air coming in under the door was cold, so it was unlikely that anyone else's door would be open. Pierrette removed her sandals. Bellagos did not. "Shouldn't you leave your shield and armor here?" Pierrette asked. "That chain mail jingles."
"Not if I walk smoothly," he countered. "Besides, if anyone hears me, they'll only be reassured. Warriors in the streets mean all is quiet and well." Bellagos peered outside, then motioned her to follow. The cobbles were cold underfoot, because the street had been in shade for several hours. They crept past doorways where yellow light spilled out in thin lines from underneath. If anyone looked, there was nowhere to hide.
Just as when she had crept through the streets of Heraclea, and again on the road to Aquae Sextiae with ibn Saul, she felt presences in the deep shadows, ghostly lurkers that brushed against the fringes of her mind, creating nameless dread. That was what kept the people of Entremont inside, when the sun went down—for they were the spirits of strangers, not ancestors, siblings, or friends.
But unlike the bodiless watchers on Heraclea's walls, and the spirits lurking in old trees and stones, these fantômes were blind, because the dryades had not bothered to paint eyes on their sewn-shut lids. Their destiny was not to watch and defend—but then, what was it?
At the corner, Bellagos again peeked—squatting low, because a watcher would be more inclined to notice movement at his own eye level. That was a stalker's trick. Bellagos was more versatile than impressions would have indicated. Good, she thought. He'll have to be clever to find Minho's Isles—and to survive getting there. She wondered if Aurinia would be pregnant by then, or—judging by the way she looked at Bellagos, if she were already so.
The four houses were ahead now, with the staircase on the right of the endmost one. Next to it was a split wood fence—a pigpen, by the odor that drifted their way. When they had passed it before, Pierrette had heard no grunting or scuffling, and guessed that it was empty. "You can hide in there," she whispered.
"It stinks!" he hissed.
"You don't have to wallow in it—just hunch down and keep watch through the slats. If you see or hear anything at all, tug on the end of this cord. I'll have the other end."
"More likely you'll be the one who needs a diversion," he mused. "Let's work out some signals, so I know what to do."
There were, Pierrette admitted, advantages to the military mindset. The Romans and Greeks wrote treatises on strategy and tactics, on the use of terrain, surprise, and diversions. Now, despite the obvious scorn of the old warrior in the market for troops who fought in formation, she understood that not all Gauls were ignorant of such things. "So if I tug twice on the cord, you'll tug back twice—and then do something noisy to draw attention here, at the rear of the nemeton. And if I tug three times . . ."
"I'll go round to the front." It was all settled, then.
As she mounted the staircase, she wished for her boy's clothing, more suited to climbing, but at least her dingy rags were dark. She pulled her long skirt up while she ascended the ladder to the second-story roof. There would be no moon for a while, she realized—which thought only slightly slowed her pounding heart.
The ladder was heavier than it looked, and even after pulling it up behind her, she had to drag it across the roof. Finally, she got it raised into position against the roof of the sanctum, without yet having raised an alarm. She scrambled upward and peered over the parapet, keeping her head low, even though she did not expect anyone to be on the upper floors of the nemeton at night, because of the prohibition against lamps. She saw nothing on the roof except the ladder projecting upward from the room where the dryades' grisly trophies were prepared.
She crept to the edge of the skylight. The air rising from inside made her eyes water, so strong were the fumes. She had to force herself to remain there, listening—and hearing a quiet murmur from below. Who could it be, down there in the dark?
"Am I going mad?" she heard. "Am I blind? What has happened to me?"
"We're all blind," said another voice, a strange, eerie whisper that seemed to originate inside Pierrette's head. "The sacrifice is necessary, for the cause."
"Necessary? For whom? For what? I'm going mad. I can't feel my arms and legs. I can't even feel my cock!"
"What cock? Don't you know where you are? You don't have a . . ."
Fantômes! The voices were not dryades lurking below, they were . . . the heads. She was not hearing spoken words at all. But how did she dare climb down into . . . that?
She had not spoken aloud, but when another disembodied voice spoke, it addressed her directly: "They won't see you, girl, or even notice. And I won't tell." It was a familiar voice . . . but who? "It was ten years ago," the voice continued. "I was . . . Ambioros. Don't you remember me? In Heraclea?"
"Ambioros! Of course I remember you. But . . . are you a fantôme? What has happened to you?"
A disembodied sigh rewarded her. "Do you remember what you told us, what we discussed? After you burned the nemeton, I had no more stomach for headhunting, for the slaughter necessary to replace what you destroyed. And as King Teutomalos's ambitions became even more grandiose, I became sick at heart. When my reticence became obvious to everyone . . ." He did not have to explain further.
"But how can you speak with me, though the others can't?"
"Even the least of the dryadeae can cast their spirits forth from their bodies. Can't you do that?"
Pierrette could—and had. And until she got back to ibn Saul, in the Roman baths, she could not be absolutely sure she was not doing that even now.
"Oh, you're here, all right," said Ambioros with a disembodied chuckle. "Your magic is better than theirs—if you can use it properly."
"What do you mean? What should I do?"
"You could start by getting that Roman—Calvinus, is it?—off his shapely buttocks, that's what. It would be nice if you did before it's too late. Before this hideous creation of Teutomalos's consumes us all."
"What are you talking about? I don't understand. How could his plans be more grandiose than they already were?"
"The god!" the voice hissed. "The new god. It is almost here. I can feel it creeping into my mind. You must save me! Make Calvinus attack, before he no longer can!"
A new god? What was Ambioros talking about? But just then, Pierrette saw a light flare below. "Careful with that!" someone exclaimed harshly. It was a living voice, not a fantôme.
"It wasn't my idea to come up here," said another. "I didn't hear anything. Except maybe Ambioros, complaining again."
"I heard a real voice. A living one. Ambioros! You traitor! Who have you been speaking with?"
"Toss that lamp into the pot that holds my head," came Ambioros's murmuring reply. "Then you'll have enough light to see for yourself."
Pierrette backed slowly away from the skylight as the flickering orange glow approached the ladder. How was she going to get away? How was she going to be able to move the other ladder back where she had found it, without being heard? Then she remembered the cord. Where was it? Had she dropped it? There! She had crawled right over it, and now it was pressed beneath her knee. She tugged on it—and the end came loose in her hand. Broken!
But no! That was the wrong end. The rest of the cord still led back the way she had come. She gave it three quick tugs, then felt three corresponding ones from Bellagos. She continued to back toward the parapet, until she felt its rough mud plaster against her feet. Was Bellagos going to do something to distract the dryades? How long should she wait? She slithered down the ladder, then poised to move it back where it belonged as soon as she heard something that was out of the ordinary. She did not have long to wait.
"Romans!" shouted Bellagos, banging his sword on his shield. "Romans at the west gate!" His voice came from Pierrette's left, at the front of the sanctum. Would the dryades in the room below hear it? "To arms!" he yelled, still banging. In a house somewhere below Pierrette, a light flared as someone lit a lamp from a glowing hearth-coal. She leaped up and clambered over the parapet onto the ladder.
Then, just as her head was about to drop below the wall and out of sight of the roof, she glimpsed movement near the skylight. "I saw something!" someone cried out.
"The Romans are below, not on the roof," another voice protested. "Come down quickly."
"But someone was here. Ambioros was lying!"
"It can wait. Come!"
Pierrette dropped to the lower roof. If the dryade—the younger one, she thought—disobeyed, he would see the ladder. But if she lingered to put it back . . . She waited, trying to keep her breath from gusting noisily. The voice was now silent. Had the dryade seen the ladder? Was he even now peering down into the shadows where she huddled? She took one strained breath, then another, then a third . . . and there was still no outcry from above. If she could move the ladder back, no one could be sure anyone had been on the nemeton roof. . . . Below, but out of sight, perhaps around the corner from where Bellagos had hidden, she heard a babble of raised voices. She pulled on the ladder's lower rungs, and it began to slide down the wall. . . .
"Where did you see them?" growled the chief of the guard. "My men saw nothing." He glared at Bellagos as if personally insulted. The two men had walked several short blocks from the nemeton, and now stood atop the western wall.
"They were there, in the brush below," said Bellagos. "And over there, near the gate. I saw a glow, as if someone was blowing a coal to life."
"There's no one now there now—and if they had intended to fire the gate, there'd be brush piled against it. Are you sure you've not been drinking too much?"
"I saw what I saw. Perhaps your men were dozing . . ."
"Not a chance! I made my rounds only moments ago. There's something strange about this. I'll speak with your captain about it. What's your name?"
"My captain is Bellagos, of the Winter Horse. Be sure to tell him about my drinking. Of course he'll want to know that."
"A horseman! I should have known." The chief turned away angrily. The Winter Horse were elite warriors, and many of them were not even from Entremont. He knew of their leader only by reputation—an arrogant fellow who would stand up for his men. He would not call upon Bellagos. "False alarm!" he shouted. "Back to your posts." He strode angrily away
Bellagos's shoulders slumped as the tension ran from him. If the chief of sentries ever saw the Winter Horse's leader without his helmet, he was in for a surprise.
He glanced about. The townsfolk who had gathered—even the women were armed with knives, spears, and firewood cudgels—began to disperse. Where was the girl . . . or would she again be an old woman? Goose bumps formed all up and down his ribs and arms when he considered that. Battle held no terror for him, but this long siege had become a different kind of war, with uncanny weapons, and considering everything he had seen this day past—the vast collection of heads he did not recognize, all stored in an unseemly, methodical yet irreverent manner, the uncanny veleda who seemed to live in past, present, and future all at once, and who was familiar one minute, a stranger the next—he was no longer sure what side he was on.
He trudged wearily back toward his house. She would be there, or she would not. Either way, he intended to catch up on some sleep. It was still several hours to dawn—though considering all he had seen, he was not sure he would sleep well, if at all.